Purple Palette for Murder

by R. J. Harlick

  The phone line was ringing when Jid placed the receiver against my ear. All I heard was the voicemail greeting. I left a message for Mikey’s mother explaining my difficulty and asked if she minded keeping the boy for a few days. I left the same message on her own phone.

  “Do you have all you need for the stay over?”

  “I need my computer and stuff for school. How long you gonna be?”

  “No idea. I’m hoping this is all a big mistake, and we’ll be returning on the next flight.”

  “Big mistake? What’s happened to Shome?”

  Oh, dear. How much should I tell him? “Shome has been arrested.”

  “You mean he’s in jail?” His eyes grew in size.

  “Yup, though by the time I get there, I’m hoping the charges will be dropped and he’ll be free to go.”

  “What did he do?”

  I hesitated. Should I pretend I don’t know? But Eric was like the father, the grandfather the boy had never had. I would have hated for him to find out from someone else. “The police think he killed someone.”

  “No!” His face filled with horror. “Not Shome! He would never kill anyone.”

  “That’s why I’m going to Yellowknife. I want to convince the police that he could never hurt anyone, let alone kill someone.”

  “I want to go too.”

  “I wish you could, but you’ll miss school.”

  “Fuck school.”

  “Jid! Your language.”

  He shrugged sheepishly.

  “Someone needs to look after Shoni and ensure Kidi is doing okay.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “So quick, get your stuff. We’ve got to leave, or I’ll miss my plane.”

  While Jid ran upstairs, I checked the front of the house to ensure the doors and windows were securely locked, then headed back to the kitchen to collect the puppy, now yelping full voice in her crate. Without thinking, I let her out the back door. It was only as I was collapsing her crate that I remembered the baby deer. But I needn’t have worried. When I opened the back door, I discovered the two of them sniffing noses. For the moment Shoni was bigger than the fawn, but in a few short months, she would be lifting her head to reach the deer.

  I gathered the dog’s food and bowls, along with her favourite ball and chew bones, and placed them at the back door beside my suitcase. I tried Mikey’s home phone and his aunt’s one more time but failed to reach anyone, which left me in a quandary. I couldn’t leave Jid and Shoni unannounced on their doorstep. I had little choice but to take him to his aunt’s house.

  Janet came to his rescue. After giving us a long lecture on the perils of removing the poor wee thing from its habitat, she offered to put up the boy and the puppy. Since the fawn had already bonded with Jid, it would be important for him to maintain this connection. Besides, she could do with the extra help in caring for the other wounded creatures. I swore Jid thought he had died and gone to heaven, he was grinning so broadly.

  With a hasty goodbye and a “Get Shome out of jail!” from Jid, I drove as fast as my ancient Ford pick-up would allow. I had two and a half hours to catch my flight. I prayed there were no traffic jams on the bridge crossing the Ottawa River and that my truck wouldn’t break down. Miraculously, the gods were listening. I slid into the airport parking lot with twenty-five minutes to spare. I ignored the angry scowl on the check-in clerk’s face as I puffed up to the counter. Once again the gods were looking out for me as I breezed through security. They were on the final boarding call for my flight by the time I reached the gate. I helped myself to a free newspaper from the stand before presenting my boarding pass and scurrying down the walkway.

  THREE

  I collapsed gasping into my seat. My heart was pounding so hard, I barely heard the announcements in both official languages. I closed my eyes and felt the plane rumble down the runway, then lift into the air.

  Eric, my love, I’m on my way. In five short hours I’ll be with you.

  I tried and failed to banish the images of him sitting in a cold, bleak cell, wearing orange, with his feet shackled. I couldn’t imagine the level of despair he would be feeling.

  Yes, I could. I was feeling it myself.

  “Would you like some coffee?” A voice cut through my thoughts.

  I opened my eyes to see the attendant peering down at me. “Some tea would be nice, with milk. Thanks.”

  Although a double vodka with tonic would be more in order.

  But I couldn’t go there. I’d been dry for almost two years, thanks to Eric. Though the urge had been overwhelming after The Nightmare, he had ensured that I didn’t come within seeing or smelling distance of alcohol of any variety, including rubbing alcohol. He had gone as far as to give up his nightly glass of single malt and remove every bottle of beer, wine, and liquor from our house. In time, the urge had waned until I rarely thought about it.

  Until now. I could almost taste the fiery comfort of the vodka sliding down my throat.

  My neighbour’s voluminous thigh brushed against my own. I flinched and tried to move beyond touching distance, in doing so rubbing against the man on the other side. I felt panic rising. I steeled myself to stay seated while I clamped my elbows into my sides and clenched my legs together until I no longer felt either neighbour. I breathed deeply, counted to a hundred, and tried to convince myself that no one was going to hurt me.

  A distraction. I needed one. Desperately. But my view outside was blocked by my well-padded neighbour hunched over her Kindle.

  Yes, reading would do the trick, but in my haste I hadn’t thought to bring a book. Then I caught sight of the newspaper jammed into the pocket in front of me. I wrenched it free, opened it, and gasped.

  Eric’s soft grey eyes stared back at me from the front page under the headline “GCFN Grand Chief Arrested For Murder.”

