The Roar of the Crowd Read online

  That’s when I thought of the perfect person to call. Taryn Creighton. She was the only director in town with whom I had a slight in, having appeared in her MFA production of Brecht’s Galileo back when I was doing my MA. The directing students had to cast a wide net for actors, since all the BFA students were caught up in their year-end shows at the same time as the thesis work needed to be presented. I had gone along for auditions, thinking it would be a lark, and it was. I ended up as a gypsy who sang little aphoristic ditties before each scene. No one recognized me behind the makeup and layers of petticoats and shawls, and the show had punctuated my last bit of thesis writing with a bit of fun.

  Taryn Creighton was about my age, having been an actor for the same length of time I was a freelance writer, and both of us had done post-secondary degrees in our late thirties. That had provided a nice respite from always being the eldest in the room. She and I had got along quite well, and while we hadn’t stayed connected, we spoke when we ran into each other in theatre lobbies and at the Fringe. I never made it to a Black Box opening night, so I rarely saw her at her own productions.

  Maybe I could call Taryn in my position as Shakespeare camp leader and take her out for lunch. While talking about elements of theatre for teens, I could also find out if she had any ideas about what Eleanor might have been doing in town that could worry someone enough to erase her from the equation.

  Lucky for me there was only one T. Creighton in the phone book, because the only person I could have asked for her contact information was Denise, and she’d have been curious. I didn’t want to get her hopes up by saying too much; it was as if she’d reached a sort of equilibrium at the moment and I didn’t want to unbalance her. As it was, waiting for the police to decide whether or not to arrest you must be edgy enough.

  Taryn sounded a bit diffident on the phone, and it occurred to me that she might not actually remember me, but her voice warmed as we spoke, and as luck would have it, she was free that evening and could meet for supper. She suggested a small El Salvadorean restaurant near her home, and stressing that I was paying, I agreed. I looked the place up on the Internet and jotted down the address. I figured I could walk there from the Grant MacEwan campus downtown.

  Somehow, getting that sorted made me feel as if all the lists were doable. I whipped through my household chores and pretty soon my apartment was in shape to last me another week of cleaning inertia. I grabbed my wheelie cart and made my way down 109 Street to the Safeway and stocked up on essentials.

  On the way past the City Arts Centre, I heard my name being called. I looked around, and eventually spotted Louise waving madly from across the street. Her light finally turned green and she dashed over.

  “Hi! I didn’t know you lived near here! I’m just down a couple of blocks toward the Varscona, there,” she sang at me. It was as if everything Louise said was directed to the back of the auditorium.

  “Really? How do you like it down there?”

  “Oh, I love the location for getting places, but I have to sleep with earplugs, it’s so noisy at night when the bars close. And you have to watch where you walk in the morning, if you know what I mean.” She wrinkled her nose as she nodded knowingly.

  I had no idea what she was talking about, unless she meant that people defecated on her sidewalk, so I just smiled and nodded back.

  “Are you doing your grocery shopping?”

  I would have thought the fact that I was hauling a wheelie cart with bags containing milk and pasta was a pretty obvious clue, but Louise might not read mystery novels. She also could be one of those people who always questioned the obvious, filling the terrifying void of silence between people who had nothing to say to each other.

  I smiled and nodded again. “What are you up to? Don’t you have shows today?”

  “I’m meeting Kieran and Sarah for brunch before the matinee,” she burbled, obviously wanting to tell someone. She pointed to the restaurant inset on the corner we were standing on, so I said, “Well, you’d better not keep them waiting,” and nodded again at her.

  On the whole, I would not want to spend time with work people when I wasn’t working. But maybe she just wanted a ride down to the park, or maybe she found Kieran and Sarah a delightful couple and just couldn’t get enough of them. Or maybe Kieran had directorial advice for Louise that he didn’t want to give her in front of everyone.

