“Sarah Arnold? I didn’t know she wanted to leave academe.”
Denise shook her head. “In theatre, academe is rarely something you want to be in if you can actually get your hands on a professional gig. There are a very few people who are driven to become professors of drama, and the ones who do see it as a vocation usually have a pretty healthy professional life alongside their teaching.” She held her hand out and counted a few people off, mentioning a couple of names I knew, like Tom Peacocke and Jim De Felice. “Aside from them, and they’re spread right across the country, everyone else is either a sessional augmenting a professional career, or a wannabe.”
“Okay, so Sarah Arnold is now on our list of suspects.”
Denise smiled grimly. That allocation seemed to make her happy. I wondered who else had dismissed her from their lives in the last few weeks and how much more of this she was going to be able to take. Denise had always had a healthy sense of her own worth, based on the proof that whatever she set her mind to, she excelled at. Now, though, she was being categorized as a murderer in the minds of people who didn’t know her well, or people who had envied her seemingly effortless success. They obviously hadn’t seen all the work and discipline Denise had infused her life with.
Well, I had seen it and I wasn’t going to desert her.
In the way of great homonymic delight, my dessert arrived just as that thought went through my head, and I tucked into my brioche with small cooing noises that Denise felt honour bound to point out.
“You’re making your amorous food noises again,” she said, folding her thick linen napkin and placing it beside her plate on which remained a radish rose, a small smattering of wild rice, and three clean bones. The waiter came and whisked it away, refilling our water glasses and gazing admiringly at Denise.
“This is so good, would you like a taste?” Denise made a small moue and negative motion with her hand, which was fine by me. I finished it off with a bit of a flourish, and we called for the cheque. Within minutes we were on our way across the street to the theatre in the north basement of College St. Jean. There was already a lineup, but we had our tickets and weren’t worried about seating.
“What have you heard about this show?” I asked Denise. From what I could tell, we’d just picked it because of the funny Shakespearean pun. I wasn’t even sure if it was locally produced or not.
Denise shrugged. “The program says it’s the third Fringe appearance for the Underwater Underwear Alliance, whose mandate is to rethink classics from the viewpoint of a modern, localized telling.” She turned over the brochure in her hand. “There are glowing quotes here for Lady Windermere’s Fanboy from Colin Maclean, and Liz Nicholls seems to have loved A Doll’s Houseplant, which sounds as if it was about angst and the inability to form relationships.”
“Shoot, I was hoping this was going to be funny. Don’t tell me we are in for an ironic vision of twenty-first-century dating.”
“Supposedly an old poster of Shaun Cassidy makes an appearance like Marley’s ghost. So you know that’s going to be good.” Denise grinned. I laughed. No matter what, Fringe shows were entertaining. This one was longer than most at ninety minutes, and it had already given us some diverting value through the write-ups and bizarre promotional blurb in their photocopied program.
At 6:20, the doors opened and we filed into the theatre, which was quite steeply raked. We settled ourselves in the middle of row G, supposedly the sweet spot of any theatre, and watched with interest as the entire house filled. Already, five days into the ten-day festival, word of mouth was creating hits of various shows, and it seemed as if this was one of them. I felt quite proud of our having chosen it blindly, as if somehow that proved we had our finger on the zeitgeist of Edmonton culture.
Soon the lights dimmed and the curtains opened on a thirty-something woman with a suitcase being shown into a bedroom by an older woman. “It’s your cousin’s old room, but I’m sure you’ll be comfortable till you get back on your feet, dear.” Sure enough, over the twin bed was a poster of Shaun Cassidy, looking all blond bangs and teeth.
As soon as the aunt left the stage, Beatrice flopped back on the bed, obviously finding herself at the very frayed end of her rope.
Denise leaned over to me and whispered, “I feel a song coming on.” Lucky for me, the sudden swelling music of accordion and penny whistle masked my bark of laughter, and Beatrice, the independent thinker who in this version had a real feminist slant, indeed broke into a song about getting out of her relationship with Ben in order to be independent but having to swallow her pride and crawl back to her family and feeling like a fifth wheel while they were planning her cousin’s wedding. As songs went, it was fine. As Fringe songs went, it was quite lovely.
