Condemned to Repeat

by Janice Macdonald

  The jewellery box I had inherited from my grandmother, a black wooden box with a Japanese cherry tree painted on the top, had been tossed onto my bed, as well. Her gold wedding bands had rested in the bottom of that box. I could find neither, though most of my casual costume jewellery and two amber rings were still there. Defiantly, I put on both rings. How dare they consider these not worth stealing?

  Steve and the officers were still in the kitchen and dining area, so while I was alone, I checked my personal wall safe, the brass plate of my bedroom-light switch. I flicked it to the right, revealing a tiny space under the wiring box. My spare flash drive and safe deposit box key were still there. I flipped back the plate and tapped it for luck, wondering idly if a Jewish god would find that profane, and then checked the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Since I didn’t require any expensive or narcotic medications, I didn’t think much would have been taken, and I was right. Instead, the jerks had dumped all my ibuprofen and TUMS into the sink, under the misguided possibility that I hid uncut diamonds or microchips in the bottoms of the bottles.

  I sat down on the side of the tub and yanked a bunch of toilet paper off the roll to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. Steve stood in the doorway of the bathroom, saying nothing. I don’t know how long we stayed there, but eventually one of the officers came to speak quietly with Steve.

  “Randy,” Steve said, patting me on the knee to bring me back into the real world. “We should go. I’m going to take you to my place tonight, and we’re going to seal your apartment up. The crime scene boys will be back in the morning to go over everything. We can possibly pick up a print here or there, since they’ve been through everything.”

  “When will I be allowed back in?”

  “Likely by tomorrow, but you can stay with me as long as it takes, hon. C’mon. The sooner we are out of here, the better.”

  He reached out his hand and I pulled myself to standing. I was directly across from the medicine-cabinet mirror. My face looked bruised, what with my mascara puddled under my eyes and streaks of tears down to my chin. I swiped the back of my hand across my eyes, and pushed my hair out of my face. There was nothing I could do to set things straight tonight, either to my apartment or my looks. People were dying around me. My world was no longer safe. Everything felt off-kilter and out of step. The falcon probably couldn’t even hear the falconer.

  The officers locked up behind us and taped the door. We left out the back way.

  26

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  I signed a short statement for Steve to take in to the station for me before we went to sleep, and when the morning came, he left me to stay in bed at his place. I was supposed to go downtown to see the Widows in the afternoon, but the events of the previous day had left me feeling fragile, as if my skin was made out of tissue paper and I was in danger of ripping and leaking with any sudden movement.

  Why would anyone destroy my apartment? What could they have been looking for that wasn’t right out in plain view? Was it just wanton fun on the part of some crackhead breaking in to find something to sell for a fix? Or was all that mess and ruination meant as a further insult to me personally? Was it a message?

  That last possibility seemed silly. Who the heck did I think I was to anyone, particularly anyone criminal? For the past few months, all I had done was research Rutherford House. No big secrets, no big pay-off.

  And yet, it was my connection to Rutherford House that had brought me into contact with two murders within the space of a couple of weeks. That couldn’t just be coincidence, now could it? First Jossie, then Mr. Maitland, and now my apartment.

  Thank goodness for Steve. I felt safe locked away here in his condo, which I loved. His living room looked out on to the river valley and was the very best place from which to watch the annual fireworks on Canada Day. He had decorated it in brown leather and wood, with highlights of bright throw cushions and one crazy quilt of an upholstered chair. Being Steve, he had one long wall of the living room devoted to bookcases, which was one of the reasons I was devoted to him.

  I padded out of the bedroom, which he kept tidy by keeping furniture to a minimum. I had pulled the duvet straight on the bed and closed the closet doors. There was coffee still in the carafe, but the little light on the coffee machine was off. I touched the glass of the carafe, which was cool. Taking a cup from the cupboard above, I poured cold coffee and set the cup in the microwave. I needed to shower and dress and have something to eat before I could even think what to do next. I leaned against the counter of Steve’s kitchen, waiting for the beep-beep that let me know my coffee was heated.

  Steve had left the day’s newspaper and a note on the other side of the counter, where he had two barstools tucked up for kitchen seating. I got my coffee, doctored it with milk from the fridge and, grabbing a banana, walked around the counter to sit down and see what he had to say. I could barely remember him leaving that morning.

  The note was short and sweet, reminding me to lock the deadbolt when I headed out and telling me there was strudel in the fridge. I slipped off the stool and went to check whether the nice policeman had been telling the truth. Sure enough, a third of a plank of strudel was sitting in the second shelf, in a plastic bag. I pulled it out and cut a generous portion, which I decided to also warm up in the microwave. While it was heating, I checked Steve’s freezer and found some fancy vanilla ice cream. Breakfast of champions.

  Now, armed with apfelstrudel à la mode and a cup of Rwandan roast, and feeling mighty cosmopolitan, I was ready to tackle reading the newspaper.

