Death on Covert Circle

by Patricia McLinn

  “Yes.”

  “They’re on the way. Don’t touch anything. Keep everybody in the store.”

  Jacqueline surged a step into the back room, as if pushed from behind. I took hold of her arm, wondering if she had lost her balance or was going to be sick.

  “Let go.” It was the most authoritative I’d heard her.

  “You shouldn’t go in there. You don’t want to confuse the—” I deleted the word crime before it could come out. “—scene.”

  “She’s right,” the man said. “Stay out of this.”

  “I can’t. I have to secure the other side so none of the employees come along and see… See anything.”

  “I’ll do that. You get the store closed.”

  Her pull against my hold eased. Instead, she pushed the door, releasing the catch.

  As it swung closed, she and I both backed out of its way, back to the produce department side of it.

  “Will you two stay here, keep anybody from going in while I go up front and get the store closed?” She looked from me to Clara.

  “Yes.” I answered for both of us, since Clara was still on the phone with dispatch.

  I stood in front of the door, prepared to block anyone trying to get in … or out.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “…he didn’t come out — Mr. Birchall, the chain’s CEO, I mean. But we had no idea, absolutely no idea, something might be wrong.”

  Jacqueline’s voice, recounting the finding of Rod Birchall’s body, preceded her coming around the corner into the produce section with three deputies — one behind, one to the left, and one to the right, slightly ahead of her. That last one drew my attention.

  Deputy Hensen.

  Good news. It was not Deputy Eckles.

  Clara and I had encountered both of them before. Neither welcomed our efforts with open arms, but Hensen had a couple positives in his favor — he had a sense of humor and he liked dogs.

  Neither attribute, unfortunately, applied to this situation.

  “We were all here,” Jacqueline was saying when I tuned back into her voice. “The entire time. Watching the doors. No one went in after Mr. Birchall did. No one got past us. Absolutely no one. I swear.”

  Hensen’s eyes twitched, as if they wanted to roll but he’d held them in check by force of will.

  Now, why would he find what she’d said eye-roll-worthy?

  We — Clara and I — knew Jacqueline had told a lie, purposely or not, because we’d seen her, the assistant, and the guy in jeans out and about in the store. If any of them had remained here, surely they’d noticed the others depart and presumably return.

  No matter what, each of them had a period of time when they’d been away and could not swear no one had gone in these doors to the back room.

  Still, that most likely left one, maybe two people here in front of the door at any given time. Though it would take careful questioning to pin that down.

  Besides, while we knew she’d lied about them all being here at the same time and for the whole time, Hensen didn’t.

  So why the twitch to suppress an eye roll?

  As if he considered a group watching these doors utterly unimportant when a man had been found dead, apparently murdered, behind them.

  “It’s got to be a horrible accident,” Jacqueline told Hensen.

  “Uh-huh.” Hensen had spotted Clara and me. He shook his head slowly, somewhere between resignation and grudging recognition, then seemed to catch himself and went expressionless.

  Not an eye roll.

  Not even a twitch to suppress an eye roll.

  Which had been such a specific reaction and not one I’d seen from him before. Why…?

  Oh.

  Oh.

  The group watching these doors was unimportant.

  But the individuals straying from them were not.

  I clutched Clara’s arm.

  “Ow.”

  “Shh.” She obeyed, but continued prying my fingers from the flesh over her radius, as I leaned in and whispered, “Anyone could have gotten into the back by one of the other doors.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Clara stopped prying my fingers, instead, twisting her neck sharply to look at me.

  I released my grip and nodded.

  “Of course,” she breathed. “Of course.”

  I nodded again.

  Hensen had reached us. “I don’t even want to know what you two are doing here.”

  Clara told him anyway. “Shopping.” She nodded to the small cart.

  “One of the customers stayed with the body,” I told Hensen. “Don’t know his name. Male, over six feet, dark hair, cut short, light stubble, earlyish forties, white shirt, and worn but clean jeans.”

  He nodded receipt of the information.

  “Stay here.” He issued the order to everyone in sight with no indication of a sense of humor or that he liked dogs. He paused only to slip on blue paper booties.

  One of his minion deputies stayed at the back of the group. Hensen addressed him. “If you need help, get one of the men getting statements from the customers up front.”

  He pushed one swinging door open with his shoulder. If he was trying to preserve finger prints I wondered how long it would take them to sort through all the employees who must have pushed since the last time it had been cleaned.

  Through the opening, I saw Rod Birchall’s lower legs and feet again. Unmoved.

  Not that I would have expected him to move them. Or even the guy in the jeans to have moved them. But, anyway, they hadn’t moved.

  The guy in the jeans had moved. He was nowhere in sight. Though, in fairness, my sight was somewhat limited, because Hensen hadn’t been overly generous with his door-opening.

  On the other hand, Hensen didn’t react as if he saw anybody live back there in the brief time before the door thwumphed closed.

  I turned to see Jacqueline straighten from leaning sideways to see into the back room, too. She seemed to relax a bit.

  The remaining deputy stepped between Clara and me, taking the prime spot in front of the door, then demoted us succinctly. “Join the others, please.”

