Final Grave Page 5

  “Forget it, Tony,” Mendiola said. “She’s a visiting detective here on a case, not interested in the likes of you.”

  Tony’s ears reddened, though he didn’t turn away.

  “Good luck with your business,” she said.

  Mendiola cranked the engine.

  “Thanks, Jack. Thanks very much.” Tony slapped the hood and stepped back. When the Blazer rolled past he was still watching her.

  # # #

  Meri Ann drove down Sylvan Street through a countrified section of South Boise on her way to Aunt Pauline’s. No curbs or gutters in this part of town, and here and there concrete ditches for irrigation. Back when small farmers owned the land, they flooded their yards with the cheap canal water by opening and closing a system of small gates in the ditches. Some still watered their lawns this way. Frugal Pauline for one.

  Meri Ann drove slowly, looking for the sprawling, robin’s-egg blue homestead, amazed when she found it unchanged.

  She parked, sat for a minute, her eye on a black cat curled on welcome mat beside the front door. She’d known Cookie from the time he was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.

  Pauline’s front gate squeaked and Cookie lifted his head. The ancient tom’s once sleek coat had given way to dull clumped fur. She hurried to him, let him sniff the back of her hand before she petted the spot between his ragged ears. “You’re so fat, Cookie.”

  He stood and rubbed against her pant leg. She was still petting him when the door opened.

  Pauline stood on the other side of a screen door, her rigid image grayed by the metal hatching. Her frosted hair hadn’t changed much. It curled tightly around her long face. She fingered the single strand of Mikimoto pearls she’d always worn, though now they accentuated the wrinkles at her neck.

  “So here you are after all these years, Meri Ann, a grown woman.” Her aunt’s lips gathered into a knot. “And how may I ask is my brother?”

  “Dad’s comfortable, still able to walk to dinner.”

  “What a terrible thing.” Pauline opened the door. “Well, don’t stand there on the porch. Come inside, dear.”

  Meri Ann kissed her cool cheek, hugged her. It was like hugging a pine tree.

  With the shades drawn, the formal living room was dark and the air heavy with the scent of cloves and rose-petal potpourri. Cookie and Meri Ann padded along behind Pauline, across the worn carpet to an arch of light that led into the kitchen.

  The smell of boiled coffee filled her head. It was the only kind Pauline made. “Reminds me of Christmas,” Meri Ann murmured.

  “You spent quite a few holidays here in this house.” She turned off the burner under the pot as they passed. “I made sandwiches in case you wanted lunch. But I suppose you’ve already eaten with your… your funny friend.”

  Meri Ann took a deep breath and held it, determined not to take umbrage with her aunt on this short visit.

  “I always knew she was queer,” Pauline went on. “And I can’t imagine why a normal girl keeps a friend like that. I warned your father, but what did he do? But then, what did John ever do?”

  “Aunt Pauline, please.”

  “Don’t get on your high horse. Let me remind you, Uncle Bruce and I paid John’s college tuition. And still my ungrateful brother turned against me, said Bruce’s money had changed me.”

  Pauline had married a prominent attorney from old Boise money, who died of a heart attack five years later. She cherished, worshipped, bragged about every inherited dime. She wore her parsimony as proudly as her pearls or her two-carat diamond engagement ring.

  “Dad’s never said a word against you.”

  Pauline pointed to the kitchen table, set with cups and saucers and dessert plates. A golden cake dusted with powdered sugar sat to the side. It smelled of vanilla.

  “Sit down. My fight’s not with you, Meri Ann. You might look like your mother, but you’re a Dunlap through and through.”

  Meri Ann’s control was wearing thin. “Was your fight with my mother?”

  “No sense dredging up dirty laundry.”

  Yet her aunt’s tone implied she would love to dredge something. “What are you talking about?”

  Pauline carried the coffeepot to the table. Steam rose in a ribbon from the spout as she poured out two cups. “I’d have canceled my bridge game if you’d given me notice. But then, you didn’t come to see me, did you?”

  “Don’t change the subject, Pauline.”

  “First, tell me why you came.”

