Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (22 page)

And whose fault is that? a small voice said. If you hurry, you can still catch the candles before they burn down completely.

“I’m going to shake the tree a little first,” he replied.

The Haddads lived in a small post-war bungalow in a modest
suburb. Moonlight tipped the white blossoms of the bridal wreath spirea dwarfing the front walk, and a wispy breeze stirred the humid air. As Green approached the front walk, he heard voices raised in anger. A moment later, the front door flung back, and Paul stormed out, hurling obscenities in his wake.

“Fuck you! Fuck all of you! Maybe I’ll let the goddamn cops know what kind of family we really are!”

“Paulie!” came two male shouts from within, but he had slammed the door.

He stomped down the cracked cement walk, head down and cursing, until he literally collided with Green. He recoiled, eyes wide with fright. “What the fuck!”

Green placed his fingers to his lips and steered him adroitly down the path. “Just a few questions.”

Paul jerked his arm loose. “If you think I’m talking to you, you’re out of your mind!”

“You got to talk to somebody sometime, Paul. You can’t keep it inside forever.”

“I’m not talking to
you
!”

“They want you to lie for them, don’t they?”

Paul turned ghostly in the moonlight. “What are you talking about?”

“Say you were all home all night Tuesday.”

“It’s true!”

“No, it’s not. One of you sneaked out. Neighbours have eyes, you know. I’m betting it was you.”

Paul backed up, shaking his head. “It wasn’t me!”

“You’re blaming Eddie again?”

“No! I’m not blaming Eddie.”

“Let me see your bicycle.”

“Why?”

“Because the neighbour saw the bicycle.”

“I don’t have to show you anything!”

Green shook his head with a sigh. “Tough guy. Okay, Paulie, get in my car. We’ll go downtown.”

“Eddie rides my bike! All the time, without asking me!”

“So it was Eddie?”

Paul turned in a circle like a caged animal, swearing softly. “It’s always Eddie. Goddamn prick, you’d think he was a saint the way they act. It’s always me that catches the shit!”

Green let Paul continue on his way, humbled and scared, and turned his attention back to the house. It was silent now, and the grey light of the television flickered on the drapes. He was all set to ring the bell and confront Eddie when he heard a low whistle from across the street. Inside a dark brown Taurus parked at the curb, he could just make out a figure beckoning to him. It proved to be Constable Wicks, who had been assigned to surveillance.

“Do you want me to stay, sir, or are you handling things from here on?”

Green vacillated then climbed in the car. “Let’s watch them a bit, see if we learn anything interesting. This family is beginning to crack apart at the seams.”

Over the next hour they shared a thermos of coffee and a doughnut. As it passed eleven, the lights gradually began to go out in the house.

Beside him, the officer yawned. “They’re not cracking apart very fast, sir, that’s for sure.”

Green held up his hand. A shadow of movement had caught his eye. Straining to see through the darkness, he made out a stealthy figure slipping past the overgrown lilacs at the side of the house. The figure emerged onto the driveway, wheeling a bike, and coasted down the drive towards them. By the time he hit the street he was pedalling hard. As he swung
left in front of them, Green caught a glimpse of a mustache.

“Follow him! Carefully!”

Eddie pedalled at a steady thirty kilometres an hour, a fast, experienced cyclist familiar with his route. They trailed him for fifteen minutes through the looping suburban crescents and out onto Alta Vista Drive, but at the busy intersection of Riverside and Industrial Avenue, they lost him. Sitting at the traffic light, they watched helplessly as he turned off onto a bicycle path and vanished into the trees.

Constable Wicks broke in on Green’s cursing. “We could go ahead and try to catch him at the other end.”

Green shook his head. “There are too many exits. He’s going downtown, but where?”

“At this hour, a bar in the market, maybe?”

Green smacked the dashboard. “Let’s go back to his house and wait for him to come home. Then he’ll bloody well tell me.”

