Authors: Nadja Bernitt
“It can’t be helped.” He indicated one of two chairs separated by a table in front of a heavily draped window. “Please, have a seat. I’ll do my best to help you, but don’t expect me to have perfect recall.”
“Of course not.” Meri Ann shifted in her chair, taking a moment to phrase the delicate question. Funny, in all her professional interviews she had never hesitated before. Something bothered her, perhaps Jason’s affection for her mother, paired with the tawdry nature of the inquiry.
“All of a sudden you seem reluctant,” he said. “Let me put you at ease. I’m in the business of personal dialog. I run a successful salon. Believe me, my job description includes, being a friend, a therapist and a listener. And if I say so myself, I excel at all three.”
She bet he did. It was no wonder his was the premier salon in Boise with his knack for putting women at ease. “Okay, then, here it is. Did my mother ever mention a man in her life other than my father?”
“You mean was she having an affair?”
His directness surprised her. “I know about Robin Wheatley, just not if she told her friends, perhaps you.”
Meri Ann waited for Jason to respond. She wondered if the tables had turned and he might now be worried about her feelings. “If you want to think about this and call me later this afternoon, that’s fine.”
“That’s not necessary. I worked with a lot of clients back then, but I remember your mother vividly. Unfortunately, her disappearance kept her fresh in our minds here in the shop.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and said Joanna had never mentioned a relationship other than her marriage. “I knew your father had lost his job and that troubled her. Another man… I’d remember that. She talked about Robin, of course. She worked for him, respected him. I always thought she cared for him as a friend. You apparently feel there’s more to it?”
Meri Ann was not about to delve into detail with Jason. “I thought you might be able to tell me.”
“We were friends. I don’t think Joanna would have kept that kind of secret from me, but maybe she would.” He appeared perplexed. “His wife, Tina, is my client, and she would never have played the long-suffering wife in silence. If she had suspected your mother having anything to do with her husband, she’d have spoken out. Oh, at first she gossiped about your mother right after her disappearance. Like so many of my clients, she was curious in a macabre way.”
You bet Tina was curious and troubled and secretive and adamant that her husband had had an affair with Mom. Why would Mrs. Wheatley not share her troubles with Jason yet rail against Meri Ann? It confirmed the woman’s instability and suggested a dual personality.
“Did Wheatley pay special attention to Mom at the birthday party?”
Jason leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His brows furrowed, and his milk-blue eyes seemed to darken. “I don’t know who is spreading rumors, but take my advice, Meri Ann. Don’t listen to just anyone. People eagerly discredit strong women like Joanna.”
“But the cops suspected Wheatley?”
Jason glanced away. “Yes.”
She saw he was holding back. “What do you think?”
“If your mother met with foul play—and I’m sorry to say she must have—Robin Wheatley is not my first choice.”
“Then who?”
“The man with the birds.”
Meri Ann recalled the querulous mountain man who ran the eagle sanctuary in the mountains north of Boise. “Harold Graber?”
“Yes. I warned her not to get involved with that derelict, but she loved lost causes.”
And birds, Meri Ann thought. “Did you tell the detectives about him?”
“I never spoke to the detectives, but I mentioned it to your father. By the way, what the Sheriff’s Department did to him was unconscionable. You might not be aware, but they did everything but arrest him and put him in thumb screws.”
“Oh, I remember, and I’m glad to hear someone else does.” She curbed her resentment, not wanting to get off on another tangent. If she didn’t hold her sharp tongue, pretty soon nobody would talk to her. She softened her tone. “If you wouldn’t mind, what do you know about Graber?”
“I shouldn’t say anything, but it’s irked me for years. The police never followed up with him.”
Jason’s intensity surprised her. She leaned forward, curious to hear more. “How long have you known him?”
“Since childhood. My father hunted with his dad who was a fascinating man. We tagged along. You know boys and guns? But I finally quit going. Harold is dark at times and it bothered me” Worry lines deepened in Jason’s brow, as though the memory frightened him. “He killed for fun.”
He sat quietly for a moment. Then he pointed to a stuffed elk’s head above his desk on the wall. “My father took him in one shot. He never let an animal suffer needlessly. Guess what I’m saying is there are responsible hunters and there are killers.”
