Condemned to Repeat

by Janice Macdonald

  Steve smiled grimly and nodded toward me.

  “Hi, Joe. I see you’ve met my girlfriend, Randy? I’m really just here for moral support. What would you like us to cover for you?”

  I walked back down the staircase, giving him a quick hug, as the detectives moved upstairs toward the crime scene. Telling Steve about our set-up of offering the guests coffee and dessert to keep them calm, I asked if he thought I should be offering the same to the waiting paramedics and uniformed officers.

  “They’ll be busy, I think, but it couldn’t hurt. Take me to your boss, Marni Livingstone. I am going to have to see if we can set something up in the library or parlour, to streamline the interviews.”

  Marni turned out to be downstairs with her staff, concentrated on loading trays full of mini-trifles and sending them up the stairs with Kathy, who had shucked off her rubber apron in exchange for a waitress’s cotton striped version. I introduced her to Steve, who informed her that the rest of the police had arrived and that he was merely helping out with the interview process to keep the guests from becoming too restless.

  To my surprise, Marni, who had always displayed an almost glacial grace around me, actually turned and hugged Steve, whom she had only met a handful of times before this. Shock and trauma do strange things to people. She offered us a folding table to set up in the parlour, as she thought the library might be too overwhelming for some of the guests.

  “It might be like being sent in to see the principal, with all those heavy leather tomes,” she remarked, and Steve agreed. He and I schlepped the table up and clicked the legs in place. Marni had followed us with two business-like folding chairs. While it was anachronistic, it would suffice.

  Steve and the officers sorted out a system. While he interviewed people singly in the parlour, one of the officers would direct people to Steve and the other would hand out pens and statement sheets for those waiting to fill out and sign. It was my job to bring them back to their places and settle them in with another cup of coffee or tea. It ran like clockwork, and Steve had soon worked his way through all sixty guests. Checking briefly with the detectives upstairs, he made an announcement that the guests could now leave, thanking them for their cooperation. Marni chimed in with apologies for the curtailment of their event and handed out vouchers for two-for-one high tea, which, I knew, was the only offer she had printed up. I guess it was better than nothing.

  Only the actors were left. Tanya had been asked to call the Mayfield to have her understudy take the show there, since the detectives didn’t seem to care about theatrical traditions. As a result, perhaps the theatrical tradition of some young girl getting her Ruby Keeler moment was happening across town even now.

  One by one, they were sent in to see Steve, and their interviews took quite a bit longer than the guests’ had, I suppose because they were observant by nature and had covered more area of the House than the average guest had done. Pretty soon, though, they too were putting on their coats. Steve had asked Mark to leave the clue board up, mostly because the detectives upstairs hadn’t had time to get the entire lay of the land, but also because it might contain information about the general movement around the House that evening.

  Marni saw the actors to the door. Mark stopped in the vestibule and seemed to be very concerned about something. Marni patted him on the arm and nodded, but he didn’t seem particularly placated. Tanya pulled on his arm, and reluctantly he followed her out into the dark.

  Now the only folks left in the House were staff, police personnel, and one dead girl. I shivered. It was as if the presence of all the other people had been a buffer against the horror that a dead body always instilled in me, but now the memory of her lying broken in the tub upstairs filled my head like a nasty movie reel running on a loop. I caught sight of the medical examiner’s team carrying the black-bagged remains of the same person I had earlier spent quality time with, hanging coats and storing umbrellas. You didn’t need a Dali picture to feel surreal when having to wrap your mind around death. I could feel my legs buckling; luckily, I was next to the Rutherfords’ low-slung settee in the parlour. I sat there, trying to remember to breathe deeply, trying to remember to feel grateful for the ability to breathe.

  Steve came into the room and sat down beside me. He had wrapped up the interviews and had a bit of a confab with the detectives in charge, who then took over the staff interviews. The medical examiner and photographer were packing up their toolkits and leaving. The actors had gone, some of them choosing to leave their costumes and props in a bin next to the clue board, which I supposed Mark was going to come back to collect the next day, after the police were through with the House and things were back to normal.

