Death on Beguiling Way Read online

  Death on Beguiling Way

  Secret Sleuth, Book 3

  Patricia McLinn

  No zen in sight…

  As Sheila Mackey settles into life in Haines Tavern, Kentucky, she still has secrets to keep, but things are coming together. That is, until someone murders an instructor at the Beguiling Way yoga studio frequented by Sheila and her dog park friend, Clara. Law enforcement says the killer was a passing-through stranger now long gone. Sheila and Clara have their doubts.

  Secret Sleuth series

  Death on the Diversion

  Death on Torrid Ave.

  Death on Beguiling Way

  Death on Covert Circle

  Other mystery from Patricia McLinn

  Caught Dead in Wyoming series

  Sign Off

  Left Hanging

  Shoot First

  Last Ditch

  Look Live

  Back Story

  Cold Open

  Hot Roll

  Reaction Shot

  “While the mystery itself is twisty-turny and thoroughly engaging, it’s the smart and witty writing that I loved the best.”

  —Diane Chamberlain, New York Times bestselling author

  Mystery with romance

  Proof of Innocence

  Price of Innocence

  “Evocative description, vivid characterization, and lots of twists and turns.”

  — 5-star review

  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

  ISBN: 978-1-944126-47-6

  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

  Author’s Note

  Day One – Monday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Day Two – Tuesday

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Day Three – Wednesday

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Day Four – Thursday

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Day Five – Friday

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Day Six – Saturday

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Day Seven – Sunday

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Day Eight – Monday

  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

  Other Books by Patricia McLinn

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  No yoga instructors of my acquaintance were hurt in the writing of this book …or used as models for characters. I had to seek out others’ experiences to research less positive experiences than I’ve had. Like all the characters in my books, these are not based on real people, but are the product of my fevered imagination. I confess, some of that imagining happens during yoga class.

  DAY ONE

  MONDAY

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

  It was the heart-soaring beginning with all things possible, it was the first step in a seven-thousand-mile walk through the desert without water.

  It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

  I had everything before me, I had nothing before me…

  The everything before me was that it was nearly time to leave for my yin yoga class.

  Our instructor, Liz, said we should feel at the end as if we’d had a cross between a structured nap and a massage. Who couldn’t use a nap and a massage?

  Especially because I’d been wrestling with nothing before me for hours, producing a few pathetic words insufficient to make a reader try the next paragraph, never mind a novel.

  Yes, I was trying to write a novel. Specifically, a romance novel.

  But, considering I just riffed off the opening of A Tale of Two Cities, I worried Charles Dickens had wormed his way deep into my subconscious and my ending might echo Sydney Carton’s trip to the guillotine.

  No matter what Hollywood thinks (have you seen some of the things they call romance?), cutting off the hero’s head is not the route to a happy ending.

  That much I knew.

  Okay, okay, Carton wasn’t the romantic lead of A Tale of Two Cities. He still ended up a hero and lost his head. I’ve never forgiven Dickens.

  I wasn’t going to do that to my readers.

  If I ever had any, since I was trying to write a book for the first time.

  Which would surprise the heck out of millions who considered me the author of the iconic megahit Abandon All.

  The catch was, I didn’t write Abandon All.

  My great-aunt Kit did.

  She’d masterminded my playing the public persona of Abandon All, investing our earnings, then ending our arrangement. She’s a masterminding kind of person.

  I’d happily left the Abandon All persona in Manhattan, re-emerging as Sheila Mackey in Haines Tavern, Kentucky, just over the Ohio River from Cincinnati.

  Now I was trying to actually write.

  How was it going?

  Worst of times, desert marathon without water, winter of despair, nothing before me.

  “What are you doing?”

  I closed the laptop in front of me with extreme nonchalance.

  “Nothing,” I told Teague O’Donnell in an even, reasonable tone despite his sneaking up on me in the dining room of my own home.

  He was a friend — acquaintance, really — from the Torrid Avenue Dog Park.

  It was our dogs who were truly best buds, my Gracie and his Murphy, along with a third dog, LuLu, and her owner Clara.

  But that wasn’t why Teague was in my house on this early Monday evening.

  He was here in his role as a carpenter.

  When he’d finished building shelves for me a few months back, we’d agreed he would next reconfigure two bedroom’s closets in my post-World War II colonial.

