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 47
Sunday morning Camilla and I went to the hospital. Late yesterday, Dr. Ireland said Natalie would be discharged in the morning if her blood pressure remained stable.
I welcomed a change of scenery. Since early Saturday morning I had virtually camped out in the war room. That’s what always happened after a supernova. This was Bobby’s term to describe the explosion that took place in a case, especially late in a case, after startling new evidence had been discovered.
The war room was a holy wreck. Literally and figuratively. The room itself was a close representation of my mind. For sure, it looked and felt like an explosion had taken place. But, early Sunday morning, before showering and dressing for our ride to the hospital I had a mental breakthrough of sorts. It seemed I had floundered for months, subconsciously thinking that something was missing. All the evidence before Paige’s disclosure, didn’t seem to generate the necessary motivation for someone to kill Adam Parker. It seemed what had happened in Alabama was almost a mirror image of what had happened in Tennessee. Adam hadn’t been killed there.
And, if Alex Williams had believed that Natalie was pregnant with his child, my gut told me (careful Connor) that wasn’t a motive to murder Adam. To Alex, what would Adam have to do with that? My mental enlightenment of sorts seemed to push me towards believing that Alex had found out about the ruse and that, combined with the Facebook controversy, was enough to push him over the edge into murder.
As Camilla and I drove to the hospital I felt I needed to be examined and maybe even admitted myself. My gut was rolling over so much I couldn’t even form a definite gut opinion. I parked, and we walked to the front entrance. All I could think about was the air molecules floating all around. Somewhere, there was one simple piece of evidence that would put this puzzle together.
Natalie was in good spirits when we arrived in ICU. She looked like she had lost ten pounds since I had seen her Friday morning. The dark circles under her eyes were gone. As Camilla helped her put on a jacket I couldn’t help but think about what would happen with her and little Nathan. She caught me looking at her. She smiled. I wondered if Paige had told her she and I had our talk.
It took nearly two more hours before a nurse came with Natalie’s final discharge papers. During our wait, Camilla and Natalie talked, mainly about how Emily was threatening to kidnap little Nathan. The two had spent all day Saturday together while Camilla was at work.
We had barely pulled out of the hospital’s parking lot when Natalie said, “Paige tells me she shared our secret.”
The statement struck me as a little odd, so I simply responded, “Paige and I did talk. Friday evening.”
“I’m sorry I lied. We should have been truthful from the beginning.” Natalie was in the front passenger seat beside me. Camilla was sitting in the back. Not saying a word.
“Usually, that’s the best approach.” I was playing it cool, wanting Natalie to direct the conversation.
“What bothers me more than anything is lying to Adam.” Natalie said. I could tell from the corner of my eye that she was crying. Before saying these words, she had pulled a Kleenex from her purse.
“Did he find out?” It was another trick I had learned from the Master. He called it the jump question: don’t ask the most obvious question but ask one awkwardly embedded in the subject statement. The obvious one would have been: ‘what did you lie about?’ or maybe, ‘why did you lie?’
Natalie laughed out loud. “That’s a dumb question. He was dead already. You know that.” Now, I was really confused.
“I can be pretty dense. Just ask Camilla. I’m not following. How did you lie to Adam after he died?” Now, that was the question I should have asked to begin with.
“You’re not really good at math either?” It was both an assertion and a question, according to Natalie’s tone and inflection.
“Math deals with numbers. Correct? I’m still confused. Sorry.” I said.
“Adam died no later than January 1st. Nathan was born October 15th. That’s a little late if I was already pregnant before Adam died. Don’t you think?”
It finally dawned on me. “You had Adam’s sperm implanted after he died?” I asked.
“Yes. It was all my doing and against what Adam and I had agreed.”
“Can you explain that last statement?” I asked.
“The short of it is that Adam backed out. I guess it was early December when the first implantation didn’t work. Something happened, and he backed out. Not fully, but asked me, politely and respectfully, to postpone another procedure. He said Marissa and he had talked and she was adamantly against the pregnancy.”
“Marissa knew about yours and Adam’s plans?”
“For sure. She even called me and demanded that I leave her father alone, said he was trying to correct a big mistake he had made over thirty years earlier.”
“Question. The fertility clinic would have to have had some of Adam’s sperm in storage or on ice, however they preserve it. Right?”
“There you go again. Another dumb question. How else could I have gotten pregnant?” Natalie was getting a little sparky.
“I’ll ask another question, risking it also may be dumb. Why did you do it? Go forward knowing Adam had changed his mind?”
Natalie didn’t respond for nearly two miles. From the stop sign at Johnson Builders on Cox Gap Road, all the way to Hickory Hollow’s driveway. “I’ll be truthful but promise me you won’t tell Paige. Okay?”
“I can keep a secret. I promise.” Sometimes I fudged the truth when I believed it important to a case.
“Nathan is not my baby. The Clinic used Paige’s egg.”
“How on God’s green earth did you pull that off?”
Natalie once again chose silence. We were running out of road. Finally, I pulled into the garage and Camilla got out after seeing my non-verbal directing. I could sit waiting in the car with Natalie if she wanted. I hoped she would answer and not rush in to see Nathan, her non-son.
“Before Adam shut down our little plot it was a three-some. Paige and I, one of us, were going to produce a baby for Adam. We both had eggs on ice as you call it. After Adam died, I decided to go ahead. I hated Alex with all my being. Nothing could stop me from vengeance. I was off the rails. I posed as Paige and moved her eggs to another fertility clinic. They thought they were implanting Paige’s fertilized egg into Paige.”
What could I say? “So, Paige doesn’t know that Nathan is her child?”
“No and I intend to keep it that way. I’m glad you can keep a secret.”
With that, Natalie got out of my car and walked inside to drool over Adam and Paige’s baby.
The Pencil Driven Life 