The Roar of the Crowd

by Janice Macdonald

  “You knew about this?”

  “I had no idea of the decoy plans. I knew about Randy’s theories of someone killing the great directors of Edmonton.”

  Iain grinned suddenly. “I loved that movie,” he shared. Jennifer nodded her agreement. Steve shook his head in exasperation and was going to say something he’d probably regret, but right then the scene-of-crime fellows came back downstairs and announced that they were finished. Steve saw them to the door. It took him a few minutes to return, which Jennifer and Iain filled by talking about George Segal movies.

  “What made the noise that woke us up?” I asked Denise, who had been busy with a scene-of-crime girl taking notes of everything she said and taking pictures to correspond with whatever she’d written.

  “The concrete gnome on my deck. I had moved it to the corner of the mat I have out there, to force down the curl that’s been happening. I guess it was masked by a shadow, so whoever broke in climbed over the side of the balcony and tipped it over on the way to the French doors.”

  “You have a gnome on your balcony?”

  “It’s from my parents’ garden. When my folks downsized a few years ago, they asked me to come and take whatever I wanted from my childhood. I took that tea wagon there and the bedside lamps in the room you’re using and the garden gnome. I used to love them when I was little, and I was surprised later in life when I realized how kitschy they were considered to be. My mother, who has really exquisite taste, had an ironic streak in her that was capable of seeding her garden with gnomes. I kept it to remind myself that people have hidden depths, I guess.”

  “Well, good thing you did. That gnome probably saved our lives.”

  Steve came back into the suite and gestured for us to join him in the living room. Denise and Jennifer and I sat on the couch, Iain leaned against the mantel and Steve sat in an overstuffed chair in the corner, close to the now firmly closed French doors.

  “Consensus is that the intruder or intruders climbed up the side of the building to the balcony and came in through the French doors, which really should have been locked. They then proceeded to explore the main floor, mostly Denise’s den. You confirmed with the scene-of-crime people that papers on your desk seemed a bit out of place, and there are smudges on your keyboard rather than finger prints, indicating someone wearing gloves woke up your computer, attempted a few possible passwords, and then gave up.

  “Nothing in the kitchen has been touched, from which we can assume they came already armed with whatever weaponry they intended to use. There are clear finger and palm prints from both of you on various drawers, and no overlay smudging. Now, possibly you made a noise at this point, luring them upstairs, but if they weren’t armed, the default would have been to pick up a handy knife along the way.” Steve looked grim. “So, we can assume that whoever stood outside the ensuite door, wearing a men’s size 8.5 athletic shoe, had his or her own knife.”

  Denise shuddered. Steve went on.

  “Either the noise of me entering the suite or the sirens were enough to spook the intruder, who chose to depart via the bedroom window. The curtains were used as a rope, allowing for a lesser drop back to the balcony below and then down the way he’d come up.”

  “But that’s two storeys down, even at the balcony level. That’s a heck of a drop.”

  Steve nodded at me. “And it’s a heck of a climb, but not impossible. There are slight markings on the ridge of railing, and Denise stated she hadn’t hung a window box there. We’re assuming it was a grappling hook tossed up to the balcony with a pretty accomplished hand.”

  “So you look for a theatre director who is a mountain climber,” I offered, more than a little excitedly. “Or an aerialist.”

  “Or anyone who came up through the ranks of stage tech,” said Denise wearily. “Most of the stage crew in Shakespeare’s time were former sailors, used to riggings and rope climbing. That’s why it’s considered unlucky to whistle in a theatre. Sailors used a complex system of whistles to determine which sail to raise or lower, and whistling backstage could get you a sandbag landing on your head as the backdrop for the next scene went shooting past you up into the rafters.”

  “Well, we may be able to confirm it is a person from the theatre world who is responsible, given the evidence of rope and cable knowledge,” offered Jennifer Gladue.

  “Surely we already know it’s a person from the theatre world,” I said.

