The Roar of the Crowd Page 24

  I shook off the idea of George Segal Gladue and tried to get back to the thread of the conversation. “No, this isn’t a farce. I really think, as motives go, this is pretty clear.”

  “No one kills for a job.”

  “No? I hear people all the time saying exactly that, ‘I’d kill for that job.’”

  “Yes, but you work in academe.”

  She had me there. If even a quarter of the sessionals and adjunct lecturers who supposedly made up two-thirds of the teaching workforce in universities and colleges across the continent actually followed through on their muttered comments about tenure-tracked fulltime staff, there would be a blood bath and the ivory towers would drip red.

  So, if it wasn’t in order to land Oren’s job, why were Eleanor and Christian killed? What else did they have in common besides the fact that they were both actors with aspirations to direct?

  Just then my cellphone buzzed twice. I glanced at my text messages, one from Denise and another from Steve, both telling me that she had been at the screening of one of the Metropolitan at the Movies operas. So, she hadn’t been jogging, she’d just been out getting some aria. Fine, I could stop worrying about where she was and get back to worrying about who was trying to frame her for murder.

  “Was that Denise?”

  Jennifer was reading my mind. Maybe all cops could. I was going to really have to watch myself while jaywalking.

  “Yeah, just checking in.”

  “Fine. Well, back to what we were talking about, Eleanor and Christian do not have all that much in common, but they were connected to the Shakespeare festival, they both attended Victoria School for the Arts when they were younger, they both lived in the Old Strathcona area, and if their resumés are to be believed, they both played Viola in productions of Twelfth Night?”

  I nodded wearily. “Yes, I remember that. A couple of years ago, Cement Theatre did an all-male Shakespeare, to demonstrate how it would have been presented in Elizabethan times. There was a bit of a gripe about it in the editorial section of a couple of papers, the main issue being there are not enough roles for women in theatre to begin with, and by doing an all-male production, even if historically accurate, you denied at least three actresses work. I wasn’t sure what side of that argument I was on, because it was really interesting. I guess, if it had been a student production and scores of professional actresses weren’t losing work over it, I’d have been totally happy with the experiment.”

  “Okay, so two Violas are killed. I wonder if that is the link.” Jennifer held up her hand to ward off my incredulity. “I just wanted to let you know how ludicrous other people are going to think your purported motive for these murders will sound.”

  “Really? I think you need to push the situation. At least find out if they already have a short list for the position.” I knew I was pleading, but when was I going to get another chance? Steve wasn’t going to discuss the case with me, and Iain sure as shooting was not going to be listening. Right here, right now was Denise’s best chance to have the police reopen their eyes to seeing the situation without her in the middle of the bull’s eye.

  Jennifer Gladue stood, and with a questioning nod of her head, took her tea mug into the kitchen and set it in the sink. Returning to my tiny living room, she towered, so I stood up to look her in the eye.

  “We are going to follow every lead and take all tips and suggestions as seriously as they deserve to be taken. And that means I will bring up the artistic directorship as a possible motive. I will suggest we take a look at their short list. But that’s as much as I can promise you, and I want to underline to you how inadvisable it would be to poke around in this situation yourself, either you or Denise Wolff.” For a moment, the cop carapace fell away, and once more I saw the woman I had just started to get to know. “You do not want to get in the way of this murderer, Randy. This person knows their way around a knife. Norgaard’s body barely bled after being strung up, but he was stabbed beforehand.”

  And with that she left me to clean up the rest of the tea stuff.

  While I was picking things up, I noticed she had left behind the three cast and crew lists of the shows running at the Walterdale. I set them on the kitchen table, not sure whether I should just toss them in the recycle or whether she might come back to retrieve them.

  Maybe she had brought them for me. What did that mean? It’s not like she couldn’t get more if she needed them. Maybe they weren’t actually important to her investigation. Under the principle of erring on the side of caution, I left them there till I could talk to Steve and find out if they’d be needed.

