Emory turned to leave, but Jeff stopped him. “You’re forgetting I needed to ask something of you.”
Emory faced him again, his arms crossed. “What is it, Jeff?”
“Are you hungry?”
CHAPTER 7
JEFF TOOK EMORY to Dolly’s Café, a trendy Dolly Parton-themed restaurant with an exterior made to look like a shanty. Inside the restaurant, country music memorabilia adorned the walls, and the waitresses dressed up like Dolly Parton, complete with wigs and enhancements. The host, costumed as Porter Wagner, showed them to a booth for two.
Before Emory took a seat, he excused himself to wash his hands. Upon his return to the booth, Jeff presented a stoic glance. “I didn’t know what you wanted to drink, so I ordered you clam juice.”
Emory snarled his lip in disgust, prompting a laugh from Jeff. “I’m just kidding. I ordered coffee for you, but I don’t know if you’d prefer sweet tea.”
“No, I don’t like tea, although I have forced down some sassafras tea that a friend at work made for me.”
Jeff cocked his head and grinned at him. “I can’t stand it either. Not very Southern of us.”
As Emory took off his jacket to place on the seat, a bottle of pills fell from the pocket and bounced on the floor. Jeff retrieved it and, after reading the label, gave Emory an I-caught-you look. “For panic attacks?”
Emory snatched the bottle from his hand. “That’s private.”
“They let you become an agent, knowing you’re prone to fits?”
Emory’s face reddened as he returned the bottle to his pocket. He snarled through gritted teeth, “I don’t have fits.”
Jeff raised his hands in a sign for Emory to calm down. “Okay, I believe you. Take a chill pill, man.”
Emory grabbed his jacket and shoved his ass out of the booth. “All right, I’m outta here.”
Jeff grabbed his arm. “I’m sorry. I was just teasing. Come on, sit down.” The PI took a big whiff of the air. “Just smell that bacon. They have a great breakfast here.”
Emory threw his jacket onto the seat and hesitated before sliding back into the booth. “You have to swear to me that you won’t say a word about this to anyone. Swear.”
“I swear, I won’t say anything to anyone.” Jeff held up his right hand as if taking an oath. “So what would happen if they found out? Would they fire you?”
“I might be confined to a desk,” Emory answered with obvious distaste for the prospect.
“Ooh. No more high-profile drug busts for you.”
“You know about that?”
“I Googled you last night. Congratulations on that, by the way. Very impressive.”
“Thanks, but why am I here?”
“Because I thought you looked horny…” Emory’s eyebrows perked up, and Jeff’s tongue jumped to correct itself. “Hungry! I swear I meant to say hungry. Plus, I thought we could just talk. You and me – no distractions.”
“I can’t share any information I have about the case.”
“Not about work. As a matter of fact, for the next hour, no talking about work.” Jeff rested his left arm on the top of the booth seat. “I’ll start. Are you seeing anyone?”
“Wh…What?” Emory looked around to see who was within listening range.
“You heard me.”
Emory placed his forearms on the table and slid his head and chest closer to Jeff so he could respond in a whisper. “I can’t. Not with my job.”
The PI laughed. “What are you talking about? You’re not in a monastery.”
“I want to have a long, successful career—”
“So you don’t want someone to share that with?”
“Of course I do!” Emory said with more intensity than he intended. He again looked around to see if anyone was listening.
“Why do you keep doing that? Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?”
“I’m embarrassed to be talking about this in public.” He pushed back from the table. “Enough spotlight on me.”
A short waitress under an exaggerated wig of hairspray-hardened platinum hair ambled toward them as if she were balancing a basket full of grain on her head. “Are you fellas ready to order?”
The two men said that they were and placed their orders. Once the waitress left, Emory tried to think of something to say. “I liked your receptionist. She seems nice.”