  “Motive would indicate that,” Jennifer nodded, “but we have to establish evidence to back up that motive or we have nothing.”

  “Oh, right.” The best part of hearing her talk that way, especially in front of Steve and Iain, was the way it showed she was thinking of someone other than Denise. Well, I guessed by now all three of them had erased Denise from their list of suspects, which was our primary goal.

  Now, to stay alive till they caught the real culprit.

  It was as if Steve was reading my mind.

  “You may have managed to prove to us that we need to be broadening the scope of our investigation, but I cannot stress enough how problematic you’ve made things. Now, in addition to looking for a killer, we are obliged to protect you against another crime. And, even though the speed with which you summoned aid might spook the murderer into assuming your whole announcement was a set-up, they may not be able to leave that alone. So, your help in this case is officially not required. Is that understood? No more sleuthing. No more innuendo. No more cryptic announcements. You, Denise, will officially withdraw your application tomorrow. You, Randy, will contact every person you spoke with, and make up some way to tell them you were wrong, and Denise is not applying.” He looked as fierce as he could, which was hard, because he was by nature good-hearted, but he almost managed to get a Staff Sergeant Keller-in-a-good-mood look to him. “And then you are going to stay here, with an hourly patrol, until we get to the bottom of things.”

  “But that could be days,” I said.

  “Weren’t you planning for days?” Steve smiled grimly.

  “Trust us, Randy,” said Jennifer, a bit milder than Steve. “We do know what we’re doing.”

  And after that, they were gone. Denise gathered up the coffee mugs, and I got out her spray cleaner and some paper towels from under the sink to tackle the fingerprint powder near the doorknobs and along the bannister up the stairs. The sun was almost up, anyhow, and we were too wired to sleep.

  By 7:30, everything was set to rights and we were back in front of the television, eating big bowls of muesli and longing to be living alongside Lorelei and Rory in Starr’s Hollow, where no one broke into your home and tried to kill you.

  39.

  Even when a place is two storeys tall, beautifully appointed and comfortable, with two bathrooms, wifi, a full pantry, and good company, if you cannot choose to come and go, it is a prison. Denise had completed all three of her syllabi and called the bookstore to ensure that her book orders were stocked. She’d organized her first week’s lecture notes, created a new PowerPoint for her third-year Shakespeare class, and sorted out the seminar for the honours group she had agreed to oversee.

  I had managed to get Valerie to email me the timetable for Grant MacEwan and sorted out a mythical syllabus for both a Monday/Wednesday/Friday fifty-minute class and a Tuesday/Thursday eighty-minute class, just in case I was tapped to teach. I was checking my voicemail obsessively, for news either from the chair of the English department or from Steve to tell us they had caught the killer. So far there was no word from either. Steve called at around seven o’clock each evening to give us an update on where they were, and Denise kept a running timer on when the police cruiser went by.

  “My neighbours must think someone dreadful has moved into the block,” she said.

  “Either that or they are all sending commendations down to City Hall for upping the police presence in their community. Never underestimate the calming effect a cruiser can have on the average citizen.”

  “Does that make me a shifty characte
r, then? Do you think I was a criminal in a former life and this is residual resonances of those attitudes?”

  “Ha! If you were a criminal in a former life, it would have been an Iago or a MacHeath, you’re that complex a thinker. No, I don’t think you’re venal in your thinking. I think you’re overthinking, that’s all.”

  “God, I wish I could go out for a walk.”

  “Me too.”

  “Why don’t you ask Steve tonight if he thinks it would be a bad idea.”

  “If he thought it was a good idea, he’d have let us go out ages ago.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe he’s just telling us to stay put so he doesn’t have to worry about us fidgeting with his investigation anymore. It might just be more convenient for him to have us shelved for the nonce.”

  I halfway agreed with Denise. It had been three days. Security installers had come and gone. We were off the map, according to the social media sites. Denise was no longer a contender for the crown, so whatever lists the murderer was checking no longer had her name on them. Hell, we’d already been menaced; maybe that was enough. Now that we knew our place and had acquiesced to not pursuing the gold ring of artistic directorship, life would be fine.