It was five a.m., however, before Eddie Haddad pedalled wearily back up the street. Sunrise cast shafts of lemony light between the houses. Constable Wicks was fast asleep behind the wheel, and Green had spent the last few hours trying to keep his mind on the case and off the wreckage of his life. Carrie MacDonald kept floating into view, luscious, playful and despite all she had been through, so fatally naïve. How had the killer got in? Why had she been naked? Why so unsuspecting while the killer aimed the deadly bullet at her head? Had she been asleep, maybe dreaming of him? Why hadn’t he sent someone to protect her? Why hadn’t he stayed with her himself? She had needed him. He could hear her cries ringing in his ears.

He shut his eyes, trying to escape. Only to see Sharon slumped at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, her voice too weary for a fight. She would be at work right now, in this
god-forsaken dead of night, probably holding some insomniac’s shaky hand and scrounging within herself for the strength to comfort.

He forced his eyes open again. Come home, Eddie, he entreated silently, before I crack up. But it was another two hours before he drifted off into a twilight sleep. The ticking of bicycle gears jolted him awake. He leaped out of the car just as the youth pedalled past. Startled, Eddie nearly fell off his bike.

“Into the car!” Green grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. Eddie was so panic-stricken that he obeyed without question. Only when they were both seated in the back seat did he recover some bluster.

“What the hell are you doing? Spying on me?”

“Exactly. And you’ve got a lot to explain. Where did you go tonight?”

“None of your goddamn business!”

Green held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart in front of Eddie’s face. “Listen, Eddie, you’re about this far away from a double murder charge, so you better start talking. Your alibi’s blown. A neighbour saw you sneak out of the house at ten p.m. on the night Blair died. I’ve seen the speed you ride that bike. For you it would be a piece of cake to make it down to the library for ten forty-five. So if you didn’t murder Jonathan Blair, you better tell me where the hell you went!”

Constable Wicks had been rudely awakened by the scuffle and now twisted around so that he could watch them. Listening to Green, Eddie’s eyes darted first to the door handle and then back to the two men. Seeing himself outnumbered, he deflated.

“I didn’t kill Blair!” he whined. “I wasn’t anywhere near there. I just went out.”

“Where?”

“Nowhere. Just…to hang out with a friend.”

“What friend?”

“A…a friend, that’s all. They’re not part of this.”

“You think I’ll just take your word for it? Name!”

Eddie hung his head. “Just…just a girl. I—I don’t even know her name.”

Green raised an eyebrow. “A girl? You spent the night with a girl?”

“Hey, listen, a guy’s got to—”

“Where?”

Eddie licked his lips. “Ah…her house. Her parents’ house.” Green snorted. “So you sneaked out of your house, sneaked into hers, into her room, slept with her and sneaked out again before morning. All without her parents knowing?”

Eddie attempted a laugh. Colour was returning to his cheeks. “Yeah. You never been young?”

“Oh, I remember vividly. I still need a name or an address. Something I can verify.”

The colour faded again. “I—I don’t remember.”

“Bullshit! I remember every girl I laid when I was your age. You dream about it for weeks. Now, name and address.”

“I can’t tell you. I can’t.”

“What? You think you’ll get in trouble?”

“No.” Almost inaudibly. “She will.”

Green hesitated. He sensed fear, but not of him. “Look Eddie, I can be subtle when it’s not five a.m. I’ll talk to her quietly, without tipping off her family. But I have to verify your story.”

Eddie twisted around to look directly at him. “And if I don’t tell you, you’ll charge me with murder.”

“It’s a strong possibility.”

“Then charge me. Because you won’t get her name out of me.” His voice quivered with passion. “I won’t betray her like that.”

God, the purity of first love, Green thought as he dragged himself up the stairs towards his apartment. The flame so unwavering, the truth so clear. Not like his own murky mess. God knows what lay in store for him when he opened his door. Sharon would be just home from her night shift, drained and full of recriminations. What would he say? What could he say?

He found her sitting at the kitchen table, still dressed in her work clothes and sipping a cup of tea. The empty candlesticks had been pushed aside, and the morning newspaper was spread out on the table, headlining the news of Carrie’s murder. She raised her head as he appeared.

“Oh honey,” she murmured, “this must be awful for you.”

There was a softness in her eyes and a warmth in her voice that he had almost forgotten. Without warning, tears scalded his eyes and he turned away to hide them.

She stood up and moved to the stove. “Come, Mike. You’ll feel better with some tea.”