  He hadn’t been able to start on the project u
ntil now because he had another role — substitute teacher. Apparently, teachers developed as bad a case of spring fever as their students, so he was busy subbing right up until the school year ended.

  Today was his first day on the closet job.

  Based on previous experience with his methods, this day and a couple more would be devoted to measuring, planning, re-remeasuring, going over the plan, then checking his remeasurements, before, finally, writing a list of needed supplies.

  “If you’re doing nothing, why did you slam the computer closed?” he asked.

  “I didn’t slam it closed.” The man clearly didn’t recognize extreme nonchalance when it was right in front of him.

  “You did.”

  “Didn’t.”

  He leaned back against the door frame of my dining room and considered me.

  Being considered by Teague O’Donnell was not the most comfortable experience. He had a way of turning his head, first one way, then the other, without shifting his gaze away, making me feel as if he were zeroing in an X-Ray machine to see below my surface. Did I mention he used to be a police detective?

  And I have a few secrets I’d like to keep, starting with that Abandon All business.

  To preserve Sheila Mackey’s laid-back privacy in Haines Tavern, she — I — could not be connected to Abandon All. Especially if I ever hoped to write and publish without a circus.

  Yeah, definitely needed to keep that secret from Teague O’Donnell, former detective.

  He continued to regard me as he said, “You going to tell me next it’s not your laptop?”

  “Why on earth would I say it’s not my laptop?”

  “When I was on patrol, we’d find drugs in somebody’s pants pocket and they’d say it wasn’t theirs because the pants they were wearing weren’t theirs. The Not-My-Pants excuse also applied to purses and underwear — men’s and women’s.”

  “Ewww. They were wearing someone else’s underwear? Sure hope—”

  “They were saying they were wearing someone else’s underwear.”

  “—it was clean.”

  “It wasn’t clean. It had drugs in it.”

  “Different definition of clean. I wonder how dirty and clean came to be applied to drugs.”

  “No idea. And a different subject from slamming your laptop closed. Anyway, why aren’t you using your office? Afraid I’d see what you were doing on the computer?”

  I mentioned the guy had been a police detective, right? He must have been a pretty good one.

  What he was not, at the moment, was a good shaver. He had scruff on his chin. Possibly a symptom of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out for Summer/School’s Out Forever” fever.

  “Of course not.” I’d thought the stairs would give me warning of his approach that I wouldn’t have in the office … and then I’d missed his approach anyway. “I thought you’d be making lots of noise upstairs.”

  He turned his head, adjusting the angle of his considering look.

  Not an improvement, from my point of view.

  “Told you I’d take a couple days to get the scope of the job since you’ve been changing what you want. So you knew—”

  “Tweaks.”

  “—you could have worked in the office today. But if you don’t want to tell me what you’re doing on the laptop, say you don’t want to tell me. Unless it’s something to do with changing these closets. Again. That you have to tell me.”

  A few little design alterations, all improvements, and he hadn’t even started work, so what was he complaining about?

  This project started when I realized two bedroom closets sat side by side, making them deep, but too narrow for adequate hanging space.

  We were going to trade depth for width by taking out the side wall dividing the closets, then building a long wall to make them back to back. In each bedroom, double doors would open to hanging space twice as wide as provided now.

  “No changes — no major changes. I did find a better register for the vent. It’s flush with the floor and matches the wood.”

  He groaned.

  I pretended not to notice. I also changed the subject.

  “Tomorrow, Clara and I are taking the dogs to the park after yoga class. Want me to take Murphy when I swing by here for Gracie? Should be early afternoon.”

  Two sets of dog ears perked up at the word park. And, again, at each of their names.

  Two, because I’d told Teague to bring Murphy whenever he came to work here. No sense leaving the poor dog alone in an apartment. Besides, Murphy visiting was like giving Gracie the best toy ever.

  At the moment, Gracie and Murphy were lying side by side on the rug in front of the front door, chewing on opposite ends of a rawhide, watching the humans, and looking adorable.

  Gracie has an edge in the adorable stakes, being a beautiful sable and white collie with more than a passing resemblance to Lassie. And being mine, adopted from the regional collie rescue group.

  Murphy, a sweet-natured lab mix, was also far above average on the cuteness scale. He just had the handicap of lying next to Gracie.

  “I thought you had class this evening — the contortionist yoga you guys do.”

