Condemned to Repeat

by Janice Macdonald

“Yes, I knew her. She was my niece.”

  41

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  It was more Rhea Jaque’s graciousness than my diplomatic skills that got us through the next ten minutes. I was embarrassed to be caught playing at Nancy Drew in front of a grieving relative. Denise, who hadn’t said a word besides a muttered pleasantry when we had first arrived, abdicated all responsibility beyond being the driver and provided no back-up at all.

  I gave Rhea a very brief rundown of my connection to her niece’s death and what had brought us out here. I didn’t want to cloud the issue, so I didn’t add anything about the break-in at my apartment or the death of Mr. Maitland so close on the heels of my working at the Archives. I didn’t want her to start thinking I was somehow the reason her niece was dead.

  We left the Magic School of the 1920s and headed back to the contemporary Mecca Glen School, where we had coffee in the staffroom. Rhea might have felt more comfortable in the sanctuary of her library, but all but one chair in there had been designed for much tinier behinds.

  “Jossie couldn’t find any work in town last spring; or rather, she didn’t want to go back to the restaurant downtown where she had waitressed the summer before, because the chef was sort of a sleaze. So she had come home for the summer. I couldn’t afford to pay her, but she did some volunteer work for me in the library and with the end-of-the-year concert, after helping her dad seed. She was also a big help getting the magic show advertised.”

  “So she would have been known to the magician, you think? If he saw her again?”

  Rhea nodded. “Oh yes, I would think so. The show was a fundraiser for the museum foundation, and Jossie was very committed to that cause. She helped him set up his show and fed his budgie, and I think she even met up with him to get posters out ahead of time. The whole idea was to generate more traffic out to the school, to make it more of a tourist attraction, you know? My mother, whom Jossie adored, had been a teacher in the Magic School when she was first starting out. Jossie used to love to hear her grandmother’s stories about growing up in the Peace Country and going to Normal School to become a teacher and then travelling all over the province teaching. In those days, I don’t think teachers stayed more than two or three years in any one posting, and my mother was probably flightier than most. She had such an urge to see the world. Of course, then she met my dad at the rodeo one summer, and that was that.”

  “So you’re from around here?”

  Rhea nodded.

  “My mother loved it here. My dad’s family had settled in Eureka, and so Mom named our cat Archimedes. Her favourite joke was to point to the offerings he would deposit on our front porch every morning and say, “Poor Archimedes spent all night looking for an honest mouse.”

  I wasn’t sure all this reminiscing was getting us anywhere.

  “So you became a teacher-librarian like your mother? Was Jossie’s mother likewise inclined?”

  Rhea shook her head. “Jossie is my brother’s girl. All my brother wanted to do from the day he could walk was ride a tractor and have coffee at the Co-op. He was born to be a farmer. I was the black sheep and ran off to Europe to see all the things my mom had never got to, but even prodigal sheep eventually come home.”

  Denise, who had been sitting silent for a while, finally spoke. “So Jossie helped out with the magic show here, then goes back to university, gets a part-time job at Rutherford House, and helps out with a magic show there? Somehow, that just seems too coincidental.”

  Now that she said it out loud, it did seem a bit strange to have such symmetry. Of course, Hercule Poirot would have loved it.

  It was Rhea who refuted Denise’s objections.

  “Coincidences are just patterns that haven’t been explained. It seems quite clear from my viewpoint. Our magic show was quite successful, and generated quite a bit of interest with the government department that oversees heritage buildings. I had to submit a description of the event for their matching grant program. That application included Mr. Dafoe’s name and particulars, including the costs of hiring his performance, which was really very reasonable. I can imagine someone seeing that report and considering him for another fundraiser in a heartbeat.”

  “Well, that would account for the magician being at Rutherford House,” I agreed, “but it doesn’t quite explain why Jossie would be there.”

