The Roar of the Crowd Page 19

  “Thank goodness he’s back.” Denise heaved a sigh. “Now maybe someone over there will listen to reason.”

  “Well, we’ll see. Better than nothing, though, right?”

  We muttered a couple more things to each other, Denise pretending she was calm and collected and me pretending I believed her act.

  The kids had already divided themselves into their scene groups and were diving into their rehearsals and planning. I grinned in spite of myself. There was just nothing like the lure of the stage to focus people on a goal. I had a feeling some of the parents coming at the end of the camp to watch our presentation were going to be quite surprised at the evidence of dedication and burgeoning talent.

  Louise walked over to debrief me on the morning.

  “They were so sweet. And quick to get the concepts, too. It’s really all about knowing how the light hits surfaces, stage makeup. It’s not that often you get kids who have never even experienced a wrinkle figuring out how to enhance and create one with light and shadow. I was impressed.”

  “I cannot thank you enough for taking that on for me, Louise. I could have let him come in on the 747 bus link, but I think being met at the airport is one of the best things, and I wanted to be able to do that for him.”

  “Besides, you missed him! I get it. No problem. I was glad to help.”

  She strolled off down the hill to the backstage area. I had paid her for the supplies, but I figured I would have to pick up something nice for her as well, like a bottle of wine and a basket of goodies.

  The rest of the afternoon went smoothly enough, and I waved off all the kids and got myself out of the park and halfway up Emily Murphy Park Road by 4:30. Passing the Groat Road rush-hour traffic made me grateful for the thousandth time that I didn’t have to rely on a car for transportation. Edmonton was getting more and more congested, even with the extensive city bus system. I was hoping Steve’s crew’s eventual report would highlight the absolute need to continue and expand the LRT system throughout the city. We had spent enough rounds of city councils deciding to shelve the plans for later, all the while supporting developments better left to private investors.

  I was hoping Steve would feel awake enough to come over, but I wasn’t holding my breath. Somehow, the whole travelling westward jet lag just slammed people. He might be foggy for a good couple of days.

  I sure hoped not. I needed him sharp and on his game. And so did Denise.

  I needn’t have worried. At six-thirty, Steve knocked and then turned the key into my apartment. He looked clean and shiny. If you looked closely, you could see that the skin by his eyes was still a bit drawn and thin, but that would be the only indication he’d been up for more than twenty-two hours straight and covered a good chunk of the globe in one day.

  I fed Steve salad chopped full of pea pods, cucumbers, and red peppers along with boxed lettuce greens, and broiled chicken breasts with rosemary and lemon slices. I also made mashed potato pies, a concoction of potato, egg, chopped broccoli and cheese in a ramekin that I had created to approximate the tasty little potato circles you could order in the IKEA restaurants.

  He ate with gusto, which is the best compliment a cook can receive.

  Later, we sat in the living room with a pitcher of iced tea, looking at photos Steve had downloaded from his camera onto a flash drive. Norway looked gorgeous, as if a crew of people went out and washed the scenery and the streets every evening in anticipation of the next day.

  “They have their troubles just like any other place,” Steve laughed, “but it really is a wonderful country. And I brought you this.” He pulled a small parcel out of his pocket.

  I unwrapped the small white paper bag he’d rolled over itself and reached in to find a three-inch statue of a troll on a ribbon.

  “He’s a niessen, a house troll who will keep your abode safe and your milk sweet.”

  “Well, what would I do without sweet milk, I ask you?”

  “There are all sorts of different trolls in Norway who are responsible for various amounts of mischief. This little guy is a protector troll.”

  “For when you can’t be around?”

  Steve leaned in and kissed me on the nose. “Exactly.”

  “He’s great. I wonder if he’d moonlight and protect Denise as well.”

  Steve sighed. “I know you’re worried, Randy, but you have to have a little faith.”

  “I am not so certain. Without you in the picture, there has been a whole lot of focus on Denise. It comes off people in waves whenever we go somewhere. And it’s as if they are projecting relief as well as blame, like she’s been staked out like the scapegoat for the sins of the theatre community.”

  “What is this, Children of the Corn? The whole theatrical community rose up and sacrificed Eleanor Durant in some sort of arcane river valley ceremony?”

  “Eww, no. But wouldn’t that be utterly spooky? Now I’m going to have nightmares all night.”

  “Well, I wish I could stay to keep them at bay, but I really need to conk out for about twelve hours.”

  “And I have to be down to the park bright and early for the next week and a bit, and then I’m done.”

  Steve promised to take Iain the lists Denise had made, along with my annotated calendar of events. I promised to focus on my job. We made plans to celebrate his return properly on the following Saturday night, when I’d be finished my gig and he’d be unjetlagged.

  “We really have quite a bit of catching up to do, after all,” Steve leered, and then laughed when I blushed.

  “Oh Randy, I’ve missed seeing everything you think played out on your face. Hanging around the acting world has done nothing to help you, has it?”

  I swatted him. “I’ll have you know I’m learning a whole lot of new tricks. It’s all about light and shadow.”

  Steve waggled his eyebrows at me and headed down the hallway to the door. I closed and locked my door and grinned.

