The Roar of the Crowd

by Janice Macdonald

  I had a feeling Detective Gladue was hoping that pulling them away from their comfort zone in the rehearsal hall would give her the advantage, but I wasn’t sure. Meanwhile, Kieran and his crew worked like crazy to rehearse in a patchwork fashion. I’d been told that movie actors had to do this sort of thing all the time, shooting out of sequence and sometimes being utterly surprised by the final product, stitched together and edited into a much different whole, but theatre actors seemed to work in a more holistic manner, building one scene into the next. That made sense to me. After all, when the audience was out front and the pressure was on, they would be called upon to bring that audience on a complete journey from beginning to end.

  That offbeat rehearsal process, more than anything, was likely causing the tension. The additional element of being suspected of murder was just icing. I knew how that felt, from past experience. I was more than grateful that Detectives McCorquodale and Gladue hadn’t decided I was worth another interrogation.

  On the other hand, Denise was on my mind. Her first interview with the police had been relatively painless, as far as I could tell from her subsequent description, just questions about where she had been at various times, who she knew in the cast, what her relationship was with Kieran Frayne, that sort of thing.

  It was the fact that they had called her in two more times for questioning that had me worried, and though I tried not to overreact and cause her to worry, she was no dummy. Somehow, they were seeing her as a suspect; if not the prime suspect, certainly one in the Fibonacci sequence. I really wished Steve was around. As much as I liked Iain McCorquodale, I knew that he was my friend only because I was Steve’s girlfriend, and that my word and opinion had no actual sway with him. From what I could sense of Detective Gladue, my relationship with Steve Browning was likely a hindrance, since I could imagine her making a real play for my man if I was out of the picture.

  Denise had called and asked if she could come over. I put on the tea and put her to work printing names carefully under the caricatures I had painstakingly drawn on the decks of cards I was creating.

  “This really is a clever game, Randy. You could market it to some educational company.” Denise was admiring my Puck, who looked a bit like Alfred E. Newman from Mad magazine, only dressed all in leaves.

  “That would take entirely too much effort on my part,” I laughed.

  “I’m serious. Why don’t you take a photo of some of these, write up the rules to your game, and pitch it to a publisher? What could it hurt? You never know, royalties on this sort of thing could add up. Games sell in the twenty-to-thirty-dollar range. That would be three dollars a deck. Even if every high school in the city bought only one deck each, you could at least take me out for dinner for helping you!” She tilted her head and grinned at me and I laughed.

  “Okay, you’re on. I will make one pitch, after the kids in the camps have played with them, and if they’re a success. Satisfied?”

  “Totally. But you know, wheedling a stake in your upcoming royalties isn’t actually why I wanted to come and talk to you.”

  “I didn’t think so, but you have come in very handy.”

  “Thank you.” Denise bowed her head to acknowledge my appreciation. “The thing is, I came to get some advice from you. Or maybe some help.”

  “Sure. Anything; what do you need me to do?”

  “I think the police are going to arrest me, Randy.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t bother going there. I know you’ve been worried about the number of times they’ve called me in for questioning.” A pained look crossed her face. “They think I had a reason to kill Eleanor Durant, because it seems Kieran was having an affair with her.”

  “Oh god.”

  “That’s what I said.” Denise took a swig from her teacup and coughed a bit. “Honestly, I had no idea it was happening. I just assumed that the requirements of getting two shows simultaneously into rehearsal were eating up his spare time, and I was trying to be good about giving him room for that. Lord knows I wouldn’t want to be considered a cloying girlfriend.”

  Denise as a cloying girlfriend was the last thing I could imagine. Usually it was a matter of men lining up to bask in her presence.

  “Are they positive he was having an affair with Eleanor?”

  “Apparently so. At any rate, he’s not denying it.” A tear welled up and spilled over Denise’s lower lid and splashed onto the table. She moved her hand to wipe at the table, not her cheek. “Randy, I’m not sure what to think. The police say I had a motive and the opportunity, since I am known to run those stairs. Kieran doesn’t seem to be sticking up for me, in that he makes it sound as if a blind person would know he was stepping out with Eleanor. And I honestly had no idea. I didn’t know I was supposed to be hating her, so how could I have killed her?”

  “Have they said whether they have anything more than that to put you on their list of suspects? Surely they can’t just be saying this was all to do with jealousy on your part?”

  “They aren’t really telling me anything. Any time I ask a question, that Detective Gladue just gets this Medusa look in her eye, as if I’ve somehow transgressed some unwritten rule. But what am I supposed to do? How do you prove a negative?”

  There was the million-dollar question. If you were an innocent bystander, how on earth did you prove to people shining their flashlights on you that you had nothing to do with the crime? Innocent people don’t go around collecting alibis, as I had learned once when a man who wielded the power to lose me a dream job was murdered. Now Denise seemed to be in the same boat.

  My thoughtful silence must have scared her.

  “Randy? You do believe I’m innocent, don’t you?”

