Stranger in the Room: A Novel (9 page)

I showed him my identification, which had the state seal, the secretary of state’s printed signature, my business name, and my name and address. I had a badge too, but decided not to break it out.

He handed it back. “Same agency gave you that licenses security personnel. I got one almost just like it.”

“This concerns a friend of Mr. Tilison’s,” I said. “It really is important I speak with him.”

“I am sorry, Ms. Street, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Neil, would you mind getting Cash on the phone, please?” I wasn’t thrilled about tipping Tilison off. I wanted to surprise him, judge his steadiness with an unscheduled visit. But unless I ran the barricade and dinged up my currently unblemished Impala, it didn’t look like I was going to get inside.

Neil punched in the number Miki had given us. The sun was heating up, beating down on us. He handed me the phone. “Mr. Tilison, my name is Keye Street. I’d like to speak to you about Miki Ashton.”

“About Miki? What about Miki?”

I recognized his howdy-ma’am country-singer voice. I’d heard it in
television interviews. “I’m at the guard shack. Would you mind instructing security to open the gate?”

The call came half a minute later, the arm lifted, and we pulled in to Cash’s multimillion-dollar neighborhood—a honeymoon of Old South and new money, with three-acre lots, weeping willows bending over garden bridges and koi ponds, gigantic shoreline homes overlooking Lake Lanier. And so far out of my price range I couldn’t have hit it with a high-powered scope.

We found the address and pulled into a long driveway. The antenna on my old ragtop teased a row of twilight crepe myrtles and the blossoms drifted into my open convertible like lavender snowflakes. Tilison’s limestone mansion shimmered with the water behind it like it was the end of the rainbow.

I parked in a circular drive in front of the house. We both got out. I looked back at my car and decided it looked good in this neighborhood. My sixty-nine Impala was in perfect condition, thanks to my dad, who’d pieced it back together after some bad luck last year—a serial killer with a tire tool and an angry subpoena recipient with a thirty-eight. Just so happens, as my dad loves to point out, I’m just as tough on cars sober as I was as a practicing drunk.
Thanks, Dad
. Why do people enjoy reminding you of the past? And when I say “people,” I mean parents. They hold on to
everything
. Doesn’t matter if you’ve recovered from alcohol, Jehovah witnessing, an attraction to guys in ball-gags, or once had a bout with gender dysphoria, your parents will clobber you with it eventually. And given the tiniest opening, they will share it with whomever you’ve decided to bring home for dinner.

Cash Tilison came out his front door in western boots, a short-sleeve T-shirt that hugged his biceps and pumped-up pecs and was tucked into blue jeans. Thick crop of reddish-brown hair, brown eyes, wide-shouldered and tall.
Yum
. Just my type. Well, except for the stalker thing. And the Miki thing. Oh, and the Rauser thing. But, hey, it does not hurt to look, right? Neil elbowed me. I think my jaw had dropped a little.

“Cash Tilison.” He extended his hand to me, then to Neil. I introduced them. “So tell me Miki’s all right.”

“There was a break-in at her house Thursday night,” I said.

He stopped. “Oh God. Was she hurt?” He was leading us down a sidewalk that twisted around the house. I saw a terraced rock garden, a pond, a bridge, a limestone patio with stone bar that matched the house. An elaborate outdoor kitchen.

“No.”

“Thank the Lord for that.” We walked up stone steps to the patio. He gestured toward the chairs. “So how can I help? Why didn’t Miki call me herself? How do you know her?”

“Where were you Thursday night, Mr. Tilison?”

“Where was I?” He looked confused. “Who are you again?”

“My name is Keye Street. I’m a private investigator.” I didn’t want to tell him Miki was my cousin. I wasn’t ready to give up anything that a stalker could use later.

“Miki hired a PI to find out who broke into her house?”

“Where did you say you were Thursday night?”

“You think
I
broke into her house?” He started to laugh. “Oh that’s sweet! Why on earth would I do that? First of all, I don’t need to rob houses for a living. I’m doing pretty good, as you can see.” He gestured to the excessive mansion we’d seen only from outside. “Secondly, I have a key.”

