COFFIN COVE a gripping murder mystery full of twists (Coffin Cove Mysteries Book 1) JACKIE ELLIOTT (books to read for teens TXT) 📖

“It’s more professional if you call me Mr Palmer in front of visitors, or even the fishermen,” he’d said just yesterday for the thousandth time.

“But if I do that,” she had replied seriously, “they would think I was talking about your father, and I wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone, eh, dear?”

It was infuriating. Brenda had been with Hades Fish Co. since his father started the business back in the seventies with one reefer truck. She helped him buy the fish at the docks and deliver to restaurants and stores all over the Lower Mainland. She had an impressive memory, never forgetting a fisherman’s name, or his crew, or even his family. When Hades expanded into three refrigerated trucks and then a warehouse, and then the immaculate processing plant situated on prime riverfront real estate, it was Brenda who worked sixteen hours a day with Nikos Palmer.

Adrian often thought his father spent more time with Brenda than his family. He remembered his beautiful dark-haired mother, Iris, with a pang. She never complained.

“Your father works so hard so we can have all the nice things we want,” she used to say fondly, whenever her hot-tempered son ranted about his father.

It was true, Adrian had to admit.

Hades provided him with a private school education, brand new clothes, the latest electronic gadgets and, according to Brenda’s blunt assessment, “an enormous sense of entitlement”.

Adrian recalled with a shudder the time when his father dispatched Brenda to bail him out of jail after a drunken party at a friend’s house. Full of booze and bravado, he’d tried to kiss and grope a female RCMP officer. As she cuffed him, his friends were still whooping and cheering, but when he got to the jail cell, sobriety and panic set in.

Adrian was horrified when Brenda showed up the next morning. She acted as if bailing her employer’s son out of jail was all part of the job, driving him in silence back to his house.

Just as he was about to get out of her car, mumbling a half-hearted “thanks”, Brenda touched his elbow.

“You’re breaking your parents’ hearts,” she said. “You really are an entitled piece of shit. I hope for your sake that you grow out of it. Soon.”

It took a month for his father to say more than a few words to him, and for punishment, Adrian was assigned to the processing line of the fish plant for the entire summer.

He remembered the horror of those weeks. Dressed in the same overalls and hygiene bonnets, he’d been indistinguishable from every other worker in the plant. For twelve-hour shifts, his job was to scrape out the fish eggs or roe from the bellies of the salmon. The boats docked beside the plant, and heavy hoses sucked up tonnes of slippery shining salmon from the bowels of the vessels and deposited them on steel conveyor belts. The fish then efficiently trundled around the plant, as fast hands sorted, cut and scraped before they slid into large freezers. There was no time to chat (although Adrian didn’t want to make friends), and apart from the official breaks, there was no time to slack off. If he missed a fish, the supervisor would scream at him, compounding his misery and humiliation. And despite the heavy-duty gloves that fit all the way up his elbows, fish blood and slime managed to seep in.

At the end of each shift, Adrian stood in the shower, turning the temperature to scalding hot and scrubbing his skin to get rid of the fishy stench. At the end of the summer, his father clapped him on the back.

“Well done, son. I’m proud of you.”

For the life of him, Adrian still couldn’t understand why a father would be proud of his son being covered in blood and filth every day.

Sat at his mahogany desk, and lost in his nightmare for a moment, he involuntarily brought his hands up to his nose and sniffed, half expecting pungent fish slime. He was relieved when all he smelled was his expensive sandalwood hand lotion.

He was, thankfully, jolted back to the present when Brenda walked in (without knocking) and set a mug of coffee on his desk.

“Thank you, Brenda,” he said, without hiding his annoyance, as he picked up the mug, wiped up the ring of moisture with a scented tissue, and set it back down, this time on a branded coaster. “Can you please send in Amy?”

“Of course, dear.”

Why won’t that woman dress properly for the office? he wondered again, watching Brenda stride out of the room. He had never seen her wear anything to work except jeans and a plaid shirt.

During his first week as CEO, he’d gathered the staff together and, using an hour-long PowerPoint presentation, outlined the future of Hades Fish Co. under his bold leadership.

Bored with the new logo concepts and office furniture designs, the plant manager interrupted after an hour and asked if there were any plans to offset the recently announced cuts in quota, and whether there would be any lay-offs.

“No lay-offs at all,” Adrian answered smoothly, not sure what the man was referring to, having not read any DFO announcements, even though Brenda had handed him a stack of paper to read “to bring him up to speed”. He’d binned it all. Luckily, he had Steve Hilstead, his newly appointed director of operations, to deal with that.

Steve cut the staff in half over the next few months, and installed a new part-time employment policy, which meant that Hades wasn’t on the hook to pay benefits or holiday pay.

With the budget surplus, Adrian bought a new Audi and employed Amy as his personal assistant and digital marketing manager.

Amy sashayed into the office now, with her brand new company iPhone