Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery

by Maria Schneider

  “You wouldn’t ask your own mother to be involved in risky business, either. And you didn’t ask. Huntington did. But now it’s done.” I shook my head. “I wouldn’t let my mom work all alone on one of Huntington’s cases. We can’t have yours shadowing some old lady by herself on his behalf.”

  Mark stepped to me and gripped my shoulders. “Sedona, it isn’t just some random mother in the sewing group. It’s Joe Black’s mother.”

  I stared up into his eyes. They were the color of coffee and held enough stress and worry that the cup was overflowing. “Joe Dork?” I croaked out.

  He nodded. “Yeah. That Joe. The dead one.”

  Well. This was an all new low where Huntington was concerned.

  Chapter 7

  When Steve asked his mother to infiltrate the sewing group, there hadn’t yet been a murder. For that matter, he even attempted to add me to his employee roster before Joe Black was found dead, but I wasn’t willing to forgive him everything because none of Steve’s cases were ever simple.

  Mark and I discussed what little we knew while we hiked back. There was plenty of time to talk because Mark had calmed down enough to stroll rather than run a marathon.

  “Steve isn’t certain Joe’s mother is involved with whatever Joe was into, but Steve is pretty certain Joe was hanging out with a crowd that is pulling off some extensive burglaries. The group is very well organized and changes their pattern of operation frequently, which makes them hard to trace. We followed a money trail, and it appears Joe may have received cash from at least one of the heists. The bills were marked. Instead of laundering them through the system so that they weren’t attached to him personally, he went on an obvious spending spree with the bills. Steve is hoping that by talking to Joe’s mother you can find out the names of any friends, new ones in particular, or gather any other clues that might pop up.”

  “I can’t believe there are two people in this world who would hire someone like Joe,” I complained. “It’s bad enough that Borgot hired him. You’d think criminals would be smarter and steer clear of such a lousy engineer.”

  “His lack of accomplishments is another reason Steve wants to watch Joe’s mother. Joe isn’t known for taking initiative or accomplishing anything on his own so it isn’t clear how he might have become involved with these new associates. He has a criminal record, but he worked alone then.”

  “Borgot hired a known criminal?”

  “The petty theft was buried in the records because he was using his father’s surname at the time. After that arrest he changed his name to Black—his mother’s surname. In addition to that incident, he had his car impounded due to unpaid traffic tickets, he missed court dates, and generally had a reputation for skipping responsibilities.”

  I shook my head. “Figures. Corporate America puts up with that sort of thing better than gangs or even two-bit criminal organizations. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the phone call I overheard, but Joe said his mother would keep quiet even if she did see something. No idea what she might have seen or been at risk of seeing, but Joe was defending his move back into her place. Whoever was on the other end didn’t want witnesses.”

  Mark sighed. “That implies she doesn’t know about his involvement in anything shady.”

  “No, that implies Joe didn’t think she knew. Those are two different things.”

  He smiled. “True.”

  “For all we know, Joe was involved in multiple shady deals, only one of which got him murdered,” I grumbled.

  “You’re a suspicious sort, aren’t you?” Mark draped his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me in a hug.

  I poked his arm. “Whose fault is that? I hang out with sneaky types.”

  “Used to hang out with.” He lost his grin.

  I had been including him in that assessment, and he knew it. “Whatever you say. But the point is, Joe was the type to dive in well over his head. He was definitely sinking fast at Borgot. There’s no reasonable way he landed the job by claiming Pig Latin as his second language. Someone had to want him there for another reason, or he lied on his resume or both.”

  “Probably both,” Mark agreed.

  “I’m not sure who hired him. To hear him talk, he was hired as a development engineer, but he showed up at the test meetings.” I was suddenly suspicious that all of my co-workers were up to no good. Well, since Joe had met his final flushing at work, I’d already decided to be suspicious of them anyway.

  On the drive home, much to my surprise, we stopped at Barbette’s Bobbins. “We aren’t attending the sewing circle right now, are we? Together?” I asked.

