The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Case of the Perfectionist Professor, written in 2018, is my sixth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Late on New Year’s Eve in the small town of Boaz, Alabama, Snead State Community College teacher Adam Parker was found dead slumped over in his car. A preliminary investigation indicated the fifty-year-old biology professor died of a heart attack. Marissa Booth, Adam’s daughter and Vanderbilt School of Divinity professor, didn’t agree.
Four days later, Marissa hired the local private detective firm of Connor Ford to investigate her father’s death. She declared local police officer Jake Stone had likely murdered her father. She pointed Ford to a multi-month Facebook feud between Adam and several local people, including Stone and Boaz City Councilman Lawton Hawks. The controversy allegedly related to Adam’s research that contended that, in layman’s terms, long-term indoctrination caused actual genetic mutations that directly affected future generation’s ability to reason.
Over the next year, Connor Ford discovered multiple and independent sources of motivation to quiet and possibly murder the controversial professor. Ford learned that a civil lawsuit and widespread public outcry had effectively run Adam out of Knoxville, where he was a biology professor for over thirteen years. Ford also learned that Adam had become the number one enemy of Roger Williams, a self-made local businessman, and his son Alex, who is a Republican candidate for governor of Alabama. Adam had discovered Alex and Glock, Inc., the Austrian-based gun manufacturer, was exploring not only the possibility of setting up a large facility in Boaz but also supplying pistols for Alex’s highly touted and controversial ‘arm the teachers’ proposal.
Connor Ford has his hands full enough with these suspects. Add in his need to determine whether Lawton Hawks and Jake Stone are friends or foes of Roger and Alex, which accentuate the pressure no normal small-town private detective can handle.
Will Connor’s discovery there is a link between Dayton, Tennessee, and the 1929 Scopes Monkey trial and a rogue group of CIA operatives bend Connor and his two associates to the breaking point?
Read this mystery/thriller to find out if Adam Parker was murdered and how, and what role the long-standing controversy between science and religion had in destroying the life of a single perfectionist professor.
Chapter 29
Friday night was a disaster. But, only to me. Camilla and Amy seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves as they shared stories of how disconnected I could be. My feelings were hopefully not evident to my current and former girlfriends, but my gut seemed to be telling me this wouldn’t end well. What man had ever been able to sustain a good relationship with a young and beautiful woman after she started deeply caring about his former, and very long term, wife? At least the German Chocolate cake Camilla had bought at Walmart was non-threatening and delicious.
Camilla and I spent Saturday cleaning out her Paradise Self Storage unit in Albertville. Just Thursday she had learned of a family who had lost everything in a house fire. One of the main things I loved about Camilla was her generous heart, but sometimes I felt she needed to balance that with a serious dose of reasonableness. She had placed most everything she owned in storage when she moved in with me and Emily at Hickory Hollow back in March. Many of the items were furniture, appliances, and beautiful but inexpensive paintings, that Camilla’s late grandmother had left her. In all, there was enough to comfortably arrange an entire household. In addition, there were also a ton of women’s clothes packed away in a dozen or more boxes. By the end of the day we were beat. And, thankful that Natalie had taken the initiative to have dinner cooked for the three of us when we pulled up at 6:30 p.m.
I was glad it was Sunday. We could go to church and then come home for a long nap. Things didn’t work out that way, at least the nap part. Brother Caleb’s sermon was interesting but made me think of Paige and Natalie and their hell-raising in Erica Williams’ Sunday School class. Caleb’s statement, I think he said it came from Oswald Chambers, ‘Just because I don’t understand what Jesus Christ says, I have no right to determine that He must be mistaken in what He says,’ really got me to thinking. I couldn’t remember a single time that Jesus had ever truly talked to me, whether I understood Him or not. Maybe Paige and Natalie were right to question their faith.
As Camilla and I were standing in line to shake Pastor Caleb’s hand after the service ended, Steven Knott eased up beside me and whispered so only I could hear. He said, “you got time this afternoon to talk?” I didn’t even consider my high hope for a nap. An hour and a half later we were sitting in my conference room.
“It’s a little weird you asked me to meet. I fully intended this week to call and ask you the same thing.” I said, hoping he would start us toward the subject that was the most important to him.
“I’ve been wanting to talk with you a while, but didn’t know if I could trust you. Hannah convinced me I could. What could I say to her encouragement to meet with you after she confessed how the two of you had been spying on me.”
“Since you bring it up, I might as well just ask you. Are you having an affair with Peyton Todd?” I asked.
“Lord no. But, I can see why Hannah thought as much. It, an affair, happened once before, in Montgomery. That taught me a lesson I will never forget. It also reminded me of how blessed I am to have Hannah as my wife.”