He leaned back, crossed an ankle over a knee, and grinned at me. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I hope you know how ridiculous this is, Ms. Street. Does Miki know you’re here?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.” He laughed again, shook his head. “Why aren’t the cops asking the questions?”

“Nothing was stolen,” Neil said.

“So what was the point of the break-in?” Tilison wanted to know.

“Miki mentioned that after the two of you discontinued your relationship, you had some trouble adjusting,” I said, ignoring his question.

He looked at me, looked at Neil. “We didn’t discontinue our relationship. We’re still in a relationship. We’re friends.”

“So when you were calling her even after she asked you to stop,” I said, “and stalking her while she was working and leaving messages saying she was a cold bitch, that was because of your friendship?”

Tilison uncrossed long legs and sat forward. Color hit his face and
neck, but he stayed cool. “Look, I fell in love with Miki.” He clasped big hands. “It was hard to accept at first that she didn’t return my feelings. I made a whole lot of mistakes. I admit that. I acted like an arrogant ass. But we moved past it. I’ve apologized for the way I behaved.”

“Did you come back here after your fund-raiser Thursday night? I believe it ended at nine.” I looked at Neil for confirmation. He nodded.

“As a matter of fact, I stayed in Atlanta. I drove back yesterday morning.” The singer’s tone had grown icy.

“Were you alone?”

“I don’t have to answer that.”

“Miki came in late,” I said. “There was a guy about your size, Mr. Tilison, standing inside her house.”

“I resent the hell out of the implication.”

“And no evidence of a break-in. It’s almost like he had a key.”

Cash Tilison came out of his chair, an impressive sight. He was about a foot taller than I was, and his nostrils had started to flare. I didn’t mind. Sometimes you have to punch a few holes in the bag and see what falls out. “You’re on the wrong scent, Ms. Street. Just so you know. And this is a waste of my time.” He walked to a set of French doors off the patio, turned the handle, and went inside. We watched him cross over marble floors.

“So what do you think?” Neil asked.

“Gorgeous,” I said. “Makes me want to listen to country music.”

“Wow. Why don’t you just totally objectify the guy.”

We headed back down granite slab steps, through the rock garden, and back to the Impala. “He still has a fierce attachment. You see how he reacted when I mentioned discontinuing the relationship? It doesn’t mean he’s stalking her, though. Not sure I bought the contrition act. Embarrassment, maybe. But after so many months of calm with Miki, it doesn’t make sense. How ’bout you? Any thoughts?”

“Yeah,” Neil said. “I think you should skip applying for diplomatic service.”

  
8

W
e drove another hour through gently rising landscape into the foothills, then twisting mountain roads took us into Creeklaw County and Big Knob, a battle site during the Civil War, according to the historic markers. A sign pointed the way to a Confederate cemetery. A mountain wall rose up on one side of the narrow main street. Gift shops advertised authentic Native American jewelry, and property rental offices built to look like log cabins dotted the stretch of land between the mountain and the road. On our right, Lake Chatuge cut a deep blue gash into the lush mountains. Boat docks and gear rentals, walking piers and fish houses lined the banks in downtown Big Knob. Vendors sold funnel cakes off carts, and a pontoon with a
Rent Me
sign was anchored next to a restaurant with a full patio. The air was spicy with lake fish and fried dough. Jet Skis and sailboats skirted the lake. Lake Chatuge’s advertised one hundred thirty miles of stunning shoreline went on far beyond our line of sight. Traffic was heavy and slow, lots of stoplights. We’d go like hell for fifty feet, then sit for a couple of minutes. The town looked like it was about to burst its seams. It had never crossed my mind that Big Knob was a big deal on a holiday weekend. This might have been good news. For once everyone seemed to be dressed like Neil.

“So how does it work, exactly?” Neil’s first words in nearly thirty minutes startled me. “The crematory, I mean.”

I looked at him. “That’s what you’ve been thinking about all this time?”

