Final Grave (32 page)

Becky’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “What’s the bitch talking about?”

At this point Mendiola eased back, taking refuge against the bar.

“Tell her.” Karen’s high-pitched demand drew attention from nearby guests, the macho manager, the servers and the long-nosed caterer. Their chatter hushed, everyone waiting for an answer.

Meri Ann turned and faced Becky. She’d done it before in nightmares, where she’d confessed her long-held secret. The feeling was the same, Becky’s disbelieving expression the same. But today it was real, her day of reckoning at hand. Meri Ann lowered her eyes.

“I wrote the letter.”

# # #

Birdie sorted out his camera equipment, his old Hasselblad with detachable back for different kinds of film. For Meri Ann he’d bought black and white. It’s what he’d used for her mother and the others. The pre-owned camera had cost him $900 in the early 1980s, at the start of his portraiture hobby. The 150mm lens, another $800. But the manual camera proved well-worth the cost. It seldom jammed and didn’t depend on batteries.

He dragged the lights from the basement cupboard as well as the necessary tripods. He used telescoping Bogans with umbrellas. Four altogether: a fill light to soften her facial shadows; the main light off to the side to give her shape and dimension; the hair light positioned at her back. Oh, her resplendent hair. Richard Avedon set the standard for studio fashion, his portraits with white backgrounds were legend. Birdie suspected the technique required over-developing the film to heighten the contrast, though he’d never achieved it himself. After all, he was just an amateur, someone who wanted to record what he loved.

Suddenly melancholy overtook him. It weighed him down till his arms felt like sledge hammers hanging from his shoulders. He lowered onto his haunches, then fell onto the floor amid the array of equipment. A long forgotten June day rushed back to him. Fifteen-years-old and eager to please. “Here’s your picture Daddy.” His father had thrown it into the woodpile and handed him a saw. “Be a man. Do something useful.”

He’d gone to the hills and killed squirrels, fifty in all. He’d dissected a few and cut out their hearts. But most he left rotting where they fell. Later he’d gone home to his mother and told her. She said he ought to be a doctor.
Didn’t
she
always
want
something
special
for
him
?
His mother, his only comfort, until he’d found Joanna.

Birdie folded his arms across his chest and drew his knees up tight. He rocked in a fetal position, filled with self-pity, then hate. It seemed like hours before he regained his composure, pulled himself up and smoothed his hair. He told himself to focus. He was a task oriented man with no time for self-indulgence. The clock was ticking, a chain of events was ready to unfold.

Chapter Thirty-eight
 

A
taxi dropped her off at River House. After Becky’s solo exit from Crain Creek, Meri Ann had called for the ride. Its red tail lights grew small in the distance, leaving her standing alone in the driveway at the back of the house. For the first time since her arrival, lights were on in the upstairs apartment above the garages. As she drew closer she saw a shadow moving back and forth across the drawn shade, Becky’s. The downward tilt of her head and the slumped shoulders were a sad reminder of the blow-up. Becky’s depression matched her own. The fact that her dear friend had left the house to avoid seeing her hurt more than anything. She felt the physical pangs of shame. Her stomach ached from it.

She made her way upstairs to the apartment and tapped softly on the door. “Becky? Let’s talk, please.”

Footsteps approached the opposite side of the door. But Becky didn’t speak to her.

Meri Ann leaned against the doorway. Her cheek pressed against the satin-smooth enameled door, one she’d opened and closed fifty thousand times in her youth when they had played in the two-room suite.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” she said, “but hear me out.”

There was no response.

“Kids reject what they don’t understand.” Meri Ann’s voice broke. “Kids are so damn mean. I was just fourteen, Becky. You and that girl out behind the lockers, it frightened me. And I wanted to punish you, I’m sorry to say. Ten minutes after I’d written that note, I knew it was cruel, moronic. If only I’d told you then and explained. But once I saw how badly you were hurt, it scared me. You’d never talk to me again once you knew I’d written it. See, I’d lost so much and… and I couldn’t lose you.”

