Murder of the Prodigal Father

by Mark Wm Smith

  “You decided he was poisoned with DDT because the doctor told you he was sick?” The concern in her face unsettled me.

  “Well. I guessed, based on—”

  “You guessed that someone poisoned your dad? Isn’t that a little weird?” Jasia’s concern became gentler, in her words and in the way she looked at me.

  “It wasn’t just the doctor,” I said in a rush. “There was the bit about Zach’s getting sick behind the garage.”

  “Zach?”

  “A guy that works for Dixon, err, Renée. He told me he got sick as a dog after messing around with some of Dixon’s old weed-killers. Behind the dealership. His doctor told him he needed to report it.”

  Darkness, shadowy and minute, crossed Jasia’s face.

  “Have you heard of this?” My anxiety made every word I spoke sound retarded.

  She shook her head. “Something else. A long time ago. but this—”

  “It’s got me stirred up, is all. Seems important.” All of my well-formed logical conclusions went flabby against Jasia’s fear for my sanity. I tried to think of something that would transform her perspective of me as a complete nut, emotionally and psychologically crippled by the unexpected death of my estranged father.

  “Connor,” she said, placing the icing tube on the counter. She stepped toward me, her hands hanging beside her. “Have you thought this through?”

  Nicole coughed. “I’m going to make sure the car is cleaned out for the party.” She slipped through the back door.

  Jasia took another step. Our bodies were separated by nothing more than an electric field.

  “My mother has been so ambiguous about Dixon’s death,” I offered, caught by the musky scent of Jasia. My vision melted into her deep, brown soul-windows. My breath barely left me before I needed another.

  Jasia wrapped her arms around me, laying her head against my chest and squeezing me gently. Her hair smelled freshly washed and light. Heat radiated from her in a consuming cloud that wrapped me in its comfort. “You are thinking about this too much, Connor.” The vibrations of her voice resonated through my skin, into my heart.

  “Something is happening—” I started. Only her hair, the heat of her body, the smell of her perfume took every thought I had and balled it up like Play-Dough.

  Jasia lifted her head from my chest, waiting for me to finish.

  I bent and kissed her lips, feeling the intensity as if we had never stopped dating. A charge of liquid desire met me in her responsive mouth. Tumbling into the lust, every nerve from head to foot tingled. My mind tossed up a memory of PCP laced marijuana. One crazy party in the military had cured me of drug use. This kiss heightened my senses in the same way. My consciousness centered on the full fleshiness of her lips.

  The back door slammed.

  Jasia and I came apart like snap-together toys.

  I bent to the floor, pretending to tie my shoe. I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “You’ll have to get over it,” Jasia said, returning to her icing with what felt like a lot more reserve than I had.

  I stood up, feeling a flush of embarrassment that Nicole might have seen us. I glanced her way.

  She didn’t appear rattled at all.

  “I’d better get,” I said.

  The front entrance seemed a hundred yards away. Neither of the women spoke as I left. In the fresh, winter air, I resolved to never speak to Jasia again. This mania had to stop. I was almost to the car when I heard her voice from the porch.

  “Call me before you leave town.”

  I dug a grin out of my bewilderment. “I will,” I hollered, knowing the call would never happen. Since breaking lips with Jasia, I’d been overwhelmed with a mental image of Nansi patiently swinging on her parents’ porch. Her gentle smile waited for me to traverse the steps and sit beside her.

  As I drove away, filled with out-of-bounds energy, Jasia watched me from her front step, arms crossed against the freezing cold.

  Navigating the dreary mid-morning streets toward Mother’s didn’t settle my disturbed state. In fact, my agitation had me physically shaking by the time I pushed through the door of Dixon’s Neoclassical legacy.

  Odors of piney camphor and nutty oats met me in the foyer. The combination soothed me. I entered the kitchen.

  Mother wheeled herself deftly about the modified island countertop, scooping chopped cabbage into a pot on the burner.

  “I expect you’ll miss that,” I said.

  She stopped. “What are you—?” She decided not to fight. Her chair regained motion.

