Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (261 page)

He grinned as he appraised Green. “You don’t look much like an inspector.”

To avoid the intimidating inspector persona, Green had dressed in his favourite jeans and faded sweatshirt for his night on the town and had tossed on his battered suede jacket. He knew that with his slight build and boyish freckled face, he didn’t look very inspectorish. The reporter was good.

He returned the man’s grin. “But you knew it was me.”

“Cops have an aura. The way you scan a room, always aware of your surroundings. We’re not so unalike, you know.”

“Thanks for meeting me.”

“Yeah, well, don’t go all Pollyanna. I’m intrigued. You know what that means.”

Green nodded, suspecting the man needed a big story more than he let on. “I’ll do what I can. For now, this is just background.”

“To do with the Lise Gravelle murder, I assume?”

Green kept his face blank. Cam Hatfield was no fool. Why else would a high-ranking Ottawa police detective be in the city in the first place? “I’m exploring leads.”

“Right,” Hatfield said drily. He signalled the barman for a refill. “So what leads did you uncover in Lise Gravelle’s apartment that bring you back to the thirty-year-old Longstreet case?”

“When I know, Cam, you’ll be among the first to know.” The barman approached and Green ordered a local St. Ambroise pale ale. Catching Hatfield’s scowl of disgust, he held up a cautionary hand. “I know that sounds like bullshit, but the truth is, I’m flying blind right now, and I can’t afford to jeopardize the investigation. I have a feeling you knew there was more to the Longstreet case than was reported. If you can help me get to the truth, you have my word you can be in on the Gravelle story when it’s safe to break it.”

Hatfield studied him in silence, twirling his Scotch glass on the beer coaster before him. Despite his rumpled, down-on-his-luck looks, his gaze was astute. Finally he picked up his glass and took an appreciative sip. “Well, my sources in Ottawa tell me I should stick to you like glue, so I’m in.”

Green laughed. “Don’t tell me. Corelli.” He and the
Sun
reporter had a chequered history of cooperation.

Hatfield shrugged, giving nothing away. “So, for some reason that you will at some future date reveal to me, you want to know about the Longstreet clan and most specifically about the peculiar death of Harvey Longstreet thirty-two years ago.”

“You remember it?”

“Oh, I remember it. I quit my job over it. Mind you, I knew the
Star
was about to fold, so it was no big loss.” He chuckled.

“I couldn’t stand my new boss, or the direction the paper was taking under the new management, so it felt great to stand in the news editor’s office and say ‘That’s it. This is my line in the sand, and I quit.’ Of course, I had a lead on a much better job with Canadian Press wire service before I did my
grande geste
.”

“I had a look at the press clippings from both the
Star
and the
Gazette
. It looks as if the story just died.”

“Killed.” Hatfield made a slicing motion through the air. “The word just came down from on high. ‘There’s nothing there but prurient curiosity that is damaging the reputation of an honourable man, so the
Star
is no longer participating’.”

“Who was putting on the pressure?”

“Oh, the Longstreet family, without a doubt, through one of their Westmount lawyers who played footsie with the
Star
’s owners over drinks at the St. James Club. Old English money in Montreal is completely incestuous. Everybody who’s anybody is married to someone or related to someone who’s somebody, and the Longstreets, from their castle on top of Westmount, are right in the thick of it. It’s a dying class now, with most of the power brokers moved on to Toronto or Calgary, but thirty years ago they were still a force.”

Hatfield took another sip of his Scotch, nursing it and relishing his soap box. Green was silent, happy to let him fill in the context. “You have to understand, thirty years ago the English were under siege. René Levesque and his Parti Québecois had won their first victory in 1976, businesses were deserting the province in droves, real estate values were in the tank. The separatist wolves were at the door, smelling blood. The Anglo elite was circling the wagons to protect its image and honour from the contempt of the Quebec intelligentsia and the resentment of the Quebec masses. During his life Harvey was one of the few to earn their respect, because he took on the English establishment. If the truth about his death came out, it would have been a humiliation, proof of the utterly corrupt and decadent depths to which the great Anglo industrial complex had fallen.”

At this point Green rolled his eyes. “Back to earth, Cam. I get it; the bigwigs wanted the story suppressed. But who exactly were these bigwigs?”

