Hang Down Your Head

by Janice Macdonald

  When Steve found me, I was crouched down in the doorway with both arms over my head, as if I’d been told to assume crash position. Fitting, considering where I was. Also fitting was the fact that Barbara Finster had managed to shatter the illuminated sign welcoming people to “Canada’s Festival City” just a few feet to my left.

  Thank God for airport security, I guess. It seems you just can’t pull a gun in the middle of a crowded airport and get away with it. Barbara Finster’s body had six shots in it from two security agents and the first police officer responding to the commotion on the lower floor. She wasn’t going to be available for questioning.

  It was just as well. I was in no mood for any denouement. I just wanted to go home to bed for a month, which is about how long I figured it would take me to stop shaking. Steve helped me up to my feet and half carried me out to the car, where Iain was waiting for us. No one talked on the way home. Steve helped me to bed, told me he’d be by in the morning to take me down to the station for a statement, and kissed me goodnight.

  I slept like the dead, which was as close as I wanted to come to the real thing.

  42

  ~

  The rest of the summer was a bit of a blur. The Festival ended with no more fuss. Woody took over my duties on the Sunday shift with Dr. Fuller pitching in. The university stood its ground against the Finsters’ lawyers, who suddenly weren’t all that interested in pursuing a claim made by two dead people, one of whom had been a killer. So the Collection still had its grant and I still had my job. In fact, I had Paul’s job too for as long as I wanted it, since he was on extended disability leave. Of all her crimes, the most chilling to me was Barbara Finster’s cold-cocking of Paul Calihoo. For the sake of deflecting attention, she had effectively removed his ability to speak and read. His memory seemed intact in other ways, but much like a stroke victim’s recovery, it was going to be a long, slow process back to normal for him. In his graceful way, though, he was looking on the positive side that he had a route to follow.

  Any potential chemistry with Woody had evaporated at the moment I’d actually suspected him of murder, so the rest of his stay was a bit stilted, although we were really too busy with winding up all the Folkways/Festival recording work to let it get awkward.

  The police had determined, through a lot of forensic sifting and sorting through legal documents and paperwork on weird holding companies and such, that all of the crimes had been engineered by Barbara Finster in order to keep her brother from bidding on more LRT contracts.

  Something in her mother’s will had tied their money together so that investments made by one had to be supported by the other. That wouldn’t be so bad if you were making money, but David Finster’s desire to be as renowned in town as his father had been caused him to recklessly underbid on contracts that would net him some notoriety. Apparently, he spent a lot of the collective Finster pot on the teak awnings over the South Campus LRT station because the budget had already been used up on the essentials long before the accessories were tallied up. It was to his credit, I suppose, that forensic engineers could find no evidence of substandard materials used or shortcuts taken. Still, if he had kept this spending pattern up, the Finster millions would have been gone before the trains made it to NAIT.

  So Barbara Finster murdered her brother after egging him on to bluster and complain about the Folkways bequest once he’d discovered it, figuring this tirade would muddy the waters, which it did. She then lured him down to the worksite after hours and murdered him in an intricately macabre, premeditated way. None of the materials used to hang or display him had been from the worksite proper, and there was no evidence to show that she hired anyone else to commit the deed. The more I learned about this woman, the more amazed I was that I managed to get away from her.

  Barbara Finster’s real desire had been to run away with all the money she could filter into a holding company owned by Anna Ford, a non-existent person for whom she had created a long trail of paperwork over the previous several years. Her will left everything to this fictitious Anna Ford, which included all the money left to her by her late brother. The fire in the Barbara Shoppe had likely been for the additional money the insurance would kick in, and Holly Menzies’ death appeared to be a tragic accident. I didn’t think Barbara was all that broken up about it though, since she made sure to silence Pia Renshaw, the manager who could testify that excess inventory had been moved to her store the night before the fire took place. Pia had likely been willing to go along with insurance fraud, but unable to condone and cover up homicide. That’s what happens when you start picking and choosing your principles.

  Barbara Finster was travelling under her new name when she was killed at the airport, but they found a set of safety deposit keys registered under her real name in a money belt around her waist.

  If she’d made it out of town, which she almost did, she would have been in the clear. Her fingerprints weren’t on file anywhere. With some minor cosmetic surgery, she might have been able to exist quite easily and anonymously, a lifestyle that seemed to be her inclination, unlike her brother. No one would have been looking for a dead woman. Lucky for us, searching for the truck that caused my accident led us to her. Lucky for me, marksmanship wasn’t one of Barbara Finster’s primary talents.

  Another lucky thing was that they hadn’t yet interred the body found at the fire scene. So it really was Barbara Allan Finster who was placed beside her brother, Jack David Finster, at the Central Edmonton Cemetery in mid-August. I didn’t go to the ceremony, but Steve and Iain attended it as part of the case. I jokingly asked Steve if they were planting a briar over her grave, as in the folk tune.

  “Nothing like that, although it would have served them right,” Steve laughed. “And if we’re lucky, we’re past the age where the bad guys are the ones who get the songs written for them.”

