Read Online Beautiful Lie the Dead by Barbara Fradkin - Free Book Online Page A

schoolmate at Lower Canada College. She assumed Lower Canada College was like its Upper Canada equivalent, an incubator for future captains of the country.
    Everyone regretted the loss of a man taken at the pinnacle of his powers, who’d left a legacy of cases untried and a young wife and infant son to mourn his loss. In all this gushing, there was precious little about the death itself. No autopsy results, no mention of nooses or closets. Montreal police were briefly quoted as saying foul play was not suspected, and the landlord who’d blabbed about the body hanging in the closet now had no comment.
    Things sure were different in those days, she thought. Today the landlord would have cashed in big time, selling his story to some trashy rag that didn’t give a damn about facts, integrity or family sensitivities. It was interesting to see that in 1978, Harvey Longstreet’s family had enough money, or clout, to muzzle a story that might have blown the guy’s perfect image to smithereens in their faces. Had the police investigated at all, or had the family’s embarrassment shut them down too?
    There were many questions that remained unanswered, many secrets that the family and Elena had kept to themselves. But the story seemed deader than a doornail, and Sue couldn’t imagine how an old suicide, no matter how tragic, had anything to do with anything.
    * * *
    At ten a.m. Thursday morning, sixty-four hours and three brutal winter nights after Meredith Kennedy had last been heard from, Constable Whelan of Missing Persons finally managed to persuade his contacts at Meredith’s bank to give him a peek at her records. Officially banks and phone companies required search warrants to permit police access to a citizen’s records, but a warrant required proof of a crime. Being missing was not a crime, no matter what the private fears of the police were. Like all businesses, however, banks didn’t want to appear uncooperative when a young woman’s life might be at stake. After ten years in Missing Persons, Whelan had enough inside contacts to persuade someone to open the books.
    By Thursday, things were not looking good. The city had been turned upside down by a burgeoning army of friends, family, women’s groups and other concerned volunteers, and the media was dogging their every move. Medical and weather experts had been thrust on the air, counting down her diminishing chances for survival if she lay injured somewhere. The mood in the incident room had turned sombre, and the search coordinator was already talking in terms of recovery more often than rescue.
    Constable Whelan refused to give up. He had been there from the first call, heard the anguish in Brandon Longstreet’s voice, and seen the hopeful laughing face of the girl in the photo he’d sent. When he finally got the official okay on Thursday morning at the end of his graveyard shift, he headed directly over to the TD Canada Trust branch Meredith used. Everyone at the branch had heard of the disappearance, and everyone knew the woman well. She’d been a customer since she was six years old, when her father had brought her to open her very own account, and she still came in regularly to do business.
    Recently she’d been in to discuss a small loan to cover some of the travel expenses to Ethiopia. She had a smile and a friendly hello for everyone, they said, and she was so excited about this trip. So thrilled about the wedding. She’d been engaged once before, she’d told the branch manager, but they were too incompatible. This time it had felt perfect.
    The branch manager ushered Whelan directly into her office and typed some commands into her computer. “This will show a record of all her transactions in all her accounts, no matter where they occur. She can take money out of an ATM in Vancouver and it will show up here instantly.” She paused as the screen flickered and loaded a long list of entries.