Murder of the Prodigal Father

by Mark Wm Smith

  The bright lights blinded me.

  Before my eyes adjusted, an ironwood hand jerked me through the door by my jacket collar.

  I sucked a big breath. My hand couldn’t release the door knob fast enough and flaming acid flooded my shoulder. I yowled.

  Akira loosed me and let his hand fall. He dropped an offensive fist as well.

  “You might get yourself killed coming in the back door like that.” After a moment of looking me up and down, he said, “You look alive. In need of nursing, but breathing.”

  “Thanks,” I grunted, cradling my shoulder.

  Akira strode to the workbench, and began prodding a relay of some sort with a screwdriver. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  “Me too. From now on, I’ll knock first.”

  His appreciation showed in a tiny smile.

  “I wanted to ask if you might have any idea what Zachary could have been involved in. What might have gotten him killed?”

  Akira shook his head dramatically. “Zach was an okay guy. Greedy. A little lazy. Nothing deadly.” He stopped working for a moment. “I really thought he’d start coming to church with me, soon.”

  Watching his concern over Zachary’s lost chance at salvation moved me. My own near death experience had evoked the deals I’d made with God over the years. Maybe I should take action on those promises. “I’m sorry about what happened to him,” I said.

  “Nothing you could do. People make the choices they make.” He began toying with the relay once again, prying at it, poking inside. A test meter sat in front of him with the leads put aside.

  “How did Renée and Dixon get along those last few weeks?” I turned my head to watch the door leading toward the office where Renée probably still worked. Or whatever she was doing.

  “Well,” Akira said, “it might sound weird, and I don’t want to be out of line....”

  I faced him. “Go ahead. This family has a lot more weird than you can see, I’m sure.” But I wasn’t sure. Akira might know all about my sister’s lifestyle. He was certainly too kind to share it openly.

  “They didn’t act like family. More like angry lovers.” He raised the screwdriver quickly. “I’m not saying hanky-panky. Just the way they stormed around each other. Always like a dark cloud of confusion surrounded their activity.”

  “They stayed angry? With one another?”

  “Most of the time.” He picked up the test leads and poked into the relay circuit. The meter beeped. “I know that families tend toward great chasms based on misunderstanding.” He stuck the other lead in and a long tone sounded before he released it. “Or mistaken information,” he said. “People don’t communicate and they don’t trust God to heal their brokenness.”

  A chill flowed over my shoulder and wound down my back. I shivered. It sent a ripple of pain out from the rip in my skin. I ground my teeth to keep quiet.

  Akira glanced at me, but went on working, finding tones.

  “Had things gotten worse between them before Dixon died?” I managed to ask.

  “No different. Always the same. And you should be careful of intrigue, especially when it comes to family.”

  This conversation had gotten a little too metaphysical. Akira’s evaluation of family dynamics and the psychic repercussions they fostered hit closer to home than I liked.

  “Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.” It sounded cold, but with the pain of my wound and Akira’s mysterious language, I couldn’t help myself. Turning to leave, I found I was unwilling to take the step I needed toward the back door. I glanced toward Renée’s office, expecting it to open.

  “And a man needs to repent when he’s breached his marital vows,” Akira said.

  My face flushed full and hot. What could he know about that? I didn’t seem able to turn toward him. Something about getting shot and the necessary follow-up drugs must have altered my perceptions of time. Maybe I was hearing things. But if I couldn’t look in Akira’s direction, I wouldn’t be able to tell.

  Then I didn’t need to, because Akira stood near my side. “If you repent of relations with the woman who is not your wife, you will be free from guilt and shame.”

  “What do you know about that?” I forced it out with a single exhale.

  “Only what God tells me,” Akira answered.

  “Only—”

  I felt rather than saw the movement of Renée’s office door. More rapidly than possible for a medically hampered man, I reached the back door and stepped into the night. As the door shut behind me, I heard Akira telling my sister that he’d just needed to find a part in the back yard.

