At 2:00 pm the Saturday matinee audience at PTC watched the current play begin, oblivious to the real drama being played out around them. By the time the curtain came down there was an obvious police presence. The body found at The Locks had been identified as that of the theatre’s missing AD. All areas not involved in the ongoing production had been taped off. The cast were directed to enter and leave the theatre via the lobby. They could access their dressing rooms, the green room—the actors’ lounge—and the stage itself. That was all. The front-of-house staff were confined to the lobby, the box office and the auditorium. Not that they ever wandered further. Many of them were volunteer ushers or students working the bar and concessions in return for some cash and free theatre tickets.
The actors were asked to gather in the green room after the show. Tamsin Longstaff broke the news that Gerald Blaise had been found dead. They were stunned into an unusual silence, then one voice asked,“How did he die?”
“We won’t know until after the autopsy,” Roxanne Calloway told them. She wasn’t ready to tell them that their boss’s throat had been cut. She knew that word of Gerald’s possible murder would be flying around on social media as soon as they were done if she did.
Toby Malleson fielded a deluge of calls and messages. His office, upstairs, was still accessible, as was Tamsin’s. The board room had been offered to Roxanne as a place where she could conduct interviews for today, but right now the cast occupied their own space, seated together on saggy chairs and sofas, still wearing their costumes.
They had last seen Gerald on Wednesday night, after a dress rehearsal with a preview audience. He had met with them after, on the set. He’d told them how happy he was with their work, how sure he was that the play would do well. He’d patted the director on the back and shaken the playwright’s hand. He’d said that he was looking forward to opening night and that he’d see them all then. And off he’d gone, just after ten. They’d never imagined it would be the last time they would see him. Two of the actors were weeping on one another’s shoulders. They’d liked Gerald, they said. He was a good guy.
“We are treating this as a suspicious death,” said Roxanne. That needed to be said, although it was obvious. “Our Forensic Identification Unit will be examining different areas of this building over the next day or two. We need your cooperation.” They were attentive. Lips stopped quivering, tears were wiped, noses blown.
“Someone killed him? You’ve got to be kidding,” said an older woman, one of the actors. One of the stage management crew already had her phone in her hand and was tapping a message out into cyberspace. Macbeth was known to be an unlucky play in the theatre. That was why it was referred to as the Scottish play, never by name. And here it was, living up to its reputation, before they even started rehearsals. That was good fodder for a tweet.
Upstairs, Pedro Diaz, director of production, was in Tamsin Longstaff’s office. He was not a happy man.
“What do you mean, the shop’s sealed off?” Pedro was not tall but he was broad enough to fill Tamsin’s doorway. “Shit, Tamsin, I’ve got deliveries coming in Monday morning. We have to start. This is a big build coming up.” Tamsin sat back in her chair.
“That might change,” she said. “Jazz Elliott’s going to direct.”
“You got Elliott?” Pedro walked right into the office and sat down. “New design, you think?”
“She’s flying in tomorrow. Wants to meet with the designers soon as. So, we’ll see. And with a bit of luck the RCMP will be out of your hair by Monday.” She leaned forward. “You could make yourself useful, if you want to stick around. After you’ve made the rest of those calls.” Pedro had to talk to all his technical crew to let them know about Gerald’s death, if they hadn’t already heard. Nell Bronson was on another line already, speaking to the incoming cast and crew of Macbeth. “You should go meet the corporal in charge of forensics. You might find what they’re doing interesting and they might be glad to have your help.”
She’d pushed the right button. Pedro was a curious guy. That was why he worked in theatre. Every new set that was built for a play was different. He enjoyed the challenge. And he also liked to be seen as practical and responsible. An hour later, he stood in the middle of his shop, directing traffic, making sure those cops didn’t make too much of a mess. He watched as they dusted their powders around and shone their infrared lights. There were plenty of fingerprints. One of them got quite excited over by a sink.
“Nah,” he told him. “Our carpenter sliced his finger a couple of days ago.” He knew all about his building. Only he, Gerald and Tamsin had master keys that opened everything, he said. The other staff were given keycards with limited access to the places they needed to go. No one knew where Gerald’s keys were, one of the cops told him.
“Tamsin’s the keeper of the keys,” Pedro said to Corporal Kovak of the Ident unit. “She’ll have a fit if Gerald’s master has gone missing.”
All the surveillance videos that were available had been examined. Gerald did not show up on either of the tapes for Wednesday night. Dave Kovak shook his head when Pedro told him about the back door that had no camera, the one opposite the entrance to Gerald Blaise’s apartment.
“So we don’t know when he actually left the theatre?” he said.
