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 character, 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.