  “You need a sewing machine, remember? Your mom said Huntington gave you a finishing machine. No one will believe that you are learning to sew if you don’t have a machine.”

  His attention to detail was a million miles above Huntington’s, but then Huntington had probably hoped I’d pay my own way when it was discovered he had only brought half the necessary equipment. “You’re buying me a sewing machine?” Was this some odd competition between the two brothers?

  He smiled and touched my chin before leaning in to brush a kiss across my lips. “My mom could lend you one, but I’m not sure how to break the news to her that you’re on the case too. I think Steve should have to explain to her exactly why he needs to put every woman he knows at risk by assigning them undercover work.”

  Ah, family tensions. I was enough of an expert on that subject to keep my mouth shut and follow him into Bobbins without saying a word.

  Barb of Bobbins was a nice lady, the owner and the sole creative mind behind the costumes that sold in the shop along with piles of fabric, patterns, ribbons and buttons. Barb also ran the local sewing circle in the back room of the shop.

  No time like the present to start my undercover duties. I introduced myself as a beginner sewer needing the basics. As soon as I said “O’Hala” she beamed.

  “Oh, yes, I remember you from when you came in here to help your sister-in-law shop! How is she? Brenda bought many a costume from me. Has she had her baby?”

  “Yes, she did. It’s a girl. Samantha.”

  “I’ll surely miss her visits. She made a great Mrs. Santa Claus.”

  My memory of helping Brenda hide her pregnancy from her boss at work was not nearly as enthusiastic as Barb’s, but then, as the proprietor of the shop, she usually wore one of her handmade costumes. Perhaps it didn’t seem odd to her that Brenda had attended work dressed as an elf, a Mrs. Claus and possibly the Easter Bunny.

  Today, Barb was decked out in happy homemaker attire, including a cute red-checked apron and a blouse with big puffy white sleeves. She also had a chef’s hat, albeit a short one, perched atop her straight gray hair.

  “I’m hoping to learn to sew a...” I stuttered to a halt. I couldn’t think of a blessed item anyone would want to sew.

  “Of course! You’ll need to make baby outfits! And that baby will outgrow things as fast as you can sew them. Here, let me show you what I have in stock for beginners.”

  She was half right. The baby would outgrow things. She’d likely outgrow them before I could finish sewing the first item.

  Barb made certain to sell us some “easy” fabric to sew, matching thread, needles, pin cushions, pins, scissors, a cutting board, a baby bib pattern and, of course, a sewing machine. Just before she rang it all up, I mentioned the serger. This led to scrap fabric and huge spools that contained enough thread to sew right across the state of Colorado. I hoped my mom could use some of this when the case was over.

  Mark carried the various items to the SUV and loaded each parcel carefully. As he slammed the door shut, he said, “This case might be too much of a challenge for you. Every time she said the word ‘sew’ you looked ready to throw up.”

  “Nonsense.” I sniffed. “This will be no more difficult than any of the others.” They’d all been damned hard. In fact, previous cases had nearly gotten me killed. Surely, sewing couldn’t kill anyone. Right???

&n
bsp; Chapter 8

  Mark and I skipped the packed sandwiches I had prepared and shared an early dinner at Italy’s Canal before he dropped me off with all the new purchases.

  I sighed with longing as he pulled away. My parents hadn’t returned from grandparenting yet, but they would soon enough. Meanwhile, I had chores to do. Two of them, in the form of sewing machines.

  Huntington, along with his other sins, had given Brenda the idea that I intended to make a bumpo or something or other for the new baby. What the hell was a bumpo? Or had he said bumper? Samantha couldn’t even crawl yet so bumping into things wasn’t a problem. Then again, by the time I learned to sew, she might be driving a car. Maybe Huntington had been getting in an early dig about my lack of sewing ability.

