Bait & Switch (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

you around. Don’t like to leave the boys when it’s storming like this.” He set a hand on the door’s crash bar.
    “Wait,” I blurted. “Your name?”
    “Walt. Walt Neftali. Caretaker, of sorts. Mostly I run the boys’ camp and try to keep vagrants and squatters from destroying what’s left of the property.”
    “This is the main house?”
    He nodded. “Kitchen. There’s more—” He gestured toward the dark end of the room, away from the windows. “But the electrical wiring is ancient and currently on the fritz, so you’d need a flashlight. Sorry about no heat. If I’d known you were coming—” His forehead wrinkled into horizontal ridges. “Well, I don’t know what I’d have done different. Been so long since any of the chimneys have been cleaned that the place would probably burn down if I started a fire. Place is about to fall down as it is. But—” He shrugged. “Welcome.”
    “Thank you.” It came out like a whimper.
    Walt nodded once more, tugged the knit hat back on his head, and left me alone.
     
    oOo
     
    The rain continued through the night, and Walt did not return. Not that I expected him to. I’m a grown woman, and I can take care of myself.
    Besides it sounded as though Walt had his hands full with a group of boys. No matter their number or ages, I’d definitely be out of my league dealing a bunch of bored, cooped-up boys. While Walt seemed like a capable man, I wasn’t going to begrudge him the time he needed to care for his charges.
    Dinner turned out to be two ham slices, a spoonful of baked beans, a mound of coleslaw and a pineapple ring. I devoured it so fast I didn’t even taste it.
    The cell phone signal waffled between half and one bar, but I was able to leave a short message for Clarice.
    When it became clear I’d need to make the kitchen into my sleeping quarters for the night, I cinched up the windbreaker, dashed out to the Tahoe, grabbed the first two suitcases my hands landed on and trudged them back to the dim kitchen. Thunder rippled overhead, ending in an earsplitting crack as another flash of lightning took the first one’s place.
    Squinting through the gloom and working more by feel than sight, I unzipped the suitcases, pulled out anything soft, and formed a nest on the tabletop. With the house empty and neglected for as long as Walt had hinted at, there was a possibility rats or other undesirable creatures might become my bunkmates. There was no way I was going to stretch out on the floor, and I was trying really hard not to think about those animals having the kind of feet and toes that enabled them to climb table legs fast and silently.
    I fell asleep curled around a pile of Skip’s soft t-shirts.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 5
     
    A blaring horn tore through my subconscious. I sat up fast, clutched the edge of the wobbly table and squeezed my eyes shut against the sunlight streaming through the dirty windows. I groaned and took another quick peek. Nothing had changed since last night.
    Except the horn, which was now being punctuated into shorter and longer blasts. Made me wonder if it was Morse code. I never was a Girl Scout or Brownie or member of whatever youth league you learn that sort of skill in, so the meaning was lost on me.
    I rolled off the table and staggered to the door. I pushed it open far enough to get a welcome glimpse of a silver Subaru station wagon with California plates. And stooped in the open driver’s door, punching the horn, was a stout, wrinkled woman with the biggest mushroom-colored bouffant I have ever seen.
    Clarice is indispensable to me. I brought her with me from my last job when I started at the foundation. Twice widowed and childless, she’d essentially adopted me as her own personal project, and I’d never have developed so much professionally — or personally — without her. If I’d lived in pre-war England, she would have filled the role of a spinster great-aunt — the