Death on Covert Circle

by Patricia McLinn

  “Which store in Indiana did you work in before coming here?”

  She flashed a look up — not at us, but possibly at the heavens asking for help. Then her gaze dropped to the floor again, and she remained silent except for the faintest grinding as she worked on the corner of her thumbnail.

  “We’ll find the manager of that store and ask—”

  “You can’t, because she’s gone. Best store manager they ever had and they cut her. Birchall shows up at the store for a surprise visit there and the next day she’s fired.”

  And then he’d come to Jacqueline’s store.

  She had to be thinking she would be the next to go. But would that be a motive? Would anyone think that was the way to keep a job?

  On the other hand, with him dying, nobody got fired, so…

  Clara pursued our previous tack. “The manager wouldn’t be the only one at your old store who’d know the guy. A butcher involved with the fast-rising young woman who went off to be assistant manager at another store. There’ll be plenty to fill in the gaps.”

  “I suppose Belinda will remember which store Jacqueline was at before,” I said to Clara.

  “I bet she will,” she agreed. “Or one of those two younger ones — Myghavnn and Josh. If worse came to worst, we could call stores one by one, asking if they know of Jacqueline Yancik. But I bet our friend Foster Utton could find out in a snap of his fingers. Do you want to call him at corporate or should I and ask—?”

  “All right, all right. Don’t. Having my name all over — even more than it is now…” She raised her chin. “It’s not like we did anything wrong.”

  “You are living together?”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t supervise him. I was never head of his department. I didn’t have any say in his schedule or reviews or anything. That’s when people get in trouble. We decided to keep our seeing each other quiet … just to keep it ours, you know? To not have everybody in the store knowing and talking about us and gnawing over our relationship.”

  She expelled a breath through her teeth.

  “It was fun, especially at first. Romantic. We moved in together. Figured word would get out then and it did. But it was okay. The store manager knew we weren’t doing anything wrong. She said it was all fine, as long as it didn’t interfere with our work. It never did. He worked hard. We both did. We were saving to get married, get a house in an area with good schools, have a family.

  “He’s a good man. He’s having a hard time right now, but he’s truly a good man. It’s hard on anybody to have his job pulled out from under him like that. You don’t understand.”

  “What’s his name, Jacqueline?” Clara asked.

  “Ward. Ward Ebersole.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “You better tell the sheriff’s department what you do know. Better yet, get him to turn himself in.”

  “He won’t tell me where he is.”

  “So, you’re in communication with him.”

  “Not really. He left his cell phone at our place and I truly don’t know where he is. Before I got home that night, he’d packed up a few things and was gone. His note said he loved me, not to worry, and he’d be in touch. I am worried. I know he didn’t do this. But if they know that was him here when Birchall was killed, what are they supposed to think?”

  As tears slid between Jacqueline’s closed eyelids, Clara put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Has he been in touch?”

  “I heard him pick up messages from our house phone twice. He’s left me a few messages. Only saying he’s okay, not to worry, and he l-loves me.”

  “Next time he calls, tell him we need to talk to him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “He might call us,” Clara said.

  “Nope. Not going to happen. Even if Jacqueline catches one of his calls and is her most persuasive, it won’t happen. Not when it sounds as if he’s trying to avoid her.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Of how to find him? Especially fast? No. But I have another idea.”

  Sitting in Clara’s SUV in the Roger parking lot, I called my great aunt.

  After introducing Clara and Kit over the phone, I said, “We’re stymied on Ward Ebersole, he’s the third person who waited outside the doors Birchall went in. The guy in jeans, remember?”

  Of course she remembered.

  I explained about “white meat” and a knife grip pointing us toward his being a butcher.

  “We got Jacqueline to confirm he’s her boyfriend — they live together. But she says he left his phone at their place and she swears up and down she doesn’t know where he is, gets only occasional messages.”

  “I believe her,” Clara inserted.

  “I’m inclined to believe her, too,” I admitted. “But we need to find him and talk to him, if for no other reason than to eliminate the possibility he has something vital to tell us. Which means the faster the better. We could try real estate records to see if there’s a place he might be staying, or dig into family, or start contacting hotels and short-term rentals—”

  “All slow, when you want fast. Tell me about him.”

  “I’ve already told you everything that involved him at the murder scene.”

  “Not that. Tell me about him. Everything you know.”

  I did, with fill-ins from Clara.

  At the end, I was surprised we’d known anything. I’d have said he was a blank slate.

  I was not surprised Kit was silent, digesting all we’d said.

  I started wondering if Phyllis Ezzard might agree to hypnosis for the license plate of his truck. Or Petey? Maybe former co-workers would know more about Ward Ebersole.

  “The two most important things,” Kit declared at last. “He’s picking up messages through the landline he shares with Jacqueline. And—”

  “Of course,” I breathed. That was our communication pathway. “But—”

  “—he’s recently unemployed.”

  Kit’s second important thing, drew a blank.

  “What do people do who are unemployed?” she asked, impatient with the silence.

  “File for unemployment,” Clara said eagerly. “I bet he’s filed for unemployment.”