  “The sheriff’s office wants to update their files to include DNA profiles. They need a sample of Mom’s hair.” The truth, Meri Ann reasoned, though not the whole truth.

  “You poor girl,” Pauline said. What that woman made you suffer.”

  “Mother never hurt anyone, certainly not me. She always had time for others. You especially. Mom cooked and cleaned for you after your surgery, a good month. A year later she did it again, got you on your feet when Uncle Bruce died. You’ve got some nerve.”

  “Watch your temper. I’m your aunt and I won’t be scolded. Anyway, Miss High and Mighty, you were too young to see her as a woman. And Joanna was a woman, down to her painted toenails.”

  Meri Ann took a deep breath, shook her head. “First you pick a fight with Dad and now my dead mother.”

  “Do we know she’s dead? No, we don’t. Just hear me out. Joanna had a sultry way about her. Pretty, I’ll grant you, if you were partial to Farrah Fawcett styled hair. And men were drawn to her. That’s a fact.” Pauline stirred her tea, slowly. “Who’s to say she didn’t just walk away? Wouldn’t you feel better knowing she’d run off with a lover, like your homosexual friend’s father did?”

  Meri Ann’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  “Why not? Joanna volunteered with that strange man at the bird sanctuary.” Pauline’s chest puffed as she gathered steam. “I think he was sweet on her. And then she worked with those engineers. All men. I told John, that was trouble.”

  “Mom loved Dad,” Meri Ann cried. “She only went to work when Dad got laid off. Sure he was jealous, but he was out of work and frustrated, probably because she had somewhere to go every day and he didn’t.”

  Meri Ann reached for her backpack, pulled out a check. “Here’s our quarterly payment for the storage. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to look through Mom’s boxes.”

  Pauline glanced at the amount before tucking it into her pocket. Under normal circumstances, Meri Ann would have laughed this off as typical Pauline. Today, she cringed, tempted to snatch back the check and tear it in pieces.

  “Your father was wrong to leave Boise,” Pauline said. “What happened wasn’t his fault, but he wouldn’t hear a word about Joanna. He just packed up and moved to Florida, as though he couldn’t get far enough away. It cut me to the quick.”

  No doubt Aunt Pauline’s hurt was real. But so was her own and her father’s. She wiped a weary hand across her forehead and glanced out the window at a two-story workshop set perpendicular to the house. She stared at the concrete steps leading down to the cellar door.

  “Can we go now?”

  Chapter Eight

  Meri Ann stood on the top stair leading down into the cavernous cellar.

  “When you were a little thing, you refused to come here alone.” Pauline’s tone had warmed, slightly.

  “I remember.” Meri Ann descended the cement steps as she’d done long ago, a child eager for the cherry ice cream her aunt kept in the standing freezer at the cellar’s far end. It might have been gold from Fort Knox the way Pauline had guarded it.

  Meri Ann waited while her aunt found the light cord. One click and voila: Pauline’s very own basement convenience store came to life.

  Twelve-foot-high shelves lined the walls. One side held canned hams,
chili, box after box of elbow macaroni, and other staples. Ball and Kerr jars lined the other side. They gleamed in the overhead light with picture-perfect peaches, tomatoes, and Pauline’s spicy corn relish, a confetti of green, yellow, and red, a colorful country cupboard—everything imaginable. But no sign of the boxes Meri Ann had packed with her dad fifteen years ago.

  “Where are Mom’s things?”

  “If you hadn’t been off gallivanting with your friend, you’d know.” She snorted indignantly. “John and I put everything away.”

  “It wasn’t my fault, Pauline. I didn’t know we were leaving until that morning. Dad decided on a whim. You know how he was?”

  Her aunt strode to the far end of the room. “Yes, indeed. I know very well what your father went through.”

  On either side of the freezer were two built-in walnut bookcases. Finely crafted with crown molding, they were suitable for the most elegant home, but out of place in the basement. Pauline kept her paperback books here, her name inscribed on the front and back of each book. Woe to anyone who didn’t return one.