  I putzed around a bit, made myself a peanut butter-and-banana sandwich, hummed a requisite Elvis tune in honour of his favourite concoction, and sat down at the kitchen table.

  Unless there is someone around to talk to, I need to read while I eat. As my parents could attest, this is a habit refined over years; way back, I wasn’t all that keen on interacting with others even if they were around. I usually kept a book or a magazine tucked by the wall end of the table, right next to my little basket of condiments, but I’d just finished my latest book and hadn’t yet started another.

  I pulled what was at hand toward me, Jennifer Gladue’s cast lists. As I ate my sandwich, I pored over the names and positions of all the people. There were several I could put a name to, but more I didn’t know at all.

  I went through the zombie show first and realized I had taught one of the leads at Grant MacEwan. I was happy to see she was pursuing her dream of being part of the theatre scene by playing a character named Legless Lucy. I wasn’t sure whether this character was supposed to be a drunk or extremely truncated. I didn’t recognize any other names on the list.

  It was a different story with the operetta cast and crew list. Aside from Micheline as stage director, and Kendra Conner and Jesse Gervais in the leads, there were only two other actors I knew of by name, and neither of them had been involved with the Shakespeare festival, so I didn’t feel guilty about neglecting to point them out to Gladue. It wasn’t as if I was so caught up in the theatre scene that I knew every name. She should be taking this list to someone like Trevor Schmidt or Taryn or even Kieran to identify the players.

  As I ran my finger down the list on the page, it snagged on one name: M. Creely, Set Designer. I wondered how many M. Creelys there were in Edmonton, because I’d bet anything that was Morgana Creely the photographer. I had no idea she was into set design, but I supposed that a photographer’s eye was every bit as artistic in setting a stage for a static vision as a stage designer’s had to be for designing the backdrop for a show. I picked up a pencil and drew an arrow with a little star and a question mark next to her name, intending to mention to Steve to tell Jennifer Gladue that there had been another person connected to the Walterdale show and backstage from the Shakespeare circle, albeit tangentially. I doubted that Morgana had been down at the festival site more than three days, total.

  Of course, if she was expanding from photographer to set designer, who was to say she wasn’t hoping to hang out her shingle as an artistic director? I wondered if Jennifer Gladue was going to take my theory seriously and check into Oren Gentry’s death. It would take a police requisition to reopen that file, and I wondered if anything could be done, as I knew from having seen the urn on the stage that there was nothing remaining of Gentry to test for unknown poisons that would simulate a heart attack.

  I had the feeling Jennifer had just been putting me in my place, milking me for whatever I might possibly know and placating me with the pretense of taking what I said seriously. Denise was still her main suspect, I felt, and who knows, maybe the timelines would show that my best friend could have stabbed and hanged a six-foot-tall actor in a relatively public place a few minutes before picking me up for dinner and a play. Or maybe she’d done it while pretending to use the ladies’ room in the restaurant.

  I pushed the papers away, frustrated that no one was stepping up to help us. Secreting Denise away would
work to lure out the killer, I knew it would. Why couldn’t Jennifer Gladue see that?

  I stopped, frozen, my hand still flat on the table. There was something that would work even better.

  36.

  Denise wasn’t hard to convince, which probably spoke more to her level of despair and frustration than to the solidity of my plan.

  We were making ourselves as visible as possible in the Next Act restaurant, which was no hardship because I adored their burgers and side salads. While Denise picked her way through a meal-sized salad, I laid out the bones of the plan that had struck me.

  “I was trying to explain to the detective how your being out of the limelight would make things more problematic for whoever is responsible for all of this, but really, we need you to be even more visible.” I waved my strawberry and pea sprout–laden fork at her for emphasis. “You need to announce that you are applying for Oren Gentry’s job.”

  Denise looked shocked for a moment, and then cocked her head to the side. “My qualifications match Sarah’s, I suppose. Won’t this play into the hands of the person trying to frame me for the murders, though?”

