Death on Covert Circle Read online

  Death on Covert Circle

  Secret Sleuth, Book 4

  Patricia McLinn

  A reviled supermarket CEO meets his expiration date

  The executive who’s responsible for widely hated changes at the biggest grocery store in Haines Tavern, Kentucky, arrives for a tour … and doesn’t leave alive. Sheila and Clara are on the scene – and on the case. Can they pick out the ingredients for the right solution?

  Secret Sleuth series

  Death on the Diversion

  Death on Torrid Avenue

  Death on Beguiling Way

  Death on Covert Circle

  Death on Shady Bridge

  Caught Dead in Wyoming series

  Sign Off

  Left Hanging

  Shoot First

  Last Ditch

  Look Live

  Back Story

  Cold Open

  Hot Roll

  Reaction Shot

  Body Brace

  Mystery with romance

  Proof of Innocence

  Price of Innocence

  Ride the River: Rodeo Knights

  Bardville, Wyoming series

  A Stranger in the Family

  A Stranger to Love

  The Rancher Meets His Match

  Join Patricia McLinn’s Readers List and get news on releases and special deals first.

  Copyright © Patricia McLinn

  Print ISBN: 978-1-944126-70-4

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-944126-69-8

  EPUB Edition

  www.PatriciaMcLinn.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover design: Art by Karri

  * * * *

  Dear Readers: If you encounter typos or errors in this book, please send them to me at [email protected]. Even with many layers of editing, mistakes can slip through, alas. But, together, we can eradicate the nasty nuisances. Thank you! — Patricia McLinn

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Copyright Page

  Day One — Monday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Day Two — Tuesday

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Day Three — Wednesday

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Day Four — Thursday

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Day Five — Friday

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Other Books by Patricia McLinn

  About the Author

  DAY ONE

  MONDAY

  CHAPTER ONE

  Orange juice.

  That’s what entangled my friend, Clara Woodrow, and me in a murder.

  Not a lot of people can say that.

  Clara apologized again for our detour to the Jolly Roger grocery store, even though I’d agreed to it. “Ned’s so easygoing about most things and he does love his orange juice. He’s coming in really late tonight from his business trip, then he has meetings starting early tomorrow morning, poor baby. This way he’ll have his orange juice before he goes.”

  Pre-detour, we’d been headed to my house from a meeting at the Torrid Avenue Dog Park.

  I’d approved stopping at the Roger, as the store was commonly called, despite it eating into time I’d mentally assigned to writing, as I tried to write my first novel, something no one else in Haines Tavern knew about.

  Something no one else anywhere knew about.

  This was not the first time I’d let my assigned writing time be overrun by other activities, though it was the first time orange juice was the culprit.

  “I read a wonderful book on oranges once that said orange juice for breakfast is widely considered an American habit, though, in fact, people in other countries drink it for breakfast. And sometimes all the rest of the day. They also do things like clean floors with oranges,” I said. “Half an orange in each hand, down on their knees, scrubbing.”

  I had time to expand on my memories of the book Oranges by John McPhee, because the Roger was some distance down the rolling highway.

  The Roger sat well back from the highway at a rising point in its endless up and down existence, tucked back on a solitary loop of a road called Covert Circle, which leads nowhere except the grocery store, a bank branch on one side of it, and a cut-rate (pun intended) hair place on the other.

  It was as if the buildings were outcasts, pushed firmly beyond the invisible yet widely understood borders of Haines Tavern, Kentucky.

  Heck, the townspeople allowed the dog park, with its attendant noise and smells, and the jail, ditto, to be built closer to the center of town than the Roger. That should tell you where it ranked in their estimation. They’d shop there for convenience, but they weren’t proud of it.

  To hear the people of Haines Tavern talk, they exclusively patronized Shep’s Market, the generations-old store near the center of town. Yet I ran into a higher percentage of people I knew at the Roger than at Shep’s.

  Still, if we’d been in town, I’d wager Clara would have opted for Shep’s Market. But Roger’s represented a far shorter detour than Shep’s to prevent Ned from being orange juice-less — and, thus, according to him, breakfastless — tomorrow morning.

  If we’d been coming with the dogs from the park, I’d have stayed in Clara’s SUV, running the AC full blast, because it was far too warm for furred beings to stay in a sun-soaked vehicle. But we’d left our dogs at my house for this meeting with parks officials about adding an agility area.

  Clara and I had been elected to represent users of the dog park in a close-run election.

  In other words, Donna, the dog park’s czarina, said someone was needed to attend this meeting. No one volunteered. No one she approved of, anyway. She assigned us.

