The Eye of the Beholder

by Janice Macdonald

  Steve heard the oven chime to let me know the meatloaf was ready, cleared up his laptop, and padded off to wash up for supper. I served from the stove, and brought our plates to the dining room table. My reading lamp from the living room cast enough of a glow to make dining by candlelight possible, since it was already dark outside, and the lights across the river marking our city skyline were visible from the windows.

  I don’t think I would ever get tired of that view. Supposedly, television shows requiring a Midwestern city would often use our Edmonton skyline because it was so attractive, shining against the big blue sky, or in this case, twinkling against the big indigo sky.

  Steve snuck up behind me, standing with my hands on the back of the dining room chair, and put his arms around me.

  “Happy honeymoon, Wife.”

  “Happy honeymoon, Husband.”

  “This smells divine.”

  “Well, dig in, and don’t worry, there is more.”

  “That always sounds like a challenge, as well as a comfort.”

  Cooking for Steve was one of the most satisfying chores because he was always so appreciative. He smiled at me as he closed his mouth on a fork-full of meatloaf and reached for my hand with his free one. Romantic dining in Edmonton wasn’t quite the same thing as on a moonlit patio in Mexico, listening to the surf on the beach and watching the sun set to opera music. Still, sitting with a good man across from me and good food before me was a lot more than most people could expect in life, and I was intensely grateful. Love was something one should never take for granted.

  “So far, so good?” Steve’s voice cut through my reverie.

  “What? Sorry, I was drifting.”

  “I could see you clicking through our new situation. You were thinking about how different it is even though we have been eating together on and off for, yea, these many years?

  “Does it feel different to you, too? I was thinking about the shift between the honeymoon and home, but you’re right. It’s like we’ve slid into a different gear, even though we’ve been driving in the same direction all along.”

  “Ooh, car allusions. What a great segue into what I was going to propose for tomorrow.”

  I perked up.

  “What?”

  “How would you like to go out for a drive and some snowshoeing near Elk Island Park tomorrow, as long as it’s not too windy?”

  The thought of crisp snow, sunshine, hot cocoa in a thermos, and the possibility of seeing a bison or two sounded terrific. It was great to have a tiny National Park within an hour’s drive of town, with trails and camping and picnic sites enough to allow everyone a taste of nature without too unwieldy a road to get there.

  We watched a couple of episodes of a police procedural series that Steve found relaxing, because the anachronisms and inaccuracies made him laugh. Whenever DNA evidence would be returned immediately, he would make a bleating air horn noise to protest, and various set phrases the desk sergeant made would elicit guffaws. Thank god the condo was pretty well soundproofed or our neighbours would have started to wonder about us.

  “I’m torn between wanting shows like that to be more accurate and wanting them to show slightly less in the way of educating incipient criminals on how not to get caught. Of course, it helps that the criminally-minded are generally not that bright.”

  “I’ve often wondered about that, too. My theory is that the police should set a watch on how many people buy shovels, hacksaws, tarps and bleach all at the same time.”

  Steve laughed.

  “And we’d be profiling a lot of arborists and renovators.”

  “Right, I never thought of that. I’m too focused on the television body dump people.”

  We cleaned up the kitchen together, and headed to bed. I had already claimed my side of the bed on our years of sleepovers, but it was still so strange to walk around to the right of the large bed and see my book on the sidetable, and my slippers beside it.

  We rolled over to face each other mid-bed, and Steve pushed my hair back from my face gently while I stared into his warm brown eyes.

  “One more day, and then it’s back to reality.”

  “Reality 2.0. I’ll walk a longer way back from campus. You’ll take a packed lunch with you on your shift. We’ll have someone to immediately relate our day to every evening.”

  “You cut right to the essentials, Randy.”

  “I do my best.”

  “This has been a great adventure already.”

  “You mean our honeymoon accented by a murder investigation which followed us home?”

  “No, I mean our life together, from the minute it began.”

  As I recalled, the first thing I had done upon meeting Steve was throw up in response to the news he had brought me, so the fact he was focusing on “from the minute our lives began” had a worrisome edge to things. I leaned in to kiss him on the nose and then the lips.

  “Have you set your alarm for the morning? If we want to get out to Elk Island before the rest of the non-church going heathens, we’ll need an early start.”

  “You’re right. And yes, I did.” Steve kissed me again, and rolled over onto his back. “Sweet dreams, love.”

  “Same to you,” I said, just like my mother and father had always said to me, and each other, savouring the tradition as I settled into my perfect pillow and went immediately to sleep.

  17

  Alberta may be considered part of the Great White North and cold as hell in the winter, but one thing the prairies and aspen parkland offer in recompense is a blue, sunny sky that stretches for miles. Combined with the sparkling snow, the sheer brilliance of the day reminded me of noon hour on the beach in Mexico. I had used the tail end of my sunscreen from our trip to make sure my nose and chin didn’t burn on our outing.

