Condemned to Repeat

by Janice Macdonald

  I closed my eyes and joined Marni in la-la land.

  44

  --

  The upper lobby and stairs must have looked as if a Sam Peckinpah movie had been filmed there, but aside from Marni’s concussion and a nasty gash on Iain’s scalp, we walked out of there relatively unscathed. Physically, that is.

  Finn was being held for the deaths of Jossie and Mr. Maitland and for the break-ins at both my place and St. Stephen’s. While I was pretty sure his grandmother had coerced most of his behaviour and likely joined in quite a bit of it, he was proving himself to be Greta’s kin through and through, maintaining a solidarity against invoking the past.

  The folks from the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team had become involved, due to the officer-discharged weapon. As a result, while Marni and I were questioned extensively, it was days before I learned anything substantial. Steve had to attend counselling for several weeks, a mandatory requirement of discharging his firearm. On the whole, even though Greta was the first person he had ever killed, I don’t think the incident had too much of an effect on his psyche. She had been showing no signs of remorse for her actions, which was the standard sociopathic behaviour that police officers are sworn to protect the rest of us from. The tableau of her swinging a shotgun back and forth between two helpless citizens was enough for Steve to compartmentalize the shooting of a little old lady into a line-of-duty necessity.

  I had never been so happy to learn of his second sense when it came to me. Somehow, my not answering my cellphone and Greta’s having pulled Marni’s office phone out of the wall earlier had been enough to make his spidey senses go haywire. When he found out Iain had called over to confab with Inspectors Gibson and Howard—and had learned that they’d been narrowing down connections between people in the Rutherford House context and those who were cross-referenced on the gun registry, the information of which luckily had not yet been bulk erased by the feds—he and Iain had jumped in the car to come talk to Marni and me. The fact that the other investigation was looking into Greta Larsen’s background at the same time he and Iain were beginning to redirect their focus toward Rutherford House was enough for him to determine that my safety was at stake.

  They had been just as leery of the door standing open as I had, and their stealth had allowed them to hear much of Greta and Finn’s argument from the lobby area below. I was thankful they had decided to move when they did. A minute or two more and either Marni or I, or both of us, would have been severely aerated.

  Marni’s concussion sidelined her for three-and-a-half weeks, leaving the running of Rutherford House’s day-to-day hours to the annoying Roxanne. Interestingly, she rose to the task, spearheading brisk pre-Christmas sales of trinkets and tree ornaments, and instituting the jolly good idea of Christmas cake teas to the Arbour Tea House for the beginning of December.

  Meanwhile, the Black Widows and I soldiered on and managed to launch the interactive website, complete with a maid’s-eye view of the house option that people could follow. The number of hits registered for the site was considerable, and I received a warm letter of recognition from the board with my final paycheque. So that was that. I never did get an explanation for why they had decided not to push for a full-time web curator, but figured it probably had something to do with Mr. Karras deciding I was some sort of malcontent for questioning him about board members. Well, it had been a limited contract to begin with, so technically I hadn’t lost anything. And when I thought about the price Jossie had paid for coming to the attention of a member of that board, I counted myself lucky.

  Poor Jossie, misjudged for her actions and discounted by all of us at one point or other, except for the one time it really mattered. I had assumed she was just a student logging in some part-time hours for extra cash, with no interest in her surroundings. Marni, on the other hand, had found her presence annoying, with her curiosity about the running of a viable historic site. And, of course, Greta had painted her as a threat, having been caught by her while rootling around in the attic after making the suggestion to hire a magician, yet another black mark against her in Greta’s books. To Greta, she probably embodied all that was coming to peel away the secrets of her past.

  In a funny way, Jossie and Greta had a lot in common; each of them had been drawn to the preservation of a piece of history because of a cherished relative. To them, history didn’t need to be brought to life or connected, it was still a vital element of their lives. Jossie wanted to preserve the Magic School in honour of her grandmother’s work there. Greta wanted to honour Rutherford House while blurring her connection to it. If only Greta had been able to see beyond her shame and appreciate the industry and bravery it took for her mother to leave the farm and head to the big city to work in a grand house. Maybe she’d have been a happier person. Maybe she’d have been a sane person.

