The Eye of the Beholder Read online

  “At any rate, if he has to take the photos physically, every hour, you can determine his alibi. Count the stills and see if he could have skipped off to Mexico over the weekend.”

  Steve laughed. “We are totally on the same wave length. That is exactly what I said to Iain.”

  I wasn’t so sure it was much of an alibi in an age where you could start your dinner from your smartphone across the city. Why not time cameras to take photos on the hour? Wasn’t that the principle of time-lapse photography? I wondered what had made Iain so quick to believe the fellow.

  “Do you think Iain’s acceptance of the boyfriend’s alibi has something to do with his not having been near the crime site? Maybe it just doesn’t feel real to him?”

  “I think it’s more likely to have something to do with the boyfriend’s demeanor. Iain is moved by earnestness, I think, more so than he might believe.”

  “So, you’re thinking it’s not the boyfriend, oh bother, does he have a name, this boyfriend? I am sick of calling someone ‘the boyfriend’ over and over.”

  “Is that why you finally married me? So you could start calling me ‘the husband’?” Steve said, teasingly. “Kristin Perry’s boyfriend’s name is…” he flipped open his notebook to find the detail he was looking for, “Cole Vandermeer. He is twenty-two, six foot two, blond, and in his second year of Art and Design. He transferred in after doing three years of a poli sci degree, which is an interesting move when you think about it.”

  “Lots of artists are highly political,” I shrugged. “Just think about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. They were active Marxists.”

  “I suppose,” Steve agreed grudgingly. “It just seems like a leap, especially in one’s final year, to start all over in something so completely different.”

  “Maybe it’s not about changing so much as not finishing. Some people get frightened of leaving academe and facing the real world, so they change majors and burrow in.”

  “Or they could just be finding their way. I’ve always thought we ask a lot of twenty-year-olds to determine what course they want to set for the rest of their lives.”

  “At least we are asking them now. In earlier generations, children knew they’d be going into the family business, or they were apprenticed at the age of twelve to learn a trade or a craft. Nowadays, we tell children they can be anything they want to be from the day they are born, and send them off to make their own mistakes.”

  “Mistakes?”

  “Or great discoveries. The point is, when decisions are made for you, you can either rail against them or tuck in and make your mark in that field. But the additional pressure of determining what your path will be is taken off your shoulders, and in some ways I can see that being a great weight removed.”

  “Don’t forget that in that same time you’re thinking of, it was more likely that you’d have married someone your father picked out for you, based on whether or not he coveted the grazing land your father-in-law had for his sheep.”

  “Yes, and if I had been part of an arranged marriage, I’d likely be celebrating my thirtieth wedding anniversary surrounded by children and possibly even a grandchild by this time, rather than my honeymoon, so way to make me feel like I’ve let down the population.”

  “Do you mind that?”

  “What?”

  “Not having children and increasing the population.” Steve had come around the island to my side, and wrapped his arms around me. I leaned back into his chest, and closed my eyes.

  “That was a door I closed a long time ago, Steve. If I had been hell bent on having kids, I probably would have figured out a way to get married sometime in my twenties, don’t you think? It’s not so easy for academics, or those of us who wanted the life. If you find someone in academe, the chances of both of you finding work in the same university are crazy small. I can think of only about four instances, and in one case it was a job-sharing scheme. On the other hand, finding a partner who isn’t in grad school while you’re beavering away on research or a thesis is also a crapshoot. So, it is honestly one of those forks in the road you have to decide on. After all, my biological clock was timing out when I decided to go back to grad school, and that was a couple of years before I even met you.”

  Steve squeezed me in a tighter bear hug.

  “And I am so glad I met you, Randy Craig.”

  I reached my arms up behind me to catch Steve’s head and bring it down to my level so I could kiss him.

  “What about you? Did you never dream of kids and a white picket fence?”

