'An attractive girl. An attractive person. Open to her emotions and her instrument. Some students come by it naturally and others have to work at it. Maya was more in the second category and she did work at it-more last year than this, I have to say.'
'Why do you think that was?'
'My impression? Something else had captured her imagination. Maybe a boy. Maybe another career idea. A lot of kids come in here thinking they're going to be the next Seth Rogen, the next Ellen Page, but they realize pretty quickly how tough it is out there. Competition for parts in our productions is fierce and to be honest, the U of T program isn't considered among the elite. The really talented kids go to New York or to Yale or skip school entirely and get right to work.'
'You think Maya had come to that realization?'
'It's possible. She auditioned well enough and acquitted herself honourably in the parts she did get, but like I said, that hardly paves the way for a career in the theatre.'
'Did she ever seem depressed to you? Despondent about her prospects?'
'Let me tell you something, Mr. Geller. I have seen some pretty high-maintenance people in my time. Not just as a teacher, but as a director, which I was for many years in the outside world.' He pointed at the wall behind him, where posters of his professional productions of The Threepenny Opera, Twelfth Night, Fifth of July and others had been framed. 'I've seen actors threaten to kill themselves when they weren't cast at Stratford or the Shaw Festival. I've had students who've dropped out-not just out of school but their very lives-when they didn't get parts they wanted. I've had the drunken midnight phone calls, the sob sessions right in this office, even threats… all the histrionics they couldn't deliver in their work. But Maya Cantor conducted herself quite professionally in everything she did. Last year, she directed Trojan Women, and she handled the cast beautifully, which was no easy task. She had a boatload of drama queens in that one and never lost her cool.'
'What about the last month or two?'
'She wasn't as focused on her work. A few weeks before she died, we held auditions for a production of Women in Transit and she didn't sign up.'
'Was that unusual?'
'Let me put it this way: Very few plays have as many good female roles. Every actress in the program auditioned for it.'
'Did she say why she didn't audition?'
'No. Not to me, anyway. I heard she was involved in an outside project-a guerrilla theatre sort of thing where actors confront politicians or business types about one issue or another-but that shouldn't have prevented her from trying for a part.'
'You weren't concerned?'
'Not really. In retrospect, maybe I should have been. But she didn't seem down at all. Quite energized in fact. It's just that her energy was being applied elsewhere.'
'Was she seeing anyone that you know of? Anyone from her class?'
He thought about it, then shook his head. 'A lot of mingling goes on in a theatre program. People work intensely together. They fall desperately in and out of love. They're trying on new personalities, in a way. Behaving outrageously, passionately, even foolishly, as if it's expected of them as artists. Again, Maya didn't seem to go for that. She knew who she was.' Harris looked down at the papers piled on his desk, snippets of drama written over the centuries, words to be spoken by students vying for their moment in the spotlight.
'At least I thought she did.'
CHAPTER 7
When I got back to the office, Jenn was slumped in her chair looking utterly downcast. If the cloud over her head had been any blacker, the room would have been filling with the smell of ozone.
'How bad?' I asked.
'Bad enough to go through the apartment of a girl who killed herself,' she said. 'But to do it with her mother… I can't tell you how many times she cried. My shoulders must be soaking wet.'
'Sorry you had to do it.'
'You are not. You're just relieved it wasn't you.'
'I won't argue. So what was her place like?'
Jenn sipped from a cup of tea. 'Neat for a student. Well organized. Nice enough furniture but nothing too fancy. A step above the usual garage sale look. Lots of film posters and theatre books. Lots of music.'
'Anything stand out?'
'One thing,' she said. 'The kind that makes you go, 'What's wrong with this picture?' Her bed was made. I stood in her bedroom, wondering who makes their bed in the morning and kills themselves at night?'
'Maybe someone tidied up after.'
'Nope. Marilyn said no one has touched anything since she died. Everything's exactly as it was when they found her.'
'What else?'
'She had a laptop but Marilyn didn't know the log-on or email passwords.'
'We can get around those.'
'I told her that. She let me take it, as long as we share everything with her once we get in.'
'You bring it to Karl?' Karl Thomson owned a shop called Hard Driver, and had helped us set up our computers when we opened our agency. He could crack passwords the way other men crack wise.
'I dropped it off on the way here. He said he'll call later today or first thing tomorrow.'
'What about her phones?'
'A land line and a cell. Luckily they both stored recent calls, incoming and outgoing.' She passed a handwritten list across the desk, with one number circled. 'She got nearly a dozen calls on both phones from this one the week before she died. Called it a lot too.'
'Cherchez l'homme?' I asked.
'Let's call and find out.'
I dialled the number and turned on the speaker. After three rings, a male answered.
'Hi,' I said. 'Who's this?'
'You called me, you should know,' he said. 'This a sales call?'
'No. It's about a girl named Maya Cantor.'
'Aw, geez. She's the one who, um…'
'Yes. Someone at this number called her a lot.'
'Not me, man. My roommate.'
'What's his name?'
'I don't know if I should give that out. Who are you?'
'My name is Jonah Geller. I'm working for her family. Trying to find out a little more about why she killed herself. Was your roommate seeing Maya?'
'Seeing like in dating? No, man, I don't think they had that going on. Look, tell you what. Leave your number and I'll give it to Will. He wants to call you back, it's up to him.'
I wrote 'Will' on the paper next to the number.
'Tell me something. Is he a theatre student too?'
'Will? Get out. He's in enviro studies. Aw shit, I shouldn't be telling you any of this. Ask him yourself if he calls you back.' And he hung up. Jenn used the phone in the front room, working through her list of Maya's friends. I searched a media database for news accounts of the Harbourview project and found one critic repeatedly quoted: a developer named Gordon Avrith, president of a company called SkyHigh Development, which was building a sixty- storey tower at Bay and King.
When I told his secretary I was calling about the Birkshire Harbourview, she put me right through.
'What's your interest in the project?' he asked.
'Not quite sure yet,' I said.