The animal’s glass eyes bore down on her, unsettling and lifelike. Her hands grew clammy and she rubbed them on the knees of her slacks. “It’s hard to understand how a man who likes to kill saves injured birds.”
“It’s not easy to reconcile, is it? But then the birds he saves are killers themselves. I am the first to admit, the man’s a conundrum. He was accepted into Harvard’s medical school and went there two semesters. Then he dropped out, not because of poor grades. He despised ‘rich kids.’ Ironic, since his dad had enough money to buy and sell half of them.”
She remembered Graber as an eccentric, a man dedicated to his birds. Now a more sinister dimension surfaced, and she couldn’t help but wonder if Harold Graber had something to do with her mother’s disappearance. At the very least she felt compelled to talk to him.
The phone rang on Jason’s desk. She rose, using it as an excuse to get going.
“Someone else will get that,” he said, and someone did.
“Thank you, but I’ve taken enough of your time.”
“Look, I shouldn’t have said anything.” He pushed up from the chair. “I didn’t mean to accuse Harold, he’s troubled, that’s all.”
Again, she said, “Thanks.”
Jason walked her to the door. “If you have more questions or if I can help you in any way, I will. And I mean that.”
B
ecky and Meri Ann stood in the sun beside the stone garage at River House, the two of them ready to go their different directions.
Meri Ann shielded her eyes with her hand. “Your hair’s so red, Becky, I need sunglasses to soften the glare.”
“Don’t switch the subject from Graber.”
“I’ll talk to him, that’s all.”
“If you can just wait till I get back from Sun Valley, then we can go together.”
“Are you worried about me?”
“Not exactly, kid.” Becky shuffled her feet. “But just for the record, Graber’s been arrested.”
“When, and for what?”
“He was charged with animal cruelty or something. I think he held a shotgun on the deputies who went out there. It was in the papers. Anyway, why would you go there when his crazy eagle attacked you.”
Meri Ann cringed at the memory, not so much from the bird’s behavior but from her fear of it. “It wasn’t the bird’s fault as much as mine.”
“You never went back.”
“Well, that was then and this is now.” The sun slid behind a bank of clouds and Meri Ann shivered at the sudden drop in temperature. “Let’s get going. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we’ll be back.” She opened the SUV’s door and gave her friend a hand up.
Becky shut her door and lowered the window. “I’ll leave you a message so you know when to expect me. Check the answering machine by the front door. I won’t be late. We’ll go out for a steak and some bean sprouts or whatever organic delights you eat.”
“What about Chinese or Thai?”
“Cool. That sounds normal.” Becky waved as she backed out the long driveway.
A moment later, Meri Ann headed out.
For the second time that day, she cruised past Jason’s salon, heading east on Warm Springs Avenue. Rush-hour traffic slowed her through the city center but slackened when she cleared the sprawling new developments creeping around Table Rock.
The neon cross unsettled her as it had the day before. Its cold light burned stark against the muddy clouds while crime scene images played in her mind. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and forced herself to focus on the highway.
Boise’s river rippled to her right. The road curved beside it, a road she’d traveled often to Lucky Peak Dam, where she used to swim and water ski on summer days. Rounding the bend, the dam’s concrete wall came into view. Water gushed from a relief valve like an Amazon’s fire hose feeding the river. The pounding force sent a fine spray onto her windshield, and she turned on the wipers. It seemed like another lifetime ago when she’d last driven up here; in so many ways it was.
Everything she did, every place she went brought back memories of her youth, and innocence, a time when she didn’t have to be so strong, a time when her parents bore that burden.
As she drove north the road narrowed, twisting and turning into the mountains. Towering ponderosa pines dotted the roadside and at every turn they seemed to multiply until she was in a forest. The stark brown earth and the massive boulders complemented the majestic trees. This was the road to Idaho City. Graber’s sanctuary was halfway between Boise and the old mining town, only twenty-some miles away. But the turn-off to Graber’s was closer, just past Grimes Creeks where the road snaked lazily into a canyon. She watched for a hillside of columnar basalt, a place with the look of a sci-fi cathedral. Finally, she spotted the volcanic outcropping with its dark iron post piles. Fifty yards ahead she saw a faded hand-painted sign,
Graber’s
Eagle
Sanctuary
.
