Authors: Nadja Bernitt
“I want you to love me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
He thumped the roll against the palm of his hand and thought of turning around. But his anger kept him going.
# # #
Meri Ann parked behind River House a little after four. The sky had brightened and strips of pale blue cut through clouds. A cheery sight but not enough to block the memory of Graber’s wild eyes. Her backpack’s strap cut into her shoulder; her feet felt like fifty-pound weights. To add to her misery, she’d stepped into a rain puddle and soaked her left shoe.
Slosh, step, slosh, step all the way up the back stairs. She yearned for an understanding ear to hear about her strange encounter with Graber and the revelation of her mother’s friend. But Becky wasn’t back from Sun Valley, so she grumbled to herself as she unlocked the door. What good had her stirring up tawdry details of her mom’s life done for anyone?
The house talked when she entered, nothing alarming, just identifiable noises old houses make. The floorboards creaked as she crossed the room. The aging refrigerator hummed. The old Regulator clock ticked softly. Meri Ann kicked off her shoes, stashed the loaves and muffins in the bread box, then headed upstairs.
She hurriedly stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower.
When she got out, she glanced at the box she’d taken from Pauline’s. She thought about the futility of arguing with her aunt and wondered if they’d ever make peace. Meri Ann fingered the flap on the box. It would need to be taped shut and labeled before she left. And in the coming weeks she would make arrangements to have the remaining boxes sent home to Florida.
Click
your
heels
three
times
and
say
there’s
no
place
like
home
.
Funny how your mind goes home before you do. She knew from experience that the last day of a vacation is not really a part of the vacation—of course in her case this was no vacation. Still the phenomenon was working. She had one foot in Boise and the other on the plane. In 18 hours she really would be home.
Dad, she thought and reached for the phone. She dialed the nursing home, waiting for the switchboard to connect the call to his room. A woman answered and introduced herself as Freida. Meri Ann told her who she was.
“We’ve just finished our bath,” Freida said. “He’s right here. I’ll hold the phone to his ear.”
“Hi, Daddy. It’s Meri Ann.”
“Your mother left me here, and forgot me.” He paused for an instant. “I want to come home.”
His confusion was bad enough when she was physically with him. The distance multiplied her frustration. “I’ll come see you soon. We’ll have breakfast together, maybe take a walk.”
“Where are you?”
“In Boise.” She winced, wishing she hadn’t mentioned it for fear of upsetting him.
There was a long pause on his end. Then Meri Ann heard the phone receiver drop against something hard. A shuffling ensued as someone picked it up.
“He’s headed for the door,” Freida said. “I’ll get him back if you want to hold on?”
“Thanks, but don’t bother. Just hug him tight for me.”
She tried not to dwell on his ultimate prognosis, yet it was always with her. A nurse had told her toward the end, he could deteriorate to a point where his mind no longer remembered to make his lungs breathe.
Stinking,
vile
disease
.
She moved away from the phone as though it were the culprit and began to pace.
The only official business left in Boise was to read her mom’s case file. She also owed Mendiola a short debriefing during which she intended to tell him about the meeting with Harold Graber. In terms of a suspect, she liked him hands down over Wheatley. She instantly felt a stab of regret. There was nothing more she could do.
She dressed in a pair of Levi’s and a bulky cable knit sweater and headed downstairs to check for messages. Mendiola owed her a call. So did Becky.
The answering machine sat in the foyer, a dreary space with ebony furniture and faded tea-rose wallpaper as old as the house. Still, a delightful shaft of afternoon sunlight beamed through an oval window on the door. She pushed the machine’s play button and took a seat on the lower stair in the sun.
“You have four messages… .”
The first and second calls were for Becky. “I’m calling about the apartment for rent… . Are you the one with the one-bedroom apartment?”
Meri Ann kicked back, her elbows on the next stair up. Her eyes followed dust motes and prisms of light.
The third message was Becky. “Hi kid, I’m running late. Won’t be home till six, maybe seven. But don’t eat anything; we’re still on for dinner. See ya.”
