Death on Covert Circle

by Patricia McLinn

  If I’d had any question of whether he knew I was withholding information, it was answered now.

  That wasn’t great, but as long as he didn’t know what information I was withholding, I should be okay. There’s a big gap between knowing someone has a generic secret and knowing what the secret is. Right?

  At last, he gave a small nod, as if confirming something in his own head — My innocence? I hoped with unrealistic optimism — then released the look.

  After a couple breaths of mentally mopping my brow, I decided I had one more task in the dining room. Those salt and pepper shakers really needed straightening.

  Instead, I snapped to attention at his next words, which were not directed at me.

  “What is it, Clara?”

  From Teague’s face, I zoomed to hers.

  She did not look happy. In fact, she looked almost… guilty.

  “Clara?”

  She sighed. “What you said about the good thing being that knowing how to turn off cameras would narrow it to people who work at the Roger? Um, it’s not so narrow.” She picked at something on her sleeve. Something invisible. “For instance, knowing where the controls are? The monitors are on a couple desks in the office. Each control’s labeled with where the camera’s located. And the instructions are posted right beside the monitors. It’s simple to disable a camera. Just a few clicks.”

  “How do you know all this?” Teague asked.

  “Everybody knows about the monitors being in the office. Didn’t you, Sheila?” She read my answer in my face. “Well, most everybody. Especially if you have to stand and wait to get rainchecks, because they’re forever running out of stock on sale items and you stand there forever, they fill out enough paperwork to get a mortgage and then you lose the raincheck or they still don’t have the item when the raincheck’s about to run out so you have to get another one and eventually you lose it anyway, so it was a big waste, spending all that time in line, watching people go in and out of the office door and sometimes they don’t even bother to close it, so you see things. But I guess you don’t get rainchecks,” she concluded.

  “I might have to after this.”

  I got the casserole dish out and started preparing it. I’d made this recipe with my mother as a teenager and felt secure enough to listen at the same time.

  “So, you’ve seen the monitors and the set-up, but how do you know it takes a few clicks to disable a specific camera, Clara?” Teague asked.

  “Oh.” Her cheeks grew pink. “I was in the store one night, quite late, when they have very few customers and a lot of people stocking, you know? There were three boys in the office laughing — giggling really — and no one at the desk, so I went to the open office door and over their shoulders I saw they had one of the cameras pointed at a girl’s backside as she bent over to stock lower shelves.”

  Her pink cheeks were indignation, not embarrassment.

  “I reached over their shoulders and turned it off — that’s how easy the instructions were. I read them in that instant of stepping forward. I didn’t even say anything, looked at them and they scattered like rabbits.”

  “Good for you, Clara.”

  She grinned back at me, then sobered. “But it does mean the field of possible suspects is still wide open.”

  “You know, I don’t think that’s a handicap for us. Not the part about there being more suspects, but the whole aspect of forensic evidence and that sort of thing. If forensics is going to solve this, the sheriff’s department is going to figure it out before we do, no matter what. So, we should leave that to them.”

  “Thank you.” Teague’s emphasis added the subtext That’s what I’ve been saying all along without saying the words. This time.

  “But,” I continued with my own emphasis, reaching for the pan and rack I’d use for the roast, “as we’ve seen in other circumstances, forensics isn’t always the best or fastest answer. Talking with people informally can get us to the answer.”

  “It can also get you into dangerous situations.”

  “We’re careful,” Clara assured him.

  “I’ve seen how careful you two are.” His tone might best be described as sardonic.

  “Sometimes things happen,” Clara conceded.

  “But we got the answers,” I pointed out.

  “How about focusing less on answers and more on staying alive.”

  “No worries for you,” I said cheerily, pulling off foil to line the pan. Since moving into my own house, I’ve become a big believer in prevention to cut cleaning tasks. “If I die, the estate would still need to employ you to finish fixing up this place so it could be sold. Your employment prospects here would continue, in addition to substitute teaching.”

  “Is that what you’re worried about, Teague?”

  Clara has a habit of saying — or asking — what other people are thinking. A lot of times I appreciated it. Sometimes I didn’t.

  Like now.

  “Among other things,” he said. “Like the way you two speculate. Speculation can take you in wild directions.”

  As much as I appreciated his redirecting the conversation, I wasn’t going to agree with him. “Everything’s speculation until you confirm it. Speculation is the same thing as a lead.”

  I gathered ingredients for coating the roast.

  “If you have evidence—”

  I interrupted him. “Once you confirm it, it’s evidence. Before that it’s a lead. You can call it speculation. We call it something to look into. And so would you if we were with the sheriff’s department.”

  I took the pork roast out of the packaging, turned it over and discovered a thick pad of fat. “For Pete’s sake. They hid all the fat on the bottom,” I grumbled. “I thought better of Shep’s.”

  “My former partner — Harris —” Teague amended the identification since we both knew who Harris was and Clara was practically best buds with him. “—worked as a butcher in college and calls it white meat, since you pay the same price per pound for it as the meat.”

  His chuckle fizzled as he looked from Clara to me.

  “Now what is it?” he asked.

  Without taking her gaze off me, Clara said, “Sheila’s figured out something.”