Becky’s feet shuffled, indicating she was near, but she said nothing.

Meri Ann kept her ear pressed tight against the door for awhile, waiting for a response. Finally, she gave up. “There’s no reason for you to sleep out here. I’ll pack my things and go. I can stay at Pauline’s.”

“Whatever.” Becky’s voice wafted through the keyhole like ether. “Do what you want, kid.”

Crawl under the stairwell carpet, she probably wanted to say.

If only Becky would scream or curse or kick the door, anything but whisper those soft, dismissive words. Meri Ann saw no way to make it right. The freshness of the wound left her helpless. “I’ll go,” she said. A tear slid down her cheek and she wiped it away. “You’ll never, never know how sorry I am about everything I’ve put you through. I… I’ve been a worthless friend, but I won’t give you up, Becky.”

“I left you something upstairs,” Becky said.

What could it be, a farewell gift, a bomb? It should be the latter. “What?” she asked guiltily.

Becky’s footsteps retreated from the door.

Meri Ann waited several seconds, a minute, but Becky said nothing else. She finally gave up, retreated down the apartment stairs and then outside. She entered River House through the kitchen door. Lamps and overhead lights shone in every room on the first floor. Becky had kept them on night and day since the prowler incident. Poor Becky, Attila the Hun would have made a better houseguest.

On her way upstairs, Meri Ann glanced across at the cluttered dining room. In their haste to deliver the topiaries to the country club, they had left a mess. Silk flower stems littered the floor, pieces of ivy, sphagnum moss and clippers and awls. Suddenly it seemed important to tidy it up, to do something for Becky, no matter how meager. She set to work, boxing the unused flowers and greenery, tossing the trash, sorting and cleaning the tools. An hour later, she collapsed into the down-filled club chair by the window.

God willing, Aunt Pauline would make room for her, because there was no alternative except a motel. River House belonged to Becky and she was no longer welcome there. She drew herself up from the chair, found a notepad and wrote a note telling Becky she’d stay at Pauline’s. Of course, that would be after her business with Graber—a fact she omitted. She left the note on the kitchen table, propped up against a salt shaker.

She climbed the stairs to her room, sick over Becky, but relieved not to involve her. Strength comes from within, and a lone hunter covers more ground.

The bedside lamp lit her room, making it easy to spot a yellow mailer addressed to her on the pillow—Becky’s gift. She tore the flap open and peeked inside. It held a cassette with a hand-printed label, “Old Favorites.” She rechecked the envelope, noted the postmark and wondered why it had been mailed to her. There was no return address. She stared at the cassette, thinking it must be songs from their high school days. Her friend’s thoughtfulness heaped still another layer of guilt onto her. She tucked it into her pocket. No way she had the heart to play it now; instead she set about packing.

In a matter of minutes she had Meg’s sweaters neatly folded and the rest of her clothes hung in the closet. That done she tugged her black suitcase from under the bed and set it on top. She gathered her toiletries from the bathroom and the few garments she’d kept in the dresser’s top drawer. When the suitcase was packed, she turned her attention to the box with her mother’s things from Pauline’s basement. It would need to be sealed with packing tape. But first, she checked to make sure nothing inside was breakable.

The photographs from her mom’s party were the first things she saw when she parted the lid. Wheatley’s letter the second. She sat on the edge of the bed and reread it. Tenderness poured from every line, every word on the page. He’d meant to start a new life. Meri Ann felt certain her mom had intended to be at his side. She must have told Graber, the birdman, who claimed, “Joanna was my life.”

Meri Ann pictured him as a wild paranoid man with a sick psyche unable to cope with abandonment. So he’d killed her rather than lose her, a popular theme in the annals of crime. She had seen two such cases in her brief career. But Graber’s behavior went beyond a murder of passion. She brooded over the account of his dog staked over an anthill and eaten alive, the sinister crime scenes he’d set up with the bones.

Her hands trembled, imagining the horror of her mother’s last moments, her last breath.