  It was good to have him home.

  29.

  The next eight days were a blur of activity. The kids were thrilled to discover how their costumes tied the scenes together. I had brought in my good camera to take a group shot and photos of each scene’s groupings, with an eye to emailing them to each camper as a memento of their summer. All five Beatrices insisted on having their picture taken together, which began a run of similar shots. By the time I was done, I realized it was going to take an entire evening to sort out the permutations and combinations of who was in what photo. They weren’t going to be anything like Morgana’s photos of the real cast, which were being flashed all over social media and on one bus bench, but even in the little viewfinder, they revealed a group of happy kids who knew that they were making magic happen and that they were stronger together than apart.

  Their Saturday noon production was favoured by a beautiful sunny day. I had biked down to the park with three clamshells of big bakery-made cookies for the mini-reception after the kids’ scenes. They and their guests were all invited to stay for the matinee performance, and Micheline had offered to set up a coffee urn for the parents between times.

  The energy and joy were electric, and even if I hadn’t been so invested in them, I would have been delighted with the performances. The audience, already prepared to love them, was swept up in the moment and burst to their feet for the curtain call.

  Kieran, who had been glad-handing and schmoozing with the parents and students, came up to me with a large cookie in his hand.

  “This was fantastic, Randy. Exactly the sort of reputation I want to build for this program. These people are going to be our best ambassadors for the summer Shakespeare.”

  “The kids were great,” I agreed. Kieran went on about his vision for the coming years, bringing in guest lecturers, having concurrent classes when it got bigger, moving toward a year-round weekend program, and my mind turned off a bit. Running a year-round Shakespeare camp for teens wasn’t my goal in life. Kieran could dream all he wanted. He’d be finding someone els
e to run things. Someone who would have to buy decks of my patented Shakespeare cards.

  He sensed our conversation waning, and we melded into two other groups of conversations, as one does at fancy, crowded cocktail parties, or in a tented enclosure with seventy-some bemused, proud adults and twenty-five zingingly adrenalined teenagers.

  As I met and shook hands with someone’s grandmother who had been in Robert Altman’s Nashville and was so proud her grandchild was following in her footsteps, it occurred to me that Kieran’s grandiose plans for the Shakespeare camp weren’t consistent with Denise’s idea that he would sell his soul to get the artistic directorship of Chautauqua Theatre. He sounded as if he had more than enough high hopes and big plans for the Freewill Festival.

  Of course, he could be just hepped up on the moment. I knew the feeling from being a sessional lecturer. No matter what you were teaching, it was your favourite topic in the universe; the course was your absolute dream course and you wanted to teach it forever; the syllabus you’d prepared was the very best reading list you could imagine. You had to gear yourself up into that sort of fervour to make things palatable and desirable for your students. That could be how Kieran operated as well; whatever he was doing at the moment was his ultimate dream.

  That could be why it was easy for him to switch-hit with girlfriends, too. I still couldn’t imagine him throwing Denise over for Sarah, nor could I imagine him cheating on Denise with Eleanor. But if he was of the “love the one I’m with” persuasion, it made more sense.

  I continued to schmooze and congratulate my students. I didn’t particularly want to hang around for the matinee performance of the festival, so I was angling my way toward the trailer, where Micheline had let me stash my bag under her desk.

  She was in the trailer when I got to it, which was a good thing, because she let me know that my final cheque was missing the vacation pay portion that needed to be determined once the full run of the festival had wrapped up. She said to check for it within a couple of weeks, then she gave me one of those awkward hugs people who don’t like each other much seem to think they need to deliver at specific moments, such as extended departure.

  I didn’t mind Micheline, but she certainly wouldn’t be someone I would ask out for lunch if I had to travel to get there. On the whole, while I had enjoyed my experience with the Shakespeare folks, working outside for long periods of the day was my least favourite location. I could handle the youth, since they were barely a year or two younger than the students I taught whenever I got a sessional gig. I could handle the theatre people, for short bursts, although their need to perform and entertain instead of merely converse wore me out. I could even handle the out-of-the-way aspect of getting into and out of the park. However, once you got there, it was either stew with Micheline in the trailer, sit in the green room and be bombarded with young actors wandering about in tights and little else, or be outside.

  I hadn’t known quite how much a creature of comfort I was till I passed a picnic table on the way out of the park and with a small shiver of delight realized I wouldn’t have to sit at another one of them for the rest of the year.

  I trudged my way up the big hill so I could walk home via the Windsor Park mini-mart and pick up a litre of skim milk. Steve was coming over for an early supper, so I wouldn’t get a chance to head out for a larger grocery shop. I had enough fixings for a warm weather meal, anyhow. I just wanted to get home and put away my thoughts about the summer camp experience and get into gear for the fall.

  I was planning to drop a CV off to Grant MacEwan on Monday, popping in to see the Chair of the English department while I was there. From my experience, August was always the scariest month for chairs and deans. The majority of their workforce were academic gypsies, and while a lot of sessionals were married to tenured professors or other professionals with anchoring jobs keeping the family local, others of us could move like the wind and did, leaving planning a fall term a bit of a nightmare. Likewise, last-minute registration and the temptation of more tuition revenue always increased the chances of another class section or two appearing by August 15 and requiring a lecturer at the helm.

