A Welcome Murder

by Robin Yocum

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  DENA MARIE CONCHEK ANDROSKI XENAKIS

  I am a sick puppy—one magnificently disturbed human being. The whispers that people didn’t think I could hear are all true. The accusations of mental illness were dead on. I’m nuts. Or, as Johnny Earl once so eloquently phrased it, I am “stone crazy.”

  I love my husband. Absolutely love him. Adore him, in fact. I can’t wait for him to come home from work. I’m sending the kids back to my mother’s. Never before have I met him at the door with a cold beer and a blow job, but I will start a new tradition tonight. And I’ll be wearing the dress he bought me, the blue one with the wide white collar that makes me look like the pickled old biddies in the church choir. But he likes it, so I’m going to wear it. The strip steak and mashed potatoes—his favorites—will be ready. I will cut his meat and spoon-feed him the potatoes, naked, if he likes.

  In the years we’ve been married, he has never treated me as badly as he treated me the past few days. He’s rude, crude, and demanding. His answers are short, and there’s a vileness in his tone. He virtually dragged me to the bedroom and took me as though I was a street whore, penetrating me without a kiss or a touch, grinding at me like he was late to catch a plane, ejaculating, then rolling off and looking at me in disgust.

  And oh, sweet Jesus, I am moist in my panties at the thought of him climbing on top of me again tonight. I will suck him hard then let him take me. He’ll pull my hair back until my forehead is pressed against the headboard, then press my ankles to my ears and ride me into the sheets.

  What in God’s name is wrong with me? What went wrong with my wiring? When he was a saint, I couldn’t stand the sight of him. Now he acts like a bastard, practically a Rayce Daubner reincarnate, and I love him. I crave him. I know he killed Rayce. No matter what anyone says, I know he killed him. For years, I believed that he was just a wimp. But he’s not; he’s a killer.

  I’ll do anything to keep him. This morning, I watched as Vincent—I’ll never dare call him “Smoochie” ever again—drove his car away from the house and headed for his job at the hospital. As soon as the taillights disappeared onto Kennedy Avenue, I got dressed and went down to the sheriff’s office. I had to protect my man.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  SHERIFF FRANCIS ROBERSON

  My life was becoming a recurring nightmare. As I entered my office at 7:30 a.m., Dena Marie Xenakis was pouring water into my coffeepot. She smiled and said, “I thought it would be okay to make some coffee.”

  “Dena Marie, what are you doing here . . . again?”

  “Mr. Majowski let me in. I told him I needed to talk to you, and he said I could wait in your office.”

  “Toots let you in?” I peeked over toward his office; the door was half open and the light on. That was odd. Toots never arrived at work before nine. Allison must have heard Dena Marie’s voice, because the familiar heel-to-toe, click-clack of her shoes started toward my office. I pushed the door closed before she could get close enough to give me the finger. “Dena Marie, I know you’re trying to be helpful by getting your husband arrested for murder, but you’re making my home life a living hell.”

  “Not anymore. I wanted to tell you that you can call off the dogs. Vincent didn’t kill Rayce. I’m truly sorry for the confusion.”

  I set my briefcase on the floor behind my desk, and I could feel my forehead wrinkling in the same perplexed furrows that were once brought on by my advanced calculus class. “Vincent?” I asked.

  “My husband,” she said.

  “Smoochie?”

  “Please don’t call him that. His name is Vincent.”

  I nodded. “Yes, so I’ve heard.” I eased myself into my chair.

  “Coffee?” she asked. I grabbed the mug from the corner of my desk and held it toward her. “Cream?”

  “Black,” I said. “Listen, Dena Marie, this is quite the turn of events. Just a couple of days ago, you were in here pleading with me to arrest him. In fact, you said something like, ‘He killed Rayce. I know he did.’”