At around 5:00 pm, Winnipeg time, another matinee performance ended on the stage of the Globe Theatre in Regina. Word about Gerald’s death had travelled fast. It had made the national news already. Annabel Torrance walked onto the stage to take her bow and the audience sprang to its collective feet. The rest of the cast left her standing solo in the middle of the stage, her hand on her heart, her head bowed. Someone tweeted out a photo. #showmustgoon.
“Look at this, Tamsin. What was it she said to you?” Toby Malleson was poised, thumbs ready.
“Gerald would have wanted me to.”
“Great!” Toby retweeted. Tamsin wished this day would end. Her board chair was insisting that the executive meet with her tomorrow. She could just imagine the look she’d get from under Frank Moran’s hooded eyelids when she told them how much she was having to pay Jazz Elliott to come in and direct at short notice. And she had no idea how Gerald’s death would affect box office sales. Or if they could find someone good to act as interim artistic director at such short notice.
She needed time to think about Gerald. The image of his face, drained of blood, the clotted wound running ear to ear, lurked at the back of her mind. He’d bled out into the trunk of the car, she’d been told when she had asked.
Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him, she thought, remembering the line from Macbeth. She shuddered. She could use a stiff gin and tonic. She spotted the red-haired RCMP sergeant walking past her office door, got up and stuck her head out into the corridor.
“Hey, Sergeant,” she called. Roxanne Calloway turned.
“Want to go eat?” said Tamsin. “I’ve got to be back for eight to talk to the audience before the evening show but I could call Oliver’s and see if they’ve got a table.”
Roxanne was glad to agree. She’d never eaten at Oliver’s and she was hungry. Maybe she could combine business with pleasure. She had just talked with Inspector Schultz by phone. She needed a team right now, she had insisted.
“There’s that new McBain girl,” said Schultz. “You’ve worked with her before, right?”
Roxanne was glad that he’d mentioned Izzy. She had been a constable out in the Interlake until a couple of months ago and had assisted on the murders Roxanne had solved in February. She herself had suggested that Izzy apply to work in the Major Crimes Unit.
“You can get her started and we’ll see who else we can spring once we find out how big a case this is,” Schultz added, managing to sound magnanimous. That was ridiculous. Izzy would be great out in the field, investigating, but Roxanne also needed a third person to act as file coordinator. Schultz was not to be swayed. There were other cases to investigate. It had been a busy year. An expensive one. Resources were stretched right now. He’d talk to McBain, let her know. Tell her to check in with Roxanne.
Oliver’s was just around the corner from PTC, a restaurant of long standing, with red upholstery and white tablecloths. Half an hour later she had a glass of merlot at her elbow and Tamsin Longstaff had sunk most of her gin.
“You’ve been over to the apartment?” Tamsin hadn’t bothered to look at the menu. She ordered prime rib of beef, rare. It was what she always ate here.
Roxanne had. Gerald and Budgie’s apartment was on the third floor, with windows looking out across the river on one side, towards the back of the theatre on another. It had high ceilinged rooms, exposed beams and polished wood floors. The couple had shared a bedroom and the en-suite bathroom, but they also each had their own study. Budgie’s was papered with posters and photographs, going all the way back to the start of her career, when she was playing minor Shakespearean roles at Stratford, Ontario, and contemporary plays in Toronto. Pride of place was given to a large photograph of her in a famed performance of Euripides’ Medea. She looked fierce in it. She had collected memorabilia, fans and masks and shawls. They hung off chairs and mirrors and a large screen. A whole wardrobe contained costume pieces.
Her desk, however, was reasonably well organized. Writing materials were sorted into boxes and drawers. There was no sign of any electronic device. She’d probably taken all of them with her to Regina. There was a filing cabinet, covered by a bright shawl. All the contracts she had worked had their own folder, filed by date. She had kept programs, photos, reviews. A file for the role of Lady Macbeth was up front in the top drawer.
Gerald’s room, on the other hand, was messy. He was in charge of the household accounts. He had kept them in a hanging file rack. He’d still worked with paper. There was a pile of bills lying on top, going back two or three months, but it looked like they had all been paid. A stack of arts magazines and a sculptured statue lay on a small table beside a big leather armchair, a reading lamp behind it. Two walls were lined with bookshelves full of scripts and books about the theatre. Paintings hung on every available space. His desk was large, of old polished oak, littered with notepads, doodles for stage sets, scribbled notes about Macbeth. His phone, like his keys, was missing and his wallet had been found, empty, on the floor of his car. It was possible that Gerald had been mugged, robbed and killed for a cellphone and the contents of his wallet, but why had his car been found thirty kilometres out of town at The Locks?
The living room was elegant, with more artwork on the walls. There was no spare room for visitors to sleep over.
