Murder of the Prodigal Father

by Mark Wm Smith

  Or, it could also be the reaction of a man guilty of adultery. That meant my bloodline wasn’t looking any purer. Mother seemed to enjoy Granger’s company more than most sister-in-laws. She would by rights be a bit lonely after twenty some odd years without a husband in the home. Hard to blame her for needing the attentions of a man.

  The curves straightened and dropped me off on Highway 59, north of town.

  I glanced at the car’s clock and cursed.

  Almost nine.

  Nansi would be waiting up for the phone call I forgot to make at six this morning. I spun onto the deserted Sunday-morning roadway in a race to make up time.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Family Dynamics

  Nansi said, “Hi,” with enthusiasm.

  “Sorry it’s so late.” I mentally calculated. After one in the morning for her. “Feeling better?”

  “The children miss you.”

  She had put them to bed early after a three hour walk through the Botanical Gardens that afternoon. Quentin moped for the first thirty minutes, but perked up after seeing the colorful fish attacking bread tossed on the water. Penelope Jane begged to save petals from every flowering plant. “Daddy loves these,” she reminded her mother with every selection.

  “The flowers did smell lovely,” Nansi told me. “And the cool breeze off the ocean.”

  “Sounds like an anniversary experience.” I closed my eyes and saw her hair feather across those adorable blue eyes. The beginning of our second year, a gentle wind caressing her face as we walked through a public garden in Virginia.

  “I wanted to do something memorable. For them. Someday their grandpa’s death will be important.”

  The phone left me with the same dead air between beats I’d heard the morning Renée called. One week this morning since they discovered Dixon naked and alone in the apartment above the bar.

  “Connor?”

  “Sorry. I just remembered... something.”

  “It’s not,” the tone of her voice dipped into melancholia and then rose to rapid, panic. “I started thinking. We were watching the fish thrash in the water, I remembered you telling me about that girl you dated in high school.”

  A cold tingling ran across my shoulders. It crawled up the back of my neck and wrapped around my chest. My heart pounded.

  “She’s not still there is she?”

  “That’s absurd.” I said it too quickly. Too loudly.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just scared.”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of. That’s old news. She’s got a little girl and everything—”

  “You’ve seen her?” Her voice pitched higher.

  “Nanse. Calm down. I’m here for my dad’s funeral.”

  I could hear her crying, muffled by her half-hearted efforts to keep the mouthpiece covered. The smell of Jasia’s perfume became noticeable in the room. I stood and opened the door, keeping the phone pinched against my ear.

  “I’m fine here, honey. There’s nothing going on that you need to worry about.”

  “I’ve got to—” She sucked a sharp breath. “I’ve got to get up in the morning with Quentin for school.”

  “All right. But everything—” The silence on the line changed in the slightest way. “Nansi?”

  Nothing.

  “Did you hang up?” I pulled the phone away from my ear to study it. “What kind of a question is that?” I asked the receiver.

  My bedroom walls closed inward creating a small cell. Guilt took pinpoint stabs at my heart. A single tear escaped my efforts to minimize the importance of Nansi’s accusation. It shattered the dam behind my eyes. I cried openly, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  The phone line began squawking.

  I slapped the receiver into the cradle.

  It fell out like a dead fish.

  I grabbed the lamp from my bedside table and jerked the cord loose from the outlet. My arm hurled the lamp and my chest released the anguished cry of an animal.

  Cerulean glass exploded into a thousand pieces of sea water against the Farrah Fawcett poster. The hollow burst rained porcelain shards and white dust over my multi-colored bedspread. The shattered base bounced once on the bed before hitting the floor with a thud.

  Farrah’s torso was ripped wide open, exposing a shadowy emptiness behind her where the sheetrock collided with my emotional eruption.

  “What the hell?” Renée said from the hallway.

  “She’s broken.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  I sat on the edge of my dust-covered bed. A deep sigh left me. My chin fell to my chest.