  She sashayed over to one of the chairs in front of my desk, sat down, and rolled her eyes. “Things change. I mean, what was I thinking? Vincent? Commit a murder? It’s laughable, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know, Dena Marie. I thought it was laughable the first day you walked in here. But that’s when he was the old doormat Smoochie Xenakis. Now that he’s Vinnie the Shark, I don’t know. It would seem to me that Vincent is more likely to have murdered someone than Smoochie. He might warrant a second look.” I crossed my ankles on the corner of my desk and interlocked my fingers behind my neck. For the first time in several days, I was smiling and actually starting to enjoy this. “This is all very interesting, don’t you think, Dena Marie? I mean, why is it that when he was good ol’ Smoochie, you couldn’t wait to get rid of him? But now that he thinks he’s Michael Corleone, you want to protect him?”

  “I’ve always loved Vincent. I was just a little confused.”

  “Confused?” I dropped my legs from the corner of the desk and took a sip of the steaming brew. “Dena Marie, in all candor, I’m not the one you need to be concerned about.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are two agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation running around the county, investigating the murder. Rayce Daubner was a federal informant, and they’re investigating—”

  “I know. I talked to them last night. They were at the house.”

  She had my full attention. “You talked to them? What did you tell them?”

  “Same stuff I told you earlier, mostly. I don’t think they believed me, though.”

  “I want to make sure I have this straight. Last night you wanted him in prison; this morning you don’t?”

  “Something happened last night to make me change my mind.”

  “Did they ask Smoochie—er, Vincent—any questions?”

  “They tried, but he started talking about some rash on his testicles. He called the black guy a fatass and they left.”

  “Good boy, Vincent.”

  “Why would you say that? Don’t you want their help?”

  “They’re not here to help, Dena Marie. They’re here to stick someone with the murder so they can cram it up my ass sideways. It’s a long story, but it would certainly behoove Vincent not to talk to them.”

  Her left eye closed slightly as she absorbed this. “Did you warn Vincent about this?” I shrugged and nodded once. “You’re protecting Vincent, even though he probably killed Rayce?”

  “You’re making my migraine return.”

  She pressed her right palm to her breasts and said, “You’re protecting Vincent because you love me so much, aren’t you, Francis?”

  It was at that instant that the appeal that had held sway over me seemed to vanish, dissipating like the white smoke escaping from the stacks at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel. She seemed childlike—infantile, all wrapped up in her own little world. And now, for whatever reason, she was in love with her husband.

  “Yes, Dena Marie, that’s exactly why I’m protecting him. Ours is a forbidden love that can never be, so I’m willing to do everything in my power just to make you happy.”

  She pressed two fingers to her lips, mouthed the words “thank you,” and left.

  Dena Marie wasn’t gone from my office thirty seconds before Toots walked in, a purplish mouse under his left eye and the front of his shirt held together by two safety pins. “Sorry for letting the crazy lady in here, boss. She was here at seven o’clock and would . . . not . . . shut . . . up. She was prattling on about how she needed to see you and how Vincent wasn’t guilty and how she’d just die if Vincent ever went to prison. I let her in your office so I didn’t have to listen to her anymore.”

  “What in Christ’s name happened to you?”

  “We had a little incident last night.”

  I covered my face and massaged my eyeballs. “I really don’t need another incident, Toots. What was it?” />
  “I had a little run-in with the friends of the Third Reich.” He dropped a folder on the desk. “They’re in the jail. I arrested them both for aggravated menacing and assault on a police officer.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “They were out front when I got back from dropping off Johnny. They started running their Nazi mouths, and I told ’em they had about two seconds to clam up or they’d be eating cold oatmeal for breakfast as the guests of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department. The big one said, ‘You ain’t near man enough, porky.’ I didn’t mind that assault on my manhood, but that ‘porky’ comment went right up my spine. I walked over to them and put a finger in that little preacher boy’s face, and he shoved it back up in my face. Then the fight was on.”