  “Excellent, Clara. His income stream has been cut. He’ll want that unemployment.”

  * * * *

  Clara used a voice from one of her high school plays. Someone both officious and not overly bright.

  “This message is for Ward Ebersole. You failed to include all the necessary information on your unemployment insurance application. I understand your situation, it’s the only reason I’m calling after hours from my personal phone. You have an appointment for tomorrow at 1:45 p.m. Ask for Ms. Henschalt. Otherwise we won’t be able to help you this month. Be sure to bring your latest pay stub.”

  “That part about the pay stub was a nice touch,” I said when she’d clicked off.

  “I thought so, too. Hope he accepts the excuse for the phone number being from Kentucky. Now what?”

  “Dinner.”

  * * * *

  Clara dropped me off, having obtained my pledge to say nothing of this to Teague until we could tell him together. I gladly agreed.

  When he tried to pump me, I shooed him out, saying the cook needed solo time.

  True.

  I also wanted mulling time.

  Good thing they could be accomplished simultaneously.

  Much of what I mulled was recalling moments when it seemed Jacqueline had tried to keep Ward Ebersole from interacting with Birchall.

  Phyllis’s observations filled in one of Jacqueline’s broken-off statements, providing the answer to what she would have done if she’d known the Jolly Roger CEO was coming to the Haines Tavern store Monday. She would have made sure Ward was as far away as she could get him.

  I liked having gaps like that filled in.

  On the other hand, it didn’t point more toward either of them being the murdere
r. All it did was say she’d worried about a confrontation.

  Well, maybe a smidge more, because if she hadn’t thought her honey was capable of something — if not murder — she wouldn’t have worried.

  On the other other hand, was this kind of murder his style?

  I stood by what I’d said to Clara about the use of poison in this murder, yet it still didn’t quite fit the guy in jeans — Ward Ebersole.

  I clicked my tongue.

  Right. Didn’t fit him. Like I knew the guy.

  Bottom line? Jacqueline would have avoided having her significant other interact with Birchall if she could have. Beyond that, I was speculating, as Teague would tell me in a heartbeat. Heck, he’d call my saying Jacqueline would have kept the two men apart speculation.

  But on that point I was confident.

  * * * *

  Before dinner and amidst mulling, I called Kit.

  Time might have been tight if she had a lot to tell me. But all she had said was she was out to dinner — judging from the voice in the background, with the widower — and would talk to me later.

  Much later.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Clara entered my house with dessert and a request.

  As I put the key lime pie she’d brought in the fridge, she asked if I’d take LuLu to the park the next day. She needed to be able to talk on her computer during her class and LuLu tended to join in on such conversations with barking.

  “I’d keep her outside with me,” Ned said, “but top of my agenda tomorrow is dealing with poison ivy.”

  “We do not want LuLu in poison ivy,” Clara added. “Plus, if you take her while I have class, we can start our day’s detecting sooner, Sheila.”

  “Sure thing,” I said over Teague’s groan.

  The pork roast was a great success. As were the roasted sweet potato and apple casserole, green salad, and blue cheese drop biscuits, still warm from the oven.

  Ned marveled that his orange juice landed us as witnesses, asked questions, and listened avidly to our answers about what had happened at the Jolly Roger and what had followed so far.

  “I’m with Sheila that it was a spur of the moment murder,” Clara said. “Someone might not have thought it through. So, we shouldn’t be too strict about motive.”

  I grimaced. “Spur of the moment, but seems like it should have someone with passion behind it, like—”

  “The mother of that little girl,” Ned said.

  “Exactly. She blamed him for Lorelei nearly dying. That’s motive. Especially with what she said about the labeling.”

  As we went over the suspects, we edged close to the cause of death a couple times, but Clara adroitly steered us away each time bashed on the head neared.

  When we reached today’s events, Teague said, “You don’t have any proof this guy’s a butcher. Or that he and the assistant manager are involved.”

  We tried not to be too triumphant as we updated both men on our latest talk with Jacqueline.

  Teague willingly acknowledged we’d turned speculation into leads, if not fully evidence in his view.

  “Murdering someone over his cutting jobs, doesn’t that seem extreme?” Ned asked. “Unless they knew for sure the next CEO wouldn’t cut jobs.”

  Clara and I looked at each other.

  She voiced what we were both thinking. “He’ll cut the jobs. He’ll go with inertia.”

  “And I can’t imagine anyone who was there would think otherwise, undercutting that as a motive,” I said.

  Even Teague joined in the chuckles about Phyllis’s delicacy over what Jacqueline and her significant other had been doing in the truck.

  “She wouldn’t have been as careful if she’d spent her teaching career at the high school level, right, Sheila?”

  My backstory for Haines Tavern was I’d been a high school English teacher in New York when an inheritance let me quit and move here.

  I knew the story inside and out, but Teague’s question caught me unprepared and he knew it, even as he covered my silence. “What goes on in high school parking lots goes way past entangled. Some stuff there shocks me despite the years as a cop. Must have been the same for you.”