The play then went on, bouncing between Beatrice’s wounded sensibilities at her aunt and uncle treating her as if she was a teenager just because she was single and staying in her cousin’s old room, and her prickly nostalgia for her life with Ben. Meanwhile, the actual play was somehow woven in, through an amateur performance that her uncle’s friends were rehearsing.
There was one amusing point where, short-handed, two men carried on an entire scene, shifting and grabbing and taking off hats to denote other characters. It was a rip-off of the most recent stage version of The 39 Steps, but it worked well in this context too. Beatrice was reconnected with her old beau, mostly so that her aunt and uncle could get her out of the house; her cousin, who was missing, returned and all was happy and bright. The whole cast came out for their curtain call, which turned into a sock hop of twisting to “Da doo ron ron.”
Denise and I found ourselves humming the tune all the way to the car. “What an earworm,” Denise laughed. “Well, it makes a break from ‘Longfellow Serenade,’ which is what usually gets stuck in my brain.”
“For me, it’s Burton Cummings’s ‘My Own Way to Rock.’” We drove along Whyte Avenue, enduring the congestion created by the Fringe crowds at 104 Street. I had forgotten to bring my sunglasses, so instead of squinting into the western sky ahead, I turned my head and watched the people on the sidewalk. It was like a Fringe play all its own. There were people seated at small tables in front of restaurants and ice cream parlours, with crowds flowing past them, and groups massed at the corners, while others manoeuvred their way around the corners through the narrow spaces of light.
Earnest young actors attempting to drum up audiences for their shows were pressing playbills on passersby. Girls with messy knots of hair piled on the tops of their heads strolled along, wearing shorts and vests over thin tee-shirts. Young men in red trousers or long shorts or skinny jeans and high-top runners were everywhere, arm in arm, or walking backwards while conversing excitedly with groups of friends.
There was altogether too much humanity there for my sense of serenity. Denise, on the other hand, took it all in stride and drove at ease from one red light to the next, till we had eased our way past 107 Street and the last of the Fringe venues. “Do you feel like coffee and dessert somewhere?” she asked.
There was nothing to drag me home. Everything I was doing at the moment was completely on spec, hoping it would lead to work in the fall. Why not?
We pulled into the High Level Diner parking lot, and had to wait only a few minutes for the people in front of us to be seated and another table to be cleared. Soon we were pulling apart hot cinnamon rolls and drinking lovely brewed decaf, discussing the variety of ways one could revisit Shakespeare without being disloyal to the plot or dismissive of the intent.
“Try to imagine any other playwright who has had so many modernizations of his plays and not had them just disintegrate under the machinations,” Denise marvelled, shaking her head admiringly.
“Well, I saw a version of Uncle Vanya set in the Canadian prairies,” I countered, but it was true, there were not many examples I could think of. I supposed Lysistrata had been done a few ways, just updating it to determine whatever war the women didn’t want the men fighting, and I could count th
ree variations of Madama Butterfly, but there was nothing like Shakespeare for being set to music, done in jackboots, performed with multiple versions of the same character or in lime green afro wigs.
Denise lit up when she talked Shakespeare, and it was a pleasure to enter into the game. I could see why she was consistently nominated lecturer of the year; her students couldn’t help but be caught up in her enthusiasm.
A small voice in the back of my mind asked, “Could that fervour become murderous in the right circumstance?” Luckily, Denise had her head down, concentrated on buttering a piece of her cinnamon bun. I took a swig of my coffee and tamped down the voice of doubt. If I didn’t believe in Denise, who would?
We stood by her car talking, till I suggested she come in for tea. She checked her watch and said she had to head home. I waved her out of the parking lot and trundled across the alleyway to my apartment building.