  There, of course, was nothing about the desecration of my apartment. I hadn’t thought there would be, unless it was in the form of a “crime spree hits Old Strathcona area of town” sort of story. The canvassing of the rest of the apartment owners in my building had not shown any other break-ins. Four of the people on the main floor had been at home, but of course the man next to me was quite deaf, and hadn’t heard anything from my apartment, a situation I normally found comforting.

  Only two of the six tenants upstairs had been at home, but none of the empty apartments had been ravaged, leading the investigating officers to consider the crime to be targeted at me in particular. And the situation of one little academic researcher in the heart of what had been called Canada’s Murder Capital just last year, didn’t warrant a news story.

  There were some stories of interest on the cover, though. Apparently, someone had tied in the recent unsolved murders of two working adults to mean that parents should panic about their children’s safety when trick-or-treating this upcoming Hallowe’en. The mega-mall had announced there would be treats delivered store to store for little ones too small to do outdoor treks, and the annual Spooktacular at Fort Edmonton Park was highlighted as a family alternative. Other related stories further inside the paper dealt with not allowing masks as part of the costume, to keep eyesight at a maximum, commentary on the safety of sparkly makeup, the need to ascertain all candy was factory sealed, and how to examine it for tampering.

  Somehow, as Hallowe’en grew as a commercial activity, with people decorating their homes as splashily as they did for Christmas, though obviously along a slightly more garish and ghoulish theme, the joyous anarchy of the event had diminished. Not that I had ever been one of those rascals out egging windows and toilet-papering trees, though I had secretly delighted in that sort of trickery. For me the old flickering candle in the malevolent jack-o’-lantern and a bowl of candy handed out in placation provided far more of a preteen high than did blinking plastic headstones and stick-on blood spatters on the screen doors. Mostly, just being out in the dark without one’s parents was enough of a thrill for the twelve-year-old set. For the younger ones, it was all about the candy.

  Maybe I would head down to Fort Edmonton for their Spooktacular event. It was anachronistic, of course, and one was likely to encounter a zombie bride walking down the street just as easily as a turn-of-the-century bobbing for apples game being held in one of the houses, but there wou
ld be fewer street lights and more potential for anarchy.

  I checked the paper. The Spooktacular ran for the three days before Hallowe’en. I turned Steve’s note over and wrote “Wanna do this with me?” and drew a large arrow pointing left. I folded the paper to the Fort Edmonton ad, and placed the note strategically, before heading to the washroom to clean up and head downtown.

  The Widows were happy to see me and made all the right noises when I told them about the break-in to my apartment. Linda said something that hadn’t occurred to me till she mentioned it.

  “Are you going to feel safe there once you’ve cleaned it all up?”

  “I really don’t know. I didn’t stay there last night. But as soon as the police are done with it, I have to get back in there to start cleaning up the mess.”

  “Well, in the meantime, you don’t have to worry about tomorrow’s presentation,” Judy pronounced, patting me sympathetically on the arm. “I think we have got it totally under control for you.”

  “You bet we have. Sit down here and let us walk you through it,” Linda joined in.

  I sat down, prepared to be amazed. I always loved what the Widows came up with. Their sites were clean and simple, but deceptively so. A lot of work went into the background of making things flow smoothly.

  “We’ve mocked up the website into our sandbox, meaning that you can offer a secure URL to your board members so they can actually paddle around in the site themselves, if you like. Otherwise” —Judy clicked her mouse and pointed at the Smart Board on the wall in front of us— “you can just lead them along with you in a demo. Either way, it’s set to show.”

  The site was fantastic.

  A shadowy brick background framed a central film on the splash page of the site.

  “We have a bypass built in here,” Judy said, pointing to the scripted “returning visitors” note at the bottom right of the screen. “But we wanted it to start as the default to underpin the concept of how magnificent and different the House was for its time and place.”

  The film began with a wide, establishing shot of prairie that moved toward a belt of aspen parkland marking out the river valley. It morphed into a sighting of palisade wall, presumably Fort Edmonton, then a sod shack with a little goat standing on the top of its green roof. This became a full-sized split log cabin, then a small clapboard house, and finally a view of the wooden Rutherford House now situated down in the historic park. There was a pause of about five seconds, and then the picture broke into a thousand little tiles and spilled down to the bottom of the screen, leaving a majestic vision of Rutherford House as it stood today, looking out over Saskatchewan Drive. It radiated majesty and dignity, the way the cornerstone of one of Canada’s major universities should.

  The title RUTHERFORD HOUSE appeared at the top of the screen, and a set of ornately filigreed radio buttons faded in on the left, letting the viewer choose to go to Family History, House History, Timelines, People, Hours, Arbour Tea Room, Friends of Rutherford House, Special Events, and Contact Us. I looked questioningly at Linda, who nodded, and I proceeded to mouse my way through all the sections of the site.

  I especially loved the House History section, which consisted of a blueprint layout of each floor of the house. When the cursor rolled over a room, a photo of the room as it appeared now sprang onto the screen, as well as a portrait of the pertinent Rutherford. If you were to click the portrait, the site took you to the Family History section.

  “This is amazing. Will it all load this quickly, wherever?”