  When I turned the corner to Mother’s house, I saw Granger’s Ford parked in the drive. I accelerated the New Yorker and slid in at an angle behind the pickup truck. The tightening of the seatbelt pinched a yelp from my lips, but adrenalin had subdued it by the time I hit the porch steps.

  Granger opened the door in my face before I could grab the knob.

  “Why don’t you just pull out your gun and shoot me in the daylight instead of lurking around in the dark?” I bellowed.

  Granger balked. “I’ve never shot a man in my life!”

  My mother sat behind him. “Connor thinks we killed his father so we could be married,” she said, looking all the time at me.

  “That’s preposterous!” Granger’s use of the word dumbfounded me. “We were together the night Dixon was killed.”

  “I’m not surprised at that,” I blurted, after regaining my mental balance. I couldn’t remember ever hearing a city word come out of Granger’s mouth. It stirred more anger. What other things was he covering? His whole life was probably a sham. Even the idea of marrying my mother could be about gaining control over the car dealership his brother had built from nothing.

  Granger stared at me with lame exasperation, his eyes revealing uncertainty about what to do with me. Behind those gray irises I could almost watch the gears turn. Everybody always considered Granger to be the mentally slower of the two siblings. Inside those storm-clouded eyes, I could visualize a manipulator extraordinaire.

  My body tensed of its own accord and my left fist clenched. Before I was aware of it, my left arm swung up and shot out, hammering Granger squarely on the chin. A rocket blast of pain staggered me. My eyes watered. The punch held little payload.

  Granger stumbled backward. His leg caught in mother’s chair and he teetered on one foot. Unable to find equilibrium in the tangle of falling and avoiding landing on my mother, his body thudded onto the oak floor. “Damn!” he said.

  Mother had already bent far out of her chair to latch onto him and make sure he was okay.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Granger said, trying to keep her from drawing too much attention to the embarrassing moment. “He just caught me off guard. And this damned thing.” He slapped the chair’s wheel.

  Mother sat up and squared off to me.

  My body trembled with the force, as well as the emotion of the act. I focused on her face.

  “Son,” she said with a noticeable absence of her pinched control. “Your Uncle Granger and I were planning to marry. I conceded to a divorce settlement with your father a week before he died.”

  The words hit my brain like a brick. My vision blurred, eyes locked onto both Granger and Mother simultaneously. I squinted hard, and forced a breath.

  The sound of Mother’s voice came through cotton balls dipped in honey. “Dixon expressed complete agreement in the matter.” Her voice was microscopic. “In fact, he told us it was appropriate.”

  My hearing began to clear. I blinked away the soft focus.

  “Since Granger had met me first.” Her warmth smoothed the words.

  In my memory I couldn’t recall my mother being kind and concerned about anybody. Her way was absolute, uncontaminated strength of will. Searching through my wobbling cognitive recollections for a piece of confirmation, I picked up the tidbit Renée had thrown at me before the shooting.

  “What about Granger’s calling Dad a child mo
lester?” I asked mother.

  Granger had lifted himself off of the floor and stood behind her. He had been watching me until that question. And then his gaze hit the corner behind the door.

  A chilling swirl of winter reminded me the door remained open and I was standing on the porch. Mother’s hair fluttered in the unexpected breeze.

  “Was that just a lie? To get what you wanted?” I shivered deeply, rattling off the final tremors from the punch.

  “Leave him be,” Mother said quietly. “There’s not a one of us that hasn’t slipped up. He and your father came to terms on that.”

  “Well, I’m glad everyone is working things out,” I said. Glaring at her didn’t hold. This new woman that was calling herself my mother didn’t do revenge worth a tinker’s dam. I turned, hitched down the steps and hobbled to the car.

  Each of us had the good sense to not say another word.