  You wear sunglasses year round in Edmonton, first off because it’s the second sunniest city in Canada, losing out to Calgary by an average of eight days, and because in the winter, that sun is positioned in the sky at an angle to always be right in your eyes.

  Steve had packed the snowshoes and poles, and brought our winter hikers out from the back of the closet while I made cocoa, poured it into the big thermos, and packed it with the sandwiches, chocolates, and bananas in my backpack. I also packed wet wipes in a resealable sandwich bag, and a small garbage bag for anything we might want to toss in one of the big bins near the picnic site.

  Elk Island National Park was only about half an hour past the edge of town, but it seemed kilometres away once you swung into the entrance and slowed your car and your heartbeat onto park time. The park on the north side of the highway was the part which welcomed people, the rest was still a large animal preserve.

  It had started out more than 100 years ago as a preserve for one of the last elk herds in the province and became one of Canada’s twenty-two National Parks in 1930. There were two or three camping areas, one of which was even organized for people without tents and camp stoves of their own, and oodles of walking trails. There were some historic buildings of early settlers, preserved for mostly educational programming, and a small golf course and clubhouse tucked away at one end of the main lake.

  A boardwalk out over the marshy end of Astotin Lake offered information signs about the fish and insects beneath, and a bison paddock let you drive slowly through an enclosure where you might be able to see and photograph accommodating bison. Chances were, of course, that you might come across a bison or two on the hiking and skiing paths, which a park warden had once laughingly told me the bison assumed had been created and maintained entirely for their pleasure.

  In the summertime, we came out for picnics and to watch the sailboarders glide and splash in the lake. We never had camped over; Steve and I had both agreed a long time ago that hell was being trapped in a tent with a mosquito. But we liked to come out for a day’s enjoyment; hiking in the summer,
and using the same groomed trails in the winter to snowshoe or cross-country ski.

  I had found my sport in snowshoeing now that the new aluminum styles had been developed. They were easy to get into, and walking in them was pretty straightforward, rather than the wide-legged duck walk I had used when snowshoeing with my grandfather in the gut-strung elongated tennis rackets he purchased from a Dene trapper friend. While he mainly used them to maintain an eye on his fences and check the state of the stream that ran through his lower forty over winter, he would pull them out whenever we went out to the farm to visit, and my dad and I would usually waddle out in his wake, while my mother would laugh and take photos from the kitchen window where she would stay and visit with her mother.

  Years later, when Steve had surprised me with snowshoes, I had cringed, thinking of my graceless progress over the snow, but within minutes of strapping the smaller aluminum ovals onto my boots, I had felt the freedom they brought. Displacing your weight meant that you didn’t sink into snowdrifts, and you could walk with ease across snowy expanses, opening up the winter for exploration. We had done a trip to Marble Canyon the winter before, when we’d been staying for a long weekend in Banff, and strolled along amid small trees recovering from a forest fire some years before. It was only when we got back to the hotel and I was flipping through some postcards on the rack that I realized we’d been strolling along about eight or nine feet above ground level and that those small trees were actually fifteen feet tall, not four or five feet as I had thought.

  Elk Island didn’t get that sort of snow, usually, and the trails were mostly maintained for skiers to get through, so we wouldn’t be hovering above the trees anywhere, but it would be nice to make the journey without turning an ankle along uneven snowy paths.

  We pulled into the small parking area for the Beaverpond Trail, which was one of my favourites because you didn’t have to retrace your steps—it brought you back to where you’d begun. Even in the mountains, where the vistas were pronouncedly different from every angle, going back along the same trail made me a bit anxious since it always seemed we’d gone a lot further than I’d been reckoning.

  Steve opted for a counter-clockwise trail, and since there was no one else in the parking lot, we could do as we liked. I pulled on my backpack after transferring the heavy thermos to his, and we strapped on our snowshoes, his blue and mine red. Soon, we were strolling along, listening to bird song and glorying in the morning.

  “This time a few days ago, we were heading off to that food tour in shorts and sandals,” Steve mused. “Hard to believe, eh?”

  “Well, aside from a few layers of wool and neoprene, and a distinct lack of tequila, it’s much the same thing. We’re doing as we like, we’re together, and the sun is shining.”

  Steve pointed across the pond, where a moose was walking in the snow, his long awkward legs looking much more graceful and purposeful as they stepped up and into the drifts.

  “And the things we spot along our walk aren’t dead,” I whispered, although I doubted we would startle the moose. Animals in National Parks seem very aware that their protection is the primary concern. While I wouldn’t want to get close to a bear or even an unpredictable moose or bison, from this distance I was happy to admire and leave him alone.

  Steve paused to get a photo on his phone, and then stopped to read the messages he’d been ignoring since it was ostensibly his day off. He dashed off a couple of text messages and then, frowning, put his phone back in his inner pocket. Smartphones didn’t do too well in extreme weather, and though it was sunny, it was still well below freezing. He popped his gloves back on and turned to smile at me.

  “Trouble from work?” I asked, even though I didn’t particularly want to hear the answer.