  Renée took a step inside. “Did you throw that thing?”

  “It’s okay. The whole damn world is broken, so Farrah and the lamp will be right at home.”

  She came and sat beside me, and we stared at the floor together.

  Mother’s voice hollered from the first floor. “You’re going to clean that mess up, right? I can’t fly my chair up there.”

  “She’ll never change,” I said.

  “She can’t.”

  “What kind of person am I, Renée? The dad I never knew is gone. Mother’s as angry as ever. The police hate me. Jasia won’t leave me alone. And Nansi and the kids will be gone when I get back home.” I leaned my face into my palms.

  Renée laid a hand on my back. “Tony still likes you.”

  I gave a short laugh. “Only because I haven’t cost him his job yet. Am I doomed to die just like our philandering father? I act just like him.”

  “I hope that’s not true,” she said.

  I shook my head as much as my posture would allow. Spare her the details of your recent encounters with Jasia. “I just want to be whole. Will trying to discover what happened to him really make me better?” Do I have to hide in a blank room to stay away from sexual temptation?

  Renée patted my shoulder. “I know.”

  Her nonjudgmental acceptance of me at my worst felt like a magnet pulling the heavy metals from my soul. Why am I doing this to my people? Questioning everyone, bringing up bad blood, making my family relive painful memories— are these actions accomplishing a purpose? Am I just that selfish? Isn't that just like Dixon? The weight of it was getting too much for me. “You didn’t say my sister still likes me.”

  “She’s still mad.” Only, she sounded forsaken. Her hand made small circles on my upper back.

  “Sorry for abandoning you, Sis.”

  We stayed like that for some very long minutes.

  Mother’s banging around in the kitchen grew louder with the passing minutes.

  Both of us began snickering. I snorted out loud causing an avalanche of humor. Soon we were laughing so hard we fell back onto the dusty remains of my anger and pain.

  After Renée left for the dealership, I made a decision to pressure Mother about Granger’s anger at my father.

  First, I needed to wash off some of the shame and fear coming through my pores after Nansi’s indictment. I climbed into the shower before realizing Renée had used up the shampoo. So I trotted down the steps, in my towel and dripping wet, to steal Mother’s.

  The house was quiet. I guessed Mother would still be in the kitchen, or back in her bedroom.

  I crept around the corner of the stairwell, adolescent fear tingling in my gut at the possibility of my mother catching me half naked. Every tiptoe threatened a creak on the stairs. Mother had hearing like a mule deer in hunting season. I reached the landing.

  Her bedroom door was cracked open two inches.

  I froze. It suddenly occurred that she might be in the bathroom.

  A shadow bounced off the door jamb of her room.

  I sprinted for my destination, grinning at my childish success. Excitement approaching dread infused me as I thought about the return trip. Mother’s doorway would offer a small gap of visibility into the hall for anyone near her bedroom window. And of course, anyone exiting the room would have a clear view of my towel-adorned body.

  As I stood in the
bathroom doorway pondering this scenario, feeling foolish at the youthful silliness of my circumstance, a halting figure passed by the tiny opening.

  Curiosity pushed me forward. I crept along the wall, stretching my neck to see inside her room. Pangs of treachery stirred in my gullet. I peeked through the opening.

  Mother eased herself into her wheelchair.

  My heart stopped beating. I became light-headed, actually feeling the blood drain from my brain. This was not possible!

  Collecting the tiny bit of self-control I had left, I ran up the stairs, two steps at a time on tiptoes. Behind the safety of the bathroom door, I cranked on the water and sat down in the spray.

  Maybe she was just moving from the bed? Maybe she’d lifted herself from the bed and into the chair? I closed my eyes and let the hard droplets pummel my face. I recreated the scene in my mind.

  The bed had been made. The light from the window spread across the foot of the bed and onto the floor. The wheelchair back rested against the edge of the bed. There was no way she could have moved from the bed to her wheelchair without walking around it.