  “Why is it that Granger spends so much time around here, Mother? You two got something going on?”

  She peered into the pot and rattled it vigorously. “That sounds rude and unnecessary,” she said flatly.

  “He might have killed your husband.” I braced myself for her reaction by grabbing onto the lip of the counter I leaned against.

  Mother raced her wheelchair all of the way around the island, skidding to a halt in front of me. “That is ridiculous! What has gotten into you to make you so hateful of your own blood?” Her cheeks blushed. Eyes like iced metal bored into me.

  I’d come too far to back out. “He fired his rifle at me.”

  “You stepped way out of bounds, young man.” I detected a small trembling in her forearm. “Digging through a man’s personal things goes against common decency.”

  “Nobody wants to tell me anything,” I said in the shallowest tone I could muster.

  Mother balked. “You—” She rolled back two feet. “Impertinent. Like your father. Got to go against the grain.”

  “That’s nice, Mother. Calling the dead names. Granger had motive and he’s mean enough to have done it.”

  The tremor began to roll up to her chest. “If Granger Pierce would have wanted to kill his brother, he’d have done it a long time ago.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She had me off guard.

  “You don’t know all you think you know about your father. Dixon Pierce was capable of—” Her knuckles whitened trying to hold back the anger. “It wasn’t just his drinking. It wasn’t just putting me into this prison.” She slapped the armrest. “Dixon was bad in other ways.”

  “And you made sure he knew it.”

  “What?!”

  “How long have you been walking?”

  Mother’s mouth fell open. After staring for a full ten seconds, she clapped her jaw. Her chin fell and she stared at the floor near my feet.

  “How much do you really know about Dixon’s death?”

  She didn’t move.

  “Were you and Granger figuring on getting married once Dad was out of the way?”

  Mother rose halfway up from her seat. Her strong, wiry arms shook a rattle into the chair. A low growl rumbled from within her. In a sudden release, she flopped back into the seat.

  Before I could let out a breath of relief, a small, hard pillow she kept in her chair zinged by my left ear. I shifted to one side. A shower of cabinet glass rained onto my shoulder.

  “Get out!” my mother screamed.

  My ears stung with the pain of her shrill voice. I reached up to cover them.

  “Get out!”

  When I saw her eyes, red and puffed around hardened steel, I knew I’d broken a sacred rule. Trying to kick something free had alienated me from my mother.

  There was no point in trying to plead my case right now. I’d allowed my emotions to control my thinking, and the repercussion was exile.

  I walked back out to the car as quickly as possible without running.

  The drive through town was filled with the logic that had led me to Granger’s guilt. As ideas go, it seemed sound. But Mother’s reaction twisted logical reasoning into a knot. I needed to ask Renée what was missing from my past recollections.

  I rolled into the parking lot of the dealership with a rising fear that Renée would write me off as insane like the rest of my people wanted to. I pushed it aside. Everybody was flipping out
over my inquiries about Dixon and there had to be a reason. I climbed out of the Chrysler and pressed through the frozen world I grew up in to uncover it.

  Renée greeted me like we hadn’t had our topsy-turvy conversation about Akira. I expected something like “Hi, loony-bro,” but if she thought it, she kept it to herself. Instead, she appeared chipper.

  “I guess you slept well.”

  A playful grin danced across her lips. “It has been a productive morning.”

  “Productive? It looks more like cream-de-cat.” Feeding her joy might help me breach the dreaded question and answer barrier.

  “Okay,” Renée said, her smile widening. “I can’t keep it to myself. Insurance paid the balance on the shop mortgage.” By the end of the sentence she was clapping her hands like a child and hopping in place.

  I pursed my lips. “Impressive.”

  “Isn’t it?” She bounced back to her desk. “I’m having a steak tonight.”

  I watched her park her rail-thin frame into the oversized chair, thinking three steaks a day might be a better diet. “Am I invited?”

  Renée’s glance held uncertainty, like she’d forgotten who I was.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said to let her off the hook. “I’ve got something else I need to do tonight.”