“From what I’ve gathered, she is a remarkable woman.” I had watched Steven carefully as he answered my question. He was hard to read. I was undecided whether he was telling me the truth. Talk was cheap. Time alone with Peyton Todd, who was every bit as attractive as Hannah, could be mighty tempting to any man, even those who were honest.
“She’s not only beautiful, but sweet, kind, honest, and faithful. What else could a man want? Anyway, I suspect we have more to talk about than Hannah. Why don’t you ask me what you want?” I was a little surprised at Steven. At church I hadn’t observed his activism. I had concluded he was rather passive. Now, it seemed he was usurping my role.
“I appreciate your offer but let’s remember you asked me to meet. So, to be polite, you start us off.” I said.
“No doubt, as I’ve indicated, Hannah is the reason I’m here today. Her prompting, as you can easily conclude, was caused by finding Adam’s leather bag and iPad on my desk. To cut to the chase, Adam Parker and I were friends. I believe he was murdered and Peyton and I were trying to figure out who killed him.”
“That’s a lot to unpack, but I appreciate that tight summary. Now, I accept your invitation to ask a few questions. First, what is your connection with Peyton Todd? What got you two on the same team?” I asked.
“I met her at Sand Mountain Bank. The Church has a policy of rotating who makes deposits on Monday morning, after the haul from two Sunday services.”
“That’s kind of funny. I’ve never heard it put quite like that.” I said feeling Steven might lean away from the stereotypical minister of music.
“I had seen her a time or two walk behind the tellers. You know she’s not one. She’s Kurt Prescott’s executive assistant. Anyway, when she would see me, she would always say hi and smile, even though we hadn’t formally met. I have to say, I liked that, and as you know, she’s a very attractive woman. After, gosh, I bet it was months, she saw me one day in the bank, by then I had already opened my own account, and asked if I had a few minutes. I followed her to her office and we talked.”
“I have to ask. Why did she want to talk with you?”
“Some way she had heard I was a counselor. I don’t broadcast that. She might have Googled me or something. Anyway, she was concerned about her daughter, Paige.”
“She wanted you to counsel Paige? I know that she lost her best friend to suicide. Back in high school wasn’t it?” I asked.
“That’s right but it wound up that I counseled Peyton. Over a period of a week or so, and after she had asked Paige to meet with me, Peyton and I started meeting. No, Paige didn’t want my counseling.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, where did you counsel Peyton? Where did you two meet?” For whatever reason, my mind was painting a picture of Steven’s counseling getting way too personal with the beguiling Peyton. I could think this about her, but I was surmising only.
“Different places. She wanted to keep it secret. Both from her current and former husbands. You may know she’s currently married to Jerry Todd, and her ex-husband is Jake Stone.”
“I’m aware of both.” I said.
“Back to your question. We have met several places, including Health Connections on a regular basis, and a couple of times at her house when Jerry was out of town. That wasn’t too smart.” I decided not to ask him why.
“Oh, and one time at Jane Ellsworth’s place down on Henderson Road. She’s Peyton’s former sister-in-law. She also owns the Brass Lantern Restaurant.”
“Along with her partner, Jake Stone.” I added.
“That’s right.”
“One question before moving on. Now, that I think about it I bet you won’t want to answer, but I’ll ask anyway. What was the focus of your counseling?” I asked.
“Will you keep this confidential?” Steven asked.
“I will.”
“Two things. Of course, Paige and her ongoing battle over the loss of her friend to suicide. The second thing was the anxiety her two men, as she called them, were causing her.”
“Jerry and Jake?”
“Yes. This is now getting close to the answer to one of your earlier questions. You asked how Peyton and I got teamed up. Both Jerry and Jake became public enemies of Adam Parker. In short, we, Peyton and I, became two fans of the perfectionist Parker.”
“Tell me how that came about.”
Steven stood up and pulled off his suit coat. I could tell he was beginning to perspire. “I hate to say it but several guys in my Sunday School class became kingpins against Parker and his research.”
“The Seekers Sunday School class.” I said.
“You’ve heard?”
“I’ve heard that Lawton, Jerry, Jake, and seems like one other, and of course you, started communicating with Parker. This is how you met him and the beginning of your friendship. Right?”
“It’s also the way Peyton met him and became a fan. She couldn’t stand what Jerry and Jake, and others, were doing. The main thing she, and me for the most part, knew they were doing was attacking Parker on Facebook. As time passed, this was early last Fall, we three grew closer and closer.”
“There’s something I need to ask, and I really need a complete answer. Why is one of the Williams’ paying you, or you and Peyton, money?” I asked.