  We were all so quick to judge, to label. As historians, as researchers, as people. I hadn’t been much better. Like the people who had judged Greta’s mother first for her place in society and then for her unsanctioned pregnancy, I hadn’t bothered to see anything more than a phlegmatic university student when I worked with Jossie. Had I taken any time for her at all, I’d have at least learned more about her connection to the Magic School and her part in the fundraiser.

  As for the magician, Dafoe da Fantabulist was finally tracked down after he returned home from visiting relatives in Ontario. His disappearance, which had seemed the greatest illusion of all, was really simple once it was explained, like so many magic acts. Apparently, he had assumed that Detective Howard’s interview with him the morning after the event had been all that was required of him. That’s what you get, I suppose, from growing up with American television. If they don’t tell you not to leave town, it doesn’t occur to you to check.

  It was the 7th of December when I crunched my way through the snow to meet Marni in the tea house for lunch. She had been back at work for a week, giving Roxanne a short break before the anticipated rush of carols and cocoa evenings, another of her innovative ideas. Roxanne might just have wormed her way into the events coordinator position.

  Marni was looking less gaunt than the last time I’d seen her, and her colour was back to normal. She was also more serene, a generous byproduct of looking death in the eye and coming out the other side, I suspect. After the things we’d been through, I doubted that something like a late busboy or a missing tea delivery would ever ruffle her all that much again.

  Marni poured our tea through the little silver strainer that came with the pot. There was no one else in the breakfast nook with us, and we could be at ease with our shared experience, about which neither of us had spoken to anyone but the police. Greta may have been wrong to think her reputation in the twenty-first century would have been smeared by having it known that her mother had been a maid who had been let go for being pregnant and unwed, but there was no real need to underline her family’s sadnesses for the benefit of gawkers and tabloid journalists. Let the dead take care of the dead.

  “So, they’ve pieced almost everything together for me,” Marni said, adding a wedge of lemon to the side of my saucer and passing it to me. “I get that Greta was looking for a locket her mother had hidden somewhere in one of the houses, which accounts for her break-in at Fort Edmonton, though I have a hard time envisioning her shinnying up the chain link of the Park.”

  “That was probably Finn, though you have to admit Greta was pretty wiry and in great shape for a woman in her eighties,” I said. “People underestimate the geriatric at their own risk. I have more of a problem with her managing to break Jossie’s neck. That had to have been Finn, I would think, but the adrenalin of fear can push people to do amazing things. In a way, that was her worst crime, turning her grandson into a killer because she refused to tell him truthfully about her past. There she was, looking for a locket to keep quiet an illegitimate birth, and he was thinking he was hiding a hideous criminal family secret.”

  “I don’t suppose we’ll ever find the
locket,” Marni mused. “After all, it could have been long since found by some frat boy and given to his girlfriend.”

  “It could,” I agreed. “But there was something I was going to suggest, something I had been thinking about before coming to see you that day.”

  I explained the concept of the hidey-hole, trying hard not to admit that I had one such in my apartment. Marni was skeptical, but we decided it was worth a look. The screwdriver I’d popped into my satchel that day was still in the bottom of my bag, and when we got up to the maid’s bedroom, I went straight to the light switch, hoping to find a spot akin to mine at home.

  I got the plate off with just a little trouble, after having to pry it up from the painted wall. I could hear Marni sucking her breath in through her teeth, mostly afraid my actions were going to necessitate another painting job.

  There was nothing inside but the wiring and a dead spider.

  I replaced the switch plate and rotated the little brass screws back into place.

  “Well, it was worth a try,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  Marni pointed to the plate covering the one electrical outlet behind the tiny bedside table.

  “What about that one? We might as well check, as we’re here already.”

  We set the table to one side and unplugged the small lamp that sat on it.