  Pauline stepped to the right-hand bookcase. “Now pay attention. There’s a lever, here, third shelf down.”

  She tugged on some hidden device, and the whole unit swung out from the wall like a door. Another room lay behind, a rectangular hole in the wall that was blacker than Cookie’s fur. Pauline stepped into the darkness. She switched on another light. This one was an ancient bare globe. A fine oily dust covered the floor, the walls, and everything, including a stack of cardboard boxes.

  Meri Ann stepped inside. “Amazing.”

  “Dick Parcell built that unit. He worked for the finest families in Boise. My Bruce, rest his soul, always wanted the best.”

  “Hmmm,” she mused, staring at the boxes.

  “It’s just as well you know about my secret room. Some of my valuables are here, things you’ll inherit when I die. Mind you, only a box or two are mine. You’re paying for the lion’s share of the room. That’s only fair.”

  “What? Yes. You are fair,” Meri Ann mumbled.

  Pauline took a dishtowel off her shoulder and began wiping the boxes.

  “Aunt Pauline, I wish you wouldn’t do that now.”

  “It’s been a while since I took a rag to it.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go through Mother’s things on my own.”

  Pauline straightened up. She folded the cloth with precision. “Oh, I understand. And I’ve plenty to do.” Pauline’s mouth drew into its familiar pucker. She strode to the center stack of boxes and scooted a two and a half foot square box out from the wall. She started to open it. “Joanna’s things from her dresser are in this one.”

  How did Pauline know that? Had she gone through all the boxes? She glared at her aunt. “So I guess you know where everything is?”

  “Well, I never.” Pauline backed all the way up the stairs, a pale mean ghost of a woman.

  Meri Ann’s hands shook as she dug into the box Pauline had indicated. Sure enough it held things from the top of her mother’s dresser, dried-up jars of face creams, bottles of makeup, and two hairbrushes with adequate hair for the DNA tests. Meri Ann was too upset to stay in the basement one minute longer. She picked up the box and carted it upstairs.

  Pauline stood ramrod-stiff on the outside stoop, arms folded against her chest. “You didn’t close the door, did you?”

  She didn’t answer. Her muscles were taught, her mouth locked shut. The box filled her arms. She strained to carry it as she made her way around the side of the house.

  Pauline followed her. “I wasn’t snooping. I was looking for aerosol cans. They’re highly explosive, you know? What if the cellar blew up?”

  She punched the front gate open with her hip.

  “You can’t think I took anything. I’m no thief.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” Meri Ann set the box down on the sidewalk beside her car.

  “Don’t talk to me that way. You’re the one who doesn’t understand. One day you’ll see.”

  Meri Ann threw the box into the back seat. “I’m sorry already. Sorry for the lack of a loving aunt, for a father who doesn’t know what day it is. And damned sorry for my mother.”

  # # #

  Two blocks down Sylvan Street Meri Ann swung the Mazda to the side of the road. She switched off the engine and caught her breath.

  All she had wanted to do was to sort through her mom’s things, to touch old treasures as she searched for a hairbrush. Instead she’d let Pauline get the best of her.

  She glanced in the rearview at the cardboard box. It drew her like polar north. She turned around and knelt on the front seat facing backwards. She parted the box flaps.

  The hairbrushes rested on top. She pulled out a strand of deep auburn hair, hair like her own, hair with a double helix of DNA. Something so personal that it carried her mother’s physical blueprint and a blueprint of all the women she had descended from. Now the hair was evidence. Sadly, she tucked the brushes inside a paper bag she had brought with her and placed it into the backpack, ready for forensics. Then she turned back to the box.

  Beneath the cosmetics, she found her mom’s black cashmere sweater, a treasure she hadn’t expected to find. She buried her face in it, gathering her mother’s scent mixed with traces of Ralph Lauren’s perfume, Lauren. She draped the sweater over the seat, sifting through a cache of paperback mysteries, historical novels, books on myth by Joseph Campbell.

  Halfway down, she found a yellow Kodak envelope. Thank you, God. She’d watched victims of catastrophes on CNN scavenge through mudslides, fallen buildings, even burning embers, for photos, as if those images were the proof of their lives. She felt that way now. Her hands trembled with expectation as she opened the envelope.

