This was getting us nowhere, even though talking things over with Denise did make me feel a bit easier about the craziness I’d become involved in. Somehow, having her give voice to the possibilities and patterns made them less insane and outrageous. If she could discuss them, like Alice’s six impossible things before breakfast, they took on a veneer of ordinariness that made them just a little bit less scary.
We cleaned our table and headed down the stairs to the pick-up area. Lucky for me, everything I wanted was in stock and, flatpacked, could be tied onto Denise’s car, with the handy little Ikea cardboard triangles to support the cartons. We decided to go with that, buying only the living-room furnishings today and coming back another day for the daybed and mattress, rather than renting one of their vans, which I would then have to return to IKEA on my own and bus back to the university area alone. After all, I didn’t need a bed yet. I wasn’t quite ready to move back to my apartment. I was hoping that being able to sit and work in the living room would help to entice me back.
Denise sat in the parking lot at the Apple Store, to keep watch so no one walked away with my living room suite. It was probably just as well, as it focused me to get in and get out again. I knew the basics of which laptop I wanted. I could splurge a bit, since I wasn’t going to replace the desktop model. I figured I could pick up cheaper USB cords to attach to my printer and my camera elsewhere, so I was in and out again within twenty minutes, which had to be a record for that electronic funland.
While Denise helped unload the cartons from the roof of her Bug and bring them into my apartment, she demurred about helping build the furniture itself, citing a meeting she had to get to with a grad student. I felt a pang of regret, watching her drive away, that I hadn’t persevered and done my PhD, so that I too could have grad students. At the time, I had been more enamoured of the eager freshmen I could teach with an MA under my belt. I had no idea then that colleges would decide that doctorates were necessary for the teaching of first-year students, but when unemployed PhDs were wandering about for the taking, I guess they saw their chance.
The huge cardboard pack held the underpinnings of the sofa, which the bag of fabric and cushions were then pulled over like a glove. I managed to get the structure together with no problem, but ended up breaking two nails pulling at the coverlet. Once it was done, though, it was worth it. The chair, in contrast, was a straightforward breeze, which I think is the English translation of “pöang.”
I folded up the cardboard and hauled it under my arm out to the recycle area of the rubbish bins. When I got back to my apartment, it felt homey for the first time in a week. Maybe I really could stay here.
Too grimy to sit on new furniture, I had a quick shower and changed into clean jeans and my sweater with the bear pattern. Now for the fun stuff. I made a pot of tea and took the lovely shiny white Apple box to the new sofa. The plug-in was close enough that I didn’t need an extension cord, which was another good thing about a smaller couch. I’d have to remember to tell Denise.
Within minutes, I was up and running. My email, when I logged in, held more than three hundred new messages. I decided to read them later, and continued to set up my bookmarks and docking station for shortcuts to applications and programs to my liking. The operating system was two generations ahead of my old laptop, so there was a bit of a learning curve, but the keyboard was so amazingly comfortable that I found myself luxuriating in the sensory newness of it all.
It occurred to me to download the material from the Widows’ flash drive I’d been carrying around in my wallet. I went into the dining area to retrieve my purse and noticed my phone was blinking, indicating new voice mail.
I poured another cup of tea and pressed my codes into the phone, pulling a pad of paper and pencil closer in case I had to write anything down. The first message was from the Widows, asking how the presentation had gone and letting me know they’d made some more tweaks to the back-stairs walk. I made a note to call them, though I had been putting things off till I’d found out what the board had decided.
It seemed I would know pretty soon. The second message was from Marni asking me to call her as soon as I got the message. I checked the time and realized I’d used up the entire afternoon. I would be seeing Marni in another two hours for the Hallowe’en event. But she sounded insistent in her message.
Marni answered on the first ring.
