The Roar of the Crowd Read online

  I shuddered and slid to the floor, my legs giving way.

  Kieran was marched out of the building to a waiting car. Jennifer had to call in the situation to Steve and Iain McCorquodale before she was able to fully concentrate on either Denise or me.

  Both of us were jellied, unable to do much more than shiver, laugh, and occasionally cry a bit. That’s what trauma really does. No sitting wrapped in Red Cross blankets on the edge of ambulances and drinking sugared tea for us. Maybe that just happened in movies like Mrs. Miniver or National Treasure. Instead, we huddled together, too spent by nerves to function.

  The younger officer asked us to make a statement, but Jennifer waved him off for the moment and told him to make some coffee. By the time the pot was full, both Iain and Steve had joined us. Denise went to the washroom, and on the way back she brought a couple of shawls for us, so in effect we created the movie scene for ourselves.

  “We’ll take brief statements now and then I would suggest, for your peace of mind, that you call in a locksmith, Denise.”

  Denise smiled at Jennifer, and I knew she was striking the right balance of calm assurance and matter-of-factness that would bring her back from whatever abyss she’d glimpsed in those last scary minutes with Kieran.

  “Tomorrow is soon enough for a more comprehensive report. If you could come down to the station in the morning, we can manage that there.” Denise nodded and so did I.

  Steve smiled at Jennifer approvingly. Her take-charge attitude was working. “So, after we get the basics down, I can drive Randy home, unless you would rather stay here one more night?” I looked at Denise, who shook her head.

  “I’ll be fine and I know you’d like to get back to your own world.” She hugged me. “Thank you so much, Randy, for everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Standing up to him there, making up all that crazy plot, saying I was playing him instead of the other way around. I am sure that is what saved our lives.”

  “I was trying to buy us time.”

  “You set him off balance, and that was what kept us alive. I am sure of it. For the first time in his twisted trip to landing Oren’s job, he wasn’t in charge.”

  I smiled. Maybe I had done something clever. It was nice to think my brilliant friend thought so, anyhow.

  We went through the making and signing of statements while Jennifer briefed Steve and Iain. They sent someone down to the underground garage to impound the car that Kieran had driven in with the spare entry fob. With any luck, they’d find traces of Eleanor in the trunk or Christian on some tackle. It would be nice to have physical evidence to shore up our statements of Kieran’s preening over the murders.

  “Don’t worry, he’s not going to talk his way out of this. We have everything he said to you on tape,” Steve assured me. He drove me back to my cozy little apartment with no view to speak of, which would probably fit entirely into the floor space of Denise’s bedroom suite. Even so, I was utterly content to turn the key in the door and come home.

  Steve had to deal with a mountain of paperwork at the station but promised to be back before long. With Kieran in custody, I had nothing to worry about and waved him off at the door, feeling remarkably calm.

  I’d played at being a Shakespeare expert for the teens in the park. I’d played at setting up Denise as a director for consideration in the Chautauqua job. I’d even played at having the upper hand over a psychopath in the performance of my life. Now it was time to come home, take off the greasepaint, and go back to being myself. Randy Craig.

  On my way in, I had retrieved two or three days of mail stuffed into my little brass mailbox. I set my bag down by the door and kicked off my shoes. I looked at the mail. The top two envelopes were come-ons for magazine subscriptions and a third was a letter from my mother, which I would read with pleasure once I’d made some tea. The fourth envelope was from the English department of Grant MacEwan University.

  Maybe I was really going back to being my old self after all.

  Acknowledgments

  I love the theatre community in Edmonton, which is very strong. Beginning with high school programs, summer courses in Drumheller, Artstrek, the Banff Centre, and of course the great BFA/MFA programs at the University of Alberta and the Musical Theatre program at Grant MacEwan, a love of theatre is there for the asking. Couple that with a vital amateur theatre community, great dinner theatres, the mighty Fringe Festival, the flagship Citadel Theatre, Teatro la Quindicina, Workshop West, Theatre Network, Northern Light Theatre, Catalyst Theatre, Rapid Fire Theatre, Firefly Theatre, Concrete Theatre, Shadow Theatre, and the wonderful Freewill Shakespeare Festival—Edmonton is truly blessed.

  I want to acknowledge all the folks from the theatre community over the years who have inspired, supported, and befriended me, and who helped with the research for this book: Millard Foster, Tom Peacocke, Jim de Felice, Diane Bessai, Marianne Copithorne, Conni Massing, Mark Meer, Belinda Cornish, Chris Craddock, Georgina Kravetz, Ben Henderson, the late Bill Meilen, Larry Reese, Tanya Ryga, Maggie Baird, John Wright, Stewart Lemoine, Jeff Haslam, Trevor Schmidt, Darrin Hagan, Timothy Anderson, and Barbara Reese. I would also like to thank Teresa Goldie for bidding on a name for the book as part of a fundraiser for the Freewill Shakespeare Festival (I asked her if she would mind if Christian Norgaard was cast as a suspect or a victim or a smoker, and she replied, “Anything except a Tory!”)

  I want to thank my great love and husband, Randy Williams, for being my ideal reader, staunch supporter, great promoter, and best friend. Between his devotion, the support of Edmonton booksellers, and the obvious great taste of our book-buying public, the renaissance of local writers of which I am happy to share the wave has made the last several years of quiet, early weekend mornings seem all that much more worthwhile.

