Hello?” The sleep frog in my throat was all too obvious. I coughed up a bit of phlegm, and then muttered, “Excuse me?” because I hadn’t heard a thing being said on the other end of the line.
“Randy, are you all right?” It was Steve. I coughed into a tissue I’d managed to snag and sat down hard on the loveseat. The air coming in through the window screens behind me was already midday hot. I leaned forward and twisted to check the clock on the wall to be sure it was really as early as I had thought. Sure enough. Nine o’clock.
“One of the few pleasures of the underemployed would be a certain allowance to sleep in from time to time,” I growled into the phone. I hated the phone before 10:30 on principle; being woken up by the telephone never boded well.
“I needed to talk to you right away. Do you have any idea where Denise was last night, say between six and midnight?”
“Easy answer, yes. She was with me. We went to a Fringe play and then to the Diner for cinnamon buns. She headed home just after 9:30. Why?”
“There has been another murder, and I was hoping you’d be able to fill in some of the timelines.”
“Have you talked to Denise?”
“We haven’t been able to locate her as yet.” That was odd. Denise, though fully employed, was enjoying the same schedule I was for the next couple of weeks until classes began. She should have been home, luxuriating in not having to mark a pile of essays. Of course, if I knew Denise, she would have been up at the crack of dawn jogging or swimming or learning Italian.
“Who is dead?”
“They haven’t released the name of the victim yet,” said Steve, in that formal way he had of talking that told me he was calling from his desk at work and there were folks milling about nearby.
“If I were to guess someone in the theatre community, would I be in the ball park?”
“Home run.”
“Good lord. If they keep this up, we’re going to lose our status as a theatre city. Wait. Have you checked people from Calgary for all this?”
“I think the situations speak to a knowledge of the city,” said Steve drily. “Look, sorry to wake you up, but if you hear from Denise, please tell her we’re looking for her, okay? If she could call Iain or Jennifer or me, it would be a very good thing.”
“Sure, I’ll tell her if I hear from her,” I said, and found myself looking at the phone receiver, Steve having hung up rather abruptly.
Who had been murdered? Where? And why would the first assumption be to pin this one on Denise? Could it be another person vying for the Chautauqua job? Or was that a blind alley that Denise and I had been running up?
It was too late to try to regain whatever dreams I’d been having, so I headed for the shower to commit entirely to the day.
I was dressed and presentable within twenty minutes. When you hit a certain age, it becomes just a matter of brushing your teeth, slathering on some sunscreening moisturizer, and if you intend to impress, mascara. Add another four minutes to brush and braid your hair, and you can be ready for action. Of course, folks in the theatre community probably spent a bit more time on their looks, though I had seen several actresses on the street or in the supermarket looking very drab in comparison to their onstage personas, so maybe they liked to play it low-key if they didn’t have to hit the boards.
I called Denise, mostly just to have it done. I didn’t doubt Steve when he said they couldn’t reach her. She still wasn’t picking up. I sent her a quick text message from my cellphone: “Where are you? It’s important you call Steve.”
Then I called Steve back. He sounded very curt, a signal that he was feeling some sort of pressure at that end. I asked if anyone had driven to Denise’s condo.
“Not that she might not be out jogging or something, but it is sort of worrisome, if you’ve been trying to reach her for a while this morning.”
“I’ll see if we can get a car out there, thanks. Sorry, Randy, things are exploding here, I can’t talk now.” I said I understood and agreed to text him if there was anything I needed him to know.
So there I was, fully awake in a town where a murder had just happened, and radio silence from both my best friend and my boyfriend. How was I going to learn anything?
I pulled my laptop toward me and opened it, wondering if there might be a hint of whatever had happened to pull Steve into cop land so thoroughly. Having cancelled my newspaper subscription in response to a particularly odious columnist, I now had to rely on social media for my current affairs fixes.
The story was everywhere. I scrolled past two entries of cats sitting in boxes and tortoises wearing knitted dinosaur cozies, and found the Edmonton Journal’s link to their news article about a body found on the Fringe grounds. There wasn’t much in the article, and a vagueness as to where the body had been found that was odd. Were they protecting the festival from a surge of ghouls or abandonment by the squeamish? Or were the police withholding the information?