  Ha. From experience, I knew that once murder has been let in the door, nothing ever goes back to normal. Steve patted my back, which he had been stroking rhythmically, the way one does to a baby one is trying to put to sleep, and I knew it was time for my interview.

  7

  --

  The table and chairs were still set up at the end of the room, where Dafoe da Fantabulist’s magic show had wowed the crowd only a few hours before, though it seemed like it had been weeks. Weeks without sleep. I sat across from Detectives Gibson and Howard, who still seemed relatively composed, probably drawing on invisible coping skills to do this sort of job day in, day out.

  Not that there are daily murders in Edmonton, of course. Or daily murders anywhere in Canada, for that matter. But somehow, perhaps, that was worse. Coping with the dreadful, when one had to do it every day, might eventually become second nature. To come face to face with the horror of violent death perpetrated on another, when it didn’t happen as a rule, had to be a shock to the system, even if you were a hardened detective. I knew Steve didn’t ever take it lightly, and I was sure these two didn’t either. They only looked calm and collected.

  Nancy Gibson took my statement from the pile.

  “I know you have been busy helping us with our investigations this evening, and probably didn’t get as much of a chance to fill in the blanks when you were writing down your statement, so I wonder if you’d mind if we were to tape this interview, and we could get someone to type up your statement tomorrow and you could come down to the station to sign it then.”

  I had been in a rush, getting people more tea to keep them calm, ushering them in to see Steve, finding their coats when they were allowed to go. Steve had initialled their coat tags, a way I had thought up of identifying them as being free to leave. I had taken the police-statement form with its self-copying paper beneath that everyone had dutifully filled out and jotted down bullet points, trying to lay out the timeline the best I could. A more fulsome statement would undoubtedly be better. I nodded, and as she turned on her tiny digital recorder, said, “Yes.”

  After asking me to state my name and address and purpose for being in Rutherford House that evening, Detective Gibson asked me to detail the events of the evening, both as they should have gone and as they actually played out. She and Detective Howard, who probably had a pretty good idea of the timelines after having interviewed Marni, Roxanne, and Chef Bryan, and having glanced through all the statements Steve had taken, let me talk, guiding me gently every now and then with a more probing question.

  They were particularly interested in anything Jossie might have said to me while we were hanging coats. Did I notice that she seemed nervous or worried about anyone who had arrived as a guest? Was she in any way pensive or unlike herself? Did I notice anyone taking particular interest in her as they handed over their outerwear? Feeling as if I was somehow letting them down and proving myself as blissfully unobservant as Dr. Watson, I kept shaking my head and answering no to most of their queries.

  They were also interested in my dealings with the magician, for whom Detective Howard had left a message on his home phone to make arrangements to meet the next day. I tried to recall for them what we had talked about over our shared supper in the maid’s sitting room, but as far as I could tell, it had be
en me asking questions about the various venues at which he had performed magic, and our mutual discussion of whether or not this would be an easy winter, which was mostly what Edmontonians fell back on as a conversational gambit with strangers.

  Eventually, I answered every possible question they could throw at me. Standing up a bit creakily, I stretched and yawned, excusing myself immediately. Detective Howard grinned.

  “It’s late, no worries. Good night. We’ll see you tomorrow down at the station.”

  Just outside the parlour doors, I found Steve with Marni, who was waiting to lock up the House once the detectives packed up their table’s worth of gear.

  “We can clean up in the morning. I am just too bagged to do anything more than set the alarm tonight.”

  I hugged her, and she, who was always so entirely professional, hugged me back. She looked exhausted, as if the evening had drained three years of her life. It had been up to her to find Jossie’s emergency contact information for the police, which would be Detective Howard’s next call. I didn’t envy him that conversation at all.

  Steve had been giving her some tips on how we should operate in the days to come.