  “Not so much. I’ve told you about the girl I dated once I was out of university, who seemed to be pressuring us to move through all the requisite hoops so much that I just balked. After that, I sort of steered clear of entanglements for awhile, and aside from a date or two here and there, it was a lot easier to be single. And then I met you, and I didn’t even know I was going to. I had jotted down your name and thought I was heading off to meet a male lecturer. I even had you penciled in on my suspect list until I met you.”

  “Really? You never told me that before. That’s so sweet. We should have found a way to make that part of our vows!”

  Steve laughed and tickled me just enough to make me wiggle out of his hold and turn around on my stool.

  “Have you eaten all you wanted? Should I be bustling about getting my husband a salad and dessert to go with the pizza, which I note you’ve not had much of? At least not by the standards of your appetite last week.”

  “I’m honestly too bushed to eat any more. What I would really like to do is take my wife to bed.”

  “Oh, well that can certainly be arranged.”

  “And there you go, being married is so much better than being single.”

  14

  It was just after noon on Friday that I managed to record all my grades onto the spreadsheet I maintained. At the end of the term, the final tallies would have to be entered the computer program the university favoured, but I would keep my grade sheet for two years, bundled with the eventual class evaluations and a copy of the original syllabus.

  No one had ever come back after final grades to question their various marks, but it was wise to keep records, I supposed. I had heard of such complaints. My students were usually pretty aware of how they were doing, because I pushed myself to get their papers graded quickly and back to them within a class or two. I wanted them to be building on the comments I had painstakingly made on their previous work, to better their next efforts.

  And mostly it wasn’t in vain. Some of them soared, even within the timeframe of a full term course. And some of them had gone on to “Do great things,” as the University of Alberta was now promoting as its motto. Maybe it was the modern motto, while Quaecumque Vera, or “Whatsoever Things are True,” was still the traditional motto, like the double list of traditional versus modern anniversary gifts you could find listed on the Internet or in Hallmark stores. Copper or desk sets, china or platinum, truth or action.

  MacEwan University’s motto was “Through learning, we flourish” and it was pretty accurate, too. One of my former Grant MacEwan students now worked at the University of Alberta Press, a job I wouldn’t have minded myself. Another was a freelance writer whose byline I saw all over the place, even in the airplane magazine on our way down to Puerto Vallarta. I took a modicum of pride in thinking I had helped them hone their craft and style in some small way. Of course, for all I knew, others of my past students were racing about breaking grammar rules with glorious impunity and sneering at their distant English class as something they’d had to endure but not retain.

  Marking always seemed to drop me into this introspective chasm. The concrete proof of whether or not my teaching was reaching the classes who sat so politely before me had a tendency to make me question myself.

  Denise was, as always, more cavalier. She had phoned to invite me to tea at a place on Wh
yte Avenue that she was longing to try, and had to listen to my train of thought first.

  “If you really want to know how you’re doing, check your grades. Take away the top mark and the lowest mark, because those are your outliers—they already came to you fully formed—brilliant or dense. Now look at the number of those who are clocking in above 60 per cent. Now, count the number below that. Is the first number higher? Right. Now do the same thing for the previous mark for the same class. Has that number increased? Right. You’re a great teacher. Now go get dressed. I’m picking you up in half an hour.”

  It did sound like a lovely way to cap the last of Reading Week, so I obligingly nestled all my papers into my work satchel and toddled off to get ready to go out into the world. I texted Steve my plans, which was the modern equivalent of leaving a note, but just to be certain, I left a note on the counter, too.

  Denise pulled up to the half circle driveway in front of our condo building spot on the half hour, and I was ready to hop into her car. I missed her cream coloured Bug, but her new car was just as stylish. It looked like a Mini Cooper on steroids, and was racing green with a white line along one side. The front seats had heating, and I felt immediately cozy.

  Denise gave my arm a quick squeeze, the in-car equivalent to a greeting hug, and grinned at me.

  “You look fabulous! Not many newlyweds actually come home with a tan, you know. So, tell me everything!”