I scrolled down the site until I saw a weird posting by John Ullyat, an actor in town and co-owner with his remarkable wife Annie Dugan, of Firefly Theatre, an aerial-focused circus act troupe.
JOHN: For the record, Annie and I were not involved in any way with what some people have called “performance art in questionable taste.” We are performing on the side of Old Strathcona High School at 2 pm for the next four days. Please come see us there.
That was odd. I scrolled further back, like a fast-action archaeologist dusting away the layer of time accrued while I was sleeping. There were posts linking to reviews of various Fringe shows, more cats, several rude but funny phrases attached to Victorian-looking silhouettes, and then a few interesting posts from around 10:30 the night before.
- There are police all over the Fringe.
- Did you guys see the body in the tower at Walterdale? I swear it was a body.
- That was probably Firefly Theatre you saw. I saw them being flies on the wall yesterday.
- This was a body inside the thing on the top.
- The cupola?
- Firefly Theatre was in the cupola of Walterdale?
- There are police near Walterdale. Was someone getting feisty in the beer tent?
- Sirens ruined our final song. #fringefail
- Anyone know why there are so many cops around?
No wonder John Ullyat had been responding. From what I could piece together, a body had been observed hanging in the bell tower of the Walterdale Theatre, which was smack dab in the middle of the Fringe site, and while various people had written it off as an insensitive theatre piece, the police had been summoned and now a murder investigation was underway.
I wondered who it had been. It wouldn’t be easy to get into the Walterdale, either. It was a real theatre, set up with a lobby and a box office and off-limit backstage areas. Anyone prowling around would be noticed by the folks slated for Fringe performances there.
So maybe it was someone from one of those shows. I padded into my dining room/office to get my Fringe program. The subtitle was always, “you can’t tell the players without a program,” but as I flipped through to the Walterdale site, I realized you couldn’t tell the players even with a program. All that was listed in the thumbnail sketches was the title of the play, the running time, the name of the company and where they were from, and a two- or three-line teaser about the plot. I noted that all seven plays slated for that venue were from the Edmonton area.
I made a list of the plays and paid attention especially to the running list from last night. While we had been at College St. Jean at the Shakespeare pastiche, people had been watching Zombies on Parade, Naughty Marietta, and something called The Penis Dialogues. The musical probably had the largest cast, which would mean a whole lot of people wandering about backstage between 8:00 and 9:30. That might work to the murderer’s advantage, if they were part of the company or known to the company. On the other hand, the smaller shows—and I couldn’t imagine a thirty-five-minute and a forty-five-minute show being too big—would have fewer people backstage to notice someone taking a dead body up the bell tower or marching someone up there to kill them.
I looked at my scribbling on the legal pad on my lap. Jennifer Gladue was probably up to speed on all of this, so why was I even bothering? It didn’t sound as if Steve was in any position to have me talk things over with him, either. What did I think I was doing?
I was trying to help my friend—that is what I was doing. And if I knew where she was and who it was she was supposed to have killed, I might be able to help her a lot more.
There was a knock at the door and I jumped, in spite of myself. I looked through the peephole, wondering which of my neighbours it could be, since we all now kept the outer doors firmly locked.
It wasn’t a neighbour. It was Detective Gladue.
I opened the door, hoping that Iain or Steve was just outside the fish-eye lens of the peephole, but no, it was just her, looking trim and capable in light-weight grey trousers, a grey and cream tee-shirt with a scoop neck that showed a few freckles and some collarbone but no cleavage, and a cream poplin blazer over top, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows.
“Ms. Craig, I was wondering if I could come in and get your statement from your time with your friend Denise Wolff yesterday?”
“Sure, Detective Gladue, right? Come on in. Can I get you a cup of tea?” I hated the fact that she was entering my apartment. I invited very few people into my sanctuary and tried to avoid letting in anyone I didn’t particularly care for. My personality, what there was of it, was on my walls and bookshelves, and I felt invaded and on display with this competent but utterly dismissive woman in my living room. My skin crawled a bit as I felt her look around the room, judging me through my belongings.
Of course, I had very few belongings. I’d been far more choosy about what I accrued now, since the break-in. In comparison to what I had previously hoarded, my apartment was absolutely Spartan. After getting her a cup and pouring her some tea from the pot on the coffee table, I sat back. Let her judge.