  I heard them, but it seemed from a distance.

  “What?” he asked.

  Clara said, “I’m not exactly sure, but Gundy said something similar yesterday about white meat and fat.”

  “Why would that be significant?”

  At the same time Teague spoke, I said, “Maybe. Maybe I’ve figured it out. Oh.”

  I swung around holding the knife I’d used to remove the packaging, upright and outstretched. “A knife. That’s it. A knife. I think I do have it figure out.”

  They both slid backed on their chairs.

  “Be careful with that thing.” Teague reached for it, but I drew it back to me.

  “Birchall wasn’t stabbed.” Clara’s objection overlooked any potential personal danger and focused on the crime. Had to love the woman’s single-mindedness.

  “No, he wasn’t. But the guy in jeans wasn’t a customer. He wasn’t just Jacqueline’s boyfriend, either. He’s—”

  “What?” Teague asked.

  “Later,” Clara promised. “Let her finish.”

  “—a butcher.”

  “The guy in jeans is a butcher,” Clara repeated. Not questioning, but in wide-eyed excitement.

  “And Belinda said Jacqueline had personal reasons for being upset about the firings last week. Like her live-in boyfriend being one those fired?”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Teague said. “How you get to the guy in jeans being a butcher — possibly a butcher, based on what leap of logic is beyond me. But, okay, say he is a butcher, how do you get to that assistant store manager—”

  “Jacqueline,” Clara supplied.

  “Jacqueline living with him, with this supposed butcher?”

  “Belinda said—”

  “You said her name is Jacq
ueline.”

  “Belinda is one of the red vests. She told us Jacqueline has a boyfriend named … Edwards. I think it was Wade Edwards, though she didn’t seem real sure. She also — earlier, when we were all on the floor in housewares — said Jacqueline took last week’s firings personally.”

  “Thin,” he grumbled. “Go back to the butcher part. What makes you think he’s a butcher?”

  “The knife’s part of it. That’s what was familiar about the slightly weird way he held his hand. It wasn’t a fist or a tennis grip. It was a butcher’s grip. There was a shop in Manhattan—” Oops. Not so close to my previous life. “Anyway, that’s what made me envision him in a white coat. I thought maybe he was in something medical, but it was the butcher’s white coats, not lab coats.”

  “You lost me,” Clara said.

  “When he talked to Rod Birchall, the guy in jeans — God, I wish we knew his name — held his arm, his hand a weird way. Not fisted. Not a tennis grip. But it seemed familiar. It was. It was exactly the way Shep’s butcher did when he cut that rib roast for you last month, Clara.”

  She squinted at my knife-holding arm. My form wasn’t great, but I hoped it got the point across.

  “They use the machines so much, but…” Her gaze jerked from my knife-holding arm to my face. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I never would have thought of that. And the guy in jeans did hold his hand kind of weird, but I barely remembered it, much less figured out he’s a butcher and living with Jacqueline from it.”

  “That’s conjecture, not a fact,” Teague objected. “You can’t go jumping to conclusions. You’ve gone from the way he held his hand to connecting him with a white coat and the guy who cut Clara’s meat. And now you’ve put him at the top of your suspect list—”

  “We didn’t say that.”

  “Well, he is kind of at the top of the list now,” Clara said.

  “Yeah, fine. But we hadn’t said it. Besides, Teague, it’s all indicative. It all hangs together. And—”

  “Or hangs apart—”

  “—there’s the other part. White meat.”

  That stopped him. “What about white meat?”

  “He used that term, too, the way you said Harris did. And it seemed strange at the time. Most people use white meat to refer to chicken or turkey. But what he said didn’t fit with that usage. He said something about how the Roger’s pre-packaging meat meant Birchall was selling customers mostly white meat and it sounded like an accusation. But if the package held chicken or turkey, so what? A customer could see what they were getting, they weren’t being cheated. But if he meant it the way Harris learned as a butcher — as fat — then he was saying Birchall’s program put more fat in the packages, where customers couldn’t see it until they got it home and started to cook it—” I gestured to the pork roast. “—which is underhanded, if not outright cheating the consumer. Making white meat a term—”

  “A butcher would use,” Clara finished happily. “Wonderful, Sheila. That’s absolutely wonderful.”

  Teague rubbed his chin. “Even if — and it’s a big if — the guy’s a butcher, what evidence do you have he’s connected with the assistant store manager — besides the gossip of Belinda.”

  “That’s easy.” Clara looked a question at me.

  “Be my guest. I’ll work on the marinade.”

  So, while I retrieved olive oil, a multi-herb rub my brother had shared, and a bit of sesame ginger dressing, Clara told him how our mystery man had interacted with Jacqueline.

  “A couple words? A touch? A few looks? And he backed off when she asked him to? That’s all you’ve got.”

  “It’s plenty when you know how to read people.” Clara ruined her assumed condescension with her next breath. “Plus, we saw and heard each of those, absorbing all the subtext in real time. Trust us, there was something going on between those two.” Her eyes widened. “You do trust us, don’t you, Teague?”

  I laughed. “You play dirty, Clara. One of the things I love about you.”