  Clara demoted him right back, holding her position an extra beat and saying into her phone, “Yes, thank you. Deputy Hensen and other people are here now.”

  A burble of amusement climbed my throat. I didn’t let it escape as we joined Jacqueline and the assistant who hadn’t moved or said anything since the idea of going in back to see what Rod Birchall was doing had been raised.

  I didn’t take it personally, but at that moment Birchall’s assistant went pale, his mouth pinched, and his lips gray.

  “I’m… I’m… I’m… Ah.”

  The man began to crumple.

  I was too far away, Clara even farther, Jacqueline paying no attention.

  “Deputy—”

  He had good reflexes. He caught the assistant before he hit the floor. But not before a stork-like elbow caught a display of pyramided potatoes.

  Pyramids crumble fast when they’re made of potatoes. Good thing the Egyptians used other building materials.

  Clara, Jacqueline, and I chased potatoes rolling erratically in all directions. I caught one during its wobbly airborne arc, then scooped several from the floor. The deputy lowered the assistant to a seat on the floor, propping his back against the bottom of a refrigerated case holding shrink-wrapped melons in various configurations of halves, quarters, slices, and filets.

  I started to pile my finds back onto the remaining ruins of the potato pyramid.

  “Don’t,” Clara said. “They’ll be all bruised. They shouldn’t be sold. Jacqueline, where should we put these?”

  The assistant store manager looked around wildly. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “How about on top of those bags of nuts. They’ll be protected from any broken potatoes until you get someone to clean up.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay. This is a nightmare. An absolute nightmare.”

  Figuring sh
e wasn’t talking about the potatoes all over aisle one, I decided it was on-topic to ask, “Where’s that guy?”

  “Guy?”

  “The tall one. One of the customers. White shirt and jeans. He waited with you—”

  “He wasn’t with me.”

  “—and the CEO’s assistant and then—”

  “Assistant?”

  I tipped my head toward the nervous man, who had come out of his faint, but sat with his knees drawn up and his head in his hands, moaning, and seemingly unaware of anything around him.

  Her face scrunched up as if she were about to sneeze. “He’s not Rod Birchall’s assistant. He’s his heir apparent. He’s now the acting CEO of the Jolly Roger supermarket chain.”

  Clara and I looked at each other.

  I suspected my face was saying the same thing her face was: Talk about a motive.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “He’s the new CEO. What’s his name?”

  “Utton. Foster Utton. Acting CEO.”

  He did not respond in any way to his name, which put his awareness well below that of my dog, Gracie. Her ears reacted not only to her name and numerous other words representing positives in her world — treat, dog park, eat, outside, walk, LuLu, and Murphy led the list — but also to she. A bit egocentric, maybe, but far more situationally alert than the new CEO of the Jolly Roger chain.

  Skipping over discussion of his suitability for CEO-dom, I stuck with my main point.

  “Along with you and Foster Utton, there was a man who went in and said Mr. Birchall was dead and then said he’d stay with the body and you should go secure the store and let the deputies in. You must remember.”

  She bent for a single potato, then turned and placed it atop the nut bags. “Of course. But I don’t know where he is.”

  Interesting.

  I’d have expected her to assume he remained in back. But if she had assumed that, why not say so?

  Could she have seen enough of the back room to be certain he hadn’t waited for the sheriff’s department’s arrival? But then wouldn’t she be more curious?

  “I hope nothing’s happened to him, too,” I said.

  Her head came up and she flashed a look at me, but said nothing.

  “I mean, if Mr. Birchall was murdered and there’s a murderer loose…”

  “Murdered? Of course not. He wasn’t murdered. It must have been an accident. Or a heart attack. Or—”

  “Healthy as a horse,” came unexpectedly from the presumptive CEO. He didn’t raise his head from his hands, so it was muffled, but no mistaking the words.

  “—something,” Jacqueline insisted.

  “Something he ate,” muttered Foster Utton, face still covered.

  “But that guy—” Clara broke off at my sharp head shake. She substituted, “What thing he ate?”

  Utton gave no sign of hearing her first, aborted comment and I wondered if he’d absorbed that the guy in jeans said Birchall was bashed in the head.

  “Something he ate with sesame in it.” He raised his head, peering around until his gaze landed on Jacqueline. “That thing he ate as he went in the back room, did it have sesame in it? Flour or seeds or oil. If it had poppy seeds, too, that makes it worse.”

  She looked at him blankly. “I have no idea.”

  Clara went to the display, but as she reached for one of whatever was wrapped in white paper, the deputy at the door said, “Don’t touch anything, ma’am.”

  “Of course not, Deputy. No touching. I’ll just…” She scooched down so she was eye level with the display, then twisted around to see the back of one misaligned package.

  “No ingredients listed at all. It says for more detailed information to contact Jolly Roger — how about any information. I see flecks all over the bottom of the tray like they fell off whatever’s in the wrappers. Those could be poppy seeds.”

  “Not being on the label doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not there,” Jacqueline said. “Mass produced food items have to list the top allergens, but there’s an exception for fresh made.”

  “That was part of the complaint by the woman with the little girl, wasn’t it?”

