The Roar of the Crowd Read online

  It wasn’t a neighbour. It was Detective Gladue.

  I opened the door, hoping that Iain or Steve was just outside the fish-eye lens of the peephole, but no, it was just her, looking trim and capable in light-weight grey trousers, a grey and cream tee-shirt with a scoop neck that showed a few freckles and some collarbone but no cleavage, and a cream poplin blazer over top, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows.

  “Ms. Craig, I was wondering if I could come in and get your statement from your time with your friend Denise Wolff yesterday?”

  “Sure, Detective Gladue, right? Come on in. Can I get you a cup of tea?” I hated the fact that she was entering my apartment. I invited very few people into my sanctuary and tried to avoid letting in anyone I didn’t particularly care for. My personality, what there was of it, was on my walls and bookshelves, and I felt invaded and on display with this competent but utterly dismissive woman in my living room. My skin crawled a bit as I felt her look around the room, judging me through my belongings.

  Of course, I had very few belongings. I’d been far more choosy about what I accrued now, since the break-in. In comparison to what I had previously hoarded, my apartment was absolutely Spartan. After getting her a cup and pouring her some tea from the pot on the coffee table, I sat back. Let her judge.

  “Detective Browning told me he has spoken with you about your knowledge of where your friend Denise Wolff was yesterday.” Detective Gladue was taking a formal approach.

  “Yes, he did. And I told him that she and I had been together from just before suppertime till about 9:30. We had dinner, went to a Fringe show over at the College St. Jean venue, drove back to the High Level Diner, and then Denise went home, as far as I know.”

  As she was writing down what I said, I looked at the scribbles on the notepad in front of me. Maybe she wasn’t as icy as I had presumed, and perhaps she would appreciate whatever thoughts I had about the situation.

  “I was piecing together what must be happening after Steve called, and I figure it must have something to do with people seeing someone hanging in the bell tower of the Walterdale Theatre,” I offered. Detective Gladue’s head shot up quizzically.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t be oversharing with this hunting dog of a woman, I thought, but I’d already opened the barn door. “It’s all over the Internet. I have no idea who is dead, but I went through the Fringe program to see what shows were in the theatre last night. They’re all groups from Edmonton, if that helps at all.”

  I handed her the program, opened to the Walterdale venue page. She took it and nodded. “We got this from the Fringe management folks, along with a list of the people attached to each production.”

  “I was thinking,” I volunteered a bit tentatively, “that the operetta, Naughty Marietta, would likely have the most people backstage and onstage. I wasn’t sure if that would be a good or a bad thing.”

  Jennifer Gladue looked at me, and I think it was at that moment that we turned a corner. Maybe she saw in me some innate intelligence she could appreciate, and could tell I was, in general, on her side. Maybe I saw, for the first time, that she really wouldn’t be Steve’s type, since I got the sense that, as hardworking and clever as she might be, she really didn’t have much of a sense of humour.

  Whatever it was, she made a decision. “I have a list of all the people from each production at the Walterdale over the time period the coroner’s preliminary report has given us. Would you be able to take a look at it for me and see if you could fill me in on any connections between people you might notice?”

  I shrugged and smiled. “I would do that, sure. I don’t know if I’ll be all that much help to you. I know my way a bit around the theatre scene here in town, but I’m not overly familiar with the younger layer of actors.”

  “Any help will be appreciated.” She pulled a few pieces of paper out of her sleek grey Coach bag. They were printed emails with cast lists on each one, mailed to her from Fringe Theatre Adventures, the management that oversaw the festival.

  I scanned the lists. I had heard of the writer/actor of the zombie show but didn’t know much about him. The parody of the Eve Ensler Vagina Monologues was created by two fellows newly graduated from Grant MacEwan, and one of their names sounded familiar; he might have been in a freshman English class I’d taught as a sessional a few years ago. Most of my former students were like that, just sort of vague memories, like the shadows left by atomic devastation. A person was here, it has been noted, but that was all. I didn’t feel guilty about it; I knew their names while class was in session and I got their papers marked and back to them within a two-class time frame. What more did they want from me?