“Randy? I’m so glad you called. I have news. Like I told you, Greta Larsen went hammer and tongs against the project, but I think you must have charmed Walter Karras, and he in turn must have charmed the rest of them, because he managed to swing the board into thinking about the ways in which the virtual visits to the House would both extend the reach of the history outward and preserve the House from excessive wear and tear. He made them think it was their duty to make it possible for Maori children to wander through on a school tour without leaving their classroom.” Marni laughed. “Greta never stood a chance.”
“So we’re good to keep on going?”
“We’re gold, Randy. The board moved to extend the project and make you a permanent curator of the virtual Rutherford House. They’re going to explore the budgetary possibilities and approach you officially next week.”
“Permanent? As in steady money?”
“You bet! It would be a part-time position, but long ranging. I guess the idea is you’d be available to respond to email questions, and would do ongoing research to add to the website as you went along, providing a new article or element every couple of months or so.”
“Wow.” It sounded like a good thing, but I would have to crunch the numbers and see if being tied to the House would be a sound economical step. What sounded like an easy task might become onerous if I had other projects on the go. I would read the fine print of their offer and weigh my options. At the moment, though, the green light on all that we had already achieved was what I wanted to focus on.
Marni seemed to agree. “Anyhow, the big news is that you’re good to go on the anniversary project, and all the work you have already done is validated. Congratulations, and I am so sorry you had to be put through that waiting game. I honestly could just kick Greta.”
I was curious. “Do you have any idea of her reasoning for hating my project so much? I mean, what could her motivation against it have been?”
“Greta is just a genuinely unhappy person. She objects to everything, as far as I can tell. She hated the new tablecloths for the teahouse, she voted no on the change of Sunday hours, I am pretty sure she tried to scupper my being hired. If it weren’t for the Larsen family’s stature, I doubt she would be on the board at all.”
“Is she on other boards?”
“She is on the symphony board for sure, and I think she was on the museum’s transition committee. Her family, or at least her late husband’s, has been in Edmonton forever, and she sees it as her duty to carry on the positions her mother-in-law held. To hear her tell it, the Larsens invented Edmonton, and she’s certainly inculcated her grandson to think that. You only have to spend five minutes around him to sense the entitlement reeking out of him. I know nothing about Greta’s own family, but if you ever want to hear about Ivan Larsen coming west, just get her started.”
None of that made any solid sense as to why she would decide to hate my presence in Rutherford House, but I figured I’d won that round and wouldn’t worry any further about Greta Larsen.
Marni and I finished off the call with a promise to get together properly for drinks in a week’s time, once the Hallowe’en season was done. I was half hoping she was going to let me off the hook for her event that evening, but no, she stressed, sounding regretful, we needed all hands on deck as much as we needed the money the event would bring in.
I decided to call the Widows back in the morning and get ready for the event. I grabbed my black tights, black skirt, and white blouse, and popped into the bathroom to change, since I still didn’t have a replacement blind for my bedroom window. It occurred to me tha
t I would need to deal with that, if I was going to sleep here again. I made a mental note to get a blind along with the daybed when I ventured back to IKEA. The Swedes were going to be able to retire on me this week, that was for sure.
36
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Marni had managed to round up several of the part-time staff to help out with what she was dubbing “Frat Time in the Old Towne Tonight.” One of the Greek fraternity houses had decided it would be fun to have an old-fashioned Hallowe’en party, complete with bobbing for apples, candy crafts, ghost stories, and a costume contest. They were selling tickets to the evening, raising money for some charity, and providing the food. The House got a flat fee for hosting and staffing up the place.
Marni’s decision to go for it had to do with erasing the stigma of the last event and getting back on the bandwagon. I could see her reasoning. You didn’t want people to constantly be thinking of Rutherford House as the place where the young woman had been killed in the guest room, especially if they were thinking of booking a wedding venue. Of course, it helped that Finn Larsen was on the organizing committee. I wasn’t sure whether it was his powers of persuasion or Marni’s attempt to get back on his grandmother’s good side that had ultimately made her acquiesce to the idea.
