The Roar of the Crowd Read online

  The Roar

  of the Crowd

  A Randy Craig Mystery

  By

  Janice MacDonald

  other Ravenstone mysteries by Janice MacDonald

  Sticks and Stones

  The Monitor

  Hang Down Your Head

  Condemned to Repeat

  Roar of the Crowd

  copyright © Janice MacDonald 2014

  Published by Ravenstone

  an imprint of Turnstone Press

  Artspace Building

  206-100 Arthur Street

  Winnipeg, MB

  R3B 1H3 Canada

  www.ravenstonebooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or ­transmitted in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or ­mechanical—without the prior ­written permission of the ­publisher. Any request to photocopy any part of this book shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright, Toronto.

  Turnstone Press gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Province of Manitoba through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Book Publisher ­Marketing Assistance Program.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens for Turnstone Press.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  MacDonald, Janice E. (Janice Elva), 1959–, author

  The roar of the crowd / Janice MacDonald.

  (A Randy Craig mystery)

  ISBN 978-0-88801-470-2 (pbk.)

  I. Title. II. Series: MacDonald, Janice E. (Janice Elva), 1959-

  Randy Craig mystery.

  PS8575.D6325R63 2014 C813’.54 C2014-903011-8

  This book is dedicated to my wonderful friend

  Barbara Reese:

  extraordinary actress, wife, mother, world traveller,

  Edmonton arts maven, and voracious reader.

  Your generosity of spirit and your love are so appreciated.

  The Roar

  of the Crowd

  1.

  Even dead, Oren Gentry could fill a theatre. That is what it seemed like, anyway. The memorial was supposed to begin in five minutes and people were still streaming in, finding a place to sit in Zeidler Hall, the smallest of the three theatre spaces in the Citadel Theatre complex.

  “They’ll wait till 2:08, mark my words. Theatre tradition,” hissed Sarah Arnold, who was sitting on the other side of Denise from me. “They probably already planned it that way.” She fluttered back into her seat, arranging her layers of black in a seemly fashion.

  I wasn’t sure full hat and veil were required of non-family mourners, but Sarah didn’t seem to be taking any chances. I felt a slight tremor from Denise’s shoulder. I didn’t dare catch her eye, for fear both of us would begin to giggle.

  Denise Wolff, my best friend, was a Shakespeare professor at the University of Alberta, one of the very few U of A–minted PhDs they had ever hired into their ranks, I might add. That was true for most universities. They preferred to hire from outside their student body, possibly to create more cross-pollination. Or maybe it was just one of those “grass is greener” concepts. Luckily, they had realized you don’t get lusher than Denise when it comes to her love and understanding of the Bard, and her ability to get that enthusiasm across to undergrads.

  She had brought a lot of new ideas to the department once she received tenure, and this event was the result of one of them.

  Not Oren Gentry’s death, of course. Edmonton’s most famous son had died all on his own, no thanks to Denise. She was the reason the two of us were here at his memorial service, though. If it hadn’t been for her cross-departmental initiative with the Drama department to create an Elizabethan rendition of Shakespeare in the outdoor rotunda between the Fine Arts and Law buildings, the likelihood of our being surrounded by Edmonton’s theatrical community to mourn one of their own would be slim to nil.

  The concept of having Shakespeare classes in the English department mix and mingle with acting classes in the Drama department must have occurred to someone before Denise, but if so, no one else had been able to create the fusion necessary. I had been roped in to help her tote and lift, as I was “between engagements” as a freelancer. It helped, of course, that Denise was utterly irresistible to men while at the same time exuding some sort of unthreatening air to women. Everyone wanted to be connected to her, and judging by her string of friendly ex-boyfriends, everyone was just happy to have had some time in the sunlight with her.

  She was my closest pal in Edmonton. We had met in the English department, while I was working as a teaching assistant and writing up my Master’s thesis and she was in the throes of her PhD dissertation. We’d both had offices in a university-owned house across the street from the Humanities building, and the connection had continued through the ensuing years. Denise had kept her eye on the brass ring, a professorship within the university. I, who had hoped to spend the rest of my days teaching introductory English literature courses to freshmen students, had found it impossible to maintain a lifestyle filled with luxuries like groceries and electricity on the two to three courses a year a sessional lecturer could often nab, but never count on. I had to admit, as Denise grew more and more confident and alive in her secure and permanent position, little tendrils of envy grew in my heart. Still, she was my friend, and since I had no other pressing deadlines this spring, I had figured I might as well help with the inaugural Spring Session Courtyard Shakespeare 284. Denise had a budget for printing and publicity, and had hired me for a nominal amount to create handbills and tickets.

  She and Sarah, the sessional lecturer hired to teach acting, who was also quite well known as an actress around town, had been the masterminds behind the project. With the blessing of several of the local bigwigs in the theatre community, like Alex Karras, Jim de Felice, and Oren Gentry, the three daytime productions of Romeo and Juliet had been very well received. The three-week spring session English class had all been Montagues and the Drama class Capulets and the line in the sand had been obvious. University students, curious theatre folks, and a lot of retired people who could afford to spend two-and-a-half hours standing or perched on railway-tied landscaping steps, provided an appreciative audience, and the project was written up in the Edmonton Journal, Avenue Magazine and featured on the Sunday arts program on the CBC. Denise and Sarah were the flavour of the month.