  I looked at the third page, which listed the cast and crew from Naughty Marietta, an operetta from the thirties. Marie/Marietta was being played by Kendra Connor, and Warrington, her saviour/suitor, was Jesse Gervais. I noticed that Micheline was stage-managing it. This must be the show she’d been prepping for during the run of the Shakespeare festival.

  “Micheline was the managing director for the Shakespeare festival, during which time Eleanor was killed,” I shrugged. “That’s the only connection that leaps out at me.” Detective Gladue nodded.

  “Yep, that popped up for us as well. She was on her headset the entire time, supposedly to the fellow in the lighting and sound booth, but she was backstage, near the door that leads to the bell tower.”

  “So someone really was hanged in the bell tower?”

  Detective Gladue looked as if she was warring with herself, which I appreciated as a sign of her humanity. Steve often looked like that while talking to me, and it occurred to me that my curiosity about elements of his job might really wear on him. I promised myself I would try to keep out of his work and offer him a respite from all that from here on in. Just as soon as Denise was out of trouble, that was.

  I was so busy promising myself I was going to become June Cleaver that I didn’t hear Detective Gladue say something. She was looking at me expectantly, the sort of look you can’t just fudge with a non-committal response like “sure” or “maybe” or “if you like that sort of thing.” I begged her pardon and asked her to repeat herself.

  “I said, it might be better to say he was found hanging, if that clears anything up.”

  “Eww,” was my mature response. Then what she said resonated. “You said HE. Can you tell me who it was?”

  Jennifer looked around my tiny apartment holding just the two of us, as if she expected to see Staff Sergeant Keller standing by the mock fireplace. “I don’t suppose it will hurt. The name will be made public by the end of the day, anyhow. It was an actor/director named Christian Norgaard. He was in the Shakespeare plays this year, too. Did you know him?”

  “Christian?” I was shocked, mostly because we had just seen him downtown at dinner, and there is nothing weirder than having someone you’ve just seen bursting with life turn up dead the next day or so. “Was he directing the show?”

  Jennifer shook her head, and I recollected having seen another name I didn’t recognize on the list she had shown me. In fact, come to think of it, Christian’s name hadn’t been there at all.

  “So what was he even doing in the Walterdale?”

  Jennifer shrugged. “Twenty-thousand-dollar question there, eclipsed only by ‘Who would stab him and then string him up to swing in the bell tower for the entire Fringe-going public and their children to witness?’”

  I was struck by the ugliness of the image and the passion with which Detective Gladue spoke of the families who would have witnessed it. She was definitely growing on me.

  “If it is any consolation, it sounds as if most of the folks on the Internet think it was an aerial stunt, like when John Ullyatt hangs off the wall as a human fly.” Jennifer shook her head, a comment on either the gullibility of the general public or the wackiness of theatre people.

  Her humanity was probably why I decided on the spur of the moment to share my suppositions with her, which Steve would probably kick me for
. I wasn’t supposed to get on the radar with his boss Keller, and so anything I ever mentioned to Steve he managed to weave into the context of something he would arrive at on his own. The trouble was, this wasn’t Steve’s case and Denise was still in trouble.

  “You know, this makes two directors dead.”

  “Two actors, you mean.”

  “Well, technically both Eleanor and Christian had some directing chops and plenty of ambition in that vein, to hear talk. The thing is, there is a job hanging on the horizon, at Chautauqua Theatre, due to the sudden death of Oren Gentry.”

  Even Jennifer Gladue had heard of him. “But he had a heart attack, right? And a big funeral?”

  “He was fifty-five. What if it wasn’t a natural heart attack? What if this is all about getting hold of that artistic directorship?”

  “People killing for a job?”