  That was just me being snide and petty, I was pretty sure. I didn’t think, on the whole, that Kieran would bother trying to save anyone else’s feelings if he had something to say to make his show better.

  While I was on my petty line of thinking, it occurred to me that Louise might want me to know that Kieran and Sarah were being openly social, just to rub it in to Denise by proxy. I decided I really didn’t like Louise.

  I made it home without any other disruptions and had my groceries put away in time to change and check my various streams of social media before heading off to meet up with Taryn.

  My mother was posting pictures of Hawaii on her blog, Denise and our old pal Leo were having a war of wits on Twitter, as usual, and people were starting to send out invites via social media to their Fringe shows. I automatically pressed “Going” to Kate Ryan’s show, since I enjoyed anything she and her Leave it to Jane players did. Their mandate was to find lost and forgotten smaller musicals and mount them imaginatively for the Fringe. I had seen all their shows and had never felt like I’d backed the wrong horse.

  Before closing my laptop, I googled Taryn Creighton. She had several entries and impressively took up the top fifteen herself. It was only when you got to the second page that you got to a law firm in Wisconsin, an obituary for someone in the last century, and a misspelled page about J.M. Barrie’s Admirable Crichton.

  She had directed all over the country and still did so between seasons of her Black Box Theatre. She had won two Sterlings, been awarded a YWCA Women of Distinction Award, and was apparently on the City of Edmonton’s Culture Wall of Fame over in the walkway between the Citadel Theatre and Canada Place.

  It made me wonder what the heck I had been doing the last dozen years or so. Everyone I’d been in school with was getting on with their lives. Denise was tenure track, Taryn had conquered the theatre world, Leo was ensconced at Memorial University, Steve had a career track toward eventually becoming Deputy Chief, if he wanted it. And me? I grubbed from one job to the next, missing the career turn time and time again.

  I shook off my maudlin thoughts. Once the summer was over, I would again mount an attack of resumés and queries. If I couldn’t get enough courses for sessional work to pay the bills, I might check with a temp agency or even send in a job application or two to the municipal or provincial government. I wasn’t so sure about the feds. If I got in with them, I had the feeling they’d up and move me about, like they’d done our family when my dad was in the Armed Forces. I had had more than my share of moving cities. Now I just moved paycheques.

  It was time to get ready to meet up with Taryn Creighton and paint myself a picture of just what was happening behind the Edmonton theatre scenes.

  23.

  The walk to the restaurant from where the bus let me off was longer than I had anticipated, and I arrived a bit sweaty and hot. However, it was cool inside the little restaurant, and shade trees kept the sun from beating in the windows. Festive garlands hung from the ceiling, mitigating against the sparseness of the tables and other décor. I pulled off my sunglasses and looked around, spotting Taryn off to the left by the wall. She waved and I waved back, smiling at the woman by the desk near the front of the restaurant.

  Taryn stood up and touched my arm, an appropriate equivalent to hugging a friend. We weren’t exactly friends, but we did have a history.

  “I’m so glad you agreed to meet me,” I started, sitting down in a chair that was about two inches too low for the table, making me feel as if I was visiting the principal’s office.

  “It’s been a while,” Taryn said, and then suggested we ch
eck the menus before we did anything else. “The food is really good, but it takes a while, since they make most everything fresh. I am a sucker for their tortilla soup and tamales, but everything is good.”

  I opted for Mexican enchiladas, and once our orders were through and water delivered in bright plastic glasses, I started over again.

  “I have been trying to figure out how to get a clear picture of anything that may be shaking in the theatre scene, but I need an objective eye and thought of you. I’ve been working with the Freewill Shakespeare Festival in a teaching capacity for their high school camp, and so I’ve been tangentially involved in the investigation of the murder of Eleanor Durant.” I was looking right at her as I said this, and nothing twitchy seemed to register, so I figured I had been correct in my assessment of Taryn as the perfect person to talk with.

