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 51
I had spent all day Thursday trying to force a round peg in a square hole. Usually, when I tried to do this, it was fruitless. Yesterday’s slightly-shady plan had worked.
Ever since hearing Sandra Goble’s illegally-obtained statement that Peyton and Steven had Kurt by the balls, I had been unable to think of anything else. My gut (sorry Bobby) was telling me there was a helpful story awaiting my discovery. By yesterday morning, after a night of tossing and turning (I initially thought it was from the church’s greasy fellowship meal), my mind had crafted a little plan.
It hadn’t been difficult convincing Marissa. She too felt that recent events had propelled the investigation into its final quarter. Her relationship with Steven Knott might be worth a touchdown and an extra point. She had called Steven. Worried about him, because of what she had heard. Marissa told him that if what she was hearing was true that he and Peyton were about to come under scrutiny by the DA because of their actions in putting Kurt Prescott in a vice. Not only had Marissa spawned a worst-case nightmare for Steven, she also provided him with a hopeful solution. She forcefully, but respectively, encouraged him to come see me and explain the dilemma he was in. Marissa had promised this would be in his best interest. Especially since I was tied tight to the Sheriff’s Department and the DA’s office.
I was proud of Marissa. She could be powerfully persuasive. That sweet and sensuous voice, I guess. At 3:30 yesterday afternoon Steven had called. I could tell he was worried. Just by the tone of his voice. I added an extra layer of trepidation to his plight when I responded to his request for a meeting by telling him I was tied up until Monday morning. He almost begged to see me, promising to pay me up front for an initial consultation.
Someway, my calendar got rearranged. I had expected him to ask that I talk to him as an attorney where he would know I couldn’t repeat what he was about to divulge. He hadn’t. I was glad. That would have greatly complicated things.
Steven had described how late last Fall he had overheard Pastor Caleb and Kurt Prescott in a meeting. It was late on a Wednesday and they apparently had thought they were alone. No doubt Caleb had not known, or had forgotten, that Steven had spent most of the afternoon in the music library, which turned out to be a large closet behind the music secretary’s desk which was across the hall from Pastor Caleb’s office. Yelling and shouting had gotten Steven’s attention and he had sneaked across the hall and listened in without Caleb or Kurt knowing he was present.
The gist of the overheard controversy was the death of Josh Wray of Dayton, Tennessee. Steven had interpreted the conversation to mean both Caleb and Kurt were involved, maybe even the perpetrators of the murder. Adam Parker’s name had come up and that’s where the loudest voices were heard. Caleb and Kurt had disagreed over what to do about Parker’s persistent probing. Steven had concluded that both men had agreed on one thing. That, Adam Parker had to be silenced.
Steven had gone on to tell me that he had shared this information with Peyton Todd. By this time late last Fall, the two of them were more than friends. Someway, she had been the understanding voice he had needed to share his ongoing battle with Southeastern Conference College football. I almost lost it after Steven asked me at least ten times to not share with Hannah that he and Peyton had slipped under the sheets on several occasions.
One of the highlights of Steven’s near non-stop confession was how he and Peyton had blackmailed Kurt. The idea, feeble as it was to begin with, took on fast legs and a strong back after Peyton found out about Kurt’s embezzlement. I already knew about one wire transfer he had made, but Steven shared that there was another transfer a few days before the first of the year, a few days before Adam Parker was found dead. It was between the week of Christmas and New Year’s Day.
I was surprised to learn that not only had Kurt paid Peyton and Steven to keep quiet about ‘Tennessee,’ as Kurt labeled his discussion with Pastor Caleb, Kurt had forked over another quarter of a million dollars. This money had been split between Steven and Peyton with most of his used to pay off his gambling debts.
During a lull, I had been almost on the verge of ending my conversation with Steven and sending him home when he, out of the blue, said, “I had nothing to do with Jake and Paige.”
I had been a little cunning when I had responded, “that’s not what I’ve heard.” This had gotten him defensive. He had gone on to describe how Peyton had learned about Paige’s involvement with Alex Williams. Something about Paige thinking she was pregnant. Peyton had shared this with Jake, Paige’s father, who had gone ballistic. He had conducted a little investigation of his own and learned, someway, Peyton didn’t know how, that Adam Parker was spending quite a bit of time with both Paige and Natalie. Stone had confronted Parker but hadn’t learned anything specifically but acquired a burning hatred, saying the man was too damn perfect.
Peyton had the greedy idea of going back once again to the money tree. Her and Jake cooked up a plan to extort more money from Kurt, promising this time to quieten Adam Parker in exchange for a ‘shit pot full of money.’ Steven said this is how Peyton had described it. They, Peyton and Jake, through his bugging of Natalie and Paige’s phones, had learned about their and Parker’s baby-making plot. They had also learned that Parker was close to exposing Kurt’s involvement in Josh Wray’s murder. Steven was missing quite a few details, but all of this made sense and seemed to fit with what Sandra and Jake had talked about in the bugged interrogation room at the Marshall County Jail.
I had to speculate that someway things had not gone right for Jake and his attempt to silence Adam Parker. Maybe he had decided to permanently silence him, and Kurt had found out. This was why Jake feared Kurt Prescott.
By the time Steven left, I still didn’t know any more about Paige, and what she might not want the world to know. That would have to come, if at all, from another one of my little schemes.
The Pencil Driven Life 