  “This is a theatre town. And it’s a great training centre for directors. The university churns out two MFA directors a year. The statistics don’t have to get very complex to show there are more directors than solid jobs. Just think how many people are directing Fringe shows, just keeping their hand in, feeding their desires.”

  “So someone murdered Oren Gentry for his job? Why not Bob Baker?”

  “Baker doesn’t need theatre, he has the Citadel, the biggest of them all. Oren Gentry dies, leaving the way open for someone with ambition. Then along comes Eleanor Durant, who may have an inside track. She dies, once again clearing the way. And miraculously, it can be blamed on the spurned English prof, keeping the spotlight off anyone in the drama sector. However, something happens and Christian looks like he may have a chance at the job, so Christian has to die.”

  “This sounds like the plot from a Simon Brett novel,” Jennifer scoffed, shaking her head.

  “You read Simon Brett?” I asked, delightedly distracted.

  “All the Charles Paris novels, and After Henry, but I haven’t much liked those Mrs. Pargeter ones,” she said. “I’ve sort of moved off him and onto Denise Mina and Christopher Brookmyre. I like the British mysteries the best. They’re like mini-vacations.”

  “Busman’s holidays for you, though,” I said. Jennifer smiled and suddenly she looked utterly human and like someone I could befriend, even if her loyalty to great mystery writers was in question.

  “I bet most cops read crime fiction of one type or another.” I thought of Steve and his shelves of Walter Mosley and James Lee Burke. Jennifer Gladue was probably right. I wondered what sort of crime novels Iain McCorquodale read and if I would ever get up the nerve to ask him.

  “Okay, so it sounds far-fetched,” I admitted. “But it makes a certain amount of sense. Unless there is someone who just doesn’t like actors or actors wanting to become directors roaming the city, what other rationale could there be?”

  “This is all doing a pretty good job of discrediting your friend Denise. Is there anyone who wants to see harm come to her?”

  “I can’t imagine who, but on the whole this last murder, if you folks determine it is indeed the same hand that killed both Christian and Eleanor, should exonerate Denise, because I was with her the whole time in question and therefore she has a cast-iron alibi.”

  “But who knew that?”

  I shrugged. “Anyone who saw us together at the Cité Francophone for dinner, or the College St. Jean at the play, or the High Level Diner after can vouch for us.”

  Jennifer Gladue was shaking her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. If we think along the lines that someone was trying to pin their crimes on Denise, which seemed to be working, so why not continue? Why would they kill someone at the Fringe? Because they figured Denise was going to be in the vicinity. So, someone had to think that Denise would be at the Fringe last night.”

  “And we were Fringing last night, just not at the main site.” I shook my head slowly. “You are saying that Christian was killed at the Fringe because the killer wanted to frame Denise for this murder, and the killer therefore believed that Denise would be at Naughty Marietta.” Jennifer nodded.

  “Or in the vicinity. This whole Bring Your Own Venue isn’t something a lot of people have wrapped their minds around. If someone overheard Denise say she was Fringing on Tuesday night, they wouldn’t necessarily think to question where. When you think Fringe, you think the epicentre, which is 83 Avenue, right by the Walterdale Theatre. And the minute they heard Tuesday, the plan was activated.”

  “Man, that’s cold.”

  “That’s reality. So,” Jennifer Gladue leaned in. “Who knew you would be Fringing on Tuesday?”

  I tried to think before I said anything. This wasn’t Steve I was talking to; for all I knew, anything I said to Jennifer would come back at me in a courtroom.

