If You Only Knew by M. William Phelps

for some with a .44 alcohol blood level to walk around on his or her own accord. Thus, if Don Rogers was drinking, as Billie Jean had told police, between one and two gallons of vodka per day, he was within this spectrum of those users. Don most likely woke up in the morning with a higher blood alcohol level than was legal to drive a car.
    Dr. Dragovic told Ortiz-Reyes that someone would be by the office soon with photographs. The TPD wanted Ortiz-Reyes to have a look at photographs taken at the scene of Rogers’s body. They wanted his opinion on a few things.
    What was this new information the TPD had uncovered the previous day, August 30, 2000? It certainly surprised detectives, not to mention everyone else involved. In fact, this “surprise” would not be the last one for law enforcement involved in the investigation, which was now substantially heating up around Don Rogers’s so-called “accidental death.”
    As additional detectives were brought in and the TPD continued to investigate, learning all they could about Billie Jean and Vonlee, what was to become a major shock to all was about to emerge—and, boy, it would change everything.

PART 2
    In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
    Hubert H. Humphrey

CHAPTER 19
    VONLEE’S “FIANCÉ” WAS A rugged-looking, somewhat overweight, dark-haired foreigner, who gladly bragged that he was the sole proprietor of a jewelry store. His shop, the one where Billie Jean made those large purchases in the days just after Don’s death, was located in Oak Park, a twenty-minute drive south of Troy. Forty-year-old Danny Chahine was a transplant from Lebanon and had been in the United States since 1979. Danny had met Billie Jean and Vonlee at the Motor City Casino in late July when the two women started going out together, spending hours of their lives per week at the casinos in downtown Detroit.
    Vonlee wasn’t much of a gambler. So, as Billie Jean sat and gambled the nights and early mornings away, Vonlee wandered around, looking for something to do. That’s how she met Danny. For Vonlee, there wasn’t always a lot to do at the casino, besides drinking excessively. There were also many nights when Vonlee would have to pull Billie Jean off a slot machine or table or roulette wheel and literally drag her out of the place.
    â€œCome on . . . let’s go home,” Vonlee would plead with her aunt.
    â€œJust one more pull,” Billie Jean would say.
    â€œPlease, Aunt Billie. Let’s just go home.”
    Vonlee found herself “begging” her aunt on more occasions than not. Her aunt just didn’t want to leave. It was always one more hand, just another dollar dropped down the throat of a one-armed bandit, one more go of the roulette wheel. One pull of the slot was too many, while a thousand pulls not enough.
    â€œI didn’t know anyone at the casino,” Vonlee said later, speaking of those days before she met Danny Chahine. “I had only gone with my aunt because she wanted to go, and [Danny] was someone to talk to.... A lot of times, I would just sit and talk to him while he gambled. Sometimes I would gamble. . . .”
    Since meeting in July, Danny and Vonlee dated regularly. Later, Danny would say he had seen Billie Jean and Vonlee at that particular casino about thirty times between June and August 2000, but it was clear he only saw Vonlee by Billie Jean’s side during the latter portion of that time, because Vonlee was back home in Tennessee in June.
    Danny liked Vonlee. She was attractive and fit the role of girl-on-your-arm, which he fashioned for her as they walked into the casinos together. Danny had the swagger of a regular, maybe even the clichéd, casino type: the cigar-smoking, potbellied, wannabe-rich man. Having a woman like Vonlee,