  “Another friend of mine, Denise Wolff, has been implicated in the murder, and now there seems to be a stalemate, with all that suspicion hovering over her head and the police not beating any other bushes.”

  “Maybe she did it?”

  I bristled. “No, she didn’t. That’s not on the table for discussion. At least not this table.” I took a deep breath. “The thing is, I figure it all boils down to someone killing Eleanor Durant for a reason the police haven’t thought of, because it’s a theatre reason. And so I thought maybe you could talk to me about what is happening in the theatre community that might have something to do with Eleanor coming to town and being in the way, or at least in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Just then our food came, and we tacitly agreed to tuck into it before continuing the conversation. I hadn’t realized how ravenous I was, but half my enchiladas were gone before I bothered to speak again.

  “Did you know Eleanor well enough to know what she was planning after the summer Shakespeare season?”

  Taryn smirked. “Oh, I have a pretty good idea what she was planning.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep, I’m pretty sure she was going for Oren Gentry’s job.”

  “The artistic directorship of Chautauqua?”

  Taryn nodded. “You bet. Anyone with half a directing chop in a circumference of a thousand miles is salivating over that position. I’m applying, you’d better believe it.”

  I was curious. “What’s so great about Chautauqua Theatre? I mean, I’ve been to shows there, and support it and all, but what does it have that, say, the Roxy or the Varscona or even the Citadel doesn’t have? Why would you leave Black Box for it?”

  “That’s a good question and probably one I’ll have to answer the board if I make the cut for interviews.” Taryn nodded thoughtfully. “Obviously, there is a much smaller budget than the Citadel has to work with but about ten times what the Black Box can muster, although money isn’t the motivator. It’s the mandate for Chautauqua that interests me the most.”

  The woman came by to clear our plates and I handed her my Visa card.

  “Oren had a vision of a Canadian theatre that would run Canadian plays, new and classic. He said that the only way to produce a classic is to remount a production, for the next generation and the one after that to discover. And who does that? We get maybe two new works from outside the province and a Drowsy Chaperone and we’re grateful for the Canadian content around here, and that’s with grants demanding some. Can you imagine what would happen with the big boys if there was no culture vulture watching out for a little national pride?”

  “But surely there is a lot going on in local playwrights’ work being delivered,” I countered. Taryn made some good points, but this was starting to sound like a screed rather than a measured argument. “That has got to count as Canadian content?”

  Taryn nodded. “Of course it is, and I’m not trying to diminish it. But we need to keep cycling and recycling our plays, looking for what we have in common with each other, coast to coast, and each other, generation to generation. We need hipsters to watch The Farm Show, we need another generation to be terrified by One Night Stand, we need rural westerners to watch and understand Balconville, and Maritimers to cry over The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. There are classics in our repertoire and we need to honour them on the stage and not just in historic overview courses in the English department, if you pardon my meaning.”

  “And that was what Oren Gentry was doing, right?”

  “Yep, and I admired him for it. His recipe was one new work from an Alberta writer, one celebrated new work from away, which usually meant Daniel McIvor, but he was always looking for more, two classic Canadian works, aiming for a comedy and a drama, and the springtime new works reading festival. He didn’t bother with the Broadway musical, the Shakespeare, the Shaw, or the Ibsen. He counted on the Citadel to cover those bases, which you have to admit they do an admirable job of. No, Oren’s vision was to be 100 per cent Canadian.”

  “And it was working,” I said.

  “No shit, Sherlock. People loved it. I’m glad they were voting with their pocketbooks, because I think Oren had a bit of trouble with his board at first, who were a little nervous of banking it all on Canadian plays everyone had seen before.”

  “What changed their minds?”

  “Well, I guess they began to realize that an entire generation has grown up and had babies of their own since most of those plays were performed. And those babies are going to their own versions of Paperbag Playhouse or Opera in the Schools and participating as magic trees in the forest or bits of furniture for Snow White to dust and getting pulled into the theatre for another generation. That’s what? Five generations from Gwen Pharis Ringwood. What are they going to make of Still Stands the House? They’ll never know if they never see it.”

