Final Grave (6 page)

“It’ll give us enough for a blood test and to drop off the samples.”

“It’s just I’d wanted to talk to the doctor in charge of forensics, to see the remains.”

She suddenly realized he had made an unexpected turn and looped around to Garden City, Boise’s industrial pocket.

“Aren’t you dropping me at my car?”

“If you don’t mind, I got a five-minute errand. It’s on the way.”

She doubted five minutes. She doubted everything about him. “Is this about the case on your desk?”

He shot her a look somewhere between amusement and irritation. “No, ma’am. But I do have other cases. The one on my desk’s a hay theft and believe it or not, a cow shooting. Needs dealing with, sure. But this right now is a personal errand that can’t wait.”

Mendiola turned onto a shabby side street, checking his wristwatch as he rounded the corner. “It’s quarter till noon, so let’s call it a lunch break.” He sounded testy.

“I’m not accusing you.”

“Sure you are. But what the hell, switch shoes and I’d accuse you too.” He gave her a sly grin, one that said gotcha.

He parked in front of an eight-foot chain-link fence, the entrance to a run down auto repair shop. An airbrushed sign the size of a billboard blazoned on the roof:
Tony’s
Dream
Machines,
Automotive
Restorations
. The high-quality artwork reminded her of a painting on the side of a rock bands’ bus, a lofty advertisement for such a scruffy, cement-block garage with only two bays.

Inside the fence an array of old cars somewhere between heap and vintage gathered dust. Men and cars, she thought, wondering if one belonged to Mendiola.

The right bay was open and Meri Ann spotted a ‘56 Chevy on a lift, a model her dad had once owned. A slender man somewhere in his thirties stepped from behind the car. To her surprise, he wore a pair of spotless gray slacks and a blue button-down shirt. His thinning light brown hair glistened from hair spray, or whatever he used in his creative comb-over.

“That’s my nephew, Tony. Mind waiting?”

She smiled. “No, go ahead.”

Tony wiped his hands on a dirty pink oil rag as he approached his uncle.

Mendiola removed a piece of yellow paper from the breast pocket of his wool flannel shirt. It looked like a check. “Here you go, but this is it. The well’s dry.”

“Thanks, Jack. I mean it.” He hugged Mendiola with the gratitude of a saved man.

They ambled back to the Blazer, the transaction as brief as promised. Mendiola climbed in and settled himself behind the wheel.

Tony closed the door for him. “You’ll get it back. I promise.”

“No problem. Anyway, I know where you hang out.”

Tony polished the Blazer’s rearview mirror with the rag, as though to hide his self-consciousness. His gaze shifted to Meri Ann, briefly, just long enough for her to see a curious glimmer of recognition in his small pale eyes. “Don’t I know you?”

“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
 

M
eri 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?”