Hatfield pouted. “But you have to understand the Anglo-Quebec dance. Nowhere was it more exquisitely executed than right here in this building in 1955. When it was still the Montreal Forum, thousands of Montreal Canadiens fans took to the streets in a riot because their beloved hockey icon, Rocket Richard, had been suspended by the English-speaking rulers of the NHL.”

Green sighed. “I live in Ottawa. Trust me, I know the English-French dance. But behind the politics, there are always personalities pulling the strings. René Levesque, Pierre Trudeau, Lucien Bouchard... Who were the people pulling the strings in the Longstreet affair? Elena Longstreet? Her father-in-law?”

Hatfield grunted in dismissal. “Elena Longstreet was a nobody. The daughter of a Hungarian immigrant who’d fled the communists in 1956 claiming he was a count. Elena had looks, brains and charm, and luckily for her, an infant son with Longstreet blood in his veins. Without that, she’d have been back making goulash.”

“She’s not a nobody any longer.”

Hatfield nodded. “So I hear. But in 1978 she was a bewildered, heartbroken young widow barely out of law school.”

Green raised an eyebrow. “Heartbroken?”

“That may be an exaggeration. She certainly knew what she wanted—to preserve her husband’s good name and of course by extension, her own.”

“Was there money involved? Insurance?”

“A drop in the bucket compared to what Uncle Cyril controlled from his perch at the top of the Circle.”

Green perked up. Here was a name. “Uncle Cyril?” “The actual man at the helm of the Longstreet fortune. Others had shares and trusts, but these were set up so that Cyril maintained control. Cyril never married and he had no children, but after his brothers died, he decided who among all the nephews, nieces and grandwhatzits got any money.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Oh, he’ll never die. He’s pretty much housebound now, but too stubborn to relinquish his iron grip on other people’s lives.”

Green sipped his beer thoughtfully. The picture was taking shape. Realizing he was starving, he signalled the waiter. “So Cyril quashed the story.”

Hatfield said nothing until the waiter arrived with a menu. “Try the cannelloni, it’s a safe bet if you’re cheap like me.”

With a grin, Green ordered the meat cannelloni while Hatfield ordered another Scotch. Single malt this time, Green noticed and realized that the Ottawa Police Services would be paying. Once the new Scotch was in front of him, Hatfield closed his eyes in bliss. “Yeah, I always assumed Cyril quashed the story. No big thing for him. He and his pals had been manipulating the news for years.”

Determined to divert Hatfield from his favourite political soap box, Green plunged ahead. “Tell me what you do know about the Longstreet case.”

“I know it wasn’t suicide.”

Green’s eyebrows shot up. “What did the autopsy find?”

“Asphyxiation due to strangulation. That much was released before the hammer came down. But get this.” Hatfield leaned in close, breathing Scotch. “He was naked as a jaybird.”

The penny dropped. “Ah. And the cops knew this?”

“Of course they did! So did the coroner. But they killed it to avoid the scandal. It wasn’t that common back then, or at least as openly talked about, but obviously sex was involved. But whether the guy was doing himself, or had an over-enthusiastic partner who miscalculated, the cops never said.”

“But surely the cops would have at least investigated whether there was another person in the room. There was no DNA back then, but they would have looked for fingerprints, a second wine glass, hairs on the sheets...”

“Everything was wiped clean.”

“Everything?” Green leaned forward. “You mean door knobs, toilet seats…?”

“And the dishes in the drainboard. All washed, all whistle clean, according to the investigating cop.”

Green sat back in disbelief. “Didn’t that strike anyone as suspicious? If you were about to engage in a little game of autoerotic asphyxiation, you don’t wipe all the dishes and surfaces clean. You don’t expect to die!”

Hatfield laughed. “You’d think. I asked the cop that, in fact. Some fresh off the farm kid who’d just landed his first case. Not even a detective. The force hadn’t even called in the big guns, and when the coroner ruled it suicide, they just left this kid with this stinking political mess in his lap.”

Green sidestepped the political reference. He knew the force wouldn’t have left the young officer to his own devices. Someone higher up had pulled the strings. “So what you’re saying is there was no investigation. What about witnesses? The landlord, the neighbours?”