  I knelt down on the hardwood floor and set my screwdriver into the ridge of the screw. These screws hadn’t moved in a long time, and I was pretty sure the grime I was finding went back a fair amount of time, too. Mrs. Rutherford would not have been impressed.

  I really had to pry this plate and ended up wedging the screwdriver between the plate and the wall, trying to do so from the baseboard side of things, to minimize any marks I might make. Finally, the plate popped off, the dull metal of the switchbox making the plugs stand in sharp relief. At the bottom of the box was a folded piece of paper, which felt heavy when I pulled it out.

  I heard Marni gasp behind me.

  I unfolded the letter. Even after all these years, it was apparent that it had been folded and refolded many times. As I opened the final fold to read the sweet words written in the fading brown ink, a gold chain and heart-shaped locket slid into the palm of my hand. It was dulled and slightly brown-looking, making me wonder at the amount of real gold in the jewellery itself.

  I turned it over to find the clasp, and there on the front of the heart was engraved the name GRETA. He had named his daughter after her mother and then punished her with his own tarnished memories.

  “So this is what she was looking for?” Marni breathed over my shoulder. I held up the locket, the chain sliding between my fingers, as if it wanted to remain hidden, away from the light.

  “Yep, this is it. Not worth the lives of two innocent people, is it?”

  “Well, it could have been the Kohinoor diamond and not been worth that,” Marni shrugged. “What are we going to do with it?”

  I sat back on my heels to think. There was no way we would be able to find a grave on a private farm somewhere northeast of Lamont. There was no reason to turn it over to the police, as they had enough material on Greta Larsen to close both investigations with the event of her death. And there was nothing to link the locket to any great curatorial collection.

  On the other hand, I had completely disagreed with Greta’s reasoning that a focus on the maids of Rutherford House would be demeaning to the young girls who had come into town from the farms and nearby towns in order to better their lives and send money home. There was nothing shameful about honest work, and there never would be.

  I looked at Marni and hung the locket over the wire bedpost, as the first Greta might have done before going to sleep. Then I screwed the plate back over the love letter in her safe place, and we went downstairs to finish our tea.

  Acknowledgements

  Without the generosity of people who are willing to help out and support me, it would just never happen. These acknowledgments are the very least I can do. They may also be the most you get, so there’s that, too.

  First off, thank you, Lorna Arndt, from folkwaysAlive!, whom I inadvertently left off the last list, but who championed the finished product anyhow. Thank you, Randy Williams, for doing everything in your power to make a little mystery novel about Edmonton folk music stay on the bestseller lists for such a long run, and for making the weekends easy, to facilitate the writing of this book. Thanks also to my father-in-law, Ron Williams, who bought out the entire stock of French Market chicory coffee and mailed the tins express-post when he learned my weekend morning tradition was running out. I swear, the book you are holding in your hands is fuelled by chicory. And thanks to the Ides of Lunch Ladies, who always know how to commiserate and when to cheer. Likewise, thanks to Cora Taylor, Martina Purdon, Marianne Copithorne, Barbara and all the Reeses, Stephen Dafoe, Bonnie Bramming-Dinelle, Timothy Anderson, Laurie Greenwood, Michael Rose, Garry Bodner, Brad Fraser, Lasha Morningstar, Caterina Edwards, Alice Major, Angie Abdou, Suzanne North, Gail Bowen, Linda Granfield, Stewart Lemoine, Jeff Haslam, Mark Meer and John Wright for being in my corner, in a variety of ways.

  Brenda Manwaring, from Culture and Community Spirit, opened up locked doors of Old St. Stephen’s College and arranged for a tour by Larry Pearson through the areas no one sees anymore. Peg Copithorne Tyler graciously brought those dusty floors to life with her memories and recollections. Jocelyn and Madeleine Mant allowed their brains to be picked about their collective work at Fort Edmonton Park and Rutherford House, and Laura Nichol and Alex Hamilton answered with alacrity whenever I needed a fact checked. Terry O’Riodan patiently explained the day-to-day workings behind the scenes at the Provincial Archives of Alberta. None of these people is to be blamed for me fixing, changing, switching, and rearranging any of the historical sites, offices, interior décor, rules, hours of operation, and artifacts.