I kicked off my sandals, locked the door, and headed directly for my bedroom and through to the washroom. My clock radio’s red buttons said 9:38. I was tired and decided to crawl into bed. I left my clothes in a pile between the door to the washroom and the end of my bed and swiped a washcloth over my face. My nightshirt was hanging on the bathroom door.
I was asleep probably within ten minutes of getting home. Middle age, what a pathetic comedown. I slept till 9:00 a.m. and probably would have slept longer if it hadn’t been for the phone ringing insistently.
35.
Hello?” The sleep frog in my throat was all too obvious. I coughed up a bit of phlegm, and then muttered, “Excuse me?” because I hadn’t heard a thing being said on the other end of the line.
“Randy, are you all right?” It was Steve. I coughed into a tissue I’d managed to snag and sat down hard on the loveseat. The air coming in through the window screens behind me was already midday hot. I leaned forward and twisted to check the clock on the wall to be sure it was really as early as I had thought. Sure enough. Nine o’clock.
“One of the few pleasures of the underemployed would be a certain allowance to sleep in from time to time,” I growled into the phone. I hated the phone before 10:30 on principle; being woken up by the telephone never boded well.
“I needed to talk to you right away. Do you have any idea where Denise was last night, say between six and midnight?”
“Easy answer, yes. She was with me. We went to a Fringe play and then to the Diner for cinnamon buns. She headed home just after 9:30. Why?”
“There has been another murder, and I was hoping you’d be able to fill in some of the timelines.”
“Have you talked to Denise?”
“We haven’t been able to locate her as yet.” That was odd. Denise, though fully employed, was enjoying the same schedule I was for the next couple of weeks until classes began. She should have been home, luxuriating in not having to mark a pile of essays. Of course, if I knew Denise, she would have been up at the crack of dawn jogging or swimming or learning Italian.
“Who is dead?”
“They haven’t released the name of the victim yet,” said Steve, in that formal way he had of talking that told me he was calling from his desk at work and there were folks milling about nearby.
“If I were to guess someone in the theatre community, would I be in the ball park?”
“Home run.”
“Good lord. If they keep this up, we’re going to lose our status as a theatre city. Wait. Have you checked people from Calgary for all this?”
“I think the situations speak to a knowledge of the city,” said Steve drily. “Look, sorry to wake you up, but if you hear from Denise, please tell her we’re looking for her, okay? If she could call Iain or Jennifer or me, it would be a very good thing.”
“Sure, I’ll tell her if I hear from her,” I said, and found myself looking at the phone receiver, Steve having hung up rather abruptly.
Who had been murdered? Where? And why would the first assumption be to pin this one on Denise? Could it be another person vying for the Chautauqua job? Or was that a blind alley that Denise and I had been running up?
It was too late to try to regain whatever dreams I’d been having, so I headed for the shower to commit entirely to the day.
I was dressed and presentable within twenty minutes. When you hit a certain age, it becomes just a matter of brushing your teeth, slathering on some sunscreening moisturizer, and if you intend to impress, mascara. Add another four minutes to brush and braid your hair, and you can be ready for action. Of course, folks in the theatre community probably spent a bit more time on their looks, though I had seen several actresses on the street or in the supermarket looking very drab in comparison to their onstage personas, so maybe they liked to play it low-key if they didn’t have to hit the boards.
I called Denise, mostly just to have it done. I didn’t doubt Steve when he said they couldn’t reach her. She still wasn’t picking up. I sent her a quick text message from my cellphone: “Where are you? It’s important you call Steve.”
Then I called Steve back. He sounded very curt, a signal that he was feeling some sort of pressure at that end. I asked if anyone had driven to Denise’s condo.
“Not that she might not be out jogging or something, but it is sort of worrisome, if you’ve been trying to reach her for a while this morning.”
“I’ll see if we can get a car out there, thanks. Sorry, Randy, things are exploding here, I can’t talk now.” I said I understood and agreed to text him if there was anything I needed him to know.