  She pulled out onto Saskatchewan Drive and within a few turns was soon cruising down Whyte Avenue toward Calley’s Teas. She found parking on the street because it was a Friday rather than a weekend, but even so seemed to be a minor miracle, and soon we were ensconced in a warm and inviting wee tea shop, where a variety of mismatched tables were laden with tiered serving trays and cozy-covered teapots.

  “I don’t suppose my Reading Week was as exciting as yours. All that happened here was that the boiler at my condo went on the fritz, and we all had to spend two days keeping our ovens on with the doors open and space heaters blowing to keep the pipes from freezing while the plumbers replaced it. I looked like the Michelin Man in the middle of my living room, in sweats, and wooly socks, and a down-filled parka. I might as well have gone skiing. But it’s all fixed now and aside from a spider plant that seems to have caught a chill, everything is fine.” Denise picked at one of the fairy cakes and took a sip of tea.

  “But what about you? Tell me everything. I have been wondering about Puerto Vallarta all my life, after reading about Elizabeth Taylor’s romance with Richard Burton.”

  “It’s still there, I think, even though the Hotel Zone has grown up along the beach all the way to the marina, and huge cruise ships come right into port. The old town streets are still cobbled. The area where Taylor and Burton had connected villas, which was called Gringo Gulch, is now considered a traditional area, because newer million dollar villas have been built all along the coastline and up the hills south of town. It’s totally charming, and absolutely focused on making tourists and long-term visitors happy. There is a rather large ex-pat community there made up of retired Canadians and Americans, so it’s easy to find English spoken anywhere.”

  I presented her with her embroidered top, which she loved, and then pulled out my phone to show her some of my photos. Denise oohed and ahhed appropriately at my sunset photos, and asked the sort of questions that made her sound truly interested in our vacation, rather than merely polite.

  When we got to the photo of what I now knew was a picture of a crime scene, she paused, catching on what I had initially seen myself.

  “What a strange place to be sun tanning alone,” she remarked. “Is there a hotel or condo nearby?”

  “Not that close,” I shook my head. “The closest condo is over the bridge I was standing on, so you’d have to cross the bridge halfway, take the stairs down, and make your way to the sandy spit. Then it’s a walk through a stony area and sort of a dank bit under the bridge to get there. Usually, we would spot people fishing off the spit, but this was the only sunbather.” I looked around the teashop to be certain we couldn’t be overheard.

  “And it turned out she wasn’t sunbathing. She had been murdered and posed that way. She was found a day later, in that same pose. I just took her picture coincidentally. Steve was called in to connect on the case because it turns out she was from Edmonton, so there isn’t all that much I can say more than that, but it was eerie to realize that one of my photos turned out to be valuable as a time indicator on a police case.”

  “Shut up! You went on your honeymoon and still wound up getting immersed in a homicide? What are you, some sort of murder magnet like Jessica Fletcher?” Denise laughed, and it struck me that I might not have been far off the mark in my interpretation of Iain McCorquodale’s take on the boyfriend, Cole. Somehow, because, to quote Marlowe, the crime scene was “in another country and besides the wench was dead,” it seemed less real, and therefore easier to discuss in a frivolous manner.

  But it wasn’t frivolous to me. I had seen that girl, all alone, posed as some sort of art installation of a happy tourist, but lost and dead far too soon. How could Denise feel that, though? Time and distance, and hot tea and crumpets insulated her. I couldn’t blame her for sounding unsympathetic. She wasn’t affected by it in the same way I was.

  She had slid past the photo by now, and was admiring the pool area of our hotel, which I had snapped the last day, to remind myself of that happy oasis.

  “It looks like you had a fabulous time, even with the hiccough of Steve having to work a bit. Would you go back?”

  “In a heartbeat. In fact, Steve was talking about making it an anniversary destination in a few years.”

  “Good idea! You can avoid an Edmonton winter and celebrate your anniversary. Well played, Randy.”