  “I’m very good at looking away. Besides, it wasn’t part of my duties.”

  “You didn’t have to do patrol duty? That school of yours must have been fat with staff.”

  “Not bad, but of course we all did some. I was spared the parking lot.”

  His raised eyebrows were more a demand than a question.

  “Cafeteria.” It was the only place I could remember teachers patrolling in high school. I’m sure they were other places, but I was a pretty good kid and didn’t run afoul of them.

  “Whoa. I’d rather have parking lot than cafeteria.”

  “But only occasionally,” I backtracked as fast as I could. “Mostly the halls.”

  He shook his head. “Still, that means the bathrooms. No fun there, either. Easier to strap on the weapon again and rejoin the force.” He gave a mock shudder.

  “But you can’t shoot a gun,” Clara protested.

  “Sure I can.”

  “But your eye, your medical retirement?”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah, that.” I spotted the glint in his eyes — one of them might be legally blind, but it was an equal mischief-glinter. “Now you’re going to say you can shoot, you just can’t hit things?”

  The glint intensified. “Good line, but I wasn’t going to say that. I’m still a good enough shot.”

  “But you said your eyesight was the reason for your medical retirement,” Clara said.

  “True. I didn’t say it was right or reasonable.” No eye-glinting now. “Other departments’ regs would have let me qualify. As long as I could meet the standard it was okay with them. But not my department.”

  “Then why not move?”

  “I did. Like you did.” He shifted his head, giving me the full force of his good eye.

  “I meant move to a different department. Near where you were before or even here.”

  “Ready for a new life. Again, like you.” He rocked one shoulder forward, then back. Staring at me, challenging. “Working with kids, which was the best — and worst — part of law enforcement. Only, now, I can try to get them a step or two before they’re in real trouble. Sort of pre-emptive community policing.”

  “But the way you feel about law enforcement—”

  Ned interrupted his wife to ask, “What about the store manager as a suspect? What’s his name?”

  “Kurt Verker,” I said. “He’s a possibility, because he could have come back to the store and certainly nobody knows the camera system and the rest of the store better than he does. But other factors argue against him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he ran away when he heard the Jolly Roger CEO was coming to his store. He ran away from Belinda. He ran away when Jacqueline tried to find out what was going on. And he tried to run away when we asked him questions.” I concluded, “Running away does seem to be his modus operandi.”

  Later, while everyone pitched in with cleanup, I heard Ned say quietly to Clara, “You shouldn’t ask Teague so many nosy questions.”

  “That’s what we do,” she said complacently. “Besides, we care about him.”

  He moaned. “Let up on him some, okay?”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “Yes, dear.”

  He grinned and pretended to flick her with a dish towel.

  * * * *

  With clean-up done and the others gone, I checked my phone as I took my last swallow of wine.

  Kit had left a message only a few minutes earlier, saying to call her.

  “I thought I wouldn’t hear from you until morning, because your date wouldn’t be over until then,” I teased her.

  “They do things early here and the retirees do them even earlier.”

  “So he’s gone home and—”

  “No, he hasn’t. But he goes to sleep early. Gives me
writing time after and then he has private time in the morning.”

  I swallowed a bit of surprise and something else. Perhaps protectiveness. I’d been there to vet the men she’d let into her life over the previous decade. Now, she was on her own.

  And I’d mention that to her when I wanted my head handed to me.

  “That works out well,” I said.

  “It does. You should find your own system that works out well.”

  “Kit—”

  “No, don’t bother giving me any hogwash you give your mother. You don’t want to talk about it, you’re not going to talk about it. Despite all the wisdom at your disposal.”

  “Did you know the FBI has stats on methods used for murder and breaks it down by gender?”

  Sure it was an obvious change of subject. Subtlety doesn’t work with Kit.

  “Of course. The Supplementary Homicide report. You know about that.”

  “I don’t think so. Not until Clara mentioned it.”

  “I could have sworn it was covered in one of the day-long programs we did with the FBI.” A click of her tongue dismissed that as unimportant. “So, Clara found it, did she?”

  “Yes, she was checking on the common wisdom that poison is a woman’s murder weapon.”

  “Good for her. We need more of that kind of thinking.”

  “Especially among author assistants?” I asked dryly.

  “Absolutely. We need them to keep their authors on their toes. I need to meet your Clara.”

  “Yes, you do. Also her husband, Ned, and Donna from the dog park, and several of my neighbors and most of all, Gracie.”

  “Gracie first. But aren’t you forgetting someone?” Before I could say no I wasn’t forgetting anyone, she said, “Teague O’Donnell. I need to meet him, too.”

  “He doesn’t talk much about his days as a detective, so he wouldn’t be a good source for you.” And, oddly, after all the years of watching Kit in action pumping people for background material, I didn’t want her doing that to Teague.

  “I’ve got a good many law enforcement sources already. Maybe I want to meet him for something else.”

  I said nothing.

  She sighed.

  Some people sigh in resignation or to not express an emotion. Not Kit. Her sighs are as good as a paragraph and she’s not resigned to anything.