  “Hmph. I know how to thread the regular machine at least.” Well, not without double-checking the instructions and piercing my thumb with the sharp needle, but success was still success. “You probably couldn’t have managed even that,” I said to the not-present Huntington while sucking on my thumb.

  Once the beginner machine was ready for actual sewing, I stared at the serger, the one Mom called a finishing machine. “Start small. One thread at a time,” I muttered.

  Machines don’t scare me. I worked with them all day. I opened the panels and peered within the bowels of the great device that, according to the booklet, would make my creations “masterpieces” and “professionally finished.”

  There were more levers and notches than the inside of a computer. There were hooks and random color splotches and eyelets and sharp protrusions and tiny little numbers. “Unbelievable.” The only thing missing was a keyboard. “How do you talk to this thing without a keyboard?”

  The booklet was a sales tool, not instructions, so I turned to the internet.

  Studying online manuals only made things worse. “Are you kidding me?” Threading the thing required all four spools of the thread Barb had sold me and quite possibly a PhD. “Why doesn’t the thing thread itself? It has a computer chip installed, right?”

  A little research revealed that Huntington had not purchased the very top-of-the-line equipment. No, this was a mid-range item that would not only not thread itself, it wouldn’t sew articles without a lot of expertise either. “Oh, this is bad news.”

  The guy who designed the thing was obviously a very angry car mechanic. He wasn’t an engineer, because no self-respecting engineer would have made such a mess out of four threads. The engineer would have simply designed a computer to control the thread tension. No, this guy had been repairing a Yugo the day his wife nagged him to finish the serger design. He had muttered, “You think working crammed in a tiny space with poor lighting all day is fun? You think I enjoy working by feel, hoping I get it right? See how you like it!” Presto, the serger was born, the most convoluted sewing nightmare ever to grace the earth.

  Instead of four separate channels with tension levers that made sense, the threads had to be wound up and around, crisscrossing, looping under and over this lever and that thingamabob as if Silly String had exploded in one giant mess.

  The end result was ugly. Very ugly.

  “Maybe I don’t need professional finishing.” I turned to the baby bib pattern. It was a complex design with some kind of teddy bear sewn across the middle and a different colored fabric trimming the edge all the way around. The pattern mentioned something about “binding,” but there was no definition. “Why do you have to trim the edge of the bib? Waste of time for something that is going to be spit on.” I had made a pillow once. I could just sew the seams on the inside of the bib and turn it out like the pillow. “Who has time for trim? Samantha will love it because I made it.” The real meaning of that mantra hit me for the first time.

  I trolled the internet and found a simpler pattern, one that didn’t involve a teddy bear on the front. The search for small sewing projects also yielded a pattern for a bra. That looked simple enough. I downloaded it as well.

  “Gosh. Surely, this is enough for the day. I need a snack.” There would be no sewing on an empty stomach in this house. And I hadn’t even tested the serger yet. “Hmm.” Progress was slow. “Good thing I decided against doing a bumper. Or bump-up. Whatever.”

  I made cookies. Priorities had to be adhered to in times of stress.

  * * *

  What with one thing and another, mainly the return of my parents, Dad’s deliveries to my backyard and my ability to procrastinate as if my life depended upon it, sewing took a back seat for the rest of the evening.

  Sleeping on the problem didn’t help any either. When my alarm clock next struck me awake on Sunday morning, none of Cinderella’s mice had shown up to produce a baby bib or any other useful pieces of clothing.

  We all trooped off to church, something I would have skipped had my parents not been there with their high expectations. It was all for the best, however, because I needed to corner my brother, Sean.

  It didn’t take me long to find him and explain that the phone my boss had given me to test might belong to the murder victim. “You need to hand it off to the police.”

  Sean grabbed his hair and yanked on it. His brown locks were the same color as mine, but his eyes were a dark blueish gray to my greenish-gray ones. He used to keep his hair military short, but these days, he didn’t have time to get it cut regularly. It was combed back and starting to grow out of even that style, drooping over his ears. “What makes you think I should turn over evidence for you?”

