BEAUTIFUL
LIE
THE
DEAD
Barbara FRADKIN
Text © 2010 Barbara Fradkin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.
Cover design by Emma Dolan
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
RendezVous Crime
an imprint of Napoleon & Company
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Printed in Canada
14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, date-
Beautiful lie the dead / Barbara Fradkin.
(An Inspector Green mystery)
ISBN 978-1-926607-08-5
I. Title. II. Series: Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, 1947- . An Inspector
Green mystery
PS8561.R233B42 2010 C813’.6 C2010-904966-7
The Inspector Green Series
Do or Die Once Upon a Time Mist Walker Fifth Son Honour Among Men Dream Chasers This Thing of Darkness Beautiful Lie the Dead
Table of Contents
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Acknowledgements
To Hannah Green, the Number 2 bus was the lifeblood of the city, belching oily fumes as it rumbled along the narrow streets of the inner city. On Ottawa’s transit planning chart, it was supposed to provide a link between two major shopping malls, the Rideau Centre at the heart of downtown and Bayshore Shopping Centre in the west. But it was the whacky journey in between that Hannah loved, first passing the gingerbread Victorian renos of Centretown, then the spice-laden clamour of Chinatown and the thrift shops of Hintonburg before it skulked like a smelly, overweight bag lady into the trendy kitsch of Westboro.
On Monday night the weather was working itself up into one mother of a snowstorm, adding to the fun. Hannah loved watching the people as they clambered aboard in a swirl of snow, juggling Christmas shopping bags and yanking their mittens off with their teeth so they could fish into their pockets for change or a bus pass. She loved reading the clues they gave away, a weird habit she’d probably gotten from her father, the bigshot detective. The student with the three-hundred dollar Goretex jacket and the swagger in his step would probably get off in Westboro, or worse in her own neighbourhood of Highland Park just to the west of it. The old Chinese lady wearing a long woollen coat, a thousand mismatched scarves and a huge brown vinyl sac was going shopping at the Asian grocery store, and the teenage mother with the neon green ski jacket would wrestle her second-hand stroller and her sleeping baby down the steps into a snowbank outside the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store.
Sometimes the people surprised her. Sometimes the tall, classy African family would not get off at the Ethiopian restaurant but at the library nearby. Sometimes the boozy trio of loudmouths whom she had pegged for the Royal Oak would head off instead to the stone church that hogged an entire block among the funky old stores of Hintonburg.
And sometimes, like the young woman who flopped down in the seat across from her, they confounded her. The woman had boarded the bus at the corner of Bank and Laurier Streets, in the middle of the business district. She looked like a fashion natural. Long tumbling hair a shade of burnt red that you couldn’t buy in a bottle, perfect nails buffed to a natural shine. No make-up, but with cheekbones like