Her pulse quickened as she slowed for the turn. A steep dirt road twisted up the mountain. It wasn’t much more than a rutted path crowded by scrub cedars and towering pines. It felt claustrophobic until the trees thinned near the end of the road and she saw Graber’s weathered cabin atop a cleared knoll. The bed of a rusty pickup stuck out from behind a semi-attached shed. The clouds grew heavier and darker by the minute promising snow. In the dim light it was easy to see a lamp burning inside the cabin—someone was home.
She shifted into park and sat. The futility of her visit struck hard. She debated whether or not to open the door and get out or to turn around and head back.
She’d been here only twice before, the last time when her mom had organized a group of BSU students to lay a stone walkway. Graber had seemed friendly, a funny man with eyes as small and fierce as his raptors. He’d shot four or five rabbits that day, divvied them up for the birds. Meri Ann recalled the piercing shrieks as the birds tore at the flesh. Later, Graber had paraded around the cabin with a golden eagle on his arm for everyone to admire.
But while the students oohed and aahed, the bird watched Meri Ann, specifically the tuna on rye in her hand. The bird swooped. She jerked away, but not before its beak ripped the sleeve of her jacket. She screamed and ran, locking herself in the Jeep. She still recalled the laughter of the university students and her humiliation at having run away.
Suddenly, the light went out in Graber’s cabin and Meri Ann took note. It seemed odd to turn off a lamp, now, when he must have heard her car engine. Regardless, she meant to talk to him and it was too late to pretend he wasn’t at home.
She opened the car door and stepped out. The rank odor of caged birds wafted down the hill, strong even with the wind picking up. She breathed through her mouth as she climbed the stone steps, the very ones she’d helped lay all those years ago.
Halfway up, a door latch clicked.
She craned her head and caught a glint of steel—a double-barreled shotgun—poking through the partly open front door.
“Hold it right there,” came a raspy male voice.
She stood stock still.
The door parted slowly. “Who the hell are you? And what’s your business?”
“Put down that shotgun. I’m not here about your birds, Mr. Graber. It is Mr. Graber, isn’t it?” She stood firm. “I’m Joanna Dunlap’s daughter.”
Slowly, he lowered the shotgun.
A lanky, rugged sixty-year-old man with the pallor of a heavy smoker stepped out. He wore a washed-out denim shirt and jeans with mud spotted knees. His pants were gathered around his waist, cinched by a worn western belt, and his steely hair was worn in a ponytail. Though she couldn’t see what he smoked, she bet on Marlboros. She eased up the steps, still leery of the shotgun.
“I’m here about my mother. You remember her, don’t you?”
He moved haltingly to the edge of the porch railing and squinted at her. He said nothing for a good five seconds which felt more like five minutes. “Joanna,” he mumbled. “Ah, yes, Meri Ann.” He nodded as if he approved. “You’ve come to see me.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “You know who I am?”
“I know more than you think.”
The way he said it gave her pause, but then anyone holding the high ground with a weapon in hand gave her pause. “I’d appreciate it if you’d put the shotgun down.”
He leaned it against the porch rail. It was still only inches from his hand. “Are you still afraid of birds?”
She shrugged.
“Birds won’t hurt you. I dropped out of medical school to doctor birds. Some folks say I’m
non
compos
mentis
.”
She remembered Jason saying Graber was accepted to Harvard. It seemed incredible.
“You seem nervous, Meri Ann. Are you afraid of me? You think I’m psychotic, maybe ready to commit?”
“You’re a lucky man to be doing what you want. And I’d like to ask you about my mother.”
His eyes moved up and down her as if she were on trial. “You think I killed her.”
Meri Ann blew on her hands to warm them and to avoid his accusing stare. “I don’t think anything.”
“Bull,” he snarled. “I never did anything to hurt your mother. She was like a daughter to me. I tried to give her advice, but she paid no attention to me. She’s dead. No one can bring her back.”
Dead
? The word bored through Meri Ann’s head like a slow turning drill. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe it herself, but she questioned his certainty. “But no one’s found her body.”