The Roar of the Crowd Read online

  “And that means?”

  “I think it works out roughly to ‘nosey but nice,’” he laughed. “At any rate, that’s what the cleaning women at the train station here called me. I wrote it down phonetically. Sort of fits my idea of you, too, come to think of it. Nyfiken men trevligt. We could put that on a tee-shirt for you.”

  “Very funny. I don’t feel all that nosey, personally. I just find answers calming.”

  Steve laughed again, and then the picture of him froze, making him look a little maniacal as we continued to talk. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was frozen.

  I told him I’d had lunch with Iain, because I figured he already knew and I wasn’t about to appear to be hiding anything from Steve. There was a bit of a break in the transmission at that point, so I wasn’t entirely sure if he said he thought that was a great idea, or not a great idea, but I didn’t know that it would make all that much difference to me to find out. I didn’t get much face time with Steve and I didn’t want to waste it having him repeat himself. The picture component had reanimated itself and he was once more twinkling at me, or rather at my clavicle.

  The positioning of the internal cameras on computers always ended up making you look down, since you were focusing on the image beneath the lens on the screen you were watching. I always had a sense that people I spoke with on Skype were being thoughtful and philosophical as a result of entire conversations taking place without their really meeting my eye. There was another concept to fit into the MacLuhan one of the media transmogrifying the message for you.

  I pulled myself back into the conversation, hoping my meandering thoughts had been written off as computer freeze.

  “So what is up with Denise?” I heard Steve say.

  “She’s really worried that she’s going to get arrested for murder. Whenever she talks to Iain or Detective Gladue, she is given the impression that they’re just looking for ways to prove she killed Eleanor, instead of looking for anyone else who may have done it.”

  “I don’t think they would be confiding their process to her, especially if they think she is a person of interest,” Steve pointed out. “I am sure they’re following all avenues in the investigation.”

  I shrugged, though he may not have seen that. “I know. And that’s what I keep trying to bolster her up with. But this is not a very friendly town to Denise at the moment. Whoever doesn’t have a vested interest in making sure they don’t get caught probably has an interest in not being targeted with suspicion, anyhow. The drama crowd is probably very thankful that the brunt of the investigation is Denise and not them, especially as they gear up for the Fringe.”

  “That’s a bit cold, isn’t it? After all, a woman has died. That has to rank higher than a self-produced show in the old bus barns.”

  “Those shows make up a large part of some actors’ livelihood, and I know for a fact that businesses on Whyte Avenue count Fringe as their mega-sales time of year, even higher than Christmas.”

  “Okay, point taken. Still, do you think there really is a closing of ranks against Denise?”

  “Well, I can sure sense it over at the Shakespeare festival. She is persona non grata, and I’m feeling a little byblow frost, being connected to her. Not that I mind that,” I hurried to add. “I’m just worried about her.”

  I told him about Sarah Arnold’s cutting of Denise at the Sterling Awards and how Denise was pretty sure Sarah was going to try to worm her way into being the only person sent to New Orleans for the paper on the Romeo and Juliet project the two of them had worked on.

  “The thing to ask is, would Sarah have had any sort of motive to kill Eleanor?” queried Steve, effectively cutting my huge conspiracy theory off at the legs. Even I couldn’t make a case for someone being killed so another person would be framed, giving a third person all the minor glory of delivering an academic paper.

  We finished off the conversation by discussing things I would far rather deal with, like the details of his return. I dutifully wrote down all the numbers of his flights and times of arrival, and promised to get his car from his parkade where I had returned it after delivering him to the airport and to meet him at the airport in four days’ time.

  We reached that awkward point in Skyping where both of us had said all we wanted to say yet couldn’t bear to cut the connection of seeing each other. Finally, Steve said, “Okay, on a count of three…” and we simultaneously hit the disconnect.

  In four days he would be home and everything would get worked out. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; I would count down the days.

  21.