  “There will be gawkers and reporters, and it’s a toss-up who will be the most annoying,” he grimaced. “Take tomorrow to clean things up and put things back to normal. Once you are reopened, if people ask, just tell them it is a tragic occurrence for your staff personally, whom you do not want disturbed, and a sad chapter for Rutherford House. Don’t get drawn into anything, just tell people that it is a matter for the police at present. That should stop anyone legitimate in their tracks, and you can just ignore more persistent idiots.”

  “So, we are allowed to set things back to rights, upstairs, I mean?” I asked, meaning, of course, the guest bathroom, which would have to be cleaned of all the grey fingerprint dust and muddy footprints and last vestiges of a young woman I barely knew.

  Steve nodded.

  Marni still looked shell-shocked.

  “I don’t think we can leave something like this to the Bee Maids. We have such a strict hands-off-the-artifacts policy with them, how are we now going to expect them to scrub up blood and dust? No, I’m going to have to do this myself.”

  “I’ll help you,” I found myself volunteering. I just could not imagine Marni having to come in here alone and tackle the task. I saw Steve smile at me, whether because he was touched by my generosity of spirit or amused at my inability to walk away from vulnerability, I wasn’t sure.

  Marni and I made plans to meet up in HUB the next morning for coffee, and then tackle things together before a general staff meeting she was going to call at two. The detectives joined us in the lobby, and, after Marni had locked the doors and checked the alarm lights, we all went out into the damp October night together. Although the rain must have stopped while we were serving dinner, the sidewalks were still wet, and there were puddles reflecting the street lights all the way down the road.

  I was happy to take a ride home from Steve. He pulled into a parking spot on the street and walked me to my apartment. Once we were inside my door, I began to shiver.

  Steve ordered me into the shower, the hotter the better, even though it was past one in the morning and I was sure the pipes would wake up the old man who lived next door. I sluiced the sweat and fear and horror off me as I slowly began to warm up. Wrapped in a fuzzy bathrobe and a hair-towel turban, I padded out through my miniscule bedroom to discover that Steve had made tea and toast that he had brought into the living room on a tray. I sat down beside him, so close that I could feel his heat, and reached for a piece of marmalade-covered toast.

  “You need heat and sugar for shock, and then you need sleep, Randy,” he said, pouring me a cup of green tea, which was all I had in the house these days. I cupped my mug with both hands, loving the warmth pulsing through my fingers, and sipped at the too-hot tea. “How you get entwined in these situations, I will never know. What is it about the jobs you choose that makes you on the scene for murder?”

  “I honestly have no idea. After all, it’s not as if anything I do is remotely dangerous or edgy. It’s not as if I go looking for it, either, though I’m pretty sure Staff Sergeant Keller thinks that’s exactly what I do, like I’m some sort of ghoulish groupie who hangs on at murder sites.”

  “Oh God, Keller’s just going to love this,” Steve sighed.

  “Maybe it will be okay, since it’s not your case,” I said hopefully.“

  Yes, I’m sure that will make all the difference to Keller,” Steve laughed.

  It really wasn’t fair of Steve’s boss to hate me so much. It’s not like I obstructed police justice or, heaven forbid, caused murders to happen. I just had a knack for being in the wrong place at the right time. And it wasn’t always a bad thing. In the past, I had been of some small aid to the police in their investigations. And of course, I would have never met Steve if a university student of mine hadn’t been murdered. Talk about silver lining, storm cloud.

  You know that phrase, “It’s an ill will that blows no one good”? It took me a long time to realize that what it meant was that, no matter what happens, someone profits by it. All my life I had been parsing that sentence as a description of a particularly bad wind that indeed was evil to all (“What is that? That? Oh, that’s an ill wind, the sort no one likes!”), rather than saying it would have to be a terrible wind that didn’t benefit someone somehow. I guess I had been too used to all my grandmother’s phrases, which were always so negative, to realize that for once she was trying to tell me to look for the bright side to things.