“He has a cleaner come in every Thursday,” Larry Smith, the caretaker, had told her. She had been here last week, as usual. That was too bad. That was the day after the presumed murder. The cleaner had been efficient. The apartment was shiny clean. The cats looked on, balefully, one from a perch on the back of a sofa, the other from a cushioned chair. They were both blue Persians, with thick grey fur and orange eyes. “They’re worth thousands,” said Larry. “Budgie will probably sell them. Too bad, Mr. Blaise really liked them.”
The kitchen was well stocked with rows of spice jars and a full wine rack. There was a shelf of cookbooks.
“Who liked to cook?” Roxanne asked.
“That was Mr. Blaise.” Larry referred to Budgie by her first name but not Gerald, Roxanne noticed. “He often had friends over for dinner. On the weekends, mostly.”
“While Ms. Torrance was away?”
“Suppose so.” Larry looked at his feet and scuffed his toe on the polished floor.
“Anyone special?”
“Oh well,” said the caretaker, his hands deep in his pockets and his shoulders up almost to his ears. “I wouldn’t know about that.” She had waited to see if he would say any more. He hadn’t.
“Gerald had many friends?” she now asked Tamsin.
“Sure. Lots.” Tamsin looked across the table at her, an arugula leaf poised on the end of her fork. “Gerald liked people. It’s one of the things that made him good at his job.” She popped the arugula into her mouth.
“He was? Good at his job?”
Tamsin had progressed to a glass of shiraz. She’d have to stop at that, she had said. Had to go back to PTC tonight, to make a pre-show announcement. Couldn’t wobble onstage in front of an audience. She sounded like she’d like to drink some more.
“Gerald was a charmer,” she said now, cutting into a slab of pink meat. “He was great with the board. Kept the audience happy. He’d lasted twenty years in the job.”
“And that’s unusual?”
Tamsin chewed, swallowed and drank a mouthful of wine before she answered. “For an AD? Most of them move on after ten, twelve years. Gerald might have stayed on too long. But there’s not many jobs in Canada he can move up to, after PTC.”
“He planned to? Move on?”
“Word was he’d been fishing.” Tamsin put down her knife and fork and considered before continuing. This close, Roxanne could see dark circles under her eyes and the lines at the corners and between her brows. “But nothing, so far.”
“He was paid well?”
“Better than most. His contract was coming up for renewal. He’d have been under review this year. I don’t think they’d have upped his salary by much more.”
“But he would have been renewed?”
Tamsin looked wearily at Roxanne over the top of her wine glass. Perhaps exhaustion and alcohol had made her drop her guard. And grief. Or worry.
“I don’t know.” Tamsin shook her head. She pushed her plate away, half finished. She sat back in her chair and looked at Roxanne, head leaning to one side.
“Confidentially?” Then she shrugged. “Someone’s going to tell you anyway.” She caught the server’s eye and pointed to her coffee cup. “Gerald was getting past his best-by date. I know a few of the board thought that. Some critics had hinted. And the funding bodies were quite clear that he’d been playing it too safe for years.”
“Too safe? How?” Tamsin waited while their coffee was poured. She put two spoonfuls of sugar in hers. Roxanne was surprised. The woman was thin, even by Roxanne’s standards. She herself was often criticized for being too skinny. Tamsin stirred her coffee.
“Well, when he came here, to PTC, the company was in trouble. The AD before him was an experimenter, thought of himself as an intellectual. I wasn’t here but I heard all about it. The plays he chose were serious and the audience didn’t understand half of them. Ticket sales went down, they were losing money. So after four or five years of that, Gerald arrived like a sunbeam. That’s what one of the older board members called him. She told me, ‘Gerald made our audiences smile again.’ He gave them comedies straight from Broadway. Musicals. A Christmas Carol. Lately, a lot of plays based on famous novels or films. When I started on this job, he’d been here for five years already and the audience was lapping it up. Gerald liked to make people happy.”
“Would anyone have wanted to replace him?”
“There’s always people want his job.” Tamsin downed what was left of her coffee and patted her mouth with her napkin. “But why bother killing him? Easier to poison the ear of a couple of important board members and make sure he didn’t get his contract renewed. It wouldn’t have been difficult. But there would be no guarantee that whoever did that would get to succeed him. There would be a competition for the job. A national one. Will be.”
After dinner, they walked around the corner to the parking lot. Tamsin ducked into the theatre at the lobby entrance.
“I suppose we’ll be seeing you again soon?”
She would. Roxanne walked to her car. Izzy McBain had texted her already. On your team! Yeah! Start Tomorrow? She would call Izzy as soon as she got home. She was just pulling out of the lot when her phone buzzed.
“Detective Sergeant Cooper Jenkins, Winnipeg Police Service,” said a deep voice. “You’re investigating the missing theatre guy, right? The one with the red Audi?”
“I am,” she replied.
“We’ve got a kid here you might want to talk to. We think he stole that car.”