  I have to admit I did a lot of that. You won’t be able to find a box of Mattie Rutherford’s diaries at the Archives. You’re not allowed to take picnic lunches into the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village. The Archives staff are far too professional to all take their vacations at the same time, and they aren’t open on Mondays. Zombie tag isn’t a regular occurrence at the Spooktaculars, though it should be. Please don’t ask Stephen Dafoe to show you the trick with the hamster and the budgie. And I’m so sorry I didn’t mention the Rutherford House Christmas cactus, but it’s an October book.

  Tom and Judy Peacocke, in a generous bid to support the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, which is also very dear to my heart, paid to name one of the characters in this book, who quickly became one of my favourite characters ever. They have also been supporters of the series from the start, and I am grateful for readers like them. I tell you, Randy Craig fans are top drawer.

  This book, especially, has been a labour of love. My very first book-length writing was The Northwest Fort: Fort Edmonton, and I have spent many years wandering the dusty streets and boardwalks of one of the best historic parks in the world, taking visitors and visiting my working children. Thanks to my mother’s twin urges of teaching and wanderlust, visiting historic sites is something our family always did, from Barkerville to Green Gables. I also want to thank the pioneer descendants of Mecca Glen, who placed a historic marker right where I was planning to invent one.

  Those of you who wish to make historic visits based on this book will find your way easily to the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village, Fort Edmonton Park, and Rutherford House. And you should. These are great resources and all-around fun places. A couple of the other sites I made up of necessity; for instance, the Magic School, where my mother taught years ago, is an illusion worthy of its name.

  I’d like to thank the several people who allowed their names to be used for suspects and victims. It was very pleasant to spend weekend mornings with your alter egos. And for those of you wondering why Jossie is the name I used for a victim, it was a compromise; she wanted to be a murderer, but I didn’t think that would be seemly. A
fter all, people always judge the mothers of murderers so harshly.

  The folks at Turnstone: Jamis, Sharon, and Sara, are all lovely people to deal with who make beautiful books. I am very thankful they choose to make them out of words I’ve written. Sharon is so patient, prescient, and precise in her editing that the rewriting has nearly become the most fun part of the process.

  As ever, a special thank you to my husband, Randy. Writing is a solitary task and without the right person in your corner, it can be a lonely one. Lucky for me, Randy is chief cheerleader, promoter, editor, first reader, and bottle washer. He’s already getting me in gear to write the next one.

  And of course, thank you, for reading and buying Canadian.

  Janice

  Sticks & Stones

  by Janice MacDonald

  How dangerous can words be? The University of Alberta’s English Department is caught up in a maelstrom of poison-pen letters, graffiti and misogyny. Part-time sessional lecturer Miranda Craig seems to be both target and investigator, wreaking havoc on her new-found relationship with one of Edmonton’s Finest.

  One of Randy’s star students, a divorced mother of two, has her threatening letter published in the newspaper and is found soon after, victim of a brutal murder followed to the gory letter of the published note. Randy must delve into Gwen’s life and preserve her own to solve this mystery.

  Spellbinding … —W.P Kinsella

  Sticks & Stones / $14.95 / ISBN: 9780888012562 / Ravenstone

  The Monitor

  by Janice MacDonald

  You’re being watched. Randy Craig is now working part-time at Edmonton’s Grant MacEwan College and struggling to make ends meet. That is, until she takes an evening job monitoring a chat room called Babel for an employer she knows only as Chatgod. Soon, Randy realizes that a killer is brokering hits through Babel and may be operating in Edmonton. Randy doesn’t know whom she can trust, but the killer is on to her, and now she must figure out where the psychopath is, all the while staying one IP address ahead of becoming the next victim.