  Rivulets poured down my face and chest and pooled into tiny rivers along my heels and toes. I watched the trails as they converged in a spiraling descent down the drain. The miniature waterways reminded me of the four lives connected by this house. We came together in a rush and spilled maddeningly downward, into an unknown future. Only our rivers weren’t conformist. Nor were they predictable.

  Did Renée know my mother could walk? Did Granger? I wanted to run out naked and ask them. I couldn’t ask Mother. She obviously intended this to be a secret. Maybe she didn’t plan on revealing it ever.

  I pushed myself up from the tub floor and finished my shower.

  Crazy kept getting crazier and I wasn’t sure I could handle many more surprises. The world I’d grown up in was gone. And I was beginning to feel extremely isolated in this one.

  By noon I was functional again. After two hours patching the mess I made with the lamp, twenty minutes nursing Farrah back to health with Scotch tape, and a quick drive in the New Yorker, I now stood in front of Tony Ruiz’s house on Comstock.

  The street captured a full spectrum of income levels, ranging from a 1920’s mansion on the corner of Main, to a trailer park in the cul-de-sac at the end. Tony and Marie raised their three children in the middle of this five-block stretch. His roof reminded me of a high school geometry problem. How much volume fits inside two equilateral triangles sitting on a rhombus?

  I traipsed up the cement walk of the quaint and small abode, noting tiny russet faces peeking from the window behind the porch. My heart jumped into my throat. Why had I left my own two children home?

  Tony opened the door before I reached the porch steps. “Glad you could come, buddy!” His voice held genuine cheer.

  “You have lookouts.”

  He laughed.

  Inside, three small Indians crowded behind my host.

  My palm snapped up. “How!”

  The children giggled. Tony pulled them one by one from behind his legs. “Jimmy is four. Regina will be five in May. And Luke is two and a half. Children, this is my friend Connor.” Jimmy and Regina coyly offered greetings. Luke stuck out his tongue. Tony bent quickly and swatted his bottom. Luke raced for the kitchen from which the divine smell of spiced meats and apple pie emanated.

  “Smells great.”

  Jimmy and Regina trotted after their wailing brother.

  “Juanita loves a chance to cook for someone else.” Tony winked. “If you don’t like it, lie.”

  “Funny.”

  Tony cleared toys from a club chair. “I was afraid the fire may have kept you.”

  “Nothing to it really.” I decided on Akira’s version. “Probably a couple of kids.”

  “Makes sense. Have a seat.”

  Sitting down made me think of Mother. I’d pushed the spying moment deep. Emotional detachment crowded around the memory. I decided I would not bring her up. And Granger’s threat didn’t need to spoil a good meal either.

  Tony sat on the sofa across from me.

  Everything below the five foot line insinuated children. All of the books on the built in shelves were oversized, with cartoon pictures on their spines. Bright green, orange, and red toys poked from every nook and cranny.

  “It’s a little small for the five of us,” Tony said, with a note of apology.

  “It’s great. Cozy.”

  An iron sculpture of an American Indian stood in the corner near the front window.

  “My father’s. Juanita insists.”

  “A conversation starter.”

  He grunted. “Not if you’re talking to me.”

  Juanita stepped from the kitchen, a caramel-skinned woman about five and a half feet tall.

  I struggled to stand, blushing and fumbling.

  “Hello, Connor! I’ve heard a million stories about you, and still, you are more handsome.”

  “How perfect.” I shook her hand, it’s grip warm and comforting, like the house.

  “I must cook. You can tell me about my husband later.” She raised one eyebrow on her round face. Then she disappeared.

  “She’s pretty,” I said, sitting back down.

  He chuckled. “Pretty damned mean. I told her not to scare you.”

  “It’s not a bad thing to be the star of the show once in a while.” I picked up a small toy train from the coffee table and inspected it.

