Stranger in the Room: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

mind.”
    “You’re an ass,” he said, but he was fighting off a smile.
    “I was just afraid you were going to tell me you’re becoming a leather daddy or something. Everyone else in my life seems to have some kind of sexual identity crisis. I swear to God if Rauser ever tells me he’s gay, I’m going to drink antifreeze.”
    “Wow. This was so not supposed to be about you.” Neil threw up his hands.
    “Awww. Do you need to talk about your feelings? Come here, you.”
    I made kissing sounds and tried to get my arms around him. Laughing, he held me off. We were close to a full-on wrestling match when the phone rang. Neil told the smart panel to switch the call to speakers. He had made our office his playground for electronics. Audio boomed from every corner of our super-wired office space. He adjusted the volume.
    “Keye, it’s Larry Quinn. How’s my favorite detective? Hey, I got a job for you up north. Nice little resort area. You free?”
    “It depends,” I said, and winked at Neil. “I don’t trust you, Larry.”
    Quinn chuckled. “It’s nothing like the cow thing, Keye. There’s almost no chance you can get yourself arrested.”
    Last year Larry Quinn had hired me to find a family pet in ruralNorth Georgia. Okay, it was a missing cow named Sadie. I’d gained ten pounds on fried pies, which is apparently all they eat up there unless you count gravy, gotten arrested, and taken to jail in the back of the Gilmer County sheriff’s car with a cow thief who’d smelled like poo.
    “It’s up in Creeklaw County,” Quinn said. “Southern Appalachians. Little town called Big Knob near the North Carolina line. You know it?”
    “Um … no.”
    Neil made a childish reference to the town’s name by first grabbing himself, then spreading his arms the length of a yardstick. I did a lot of overt eye rolling to prove I was above this primitive level.
    “There’s a married couple up there with an interesting story. Fella named Billy Wade drops an urn containing the ashes of his deceased mother. Well, what fell out didn’t look like ashes. The Wades had an independent laboratory analyze the contents. Cement mix with some chicken feed.”
    “Uh
-huh
.”
    “Naturally, they want to know what happened to the real ashes.”
    “Naturally.” They probably also wanted to sue the shit out of someone. I didn’t say that. “So why not just ask the crematory operator?”
    “That’s just it,” Quinn answered. “They did. Several times. The owner, one Joe Ray Kirkpatrick, dodged their calls for a couple days, then finally offers a big apology, says an employee spilled and contaminated the ashes and filled the urn with cement mix to protect his job and spare the family the pain of lost remains. Kirkpatrick says he dismissed the man at once. He also reimbursed the Wades for
all
their funeral expenses, not just the cremation.”
    “So what’s the problem?” I found a pen and wrote a note—
Joe Ray Kirkpatrick
. We had access to databases that would give us the skinny on the crematory operator in no time flat, and what our paid-for access wouldn’t get us, Neil was perfectly capable of finding on his own.
    “They smell a rat, Keye,” Larry Quinn told me. “And I do too.”
    And a big settlement.
    “So why not call the cops?” I asked.
    “They did. Kirkpatrick reimbursed the Wades for all their funeral expenses. Cops don’t see it as a civil matter at this point. The cops may also be in this guy’s pocket.”
    “So the Wades called you.”
    “And here I am,” Quinn said. “Keye, these poor people are distraught. Billy’s mama wanted her ashes sprinkled in the ocean. Now that family doesn’t have a pot to piss in. The whole county is in the bottom tier in the state as far as income and education.” Quinn was getting breathy and worked up. I’d seen him like this at depositions, when he sensed deceit. “Nowhere to work but in service. Golf courses. Big lake. Lot of division between the haves and