  Of course. As the newly elected Grand Chief of the Grand Council of First Nations, all media eyes were on him. I was so glad I’d told Jid rather than having him find out this way. But what would this do to Eric’s standing as chief? He would be shattered if forced to resign. He had worked so hard for this opportunity to help his people.

  In the photo, my husband was wearing his full re­galia and the cherished moosehide jacket once worn by his grandfather and holding the ceremonial eagle feather given to him by a former chief of the Migiskan Anishinabeg, the Algonquin community he belonged to and that he had been band chief of for over ten years. In the photo, he was beaming, having just been elected Grand Chief.

  I had willed myself to forget about The Nightmare and go with him to Vancouver to share in that moment, but at the last minute I balked. I hadn’t had it in me to plant a smile on my face and be charming to all his supporters, who would have been scrutinizing me, looking for any misstep, and wondering what kind of wife I was to such a remarkable man. He hadn’t been happy, but he’d understood.

  I had stayed glued to my computer, watching the election unfold, and had sent a congratulatory text the minute his name was announced. But it wasn’t enough. I should’ve been at his side, beaming alongside him and showing the assembly that he had his wife’s full support.

  Now this. Poor Eric. The front-page headline killed any hope of keeping the ignominy quiet. Everyone would think him a man capable of murder. I had to help him. I might not have been able to face an assembly full of supporters, but I would do what I could now to prove his innocence.

  The first thing I learned from the article was that Eric wasn’t in Yellowknife, but in a remote fly-in community by the name of Digadeh, which begged the question: What in the world was he doing there? Not wanting to burden the GCFN coffers with the high cost of northern flights, he had arranged for the chiefs of fly-in communities to meet him at the main Dene Nation offices in Yellowknife.

  The murder had apparently happened yesterday. We’d missed our daily phone call, though I
’d tried to reach him twice. I had put it down to a dead phone battery. He had a habit of forgetting to plug it in. But it looked as if he’d had another reason for not answering.

  The article merely identified the murder victim as male with his identity pending family notification. Yet the lawyer had said it was Teht’aa’s boyfriend. As far as I knew, the man lived in Yellowknife, so maybe the lawyer was mistaken.

  The article made no mention of how the man had been killed, though it did report that the RCMP weren’t looking for any other suspects, which in police-speak meant they had sufficient evidence against Eric.

  Things were going from bad to worse.

  But I didn’t know how much worse until a name embedded in a later article caught my eye. Teht’aa Bluegoose. Too used to her married last name of Tootoosis, my eyes had passed over it before I remembered that she’d reverted to her maiden name after moving to Yellowknife. Though the article didn’t make the connection to Eric, I knew it was her.

  “How Many More Native Women Need to Die Before Something Is Done?” shouted the headline. My heart sank until I read that Teht’aa was still alive. While the other two women discussed in the article had been found dead, one in Edmonton and the other in Vancouver, she had been found badly beaten and unconscious three days ago in a back alley of Yellowknife. At the time of writing, she was still in a coma at the Stanton Territorial Hospital, with her condition listed as critical.

  Three days ago! Why hadn’t Eric told me when we’d talked two days ago?

  Although the article made no link, I knew with chilling certainty that there was a connection between Teht’aa’s beating and Eric’s arrest.

  When we chatted on the phone a little over three weeks ago, she was bubbling with excitement over her new job at CBC North. She’d been lured away from the aboriginal network APTN and was scheduled to start next week as an evening news announcer for Canada’s public broadcaster. She would be devastated if this assault jeopardized her job.

  The phone call, though, had had a sombre side to it. She’d finally broken up with her boyfriend. Eric and I had seen it coming and were thankful she had finally removed the blinkers and seen the man for what he was: a bully and an abuser. He, however, didn’t want the relationship to end and had been hounding her to get back together. She’d sought her father’s advice on how to deal with him. Another reason for Eric’s trip to Yellowknife. He had intended to speak to the man and get him to leave his daughter alone.

  Something had gone horribly wrong.

  FOUR

  We landed in brilliant sun, as brilliant as the sun I’d left behind. Though it was close to seven in the evening my time, the time difference had me adjusting my watch to five o’clock. Nonetheless, the sun seemed farther from the horizon than I was used to seeing at this hour.

  After crossing the seemingly limitless expanse of Great Slave Lake, I was surprised to spy smoke rising from the forest on the shore of a bay opposite the grid of Yellowknife. During the flight, my neighbour had pointed out two other fires, remarking that it was an unusually early start to the forest fire season. She blamed it on the unseasonably hot and dry spring they were having.

  The plane landed as smoothly as it had flown and taxied up to the low single-storey airport building, easily a tenth of the size of Ottawa’s sprawling structure. The warm air hit me as I descended the staircase to the tarmac. I hastily doffed my down jacket. It looked like I wouldn’t be needing it or any of the other winter clothes I’d brought.

  I picked up my luggage under the hungry eyes of a stuffed polar bear guarding the baggage carousel and headed out the main door in search of a cab. While I waited, I called the lawyer using Eric’s spare cellphone, which I’d remembered to bring at the last moment. I didn’t reach him, so I left a message before hopping into a taxi to go directly to the hospital. Since Eric couldn’t be with his daughter, I would be there for her.