  “Oh,” she whispered, sorting through pictures of her mom’s thirty-sixth birthday party. In one, Meri Ann grinned from a dance floor. Like everyone at the party, she wore a fifties costume: full felt skirt, white blouse with a turned up collar. A skinnier, trusting, fourteen-year-old Meri Ann whose biggest worry was a math test on Friday and heartthrob Ricky. Would he meet her at the locker? Would Boise beat Borah High? If someone had told her that two weeks later her mom would vanish, she would have laughed in his face. But it had happened. And her life had changed forever.

  There were seventeen photos with her mother in them. All appeared to be taken at the same party. Joanna wore a scoop-necked blouse and skin-tight black pants, a dark-haired version of the movie star from Grease. Robin Wheatley dressed as Elvis. Meri Ann didn’t recognize him at first. This was not the up-tight engineer she’d encountered in the airport. He appeared in a half-dozen shots with her mom, his arm around her in all but one. No wonder Meri Ann’s dad felt jealous. The last photo was a close up of the D.J. holding a microphone to her mom’s parted lips. Joanna’s head tilted back flirtatiously.

  Her mother’s sensuality leaped out at her, something she hadn’t recalled as a kid. But wasn’t that the way teenagers were? Smug in the knowledge they had invented sex?

  She gathered the photos, started to put them away. But another one dropped from the packet, a shot taken out at the eagle sanctuary. Her mother held a golden eagle on her arm, granted her arm was covered with a leather gauntlet. Still the bird was enormous. Its beak gaped open and its yellow eyes looked wild.

  Meri Ann tucked the photo back into the packet with the others and closed the flap. She had never shared her mother’s love of predatory birds. Given her druthers, Meri Ann would sooner catch a bobcat than let an eagle grip her arm. She briefly wondered if the lanky outdoorsman still ran the place.

  She tucked the photos back into the box. In the process she uncovered a small cedar chest, one her mother had always kept locked with a doll-sized key. The box tipped as she lifted it out. The lid opened, dumping out hospital name bea
ds, baby teeth, and two crayon drawings she’d done in kindergarten. A blue envelope was wedged in the bottom. “Joanna” was written on the outside.

  Her fingers fumbled in her hurry to open it.

  My darling Joanna, I can’t bear these days of watching you and wanting you and knowing you belong to someone else. I won’t rest until you agree to Seattle . . . .

  The letter talked about renting a place on Puget Sound and opening an office. He wanted to leave his wife. Whose wife? Meri Ann jumped to the closing: I love you my darling, Robin.

  The very idea of that man with her mother irked her, Robin Wheatley with his slicked back hair and haughty expression. “Wheatley, you bastard,” she said through clenched teeth.

  She stuffed the letter back into the envelope. Pauline must have read it too. Had she told Dad about it, adding the suspicion of infidelity to his grief?

  Now she understood Pauline’s cutting remarks, but she didn’t fault her mother. Wheatley and Pauline deserved the blame. Pauline earned the honor for believing the worst of Mother, and Wheatley, for his seductive proposal, a sleazy excuse for a man, sneaking around behind his wife’s back no less. It might be old business to him now but not to her. She meant to shove the letter in his face and demand an answer.

  She knew where he worked.

  Chapter Nine

  He drove down Chinden Boulevard, his purpose clear. He must find a bar with rear parking. One with no more than two cars in the lot, a place seedy enough to attract hard-core, daytime drinkers. One customer must be a woman who met his criteria.

  The Western-style Bannock Bar caught his eye. Weeds grew up around its sagging front porch. The place looked almost as abandoned as the boarded-up gas station next to it. A neon Coors sign flickered in the bar’s left front window, proof it was open.

  He pulled into the side lot, noting two vehicles: a battered Toyota truck and a pink Chevy Caprice—a woman’s car with mismatched tires. All four were tread bare. He pictured the car’s owner as a down-on-her-luck lush, lonely, and amenable to anything he might propose.