It was sort of weird to be back in my serving clothes, waiting for the evening to begin. Two of the organizers from the frat were hauling in a galvanized washtub toward the kitchen area. This was the only place Marni was going to allow the apple bobbing, since it was guaranteed to generate a mess. She had provided two oilcloth tablecloths for them to set up on.
The teahouse had been divvied up, with tables in the interior area devoted to decorating pumpkin-shaped cookies with icing and candy corn and sprinkles; stringing mountain ash berries into necklaces to ward off witches; and decorating domino masks with feathers and glitter. The sun porch tables each had on it a bowl of Hallowe’en candies. Most of the tea services had been left downstairs, and all that remained upstairs behind the counter was glassware.
I was beginning to wonder if I’d misheard the concept and that somehow the fraternity was running a party for orphans, but Marni assured me it was for university-aged children.
“It’s Finn’s idea,” she said, pointing to the lanky fellow I’d seen accompanying his scowling grandmother a couple of times. Tonight, he looked younger somehow, even dressed as he was, in a double-breasted suit and devil horns. “The idea is that nostalgia for one’s youth can start even in youth itself.” She shrugged. “He may have a point. I have to admit, this looks like it could be fun.”
They were both right. The guests began to arrive within the hour, paying their twenty-dollar entry fee and accepting their four different-coloured tickets entitling them to one apple-ducking try, one cookie to decorate, one mask, and one beer. Additional beer tickets were for sale at the sun porch. There weren’t many coats to hang, which was surprising, given the coolness of the weather and skimpiness of the outfits. Most of the girls had opted for the micro version of their costumes, and there were plenty of “sexy” nurses, milkmaids, mice, molls, police officers, and gypsies. The guys had shown some imagination, going for more than ripped-shirt zombies. The classy devil was standing with a six-foot Winnie-the-Pooh, while a remarkable Tim the Enchanter, complete with little white stuffed killer rabbit, sat in the parlour talking to Popeye and a roll of Life Savers.
Finn the devil had been right. The kids, allowed to indulge in childlike delights, made the most of it. The craft tables were in demand, and while a few people sat in the beer area, most mingled, sitting for a story or two before heading out to explore the house and get more candy. One girl with ruined makeup and wet hair proudly crunched an apple as if she’d ascended the Olympic podium.
Marni was monitoring the upstairs while I circled the main floor and Roxanne patrolled the basement. The kitchen was closed, and we had packed the gift shop away by covering the tables with sheets. The fraternity exhibit was accessible, though it occurred to me that the partygoers were not in any mood for a history lesson. Roxanne could dream, though. For the most part, the guests were using the basement only when they had to use the washroom. Roxanne had been required to shoo one overly amorous couple back upstairs, but she seemed more than up to the task.
I was having an easier time of it, even with the number of open artifacts on my level. The dining room was being used as a pass-through area, with no activities focused there. As a result, the glass cupboards holding the set of Limoges dinnerware seemed safe. The storyteller in the parlour was also watching out for the furniture and ceramics, and the bartender had his eye on the glassware in the sunroom.
I had to ask a Bugs Bunny not to take one of Mr. Rutherford’s law books from the shelf in the study, but that was the extent of my hardnosedness. The door monitors had a people-counter ticker with which they were tracking the number of ghouls and goblins allowed into the House.
On the whole, things seemed to be in pretty decent order. Or so I thought.
Marni had locked the doors to her office and the attic, to set some additional boundaries, and she had closed the gate to the sewing area in front of the doors on the second floor. As she had said, the last thing she needed was a drunken Juliet on the balcony, which had been deemed structurally compromised in the last architectural audit.
She had stationed herself in the guest room, to deter too many gawkers from doing stupid things in the former crime scene.