“Is it just, like, a big, long oven?”

“Kind of.”

Neil thought about that. “With rollers to slide a casket in?”

“I think a lot of the time it’s just some big cardboard coffin. I’m not sure how they load them.”

I focused on a Confederate flag in the back window of the pickup truck in front of us and felt my anger spike. There has been a good, long debate down South about this flag and its current appropriateness. People who fly it claim it’s about Georgia’s rich history, about state’s rights and southern identity.
Bullshit
. Everyone knows what it’s really about. Whatever the flag meant once to the Confederate States, the Civil War South, for people of color it came to represent prejudice and terror, pure and simple. It has been marched down the street on the shoulders of hooded Klansmen. It was used as a symbol of white supremacy by Strom Thurmond supporters during his segregationist presidential bid in ’48. After that, everyone knew what the Confederate flag had been turned into. If I could, I’d set fire to every one of them. Screw free speech.

“So there’s just a pile of ashes left?” Neil said again, obsessing. It was wearing a little thin.

“Okay, so what’s the fascination with the crematory?”

He shrugged and didn’t answer for a while. My car moved a full twenty-five feet in traffic. There was a nice breeze coming off the lake. “I guess I’m just wondering about the person whose job it is to do all that,” he finally admitted. “I mean, here’s a man who knows how hot a fire has to be to burn flesh and bone. What do you think he talks about after work? He probably has, like, trade publications about cooking people and catalogs for creepy instruments. He knows all about disposing of the dead, this guy. You think he just sees bodies now? Like maybe in the beginning he saw people who had lives and stuff but now he just sees some dead flesh to be disposed of.”

“God,”
I said, and looked at him. “I’m so glad I asked.”

The truck in front of me with the Confederate flag stopped suddenly, even though there was plenty of space in front of it. I jammed
my foot on the brake pedal. Neil’s phone and a couple of other devices flew out of his hands and landed on the floorboard. He cursed.

In the pickup, a teenage boy was leaning out his window, talking to a group of girls on the sidewalk. He had thick biceps, a crew cut, a dangling earring that picked up the sun. The driver got involved. Everyone was chatting and laughing. The light ahead changed to green and more space opened up in front of the truck. My heart was still doing a hundred and fifty after nearly driving up his tailpipe, so I didn’t find any of it particularly endearing. I laid on my horn.

The passenger door opened.
Oh boy
. A big number seven sat squarely in the center of the boy’s chest on a sky-blue football jersey. “What’s your problem, lady?” he yelled back at us. He was wide-shouldered and thick-necked.

“Oh great, get our ass kicked by rednecks. Good thinking,” Neil mumbled.

The young man shaded his eyes with one hand and squinted, then leaned into the truck and said something to the driver. The driver’s door opened, and he got out too. Same color jersey, thicker neck and shoulders, a double-digit number. There was a lot of conversation, looking back at us, nodding. Neil and I exchanged an uncertain look.

Number Seven yelled to the girls on the sidewalk he’d been flirting with, “Hey, it’s the Booger Bandit Bounty Hunter!”

“Oh shit.” I sank down low in the driver’s seat. Heads turned our way from traffic, from pavement cafés, from the sidewalk.

“What the hell?” Neil wanted to know.

“Miki YouTubed a bond-enforcement job,” I grouched. “I’m never taking her with me again.”

Neil typed something into his tablet. Chipmunk-like sounds came from tiny speakers. His shoulders begin to shake. “This is hilarious.
Ooohh
. Look at that. This thing has gone totally viral.
Awesome
.”

So much for blending in. The car behind us honked and the guys in the truck finally got back in, but Number Seven pressed his face up against the back window and pressed a knuckle into his nostril so it looked like his finger was jammed up there. Neil laughed. We inched forward another few yards. I found a crack in traffic and turned off the main drag. We went about three blocks, then turned right on
Chatuge Drive. This is where Big Knob lifted its tourist mask. Here, all the makeup came off and the town’s support staff came home to squat frame houses in need of paint jobs, broken-down cars, and oil-stained driveways.