  “Well, you’re already being framed as the slighted woman, though I am not sure why you’d supposedly kill Christian, unless you suspected him of an affair with Kieran as well.” Denise laughed abruptly.

  “Not likely. Kieran may have been a swinger but it wasn’t both ways. Christian would not have been his type.”

  “Okay then, so we make whoever is doing this see you as less of a scapegoat to tie all the blame to, and more of a rival to eliminate on the way.”

  “But we are going to figure out a way to be a target without being killed in the fallout, right?”

  “Of course, right. We will be ready for anything, because we’ll be expecting it. And you won’t be on your own. I am going to be with you the whole time, starting now. The minute we start this, anything could happen.”

  “And what’s to stop whoever it is from killing us both?”

  “We are quick and clever and anticipating an attack, which is at least one less attribute than the other victims probably had.”

  “And we’re going to tell Steve?”

  “We can’t do that. I mean, I will let him know where I am and all that, if he asks, but I can’t detail what we’re about to do. For one thing, he’d try to stop us, because it could be construed as impeding a police investigation, and he’d also pooh-pooh our ideas, which would make us second-guess ourselves. The thing is, if we’re going to do this, it has to be totally focused or else no one is going to buy it.”

  “Yes, we are going to be giving the performance of our lives, to an audience of professional performers. The hardest audience of all,” Denise shook her head. “I’m not sure I’m even up to it. Maybe the reason I went the academic route to Shakespeare was my innate knowledge that I couldn’t make it on the stage.”

  “Or maybe it was your profound and complex appreciation for the plays that transcended the need to hear the words out loud?”

  Denise smiled. “You’re right. It could be that.” She took a sip of her pint. “Okay, so how do you see your plan unfolding?”

  “My theory is, you submit your application and resumé, and we seed the message to a few different people. It shouldn’t take long before everyone in the theatre community hears about it. After all, they’re mostly all still congregating for Fringe shows, and the week of shows chosen to be held over will continue to bring people here all next week. Once people know, someone is going to come looking for you.”

  “But several people could come looking for me, to congratulate me, to talk me out of it, to just wonder why I want to change careers midstream. How will we know which one is the murderer?”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “Well, I think the knife will be the giveaway.”

  Denise laughed, too. I suppose you couldn’t really get Shakespeare without an appreciation of the darker sort of humour. “Yes, I can see that. I was hoping, though, for a bit more lead.”

  “That’s the best I’ve got. We bait him, lure him, and catch him, then we turn him over to the police, and you get your life back.”

  “Would that it were so easy.” Denise lifted her glass in a mock toast. “Here’s to foiling evildoers.”

  I raised my glass to clink it with hers. “To quote Hamlet, and who doesn’t, ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king!’”

  “Don’t forget, he also kills an old man by mistake, drives his girlfriend to suicide, has his two best friends killed in his place, and brings about the end of home rule to his kingdom. I wouldn’t be so quick to model myself on the great Dane.”

  “If you don’t want to do it, just tell me now.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Because I think it’s the only way we can find this killer.”

  “Well, there is another way, but I might be in jail long before it happens.”

  “What’s that?”

  Denise looked grim. “We just sit back and arrest whoever ends up in the Chautauqua job.”

  “If killing all the competition is their way of getting the position, who will be left to buy tickets?”

  “Okay, I’m in. Where do we start?”

  “First off, you send your resumé in to Chautauqua. Then we mention it to everyone we run into. What are you doing?”

  Denise was clicking a few things on her iPhone, which she’d pulled from her small purse. “I’ve got a current CV. Give me a few minutes and I can whomp up a cover letter and we can send it from here.”

  I left her to compose her letter on the tiny screen and went to use the lavatory. It was a small one, and bit of squish to get past the sink to the two stalls, but I was on my own in there, so the problem was averted. The polished silver of the stall walls was nice and kept graffiti to a minimum, which was just as well, since it was usually either the religious, the mundane or the profane in Edmonton washrooms. Clever people were saving their bon mots for Twitter these days.