  Denise and I finished off our burgers and salad and, after chatting with our pleasant waitress, paid up and slid out of the booth at the Next Act. The buzz of patrons was happy but not overly boisterous, and there had been no lineup. That would all change in a few weeks, during Fringe season. Then, there would be a line curling around the alley, and the wait staff would be up to their elbows in action. Families and couples who for the rest of the year never made Old Strathcona part of their shopping circuit would descend on the area to see plays, eat interestingly fried foods, watch street performers, shop the craft tents, and lay out money for psychic readings. There were folks who would also spend their Fringe visits camped in the beer tent areas, after twenty-five years still tickled they could drink outside on an Edmonton street.

  But tonight, it was relatively calm. The shopping hours for the boutiques along Whyte Avenue on a Saturday ended at 6:00 p.m., and the weekly Farmers’ Market, which would suspend action during the Fringe, had already closed up. The farmers who had driven in for a 5:00 a.m. set-up time were by now well on their way home.

  Teatro la Quindicina, one of the theatres that shared the space known as the Varscona Theatre, named for a now razed art deco cinema near the university, ran its season counter to the regular September-to-May offerings of all the other theatres, presuming correctly that its audience was loyal and starving for theatre in the summer months when it was actually a delight to get out at night and line up for a show. They ran three shows prior to the Fringe, one show during the Fringe, and one show in the beginning of October, and that was their season. The artistic partners in the company were then free to take on roles in other theatres or venture to other cities for plum roles.

  I loved Stewart’s shows. They were always witty, alternating bittersweet with kooky, and the language and erudite hypotheses always had the ability to tickle my funny bone. They were like meringues and I had a hard time describing the plots to anyone, even a week after I’d seen one, except to say, “Go, you’ll love it.” Teatro always did two classic Lemoines in their season as well as one of his new works and often a play by one of the associates, and had recently added a remount of a classic.

  Tonight’s offering, Pith!, was a play I had seen twice previously, and it was one that actually stuck with me, though the sharper bon mots and structure had fled my memory. The plot entailed a drifter being invited into a wealthy widow’s home by her stalwart and plucky maid, who through the course of the evening helps her to overcome her debilitating grief through an elaborate game of parlour charades. Only in the Lemoine world would a drifter be psychologically astute and altruistic. Stewart’s universe was populated by troubled aristocrats, prescient teenagers, and Burt Lancaster as Bill Starbuck, the rainmaker. It was a world I wouldn’t mind inhabiting, come to that.

  Denise and I bought eight red licorice whips each, and although it was general seating and there was plenty of choice, we made our way to our usual seats at the back right of the theatre. There was talk afoot that the whole theatre, which had once been a fire station, was going to be ripped out and a new theatre built in its place. No one was sure when this was going to happen, but every time I came into the cool darkness of this cheerful little space, I felt a tug of pre-nostalgia, already missing what was going to disappear.

  The only other theatre in town that made me feel this much at ease yet close to the action was Chautauqua, Oren Gentry’s
lovely theatre, at one time a cinema, which is what Edmontonians turned into theatres when they ran out of fire stations. The Roxy over in the gallery district was also a former cinema, but it had a longer and narrower audience area.

  As far as intimate theatre went, the tiny experimental spaces that Taryn Creighton turned into theatres made for some of the coolest experiences in town. While you could have audiences of only 100 or fewer, it was the ticket to get for wildly inventive and thought-provoking theatre. You let your Black Box subscription lapse at your peril; I’d heard there was a 900-names-long waiting list to get season’s tickets.

  One thing I loved about Edmonton theatre was that, except for the Shakespeare plays, which needed a chance in our long summer days of getting dark enough to use some lighting effects in the second act, most performances started at 7:00 or 7:30. That meant that on a given evening, you could see a show, stop for a drink with friends, and still make it home in time to catch the news and go to bed at a decent hour. It fit neatly into one’s schedule. And to my way of thinking, that was how it should be—part of the world as you knew it. After all, theatre was built to be disruptive enough on its own, without making it so uncomfortable that people shrank from adjusting their lives to take it in.