“I’ll answer that, but how in the hell, sorry, did you know about that?”
“Don’t forget, Hannah hired us to investigate you and Peyton. The details of how we learned this are not that relevant. Just know, an investigator, a good one, has his methods.”
“Again, is our conversation here confidential?”
“Yes, but I’m not here as your attorney. There is no investigator/witness privilege.”
“I hear you are an attorney. Can we transform our session into an attorney consultation?” Steven asked.
“We can but just know I’m not agreeing to represent you in any type case.”
“Okay. Deal. Peyton and I blackmailed Roger Williams.”
“How, why?” I asked.
“It was back before Adam died that we learned Natalie wasn’t his son Alex’s first mistress.”
“Let me interrupt. How did you learn this?”
“From Adam. He was quite the sleuth if you know what I mean. Roger and Alex were way subtler with their opposition to Parker. At least Roger was. Someway Adam found out about Alex’s affair a year or two earlier. It was another young girl from Guntersville.”
“What made you and Peyton decide to blackmail Roger?” I asked.
“It’s funny really. We both, separately, were attending the kick-off of Alex’s campaign for governor. It was held in Guntersville and there were all types of high fa-luting people there. They all were touting Alex as the best thing to come along since sliced bread. It was Roger that did it to himself. He was his arrogant self, in his speech supporting his son, he had to make several not so subtle remarks that highlighted his own success and wealth. If that weren’t bad enough, he spent probably fifteen minutes describing what a man of God Alex was, and describing how God, just like He had with Joseph in Egypt, had a plan to use Alex to save America, starting first of course with Alabama. Roger’s little speech pissed off both Peyton and me. We sat through it already knowing, from Adam, that Roger had paid off the young girl’s family from Guntersville.”
“How did you pull this off? The blackmail?” I asked.
“Easy peasy. In short, we hired a guy to drop off a little package to Roger’s office at Rand in the Industrial Park. Someway, and I don’t know how, Adam had been able to obtain a copy of the confidentiality agreement Roger, Alex, the girl and her family had signed. We simply asked for $100,000 to keep it quiet. Get this. The girl had an abortion to get rid of her and Alex’s baby.”
“I guess we could say Alex is consistent. Can I ask what you did with the money?” I asked.
“We hired Goldstein & Associates, it’s an investigative firm out of Atlanta. You’ve probably heard of them.” Steven said.
“Definitely, they’re big time, international, often involved in major cases that hit the media.”
“I have to ask. What, so far, has Goldstein discovered?”
“In a way, not a whole lot, at least to me. The thing that got Adam’s antenna on alert was Alex’s tie to Glock, the big gun manufacturer. It seems the two have big plans, starting with Glock coming to Alabama in exchange for Alex’s help in selling guns. You know there is a big push to arm every public-school teacher.”
“It seems it’s more than hopes and promises. The Alabama legislature just passed a law making it mandatory for teachers to be trained and armed.”
“I hadn’t heard. That’s about the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.” Steven said.
“It is except for folks like Alex who obviously see personal gain coming his way.”
Steven and I talked another hour. Mainly, about his and Hannah’s dream of moving away from Boaz. It seemed the two of them were getting tired of the ‘singing in the choir,’ as he put it. This was his way of stating his and Hannah’s opposition to the one song that ninety-nine percent of locals sang. Steven even described it as the ‘bullets, babies and bullshit’ indoctrination, thanking their late friend Adam Parker.
Tuesday afternoon I revisited Adam Parker’s office at Snead State. After nearly two hours of searching every square inch I gave up and left. I didn’t have a clue what I was looking for but was convinced I would know it when I saw it. This case was the most bewildering I had ever encountered. Coming down the Administrative Building’s second floor stairs, I saw Mark Hale coming in through the rear entrance.
“Mark.” I yelled when he was inside the building, looking around as though he was lost and needed some direction.
“What are you doing here?” Mark said, as he looked up towards me as I stood on the final landing before turning and coming down to the first floor.
“I thought I might get lucky and find something helpful in Adam’s office. I could ask the same question to you.” I said.
“You won’t have to ask, just join me. I must go by Dean Naylor’s office. Do you know where it is?”
“Second floor. Follow me.” I lead Mark back upstairs. Every time I had been here I had seen the Dean’s name on the door in the corner office before turning down the long hallway to the left to reach Adam’s office.
Mark walked in and introduced himself to Kitty Brown, the Dean’s Assistant, according to her desk plaque. She handed him a small package and thanked him for coming by. I followed him back out into the hallway.
“You still don’t know why you’re here?” I asked.
“Let’s go to your office and watch this tape. It might be helpful in solving the Adam Parker murder.”