It was understandable that there would be curiosity seekers, and likely the savvy frat devil had booked the House for that very reason. Everyone wants to rubberneck in some way when something that horrific happens. It had occurred to me that this whole party might have been concocted in order to profit from the prurient curiosity about the murder, but Marni had assured me the booking seemed innocent.
I made another quick trip back to the kitchen area to ensure that water spillage from the washtub of apples wasn’t spreading across the floor, but a Dr. Who (the one with the fez) and a Jersey cow, complete with udder, were wielding a mop and bucket to maintain safety at the bobbing station. The cow seemed also to be in charge of taking tickets.
The mask station was empty, and only two cookie decorators were still at it. A group of thirty or so young people was congregated in the sunroom, drinking beer and laughing. Several girls were perched on laps.
The storyteller in the parlour had a small crowd enthralled. I stepped through the doorway and positioned myself close to where I had been the night of Jossie’s murder, when the magician had been performing in this room.
“It was during the building of Achnacarry that the accident happened, as I’m sure you’ve heard people remark.” The storyteller, a large woman dressed as a gypsy, with swirling skirts and silver chains and a purple headscarf, leaned toward the group at her feet. “No one had seen a house this size west of Winnipeg, and the brickyard was put on double shifts to manufacture all that was needed for the task. A master mason had come from Toronto and several younger men of the area were happy to sign on as apprentices.
“At first, it was a happy place to work. Time flew, the weather held, and the foundation was dug and set in record time. The plans were true and elegant, and all the workers felt a certain pride that they would all their lives be able to point across the river to the brick house on the edge of the university and say, ‘I helped build that house.’ That’s why no one anticipated what happened after the accident.”
There was a bit of rustling, and I realized it came from a few of the young women edging closer to the boys beside them. The deep, mellifluous voice of the gypsy storyteller was painting a picture that felt a little too real.
“It may have been the wind or the weather, it may have been that the worker had been drinking the night before, it may have just been very bad luck, but one of the masons fell from the scaffolding and landed on the sharp edge of saw lying below, slicing off his arm. His wails and the shouting of the men on that side of the building brought the whole crew to hi
s side. They staunched the bleeding and bustled him down to the ferry site as quickly as they could to get him across to Edmonton, where the hospital was. It wasn’t until they arrived at the hospital that they realized not one of them had thought to bring along his severed arm, which the doctors said was a shame, as the fellow might have stood a chance of reattachment, had they acted more quickly.
“One fellow offered to go back and get the limb, but the doctors assured him it would be too late if he weren’t back within the hour. Now, it was barely possible to get down into the river flats and across the North Saskatchewan by ferry in half an hour’s time, but he was sure it was worth a try. After all, what could a one-armed mason do? So off he went and made it back to the worksite in just thirty minutes. If he could get the arm, wrap it in something and get it back to the hospital in the same amount of time, there might be a chance. He raced over to the scaffolding.
“The arm wasn’t there.”
One of the girls gasped and I swear I saw a young man dressed like Bugsy Siegel shudder.
“The man searched everywhere, frantically shouting for whoever was still on site to tell him what had been done with his friend’s arm. But no one had kept track of it, so anxious were they all to get their bleeding colleague to the ferry.
“The man was frantic, and the clock was ticking. If some animal had come by and taken the arm, it would be gnawed and mauled by now, but if he could spot it quickly enough, then perhaps reattachment would still be feasible. He searched the bush near the worksite, looking for a trail of blood that might indicate which way an animal had dragged the limb.
“There was nothing at all. An hour or two later, the man returned to the hospital, dishevelled and depressed. The doctors hadn’t waited for him past the hour, but had cauterized and stitched up the nubbin at the elbow, doping the poor fellow with morphine to dull the pain.
“While the injured man lay in the hospital across the river, his wound knitting up, work continued at the House. The walls went up with one less apprentice laying the bricks, and things were never quite as jolly as they had been. Though no one mentioned it, the men kept their eyes peeled for the missing arm as they went about their work.
Condemned to Repeat Page 24