  We spilled out on to 83 Avenue in time to see the western clouds showing glowing gold undersides in the still bright blue sky. Denise had parked in the lot past the funeral home, so we strolled there, reliving our favourite lines from the show we’d just seen and marvelling at Andrew MacDonald-Smith’s physical antics as he became a mute Inca canoist paddling the Amazon.

  “When you consider it’s a play within a play within a play, it’s really quite marvellous.” Denise was marking the distinctions with her fingers. “We are watching Pith! In the play, he is a drifter. He pretends to be a counsellor, and they embark on the pretense of a voyage, where he is a fellow traveller. Within that context, as a fellow traveller, he becomes the native guide. And we continue to buy it, because he is thoroughly committed to his role, whatever it happens to be.”

  “What gets me is that on top of all that, he can sing and dance.”

  “Oh, he’s probably a reasonably good accountant, too,” Denise laughed. “From what I can tell, that Teatro crowd just muddles in and takes a turn at doing everything. Jeff runs the subscription base and Leona could probably give courses in period costuming, and then they all troop onto the stage and steal your hearts.”

  We got into her little car and drove the zigzag pattern across the one-way streets of Old Strathcona toward my house. I got out by the fire hydrant, where Denise pulled up for a moment so that she could continue on track to her place instead getting tied up in my back alley. That was one trouble with the great location of my apartment building. There was never street parking available in front of it.

  I let myself in the front door and walked the long, dim, carpet-runnered hallway toward my door near the back of the building. My new locks made for a jumble of keys, but having more than one deadbolt made me feel monumentally safer. I occasionally wondered whether I should alternate leaving one of the locks open, so that any lock pick would lock one as he or she unlocked the others, but I was worried it would screw me up into forgetting to lock any of them.

  I flicked on my overhead light and snapped the bolts on the door behind me, then moved to close my blinds and open the air holes in the kitchen window to get a cross-draft going. The temperature was marginally cooler once the sun went down, and soon it would drop several degrees in the evenings, warning us of the months of ice to come. Tonight it was mild and dry, so even though the temperature hadn’t gone down much, I wasn’t turning into a sweaty, muggy mess. I would be able to sleep under my summer-weight duvet just fine.

  I popped the kettle on for a cup of sleepy tea and moved toward my phone, which was blinking messages.

  The first one was from Micheline, telling me that two of the parents of my camp kids had been at the show that night and were both raving to Kieran about how much their darlings were getting out of this year’s program. I made a mental note to thank Micheline for sharing that. Feedback was so sporadic in the teaching game; you had to feed your ego with scraps.

  The second call was from my mother, who wanted to remind me to get a card in the mail for my Aunt Ruth’s birthday. I don’t think I had ever even known when Aunt Ruth’s birthday was, but my mother had taken it upon herself to be sure her sister-in-law was well cossetted by the family she still possessed since her recent widowhood. I made an actual note to myself to go get a card, since I knew I wouldn’t remember that task.

  The third call was dead air. I had the phone tucked under my chin, writing myself card for Auntie Ruth on a pink sticky pad, waiting for the voice mail computer voice to come in and ask if I wanted to erase or reply, knowing that if I tried to erase before then it would just reset and start to play over again, some glitch in my personal voice mail box. Assuming someone had reached a wrong number and had inadvertently listened to my message too long, triggering the answer space, I waited for the program to run its course. It surprised me to hear the click of a phone receiver being set down. I hadn’t been listening to dead air.

  I had been listening to someone listening. Creepy.

  22.

  Sunday morning I woke to birds squawking at each other outside my window. The magpie population of Edmonton had exploded this year, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe the coyotes in the ravine were otherwise occupied with bunnies. Or maybe bird flu had carried off more invasive birds, if there were such a thing. Whatever. They were raucously boisterous and as such they were better than an alarm clock.