  So murder had once brought me Steve. I wasn’t sure he would care to be thought of as a silver lining, but he had helped me through several other situations I’d found myself snagged in. But what had murder brought me this time? Was this wind, that had whipped through a seemingly placid workplace intent on raising its profile as a historic museum and tourism destination celebrating its centennial, going to do anything more than destroy? What good could trail in the wake of the murder of a young girl on the brink of adult life? Why the heck would someone kill anyone there, with more than seventy people milling about and ready to walk in on the act?

  Nothing made sense except the warmth of the tea and the crunch of the marmalade-tart toast. I ate, brushed crumbs from the front of my robe, and then Steve walked me to my bed and tucked me in.

  “Aren’t you staying tonight?”

  “I wish I could, but I can’t. I have to be at the station early and I didn’t bring anything but my phone and my gun to the House this evening. I’ll set your alarm for eight thirty, and you can just roll out of bed and go meet Marni for nine thirty as you planned. Sleep well, Randy.”

  He kissed me, and turned out the lights.

  I was asleep so quickly I am not certain I even heard the door close.

  8

  --

  Aside from a few persistent puddles, the rain had dried up overnight, and it was looking to be a crisp fall day as I loped along toward HUB Mall to meet up with Marni. I had brushed my teeth and hair, but that was about all the grooming I was capable of, having slept hard and woken disoriented.

  Since we would likely be scrubbing away police residue, I had deliberately chosen my more faded jeans, which thankfully were clean enough to seem “casual Friday” professional. A sweatshirt under my leather jacket was almost warm enough, but I was glad I had grabbed a scarf and mitts on the way out. Weather in Edmonton was always deceptive. We were the location that the layered look was invented for. By noon, I would likely be passing undergrad boys wearing board shorts and tank tops.

  Marni, too, had chosen to dress for housecleaning rather than wear her usual professional garb. While she normally put her hair up in a simple chignon, today she was sporting a ponytail. She smiled as I walked up to the table in front of the breakfast place. I set down my coat and went over to order an egg sandwich and hash browns, figuring I deserved some carbalicious energy for the task ahead.

&n
bsp; When I sat down, I noticed Marni was finishing off the same meal. Great minds think alike. As I ate, she filled me in on her plans. She had sent an email out to the whole staff, those who had been there last night and the rest, giving a brief summary of the situation and asking that everyone who could make it be at the two o’clock meeting in the House. Seeing as how the fall and winter part-time staff tended to be composed of students fitting in an odd shift here or there between classes, I wasn’t totally clear how many people to expect.

  She and I would clear up the evidence of the crime scene and the police presence, and try to set things back to normal from the mystery event as best we could. The more we could smooth things over physically, the less likely staff who hadn’t been there last night would be to grieve the loss, or so we figured. Of course, I wasn’t certain how many of the staff members knew each other well, let alone Jossie. There were never more than three or four people in the House any time I had ever been there during a normal shift.

  We dawdled over our coffees, though. Neither of us wanted to be the first to head toward the crime scene. With a look and a shrug, we got up in unison and trudged together down the length of the mall. Exiting down the stairs at 9201, one of the stairwells of apartment doors, we went in the back door of Rutherford House, Marni entering the alarm code on the anachronistic plastic box inside the door. Apparently, the board had spent two hours discussing the addition of the alarm system, worrying that it would detract from the authenticity of the site. A series of burglaries in the area, around the same time as the Garneau Grabber had been operating, had swayed the vote in favour of security, and the insurance rates had gone down considerably as a result.

  Security had done nothing for Jossie Jaque, of course.

  Marni found us rubber gloves and buckets in the back of the basement kitchen. We filled them with hot water and Pine-Sol, then hauled them up two sets of stairs, trying not to slop over. The bathroom where Jossie had been found was a very confined space, but there was fingerprint dust everywhere, on the door frame, the sink, the mirror, and of course all around the tub itself. Marni decided to start with the walls, and I began with the porcelain, meaning the tub and sink. Guests of the Rutherfords had to use the same toilet facilities as the family, which was originally a water closet near where the staff offices were situated now, but apparently it was no problem to run pipes for a tub and sink to the guest room.