“I assume you’re speaking of a video tape?”
“Yep. I can’t believe you didn’t discover it. I thought you were hired to investigate Parker’s death.” Mark said, looking at me as though I was a greener than green P.I.
“I was told there were no cameras in the parking lot behind the Science Building.”
“Who told you that?” Mark asked.
“The supervisor with the maintenance department, Greg or Craig, something like that.”
“You should have talked with the Dean.”
“I tried, but he was out of town. I guess I dropped the ball.”
“He might not have told you anyway. No one here, including the maintenance department, knows about the six cameras he had installed mid-Fall last year. He personally hired a company out of Tampa, Florida. I don’t think the Dean would have told me if I hadn’t been an investigator with the Sheriff’s Department. Sometimes it pays to be official.” Mark said taking another dig at me. I didn’t hold the power and influence, including subpoena power, like members of the executive branch.
Blair was helpful in setting up the tape for viewing. It was just a DVD. Blair was intrigued, as I was, with Mark’s account of what Dean Naylor had shared with him. It seemed Naylor had gotten concerned about campus rumblings, most of them to do with Professor Parker and his controversial research, and the local backlash. So, the Dean decided to install a security system that only he knew about. The Tampa company had an ingenious way of hiding their high-tech devices. They used a large, specially designed, bracket that appeared to hold a two-foot by two-foot campus flag on an existing parking lot light pole. The system was highly sensitive and recorded only if triggered with movement, of a human. A dog, cat, bird, any non-human, wouldn’t activate the system. Someway, wireless, the system transferred data to a computer in the Dean’s office. He then could burn a DVD of any day’s recordings. The computer was designed to hold a year’s worth of data for a maximum of ten cameras.
Mark had asked for a day’s recording of the camera that was best positioned to capture the spot where Adam Parker’s vehicle was parked when he was discovered late that Sunday afternoon. Instead of taking up to twenty-four hours to probably learn little or nothing, Dean Naylor had left a sticky note on the DVD with instructions where to find the five places the camera had recorded movement.
The first recording started at 16:30 on the DVD’s counter. Blair quickly determined this was 9:30 a.m. Sunday morning. The camera showed Adam driving forward into his assigned parking spot. We all assumed that he had come to work in his office. At the 19:35 spot (12:35 p.m.), Adam returned to his car and drove away. At 19:56 (12:56 p.m.) the camera recorded him returning. All three of us agreed Adam was carrying a Zaxby’s Chicken sack; he had driven for lunch and returned to his office to eat.
At 20:12 (1:12 p.m.) the camera revealed two men returning to Adam’s car. The man was Lawton Hawks and it appeared likely he was forcing Parker to come with him. The man had his right hand inside his jacket as though he might be holding a pistol. The giveaway was when Adam unlocked his car door and slid across to sit in the passenger seat. Hawks drove Parker’s car.
The fifth and final place Dean Naylor had pointed us to on the DVD revealed Adam’s car being backed into his parking spot. The time was 2:48 p.m. (21:48 on the DVD’s counter). The videotape also showed another vehicle, what looked like an older model Nissan Quest van, backing in beside the driver’s side door of Adam’s Chevrolet Impala.
This time, there were two men, and both were wearing a tight, black hood. One got out of the driver’s seat of Adam’s car, and the other from the van. What was horrible to watch was the men removing Adam’s body from the back of the van through its sliding door on the passenger side. They quickly put Adam into the driver’s seat of his Impala, leaving him to be found by none other than Jake Stone less than two hours later. Watching this last scene revealed why Adam’s car was found backed into his parking spot. I virtually kicked myself for not seeing this during one of the many times I had stood looking in the Science Building’s parking lot. There was a curb and a landscaped area including a Bradford Pear tree immediately to the left of Adam’s car door when he pulled in front forward.
After re-watching the 21:48 scene two times, all three of us easily concluded one of the hooded men was Lawton Hawks. Less confidently, Blair and I believed the second man was Jake Stone, partly based on the sixth and final scene that showed Stone in his police cruiser pulling up cross-ways behind Adam’s Impala at 4:55 p.m. (DVD counter beginning at 23:55). Mark was reluctant to join Blair and me on our second opinion.
Blair left to return to her desk and Mark gave me the bad news. Obviously, Lawton Hawks wouldn’t be saying much since he was dead, but there still wasn’t enough evidence to bring Stone in for official questioning. I didn’t fully agree with Mark, but he didn’t think it best strategically to go talk to Stone even on an unofficial basis. I was glad I wasn’t subject to Mark’s authority and made a mental note to speak with Stone about the extent of his police department investigation.
The Pencil Driven Life 