  Because he was in danger of hyperventilating, I waved my hand in front of his face. “Hello? You’re a lawyer?”

  “You’re hiring me to represent you? Do you know what I charge?”

  I’d walked into that trap. “Sean.”

  “What do Mom and Dad think of this mess you’re in? I thought you weren’t accepting these bogus jobs from the Huntington brothers anymore? I knew you couldn’t be trusted!”

  “What about attorney-client privilege?” I hissed, eyeing our parents as they took seats in the windowed cry room at the back of the church. “No one needs to mention this to Mom or Dad. And who said this had anything to do with Huntington? I was at work. A dead body appeared. My boss was passing out phones for us to test, and somehow I ended up with a phone that may have belonged to or been programmed by Joe!”

  Our heated whispers in the hallway caught Brenda’s attention. Since Mom was caring for Baby Samantha, Brenda scooted through the still open door and headed our way. “You aren’t discussing baby presents are you? Sedona, how is the bumper for Sammy coming along? Huntington said you were sewing one so I put off buying it, but now we need it!” She looked back at her daughter and blew her a kiss. Now that she had given birth, she was letting her pixie brunette hair grow out. Even though she almost had her figure back, she still sported the glowing complexion of a new mother. “Auntie Sedona is sewing you a present!” she cooed.

  I didn’t know who I wanted to smack more—my brother or Huntington. Mom caught my eye then, her eyebrows and head indicating we needed to get in there and sit down.

  I handed the suspicious phone to my brother. “Derrick is here. I saw him drive up as we were on the way in. You can give this to him.”

  Sean might be a royal pain, but he was my brother. He frowned down at the cheap black plastic phone, his own temper at war with his lawyer instincts.

  I hurried into the cry room, knowing that when push came to shove, he wouldn’t desert me. He’d make me pay, but we both knew that me turning in that phone without a lawyer was not in my best interests.

  He and Derrick missed most of the Mass. I made sure they both missed me on the way out, although I’m pretty sure Derrick had already left with the evidence, because otherwise he wouldn’t have allowed me to leave without answering a bunch of stupid questions. Unfortunately, I didn’t happen to have any answers.

  Chapter 9

  Some Mondays pretend they aren’t really Monday, sneaking up on you before you’re even fully awake enough to come to terms with it b
eing that nasty first day of the week. The second Cary cornered me in the break room it was clear that this Monday had plans to flatten me like roadkill on the highway—over and over. If Cary hadn’t been hiding behind the fridge door, I’d never have wandered into Monday unsuspecting like that.

  His stare was as icy as his voice. “Sedona. You are the only employee who neglected to upload any test results this weekend.”

  Monique actually hung up her phone and blushed as though she feared what the person on the other end might think of the conversation. Kovid, one of the programmers, grabbed his coffee on his way to bolting. He was one of the really brilliant engineers, a young Indian guy with a great temperament.

  Cary held up his hand to stop him. “No, by all means stay. Everyone on the team may as well know what was so critical that Sedona felt she could leave us high and dry. We all had our noses to the grindstone this weekend. You don’t look dead or sick. Maybe you’re not cut out to work at a startup. Or do you just want to reap the rewards of our hard work at the end?”

  “Dead or sick?” He wanted me to be dead or sick? What kind of boss said things like that? My face flushed. He was deliberately dressing me down in front of co-workers. “Are you crazy? One dead body wasn’t enough for you? You want the rest of us dead too?”

  Monique gasped. Kovid’s mouth fell open and stayed there.

  His reaction helped me rein in my temper before it galloped away completely. I delivered my prepared excuse through almost unclenched teeth. “The police confiscated the phone you gave me. I had nothing to test. The police said there might be evidence on the phone that could help them solve the murder. They had a lot of questions.” The last part was mostly a lie. They hadn’t asked me any questions because Sean was fielding all related phone calls for me as my lawyer, but I was certain the police had questions. Close enough for this war.