  Before I could decide what I needed to see her about, my car pointed itself toward Jasia’s. Rolling through the neighborhood again, still late, houses still different and yet the same, if more intensely so this time, the battle began.

  I knew Akira was right. Repenting was the only way to secure my marriage and find stability. It was what I wanted. It was what I needed.

  But the other side had an equally compelling argument. I’d already broken my vows, talking to Jasia couldn’t make it worse. And she had been the one. Before I abandoned her. I owed her. Just packing up and leaving again was wrong. A double blow to her heart couldn’t be the answer.

  Except running back into a burning house to save your favorite photograph was just plain stupid. That’s what I’d done. God saved me with a bullet. Now I was planning on rushing right back in.

  Lingering on the edge of my conscience were the repercussions of my previous betrayal with Sharon. These thoughts floated toward the surface, so I forced them back. I’d avoided them so far, and meant to keep avoiding them until I could no longer.

  Nansi’s concern for my health should prevent addressing the ugly stuff for now. At least until we could face it together.

  Ruminating on my recent mistakes brought Mother’s words to me. There’s not a one of us that hasn’t slipped up. In defense of Granger’s foolishness, she’d called me out. I had a passel full of blunders. And they’d started long before my return home.

  Come to think of it, wasn’t my confusion over messing up the real reason I searched for Dixon’s killer? Finding out if his lifestyle had led to his death kept me investigating. My obsessive journey was about discovering Dixon’s crimes and steering clear of imitation. Break the cycle. So why revisit Jasia and open the door to failure?

  Mother’s Chrysler was rolling down her street.

  My heart beat faster. As her house grew closer, I forced my eyes to stay forward, and counted the number of streetlights until the corner. When I got to the stop sign and hit the brakes, the car slid. I’d been accelerating as I passed her house.

  My exhale left me a little dizzy. The braking reminded my shoulder of the earlier abuse at Mother’s. I hurried around the corner, heading toward the dealership and thanking God every ten seconds. Beyond the surface, though, I feared it wouldn’t last. Something about Jasia kept her spinning in my head.

  I thanked God anyway. Repeatedly.

  Closing in on the sales lot, second thoughts popped off like firecrackers. I pressed on. I needed this whole ordeal over. I was tired of introspection and investigation. My arm hurt. My back was torn open. And my head threatened to blow into a million pieces.

  “Find me an answer, God,” I yelled into the windshield.

  My prayer for a heads-up display revealing the killer’s identity didn’t work.

  I would have to face my sister’s demons instead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Like Father Like Son

  A solitary light illuminated Renée bent over her desk.

  My heart swelled with compassion. She’d expressed fear that all this would collapse without Dixon. Yet, her dread seemed unfounded. Dixon had spent so little time here while he was alive she was effectively running the place alone.

  I pushed inside.

  Renée didn’t raise her head.

  I stomped across the tiles, the pain of each step watered down by a handful of pain-killers and antibiotics.

  At my final step, her head popped up, clearly shocked to see me.

  I stopped my thighs against the edge of her desk for support. “Did you kill Dixon?” I asked in as loving a way as I could.

  Her mouth widened further, pulling her thin lips tight. They way her gaunt cheeks hollowed with astonishment would have earned a B-rating in Hollywood.

  “You had a motive.”

  “What are you saying?” Her mouth clamped shut, but the concave stare remained.

  “Dixon molested you, you decide to seek revenge. Or maybe he found out about Vicky.”

  Renée’s expression pushed forward, away from total bafflement and into confusion. Her forehead wrinkled as much as her meager flesh allowed. “Dixon didn’t know about Vicky. He—”

  “You had access to the DDT. Doc says that’s what probably killed him. Why not just get him out of the way, you have half of the dealership that you’re already running by yourself, and no more concerns about Dixon’s perverse behavior.” My legs felt weak. My stomach roiled. I leaned harder into the desk.

  Her head fell forward into her hands, all fight clearly drained. I heard the telltale huffing that always preceded her crying episodes. As expected, she inhaled deeply, pulling her face from her palms. But then she surprised me.

