Remover of Obstacles

Jude Hayes is so burned out flying corporate airplanes that she never wants to hear a jet engine spooling up ever again. Convincing herself that the career move is permanent, she sinks every penny of her savings into becoming a private investigator and unintentionally attempts to replace the excitement of flying jets with motorcycles, martial arts, and . . . murder. Desperate to give her detective agency an edge, she latches onto the restaurant business as a niche market. When an old...
More Description

Jude Hayes is so burned out flying corporate airplanes that she never wants to hear a jet engine spooling up ever again. Convincing herself that the career move is permanent, she sinks every penny of her savings into becoming a private investigator and unintentionally attempts to replace the excitement of flying jets with motorcycles, martial arts, and . . . murder. Desperate to give her detective agency an edge, she latches onto the restaurant business as a niche market. When an old college chum hires her to clandestinely investigate missing valuables at the McMansions of her wealthy catering clients, Jude is appalled when her lucrative little theft case escalates into the high-profile "Garden Party Murder," complete with the dead dilettante son of a prominent doctor behind the barbeque. Also not happy about her involvement is bucolic Deputy Chief of Police Tommy Gallagher, who warns her to drop the case or face losing her license. Jude focuses on her other clients, ex-circus star chefs Elio and Simone Tremont, whose mom-and-pop restaurant has been suffering after-hours computer invasions. Jude and her supergeek assistant, Ming (the Merciless) Shen, are successfully profiling the über cyber criminal when A.J. Pierpont, powerful octogenarian matron and industrial magnate, persuades Jude to remain peripherally involved in the "Garden Party Murder" investigation against her better judgment. Hoping things will calm down long enough to take her martial arts test at the fall Aikido seminar, Jude volunteers to locate a reclusive living Aikido legend to preside over the benefit seminar and keep her sensei's financially strapped dojo alive. But she is totally unprepared for the reality of the man she meets. He's certainly no Mr. Miyagi. Nor can she predict that this handsome and enigmatic hermit will be drawn into the violent collision of her two cases. Take the quirky diversity of the food business, season with the solemnity of the Japanese dojo and the roar of sport motorcycles, add friendly witches and unfriendly cops. Leaven with murder, then mix and bake in the high-altitude sun on the pink sandstone cliffs of the Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction, Colorado.