  “You got in a fight with those two and all you got was a little shiner and a torn shirt?”

  “I gave the preacher a backhand and knocked him clear off the hood of the car. The goon and I wrestled around a little. He elbowed me in the eye, so I clubbed him. No shit, Fran, I smacked him in the head and my nightstick bounced back like I’d hit a chunk of granite. It almost flew clear out of my hand. I gave him a mouthful of pepper spray, and he settled right down.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Did they need medical attention?”

  “No.”

  “No, they didn’t? Or, yes they did but you elected not to bother?”

  “Probably the latter. They can go to the hospital when they get to their new country.” Toots took the chair Dena Marie had been sitting in and touched at the puffy spot under his eye. “It doesn’t detract from my natural good looks, does it?”

  “How could it?”

  He grinned for a minute, then his expression turned serious and he got around to the reason for his visit. “You don’t suppose those two had anything to do with Daubner’s murder, do you?”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “When Daubner got out of high school, he bragged that he had joined the Ku Klux Klan, and for a long time he had a Confederate flag hanging outside of his house.”

  “Why would that make him a target? Wouldn’t that endear him to them?” I asked.

  “In most cases it would.” Toots pulled his pocketknife from his pants pocket and slowly began working the blade beneath his fingernails, deliberately making me wait for his point. “Yes sir, it would in most cases. Let’s say, for example, that Daubner had somehow gotten himself involved with the goon and his Aryan Republic of New Germania, which is not a total stretch, since we know that Daubner claimed to be a Klansman.”

  “Go on.”

  “Johnny Earl gets sent to prison and ends up in the same cell as the would-be chancellor of the new republic. Earl and Himmler talk. Earl tells him about getting set up on a drug deal by a federal informant. Himmler asks who it was and Earl tells him, some guy named Rayce Daubner. Himmler knows Daubner because they ran around together wearing white sheets and burning crosses. Maybe Daubner was supposed to be a citizen of New Germania, but now Himmler knows that he’s actually a federal informant.”

  “You think that Himmler and the preacher came to Steubenville to get rid of the traitor?”

  Toots made an imaginary pistol with the thumb and index finger of his right hand and shot me as he winked. “I’d say that scenario is a hell of a lot more likely than anything else we’ve got.”

  I felt a tingle in my balls. The tingle spread upward, to my stomach and nipples and ears. “Has he been around town that long?”

  Toots shrugged. “I don’t know. Just because we didn’t see him doesn’t mean he wasn’t around. We know the goon was in prison, but he could have sent the good preacher on a mission.”

  “It could have happened.”

  “Of course it could have happened. I impounded their car. Why don’t you get a search warrant for it? If they’re heading to their new country, chances are that’s where they’re keeping all of their possessions. Maybe there’s something there.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ALLISON ROBERSON

  Toots Majowski walked into the radio room and leaned over my desk. “Make sure he understands the importance of the discovery,” he said in a barely audible tone.

  “What happened to your eye?” I asked.

  “The discovery, goddammit, make sure he knows it’s important.”

  “What discovery?”

  He turned and started back to his office. When he got to the doorway, he looked at me for a tense second and mouthed, “the discovery!”

  A few minutes later, Frannie came excitedly out of his office. “I’m going to see Judge Pappas to get a search warrant,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “That little Nazi preacher’s car.”

  When I heard his footfalls fade down the hallway, I got up from my desk and walked over to Toots’s office. “What happened to your eye and your shirt, and what the hell is this all about?”

  Toots looked up from the paperwork in which he was pretending to be engrossed. “I got into a little scrape is all.”

  “Why is Fran going after a search warrant?”

  “Apparently he feels there might be something of interest in that car.”

  “He thinks there might be? And what discovery is going to be so important?”

  He blinked twice and said, “You’ll know it when you see it.” Then he went back to pretending to be busy.

  Fran was back in less than thirty minutes. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him so excited. He rapped twice on Toots’s doorjamb. “Got it; let’s go.”