Jeff shook his head. “She’s not my receptionist. She’s my business partner. I handle the investigative footwork, and Virginia takes care of research and the office. She’s also my best friend – has been since we were kids, even though she was two grades ahead of me. After high school, she served six years in the Marines, in intelligence. We formed the agency almost two years ago, after she got out and I finished college.”
“Which college did you go to?”
“UT,” Jeff answered, referring to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “What about you?”
“Vanderbilt.”
Jeff grimaced at the mention of the cross-state rival. “Ooh, Vandy?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“They’re a bunch of rich snobs—”
“I was there on a scholarship.”
“Didn’t you feel out of place?”
“When do I not?”
Jeff gave him a knowing smile. “So you were going to be a doctor?”
Emory nodded. “I’m not being boastful, but I’ve always excelled in chemistry classes. Defined chemical structures, interactions with calculable results – there’s a beauty to their predictability.”
Jeff threw open his arms. “But chaos is so much more exciting.”
“Okay, now I’m embarrassed to be seen with you.”
“Sorry.” The PI drew in his arms and lowered his voice. “Why the switch to law enforcement?”
“Partly to follow in my father’s footsteps. And I just hate to see people get away with shit. Figured I could do something about it. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your major.”
“Oh.” Jeff glanced at the approaching waitress. “Criminology.”
“I didn’t know UT had a criminology major.”
“They do,” Jeff assured him as the waitress placed their food on the table.
“When are you going to tell me why I’m here?”
Jeff waited for the waitress to leave. “Now, I guess.” He took a deep breath and let it wisp from his mouth before speaking. “I’m on the government’s no-fly list.”
Emory didn’t know what he was expecting Jeff to say, but he for sure wouldn’t have guessed this. “Why?”
“I don’t know. The week after I graduated college, I had my bags packed for my dream vacation to Australia. I always wanted to travel the world, and I thought I’d start with the furthest point. I was so excited when I arrived at the airport, but after I tried to get my boarding pass, the airline rep said they couldn’t issue me one because I was on the list. Of course, I laughed. I thought it was a weird joke. I mean I’d never done anything even remotely terroristy. When I understood that she wasn’t kidding, I contacted every agency I could think of to ask why I was on the list, and all I got was a string of contradictory non-answers.” Jeff sipped his coffee. “Since then, I’ve tried to find answers on my own, and I finally hired a lawyer, who’s been having no luck whatsoever.” He sighed. “I’m an adventurer stuck in an adventureless land. After I realized I was going to be in Tennessee for a while, I put the money meant for the trip, and a good chunk from my parents, toward starting my own detective agency.”
“You want me to see what I can find out?”
Jeff nodded. “You’re on the inside. Maybe you can get to the bottom of what’s going on.”
Emory thought in silence for a moment. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”
The killer smile returned to Jeff’s handsome face, and the two men started eating.
CHAPTER 8
HAVING LOST ALL track of time during his brunch with Jeff,
Emory was twenty minutes late when he pulled into the parking lot at the Regional Forensic Center. Spotting Wayne returning to his car, he pulled up beside him and lowered his passenger-side window. “Sorry I’m late.”
Wayne dropped his car keys into his pocket. “You didn’t miss much. As best the ME can tell, burning is the cause of death. Unfortunately, it wasn’t done postmortem. The lab verified that the powder we found on the ice is calcium carbide and the likely cause of the fire, and they were able to peel Britt’s cell phone from her clothes. They’re working on retrieving info from it, but between the fire and the water, I doubt we’ll get anything. Someone must’ve really hated her to murder her like that.”
“Or maybe it was just a convenient way to kill her and not be at the scene of the crime when it happened. Do you have the copy of Victor’s document I gave you?”
“Somewhere.” Wayne opened the door to rest his battered briefcase on the passenger seat. He rifled through the disordered stack of papers held within and pulled out the coffee-stained document. “Here it is.”
“He included information on Britt’s best friend in there somewhere.”
Wayne pointed to the paper. “Her name is Tatiana Burrett. Tatiana. Isn’t that a fairy or something in a Shakespeare book?”