  “I couldn’t have killed him!” she said, coming to her feet. “I wanted him to love me.” She pointed a slender finger into her chest. “Love is all I ever wanted from him.” She spoke this with a long exhale.

  My lips parted at her startling confession. My weakening legs forced me to lean on the desk top with my good arm. “You’re saying you never wanted him dead?”

  “I wanted him to treat me like a daughter!” Tension for breaking into tears again rested just below the surface of her words. “And I didn’t even know about the DDT until Zachary and Dixon fought over Zachary stealing a jug.”

  Zachary stole a jug of the poison. Why would he need that, besides to kill his boss? It twisted my theory into a different kind of knot.

  “Why would I do that?” Renée was asking. “How could you even think that? I wanted his love,” she swung her arm wildly, indicating the room and everything that went with it, “not his stuff.”

  I tumbled into the chair beside me, but Renée didn’t notice.

  She was staring out into the black night. “Besides,” she mumbled. “I was with Vicky all weekend, Thursday through Sunday morning, camping.”

  “Camping? In the winter?” These pills were making my hearing as fallible as my deductive reasoning.

  “So it’s weird! I needed the break from this place. When we came back that morning, Akira called to say he’d found Dixon.” She sat back down. “I didn’t go with her to see. I couldn’t.” Her voice dipped into trembling. Then she started crying softly.

  My chest ached. I slumped with exhaustion. I had attacked every remaining member of my family within a two hour period. Idiot extraordinaire could be my nom de guerre. After accusing everyone close to me, I was no closer to discovering how my father and I were alike and what I could do to alter the inevitable outcome of my life. My head rested against the chair’s backrest, and I closed my eyes.

  Renée’s sobbing diminished. Occasional short bursts of breath escaped her.

  She must be right. My obsession over my own guilt for running away and not dealing with Dad had taken over. If he was killed, I’d be off the hook. No responsibility for abandoning him. Reduced responsibility for abandoning them. So, I had tried to establish a scenario of mystery and mayhem.

  I’d watched too many crime stories. What did it matter anyway?

  I let the pain medicine and the drain of emotional lunacy
draw me toward sleep in this uncomfortable seat. A radio played softly in the background, Garth Brooks lamenting a cowboy’s life. I hadn’t even noticed it earlier. The scent of new cars and sweetly floral perfume caught my attention, as well. When we were growing up, Renée wouldn’t even wear perfume. She said it bothered her sinuses. And how exactly do you get new-car smell into a building? Maybe I’d missed the display model under a desk near the front.

  The image of a car tucked beneath a workstation produced a smile.

  I drifted back to real time. Like it or not, my father’s death was nonfictional. His body had been found in an unusual position. A totally unlikely album had been found on his stereo, raising questions for anyone who knew him. And one of his employees had been killed. Not to mention, I’d been shot. No, it might be my fantasy, but too many of the episodes came dangerously close to real life.

  I pushed myself out of the chair with a grumble. “I’m sorry for being an ass, Renée,” I said, tottering to the door.

  She didn’t reply.

  And I certainly didn’t need to hang around and torment her anymore. If she had something to do with Dixon’s death, I’d wait until I knew she had something to do with it before accusing her again.

  That, I thought as I shoved through the outer doorway, needed to be the rule with everybody I knew from now on.

  My conscience took a dive after the confrontation with Renée. I was parked in front of Jasia’s house and out of the car before considering where my choice might take me.

  I needed the information about who was seeing who in this town. Jasia had to have it. She’d always kept tabs on our high school crowd. Her growing catering business necessitated intimate knowledge of local scandals. It was unlikely that she avoided the underbelly as the need increased. More likely, she’d gotten better at it.

  I knocked on the door once again.

  Jasia answered. She opened the door wide. “Come in.”

  I hesitated. Then I stepped inside.