Free Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2) by Jerusha Jones

abundance of coffee rings was any indicator, he wouldn’t notice if a few papers had been moved slightly. But there wasn’t time to be thorough. While his computer was booting up, I went for the less obvious — what was in his drawers.
    Lee Gomes didn’t use his drawers, except to stash peanut M&M’s and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I enjoyed the fleeting relief that he didn’t appear to be a customer of Dwayne’s, since he bought branded whiskey and not stuff in a quart Mason jar. The state of his desk indicated he must be one of those out-of-sight, out-of-mind people, not trusting himself to remember what he couldn’t see.
    The computer beeped — an email notification. I clicked the message open and scanned it. Then I went back to the top and read it completely, the air squeezing out of my lungs. And then I hit print.
    I’d spent too much time in the wrong office. Whatever Hank had found was nothing compared to this.
    The printer on Lee’s desk blinked blue lights at me, the printhead clunking into starting position. It sucked paper from the feed tray and whirred into action.
    I pulled up Lee’s contact list — names, email addresses, occasionally phone numbers — and printed the whole thing, twice. I’d have to sort through the names later, separate the criminal from the innocuous, if not innocent.
    Those pages safely stuffed inside my jacket and down into my waistband, I scrolled through the other emails, noting his most frequent correspondents. They used the word ‘goods’ a lot. If there was some way to match up the dates of the emails with the shipment manifests for the dates surrounding the messages, I might be able to figure out what those particular goods were. But I didn’t have time for that. The only thing I knew for certain was that the goods weren’t always headed to their lawful owners.
    “Finished with the copies,” Clarice hissed from the doorway. “We gotta go. Too long already.”
    “Let me shut this down,” I said. “Did you wipe down the copy machine?”
    “Don’t I always?” Clarice growled.
    I made sure every program was closed and turned off the computer but not the printer, leaving them exactly the way I’d found them. I gave the papers on Lee’s desk the barest whisk of a shuffle so they didn’t look too tidy. I might have unconsciously fidgeted with them while I perused his emails, out of shock or nerves or pure disbelief.
    Clarice and I wheeled the now heavy suitcases out to the pickup.
    “Forty-seven minutes.” Thomas materialized at my elbow. “What took you so long?”
    “None of your business,” I muttered. “No questions. The less you know, the better.”
    “Right, boss.” Thomas’s tone was like an open smirk.
    I turned back, locked the glass door and pressed it closed with a satisfying click. Then I hefted the two burdens and thumped them in the pickup bed.
    When we were humming down the county road with Thomas wedged safely between Clarice and me, I asked, “Did the copy machine have an internal counter?”
    Clarice grunted. “The last service sticker was dated January 2010. How much do you want to bet no one pays it much attention?” She scowled at Thomas. “Don’t answer that. We did use three-plus reams of their paper, though.”
    “What’s a little pilfering among thieves?” I muttered.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 9
     
    After a pitiful attempt at catching a few winks, I was on the road again. I wanted to get to the restaurant parking lot before Josh. Mainly in case I needed to hightail it out of there. I wasn’t expecting him to be a creep, but the whole situation gave me the jitters, probably because he, a former FBI agent, had sounded nervous on the phone. What makes a hardened law enforcement officer nervous? Unless it was his own conscience, I didn’t want to guess. And I wanted to see him before he saw me.
    Dwayne’s map markings and advice had been spot on. But I needed to buy a warmer jacket.