Denise wasn’t hard to convince, which probably spoke more to her level of despair and frustration than to the solidity of my plan.
We were making ourselves as visible as possible in the Next Act restaurant, which was no hardship because I adored their burgers and side salads. While Denise picked her way through a meal-sized salad, I laid out the bones of the plan that had struck me.
“I was trying to explain to the detective how your being out of the limelight would make things more problematic for whoever is responsible for all of this, but really, we need you to be even more visible.” I waved my strawberry and pea sprout–laden fork at her for emphasis. “You need to announce that you are applying for Oren Gentry’s job.”
Denise looked shocked for a moment, and then cocked her head to the side. “My qualifications match Sarah’s, I suppose. Won’t this play into the hands of the person trying to frame me for the murders, though?”
“Well, you’re already being framed as the slighted woman, though I am not sure why you’d supposedly kill Christian, unless you suspected him of an affair with Kieran as well.” Denise laughed abruptly.
“Not likely. Kieran may have been a swinger but it wasn’t both ways. Christian would not have been his type.”
“Okay then, so we make whoever is doing this see you as less of a scapegoat to tie all the blame to, and more of a rival to eliminate on the way.”
“But we are going to figure out a way to be a target without being killed in the fallout, right?”
“Of course, right. We will be ready for anything, because we’ll be expecting it. And you won’t be on your own. I am going to be with you the whole time, starting now. The minute we start this, anything could happen.”
“And what’s to stop whoever it is from killing us both?”
“We are quick and clever and anticipating an attack, which is at least one less attribute than the other victims probably had.”
“And we’re going to tell Steve?”
“We can’t do that. I mean, I will let him know where I am and all that, if he asks, but I can’t detail what we’re about to do. For one thing, he’d try to stop us, because it could be construed as impeding a police investigation, and he’d also pooh-pooh our ideas, which would make us second-guess ourselves. The thing is, if we’re going to do this, it has to be totally focused or else no one is going to buy it.”
“Yes, we are going to be giving the performance of our lives, to an audience of professional performers. The hardest audience of all,” Denise shook her head. “I’m not sure I’m even up to it. Maybe the reason I went the academic route to Shakespeare was my innate knowledge that I couldn’t make it on the stage.”
“Or maybe it was your profound and complex appreciation for the plays that transcended the need to hear the words out loud?”
Denise smiled. “You’re right. It could be that.” She took a sip of her pint. “Okay, so how do you see your plan unfolding?”
“My theory is, you submit your application and resumé, and we seed the message to a few different people. It shouldn’t take long before everyone in the theatre community hears about it. After all, they’re mostly all still congregating for Fringe shows, and the week of shows chosen to be held over will continue to bring people here all next week. Once people know, someone is going to come looking for you.”
“But several people could come looking for me, to congratulate me, to talk me out of it, to just wonder why I want to change careers midstream. How will we know which one is the murderer?”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Well, I think the knife will be the giveaway.”
Denise laughed, too. I suppose you couldn’t really get Shakespeare without an appreciation of the darker sort of humour. “Yes, I can see that. I was hoping, though, for a bit more lead.”
“That’s the best I’ve got. We bait him, lure him, and catch him, then we turn him over to the police, and you get your life back.”
“Would that it were so easy.” Denise lifted her glass in a mock toast. “Here’s to foiling evildoers.”
I raised my glass to clink it with hers. “To quote Hamlet, and who doesn’t, ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king!’”
“Don’t forget, he also kills an old man by mistake, drives his girlfriend to suicide, has his two best friends killed in his place, and brings about the end of home rule to his kingdom. I wouldn’t be so quick to model myself on the great Dane.”
“If you don’t want to do it, just tell me now.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Because I think it’s the only way we can find this killer.”
“Well, there is another way, but I might be in jail long before it happens.”
“What’s that?”
Denise looked grim. “We just sit back and arrest whoever ends up in the Chautauqua job.”
“If killing all the competition is their way of getting the position, who will be left to buy tickets?”
“Okay, I’m in. Where do we start?”
“First off, you send your resumé in to Chautauqua. Then we mention it to everyone we run into. What are you doing?”
Denise was clicking a few things on her iPhone, which she’d pulled from her small purse. “I’ve got a current CV. Give me a few minutes and I can whomp up a cover letter and we can send it from here.”
I left her to compose her letter on the tiny screen and went to use the lavatory. It was a small one, and bit of squish to get past the sink to the two stalls, but I was on my own in there, so the problem was averted. The polished silver of the stall walls was nice and kept graffiti to a minimum, which was just as well, since it was usually either the religious, the mundane or the profane in Edmonton washrooms. Clever people were saving their bon mots for Twitter these days.
I washed up and returned to our booth. On the way, I noted that the place had filled up with some people I recognized. Three or four of the actors from Stewart Lemoine’s play were in the large booth in the corner. Louise and Micheline were sitting at the bar together. The fellow who had been Benedick in the silly Shakespeare we’d seen was sitting with John Kirkpatrick at one of the tall tables. Everyone came to the Next Act. Eleanor’s and Christian’s murderer was probably here right now.
That thought made me shiver as I slid in to the booth across from Denise.
She looked up at me, raised an eyebrow, and hit a button on the screen of her phone.
“I just sent my application for artistic director to Chautauqua Theatre. I hope you know what we’re doing now.”
So did I.