No 12900, Friday 03 Apr 2020, Anon

Day 10 of 21 Stay safe at home

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ACROSS
1   Shy, love the heartless wolf (6) COYOTE {COY}{0}{ThE}

4   Incentive to behead for disloyalty (6) REASON tREASON
9   Boyfriend starts by enlisting an understudy (4) BEAU Acrostic
10 Concise diet of biscuit (10) SHORTBREAD {SHORT}{BREAD}
11 First off, imagine odd conundrum (6) ENIGMA iMAGINE*
12 Takes for granted first page of summaries (8) PRESUMES {Page}{RESUMES}
13 American birds murder loved ones, we hear (9) KILLDEERS {KILL}{DEERS}(~dears)

15 Righteousness of baked dish at Turkey’s boundaries (5) PIETY {PIE}{Tu...y}
16 Noose for girl in love (5) LASSO {LASS}{0}
18 Bans me coming back to watering holes, departs (9) EMBARGOES {ME<=}{BAR}{GOES}
22 Fabric for spies’ relatives (8) MOLESKIN {MOLES}{KIN}

23 Run away from Central Europe for wool (6) FLEECE {FLEE}{C}{E}
25 Out of the blue, yet, doctors refuse none (10) UNFORESEEN*
26 Implements rise rapidly from end to end (4) OARS (-s)ORA(+s)S
27 Barbed alien in distress signals Oriental (6) SETOSE {S{ET}OS}{E}
28 Vipers have calculators (6) ADDERS [DD]

DOWN
1   Enchain doctor in South Indian city (7) CHENNAI*
2   Possibly no guy is not new (5) YOUNG* Not new?
3   One who makes will starts tallying property (7) TESTATE {Ta...g}{ESTATE}
5   Oriental returns, makes contact with judge (6) ESTEEM {E}{MEETS<=}
6   Covering his ground, cook… (9) SHROUDING*
7   … is most close to eastern building (7) NEAREST*
8   Isolated to protect madmen at sea (13) COMPARTMENTED*
14 Oaf protects remains from attacks (6,3) LASHES OUT {L{ASHES}OUT}
17 Sailor, starts off healthy, starts speaking to crowds (7) ABOUNDS {AB}{sOUND}{Sp...g}
19 Connected with a second offence, was penalized (7) AFFINED {A}{oFf...e}{FINED}
20 Odd dean, twenty, from start to finish, requests repeats (7) ENCORES {dEaN}{(-s)CORE(+s)S}
21 Athletes from Osaka even rise in revolt (6) SKIERS {oSaKa}{RISE*}
24 Gazelle, say, shrugs off worker to run away (5) ELOPE antELOPE

Reference List
Love = 0, Central = C, Europe = E, Alien = ET, Oriental = E, Sailor = AB, Worker = ANT

Dr RKE's TalePiece

Liza Turner, a YOUNG woman, was to inherit a fortune when her uncle Tom had died TESTATE and named her in the will as she was the NEAREST of kin. Tom had built up his ESTEEM as a Biscuit King, as his brand of butter SHORTBREAD sold by the millions. Tom, in his fifties, had been healthy all his life, being an avid SKIER and birder.  So, the REASON for his sudden death, when he was out on a trip to track KILLDEERS at COYOTE Country, a beach town on the Pacific coast, was an ENIGMA SHROUDed in a mystery. The coroner had indicated that it could be from the bite of a venomous ADDER, but the sheriff, Dick Copper was not convinced. The sheriff PRESUMEd that it was murder for gain. The so-called fang mark was high up on the calf of the dead man and the sheriff knew that adders can't bite that high and that too through the thick MOLESKIN trousers and FLEECE stocking. Searching the site carefully, the sheriff's men discovered a  barb. Chemical analysis revealed that it was coated with curare. That tipped Dick Copper to look for a native American Indian perpetrator. An UNFORESEEN development was Liza ELOPing with her BEAU. They were tracked down and the Sioux lover on grilling admitted that he had LASHEd OUT at Tom from behind with a SETOSE LASSO with poisoned barbs. Liz and her lover were put in a COMPARTMENTED prison. Even The Hindu, a CHENNAI paper, that shuns sensational stories, carried this detective tale!