  “No.” Her eyes, weathered, dull gray versions of our mother’s steel orbs, held genuine pain. “We do need to take some time for a meal. Before you go… back.”

  I averted my gaze. Her indecision about whether to say “home” or something else hurt. I deserved it, though. “We should. You’re right. I haven’t tried hard enough to be involved.”

  She waved my concern away. “It’s not the best time, Connor. Everybody is a little off-balance.”

  “Yeah.” I held the breath for a couple of seconds, and then inhaled slowly. How should I approach my reason for coming? I decided thinking would not help. “Why do you suppose Mother is so protective of Granger?” I let the words come naturally. But they weren’t natural. Tension filled the space between us.

  Renée stared at me. Gears turned behind her eyes for a full rotation. “You don’t know.” She said it with that tint of surprise that softens a voice.

  “Know what?”

  “The story.”

  “There’s a story?”

  “You grew up in the same house I did. How could you not know the story?”

  I took a deep breath, weary of the story even before I’d heard it. “I’m an idiot, okay.”

  Renée shook her head several times. “Granger tried to get Dixon arrested for molesting our cousin. That story.”

  The words hung like bats in my big banyan tree back home. I knew they hid up there, but I never saw them. Except at night when they swooped out for a meal. “You’re serious?”

  “Uncle Granger wasn’t in the house. Dad was alone with the kids.”

  “So that means he molested them?”

  “Nobody knows. Aunt Greta moved out and lived with us for a week. She left for California a few weeks later. Granger was crushed.”

  “Does our mother believe that Dixon did something wrong?”

  “Well, that was right after....” Renée melted, the big chair swallowing more of her. She began to cry. It was a soft, gentle sniffle. Between watery breaths, she said, “Mother ran Dixon out of the house for giving me a bath.”

  Bath, bath, bath rang inside my brain. Time stopped. My head felt like a lump of half-dried brick mortar. Words formed on my tongue. They felt like paste. “Did he, touch—?” My lips remained stiff cardboard.

  Renée sat bolt upright and slammed her fists on the desktop.

  I jumped, freed from the immovable point in time.

  “I don’t know!” she wailed. “I was six! I didn’t even think about it until I was sixteen and Mom told me the story.”

  “Well, what did Dixon say?” I blurted.

  She held her fists out, clenched into tight red balls. “I never talked to him about it.” Her clenched teeth made the words difficult to understand. She heaved out a gigantic breath, more than her small lung capacity could possibly hold. Her body deflated into the undernourished frame that had started this story five minutes ago.

  Five long minutes. Tears rolled off my cheek. I let them go. The walls of the room pressed us into a tiny box. We were goldfish, swimming in helpless circles, in constant anticipation of outside involvement. My eyes burned. My chest ached.

  The door from the street opened letting in a refreshing gust of cold.

  “What’s going on?” a young woman said. “You all right, Renée?”

  I didn’t turn. My back bent in defeat, I wiped at the wetness with the side of my hand.

  A youthful redheaded girl brushed by me. She was slender and wore designer coveralls.

  “I’ll be fine,” Renée said. It sounded defensive.

  “I’m sorry I brought the whole thing up, Sis,” I said.

  “You’d better be sorry!” The redheaded girl’s mouth was nicely curved, but bent into a mean scowl.

  Renée glared up at her friend. “Vicky,” she said with a soft voice that contained so much power the redhead moved back slightly.

  “Whatever,” Vicky said, straightening up. “I’ll be in the shop.” She walked out without looking at me.

  I watched her well-postured, determined stride all the way to the door, and then turned to Renée.

  “I’ll be fine, Connor. Somebody should have told you. A long time ago.” She smiled one of those somebody-died-but-let’s-move-on smiles.

  I nodded. There was nothing else to say. So I headed for the outer door.