  Our conversation continued along the lines of what we’d been reading, what we’d be teaching, and whether or not we thought Tom Burke would make as great a Cormoran Strike in filming of the Robert Galbraith mystery novels as he had a Musketeer. Denise thought he could do anything, whereas I figured he was lovely but physically too slight. I would have rathered someone like Jamie Redknapp play Strike; he had a sportier physique, and was showing some strong acting chops, or Adam Hills, who legitimately was a one-legged actor.

  Denise offered to drive me back to the condo, but I declined in favour of popping into the K & K, a German grocery shop. We hugged properly near her car, and then I set across Whyte Avenue.

  It was mild for February, but perhaps a week in the tropics had thinned my blood. I was shivering by the time I got halfway back to Saskatchewan Drive with my groceries. I had been wearing my wooly headband inside my parka’s hood, so I hadn’t heard the buzz of my phone telling me Steve had been texting me. Of course, it wasn’t a good plan to pull out one’s phone on the street in February since smartphones had been known to freeze up and then get wonky from the cold.

  My boots had their own shelf in the front hall closet, so I couldn’t just kick them off and leave them by the door. I hung up my parka and draped my scarf over the back rail of the boot bench in the foyer to dry out from the frost my steamy breathing had created.

  I set the phone on the kitchen island and put the rye bread, veggies, and cold cuts away in the fridge and the mustard and potatoes into the pantry. I filled the kettle and clicked it on to make another pot of tea, as if I hadn’t had enough already. Once that was done, I was ready to check my messages. That was the thing about winter in the north, everything took longer because of having to either bundle up into or peel out of layers of winter wear.

  Steve had been texting to let me know he wouldn’t be home for dinner again. There had been a long conference call with the Vallarta police and the embassy lawyers, which had skewed all of Steve’s plans to interview various people connected to the dead girl back home. He had made arrangements to talk with her parents and her roommates this evening and I was not to wait
dinner for him. Luckily, I had decided to go with potato salad and cold cuts, which could keep easily.

  I worked on lecture notes while my little potatoes boiled. I mashed them up with mustard, mayonnaise, and chopped green onions and set the bowl in the fridge before leaving the kitchen to sort out my wardrobe for the week to come. My sense of smell was not the greatest and my ability to zone out and forget things on the stove was legendary, so I made it a point never to leave the kitchen unless the burners were off or a timer with a loud buzzer set.

  I set outfits together onto the back of the closet door, five of them, so that I could move on autopilot first thing in the morning and not repeat myself, wearing the same thing on a Tuesday and Thursday, to see the same students. My classroom outfits had matured a bit since I had first started teaching, but were generally based on comfort of fit, cleanness of line and pockets. I had enough to deal with being at the front of a lecture hall, knowing that if I was doing my job right to engage their minds, all eyes would be on me; I didn’t need to worry about gaping necklines or bulges.

  I cleaned up the rest of the vacation detritus, pulling out my good brush and moisturizer from my travel makeup bag, and storing it under the bathroom vanity. My suitcase was already collapsed and nestled in Steve’s larger, hard-sided case on a high shelf in the storage room off the foyer. My summery clothes had been laundered and folded by Steve, and I sadly placed them in the plastic bin with the rest of that season’s clothing in the same storage room. It was a weird feeling, all this sorting and organizing. Not only was I moving back into the actual frozen season we were all facing for another two or three months, I was doing so in a new environment, one I had been visiting for a long time but had only really occupied for a fortnight before we’d gone on our honeymoon.

  This cleaving-to-another business was a strange thing, and probably made even stranger by the fact that Steve wasn’t part of the picture at the moment. I curled up in the oversized armchair under the best reading light in the living room and enjoyed the momentary pause before diving into a new book. This was the biography of Frida Kahlo I had purchased in the bookstore across the plaza in the Old Town the morning of our last day in Vallarta.