“Detective Browning told me he has spoken with you about your knowledge of where your friend Denise Wolff was yesterday.” Detective Gladue was taking a formal approach.
“Yes, he did. And I told him that she and I had been together from just before suppertime till about 9:30. We had dinner, went to a Fringe show over at the College St. Jean venue, drove back to the High Level Diner, and then Denise went home, as far as I know.”
As she was writing down what I said, I looked at the scribbles on the notepad in front of me. Maybe she wasn’t as icy as I had presumed, and perhaps she would appreciate whatever thoughts I had about the situation.
“I was piecing together what must be happening after Steve called, and I figure it must have something to do with people seeing someone hanging in the bell tower of the Walterdale Theatre,” I offered. Detective Gladue’s head shot up quizzically.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be oversharing with this hunting dog of a woman, I thought, but I’d already opened the barn door. “It’s all over the Internet. I have no idea who is dead, but I went through the Fringe program to see what shows were in the theatre last night. They’re all groups from Edmonton, if that helps at all.”
I handed her the program, opened to the Walterdale venue page. She took it and nodded. “We got this from the Fringe management folks, along with a list of the people attached to each production.”
“I was thinking,” I volunteered a bit tentatively, “that the operetta, Naughty Marietta, would likely have the most people backstage and onstage. I wasn’t sure if that would be a good or a bad thing.”
Jennifer Gladue looked at me, and I think it was at that moment that we turned a corner. Maybe she saw in me some innate intelligence she could appreciate, and could tell I was, in general, on her side. Maybe I saw, for the first time, that she really wouldn’t be Steve’s type, since I got the sense that, as hardworking and clever as she might be, she really didn’t have much of a sense of humour.
Whatever it was, she made a decision. “I have a list of all the people from each production at the Walterdale over the time period the coroner’s preliminary report has given us. Would you be able to take a look at it for me and see if you could fill me in on any connections between people you might notice?”
I shrugged and smiled. “I would do that, sure. I don’t know if I’ll be all that much help to you. I know my way a bit around the theatre scene here in town, but I’m not overly familiar with the younger layer of actors.”
“Any help will be appreciated.” She pulled a few pieces of paper out of her sleek grey Coach bag. They were printed emails with cast lists on each one, mailed to her from Fringe Theatre Adventures, the management that oversaw the festival.
I scanned the lists. I had heard of the writer/actor of the zombie show but didn’t know much about him. The parody of the Eve Ensler Vagina Monologues was created by two fellows newly graduated from Grant MacEwan, and one of their names sounded familiar; he might have been in a freshman English class I’d taught as a sessional a few years ago. Most of my former students were like that, just sort of vague memories, like the shadows left by atomic devastation. A person was here, it has been noted, but that was all. I didn’t feel guilty about it; I knew their names while class was in session and I got their papers marked and back to them within a two-class time frame. What more did they want from me?
I looked at the third page, which listed the cast and crew from Naughty Marietta, an operetta from the thirties. Marie/Marietta was being played by Kendra Connor, and Warrington, her saviour/suitor, was Jesse Gervais. I noticed that Micheline was stage-managing it. This must be the show she’d been prepping for during the run of the Shakespeare festival.
“Micheline was the managing director for the Shakespeare festival, during which time Eleanor was killed,” I shrugged. “That’s the only connection that leaps out at me.” Detective Gladue nodded.
“Yep, that popped up for us as well. She was on her headset the entire time, supposedly to the fellow in the lighting and sound booth, but she was backstage, near the door that leads to the bell tower.”
“So someone really was hanged in the bell tower?”
Detective Gladue looked as if she was warring with herself, which I appreciated as a sign of her humanity. Steve often looked like that while talking to me, and it occurred to me that my curiosity about elements of his job might really wear on him. I promised myself I would try to keep out of his work and offer him a respite from all that from here on in. Just as soon as Denise was out of trouble, that was.
I was so busy promising myself I was going to become June Cleaver that I didn’t hear Detective Gladue say something. She was looking at me expectantly, the sort of look you can’t just fudge with a non-committal response like “sure” or “maybe” or “if you like that sort of thing.” I begged her pardon and asked her to repeat herself.
“I said, it might be better to say he was found hanging, if that clears anything up.”