  Her eyes wide with innocence, she said, “And then there’s what Phyllis Ezzard told us about them being entwined in a truck in the parking lot.”

  After her brief explanation, Teague gave a mock disgusted, “Sheesh. You could have started with that.”

  “We were waiting until dinner to tell you and Ned together.”

  Clara’s phone rang. She went into the dining room to answer.

  Teague was silent a moment, slicing an apple. “You need a hell of a lot more than these little pieces to accuse someone of a crime, Sheila. Any crime. Much less murder.”

  I turned with the bowl holding the whisked marinade. That sounded like something even deeper than the professional standards he adhered to, even though it was his former profession now.

  Dropping any flippancy, I said, “We aren’t accusing him. We do suspect him. Along with several other people. We’ll keep looking for evidence.”

  He rubbed his forehead again.

  “While you’re doing that, could you please remember that, if you’re right, this guy knows how to use a knife?” Then the line of his mouth eased slightly. “And Gracie might be able to get Timmy out of the well or bark at intruders, but don’t count on her disarming a knife-wielding murderer.”

  Of course I didn’t count on her doing that.

  Because I’d be standing between her and the knife-wielding murderer to protect her.

  Clara came back into the kitchen. “We’ve got to go, Sheila.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Before we left, I covered the roast with marinade, put it in a high heat oven with strict instructions to Teague to turn it way down in twenty minutes. Then check on it while it was cooking.

  “If it’s close to temperature and we’re not back, turn it lower, but not off.”

  When I started to go over the instructions for the casserole a second time, he said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it. Why won’t you tell me where you’re going?”

  I shrugged. “It’s all Clara’s show. I don’t know either.”

  Clara honked from the driveway and I left.

  * * * *

  “Where are we going?” I asked from the passenger seat.

  “Jacqueline’s back on duty at the Roger. Millie texted me. After what Phyllis said, I thought we should get to her as soon as possible.”

  “Great. But why wouldn’t you tell Teague?”

  “He was being such a killjoy. I didn’t want him saying we needed an armed escort to go to the Roger.”

  * * * *

  We spotted Jacqueline walking into the office and followed her.

  She gave us a weak welcoming smile.

  After hellos, I said, “Tell us about the security cameras at the Roger, Jacqueline.”

  “God, you, too?” I’d thought it would ease us into the real questions, but not by her reaction. “The deputies were on and on about them. Was it normal to have several cameras pointed toward the produce section? Well, no, because that would be stupid — we want to cover the most territory with them, not the least. And was it normal to have a bunch of cameras pointed at those doors to the back room? No, one. And was it normal to have cameras disabled from the front to the back of the store? No, the whole idea of the cameras is to not have blank spots. And how hard is it to operate the cameras or disable them? Not very hard for someone who’s ever worked the system or anything similar, which is about anybody who’s ever worked in a store of any kind, ever.”

  Clara winced, but Jacqueline didn’t notice, having turned toward the computer on the desk.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” the assistant store manager said. “I didn’t mean to explode, but it’s so frustrating to be asked these questions over and over from forty different angles, the same questions and the same answers.”

  As long as we weren’t easing into this, I changed tactics. Gently swinging the door closed to limit being overheard, I went for direct.

  “We know he’s a butcher.”

  She spun aroun
d, then, belatedly tried for the wide-eyed innocent look. In another few years it would look ridiculous on her. Right now it simply didn’t work.

  “Who is?” she tried.

  “The guy in jeans who was one of the people confronting Rod Birchall. And when he did, you tried to smooth it over and then he backed off, like he didn’t want to upset you. The guy who said he’d stay with the body, then didn’t.”

  She shook her head, adding a shrug to emphasize her supposed confusion. “I don’t know who—”

  “C’mon, you can’t possibly pretend you don’t remember him. Not when he found the Jolly Roger CEO dead in the back room of your store.”

  She latched onto that. “That’s probably what drove everything else out of my mind.”

  “You remembered us,” Clara said quietly.

  Jacqueline blinked twice rapidly.

  “You do know him, don’t you?”

  “No. I told you, I’ve only been here a few months. Even if he’s a regular customer, I might not know him. And he could have been in the store for the first time for all I know. Customers come and go.”

  “But he wasn’t a customer. He’s a butcher.”

  She paused, chewing on the corner of her thumbnail for a telling instant. “Of course he was a customer. I haven’t been here long, but I know all the employees.”

  “You know all the butchers who work here?”

  “Yes.” She said it fast and firm.

  “Of course there are fewer to remember after the firings last week.”

  “I would have recognized him if he’d ever worked here,” she said doggedly.

  “So he worked as a butcher at another store.”

  She said nothing.

  “He was one of the butchers let go in the recent layoffs and firings, wasn’t he? That explains his anger at Birchall.”

  Nothing.

  Clara contributed, “If he was let go and you knew how angry he was at Birchall, how he blamed the CEO, that explains your trying to get him to leave. Didn’t work, but you probably knew it wouldn’t end well.”

  “Definitely didn’t end well,” I agreed. “Not for Rod Birchall and possibly not for your butcher friend.”

  Her silence had become rigid.