  It had worked out rather well for me, as well. The artistic director of the summer Shakespeare in the Park festival had been really taken with the whole idea of springboarding the interest in Shakespeare with first- and second-year students. His company was made up of professionals, but they had a mandate to hire two or three freshly graduated students, as well, in an effort to help them on their way to their Equity cards, and to provide some essential training in the classics. They also ran a Shakespeare camp for junior high and high school students, who met during the day down at the site and learned about Shakespeare and acting, along with stage fencing, makeup, costuming, and repertory work. The junior high program was well developed and run by an actress with a teaching degree, who had been part of the company since its inception. The high school program was waning, though.

  Kieran Frayne had approached both Denise and Sarah to see if they would be interested in creating some sort of bridging class for the summer high school students who self-identified as wanting to spend three weeks studying Shakespeare and acting. Neither w
oman had the time or inclination, but Denise had loyally offered up my name to him. I had met with him twice, providing a syllabus of what I thought would provide insight, background, hands-on work, and fun. I was hired, gratefully, I had the feeling. The course was set to begin at the end of June, giving me just under a month to get ready, once I was through with the marking I’d signed on to do for a couple of profs. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Kieran had begun seeing Denise socially. Ah well, if you can’t make nepotism work for you once in a while, why bother making friends?

  In the meantime, the best-known actor/director/television personality to have ever come out of Edmonton, Oren Gentry, had died. Although he was only in his fifties, Gentry had lived hard and fast and bright, very much in the public eye. No one was overly surprised by his sudden heart attack. Sad, yes. Messages of condolence were coming in from all over Canada. The prime minister had been filmed saying that Gentry was his favourite actor, calling him the patron saint of Alberta. Flags flew at half-mast at the Legislature, City Hall, the university, and the Victoria School for the Arts, where Gentry had once attended school.

  And here we were, the theatre community of Edmonton, come to mourn one of our own.

  The lights began to dim, causing a slight flurry to our right, as Sarah flipped back her dark veil in order to see. I checked my watch, pushing the glow button in the dark. 2:08. Showtime.

  2.

  The curtains drew back to reveal one empty spotlight on the stage. It stayed lit for a full minute, which seemed interminable, and then was abruptly shut off, leaving the stage entirely dark for another minute. Slowly, so that I couldn’t even say for sure when it had begun, a low orchestral piece, relying heavily on strings, built in the background, providing a fuzzy warm sound in the wings.

  The stage slowly relit, and this time there was a podium to the left, a long table in the middle of the stage, draped with a purple cloth and holding a photo of Oren Gentry, next to a brass urn that caught the overhead spotlights and seemed to glow. Coming from the wings stage right, dressed in an off-white, homespun cassock and a purple alb, was Bill Oakes. I smiled in spite of the sad occasion. What a perfect choice of cleric to lead the funeral of such a larger-than-life and vibrant Edmontonian. Oakes, a former moderator of the United Church of Canada, had run for provincial office after his time in the synod and won his seat handily. Totally at ease with people, and mildly charismatic to boot, Oakes had held his seat through three premiers and was an always pleasant thorn in the side of the reigning Conservative Cabinet.

  He held his hands up, in a way I associated with Evita Perón, and I am sure you could have heard a pin drop. The music stopped, then swelled into its final cadenza. As the silence fell, Oakes tilted his head forward in classic indication and said simply, “Let us pray.”

  The rest of the funeral was the usual blur. Oakes gave a very personalized homily, as he and Gentry had been acquainted for years and had served on various community committees. A cousin got up to speak, as did Tom Wood, the lead actor-in-residence at the Citadel, and former Edmontonian Brad Fraser, who had flown in from Toronto to attend the funeral of the man who had first produced his plays. A beautifully edited short film of Oren Gentry receiving an award from the City, striding onto the stage as a startlingly beautiful young Hamlet, working with student actors, and walking his poodle in the river valley, ran while Cathy Derkash sang “If Ever I Should Leave You” from Camelot.

  I doubt there was a dry eye in the house. I could hear several people weeping, but I wasn’t close enough to the front of the house to determine how those in Gentry’s inner circle, his closest friends and confidants, were affected. Denise looked stoic, but there was no colour in her face, and I knew she was moved. I now understood why Sarah had opted for the dark veil.

  We sat as the rows in front of us emptied, and by the time it was our turn to reach the lobby, the party was in full swing.

  It was like stepping through Aunty Em’s front door into Oz, the difference in temperament and tone. While we were in the service, catering staff had set up shop in the lobby of the Citadel. Finger foods and glasses of white and red wine were set out on tables at the sides, and waiters abounded, circulating with trays of hors d’oeuvres and open bottles to top up glasses. A klezmer band was playing gypsy oompah music in front of the staircase to the Shoctor Theatre upper lobby, probably to keep the crowd from wandering all over the complex. Even so, since the lobby to the theatre was open to the public, and attached by pedways to a couple of other buildings, businesspeople and several folk who looked more homeless than theatrically bohemian in their clothing choices were also in evidence.