  Utton stared straight ahead, possibly back in his catatonic state.

  Jacqueline said, “Also that things came from corporate that you’d think were mass produced, but they said they weren’t, so those items get around the rules.”

  “It’s not illegal.” Utton’s voice didn’t sound like his, though I’d barely heard his voice other than whispers. More like a ventriloquist echoing Birchall. Or a medium channeling him.

  A chilling thought.

  Before the full chill hit me, however, a line of medical personnel with crime scene techs on their heels came through the produce section.

  The deputy on door duty cracked it open and said, “They’re here, sir.”

  Hensen appeared, holding a quiet conversation with the head of each group.

  The door deputy also said something to Hensen, whose gaze touched on Clara and me, then passed to Foster Utton.

  “Deputy,” Hensen said to the Foster-catcher, “please take Ms. Mackey and Mrs. Woodrow to join the group in the housewares aisle and stay with them. Mr. Utton, I understand you’ve been unwell. Medical personnel will check you out in a moment. Ms. Yancik, I’ll be with you in a few more minutes.”

  She protested, “I’ll come back, but I should check on my employees and the store and—”

  “All being taken care of. Remain here.”

  The door deputy went to her side, clearly prepared to do more if needed.

  The other deputy stepped back, nodding for Clara and me to precede him.

  “Darn,” Clara grumbled. “Just when things were getting interesting here.”

  Then she had another setback when she reached for the handle of the cart and the deputy ordered, “Leave it.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Looking down the main aisle that crossed the front of the store, we caught sight of a dozen and a half civilians and about half a dozen uniforms in the open area past the registers.

  Our deputy ended our efforts to figure out what was happening there by directing us up an aisle selling dishtowels, hot pads, plates, silverware, cooking utensils, and more.

  The three red vests sat on the floor, looking slightly scared and entirely bored. A deputy stood a couple yards away.

  Maybe our guardian? Our spy, for sure.

  As we neared, the three red vests separated into individuals.

  A young man and young woman, each in their twenties, then Belinda, the older woman with crow’s feet at her eyes and deeper grooves beside her mouth.

  Clara sank down next to Belinda. “Horrible thing to happen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Hard to gauge her reaction — if any.

  “I don’t know why we’re being held.” The younger woman’s name tag read Myghavnn.

  What are some parents thinking? Can’t they expend their creativity in flower-arranging or painting their faces for sports events? Something normal and relatively unharmful to their progeny.

  “We never even talked to him,” she said. “Walked around the store a little listening to him go on and— Listening to him. What about all the customers who were yelling at him? Why aren’t any of them being persecuted this way?”

  “Told you, Myghavnn. They have to talk to everybody.” From her tone, Belinda had tired of saying that. Or maybe she was tired of trying to remember how to spell the younger woman’s name. She answered one question — she pronounced the name as Meghan.

  “We’re customers and they’re keeping us here, too,” Clara said cheerfully. So cheerfully, that those who knew her well would understand she’d have to be kicked out to miss what was going on.

  Myghavnn grumbled, “Doesn’t help me any.”

  “Strange this happened at the same time the manager got sick.” I hoped to turn her thoughts to a more productive angle — more productive for Clara and me.

  “Si
ck? No way. He was absolutely fine this morning. He bailed. Funked,” the guy said. His name tag proclaimed him a thankfully more mundane Josh.

  “You’re sore he chewed your butt this morning about the olives being shelved with soup overnight.” The bite of competition in her words said Myghavnn was more than half pleased Josh received said butt-chewing.

  “Like I’m here to watch those guys every second. Besides, it was a few cans and—”

  “That’s our job, to watch them every second,” Belinda said.

  “So, the store manager was fine this morning and everything was normal until he bailed.” I purposefully used Josh’s word.

  “Never seen him move that fast.” The young man shook his head. “Came out of his office — coming out’s weird enough by itself — and blew past Belinda, then nearly knocked three customers over. Had to catch an old—” He swallowed what he’d started to say and substituted. “—lady.”

  The two younger ones exchanged a look in a moment of solidarity.

  The girl giggled. “He did look pretty sick, though. Thought he was going to hurl in front of customers.”

  Clara’s eyes widened. “You think he knew Rod Birchall was coming to Haines Tavern?”

  The two younger red-vested employees looked toward Belinda.

  She said, “He knew. He’s been around so long he has connections from cart jockeys to corporate. That’s how he’s hung on so long. The only reason he’s hung on so long. Somebody called and warned him.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not in his hip pocket. I work hard and do my job. Nothing that’s valued in the Jolly Roger chain.”

  Combined with her attitude toward Jacqueline, I suspected she’d hoped for the assistant store manager job.

  Now and then a deputy had passed the end of the aisle, headed toward the main doors or back toward the produce section.

  But now the deputy, tall and broad, turned into our aisle and walked toward us.

  It took a moment to realize he accompanied Petey, short and narrow.

  The same deputy who’d delivered us said briefly to Petey, “Have a seat,” then to our watchdog deputy, “Hensen wants to talk to him, too. He was out in the parking lot when the victim arrived.”