She eased to the window and peered below. The street was still. Not a breath of wind moved the trees, no cars, nothing but black asphalt reflecting a waning three-quarter moon. The tangled woods beside Becky’s house made a perfect hiding place. He had used it before and might be using it again. He hadn’t made contact, yet.

Her hands broke out in a sweat at the thought of waiting for him. No way was she going to stand by like a helpless lump, listening to the Regulator clock tick the minutes away. She’d draw him out, stand in the front of River House and call to him. If he didn’t show himself, she would know he was holed up in the cabin. She’d borrow Meg’s car for the last time and drive up the mountain.

She checked the revolver in her backpack and confirmed it was loaded. “Thank you, Mendiola,” she whispered as she glanced around for her jacket. Meg’s coat might be warmer, but she wanted her own. She grabbed the lightweight windbreaker from a hook on the bedroom door and hurriedly slipped it on. But as she started down the hall, she noticed a bulge in the right-hand pocket—an envelope. Her name was on the cover, written in Becky’s scrawling hand and a note inside.

Dear
Meri
Ann:
You
broke
my
heart,
but
it’s
not
so
much
your
fault
as
mine.
I
thought
you
were
different
than
the
others.
It
will
take
me
a
long
time
to
get
over
this,
maybe
forever.
I
don’t
hate
you,
like
I
said.
But
I
can’t
stand
to
see
you.
Becky.

The heartfelt message took Meri Ann’s breath. Had Becky left her this also? Two seconds later, she looked back at the room in shock as the realization struck her—the Old Favorites cassette was not from Becky.

She grabbed it from her backpack and rushed downstairs to the music system. Her fingers trembled as she inserted it into the tape portal.

Music filled the room, a primitive rock and roll beat, one she’d heard before:

.
 
.
 
.
 
All
the
little
birdies
on
Jay
Bird
Street
love
to
hear
the
Robin
go
tweet,
tweet,
tweet.
Rocking
Robin
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
.

It was a song played at her mom’s party. One of those one-hit wonders that make the hit parade whenever fifties music is played. Rocking Robin? Robin Wheatley? Had someone wanted to incriminate him? Or might Mendiola have been right about him from the start?

Meri Ann dropped into Paw Paw’s chair, stunned by the lyrics and what they might mean. Seconds later the phone rang.

“Meri Ann? It’s Jason. Harold Graber is here.”

She bolted up from the chair, the phone pressed tight to her ear. “Where exactly are you and where is he?”

“I’m at the shop.” Jason took a deep ragged breath. “I was just locking up when I saw him sneaking around the hedge in the back parking lot. You said to let you know if I saw him. Well, he’s here and he’s got a shotgun.”

“Are you sure it’s him?”

“Yes. I know his truck, and he’s got on that old, rag-tag range coat he wears every where.”

Oh, yes. Meri Ann recalled the range coat, a range coat that looked like a long raincoat.

“What can he want here—with me?”

She wondered herself. Graber should be looking for her, not Jason, not an estranged friend from childhood. That is, unless Jason knew something that incriminated Graber beyond those childhood atrocities. As gross as they were, they had happened long ago and posed no legal threat. In any event, Jason could not be the only person who knew about them. If he had told her, then others must know too. “It doesn’t make sense to me either,” she said.

“Okay, okay, so we don’t know why the maniac is here. What about me? What should I do?” His voice riveted up a notch. “Should I call 911?”

She listened carefully to everything he said and also the way that he said it. He sounded afraid, anxious, and yet she detected a false note. Her sensors shot up, the part of her brain trained to question prickly feelings. She shook them off for the moment. The elation of knowing Graber’s precise location took precedence over all else. The call had answered that unknown—it had also sewn a small seed of doubt about what Jason claimed was going on at Chez Jay’s. For all she knew, he might be a hostage with Graber holding a gun to his head, forcing him to call her. The phone still at her ear, she removed the Rocking Robin cassette from the music system. Or perhaps something else was going on.