  “Get ready, then. You’ll be the star until you leave. Juanita is extremely hospitable. Generally at the expense of her hardworking husband.” He had a hard time keeping the smile out of his comments about Juanita.

  “You two seem to have a nice life. That’s good.”

  “She takes care of me. I rescued her from a bad land.”

  The little train rolled easily across a magazine cover. I left it sitting on the stack. “She’s from El Salvador?”

  “Nicaragua. A long story she doesn’t want me to tell. But tough as nails, man.” He lifted his arms to indicate a machine gun. “Tough.”

  “Good choice for a cop.”

  He waved it off. “More danger driving a crappy car than in a Miles City gunfight. Around here the bad guys are too drunk to shoot straight.”

  I laughed. “A man of steel and wit.” Good humor offered an opportunity to broach family troubles. I decided to step into them. “Speaking of trouble, tell me what you know about Dixon’s love life.”

  “Dixon had a love life? News to me.” He turned his head to look at his father’s sculpture. “Maybe I didn’t want to look in that direction, though. Sentimental, you know.”

  “Can you check and see if any of the other cops in town noticed anything?”

  “I’ll check, but I can’t promise much. Frieze is putting the crimp on anything that doesn’t involve the Freemen.”

  “Freemen?”

  “Ranchers near Jordan that don’t want to pay taxes. You hadn’t heard?”

  I chuckled. “Yeah. I heard a bit on the plane ride in. Our contact with the States is limited. We watch last years reruns on television. And the O.J. trial.”

  “Of course that.” He grinned. “Bunch of ranchers decided the tax system was cheating them and they stopped paying. Feds are supposed to come out and try and force the issue. These anarchist cowboys are holed up on a ranch preparing for a standoff with the FBI.”

  “Don’t want to pay their taxes?” I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a possibility?”

  “They call the place Justus Township.” He smirked. “Should name it Irony Village you ask me. We busted one last year. One of us will have to go up and get anyone else the Feds nab.” His brow had wrinkled and his lips were pinched.

  “This is really going on?”

  “Yeah, man. We’ve got a real cowboy showdown, shots fired, all that mumbo jumbo, right up the road. Feds are just holding out because of Waco and Ruby Ridge.” Tony glanced at the kitchen door and lowered his voice. “I’m going to have to run up
there tomorrow. Transport a guy back.”

  I nodded. “So getting Frieze to re-open Dixon’s case is unlikely?”

  “I’d say more like ‘forget it.’ Frieze is hypersensitive about everything in his purview these days.” He shifted his body so one leg rested on the sofa. “Let him be.”

  “You don’t think I should talk to him again?”

  “If you try and talk to him, he’ll shut you down so none of us can talk to you.”

  My gaze rested on the Indian sculpture. “What about Akira. You know where he came from?”

  “Dixon vouched for him. I think he has a record, though. You want me to check him out?”

  A four-year-old, human missile flew across my view and crashed into his father. “Whoa, Cowboy!” Tony hollered as he bent forward to prevent any personal damage.

  “I’m a Indian, Daddy! Not a cowboy!”

  Tony held him up and looked him over. “Sorry. It appears you’re right about that.”

  Tony tossed him into the air repeatedly. Jimmy giggled and screeched joy. Words began bouncing out of his mouth.“Momma, says, dinner, is, ready!”

  Tony placed the boy’s feet on the floor and he rocketed away. We followed the little projectile into a dining room just beyond the living room doorway. Jimmy was just climbing into his chair next to Regina. Luke sat across from them next to his mother.

  As Tony slid in on the far end of the table, I was struck with a longing for Nansi and my children. I smiled big to hide the ache and sat quickly at the remaining seat.

  Tony said grace. And the Ruiz mealtime ruckus began.

  Our reunion stretched into dark.

  I lingered, helping Tony finish dishes with the children’s gleeful assistance. And against Juanita’s protests. Their home reminded me of our first days after Quentin was born. All the promises of a stable family life detained me within its warmth.