  While many elements of this novel are based on fact (we DO have a load of theatres in this town), I fabricated some of the other bits. For instance, I played a bit fast and loose with the way the Freewill Shakespeare Festival operates. Yes, they produce two great plays a summer, and they do run a Shakespeare camp for teens, and they are located down in the lovely Hawrelak Park in July (curtain Tuesday through Sundays at 8:00 p.m., matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 p.m., comedy on odd dates, tragedy on even dates). But their artistic and managing directors are both totally above suspicion in all their actions, and the festival could never afford to lure a big-name actor into their season, because they make their magic for us all on a relative shoestring. So, if you are reading this book and happen to own an airline or a bank or got crazy rich inventing an app for generating cat memes, why not become their corporate sponsor and see what they could do without having to annually worry as they bring us the Bard?

  I would also like to thank the publishing team at Turnstone, Jamis Paulson, Sharon Caseburg, and Sara Harms, who make being a Ravenstone author such an enviable position.

  I hope you enjoy this book … and I hope you are using a theatre ticket stub for a bookmark.

  Janice

  Sticks & Stones

  by Janice MacDonald

  How dangerous can words be? The University of Alberta’s English Department is caught up in a maelstrom of poison-pen letters, graffiti and misogyny. Part-time sessional lecturer Miranda Craig seems to be both target and investigator, wreaking havoc on her new-found relationship with one of Edmonton’s Finest.

  One of Randy’s star students, a divorced mother of two, has her threatening letter published in the newspaper and is found soon after, victim of a brutal murder followed to the gory letter of the published note. Randy must delve into Gwen’s life and preserve her own to solve this mystery.

  Spellbinding …

  —W.P Kinsella

  ...intelligent, thought-provoking and entertaining.

  —Anna Babineau,

  The Lethbridge Herald

  This is one of those books that begs to be finished at 3 a.m. of the same day.”

  —Matthew Stepanic,


  editor of Glass Buffalo Magazine

  Sticks & Stones / $14.95

  ISBN: 9780888012562

  Ravenstone

  The Monitor

  by Janice MacDonald

  You’re being watched. Randy Craig is now working part-time at Edmonton’s Grant MacEwan College and struggling to make ends meet. That is, until she takes an evening job monitoring a chat room called Babel for an employer she knows only as Chatgod. Soon, Randy realizes that a killer is brokering hits through Babel and may be operating in Edmonton. Randy doesn’t know whom she can trust, but the killer is on to her, and now she must figure out where the psychopath is, all the while staying one IP address ahead of becoming the next victim.

  [Janice MacDonald] has managed to convey the inherent spookiness … that a social cyberspace can invoke.

  —Howard Rheingold

  The Monitor / $10.99

  ISBN: 9780888012845

  Ravenstone

  Hang Down Your Head

  by Janice MacDonald

  Some folks have a talent for finding trouble, no matter how good they try to be, especially Randy Craig. Maybe she shouldn’t date a cop. Maybe she should have turned down the job at the Folkways Collection library—a job that became a nightmare when a rich benefactor’s belligerent heir turned up dead.

  Randy tried to be good—honest!—but now she’s a prime suspect with a motive and no alibi in sight.

  The Edmonton Folk Music Festival, the city itself and the fascinating politics of funding research in the arts lend a rich texture to this engaging mystery with the twisty end. If you enjoy folk music, you’re in for an extra treat. Once again, Randy Craig is a down-to-earth, funny and realistic amateur sleuth: it’s good to reconnect with her.

  —Mary Jane Maffini, author of

  The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder

  I have been a performer at the Edmonton Folk Festival for 20 years. I always knew there were a lot of characters there, but until reading Janice’s book, I never thought of the festival itself as a character, and a fine place for a murder mystery!

  —James Keelaghan

  Hang Down Your Head / $16.00

  ISBN: 9780888013866

  Ravenstone

  Condemned to Repeat

  by Janice MacDonald

  For anyone other than Randy Craig, a contract to do archival research and web development for Alberta’s famed Rutherford House should have been a quiet gig. But when she discovers an unsolved mystery linked to Rutherford House in the Alberta Archives and the bodies begin to pile up, Randy can’t help but wonder if her modern-day troubles are linked to the intrigues of the past.

  Condemned to Repeat is a compelling tale of secrets from the past colliding with the present, along with a heavy dose of history and travelogue. Plus a murder or two. Not to be missed!

  —Linda Wiken, Mystery Maven Canada blogger,

  author, and former bookstore owner

  Does for historic sites what she did for music festivals: strews corpses and intrigues in trademark MacDonald style, with giggles and gusto.

  —Candas Jane Dorsey, author of

  A Paradigm of Earth

  Edmontonians in particular will enjoy following the genial Randy Craig through buildings and districts that are as familiar to them as their neighbours, and yet now imprinted with murder and mystery.

  —Tom Long, Public Interpretation Coordinator,

  Fort Edmonton Park

  Condemned to Repeat / $16.00

  ISBN: 9780888014153

  Ravenstone

  Janice MacDonald’s Randy Craig Mysteries were the first detective series to be set in Edmonton, Alberta, where Janice lives and works. Having written her master’s thesis on detective fiction, she became for many years the Edmonton Journal mystery reviewer and an on-air expert for the Canadian television series Booked. She worked for almost two decades at the University of Alberta and Grant MacEwan College, teaching English literature, communications, play analysis, creative writing, and extension courses in detective fiction.

  Janice has also had a long love affair with the stage. She wrote the music and lyrics for two touring historical musicals for Studio North Theatre : Northsong and Making Tracks. She was lured away from finishing her MFA in playwriting by the chance to write and produce radio for CKUA, CBC Alberta, and ACCESS. She is a board member of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival. When she was younger, she wanted to be Ethel Merman. When she was really young, she wanted to be an elevator operator.