  “What I don’t get is how whoever is doing this doesn’t see that by landing the role of the heir to Oren Gentry, they automatically set themselves up as the killer. They may as well be signing a confession as a contract with the Chautauqua board.”

  She had a point.

  “Well, maybe they’re banking on the fact that people won’t connect the dots.”

  “We did.”

  “Then maybe we’re not out of the woods yet.”

  “Okay, so no walk.” Denise slid open the door of her entertainment console. “Have you ever seen Joan of Arcadia?”

  Another day slid by, and the frustrations the television teen was having with talking to god in various forms mirrored our own. When the intercom rang announcing Detective Gladue, Denise leapt to put the kettle on. We were honestly that delighted to have company and a change in the pattern.

  We settled her into a corner of Denise’s loveseat and perched, expectant, wanting to know anything we could about what was happening in the outside world. Jennifer Gladue was obviously revelling in being the centre of attention, even with a captive audience.

  “I thought I should pop by and update you on what is going on. Steve said he was going to come by later this evening, Randy, but things are getting a little kooky at work. Maybe it’s the weather, or just the end of a season making the cranks want to catch up on things, but we’re getting loads of fights on Whyte Avenue and complaints about noise levels and neighbours. It’s eating into the regular policing, if you see what I mean.”

  I did. Having been so long with Steve, I had come to appreciate just how much we take our police force for granted. Most people in town never have any interaction with the police at all, unless they slide into another car on Gateway Boulevard or find their patio window shattered and their laptop gone. But the Edmonton Police Service are there, keeping the pot on simmer when it wants to boil over, walking the beat, smiling, nodding, riding bikes and Segways, watching, reacting quickly, and smoothing things back down, driving the streets, only occasionally turning on the lights and the sirens and setting nerves a-jitter. So, I could believe Jennifer when she spoke of crazy season. Behaviour, like the weather, came in waves, and if they couldn’t quite explain it, the police could certainly sense it, and usually better than the rest of us. It was their job to keep their finger on the pulse of the city, and their job to make sure the city took its vitamins.

  Although she had once dated a reporter, Denise had certainly spent enough time with Steve and me to develop a more muted sense of police procedure and attitude. I could tell she was slightly in awe of Jennifer Gladue, which probably had a lot to do with the detective’s visible holster under her thick, cotton-weave blazer. It was probably a taser and not a handgun she was armed with, but I could understand her desire to feel self-reliant and protected. In fact, it made me feel more protected just having her there with her weapon under her armpit, like a chick tucked under a hen’s wing.

  “We have been questioning everyone connected to the Shakespeare festival who was also involved with a Fringe show this year, and especially those with directing credits on their resumés.”

  “We need an Edmonton theatrical Venn diagram,” Denise mused, and Jennifer and I laughed.

  “That’s it exactly. Our suspect base is where the intersects happen.”

  “Has anything been done about seeing whether Oren Gentry was murdered or not?” I pushed, trying not to sound like the crazy conspiracy theory lady.

  “I’ve put it on the board, but as he was cremated, there is no exhumation possibility. I am waiting to get the autopsy notes, or medical notes if there was no autopsy.” She reacted to my raised eyebrows. “If someone has a pre-existing condition and they die, seemingly of that known cause, there would be little reason to consider it a suspicious death. We don’t autopsy everyone, you know. The provincial medical examiner would end up with a pre-existing condition of her own.”

  So we could only hope that someone had been suspicious or at least thorough in their notes prior to Gentry’s death. I was sure he was the reason and the start of all this, and I wasn’t going to let it go easily.

  Denise offered Jennifer more tea and said casually, as she was pouring, “You don’t have any idea how much longer we’re going to have to stay put, do you?”