“Eww,” was my mature response. Then what she said resonated. “You said HE. Can you tell me who it was?”
Jennifer looked around my tiny apartment holding just the two of us, as if she expected to see Staff Sergeant Keller standing by the mock fireplace. “I don’t suppose it will hurt. The name will be made public by the end of the day, anyhow. It was an actor/director named Christian Norgaard. He was in the Shakespeare plays this year, too. Did you know him?”
“Christian?” I was shocked, mostly because we had just seen him downtown at dinner, and there is nothing weirder than having someone you’ve just seen bursting with life turn up dead the next day or so. “Was he directing the show?”
Jennifer shook her head, and I recollected having seen another name I didn’t recognize on the list she had shown me. In fact, come to think of it, Christian’s name hadn’t been there at all.
“So what was he even doing in the Walterdale?”
Jennifer shrugged. “Twenty-thousand-dollar question there, eclipsed only by ‘Who would stab him and then string him up to swing in the bell tower for the entire Fringe-going public and their children to witness?’”
I was struck by the ugliness of the image and the passion with which Detective Gladue spoke of the families who would have witnessed it. She was definitely growing on me.
“If it is any consolation, it sounds as if most of the folks on the Internet think it was an aerial stunt, like when John Ullyatt hangs off the wall as a human fly.” Jennifer shook her head, a comment on either the gullibility of the general public or the wackiness of theatre people.
Her humanity was probably why I decided on the spur of the moment to share my suppositions with her, which Steve would probably kick me for. I wasn’t supposed to get on the radar with his boss Keller, and so anything I ever mentioned to Steve he managed to weave into the context of something he would arrive at on his own. The trouble was, this wasn’t Steve’s case and Denise was still in trouble.
“You know, this makes two directors dead.”
“Two actors, you mean.”
“Well, technically both Eleanor and Christian had some directing chops and plenty of ambition in that vein, to hear talk. The thing is, there is a job hanging on the horizon, at Chautauqua Theatre, due to the sudden death of Oren Gentry.”
Even Jennifer Gladue had heard of him. “But he had a heart attack, right? And a big funeral?”
“He was fifty-five. What if it wasn’t a natural heart attack? What if this is all about getting hold of that artistic directorship?”
“People killing for a job?”
“This is a theatre town. And it’s a great training centre for directors. The university churns out two MFA directors a year. The statistics don’t have to get very complex to show there are more directors than solid jobs. Just think how many people are directing Fringe shows, just keeping their hand in, feeding their desires.”
“So someone murdered Oren Gentry for his job? Why not Bob Baker?”
“Baker doesn’t need theatre, he has the Citadel, the biggest of them all. Oren Gentry dies, leaving the way open for someone with ambition. Then along comes Eleanor Durant, who may have an inside track. She dies, once again clearing the way. And miraculously, it can be blamed on the spurned English prof, keeping the spotlight off anyone in the drama sector. However, something happens and Christian looks like he may have a chance at the job, so Christian has to die.”
“This sounds like the plot from a Simon Brett novel,” Jennifer scoffed, shaking her head.
“You read Simon Brett?” I asked, delightedly distracted.
“All the Charles Paris novels, and After Henry, but I haven’t much liked those Mrs. Pargeter ones,” she said. “I’ve sort of moved off him and onto Denise Mina and Christopher Brookmyre. I like the British mysteries the best. They’re like mini-vacations.”
“Busman’s holidays for you, though,” I said. Jennifer smiled and suddenly she looked utterly human and like someone I could befriend, even if her loyalty to great mystery writers was in question.
“I bet most cops read crime fiction of one type or another.” I thought of Steve and his shelves of Walter Mosley and James Lee Burke. Jennifer Gladue was probably right. I wondered what sort of crime novels Iain McCorquodale read and if I would ever get up the nerve to ask him.
“Okay, so it sounds far-fetched,” I admitted. “But it makes a certain amount of sense. Unless there is someone who just doesn’t like actors or actors wanting to become directors roaming the city, what other rationale could there be?”
“This is all doing a pretty good job of discrediting your friend Denise. Is there anyone who wants to see harm come to her?”
“I can’t imagine who, but on the whole this last murder, if you folks determine it is indeed the same hand that killed both Christian and Eleanor, should exonerate Denise, because I was with her the whole time in question and therefore she has a cast-iron alibi.”