So there I was, fully awake in a town where a murder had just happened, and radio silence from both my best friend and my boyfriend. How was I going to learn anything?
I pulled my laptop toward me and opened it, wondering if there might be a hint of whatever had happened to pull Steve into cop land so thoroughly. Having cancelled my newspaper subscription in response to a particularly odious columnist, I now had to rely on social media for my current affairs fixes.
The story was everywhere. I scrolled past two entries of cats sitting in boxes and tortoises wearing knitted dinosaur cozies, and found the Edmonton Journal’s link to their news article about a body found on the Fringe grounds. There wasn’t much in the article, and a vagueness as to where the body had been found that was odd. Were they protecting the festival from a surge of ghouls or abandonment by the squeamish? Or were the police withholding the information?
I scrolled down the site until I saw a weird posting by John Ullyat, an actor in town and co-owner with his remarkable wife Annie Dugan, of Firefly Theatre, an aerial-focused circus act troupe.
JOHN: For the record, Annie and I were not involved in any way with what some people have called “performance art in questionable taste.” We are performing on the side of Old Strathcona High School at 2 pm for the next four days. Please come see us there.
That was odd. I scrolled further back, like a fast-action archaeologist dusting away the layer of time accrued while I was sleeping. There were posts linking to reviews of various Fringe shows, more cats, several rude but funny phrases attached to Victorian-looking silhouettes, and then a few interesting posts from around 10:30 the night before.
- There are police all over the Fringe.
- Did you guys see the body in the tower at Walterdale? I swear it was a body.
- That was probably Firefly Theatre you saw. I saw them being flies on the wall yesterday.
- This was a body inside the thing on the top.
- The cupola?
- Firefly Theatre was in the cupola of Walterdale?
- There are police near Walterdale. Was someone getting feisty in the beer tent?
- Sirens ruined our final song. #fringefail
- Anyone know why there are so many cops around?
No wonder John Ullyat had been responding. From what I could piece together, a body had been observed hanging in the bell tower of the Walterdale Theatre, which was smack dab in the middle of the Fringe site, and while various people had written it off as an ins
ensitive theatre piece, the police had been summoned and now a murder investigation was underway.
I wondered who it had been. It wouldn’t be easy to get into the Walterdale, either. It was a real theatre, set up with a lobby and a box office and off-limit backstage areas. Anyone prowling around would be noticed by the folks slated for Fringe performances there.
So maybe it was someone from one of those shows. I padded into my dining room/office to get my Fringe program. The subtitle was always, “you can’t tell the players without a program,” but as I flipped through to the Walterdale site, I realized you couldn’t tell the players even with a program. All that was listed in the thumbnail sketches was the title of the play, the running time, the name of the company and where they were from, and a two- or three-line teaser about the plot. I noted that all seven plays slated for that venue were from the Edmonton area.
I made a list of the plays and paid attention especially to the running list from last night. While we had been at College St. Jean at the Shakespeare pastiche, people had been watching Zombies on Parade, Naughty Marietta, and something called The Penis Dialogues. The musical probably had the largest cast, which would mean a whole lot of people wandering about backstage between 8:00 and 9:30. That might work to the murderer’s advantage, if they were part of the company or known to the company. On the other hand, the smaller shows—and I couldn’t imagine a thirty-five-minute and a forty-five-minute show being too big—would have fewer people backstage to notice someone taking a dead body up the bell tower or marching someone up there to kill them.
I looked at my scribbling on the legal pad on my lap. Jennifer Gladue was probably up to speed on all of this, so why was I even bothering? It didn’t sound as if Steve was in any position to have me talk things over with him, either. What did I think I was doing?
I was trying to help my friend—that is what I was doing. And if I knew where she was and who it was she was supposed to have killed, I might be able to help her a lot more.
There was a knock at the door and I jumped, in spite of myself. I looked through the peephole, wondering which of my neighbours it could be, since we all now kept the outer doors firmly locked.
The Roar of the Crowd Page 22