  Denise backtracked a bit. “Actually, I can imagine that part. Once someone works at one of these places, they see the potential for jobs at other places that the average person wouldn’t see. It’s like waiters knowing they can find a job in a restaurant wherever they go. I’ve had plenty of students who spent their summers working at Fort Edmonton, then head off to grad school and end up taking summer jobs at Upper Canada Village or Plimouth Plantation.” She shook her head. “So, it could be just a clear parallel effect of the magician getting on the heritage-site gravy train while Jossie took a part-time job doing something she was already trained to do. I just wonder if she was the one who suggested hiring the magician.”

  I shook my head doubtfully. “I don’t think she would have had Marni’s ear, really. As ladders go, she was pretty much just up from the dishwasher, rung-wise.”

  I stopped and looked quickly at the dead girl’s aunt. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to belittle her offering to the place.”

  Rhea Jaque looked sad and old, especially around the eyes, but she smiled and set me at ease.

  “No offence taken, don’t worry. We are grieving the loss of our girl, but we’re not in the process of beatifying her. She was nineteen and working as a servant at a historic site. She wasn’t refining cold fusion.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything more to learn from Ms. Jaque, and we had taken up most of her afternoon. We thanked her profusely as she walked us back out of the school to Denise’s car.

  Denise, who had an unerring sense of direction, decided to take a couple of back roads leading toward the secondary highway, which she figured would be quieter at this time of day than the QEII. We were quiet on the way home, listening to the remastered and reissued CD she’d been excited to share with me, the provenance of which she had been delighted to explain. Now, she drove efficiently and calmly, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel and letting me think.

  We turned off the highway into the city at the Ellerslie turnoff just as the last sounds of Procul Harum and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra trailed off to recorded applause. I smiled at Denise.

  “Coincidences are just patterns we haven’t recognized yet? Do you buy that?”

  Denise shrugged. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Why, what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking we have got to find that magician.”

  42

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  To make up for not taking me to IKEA, Denise had loaned me her guest air mattress—perfect for when you don’t want company to stay too long—and I spent the early evening inflating it and setting up an approximation of comfort in my barren little bedroom. I was improvising a bedroom blind with two beach towels pinned over the window.

  The entire room looked different from the vantage point of eight inches off the floor—smaller and more oppressive. However, I was determined I was going to try to stay in my own place that night. The longer I put it off, the less likely I’d be to get back on that particular horse, and I couldn’t think of a less salubrious reason to move in with someone than the thought of being too afraid to live alone. Nope, if Steve and I were going to make that move, it would be for good and for proper.

  Thinking of Steve made me realize I hadn’t connected with him all day. I deliberated whether I should text him or send him an email. Somehow, texting felt more intimate. I rolled off the air mattress and onto my knees in order to get up, much the way I imagine one would have to get out of a low-slung sports car. Grace in action, I tell you.

  I texted Steve, saying I’d been out of town and had some interesting tidbits to add to the mix, and that I’d be at my place tonight. I heard back from him almost
immediately, as my cellphone rang his call through before I’d even had a chance to put it down. I guess he thought calls were more intimate.

  “Where ‘out of town’ were you?”

  “Denise and I drove out to a little place between Ponoka and Bashaw, to see if we could find the Magic School that Jossie had mentioned.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, and I think you really have to put more effort into finding Dafoe da Fantabulist, because he is way more entwined in this thing than we first suspected. He worked a show out there where Jossie was volunteering, so if she knew him, it’s a sure thing he would recognize her.”

  “And did you find out how the organizers of this show got hold of the magician in the first place? Were you talking to someone who may have turned around and tipped Dafoe off the minute you drove away?”

  I thought about Rhea Jaque and her sad eyes. “I don’t think so. Jossie’s aunt seemed more invested in her niece’s end of things.”

  “Interesting, kiddo. I am not sure Howard and Gibson talked to an aunt, probably just the mother and father. And sometimes, at that age, they are not the best sources of information on their teens. I’ll pass this on to them. But geez, Randy, don’t go running around playing girl detective on your own, okay? Do I have to remind you that there is a killer out there?”