  “Nothing that can’t wait a few hours,” he said, and on we walked to get to the bench near the beaver lodge, where I had planned to stop. We pulled out the sandwiches and cocoa, and ate and drank quickly, in order to get our hands back into our gloves as quickly as possible. The heat of the cocoa through the plastic mugs I’d brought along warmed the palms of my hands, and the sun on my face was welcoming. I heard Steve sigh beside me, and realized he was just as content here as he had been beside the pool in our hotel. I admired that about him, that he could find the pleasure of relaxation wherever he went. Maybe cops learned how to do that, to turn on and off their minds when they could, to preserve whatever peace they came across.

  It didn’t work that way for me. Even here, in this white and pristine area so different from the sandy Playa de los Muertos, I was still mulling over the imprinted memory of seeing Kristin Perry lying there.

  “Why do you think they killed her and positioned her where they did?” I asked. There was no need to explain to whom I was referring. I was betting those messages had been about Kristin.

  “I don’t know yet. But they’ve determined she was killed there. The blood loss indicates the body hadn’t been moved and placed there. There were traces of a barbiturate of some sort, which probably means she was drugged, and placed on the beach, and then stabbed. Someone must have had the knowledge of where to pierce in order for her to bleed out without being a gusher. That would suggest some anatomical knowledge. The blood saturated her red bathing suit and the towel, which had been white. There were no trails away from the towel, so the perpetrator wasn’t catching any blood spatter.”

  “Her hat was placed over her face, I presume really wedged on so it wouldn’t fly away, and her bag was beside her shoulder, her water bottle was in her hand.”

  “Yep, she looked as if she had fallen asleep while tanning. We have no one who seems to have even noticed her before you took the photo of her, but then again, that spit is used only for amateur fishermen and children, so no one would have been there at dawn to catch anything.”

  “I had thought that she must have come from one of the smaller hotels or condos along the river, maybe one that didn’t have much of a pool access or patio.”

  “But we know her hotel was well away down the beach. She would have had to take a cab downtown to get there on her own, and none of the cab drivers recall a young woman alone early in the morning. In fact, that was one of the messages this morning. Inspector Rodriguez has been keeping me informed of their progress.”

  “So, you think she separated from her girlfriends the night before, and was drugged and laid out there and killed some time before dawn the following day, or at least before people started to walk the beach.”

  “It would have had to be before dawn. Apparently, there are beach cleaners for the bigger hotels who get out before six a.m. to smooth out the areas in front of their properties. There are regular joggers. And, the folks who run the kiosks on the island come from both ends to set up each morning. It would have been a risk to be out there later than dawn.”

  “And a risk to set up too soon beforehand, or she would look way out of place.”

  “Right. One thing is that placing her on that spit of land under the bridge allows for people to see her from the bridge, but not necessarily come upon her if beach jogging, since the water is pretty deep right there. They usually either turn around when they get to the River Cuale, or they head up to the bridge, and over, before heading back to the beach on the other side. So, situating her there was a carefully planned statement.”

  “If only we knew what they were trying to say, we might figure out who was saying it.”

  “Yes. Did they pick her specifically because she was Kristin Perry, or did they just need someone who would fit into the red bathing suit?”

  “You said a copy of the Frida Kahlo book was in her bag.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it her bag?”

  “Well, it had a change purse with her hotel key in it, and some postcards.”

  “Those are things that might be in her evening purse. Maybe they tossed those in to make it easy to identify her.”

>   “Okay, so everything is purchased except the change purse and maybe the book.”

  “Why would she take a book on an evening’s outing?”

  “You take a book everywhere.”

  “Not everywhere; I don’t think I’d take a book to a nightclub.”

  Steve reached over to my backpack sitting by my feet, and opened it. Rummaging past the bag of sandwich detritus, he pulled out a paperback copy of Mary Russell’s War.

  “This is not a nightclub.”

  We laughed at my feeble attempt to get out of my own argument, but I noticed that Steve was making a note to himself on his phone. Perhaps he would check with her roommates whether Kristin had bought or brought a book on Frida Kahlo with her when they went out on the town.

  We packed up our packs and headed on the circle trail back to the parking lot. We passed and nodded to two clockwise skiers, and noted three more cars in the lot by the time we got there.

  Steve drove us back to town, and I daydreamed in the passenger seat, wondering how many of my students would notice the ring on my finger or detect anything different in my demeanour.

  “What’s that you’re humming?” Steve asked me.

  I paused to think, and then laughed and sang the words to the song from Funny Girl that had been accompanying my thoughts.

  “Sadie, Sadie, married lady…”

  Steve laughed.

  “Looking forward to referring to your husband in sentences?”

  “Exactly. What about you?”

  “Oh, I have already mentioned that I had to ‘get back to the wife.’”

  “And what did anyone say?”

  “They applauded,” Steve admitted, blushing a bit.

  I giggled.

  “Are we too old to be feeling this way?”

  “Nah, I’ll bet people who get married in nursing homes feel the same way. It’s normal to revel in the novelty of it all.”