On rubber legs he eased himself into the chair opposite hers and watched her blurrily as she worked at the counter. He ached for the old days, when she would have taken him into her arms without hesitation. “I…I’m sorry I’ve been—” he tried when he could trust himself.

“I know.” She turned to put his cup in front of him. “Mike, some day we have to talk, but now is not the time. Not after the day you’ve had.”

“I don’t deserve this,” he murmured, resting his head in his hands. Grief, guilt and gratitude welled inside. He felt her fingers stroke his hair and he longed to wrap his arms around her waist. But all too soon, she withdrew and sat back down across from him.

“It’s okay, honey,” she said. “You’re exhausted. Drink your tea, and then go to bed. I’ll leave Tony at Mrs. Louks so nothing will disturb you.”

He awoke with a start to a loud hammering at the door. Shaking the fog from his head, he peered at the night table clock. One-fifteen. One-fifteen! Sunlight poured through a crack in the drapes. He bolted out of bed, groping for the pair of trousers that lay crumpled by the bed.

The hammering grew louder, and when he opened the front door, Jules strode past him into the hall. He was purple as he seized the phone lying disconnected on the hall table.

“How dare you unplug your phone in the middle of so important a case! You’ve left a half-dozen men milling aimlessly around downtown, a psychology professor without any direction, a stack of unanswered calls from the Deputy Chief, and these—” he flung a fistful of reports down on the hall table “—accumulating unnoticed on your desk.”

Green struggled to collect his wits. “My wife must have disconnected the phone to let me sleep. I only got in at seven-thirty this morning, Adam. I was on a stake-out all night.”

“You’re an inspector. I don’t need you on stake-outs, I need you in your office, providing direction.”

“I have to know where I’m going before I can do that,” Green retorted. “I’m coming in. Tell everyone to keep their pants on. I’ll just grab a coffee and a bagel—”

“No time!”

“Adam, I haven’t eaten in over fifteen hours! Do you want me to have any functioning brain cells left?” He met Jules’ steely eyes. “Tell Dr. Baker I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

When his coffee, juice and bagel were ready, he turned his mind to the reports. He quickly discovered that, contrary to Jules’ belief, he had read most of them already. I
am
on top of this case, he thought with annoyance. Every conceivable lead is being followed up.

Two reports were new to him, however, and since they pertained to the Haddad family’s activities just prior to Blair’s death, he bent over them eagerly as he gulped his coffee. A ticket agent at the Air Canada check-in counter remembered a very excited Lebanese family who had arrived to check a female relative onto a flight for New York. He had noticed the woman first of all because she was beautiful and secondly because she was crying. The men had argued among themselves in a mixture of Lebanese and English, so that the agent had only a partial grasp of the content. They seemed to be arguing about what to do next and how much they should tell the family in Beirut.

A girl who had been on the cash at the gift shop near the observation deck on Tuesday remembered three men who had stood at the observation window for about half an hour, arguing loudly in a combination of languages. After watching a jet take off, they had left together, sullen and subdued, at about eight-thirty.

Telephone records indicated that the elder Haddad had made half-a-dozen long-distance phone calls to Beirut between Sunday, June 8 and Tuesday, June 10, the last recorded at six forty-five p.m. Monday. No doubt to inform Raquel’s father in Beirut of the flight number and arrival time of her flight home.

Green studied the phone records curiously. There had been a tremendous flurry of activity in the two days preceding her departure to Beirut. What had happened to cause the sudden panic? Phone calls between Beirut and Ottawa prior to June 8
had averaged about two a month, always at the Sunday discount rates.

All these bits of evidence lent credence to the Haddads’ version of events. Somehow they had discovered Raquel was too involved with a Canadian boy and they had taken immediate, concrete action to end it. Emergency arrangements had been coordinated by phone with relatives in Lebanon, plane tickets booked, and the rebellious young woman personally escorted onto the aircraft. Archaic, perhaps, but perfectly above board. No outcry for vengeance and murder.

Only Eddie, full of youthful ideals, might have thought differently. Even worse, his alibi had been proven false; he had sneaked out of the house shortly before the murder and refused to give verifiable details about where he had gone. Still, it was much easier to picture Eddie swinging up a flower trellis to his lover’s window than driving a knife through another man’s ribs.