“But who knew that?”
I shrugged. “Anyone who saw us together at the Cité Francophone for dinner, or the College St. Jean at the play, or the High Level Diner after can vouch for us.”
Jennifer Gladue was shaking her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. If we think along the lines that someone was trying to pin their crimes on Denise, which seemed to be working, so why not continue? Why would they kill someone at the Fringe? Because they figured Denise was going to be in the vicinity. So, someone had to think that Denise would be at the Fringe last night.”
“And we were Fringing last night, just not at the main site.” I shook my head slowly. “You are saying that Christian was killed at the Fringe because the killer wanted to frame Denise for this murder, and the killer therefore believed that Denise would be at Naughty Marietta.” Jennifer nodded.
“Or in the vicinity. This whole Bring Your Own Venue isn’t something a lot of people have wrapped their minds around. If someone overheard Denise say she was Fringing on Tuesday night, they wouldn’t necessarily think to question where. When you think Fringe, you think the epicentre, which is 83 Avenue, right by the Walterdale Theatre. And the minute they heard Tuesday, the plan was activated.”
“Man, that’s cold.”
“That’s reality. So,” Jennifer Gladue leaned in. “Who knew you would be Fringing on Tuesday?”
I tried to think before I said anything. This wasn’t Steve I was talking to; for all I knew, anything I said to Jennifer would come back at me in a courtroom.
“We hadn’t even planned to come back on Tuesday; that was sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision while we were buying tickets on the weekend. So, the ticket seller would have known, but I don’t think either of us knew her. And besides, she would have known our venue destination.” Jennifer was nodding along, as if she was coaxing a child on skates to venture closer to her. “We ran into Louise Williams and Sarah Arnold after we’d bought the tickets, so maybe we chatted about what we were going to see, or whether we were doing a lot of Fringing, that sort of thing. Things are awkward between Denise and Sarah at the moment, so I really don’t recall just what was said. I was mostly looking for a way to politely get us away without looking like we were ingoring them. Oh,” I said, suddenly remembering the ugly phone call I’d overheard in the washroom of the Varscona Theatre, “there was something that you might want to know.” I explained how I couldn’t tell who had been speaking on the phone, but that it was obvious to me that she had been talking about Denise, which proved to me at least that someone was keeping tabs on Denise at the Fringe.
Jennifer nodded. “You could be right. It could be someone tailing you two, overhearing ‘Tuesday’ and going on that. Or it could be absolute coincidence that you and Denise were Fringing the night Christian Norgaard was killed. It may also be completed unrelated to the death of Eleanor Durant, although they were found within a half-mile radius of each other.”
I stared at her. She was right. The Queen Elizabeth stairs were only about four blocks from the epicentre of the Fringe, but I never thought of my city in that way. The river valley occupied a different area of my mind, the part that managed nature and exercise. Old Strathcona was housed in the theatre/bistro/great stationery shops section of my pre-frontal cortex. But really, they were so close. I wondered who in the theatre community lived in close proximity. Then it occurred to me, who didn’t? The Old Strathcona neighbourhood from Whyte Avenue to the river valley, the Queen Alexandra area on the other side of Whyte Avenue, the Mill Creek section, and even the Richie area on the other side of 99 Street were teeming with artistic types. Heck, even Steve lived along Saskatchewan Drive, the meandering lovely road along the top southern edge of the river valley. About the only shining light that came out of that realization was that one person I knew didn’t live in that area: Denise.
Jennifer had poured herself another cup of tea and let me think, which I appreciated. She was really growing on me. Of course, she might be thinking it was some sort of mind game to make me confess, but since I had nothing to confess, I wasn’t too worried about that.
“You know, if whoever it is only makes a move when he or she thinks it will damage Denise, what would happen if we were to take Denise out of the equation?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if the object of the exercise was simply to frame Denise for murder, wouldn’t it be simpler to kill people who had something to do with Denise? Granted, I can see how Eleanor might be connected, since she was having an affair with Kieran, but Christian? I don’t see any connection to Denise, unless he too was having an affair with Kieran.”
Jennifer smiled drily. “Not that we’re aware of.”