  At first I sat on the side of my bed with a sense of complete disconnect. I wasn’t sure what day it was, where I was supposed to be, what was happening. Lord help me if I ever do suffer some cerebral disorder; I have spent enough time daydreaming in the course of my life to have managed a successful part-time job, I am sure. I wiggled my toes and did some shoulder stretches and then remembered that I had to go to the bathroom. I wasn’t sure bodily functions counted as memories—or tasks, for that matter—but once I was up and moving and my general ablutions were taken care of, I pieced together the facts that it was my day off, Steve was coming home only three sleeps from now, and Denise had seemed pretty calm and together the night before. Things could be a lot worse.

  It wasn’t till I was drinking coffee and eating toast with sliced tomato that I recalled the silent phone message. I had tried to see who had called, but the number was listed as Private Listing on my display. Not for the first time, I considered getting rid of my phone altogether.

  Over the years, I have had my share of harassing calls and nasty events. It was never fun to be targeted by a stalker, because no matter how much they protested their innocence or even their care for you, eventually the malevolent streak that propelled their actions came out toward you. There was no way I wanted that sort of attention, but from my experience, the police rarely took silent phone calls seriously. Who could blame them? Considering that they were all that stood between the innocent citizenry and knives and guns and road rage and illegal reptiles, it was understandable that a creepy phone call or two would register very low on their radar.

  Oh well, I had deadbolts on my door, and Steve would be back Wednesday. I could cope.

  Washing up my meagre breakfast detritus, I tried to make a mental list of all the things I needed to get done that day. Sighing, I realized it just wasn’t going to work, so I swished out the suds, dried my hands, and went in search of a pen and a pad of paper.

  Soon I was working on a three-column list: the household chores for the day, grocery items I needed to pick up, and a list of anyone I could think of in the city who hated either Denise or Eleanor.

  Wouldn’t it be awful to be killed just as a means of putting the blame on someone else? Not that it was any more acceptable to be killed because you were despised; to be hated so much that someone was willing to step over that line was a little daunting to cont
emplate. But being collateral damage in someone else’s line of detestation would have to hurt, especially someone in the performing arts, where so much was tied into ego and drawing the attention in the room.

  I figured that no one hated Denise so much that they bumped off one of the top stars in Canadian television. Denise was by-product, not target. So was there any other reason beyond hatred for someone to kill Eleanor Durant? Was someone threatened by her return to Edmonton? It wasn’t as if we had a burgeoning television industry here. But then again, most theatre people in Canada were multi-task-oriented. They would appear in movies, then show up on stage or begin directing a festival theatre. Some augmented their acting salaries with historical interpretive work or national park adventure tours.

  Maybe Eleanor was planning to branch out into someone else’s territory. But whose? I couldn’t imagine Belinda Cornish or Coralee Cairns knifing someone on the river valley stairs because they were concerned there wouldn’t be enough roles for actresses over thirty in Edmonton. If that was motive enough, the streets would be flowing with blood from Hollywood to Stratford.

  The trouble was, I didn’t know enough about Eleanor, and there was no way either Iain McCorquodale or Jennifer Gladue was going to give me any insights. I was going to have to find someone in the theatre community who actually knew what was happening. Kieran would never gossip. Denise had told me everything she knew, and so had Micheline, I was sure, because that girl wasn’t holding back anything.

  Who else did I know in the theatre community? There were the folks in the plays down at the Shakespeare Festival, but while I was on a pleasant nodding acquaintance with Amanda, Louise, Christian, and the others, I didn’t feel anything like a part of the fold. Sarah Arnold had pretty much cut me dead when she was dissing Denise at the Sterlings, so I could forget about her.

  Janine, the fight instructor at the Festival, might be a good person to take for a drink, but she herself was relatively new to the community. I really needed someone with some insight and history.