  Stepping into the cold restarted the mental reel of Dixon’s coffin dropping into the frozen ground. The feeling that somebody had killed him had only grown more intense. Even if I couldn’t solve Renée’s uncertainties, or Mother’s love life, I could try and solve the mystery of Dixon Pierce’s death.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Death

  Crossing town at lunch hour proved much simpler than solving a murder. Only two other vehicles moved over the thawing ground, and one of those was pulling into a garage. Watching the small Toyota enter its domestic hideaway reminded me I hadn’t eaten. My stomach protested with a growl.

  Custer Avenue looked different in noonday light. Winter gave the bare trees a spooky tint and muted the paint colors of the houses, promising disappointment in Middle America. An older gentleman walked off his lunch with a frisky mutt. That dog really got excited to see Mother’s big old car on the street.

  I pulled up on the opposite side of the street from Akira’s elderly neighbor. Climbing out of the car, it occurred to me that I couldn’t be sure what a gossip’s routine might be. With no one around to spy on during day time hours, maybe she slept through them. Or watched soap operas for fresh ideas.

  I’d almost connected my knuckles for the second time when the door flew open as violently as before. Mrs. Caruthers stood there, bright green odor and floral print more garish in the muted daylight. Her strong menthol presence cleared the air around her. Most of her unruly curls were now tucked under a dull yellow handkerchief, adding a decorative touch to her persona.

  “What do you want?” she demanded, a freshly lit cigarette braced against the doorpost.

  “Howdy, Mrs. Caruthers.” The déjà vu tilted my world slightly.

  She leaned in to drag on her cigarette. “You look familiar. I mean, in the daylight.”

  I glanced into the carport to gain some balance. A ten-year-old Toyota Corolla sat in the drive. How had I missed that? I smiled at Mrs. Caruthers. “You bought a car from my father? Dixon Pierce? Maybe?”

  Mrs. Caruthers squinted through the smoke. “You’re Dixon’s boy? Kenny wasn’t it?”

  “Connor, ma’am.”

  “Sorry to hear about your dad.” She took another deep puff. Knowing who I was didn’t crack her door another inch. “Dixon gave us a nice deal on that Corolla. When we couldn’t afford nothing but a nice deal.”
<
br />   “That was my dad. Always helpful.” The phrase sounded weird to my ear. Knowing it was true for everyone but family stung my eyes more than the burning tobacco.

  “Bernie was in the hospital, you know. Had cancer. The Buick finally give out. Had to have a way to go see Bernie.” Cigarette smoke mingled with menthol while she recounted my father’s decency. “I was still working a few hours at Pine Hills then, cleaning up them brat’s messes.”

  “Pine Hills?”

  “Juvenile detention center over on Lyman.”

  “Ah.” I’d forgotten. “A boy I went to junior high with spent some time there,” I said, trying to read his future in the peeling paint next to Mrs. Caruthers’ front door. I had liked that kid.

  A moment passed as we both reflected on the different kinds of pain Pine Hills School for Boys had visited on our lives.

  I shrugged my shoulders against the unkind memory. “Mrs. Caruthers, I don’t like bothering you, but I really needed to know if you’d seen anything at Mr. Watanabe’s house a couple of Saturdays ago. Maybe somebody made some noise that caught your attention? Or woke you up?”

  She lifted her chin to squint at me. Pursing her lips, she said, “He was helping some old drunk into his house that night. I recall because we don’t get a lot of craziness on this street. ‘Cept at Bucking Horse Sales. Bleeds over. When I heard about poor Dixon, reminded me that, that,” She paused to consider something. “I guess if Dixon Pierce liked him enough to hire him on.”

  “You remember it was that same night that my dad died?”

  “Well, because of what they said happened to your dad.” She puffed up. “Drinking don’t set well with everybody, mind you.”

  It sounded like drink had been a problem in her life. Instead of asking, I nodded to free her from guilt by association. If Akira had been helping some bum out of the cold, he probably wouldn’t have had time to orchestrate the elaborate poisoning of my father. It fit with Renée’s story. “I heard Akira spent time helping folks who were down on their luck,” I mumbled to the floor.

  “Yeah, kind and gentle, ain’t they?” Mrs. Caruthers said to the top of my head before closing her door on me.