“Right. So, the minute you put Christian into the equation, you lose Denise as being logical for the murder. She was just supposed to be in the vicinity and already under suspicion, right?”
“I’m not quite sure where you’re going with this.”
“It gets even clearer if we do add Oren Gentry’s death into the mix. The object of killing each of these people is that they stand in the way between the killer and a desired element, the job of artistic director at Chautauqua Theatre. So, if we accept that the killer seems to be acting only behind the screen of Denise’s convenient movements, how about we take that camouflage away and have him or her try to make a move in the open?”
“And how do we get rid of Denise?”
“We could get her to go out of town for a week or so, as a break before classes start.”
“The Edmonton Police Service frowns upon letting suspects in murder investigations leave town for short vacations,” said Jennifer.
“But you know she didn’t do it!”
“The murderer shouldn’t know that, though, right?” She had me. Pulling Denise out of the mix that way would smack of some sort of police sting. Maybe putting pressure on the other end would be a better idea, anyhow.
“Well, what about upping the ante on the job search for the theatre? Maybe you could approach the board and see if they could make an announcement that they had a short list, or would be coming to a decision very soon. The stakes would get higher, and the time shorter.”
“And what do you suggest we do? Just sit in dark corners near the short-listed candidates and wait for someone to pop them off? This is sounding like Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?”
“Oh did you read that book? I remember just loving it.”
“No, I only saw the movie. I’m a big George Segal fan.”
I stared at her. “George Segal? It’s the twenty-first century; who is a George Segal fan?”
Jennifer shrugged. “He reminds me of my father.”
I shook off the idea of George Segal Gladue and tried to get back to the thread of the conversation. “No, this isn’t a farce. I really think, as motives go, this is pretty clear.”
“No one kills for a job.”
“No? I hear people all the time saying exactly that, ‘I’d kill for that job.’”
“Yes, but you work in academe.”
She had me there. If even a quarter of the sessionals and adjunct lecturers who supposedly made up two-thirds of the teaching workforce in universities and colleges across the continent actually followed through on their muttered comments about tenure-tracked fulltime staff, there would be a blood bath and the ivory towers would drip red.
So, if it wasn’t in order to land Oren’s job, why were Eleanor and Christian killed? What else did they have in common besides the fact that they were both actors with aspirations to direct?
Just then my cellphone buzzed twice. I glanced at my text messages, one from Denise and another from Steve, both telling me that she had been at the screening of one of the Metropolitan at the Movies operas. So, she hadn’t been jogging, she’d just been out getting some aria. Fine, I could stop worrying about where she was and get back to worrying about who was trying to frame her for murder.
“Was that Denise?”
Jennifer was reading my mind. Maybe all cops could. I was going to really have to watch myself while jaywalking.
“Yeah, just checking in.”
“Fine. Well, back to what we were talking about, Eleanor and Christian do not have all that much in common, but they were connected to the Shakespeare festival, they both attended Victoria School for the Arts when they were younger, they both lived in the Old Strathcona area, and if their resumés are to be believed, they both played Viola in productions of Twelfth Night?”
I nodded wearily. “Yes, I remember that. A couple of years ago, Cement Theatre did an all-male Shakespeare, to demonstrate how it would have been presented in Elizabethan times. There was a bit of a gripe about it in the editorial section of a couple of papers, the main issue being there are not enough roles for women in theatre to begin with, and by doing an all-male production, even if historically accurate, you denied at least three actresses work. I wasn’t sure what side of that argument I was on, because it was really interesting. I guess, if it had been a student production and scores of professional actresses weren’t losing work over it, I’d have been totally happy with the experiment.”
“Okay, so two Violas are killed. I wonder if that is the link.” Jennifer held up her hand to ward off my incredulity. “I just wanted to let you know how ludicrous other people are going to think your purported motive for these murders will sound.”
“Really? I think you need to push the situation. At least find out if they already have a short list for the position.” I knew I was pleading, but when was I going to get another chance? Steve wasn’t going to discuss the case with me, and Iain sure as shooting was not going to be listening. Right here, right now was Denise’s best chance to have the police reopen their eyes to seeing the situation without her in the middle of the bull’s eye.
Jennifer Gladue stood, and with a questioning nod of her head, took her tea mug into the kitchen and set it in the sink. Returning to my tiny living room, she towered, so I stood up to look her in the eye.