  “It should,” nodded Linda. “We have deliberately tweaked things to be sure that everyone, regardless of platform and capacity, gets the same upload. After all, many of the people checking out a site like this will be tourists, some of them still using dial-up Internet, who are checking out the possibilities before booking a trip to Alberta. It just wouldn’t do to lock them out or hang up their computers in the loading stage, right? It’s perception as much as ease. Who would feel comfortable going somewhere they felt too backward to navigate?”

  I thought of my initial attempts to feel comfortable in cities like London and New York, where my adrenalin went into warp speed while I tried to find the bus route back to my hotel, and smiled. The Widows were amazing. By making a tourist website über-easy to deal with, they were subliminally offering a welcome to Alberta as a destination that would provide a relaxing pace along with amazing vistas and sites. It was no coincidence that Marshall McLuhan had been born in Edmonton. These girls knew in their bones that the medium was the message.

  They went on to explain that they had imbedded all the photos used as tiny pixels in previous layers of the site, so that they were loading invisibly behind each window of text or substance.

  “The opening montage will run a bit slower on older computers, but we went with really bright, clear images, so we could run them at a lighter resolution and save on some upload time that way.” Judy was obviously proud of the measures they had taken, and rightly so. They both looked at me, as I maneuvered my way through the layers and intricacies of what was only a mock-up of what the real site would be.

  I was delighted, and told them so. I was especially glad that they’d had the foresight to put all the interactive elements within the secure area for the Friends of Rutherford House to play around with in peace. Having spent time monitoring a public chat site in the past, I had no desire to play bouncer while my fate was being decided by a non-Internet-savvy board. The Widows beamed, looking more like sisters than work colleagues.

  “Do you think it would be gilding the lily to introduce another character to the site?” I asked. Judy grinned broadly.

  “You mean, the maid? We took your notes at the back of the notebook and sort of ran with that, as well.” She clicked the mouse onto a tiny teacup in the corner of the screen. “We set it up as a sort of Easter egg extra, and you can also get here by clicking either the back door on the blueprint or through the paragraph on servants in the People section.”

  The columns on either side of the front door dissolved and a regular green wooden door appeared, and then opened. Using the arrow buttons on the keyboard, Judy took the tour of the kitchen, then went up the back stairs and into the maid’s bedroom and parlour. The Widows had obviously left their loft at some point in the last week, because some of the photos appearing were not the ones I had provided. The bedroom, while ostensibly the same, had a more personal, lived-in air to it. A needlepoint pillow, with red and white Ukrainian embroidery, sat on the bed. A thin gold chain with what was possibly a crucifix attached hung from one of the bedposts, as if someone had taken it off before going to sleep, and on back of the door was a green hat with two long pheasant feathers, suitable for wearing on one’s day off when one went as far away as one could to forget the servitude of the previous week.

  “Where did you get the extra elements?” I asked.

  “Do you like them?” Linda asked.

  “They’re perfect. It’s just what was needed to bring the maid to life.”

  “CGI is an amazing thing,” smiled Judy. “We were hoping you’d get a kick out of it. The whole idea of making the maid’s world a different view of the house was a blast. We wanted to make the distinction without it being a politically-charged upstairs/downstairs sensibility. After all, the Rutherfords were lovely people; it’s not as if we wanted to start a class warfare issue. But the whole idea of layers and levels to the way a historic site speaks to people is vital, I think.”

  They were absolutely correct. It brought to mind the time my parents and I had visited my mother’s cousin in Coventry. We had gone to see the great Cathedral, as one does. The new cathedral was built alongside of the bombed remains, and there was a cross made of melted nails supposedly crafted by a verger from the ruins of the World War II bombing. There was a display of wartime photos, along with other art that strongly evoked world peace, in the new, modern cathedral, and a summertime re-enactment of the Coventry Mystery Plays in the body of the old cathedral.
We stood there, watching theatre our ancestors would have watched from pretty much the same vantage point, but it wasn’t until great-cousin Betty said, “You know, my mum and dad were the first couple married here after it was consecrated a cathedral,” that I actually felt a familial connection to that lovely place, which had been sacrificed by Churchill for the sake of the Enigma Code. Vows had been taken here and promises shattered.

  That’s the magic of a historic site that allows the visitor in to find his or her own connection. Rutherford House might be a bastion of high society to those coming to see the premier’s home, or for others it might be a nostalgic visit to the site of their grandfather’s fraternity hijinks. But for some, it would be a valid reminder of their grandmother’s hard work in a new land, baking, polishing, and cleaning for the rich ladies, and holding on to a dream of her children and their children standing side by side with every Edmontonian. And we had found a way to honour that.

  I was sure the board was going to love the site until my mind flashed to Greta Larsen with her pinched little face and my certainty dropped a point or two. Judy and Linda must have sensed my shift in confidence because their eyebrows went up questioningly. I smiled and shook my head.

  “It’s perfect. You two are amazing.”

  They preened a bit and then got busy providing the URL to their test site, log-in prerequisites and, in the event of a power outage during the board presentation, a printed version of the site. These women thought of everything. When I left their office that afternoon, I was loaded for bear.

  As it turned out, it was just as well I was.

  27