Free Bait & Switch (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 1) by Jerusha Jones

suggested we go for a stroll on the bay front which made me happy, and I hadn’t thought any more about it.
    Skip was the king of notes — Post-its all over his desk and on the mirror in his bathroom, slips of paper magnet-pinned to his fridge, clipped to the visor in his car. One of his endearing quirks.
    All those memory triggers did their job, because I got flowers from him on every possible commemorative date associated with our friendship first, then our romance, and as thank-yous for every new orphanage or charity I signed up for the foundation to support. He loved to celebrate, and he wrote notes to make sure that happened.
    Clarice knelt beside me and breathed over my shoulder. I flipped a page, then another and another, faster and faster. Columns of Skip’s scratchy writing, but disjointed letters and numbers, nothing meaningful.
    The word ‘shark’ jumped out, and I scrabbled back a few pages to find it again.
    M Shark    070812    5.55m    103112    IND
    Upon closer examination, there were a few recognizable words among the lists. ‘Shark’ made several appearances, along with ‘Fat’, ‘Nose’ and ‘Ocho’. In fact, there was a ‘Fat A’ and a ‘Fat H’. Nicknames. And some of them matched up with the names Matt had mentioned.
    Not good. So very not good.
    I glanced up at Clarice. Her penciled brows were drawn together in a worried line.
    “I’m in trouble,” I whispered.
    She just nodded. Then she pushed herself to her feet. “We have to get you set up, wired in. Tackle this professionally. You need a space.”
    “I know the place. Upstairs — in the attic. Can you help me haul a table?”
    “There’s an elevator,” Clarice said. “The boys showed me.”
    “Do you trust it?” I frowned.
    “Nope.”
    I hoped Dill wouldn’t mind, but I wanted all signs of my nosing into Skip’s — and now my — mess out of sight of the FBI should Matt keep his promise to return. We found a decent, only semi-wobbly table, an upholstered armchair that hadn’t leaked too much stuffing, and a lamp with a working light bulb and arranged them within cord’s reach of the only electrical outlet. I tacked blankets over the windows in lieu of curtains. I didn’t want anyone outside to see me burning the midnight oil.
    “You’re going to freeze your tushie off,” Clarice announced, hugging herself and rubbing her arms even though she’d developed a sweat sheen from all our stair climbing.
    “It’ll keep me from falling asleep.” But I think I saw my breath puff in short spurts as I spoke.
    “Coffee.” Clarice turned toward the door. Her steps were slow, not her usual indefatigable marching cadence. And I remembered she’d hardly slept, if at all, the night before.
    “Go to bed,” I said. “No point in staying up with me.”
    She returned a few minutes later with a steaming carafe and a plate of apple slices spread with peanut butter. “I’m setting my alarm for 5:00 a.m. I’ll come check on you then. And girl—” she sandwiched my face between her palms, “you get ‘em. Whoever’s done this to Skip — you get ‘em. I can’t believe he’d be involved willingly. Maybe they had some kind of power over him, extortion or blackmail. Get them where it hurts.”
    I nodded, my cheeks still squashed between her hands. “That’s what I intend to do.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 10
     
    I wasted an hour trying to piece together passwords from the jumble of letters and numbers in Skip’s notebook. Then I went back to Clarice’s advice and made a list of my information — birthday, address, phone number, my name in different configurations. No luck. I played with combinations of Skip’s and my initials.
    Dates were so important to him, so I veered into that track — the day we met, the day he asked me to head his foundation, our first date — which was supposed to have been dinner at a venerable Italian restaurant but ended up as a