  A great trick, if you were mobile enough, was to appear like a magical fairy in mid-August, ready to teach an 8:00 a.m. class, able to whip together a syllabus from default, pre-ordered textbooks and not be fussy about sharing an office only for set student office hours. Since I had nothing on the horizon, I was certainly that easy. I was maybe even a bit too eager, hopping in there right off the bat the first week of August.

  I had a track record of sorts with MacEwan, though, and I didn’t want to leave things too late. The older you get, the less the gypsy life appeals, if it ever really did. More and more, I envied Denise her security. In fact, as long as one overlooked her strong potential for incipient arrest, her life was perfect.

  Steve had been at work; I could tell by his collared shirt. Even though it was a short-sleeved madras plaid, it was in muted tones and matched the khakis he’d tucked it into. Normally, on a weekend or day off, he’d be in a tee-shirt and jeans. I wondered if he had to head back to work after supper, but he assured me he was done for the day.

  “Iain and Jennifer called me in for a consultation on your calendar listings I shared with them. Jennifer seemed interested, Iain not so much. But you know Iain; he’ll come around if you bring him something tangible. Jennifer seems to think in patterns, more like you.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about being compared to Jennifer Gladue, even positively. Trying not to dwell on it, I asked Steve if they were looking into Oren Gentry’s death.

  “That I couldn’t tell you, and not even because I shouldn’t even if I could. I sketched them a vague concept of theatre hierarchies and the drama scene as you portrayed it to me, and they both sort of nodded. I think they’ve tuned into quite a bit of that, but the whole ‘open job’ aspect didn’t seem to be news to them.”

  “Well, I guess that’s a good thing. It offers one way in which all suspicion doesn’t fall on Denise.”

  Steve was thoughtful. “Unless they get it into their heads that Denise was so overcome with delight on directing that student production that she wanted to change careers and become an artistic director.”

  I laughed, as I was supposed to. “As if. You don’t just wake up and decide you want to become a director. The base requirement is an MFA, and you need plenty of experience before actors will put their faith in your vision and trust you to guide their performances. It’s difficult enough for an actor to shift into becoming a director, though several have done it. They go back to university and when they come out with their MFAs, they’re often the best directors because they know just how far they can push their actors.”

  “Who else wants to direct, besides former actors?”

  “Who doesn’t? Well, apart from me. Some people just grow up to want to control the vision, just like some musicians grow up knowing that their instrument is an entire symphony and that they are destined to become conductors. Probably some theatre critics would like to be directors; maybe some drama teachers. But I would think that the least likely person would be a university prof. Too much investment in solitary research, too much introversion. So no, I think you’re probably more likely to have Liz Nicholls, the critic from the Edmonton Journal, want to become the new artistic director of Chautauqua Theatre than Denise.”

  “Would Liz Nicholls be up to wielding a knife on a beloved Canadian actress?”

  “Excuse me, have you read her reviews?”

  “A literal knife.”

  “Oh, well, in that case, no. Although she is wiry enough to drag a body somewhere, I think.”

  “To be frank with you, knowing my fellow cops, I think it’s going to stretch their imaginations a bit too far to try to incorporate a death from natural causes into a murder investigation. When working a murder case, the object is to simplify the strands of the evidence, not to exacerbate the issue by bringing in more angles.”

  I s
ighed. “Do you think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that someone murdered both Oren Gentry and Eleanor Durant in order to become the new artistic director of Chautauqua Theatre?” I sat back, a bit deflated. “Oh. Now that I hear it out loud, even I think it’s a bit far-fetched.”

  Steve nodded at me. “See what I mean? It’s a hard sell. But you know I will do what I can to make them question the feasibility of it being Denise.”

  “I know.”

  We sat there quietly for a bit. There wasn’t much to say, and we were in that weird lull that happens when someone has been away, living a life with different patterns. There is a point at which the descriptions of the new world stop and the one left behind is tired of hearing about it, and weary of catching the traveller up on what has transpired in their absence. So, without a shared month between us, Steve and I were forging ahead to make some more connected memories.

  With any luck, the new memories wouldn’t contain any dead bodies.

  30.

  A couple of weeks went by.

  I got my resumé in to MacEwan, cleaned my apartment in a way I hadn’t been able to since the Shakespeare gig had begun, went to a couple of movies with Steve, and spoke to Denise on the phone pretty much every day.

  She was preoccupied. While she was going through the motions of getting syllabi together for the fall, her heart didn’t seem to be in it. When you’re worrying you might be trying to make bail that fall, laying down the laws about plagiarism sort of pales in relative importance. Don’t forget to cite your sources. Don’t even think about stabbing people and stuffing them under the stairs.

  I had done one positive thing to help. Under the guise of finding out if she had any Fringe recommendations, I had called up Taryn Creighton again. I tried to insert enough breadth to the conversation so that I could determine if she jogged or had been anywhere near the Queen Elizabeth steps during the time Eleanor had been killed.