  “I think we are past that,” I smiled back. “Folk music may have once been a way for the lower classes to vent against the higher orders, but now it’s a social voice, urging us on to live together, to live simply, to live in harmony with nature and each other.”

  “The way you tell it, folk music will save the world,” he teased. We were walking over to Remedy, a comfortable dive of a café kitty-corner from my place, for their pistachio chai tea and samosas.

  He tickled me and began to sing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” It gave me a slight start, in that it was the same song Woody had chosen to sing to me, but it occurred to me that it may have been the only folk tune to which Steve knew all the words. I decided to write the choice of tunes off as a coincidence and focus on my man, putting his decorum and sensibilities to the side, for me. Plus, he wasn’t half bad—he had a nice lyrical baritone. I joined in and the singing of it took us through the two sets of lights across the intersection. As he opened the door for me, we harmonized on the final lines, startling a fellow writing the great Canadian novel on his laptop in the comfy chair in the corner and causing some hipsters on the upper floor seating area to sit up and take notice, I’m sure.

  “Strumming on the old banjo!”

  Acknowledgements

  I am enormously grateful to Dr. Regula Kureshi, who met with me, answered way too many questions about the Folkways Collection and then allowed me to install my fictional Dr. Fuller into her office, move everything around and re-imagine a Centre.

  I extend special thanks to Tom Paxton, the patron saint of folk music, who generously agreed to appear in the nick of time to save the day. I may have put some words in his mouth, but the best lines belong to him. Thank you as well to each and every musician who allowed me to book them into my dream Festival. I would line up for two days to go to a festival that had all of you performing together. Some of you I know; the rest of you were so gracious when a perfect stranger bounded up and asked if you’d mind showing up in a mystery novel set at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival.

  Please support your local folk musicians. Attend concerts of touring musicians and
always buy the merchandise at the back of the hall. Listen to radio stations that play local and alternative music. And of course, keep buying books. Vote. Floss. Eat your vegetables.

  I’d like to thank the friends who model for me, especially Kelly Hewson, and those who allow me to use their names for my characters, which makes the writing a less solitary experience. I’ve also actually met a very nice Randy Craig and Steve Browning since inventing mine, so it works both ways.

  This is a much sleeker read, due to the diligent reading of Sharon Caseburg, Randy Williams and Madeleine Mant. Thank you so much for all your efforts.

  And of course, my family—Randy, Maddy and Jossie—who put up with so much whenever I’m caught up in a book. Thank you for the laughter, the love and the laundry.

  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.

  The men’s residence at the U of A wants to party and issues invitations to the women’s residence, each with specific and terrifying consequences if female students don’t attend. 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. Is someone trying to kill Randy, and if so, who? An untenured professor? An unknown student? Gwen’s killer?

  Janice MacDonald’s intelligence and insight into human behaviour make her one of the most promising new writers on the Canadian mystery scene. —Gail Bowen

  Spellbinding ... Janice MacDonald populates academe with real characters and puts the humanity back in the Humanities. Of course, she also picks one or two of them off / now and then, which is all right with me, too. Sticks and Stones is an up-all-night page turner with substance. —W.P Kinsella

  Sticks & Stones / $14.95

  ISBN: 9780888012562

  Ravenstone

  The Monitor

  by Janice MacDonald

  You’re being watched. Former University of Alberta lecturer 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. Between shutting down an online bookie and patrolling for porn, Randy begins to suspect a connection between a Texas woman having an online affair through Babel, and surfacing reports of a man killed at his computer in the same state.

  Soon, Randy realizes that a killer is brokering hits through Babel and may be operating in Edmonton. The police are sceptical, as is Chatgod, and it seems that Randy’s only ally is a mysterious fellow monitor who calls himself Alchemist. 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 accomplished something no other mystery writer has done—she has managed to convey the inherent spookiness, the disembodied projection screen, that a social cyberspace can invoke. The Monitor is a cyberspace mystery that really works as both a tale of virtual social intrigue and a real life (and death) mystery tale. This is a community I can recognize and a world that, even if virtual, sparks with life. —Howard Rheingold

  The Monitor / $10.99

  ISBN: 9780888012845

  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.

  Janice MacDonald should be given an award by Alberta Tourism for putting the province on the mystery map. 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 Wilken, 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 McDonald style, giggles and gusto! —Candas Jane Dorsey, A Paradigm of Earth

  Condemned to Repeat / $16.00

  ISBN: 9780888014153

  Ravenstone

  Janice MacDonald holds a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Alberta where she has worked as a sessional lecturer, radio producer and bartender. She also spent a decade teaching literature, communications and creative writing at Grant MacEwan College and has held positions as both an online chatroom monitor, and distance course instructor. A consummate folkie, she plays five-string banjo, fiddle, guitar, and piano, wrote the music and lyrics for two touring historical musicals and has been a singer/songwriter. Janice lives in Edmonton with her husband Randy and is the proud mother of two glorious grown girls.