  We’d report at the park this evening.

  “A whole book on oranges?” Clara asked. “You have to give me the title of that one, too, Sheila.”

  “The title’s simple — Oranges. But you don’t have to read every book I mention. No one will expect you to have read every book out there.”

  Since she’d begun an online cours
e to train as a virtual assistant for authors, Clara had been on a maniacal book binge, in addition to readings for the course and doing assignments.

  “Not every book. But a lot more than I have. And you recommend such wonderful books. Not like what they made us read in school. So depressing. Turned me off reading for years. I still wouldn’t be reading if it weren’t for you and your great-aunt’s books.”

  The topic of my Great-Aunt Kit, particularly the sub-topic of her books, tiptoed us right up to the edge of a precipice I did not want to go over. The landing would be on an unforgiving bed of sharp, protruding rocks known as secrets.

  Kit’s secrets. My secrets. Our secrets.

  “Gee, look. Don’t see that every day in Haines Tavern,” I said in a brilliant and subtle change of subject.

  I was aided by there actually being something unusual to look at as we approached the Roger.

  It was one of those SUV limousines. Not the super long ones like kids rent for prom, but the kind executives get driven around in so they don’t ever have to stop being important. It had an extra section between the front and back doors, plus a raised roof over the passenger compartment. As we got closer, I saw Range Rover branding.

  It also had bright orange safety cones set around it, keeping all plebian vehicles well away from its glistening surfaces.

  The likely cone-setter was a barrel-chested suit-wearing man slowly walking around the vehicle with a cloth in one hand, attending to the glisten.

  As Clara’s path took us close to the limo, the man turned and glared at her dog-toting, Kentucky dust-wearing, not of this decade SUV, as if daring us to bring the vehicular mutt any closer to his pristine purebred.

  I had an urge to grab a grocery cart, pass right between the cones, and ram the side of the limo-SUV.

  Good thing I was still inside a moving vehicle. Made it much easier to withstand temptation.

  Clara parked with an aplomb I would never achieve in an SUV, we got out, and without discussion met at the front bumper, which started us on a route toward the limo-SUV, rather than to the main doors.

  “Who do you think it belongs to?” Clara whispered, tipping her head toward the vehicle that, in a pinch, could probably hold all the dogs from the dog park.

  I suppressed a grin at the glisten-attender’s reaction to that scenario.

  “No idea. Can’t see a celebrity popping into the Roger, even if they did find themselves in North Bend County. Were there any special events scheduled?”

  She lifted a shoulder, then had to re-seat her purse strap, which had dropped off her shoulder. “I never pay attention to the stuff they do here.”

  We’d need to adjust our path eventually or we’d run right into the vehicle, but rather than angling away, we kept straight on for now, but with a right-angle turn in our near futures.

  The driver continued his circuit. He opened the farthest back door on the driver’s side, giving us a view inside. Not his intention, I suspected, but a bonus from our angle.

  A desk was pushed way back from the leather chair-like back seat, probably to let its occupant exit. Computing devices and a screen sat on the desk. On the passenger side of the compartment, another desk with similar tools was set up in front of a somewhat more spartan rear-facing seat.

  “Definitely not a celeb,” I murmured to Clara, as we made the right angle turn under the watchful eyes of the guy in the suit, who dusted already dust-free surfaces.

  “No,” she agreed mournfully. “No glitter in sight. All work and no play. Plenty of comfort, though. They sure have more leg room than if they faced each other.”

  “Could accomplish the same thing with two passengers sitting side by side. I bet this is to keep the hierarchy fully enforced, with the underling in the rear-facing seat.”

  “Smart,” she said admiringly. “I mean you, not the rear seat limo person.”

  We grinned at each other as we entered the store and encountered Petey.

  It was more common to see him out in the parking lot, even when winter had been its coldest, than inside.

  Petey operated as a cross between a cart wrangler and a Wal-Mart greeter.

  He’d called me by name the first time I’d shopped at the Roger. I still don’t know how he’d known. He called everybody by name. And even the most curmudgeonly soon learned his name and used it in return.

  I’d guess his age at north of seventy. He came up to my shoulder. He never failed to smile and say hello.

  Except now.

  A blonde woman wearing the store uniform with a pin on her black vest that read Hi, I’m Jacqueline Yancik, Assistant Store Manager, How Can I Help You? put her hand on his arm in a consoling gesture, then hurried after a knot of people congregated where register lines emptied out under a wall holding stiff photos of the store’s management team.