  “No, but thanks. It’s that sort of thing that makes me feel all cozy and secure on a dark November evening.”

  “Well”—Steve’s voice was warm—“you don’t have to stay there tonight, you know. I could come pick you up after my shift.”

  I wavered, thinking of Steve’s nice sheets and lovely view and secure door system. Then I thought about my toaster full of crumbs and my lowly dishpan and ratty bedroom slippers I wore only when I was on my own. I needed to be home.

  “No, that’s okay. I should get back into the groove and there’s no time like the present.”

  We made a date for Steve to take me out to IKEA on the weekend. I figured that was only fair, since he should get a chance to weigh in on the bed I’d be buying. I was determined to continue living on my own—I wasn’t planning to go into seclusion.

  In northern Alberta, we pay for our glorious long summer days by living in gloom by about five o’clock from October on. Now, as we entered November, we considered every day without snow a victory—but dry times made everything darker, because the snow cover reflected street lights and allowed for more visibility. Additionally, being on the east side of the building enhanced the sense of darkest night, even when it was barely seven o’clock. I flipped all the venetian blinds closed, to keep from feeling as if I was living in a fish bowl, watched by killers unknown, and puttered about making myself a later-than-usual meal. I fashioned a tasty sandwich from cold cuts and cheese between two slices of dark rye bread from a bakery along Steve’s end of Whyte Avenue, an area that had long ago been dubbed Little Berlin for its collection of German restaurants and delis.

  A pot of tea and fat sandwich in hand, I made my way into the living room, hoping to find something on television to take my mind off my own life. I flicked through the channels, figuring out as I went how to navigate the universal remote Steve had picked up for me, and happened upon a rerun of Penn and Teller’s Fool Us, a show that had run in Great Britain a year or two earlier. It seemed as if magic acts were on the rise again. Perhaps they had never gone out of style. I tried to remember exactly when it was that the Doug Hennings of the world had stopped looking exciting and the David Copperfields had started looking cheesy. Of course, my perception was just based on television. For all I knew, magic acts were alive and well and keeping Las Vegas solvent.

  I clicked the channel button a few more times and settled in to watch a local newscast. It didn’t hurt to be informed every now and then. A contest was afoot to name the new LRT lines, an MP in Ottawa had been caught for the third time sleeping during question period, and the weather girl warned that we might get snow in the coming week. Now that I knew what was what, I turned off the TV and took my plate back to the kitchen.

  The day’s adventure had brought Jossie’s death back to the forefront for me. Too much had happened in a very short time. It was hard to believe that anything could make the violent death of a young woman lose its impact, but there it was, just one of the things clamouring for attention in my tired brain.

  One of the reasons I hadn’t been focusing on her death was that nothing about it had seemed to implicate me, whereas the Archive thefts and the death of Mr. Maitland could quite possibly be connected to my research. The break-in at my place was probably tied to the research, too, since I was pretty sure that whoever had trashed my place, or ordered it trashed, was really only after my laptop.

  I wondered if they’d managed to decode my password by now.

  That was one thing Steve had never had to chide me about, locking up my information. I chose passwords that were combinations of nonsense words and numbers, with capital letters randomly dotted throughout. I might be lax about turning the deadbolt on my front door, but backing up my work and creating strong passwords were second nature to me.

  I had read somewhere that the program to decode a password took approximately two weeks to run and you would need a computer with enough juice and a variety of connecting cords to run it. The computer techs in Steve’s precinct had a couple of workstations set up for just that purpose, I knew. So, unless Staff Sergeant Keller had stolen my laptop to see where I’d turn up next to ruin his day, I figured it was not going to be easy for the thief to get at the inner workings of my laptop.

  Luckily, whoever had broken in hadn’t found either of the back-up flash drives I used. One of them was on my keychain and had been with me all along. The other was in my serendipitously discovered hiding place, which they hadn’t found: the small crevice behind the light switch in my bedroom.