Emory raised his eyebrows, more in admiration than derision. “Titania.”
“Don’t look at me like that. I had mandatory reading when I was in school too, Mr. Know-It-All.”
“I say we go talk to her and find out who Britt really was.”
“Sounds like a plan. She’s probably in school right now.”
Emory waved him inside. “I’ll drive.”
“Didn’t your dad want you to spend the night?”
“I’m not doing that,” Emory snapped, offering no elaboration.
Wayne slipped into the passenger seat, moving the briefcase to his lap. “Okay. If you want to disappoint your dad.”
Emory started to drive again. “I also think we should talk to the coach today.”
Wayne sneered at him. “Does that mean we’re splitting up again?”
“We can go together to both.”
“I feel so honored. It’ll be better this way. You’re no good with kids.”
“Why do you say that?”
“How many kids do you have?”
Emory pulled out of the parking lot, wondering, Why does everyone keep asking me that?
Emory and Wayne followed a petite, fiftyish woman down a crowded high school hallway. The slamming locker doors, cliquey chatter and squeak of shoes on over-waxed hardwood floors took Emory back to his own tortured days roaming these halls – a memory he now tried to shudder from his mind.
“She should be finished with photography class and is probably at her locker now,” the woman said before coming to a stop. She pointed to a curly-haired teenage girl with soft features, wearing a brown sweater and faded jeans. “There she is.”
Emory nodded to the woman. “Thank you, Principal…” He couldn’t remember her last name, but it didn’t matter since she was already making her way back to her office.
Wayne and Emory approached the girl as she hung a large camera in her locker and closed the door. Wayne spoke up first. “Tatiana?”
The girl jumped and turned around. “Yes?”
Wayne flashed his badge and introduced them both to her. “We want to talk to you about Britt Algarotti.”
A tear rolled down her pale freckled face. “Okay.”
“How close were you and Britt?” Wayne asked.
“Very. We’ve been best friends since kindergarten.”
“Tatiana, did you—” Emory began before she interrupted.
“You can call me Tati.”
“Tati, do you know anyone who would want to hurt Britt?”
“No.” Tati waved her arm at the students in view. “I mean, not enough to hurt her like that. Britt was our town’s biggest celebrity.”
“Because of her skating?” asked Emory.
Tati nodded. “And she’s from the richest family. A lot of the students here have parents who work at the water factory. Everyone wanted to be her friend, but Britt was very selective about who she’d let in. She knew people would just cozy up to her because of, well, who she was. Britt could see through that, most of the time.”
Emory watched the students who walked past them, most displaying suspicious glances toward the two strangers talking to Tati. “I would think a lot of the ones who didn’t make the cut would be jealous of her, maybe even hate her.”
Tati shook her head. “No. I mean, jealous yeah, but hate her?”
Wayne asked, “Was anything going on between Britt and her coach?”
“Going on?” Tati’s eyes shrunk from wide to squinty. “Eww, gross. He’s an old man.”
Wayne’s face snarled at the remark. “Are you sure you would know?”
“Yes. Dan Claymon is her boyfriend.”
Emory acted as if he hadn’t already been told about the boyfriend by Virginia, but in his head, he was high-fiving Tati for giving them this piece of information in a legal manner instead – since the first time was through the dubious hacking of Britt’s laptop by the PIs.
“I mean he was. They broke up about a week ago.”
“Did her dad know that she had a boyfriend?” asked Emory.
Tati looked at him as if the answer were obvious. “Yeah. Britt wasn’t one to sneak around. She couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.”
Wayne asked, “You know where we can find Dan?”
Tati pointed to a young man walking away from them down a perpendicular hallway. “He’s right there.”
“Hey Dan!” Wayne yelled out, prompting at least half the students in the hall to turn his way.
Dan Claymon looked at the two men walking toward him and took off running.