  I looked across the table at my beautiful friend, who had never been rejected in her life, who had never had to worry if she was good enough. Things always came easily to Denise, though she, to her credit, worked hard to be worthy of her academic honours. How would she react if thwarted or bested, she who had never had to deal with that sort of thing? Would she strike out against someone who deigned to come between her and her prize? Would she lash out? Could she murder someone? Could I imagine her doing so? Did I believe her?

  “Of course I do.”

  8.

  Ordinarily, if I had an issue with the law, I would just call Steve, who always could ride in with support, information, or a calming word. But here I was with a best friend about to go to jail, where I could just imagine a flinty-eyed convict, played in my mind by Margo Martindale, claiming her as some sort of orange-jeaned servant-concubine. And where was Steve? On the other side of the planet, learning how socialists ride the bus.

  I was going to have to determine a new road into the sort of information I required, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to come from Jennifer Gladue. On the other hand, I probably didn’t have a hope of getting Iain McCorquodale to unbend from his official persona without Steve around. He tolerated me for the sake of his partner, but on the whole, his idea of wives and girlfriends was that they created the dishes brought to potlucks and spent the rest of the time cleaning the house and doing charity work. At any rate, that is what he seemed to think his wife Myra did.

  I wasn’t being fair. Iain and Myra had what seemed like a lovely relationship, whenever I saw them together. He obviously worshipped her, and she was completely supportive of her man. I really liked Myra, too. She was funny and clever, and had brought up two lovely daughters and seen to Iain’s comfort while also continuing a steady career as an optometrist. She had her own shop along Whyte Avenue, employed two other opticians and pretty much funded all their fancy vacations to a variety of Caribbean islands that they loved so much.

  The more I thought about it, the more sensible it seemed to go get my eyes checked.

  It hadn’t been an easy sleep, worrying about Denise, so after my shower I carefully applied the cream that was supposed to counter dark circles under my eyes. I figured it would be stupid to wear mascara to smea
r all over the machinery, so I ended up looking pretty wan and weary in the mirror even with my magic cream. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and shrugged. You couldn’t spend your whole life worrying about what you saw in the mirror, or you’d live your whole life in reverse image.

  I pulled on a light jacket. Late spring, or early summer mornings—depending on how optimistic you are—can be deceptively cool in Edmonton. In fact, there are only two times of year you can be secure in how to dress to step outside: a three-week period in late July, early August; and a multiple-week period between December and March. The rest of the time, we practise the layered look, peeling accordingly as the sun warms the air. By eleven, I would be unbuttoning my jacket and by two o’clock it would be tied around my waist by the sleeves, but right now, I did up the buttons against the cool breeze and shoved my hands into my pockets, wishing I had a pair of light gloves.

  The walk to Whyte Avenue took about ten minutes, mostly because I went cross country, cutting through the parking lot by the dance school/Pilates studio building, and through the neighbourhood made up of three-storey walk-up apartment buildings and old veranda-fronted houses interspersed every so often with a new monster house. This was the land of students and associate professors, and the rates were high to live here. The irony was that what had long been a pleasant neighbourhood of mature, leafy trees and academic types was becoming an edgy area where transients roamed and late-night noise from the pubs and clubs on Whyte Avenue drowned out the quiet pleasures. During the morning it retained some of its old grace, though I scanned the road ahead of me, to be certain I wasn’t going to be surprised by anyone sleeping rough on the side of the street I had chosen.

  One bulky person pushing a laden shopping cart two blocks ahead was all I could see, and I zigged onto the next street, bringing me alongside Old Strathcona High School, a century-old brick school that housed the academic cream of the crop. Students wrote placement tests to get in there, and only 100 were chosen each year. I used to get two or three of these grads in my introductory English courses, and they were all overachievers, either first-generation Canadians with something to prove, or from families who still privileged education and academic standards as a means to get ahead in the world. Other schools in Edmonton had good teachers, and there were probably some driven students in them as well, but Old Scona was where you went if you wanted to check out the next generation of doctors, political pundits, and professors.

  I didn’t cut across their courtyard, as a strenuous game of pick-up basketball seemed to be occurring. I turned at the corner and walked up the two short blocks to Whyte Avenue, coming out right in front of When Pigs Fly, my favourite store for browsing in when I had all the time in the world and no idea what to buy someone as a gift. Myra’s shop was three doors down and up a set of stairs. She had cunningly lit display boxes placed in the stairwell, so that people were lured up from the street level. Her shop was beautifully apportioned, with tall cones covered in various shades of velvet standing on polished wooden flooring. The walls were stripped down to their original brick, and cases of the pricier frames were along one side. Large windows looked out onto the greenery of one of the budding trees that lined the avenue, so it seemed as if you were standing in a bower, rather than on one of the busiest roads in Edmonton.

  Myra’s optician/salesperson was sitting at a small desk, which was flanked by two comfortable chairs. Behind her was the door that led to Myra’s inner chamber of machines and gizmos that determined just how blind you were. I smiled at the woman and gave her my name. In turn, she gave me a dazzling smile and told me it wouldn’t be long and that I was welcome to either sit or browse.