  Teht’aa and I hadn’t always been close. Our relationship had started out on a rocky footing. I was jealous, believing she was Eric’s girlfriend before discovering their true relationship. She was highly suspicious of whites and wanted her father to stop seeing me. Eventually, though, we overcame our initial animosity and became the best of friends. Considering our closeness in age, a little more than ten years apart, we were more like sisters than stepdaughter and stepmother.

  Eric had been a teenage heartthrob playing Triple A hockey in Medicine Hat. Teht’aa’s mother came from a remote Dene community in the Northwest Territories. They met at one of his games and fell in love. When she became pregnant, she fled back to her northern community and had no further contact with him. Eric never knew he had a daughter until Teht’aa, then in her twenties, approached him at a gathering. She’d been an integral part of his life ever since.

  He would be devastated if she died.

  My first view of Yellowknife whipped past the window. I’d been expecting rustic log cabins huddling under the towering trees of a northern forest. Instead I saw strip malls, big box stores, and acres of mostly empty parking lots that looked remarkably like the outskirts of any town in Canada. I caught a glimpse of the rocky shoreline of a small lake. The smooth pink granite was dotted with clumps of trees, none of which met my definition of towering.

  A quick call to Janet assured me that Jid was doing well and was being a big help, when he could be persuaded to leave Kidi’s side.

  “I think the wee thing can’t be more than a week old and would’ve died if you hadn’t brought her in. She is indeed a ‘she.’ She is readily accepting the goat’s milk Jid is feeding her. I have high hopes that she will survive.”

  “I’m so glad, and many thanks for all your help.”

  “I’m happy to do it. By the way, I heard about Eric on the news. I’m so sorry. It has to be a horrible mistake. He’s too good a man to be treated this way. I assume it is your reason for this last-minute trip.”

  I should’ve told her before I left, but I had been too focused on getting to the airport to go into lengthy explanations. By the time I disconnected the call, the cab driver was braking to a stop in front of the hospital’s main entrance. There seemed to be two main wings, three stor­eys each. stanton territorial hospital read the sign over the portico, which likely meant it served the entire Northwest Territories.

  I hopped out of the cab, pulled my suitcase out of the trunk, and headed to the door. I was so intent on seeing Teht’aa that I paid no attention to the couple standing near the entrance until it was too late.

  “Are you Meg Harris, wife of Chief Odjik?” the man asked, approaching me.

  He was dressed in what goes for business attire these days and carrying a photo of Eric and me. I assumed he was the lawyer. I acknowledged I was before noticing the woman coming up behind him holding a TV video camera with “CBC North” stamped along its side.

  The man raised his other hand to reveal a microphone. “Are you at the hospital to see his daughter, Teht’aa Bluegoose?”

  Somewhat nonplussed, I wasn’t certain I should answer, then decided it couldn’t do any harm. “Yes, I am.”

  “Can you give us an update on her condition?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know.” I felt the breeze nudge my hair, way overdue for a cut. I tucked wayward strands behind my ears in an attempt to look presentable. “As you can see, I’ve only just arrived. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to go inside to see her.”

  The two of them blocked my way.

  “Do you believe there is a connection between her assault and the death of her boyfriend? I assume you know your husband has been arrested for his murder.”

  Time to go. Clamping my lips shut and holding my head down, I barged my way through using my suitcase as a battering ram. I didn’t care what it looked like on film.

  “Do you think your husband is guilty?” he shouted.

  I pushed the door open and sighed with relief at the
silence when it clicked closed behind me.

  “Are you okay, dear?” the grey-haired lady in a mauve angora sweater behind the reception counter asked as I approached. “I hope they didn’t bother you too much. They’ve been standing there since I came on an hour ago.”

  “I’m fine, just glad they didn’t follow me inside.”

  “Oh, they could never do that. They aren’t allowed. I have the strictest orders to call security if they do. So what can I do for you, dear?”

  “I’d like to know which room Teht’aa Bluegoose is in.”

  “I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to give out that information. Only to family.” A marked chill descended.

  “But I am family.”

  She surveyed me carefully. “Are you sure, dear?”

  “Look, I’m her stepmother. She is the daughter of my husband.”

  “What is his name?” She consulted a piece of paper.

  “Eric Odjik.”

  “Can I see your identification?”

  Drat. All my identification was in my name. Though I had wanted to change my name to his, Eric had objected, saying it was traditional for Algonquin woman to keep their own names in marriage.

  Fortunately, I remembered that my dental plan card was under Eric’s name. I showed it to her.

  “That’s perfect, dear. You can never be too careful. Your stepdaughter is in the Intensive Care Unit on the third floor. I hope she is going to be okay. I hear she is in a bad way. Such a beautiful young woman. I enjoy watching her on the television. Give her my best, will you, dear?”

  After thanking her, I followed her directions to the elevator. On the third floor I encountered the same scrutiny. But since I had already been through it once, I was prepared.

  “She is only allowed two visitors at a time,” the nurse said. “Since she only has one at the moment, it will be okay for you to go in.”