CHAPTER 9
WAYNE SIGHED AS Britt’s ex-boyfriend ran down the hall, bumping students left and right. “Ah shit.”
Emory gave pursuit, followed by his slower partner. Dan Claymon ran into several students – collisions that did little to slow him. The fleeing teenager then slammed the panic bar of a glass side door, which popped open to the outside. As soon as his feet stamped the snow-covered ground, his momentum diminished. Emory pounded the closing door a second later and hurled himself at Dan’s back, sending the teenager face-down into the snow.
“I didn’t do it, man! I didn’t do it!” yelled Dan, snow sputtering from his mouth.
“Then why’d you run?” Holding Dan’s wrists behind his back, Emory placed handcuffs on him and helped him up.
Catching up to them, Wayne bent forward and rested his palms on his knees to catch his breath. He pointed to the impact Dan’s body made in the snow. “Nice snow angel.”
Emory turned Dan around to face him, and the teenager told him, “Man, you’re fast.”
Emory couldn’t stop a little laugh from escaping. “You said you didn’t do it. What exactly didn’t you do?”
“Kill Britt,” Dan responded.
“If you didn’t do it, why did you run?” Wayne asked.
Dan shook his head. “People have been asking me if I did it. I thought one of them called the cops on me. I don’t know. I panicked. I don’t want to go to jail.”
Emory noticed the bruise around the teenager’s right eye. “How’d you get the shiner?”
Dan hesitated. “Someone was joking about Britt.”
“Emory?” Sheriff Rome trudged across the school grounds toward them. “What’s going on here?”
Emory responded with a question of his own. “What are you doing here?”
The sheriff pointed with his thumb. “I was next door getting gas, and one of the teachers called the station about a man chasing a student.”
Wayne scowled at the sheriff’s answer. “What? There were two men chasing him. They didn’t see me?”
Emory told his father, “This is Dan Claymon, Britt Algarotti’s ex-boyfriend. We wanted to question
him, and he took off running.”
Sheriff Rome frowned at his son. “You couldn’t have waited until after school to question him instead of making a scene?” He nodded toward the glass door and the students watching from the other side. “Uncuff him.”
“But—” Emory began.
The sheriff turned Dan around so that his back faced Emory. “Take the cuffs off.”
Red-faced, Emory complied.
The sheriff placed a hand on the teenager’s back. “I’ll take him to the station and call his parents, and you can ask them if it’s okay to speak with him.” He told Dan, “Come on,” and he led him to his car.
Wayne looked at Emory. “We don’t need his parents’ permission to question him.”
“I know.”
“You know, you really need to tell him when he’s wrong about these things.”
Emory shrugged. “I can’t. He’s my father.”
Barter Ridge was the seat of one of Tennessee’s least populous counties, and the sheriff’s station reflected the necessary frugality of its residents. When Emory opened the front door to the double-wide trailer that served as the station, the corners of his mouth creaked upward for a millisecond. He found mild comfort in the changelessness of it all. He hadn’t been here since college, but it still looked and smelled the same – like old carpet, burnt coffee and gun oil.
Wayne followed him inside, and Emory nodded to one of the two wooden benches on either side of the front door. “Why don’t you wait here. I’ll just be a minute.” His partner complied without argument.
Emory walked past deputies talking on the phones at two of the four desks, and he gave a two-fingered salute to the one he knew. His eyes meandered around the deputy room – from the interrogation room to the hallway that led to the holding room, break room, bathroom and supply closet – before they came to rest on the glass door to his father’s office.
He could see that the office was empty, but he entered anyway. Affixed to one wall was a small, locked armory, but apart from that, the rest of the wall space was covered by framed pictures, certificates and newspaper articles. Next to the Tennessee Medal of Honor Wayne had mentioned seeing yesterday hung the full article about Emory and Wayne’s big drug bust from four months ago. Wayne failed to mention seeing this. Emory smiled at his father’s obvious pride in him.
Murder on the Lake of Fire Page 5