  “Well, hell, I’d hire you, Taryn. You sound like you could really dig your teeth into that sort of focus.” I had paid up by this time, and we got up from the awkwardly low chairs and moved out into the sunshine.

  “If only you were on the board,” she laughed. “Did you drive here? No? Would you like a ride? I’m heading over to near Whyte Avenue. Darrin Hagen is doing the music and sound design for our next production and he’s got ideas he wants to try out on me this evening.”

  I gratefully climbed up into her grey SUV. On the front seat was a box of papers, which she transferred to the back seat to give me room. I noticed a lot of gear in the back, including ropes and electrical cables, a cooler, and what appeared to be camping equipment.

  “This car ends up being my working office,” she said by way of apology for the mess. “One of these days I’m going to book a day and just dung it out. So, where were we? Oh, right. Eleanor and Chautauqua.” Taryn pulled out into traffic from the small side street, making a brave left turn without the aid of a light. “I’m sure she saw it as a way to maintain a level of importance in the Canadian theatre scene without resorting to face lifts. It’s a sad truth that women in theatre don’t get that much respect between the ages of thirty and Betty White. Once you get that old, you’re a novelty flavour and, like Jessica Tandy, you can write your ticket. So the trick is to become a director, or even better, artistic director of a theatre, where you don’t even have to direct the whole season. You administrate and glad-hand and work the shows you have a yen for and teach a class at one of the universities and hobnob. If you’re very clever, you even have a manager who does the grunt work like writing grant proposals and reports to the board. From a distance, it’s a grand life.”

  She gave a laugh that was both cynical and regretful in tone, though I couldn’t tell in what measure. We were on the High Level Bridge by this time, and I had to check the flow of conversation to give her directions on how to sidle off at the end of the bridge and let me off in the parking lot behind the Garneau Theatre so that she could manoeuvre back onto 109 Street easily.

  Taryn rolled the passenger window down as I got out and closed the door, so I leaned in to thank her for the ride home. “No worries, and thanks for dinner. I hope you got what you wanted. I’m sure that was why Eleanor came to town, even th
ough she said it was to nurse a sick relative. She had her eye on taking over a theatre, and Oren’s was the best bet. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear she’d knocked him over to get her hands on Chautauqua. And then someone else in the running bumped her off. Maybe you need to get the list of people applying for the artistic director role, Randy. Present company excepted, of course.” Taryn laughed and drove off, the window rolling up like a curtain coming down at the end of a play.

  She knew a good closing line. Of course she did. She was only mistaken in thinking I’d keep her off a list of potential murderers. After all, she had just given me what I finally needed—a good motive for the murder of Eleanor Durant.

  And the more I thought about it, as I trudged across the gravel drive to my apartment door, she might have given me another murder to contemplate.

  What if Oren Gentry’s death hadn’t been of natural causes?

  24.

  I spent the evening sorting through timelines, trying to figure out what had happened when, in order to have things ready for Steve when he got home. I knew better than to give any of this to Iain, as he had plainly told me to keep my oar out. But something had to be done to goose them into looking beyond Denise as a jealous lover. It wasn’t that I considered them inept; they were just wrong in this case, and while I couldn’t fault their logic, they didn’t know Denise the way I did.

  I printed off a series of blank calendar months from my computer so that I could map the order of events. While Eleanor had been murdered in late June, I printed off May through July, since that was when Denise, and by extension I, had become involved with the theatre folk.

  Denise and Sarah had done their Romeo and Juliet co-production in May, but had actually begun the work in April. I printed off another calendar month. I wondered when Denise and Kieran had got together. I remembered that they had been together at the after-party, because that was when he floated the idea that I apply for the teaching grant for Shakespeare camp. I checked my wall calendar and noted the scrawled “Denise: Party: 9 pm,” that happened on May 23.