  I had taken off the switch plate when I was stripping the hideous wallpaper border that the previous tenant had put around the doorframe. Behind it, I found a small switchbox with an inch on either side of it, carved out of the plaster and lath. Rewiring the place seemed to have included the replacement of larger boxes with their more modern counterparts. Whatever the case, leaving the bottom screw out of the plate made it easy to flip it sideways and stash valuables in the leftover space.

  Thinking about my little bolt-hole made me wonder again about the enigmatic maid about whom Mrs. Rutherford had written in her missing diary. Where could a girl like that store a love letter or a cache of savings in that plain little room in someone else’s home? Had she really been a thief?

  I wondered if anyone had checked behind the switch plates there. I knew that some of the wiring had been upgraded, but I was pretty sure that only the main floor and the office upstairs had been done. The lights upstairs still went on and off by means of the old-fashioned button pushes, rather than a flick switch.

  Could there be enough room inside one of the larger, older switchboxes to store something precious? Might a maid have pried off one of the plates and hidden something behind an electrical outlet or a light switch? Before I drifted to sleep, shutting my eyes to the ceiling that was way too far away for comfort, I put “take a screwdriver” onto my mental list of what to pack before heading over to Rutherford House to meet up with Marni in the morning.

  43

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  While I slept hard, as my dad would have said, my dreams were all over the map. Even while I showered and dressed, my mind was still swirling, trying to pick out the real from the fantastical. Answers to the puzzles that had appeared so clearly just an hour ago in my sleep were now tantalizingly hidden just around a corner.

  I was close to figuring something out, though. I could feel it. If I got a chance to poke around in the maid’s room at Rutherford House, things might start to come clear.

  I tried to recall whether it was the magician who had suggested we sit in the maid’s parlour or whether I had done so. Or had someone else steered us there, out
of the way of the actors and their shenanigans?

  I had certainly not felt the need to show the back rooms to Tanya, the actress who needed a semi-hidden place to be found dead. She hadn’t even gone near the back of the house, as I recalled.

  Was it Marni who had asked me to take Mr. Dafoe’s food up to the maid’s sitting room?

  Did it matter? We weren’t even sure that Dafoe had anything to do with the death of the waitress, let alone the murder of the archivist and the various thefts of seemingly unimportant historic artifacts.

  He had been upstairs. I had been upstairs. Tanya Rivera had been upstairs. And, of course, poor dead Jossie had been upstairs. Marni may have been up and down several times to her office, for all I knew. Greta Larsen and her grandson certainly knew their way around the house and could have gone up while people were being served their dinner. The same held true for Mr. Karras, and who knew how many other guests who might have known the House well. Roxanne had been there, looking baleful in the basement corner, likely worrying about the Limoges china in the dining-room cabinet.

  Maybe it would be easier to figure out who hadn’t been there, and then work backwards from there. I sighed and grabbed my jacket and backpack, locking the door behind me.

  The sky looked like snow, with that grey edge to the overcast that most westerners can spot. If it didn’t snow today, it would begin soon. Of course it would. It was November in Edmonton. I didn’t have to sound like the Farmers’ Almanac or a gnarled old woodsman to predict snow. But, nonetheless, Mother Nature was making a pretty good job of sending out advanced warning.

  I made it to Rutherford House by way of Saskatchewan Drive, instead of heading to HUB and grabbing a coffee on the way. Marni could spring for English Breakfast tea, I figured, since this was marginally earlier than I normally got up, let alone attended business meetings.

  I was a little curious to discover what she wanted to see me about, but even more interested in checking out the maid’s room for hidey-holes. I saw Marni’s car tucked in behind the House, but no cars pulled into the angle parking out front. I checked my wristwatch and realized it was still two hours before opening time. I figured Marni would let me in the front door if I rang, so I pressed the button and waited.