  Petey turned toward us — or more likely the exit door — with his head down.

  “Petey, what is all this? Who’s here?” Clara asked.

  He looked up, produced a grimaced version of his usual smile. “CEO. Rod Birchall.

  “CEO of the Jolly Roger chain? Here? Why?”

  “Don’t know. Yelled at the guy with him. Yelled at me. Yelled at her.” His head-jerk indicated the departing assistant manager. “Probably yelling at somebody else now.”

  As badly as this unpleasantness appeared to have put Petey off his stride, he still pulled a cart — a small one in response to Clara’s gesture — free from the line and presented it to her. But without a smile. And then he walked past us and out through the automatic door.

  “Apparently the CEO of Jolly Roger came to Haines Tavern to yell at people,” I summarized. “Clara, let’s get the OJ and get out of here before he yells at us.”

  She side-eyed me with a glimmer of mischief. “Don’t you want to hear what he’s yelling about first? See a big CEO up close and personal?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I’d seen more than a few in the years I’d spent in Manhattan, being known to the world by a different name and as the author of a book that became a movie, won awards and set records in each medium. The catch being that I hadn’t actually written the book. My great-aunt had.

  A fact very few people knew. Of those few people one lived in Haines Tavern. Me.

  People here knew me as Sheila Mackey. With no literary identity attached.

  For myself, I would have skipped getting a closer viewing of this CEO. Or any other CEO.

  Too many of them reminded me of sea lions.

  They’re smart and can be fun to watch from a distance. A long distance. Because up close you realize they’re noisy, have been known to snatch away small pets, and stink of putrid fish. Considering their diet, that’s not surprising — the sea lions’ diet, not the CEOs’.

  But who was I to deny Clara the opportunity to experience a CEO? After all, everyone should go see sea lions in person. Once.

  Besides, I might have an opportunity to ask if his was the brilliant mind behind associating a chain of grocery stores with piracy by naming them Jolly Roger. Way to make customers think they’re getting a good deal.

  “Sure.”

  Since Clara had already started wheeling the cart after the knot of people Petey had indicated and the assistant manager had joined, it was a foregone conclusion, but I voiced my agreement to make it official.

  In addition to the assistant manager named Jacqueline, the knot included a woman I’d seen in passing at the dog park — she and her terrier mix often were leaving as I arrived with Gracie, my collie — but had never officially met.

  Not only did I not know her name, I didn’t know her dog’s name, which made her next-best to a total stranger to me.

  “Do you know her?” I asked Clara, indicating the woman by shifting my eyes.

  “No. Shh.”

  Also part of the knot were three store employees in red vests, seven people I took for customers, a gangly young man in a white dress shirt and slacks with one arm wrapped across his waist as if his sto
mach hurt and a phone in his other hand, and, finally, the obvious CEO.

  Obvious not only because he was the focus of the group and because his pristine white shirt and suit pants had been tailored by masters you’ve never heard of because they would never be so gauche as to advertise, but because he had the thrust-out chest, lifted head, and minimalist chin of a sea lion.

  Though that might have been a coincidence.

  Also, he was the one talking.

  “…making this the most convenient and best choice for all shoppers in…”

  At the CEO’s pause, the gangly young man stepped forward, whispering.

  The older man spoke loudly, as if that wiped out being fed his line by whisper. “…North Bent County. Since—”

  “Bend, not Bent,” corrected a voice from my left.

  “—I took over, we’ve improved by leaps and bounds in record time, but we won’t be satisfied with improvement. Our aim is perfect.”

  A woman with white wings to her dark, upswept hair and glasses on the tip of her nose, which facilitated looking over them at him in disapproval, slid into a crack in his discourse.

  “You are far from perfect. You have London broil on sale at this store.” Her clear, precise voice stirred memories of a high school English teacher.

  “Glad you like your local Jolly Roger.” If his non-responsive answer hadn’t already given it away, his turned-away head as he scanned the aisle signs would have made it clear he wasn’t paying attention.

  “I do not like Jolly Roger at all at the moment. You have not improved, but rather, regressed. The London broil that I desire is no longer available. The employees at the meat counter, who have previously supplied exactly what I desired, informed me they can no longer cut it to my specifications. They tell me that rules from corporate headquarters have been handed down limiting the varieties of meat that can be cut at the stores, hamstringing the butchers, as it were. Further, I have ascertained that you are the party responsible for this change and others equally unwelcomed.”

  “Hamstringing butchers,” Clara repeated under her breath. “That’s good.”