Hatfield shrugged. “Suddenly blind and deaf, even after I offered a substantial sum. Never heard a thing. Professor Longstreet was a quiet, considerate neighbour who wasn’t there very often, and when he was, he was as helpful and hard-working as you could possibly want. Even offered to help one woman with her restraining order and another with some minor traffic charge. All-round saint.”

Green’s cannelloni arrived, smothered in thick sauce and fragrant with basil and garlic. He sank his fork into the cheesy mixture and prepared to take a bite. “Okay, but you know something, I can tell. Something the
Star
wouldn’t let you print.”

Hatfield chuckled. “I
had
something, but it vanished between my fingers the minute Cyril Longstreet’s minions paid a visit to the apartment building with a chequebook in hand. The tenant in the apartment underneath was a med student working eighteen hours a day at the Montreal General and off-hours as a bartender to pay for her studies. She was upset at all the noise— the parties, the singalongs, the gung-ho student meetings to plan their next protest that always ended with some bed-banging deep into the night. She told me Longstreet had sex every night he spent there, got so she hated to see him arrive because she needed her sleep.”

Green’s pulse quickened. “So there was almost certainly a lover present when he hanged himself. Any idea who?”

“Some pretty young thing. The med student, who was anything but, was not very specific.”

“Always the same girl?”

“Well, there were lots to choose from back in those days before all the politically correct sexual harassment crap. And it would be in keeping with the type of sleaze who screws co-eds while his wife is home with a two month-old baby.”

“Co-eds? It was one of his students?”

“That’s just a guess, but it was his pattern. Elena herself had been his student, and thirteen years his junior.”

“Did the Montreal Police know this?”

“I told that baby-faced cop, but I doubt he followed up. Too much work. He might even have to investigate. Nobody wanted this case to be anything. They all just wanted it to go away.” Hatfield grinned and drained his glass, rolling the last of the Scotch around on his tongue. “It’s kind of poetic justice in a way, that now it’s come back to bite everyone in the ass.”

The aroma of coffee wafted into her dreams and wrapped itself languidly around her naked body. Tickled her nostrils, brushed lips across her forehead.

Lips?

Sue Peters opened her eyes to see the morning sun carving slats of shadow on the wall opposite. Above her, Gibbsie bent his sleep-tousled head, a smile on his face and a cup of coffee in his hand. His other hand roamed her belly, tentative and tender. What a hardship to wake up to on a Sunday morning. Fighting the stiffness of her damaged body, she pushed herself partially upright against the pillows and took the coffee. Strong, black, fabulous. He fetched his own coffee and slipped in beside her.

“I love waking up beside you in the morning,” he said.

“Mmm...” she said, wary. “You make a mean coffee.”

He reddened and his Adam’s apple bobbed. A bad sign. “I’ve been thinking, we’d save money so much faster living together.”

“Money maybe, but not sanity. I told you, I’d drive you nuts in less than a month.”

He leaned over to kiss the little ridge of scar below her breast.

Once she’d been ashamed to let him see her, let alone explore every inch of her.

“You could never drive me crazy, ever,” he murmured. “Except by saying no. You know you’re going to marry me someday.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you know it’s not going to happen until I can keep up my end one hundred per cent.”

“You can! You said you’d marry me when you could walk down the aisle without a cane, and you can!”

“Sometimes. But I’m just as likely to pitch sideways into the pews.”

He didn’t answer right away, and she figured he was thinking the same thing she was, that she might never be one hundred percent. After all, it was nearly three years since the assault. Then he touched her hand. “Don’t you dream about it sometimes?”

She nodded, took a sip of coffee and silently swore at her shaking hand.

“Then let’s do it! Just go for it. Grab it. Holy jumpin’, Sue, you of all people understand that we never know what’s around the corner. Look at poor Brandon Longstreet—one minute he thinks he’s got his dream in the palm of his hand, and the next minute it’s ripped from his hand.”

“Meredith’s choice, Gibbsie. Obviously not such a perfect dream after all.”

“We don’t know that. We only know this Lise Gravelle spooked her and made her take off.”

“But not even telling Brandon where she is? You got to admit, Bob, that’s a pretty good kick in the teeth.”