  “This was what Kieran was talking about,” Denise laughed. “A note on top of the papers they found with Oren’s will stipulated he wanted a party thrown for his funeral. Apparently he had made loose arrangements for this long ago, the way some people buy a graveyard plot.”

  “He hired caterers and booked a band?” I was skeptical. After all, how would he know the date?

  Denise shook her head. “Not that specific, no. But Kieran was saying that folks were scrambling to find a dance band, because the note specified he didn’t want a string quartet. Talk about directing your own sendoff, eh? This is perfect,” she smiled as she nodded to the waiter wanting to refill her wineglass.

  I was impressed. The whole event had been orchestrated to maximum effect. People were not going to forget Oren Gentry. And of course, that was as it should be. He had been a strong force in the Edmonton theatre community. Without the vision and gumption of him and his cohort who had burst out of the U of A Drama department in the late 1970s, founding theatres and starting festivals, we likely wouldn’t have half the live theatrical events the city was famous for. It was said that Edmonton had more theatres per capita than any other city in North America. When you couple that sort of statistic with the knowledge that our roads are icy and snow-clogged for a good five months of the year, and that our population, besides government and university workers, was predominantly blue-collar rather than the more homogenized mix in other burgs, it just had to make you proud.

  We had a strong sense of drama in the schools, which bred students to enjoy live theatre. Our Fringe Theatre Festival in the late summer was the first of its kind in North America and still considered the best of the rest, which had sprung up in cities from Orlando to Victoria in its wake. The Freewill Shakespeare Festival produced two plays in repertory every summer in Hawrelak Park, one comedy, one tragedy. The Citadel’s Shoctor Theatre did the big-budget season of a Shaw, a Shakespeare, a Tony Award–winner and a Broadway-styled musical; the Maclab Theatre was where they put on their extravagantly wonderful Christmas Carol every December.

  Edgier plays could be seen at the Roxy, at the other end of the downtown on 124th Street, in a former movie theatre, or across the river in Old Strathcona, where the Fringe took hold in the summer. Two former fire halls and the previous site of the public transit bus barns were now year-round theatre spaces for three or four theatre companies to share. Black Box Theatre, Taryn Creighton’s baby, moved around the city, finding empty spaces in which to perform.

  There had been a lovely little theatre built in the basement of the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, the huge hall where operas and touring musicals were booked and university convocations took place, but it had mysteriously closed. Some said it had to be used for furnace space in a subsequent remodelling. Some said it was still perfect, but locked away for unknown reasons.

  And Oren Gentry had been part of it all. He had started as a BFA actor, dazzling everyone in his fourth-year performance of Sebastian Venables in Suddenly Last Summer. A few summers at Stratford later, he was back in Edmonton, honing his directing chops in the MFA program and starting his own theatre company in a former movie theatre down from the west-end Grant MacEwan College arts campus. Chautauqua Theatre had juggled classics that most people only studied in play analysis classes, Canadian plays past their first blush, and new works. He ran spoken-word
evenings and was always to be seen on site during the Fringe, laughing with a crowd in the beer tent, bouncing into a seat on the aisle at performances of popular winners and sophomoric one-man efforts alike. If Colin MacLean was the “dean of Edmonton theatre” due to his years of supportive reviews and journalistic coverage, Oren Gentry had been the “soul of Edmonton theatre.” It was probably scaring more than one person drinking mid-priced wine at this party to think what everyone was going to do without him.

  “The show must go on,” I muttered, and Denise turned from chatting with Sarah about her running and stair-climbing exercise routine to look at me.

  “What’s that?”

  “I was just wondering, who is going to be able to fill the gap he’s left?” I said.

  Denise nodded grimly. “Yes, it’s going to be very interesting to see how it plays out. After all, there’s an artistic director position up for grabs. There is a senior statesman role to fill. And boy, if you think nature abhors a vacuum, just wait and see what artifice thinks of it.” She motioned her head questioningly toward the doors leading to the Clifford E. Lee Pavilion of trees and benches under glass, which we’d have to traverse to get to the parkade stairs leading to her car. I nodded back gratefully; it was time to go.

  We said our goodbyes to Sarah and several other people Denise ran into along the way to the car. The party had spilled into the atrium, and several beautiful young actresses in black were conversing near a bench on which an old woman with bags at her feet was sitting, not paying them or the rest of the world any mind.

  I held the door for Denise and we made our way into the underground parkade shared by the Citadel Theatre, Winspear Concert Hall, and Edmonton Public Library.

  “Do you really think Oren’s death is going to shake things up?”

  “Oh, I think we have just seen the prologue, Randy. This is a five-act succession drama just waiting to unfold. Let’s just hope it’s Henry V and not Richard III.”