  As they were about to walk out of the office, Toots said, “Allison, why don’t you come with us? We could use another witness, just in case we find anything.”

  Fran went to the evidence room and returned with a set of keys to the preacher’s car. We walked down to the bullpen and hopped into Fran’s cruiser for the short drive across town to the county impound lot, which was located in a corner of the county highway department’s fenced, two-acre gravel lot on Hopedale-Steubenville Road. Fran unlocked the front door of the sedan. “I’ll start with the trunk,” Toots said, taking the keys from Fran.

  I stood near the front and watched as Fran searched all the obvious places—in the glove box and ashtrays, above the sun visors, under the seats and dash and floor mats, and between the seats. “You find anything, Toots?” he asked.

  “Couple duffle bags of military fatigues and a stack of skin magazines.”

  “Odd items for a man of the cloth to be carrying around in his car.”

  Toots kept his head buried in the trunk. “How about you?”

  “Nothing.” Fran crawled off the seat and walked back to where Toots was working. I followed him. His excitement had waned. I could have told him that the little preacher couldn’t possibly have killed Rayce Daubner, but he wouldn’t have listened. Once Fran gets his mind set on something, there’s no changing it. Beads of sweat were peppering Toots’s forehead when he backed out of the trunk. “It’s like a landfill in there.”

  Fran lifted the stack of porn magazines out of the trunk and dropped them on the gravel; they fanned out like fallen dominoes, portions of taut skin everywhere. He pulled the duffle bags out one after the other and dropped them on the gravel. Dirt and clutter littered the floor of the trunk. Nothing but trash. “Damn,” he said. Then, with the back of his flashlight, he reached in and flicked at a yellowed newspaper. Beneath it was a circular crease. “Toots, did you check the spare wheel well?”

  “Not yet. I hadn’t dug down that far.”

  Fran peeled off the carpeted circular cover, dumping trash onto the side of the trunk. He froze for a moment. He looked at me, then back into the spare wheel well. I leaned in closer. Stuffed in the crater of the spare wheel was a white towel with a blue stripe down the middle. The towel had been neatly folded several times. He lifted the towel, bobbed it in his hands a few times as though gauging the weight, and delicately began peeling away the terrycloth. When the last flap was removed, it revealed a s
teel-blue revolver.

  I gasped. “Oh my God! That’s your service revolver!”

  “Toots,” he said. With a trembling hand, Fran showed his chief deputy the revolver. Then he lifted the dangling end of the towel and stretched it out. Printed in white block letters down the middle of the blue stripe were the words “Valley View Motel.”

  Fran looked at Toots, who said, “When I booked them in last night, that’s where they said they were staying.”

  “Mother of Christ,” Fran said.

  To me, everything else seemed like it should be a formality. Fran would send the weapon and the slugs the coroner had dug out of Rayce Daubner to the state forensics lab in Columbus to verify our suspicions that the .38 was the gun used in the murder. I can’t even begin to tell you how relieved I was about this. I’d been extremely worried that this entire debacle was going to trash Fran’s political aspirations. And let’s be honest: My real concern was that I’d end up stuck in Steubenville. A lot of politicians’ wives support their husbands’ political careers because they enjoy the residual benefits and being in the spotlight. Me, all I want is to get the hell out of that monstrosity of a house and this filthy little town.

  Fran went back to Judge Pappas and secured another search warrant for room 7 at the Valley View Motel. I followed Fran and Toots to the property room, where they took the key attached to the plastic green fob from the envelope that contained the personal property taken from the Reverend Wilfred A. Lewis when he was processed into the jail. When we arrived at the Valley View, the cleaning lady was standing between rooms 7 and 8. The door to room 7 was slightly ajar, and she was plucking little soaps and a mini bottle of shampoo from the cart. “You haven’t cleaned room 7 yet, have you?” Fran asked.