She hit the play button for a fourth message.
“Meri Ann, this is your mother… .”
She gasped, flew to the machine, turned up the volume.
The voice went on, “I’m sorry to put you through this, but I did want you to know I’m fine. Forgive me, I can’t say any more, but I’ll call again, soon. I love you.”
It sounded like her mom’s voice, like she remembered it, but it couldn’t be. Meri Ann cried out, “Who the hell are you?”
Her fingers trembled as she groped for the play button. She played the message again and again. Then played the full tape of messages, listening to the comparative quality of the recordings. Her mom’s message sounded farther away, grainy, as if there were static on the line.
Meri Ann removed the cassette from the machine. The voice needed verification by an expert.
Bewildered, she moved to the beveled window and peered down the empty street to the spot where she’d seen the woman in the ankle-length raincoat, the woman with long, dark hair.
Despite logic and those pitiful bones in the state lab, a minuscule cell somewhere in the far reaches of her brain begged the impossible, that her mother still lived.
T
he earlier drizzle left a sheen on the road, and the evening held the stillness of midnight. Yet it was only seven o’clock. Becky would be arriving home any minute to find the disappointing note that dinner was off.
Meri Ann sighed as she turned down Aunt Pauline’s dark, lonely street. How had her aunt withstood the isolation in all her years of living alone? On second thought, the need for privacy was something she understood. Clash as they might, they were still blood relations.
She parked the car and caught Pauline peering out the front window. Her big-boned Germanic features were so like Meri Ann’s dad’s, the physical resemblance another reminder that blood and bones don’t lie.
Before she knocked, Pauline opened the door.
“So, you came back.” She looked pleased albeit aloof.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Pauline, but I need to look for the tape recorder and cassettes that Mom had. It’s important.”
“You’re lucky I was home when you called. I’m due at a Beaux Arts Society meeting. The holiday bake sale is two weeks away.” Pauline’s wrinkled mouth pursed. “Hurry up inside or you’ll let the heat out. We’re not in Florida. And in case you’ve forgotten, oil costs plenty in the north.”
Meri Ann shut the door behind her. “I won’t keep you long.”
“Why couldn’t you wait until daylight to go rummaging around in the cellar?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“So soon?” Pauline grimaced. “I’d thought you were staying a week, maybe two.”
“I wish I could.”
“Well, we do what we must, now don’t we?” Pauline gestured for her to follow, picking up the key ring on their way out the backdoor.
Meri Ann’s anticipation rose as she entered the cellar and stared at the polished bookcase on the back wall. The secret panel was now obvious to her, as was the sound of the hinges squeaking as they parted.
Pauline shook her head. “The man who built this passed on several years ago. If the door falls off, who will fix it? I’m old, Meri Ann. Don’t forget no one lives forever.”
Meri Ann’s family had dwindled to a handful on her mother’s side, cousins spread over the globe—two in the Peace Corps, one working for a bond house in London. On her father’s side, Aunt Pauline was it.
Meri Ann said, “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“Yes, indeed.” Pauline cleared her throat, and stepped into the back room.
Once again, Meri Ann faced the cardboard boxes, a puzzle of search and find. Unless… . She straightened, put her hands on her hips and stared at Pauline. Her aunt’s habit of snooping just might come in handy at the moment. “Any idea which one holds the tape recorder?”
Pauline twisted her strand of pearls, studying the boxes, like someone in a game show where you can bet your money the contestant’s been privy to the answers before the cameras rolled. She headed for the boxes along the right wall. “I’d try these.”
It didn’t take long to find the antiquated recording equipment or to see it was a hopeless mess. Old batteries had seeped a white alkaline paste into the guts of the machine. “It’s ruined and so is the tape,” Meri Ann said.
“Well, it’s not my fault.”
“I’m not blaming you,” she said, continuing to paw through the various boxes of VCRs, records and tapes. Finally, she came across a cigar box full of home-recorded cassettes. One was sure to have her mom’s voice. “I’ll just take these.”