  I chose to browse. I love looking at glasses, which probably stems from the fact that I have always wanted and never needed them. My mother had glasses, which she had worn from childhood, but my dad had fantastic vision, and even now only wore reading glasses for close work. I had picked up the habit of wearing drugstore reading glasses at night, but usually tested out with 20/20 vision. I had ocular testing done every couple of years, though, because my grandmother had suffered from glaucoma and I had a paranoid fear of that disease ever since reading a biography of Annie Sullivan back in grade school.

  This visit to Myra McCorquodale was in line with my checkup times, but the real reason I was visiting was to get an inroad into Iain. I was trying on a pair of navy cat’s eye frames when Myra appeared in her now open doorway.

  “Randy, they’re you! Or maybe your mom. I’m not quite used to the return of all these retro frames yet, are you? Come on in!”

  I put the frames back on their little Lucite nosepiece and followed her into the dim suite.

  She sat me in a comfy chair and pulled my file toward her. “Last time you were in was about nineteen months ago and I had you on a two-year checklist. Have you noticed any changes or headaches? Not that it’s not great to see you,” she added, smiling, “but normally, people only come to us when there is an awkward shift in their vision. We’re like the dentist, only vaguer.”

  “You mean people usually know what tooth pain feels like?”

  “Exactly. But they will head off to the physician or to a massage therapist when they feel eye strain, because it often presents as headaches or neck tension. Eventually, they find their way to us, but on the whole, we catch things when people break their glasses or need to order new contact lenses.”

  “Well, I am here on a dual-purpose checkup. I figured I was close enough to needing a checkup that I wouldn’t waste your time just popping in to ask you some things.”

  “Okay, then, let’s get started, and aside from a couple of points where I need you to either be quiet or answer some questions for me, you can ask away.” She pulled the table beside us in a clockwise motion and a large piece of equipment swung into sight. Soon I had my chin on a little plastic rest and was gazing into a very expensive ViewFinder. Once I saw a little red house at the end of a long road, Myra blew air at my eyeballs and had me sit back so she could heave another piece of equipment into place. Before she had me look through it, though, she handed me a little black paddle and had me cover one eye and try to read the chart a long way across the room. To my surprise, I could no longer read the bottom line with either eye. I was pretty clear halfway down on my right eye, and my left eye could see everything on the second-last line. Myra made some hmming sounds and wrote a few things into my chart.

  She next had me sit with my head up against her last big machine. She punched numbers from my chart into the machine and then had me tell her which view seemed clearer as she moved lenses back and forth. We finally seemed to agree, and she pushed the machine to the side and looked at me.

  “No glaucoma in evidence, but you know, you need glasses, especially if you intend to drive safely. Your close reading is fine, which is probably just because there is a point in our forties where problems correct themselves, on their way to the great decline, but you have probably sacrificed long distance for close work, training your muscles to lock in, and now they are reluctant to stretch.”

  Myra offered me a pamphlet on exercises to reduce eye strain and wrote me out a prescription for glasses, should I want to wander around seeing what life really looked like on the other side of the street. It was not what I had expected to get out of this meeting.

  Myra sat back with a sympathetic look on her face. She had probably handed out this sort of news to people who saw it as a sentence of horror, but truth to tell, I’d always liked wearing sunglasses and didn’t think having to wear glasses would be much different. I might get less grit in my eyes on windy days. I pocketed the prescription and nodded at her suggestion that I look around her showroom for frames I liked, but not to feel obliged.

  Having got the business end of the meeting out of the way, I decided I’d better get to the meat of the matter, the reason I had hurried my date with optometry.

  “Myra, as you know, Steve is out of town for a while, and something has come up where I would normally g
o to him for advice. Thing is, I’m not certain Iain would be open to me approaching him in the same way, so I thought I would ask you what you thought and how you think I should tackle things.”

  Myra’s open sunny face looked a bit puzzled and concerned.

  “I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at, Randy. You want Iain to do something for you? Something police-oriented?”

  “Sort of. Did you hear about the murder of Eleanor Durant this week?”

  “Oh gosh, yes, the girl from Gopher Broke. Wasn’t that dreadful? She was found under one of the stairs in the river valley, wasn’t she?”

  It sounded as if Myra had no idea Iain was even attached to the case, let alone about any of his thoughts. This might be harder than I had imagined.

  “She was, and I was questioned about it, because she was here rehearsing for the Shakespeare festival shows, and I’ve been working for the festival revamping the senior high camp. The thing is, it’s even more convoluted than that.” I took a deep breath. “You’ve met my friend Denise, right?”

  Myra nodded.

  “Well, Denise has been dating the director of the festival, a fellow named Kieran Frayne. And it seems that Kieran was messing around with Eleanor.”

  Myra leaned forward. “It’s like a TV show!”

  I nodded, thinking she wasn’t far off the mark. This had all the arcane trappings of a soap opera. If only my friend wasn’t mixed up in it, it might even be somewhat entertaining.

  “Yeah, it is. Denise thinks that she might be on the list of prime suspects, because jealousy seems like a good motive. And so I was wondering if you could ask Iain if she has anything to worry about, or to let him know that she didn’t even know Kieran was stepping out.”