  I washed up and returned to our booth. On the way, I noted that the place had filled up with some people I recognized. Three or four of the actors from Stewart Lemoine’s play were in the large booth in the corner. Louise and Micheline were sitting at the bar together. The fellow who had been Benedick in the silly Shakespeare we’d seen was sitting with John Kirkpatrick at one of the tall tables. Everyone came to the Next Act. Eleanor’s and Christian’s murderer was probably here right now.

  That thought made me shiver as I slid in to the booth across from Denise.

  She looked up at me, raised an eyebrow, and hit a button on the screen of her phone.

  “I just sent my application for artistic director to Chautauqua Theatre. I hope you know what we’re doing now.”

  So did I.

  37.

  We managed to chat with Louise and Micheline on our way to the till without making it look too targeted. I thought John Kirkpatrick also overheard Louise’s incredulous “You’re applying?” So there were two streams of information heading out. We walked through the Fringe site to maximize our visibility and see if we could find anyone else to inform.

  That’s the thing about Edmonton. You can’t go anywhere without running into at least three people you know, and this was no exception. We chatted briefly with Jim de Felice, who was buying a green onion cake before heading to a one-man show by a fellow from Victoria that was said to be a hit of the Fringe. He wished Denise all the best in applying for the job, saying the “expansion of thought” might be a good thing for the theatre, which was really big of him, seeing as how he’d taught most of the directors in this town.

  We talked with Belinda Cornish and Ron Pederson, who were coming out of the doors of the Fringe offices. I was effusive to Belinda about her performance while Ron and Denise spoke. He had been one of her students, it turned out, when he was first at the university.

  “A first-rate mind, you know,” Denise confided as we walked away. “He’d have made a
great academic if he hadn’t figured out how funny he was.”

  I laughed. “I wonder if he thinks he’s missing anything?”

  “Oh, I doubt it. There is a certain level of performer exhibitionist in all teaching academics. Otherwise, you’d move into a pure research stream and it wouldn’t be difficult. The university certainly can stick another sessional lecturer in front of a class more easily than they can attract research grant monies.”

  “You mean you don’t have to teach if you don’t want to?”

  “If you brought an endowed chair with you, you could write your own ticket,” Denise said. “The point I was trying to make, though, is that most people do want to teach. They are performers. They hop and skip and trill and persuade their students to love the material they love. Because, by creating more acolytes and devotees, they assure themselves that theirs is a useful endeavour, that they have not wasted their lives writing esoteric articles about Herrick or Fowles or Shaw.”

  “And you think there’s a chance they have?”

  “Have what?”

  “Wasted their lives?”

  “Oh, there’s a great chance we’re all going the wrong direction, Randy. We could be in a great galactic experiment, running mazes against other worlds, rising and falling in relation to the reagents and parameters of the gods.”

  “Who’s sounding like Hamlet now?”

  She laughed. “You’re right. No need to get philosophical when someone could be trying to kill you. A much better idea is to just get your runners laced.”

  By this time we were close to the parking lot where Denise had left the car, so we left the Fringe site and headed for my apartment. We had decided that if we were going to be serious about being vigilant, we needed to maintain a connected front. We might be independent and strong twenty-first-century women, but we weren’t idiots. This was no time to be alone. I was going to pack up a few days’ worth of clothes and stay over with Denise at her place.

  I left a message for Steve, who wasn’t picking up his phone, telling him I’d be at Denise’s and contactable by cellphone. Denise watered my paltry violets while I tossed some underwear, makeup, a couple of tee-shirts, sweatpants, and another pair of jeans into a duffle bag. I grabbed a hoodie from the back of the bedroom door, my laptop, my cellphone and computer cords, and the book by my bed. I checked the date on the milk in the fridge and figured it would be okay. One quick glance at the window locks, and I was ready to head out.