  “It’s yin. Not contortionist. You should try it.”

  He ignored that. “Besides, Clara told me you two were taking the dogs to the park before class to get in the habit of going earlier for when the real heat of summer hits.”

  “That was on Tuesdays. We tried, but it didn’t work out.” It didn’t work out because we arrived at yoga hot, sweaty, and smelling of dogs. After getting a lot of side looks for one class, we dumped the plan.

  “Confusing.”

  “Not at all. Classes are Monday nights, Tuesdays lunchtime.”

  “Same thing two days in a row? Why not take a different class?”

  “We like yin. We’re discussing adding another kind, but need to figure out which one.” I checked my watch. “I better go or I’ll be late picking up Clara.”

  “I’ll wait until tomorrow about having you two take Murph to the park. Your schedules will change seven times before then.”

  He wasn’t far off. You’d think, since neither Clara nor I had a job — Clara temporarily and me permanently — scheduling would not be an issue. But it got surprisingly complicated.

  “Lock up, okay?” I instructed him as I picked up my yoga bag.

  “Sure. Break a leg.”

  He thought he was so funny.

  CHAPTER TWO

  We weren’t late for class.

  In fact, we were the first ones there. Just the way we liked.

  It let us secure our favorite corner spots and provided a few extra minutes on our mats, letting the real world dissipate. Or, in my case, the fictional world stuck at a few words old.

  But tonight, we couldn’t get inside. The door was locked.

  This was strange.

  Our instructor, Liz, faithfully came early and opened the door for students to stretch, meditate, chat, snooze, or otherwise settle in before class.

  The Beguiling Way Yoga Studio is — not surprisingly — on Beguiling Way, an alley until town leaders turned it into a no-cars pedestrian passage and loftily renamed it years ago.

  It’s west of the town square (which, it delights me to report, is not square but rectangular.)

  The post office, library, and a hardware store occupy the first block west of one of the narrower ends of the town square. Behind them comes Tanner Street, with various historic storefronts and a café.

  Next is Beguiling Way, with its no-vehicles policy. For some reason, Clara and I habitually park where aromas from the café and a nearby bakery waft around us so strongly that we almost always succumb after class.

  Being at the back of a historic structure, and therefore not as regulated as the front, the studio has a large picture window and glass door. Both sport shades, allowing filtered light inside while obscuring the view of potential gawkers. A good thing, since more than a few yoga poses qualify as “Not fl
attering positions for photos or other viewing.”

  Clara peered into the window, focusing on the crack where two screens met. “This is weird.”

  “Liz’s just running late.” I set my bag, holding my rolled-up mat, towel, water, and hair clips on the sidewalk and studied a list of upcoming classes posted on the inside of the door’s glass.

  This yin class wasn’t what you might associate with yoga if your mental images center on whippet thin bodies in perfect Warrior One, Two, Three and up, reverently pronouncing Sanskrit, completing pretzel-making maneuvers, all while demonstrating supreme spirituality, allowing no wrinkles in their high-fashion yoga attire, and displaying killer pedicures.

  I haven’t taken every offering at Beguiling Way Yoga Studio, so I couldn’t say there weren’t any such classes, but so far, so good.

  Plus, yin itself is different.

  Aunt Kit introduced me to it in New York. She said it reached the seat of authors’ aches — sitting too many hours in a row, for too many years. It involves getting into positions with deliberation, supporting yourself with props, then remaining for minutes, with the goal of releasing connective tissue called fascia and easing seldom-stretched muscles.

  “Let gravity and time do the work,” Liz often said.

  I’m good with that, especially with the nap and massage elements added in.

  Clara twisted her neck to alter the angle of her view through the crack.

  “There’s somebody inside. It’s not Liz,” she reported. “Do you think she’s sick? She acted a little strange last time.”

  Our instructor, Liz, was a tall, solid young woman who exuded calm. I could imagine the character of Ma Walton from the old TV series The Waltons being a lot like Liz in her younger days. Pleasant, but no-nonsense. Perhaps a little shy.

  During last week’s class, Clara had poked me while I was relaxing into a pose called Sleeping Swan that sort of feels like the splits with one knee bent.

  It feels better than it sounds. At least for me. I understand other people hate the pose. Sort of the way I feel about Dragon, which should be against the Geneva Conventions.