Final Grave (7 page)

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 beads, 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
 

H
e 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.

He switched off the engine, checked his image in the rear view mirror. Phony black hair trailed out the back of a John Deere baseball cap. He pulled the brim low on his forehead; then put on his father’s old reading glasses. The affect of his disguise gave him a power buzz. Invisible men played by their own rules—at this moment, he didn’t exist, couldn’t be held responsible for act, word, or deed.

Entering the bar through a side door, he was struck by the heady odor of stale beer and cigarette smoke. It brought back memories of college binge-drinking days. He’d never enjoyed liquor, or beer, but on several occasions, he’d drunk himself blind to keep up with the others. They had assumed he was one of them, but no one really knew
him
, then or now, except perhaps Joanna. At least he thought she had.

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light as he searched for the owner of the Chevy Caprice, the woman. The only customer at the bar was a gray-haired male in torn overalls, a drunk slobbering over a beer.

But
there
must
be
a
woman
.

Then he heard her.

“Hi, ya,” she called, turning the corner at end of the bar. She was young, barely legal drinking age and plump and sexy in a wholesome way. She wore her brown hair parted in the middle with a thick braid slung over the shoulder. Farm fed, his dad would’ve said. Not what he’d envisioned as a target, yet her hair was long. He liked that.

He took a barstool at the opposite end from the drunk.

The girl held a thick, oversized paperback book entitled:
Microsoft
Word
for
Dummies
. She cradled it against her full breasts.

“So what can I do you for, Mister?”

“Coffee,” he said.

She gave him an understanding nod, placed her book beside the cash register. Then poured the last of the coffee from a glass carafe into a mug and set it down in front of him. “Hung over, huh?”

“Yeah.” He wanted her sympathy and rubbed his forehead as though it hurt. “You’re awful pretty to be stuck in here on a sunny day.”

She smiled and cocked her head.

He liked her reaction. “Someone with your looks ought to be at the Hard Rock Cafe. Say in London.”

“Like you know a lot about London.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I’m not here, usually. My gramps runs the place. He’s gettin’ over a heart attack. A little one, you know? I’m pouring beer till’s he’s back on his feet. But he’d better hurry up. I’m moving to Seattle as soon as I can. Gonna get a job.”

“No kidding,” he said. My niece lives there. Works at Nordstrom’s in personnel.” He pointed to the book. “She says they’re always needing someone good on computers.”

The girl leaned forward, elbows on the bar, her expression hopeful. “Yeah, I bought this book. I’m just brushing up.”

And
so
was
he
.

“I’ve got her direct extension at home,” he said. “You want, I could drop it by later.”

“You’d really do that? Get out.”

“I’m serious. How long is your shift?”

“Got a two hour dinner break, four to six. Then I’m on again till two. So any time.” She clasped her hands and grinned. “That’s really nice, Mister.”

His palms pressed against the hot coffee mug. He eyed her over the rims of his glasses. “It’s nothing, really,” he said. “Glad to help.”

He took a long draw of the coffee. She was the one he would kill.

# # #

Meri Ann sat in Wheatley’s parking lot in the borrowed Mazda. She held a chokehold on the steering wheel, wishing it were his neck. Little by little, she relaxed her grip. A minute later she got out of the car.

The six-story glass and oxidized iron building was Wheatley’s engineering flagship. She recalled how her mother had described her boss as a genius and how she felt proud to be part of the firm, even if only as office manager. The leap from respect to romantic involvement seemed ludicrous. When had it happened? Had it? Meri Ann was sure Wheatley must have mistaken her mom’s admiration for affection. She would put it to him, and he would answer her.

His structural engineering firm occupied the top floor. The elevator opened into the foyer. Photographs and color renderings of high-rise buildings hung on the walls. Citations and awards, too. Wheatley’s name and company logo appeared on every one. Some had a Twin Falls address and Meri Ann wondered if he had expanded into any other cities.

She crossed to the reception desk, standing in the very spot where Wheatley had struck her father years ago. The memory fueled her anger.

A gray-haired woman at the desk looked up. “May I help you?” But something in her expression said,
Don’t
I
know
you
?

Meri Ann didn’t have time to answer. Wheatley’s voice caught her ear. The door to his office was open and she spotted him at his drafting board. His slicked back hair appeared every bit as perfect as the night before, the furrows deeper in the intense halogen lights. He spoke on a cell phone. “. . . Just got back… .”

“Miss, can I help you?” the receptionist asked, again.

“Uh, thank you, no.” She strode past her and into Wheatley’s office.

The receptionist jumped up from her chair and followed.

Wheatley switched off the phone. “Meri Ann?”

The receptionist hurried in behind her. “She just came in and I—”

“Everything’s fine, Elaine.” Wheatley drew himself up, folded the phone and clipped it to his belt.

“But Mr. Wheatley, your meeting?” the receptionist said.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve a meeting myself at four and this won’t take long.”

He dismissed Elaine with a nod.

She hesitated, then pivoted, closing the door firmly behind her.

Meri Ann stared at him. In her wildest nightmares she couldn’t imagine her mom considering a man with such a wimpy expression. Then she remembered he hadn’t always looked that way. She recalled the Elvis photos, his cocky, self-assured pose at her mother’s birthday party.

She pulled out the envelope, leaving the letter inside. She wasn’t about to let him touch it; then claim his prints came from this meeting. She held it out for him to see.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“You ought to know what it is. It’s from you, addressed to my mother.”

Wheatley blanched. His lips parted as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t get the words out.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you used to keep Mom working late.” Her voice was shrill. “Or the day you shoved my father.”

Wheatley staggered back. “Meri Ann, please. I’ll try to explain.”

“Explain how you hit on my mother? Used your power over her paycheck to keep her late every night? I wasn’t blind. I spent the whole ninth grade waiting because she couldn’t get to school or to my games to pick me up on time. Things were different before she came to work here. You—”