  “We hadn’t even planned to come back on Tuesday; that was sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision while we were buying tickets on the weekend. So, the ticket seller would have known, but I don’t think either of us knew her. And besides, she would have known our venue destination.” Jennifer was nodding along, as if she was coaxing a child on skates to venture closer to her. “We ran into Louise Williams and Sarah Arnold after we’d bought the tickets, so maybe we chatted about what we were going to see, or whether we were doing a lot of Fringing, that sort of thing. Things are awkward between Denise and Sarah at the moment, so I really don’t recall just what was said. I was mostly looking for a way to politely get us away without looking like we were ingoring them. Oh,” I said, suddenly remembering the ugly phone call I’d overheard in the washroom of the Varscona Theatre, “there was something that you might want to know.” I explained how I couldn’t tell who had been speaking on the phone, but that it was obvious to me that she had been talking about Denise, which proved to me at least that someone was keeping tabs on Denise at the Fringe.

  Jennifer nodded. “You could be right. It could be someone tailing you two, overhearing ‘Tuesday’ and going on that. Or it could be absolute coincidence that you and Denise were Fringing the night Christian Norgaard was killed. It may also be completed unrelated to the death of Eleanor Durant, although they were found within a half-mile radius of each other.”

  I stared at her. She was right. The Queen Elizabeth stairs were only about four blocks from the epicentre of the Fringe, but I never thought of my city in that way. The river valley occupied a different area of my mind, the part that managed nature and exercise. Old Strathcona was housed in the theatre/bistro/great stationery shops section of my pre-frontal cortex. But really, they were so close. I wondered who in the theatre community lived in close proximity. Then it occurred to me, who didn’t? The Old Strathcona neighbourhood from Whyte Avenue to the river valley, the Queen Alexandra area on the other side of Whyte Avenue, the Mill Creek section, and even the Richie area on the other side of 99 Street were teeming with artistic types. Heck, even Steve lived along Saskatchewan Drive, the meandering lovely road along the top southern edge of the river valley. About the only shining light that came out of that realization was that one person I knew didn’t live in that area: Denise.

  Jennifer had poured herself another cup of tea and let me think, which I appreciated. She was really growing on me. Of course, she might be thinking it was some sort of mind game to make me confess, but since I had nothing to confess, I wasn’t too worried about that.

  “You know, if whoever it is only makes a move when he or she thinks it will damage Denise, what would happen if we were to take Denise out of the equation?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if the object of the exercise was simply to frame Denise for murder, wouldn’t it be simpler to kill people who had something to do with Denise? Granted, I can see how Eleanor might be connected, since she was having an affair with Kieran, but Christian? I don’t see any connection to Denise, unless he too was having an affair with Kieran.”

  Jennifer smiled drily. “Not that we’re aware of.”

  “Right. So, the minute you put Christian into the equation, you lose Denise a
s being logical for the murder. She was just supposed to be in the vicinity and already under suspicion, right?”

  “I’m not quite sure where you’re going with this.”

  “It gets even clearer if we do add Oren Gentry’s death into the mix. The object of killing each of these people is that they stand in the way between the killer and a desired element, the job of artistic director at Chautauqua Theatre. So, if we accept that the killer seems to be acting only behind the screen of Denise’s convenient movements, how about we take that camouflage away and have him or her try to make a move in the open?”

  “And how do we get rid of Denise?”

  “We could get her to go out of town for a week or so, as a break before classes start.”

  “The Edmonton Police Service frowns upon letting suspects in murder investigations leave town for short vacations,” said Jennifer.

  “But you know she didn’t do it!”

  “The murderer shouldn’t know that, though, right?” She had me. Pulling Denise out of the mix that way would smack of some sort of police sting. Maybe putting pressure on the other end would be a better idea, anyhow.

  “Well, what about upping the ante on the job search for the theatre? Maybe you could approach the board and see if they could make an announcement that they had a short list, or would be coming to a decision very soon. The stakes would get higher, and the time shorter.”

  “And what do you suggest we do? Just sit in dark corners near the short-listed candidates and wait for someone to pop them off? This is sounding like Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?”

  “Oh did you read that book? I remember just loving it.”

  “No, I only saw the movie. I’m a big George Segal fan.”

  I stared at her. “George Segal? It’s the twenty-first century; who is a George Segal fan?”

  Jennifer shrugged. “He reminds me of my father.”