  “We don’t have everything back from the lab vis-à-vis footprint analysis, etc., but we’re pretty confident that whoever was in your condo the other night was the same person who strung Christian Norgaard up in the Walterdale cupola and hid Eleanor Durant’s body under the Queen Elizabeth stairs. We’re hoping we can count on you to remain here, under general surveillance, as a safety measure, for at least another day or so.” She stood up, putting her teacup carefully back on one of Denise’s coasters showing pictures of the Stratford Festival. “Well, I had better get back to it. Thanks for your time.”

  We watched her walk down the front path to the cruiser she had parked in front of Denise’s building. Time. We had nothing but time.

  40.

  We watched three episodes of the second season of Joan of Arcadia before calling it a night. Steve hadn’t been able to come by, but he had called around nine, mostly to check up on us, but being deliberately chatty about the mundanities of his day to set me at ease. Denise and I had made popcorn for supper, neither of us feeling up to much more.

  When we were ready for bed, all scrubbed up and teeth brushed, we stood in our pajamas at our respective bedroom doors for a few minutes, not quite wanting to break off into solitude.

  “Oh this is silly, isn’t it?” Denise laughed, a bit forced. “Imagine two grown women afraid to go to bed.”

  “Well, it’s not without cause.”

  “But we’re being watched by the police and there are alarms on all the windows now, which I will probably be setting off accidentally for years to come.”

  “You’re right. We are safe. Sweet dreams.” I turned to go into the guest bedroom.

  “Same to you, Randy. And thanks for being here with me.”

  “Any time, Denise.” After all, that’s what friends were for.

  Despite our shared fretfulness, it didn’t take me long to fall asleep. I had taken a couple of painkillers to stave off a headache that all that television had induced, and the pills probably added to the soporific for me.

  I might have caught two or three hours’ sleep before being woken by a noise in the hall. My heart was beating like a tambourine somewhere in the region of my clavicle. I convinced my body to move quietly out from under the covers, though all I wanted to do was freeze where I was, listening for another sound.

  There was nothing to grab by way of a weapon, so I took one of Denise’s thick pillows as a possible shield against the killer’s knife-wielding skills. I crept to the door of my bed
room, and put my hand on the doorknob.

  It was like gearing up to pull off a bandage. I took a deep breath and yanked the door open. By the glow of the hall nightlight I could see a figure creeping toward the stairs. The noise I had made stopped the movement and the figure turned toward me.

  “Denise! What the hell are you doing?”

  “Oh Randy. I’m so sorry to wake you. I was hoping I could go and be back without anyone being the wiser.”

  “Go where? I don’t get it. We’re supposed to be staying here to avoid being killed. Why would you want to go out in the middle of the night, dressed all in black? You look like a cat burglar.”

  Denise looked abashed. “I was thinking about what Jennifer Gladue said about who they were targeting, and it occurred to me that Kieran is all of those things. He is a director, involved with both the Freewill Festival and the Fringe, and he is very much into physical activity. We were talking about going skiing in the mountains this winter over the Christmas break, and maybe doing some ice climbing in the Maligne Canyon.”

  “So he’s outdoorsy. That doesn’t explain why you’re sneaking out in the middle of the night. The police have just barely got over the idea that you are their prime suspect and here you go, playing right into the hands of whoever is trying to frame or kill you.”

  “But I was thinking I could be there and back before dawn.”

  “Dawn comes pretty damn early these days.” I had to go to the bathroom, but I couldn’t risk turning my back on Denise while she was set on doing something foolish. “Where were you planning to be back from?”

  “Kieran’s back shed.”

  “Okay, so I really have to go to the washroom. Promise me you will not go anywhere without me.” Denise brightened in spite of herself. I pulled the door closed, hoping she’d honour the promise. To keep her there, I kept talking through the door. “What is in Kieran’s back shed?”

  “That’s what I was hoping to find out. I was lying there, thinking about what Detective Gladue had been saying to us, and thinking about him and his skiing and ice climbing, and the whole thought of climbing gear is what I landed on.”