“We are going to follow every lead and take all tips and suggestions as seriously as they deserve to be taken. And that means I will bring up the artistic directorship as a possible motive. I will suggest we take a look at their short list. But that’s as much as I can promise you, and I want to underline to you how inadvisable it would be to poke around in this situation yourself, either you or Denise Wolff.” For a moment, the cop carapace fell away, and once more I saw the woman I had just started to get to know. “You do not want to get in the way of this murderer, Randy. This person knows their way around a knife. Norgaard’s body barely bled after being strung up, but he was stabbed beforehand.”
And with that she left me to clean up the rest of the tea stuff.
While I was picking things up, I noticed she had left behind the three cast and crew lists of the shows running at the Walterdale. I set them on the kitchen table, not sure whether I should just toss them in the recycle or whether she might come back to retrieve them.
Maybe she had brought them for me. What did that mean? It’s not like she couldn’t get more if she needed them. Maybe they weren’t actually important to her investigation. Under the principle of erring on the side of caution, I left them there till I could talk to Steve and find out if they’d be needed.
I putzed around a bit, made myself a peanut butter-and-banana sandwich, hummed a requisite Elvis tune in honour of his favourite concoction, and sat down at the kitchen table.
Unless there is someone around to talk to, I need to read while I eat. As my parents could attest, this is a habit refined over years; way back, I wasn’t all that keen on interacting with others even if they were around. I usually kept a book or a magazine tucked by the wall end of the table, right next to my little basket of condiments, but I’d just finished my latest book and hadn’t yet started another.
I pulled what was at hand toward me, Jennifer Gladue’s cast lists. As I ate my sandwich, I pored over the names and positions of all the people. There were several I could put a name to, but more I didn’t know at all.
I went through the zombie show first and realized I had taught one of the leads at Grant MacEwan. I was happy to see she was pursuing her dream of being part of the theatre scene by playing a character named Legless Lucy. I wasn’t sure whether this character was supposed to be a drunk or extremely truncated. I didn’t recognize any other names on the list.
It was a different story with the operetta cast and crew list. Aside from Micheline as stage director, and Kendra Conner and Jesse Gervais in the leads, there were only two other actors I knew of by name, and neither of them had been involved with the Shakespeare festival, so I didn’t feel guilty about neglecting to point them out to Gladue. It wasn’t as if I was so caught up in the theatre scene that I knew every name. She should be taking this list to someone like Trevor Schmidt or Taryn or even Kieran to identify the players.
As I ran my finger down the list on the page, it snagged on one name: M. Creely, Set Designer. I wondered how many M. Creelys there were in Edmonton, because I’d bet anything that was Morgana Creely the photographer. I had no idea she was into set design, but I supposed that a photographer’s eye was every bit as artistic in setting a stage for a static vision as a stage designer’s had to be for designing the backdrop for a show. I picked up a pencil and drew an arrow with a little star and a question mark next to her name, intending to mention to Steve to tell Jennifer Gladue that there had been another person connected to the Walterdale show and backstage from the Shakespeare circle, albeit tangentially. I doubted that Morgana had been down at the festival site more than three days, total.
Of course, if she was expanding from photographer to set designer, who was to say she wasn’t hoping to hang out her shingle as an artistic director? I wondered if Jennifer Gladue was going to take my theory seriously and check into Oren Gentry’s death. It would take a police requisition to reopen that file, and I wondered if anything could be done, as I knew from having seen the urn on the stage that there was nothing remaining of Gentry to test for unknown poisons that would simulate a heart attack.
I had the feeling Jennifer had just been putting me in my place, milking me for whatever I might possibly know and placating me with the pretense of taking what I said seriously. Denise was still her main suspect, I felt, and who knows, maybe the timelines would show that my best friend could have stabbed and hanged a six-foot-tall actor in a relatively public place a few minutes before picking me up for dinner and a play. Or maybe she’d done it while pretending to use the ladies’ room in the restaurant.
I pushed the papers away, frustrated that no one was stepping up to help us. Secreting Denise away would work to lure out the killer, I knew it would. Why couldn’t Jennifer Gladue see that?
I stopped, frozen, my hand still flat on the table. There was something that would work even better.