Under Pauline’s watchful eye, she re-stacked the boxes to their original position.
Pauline watched with arms folded. “Order puts a person’s mind to rest,” she said, “Thank you.” Once the room met her satisfaction, she locked the cellar tightly and pocketed the key.
As Meri Ann was leaving, Pauline handed her a square plastic container. She peeked inside and smiled in amazement. “You baked your wonderful honey cake.”
“You rushed off in such a huff yesterday that I didn’t have time to give you a piece of it.”
It felt like half the cake from the heft of it. “In your Tupperware, too.”
Pauline arched her long neck, evidently as pleased with her generosity as Meri Ann.
“I expect my Tupperware back before you leave.”
“Thought you might.” Meri Ann hugged her aunt’s stiff frame and left.
# # #
She cruised back to the city center and parked near Capitol Boulevard and Grove Street, the heart of Boise’s Basque community. She’d reached Mendiola earlier and told him about the message. He expected her.
She hurried down the street of old red-brick buildings to the Basque Center’s bar. The cassettes nested in her backpack, ready for him. But was he ready for her?
She paused at the sturdy hand-hewn door before she pushed it open.
The place smelled and looked like any other bar in the world with one exception: window-sized posters depicting Basque scenes and folk dancers covered the walls. Mendiola and a barrel-chested bartender were the only two in sight, each at opposite ends of the bar.
Mendiola didn’t look up, even when the heavy door banged shut behind her. He just continued to study his beer, like a botanist studies bugs under glass.
She walked over, the leather soles of her shoes clapping against the plank flooring. Still he didn’t turn around. Only when the bartender put out his cigarette and got up from his stool did the burly detective acknowledge her arrival.
His eyelids looked heavy. His mouth twisted in a half-hearted grin. She had no idea why he grinned, unless it had something to do with the empty shot glass and half-empty pitcher of beer in front of him.
She sat down, leaving a stool between them for her backpack.
His expression sobered. “Stinking rotten day,” he said, lifting his empty shot glass toward a poster of the bulls running Pamplona. “I feel… run over.”
He looked
run
over.
“You’re not an easy man to find.” She used the same tone of voice her mom used to say you’ve got mud on your feet.
He beckoned the bartender. “Hey, Pablo, a glass for the lady.”
“Club soda,” she said, then swiveled around to face Mendiola.
He kept her in profile and busied himself tearing a soggy white cocktail napkin into bits. “His name’s not really Pablo,” he said.
She waited for his full attention, and waited, and waited. The silence deepened.
Finally, he met her gaze.
“This case is my life,” she said. “I want you to know that.”
He lowered his eyes as she watched her words sink in, praying he’d felt the weight of her message. She continued, “Who I am today, everything I’ve ever done in my life, every fear, hope, dream, everything resulted from my mom’s disappearance.”
“What the hell do you want, my thumbs?” He held them out for her in a supplicating gesture.
“Please, don’t patronize me.”
The bartender slid a club soda and a dish of pretzels within easy reach of her. He had the good sense not to speak.
Mendiola rubbed his muscular neck. “Heavy shit you’re laying on me.”
“I want your attention.”
“You’ve got it.”
“I’d like to believe that, but you’ve put me off since the day I walked into your office. Not overtly, but I got the message. Maybe I’d act the same way if you showed up on my doorstep and butted into a case of mine. But you can’t do that any more.”
His eyes shifted in thought. “It’s not your mom on the tape, is it?”
“I can’t say for certain. But someone with the right equipment can tell. I’ve got several tapes here with Mom’s voice for a baseline comparison. Right now, all I know is it sounds like her, like I remember her.” Meri Ann cleared her throat. “But we both know it can’t… she can’t be alive.”
“No, ma’am. And that means we got us a problem. No doubt about it.” He twirled the base of his beer glass on what was left of his napkin. “We’ve got us a pile of bones, with evidence that says it’s your mom. Then someone calls, trying to make us think different. What exactly does the tape say?”