Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery

by Maria Schneider

  All the attendees sewed pillowcases while Barb talked. Every now and then one of the other ladies chimed in with advice. No one expected me to say anything, so I didn’t. Gossip and machine noise filled in around the sewing talk.

  I perked up when someone mentioned “basting” but they weren’t talking turkey so I lost interest in a hurry.

  After the sewing discussion and demonstrations, Barb reminded everyone to leave their pillowcases for the charity.

  As we filed past the counter to drop off our pillowcases, she sighed. “Joe used to deliver the pillowcases to the charity.” Three of the ladies ahead of us hurriedly dropped their parcels and scurried for the door.

  “You mean Joe Black?” I asked. The lady behind me gave a bit of a gasp and put her pillowcases down on the counter. She made a beeline for the exit, but her friend dithered behind us, not sure about the proper protocol for cutting in line just because the topic at hand had gotten morbid.

  “Yes, Wanda’s son,” Barb answered. “This is just terrible. We need to get these delivered before Wanda comes back to the meetings.”

  There was a dead silence, the kind you have right after the priest asks for volunteers for the latest project. No one knows what to say and no one wants to be noticed.

  “I can’t deliver them this week because of the store hours,” Barb added.

  Mark’s mom took a deep breath. I knew what was coming, and I couldn’t allow her to deliver anything that had involved Joe. He was a suspect in a case, and he’d been murdered. “I can probably fit it in,” I rushed out. “When do they have to be there?”

  “Nonsense. I’m retired. I can do it,” Mark’s mother piped up, shooting me a warning glare.

  “No worries,” I looked her right in the eye. She wasn’t doing this alone.

  “Oh, that would be wonderful!” Barb chirped. “I will have all of them by Tuesday. Can you two deliver them after that? That would be such a relief.”

  Yeah, peachy. Just peachy.

  There was no telling what Joe might have delivered with the pillowcases. From what Barb told us, the pillowcases would be boxed and ready for us to pick them up. She expected two or three large boxes to be filled for the delivery.

  As soon as LeAnn and I settled in the Mercedes, I turned to her. “Mark and Steve said that Joe was a suspect in some kind of thefts. Do you think maybe Joe’s mother puts something in the boxes while she’s sewing or helping pack the boxes? Then Joe takes the next leg, either delivering them to the charity that might also be involved, or stopping to deliver contraband on the way to the charity?”

  “I bet she sews messages or some important code into some of the pillowcases,” LeAnn declared.

  “Sews how?” My skills were so lacking, I couldn’t even imagine adding a secret message.

  “A code could be sewn into a seam or just the colors of certain pillowcases could mean something to someone. From what I’ve gathered, the women make most of the pillowcases at home and bring them in. Not every meeting is for the pillowcase charity and besides, if it’s anything like the other groups I’ve belonged to, most meetings are about gossip and maybe learning a new sewing tip or two.”

  “But how would anyone know Wanda’s pillowcases from the others?”

  “Maybe she writes on the pillowcases or adds her initials. I noticed a few of the ladies stitched their initials on the top corners. One of the ladies I used to know who does similar charity work sews a label with her name and a number.”

  “Really? She puts her phone number on the pillowcases? Isn’t that kind of desperate? Or risky?”

  Mark’s mom laughed. “Not her phone number. She keeps track of how many pillowcases she has sewn for the project. So each one has her name—which isn’t her real name, it’s CloudSoft, a name she made up for her donations, and the number for that pillowcase. She’s made over five thousand of the things for various charities. She does other sewing too, sometimes children’s dresses, sometimes book bags.”

  “Oh. So a label or even a coded number wouldn’t stand out.”

  “Exactly. The ladies could sign them or put doodles on them, and I doubt anyone would notice or care unless a person knew to look for a certain word or symbol.”

  “If the messages are in code, we might not be able to figure out which ones have special meanings.”

  “We can stop and sort through them when we do the delivery.”

  I nodded. “And if there is anything else in the boxes that he was delivering, we’ll find it.”

  “Exactly. Unless we insert ourselves in the process, how else are we going to find out what Joe and his mother were up to with the pillowcases?”

  How indeed.

  Chapter 21

  The sewing circle left me desperate enough or inspired enough to finish sewing the bra clasp on when I returned home. I was pretty sure the task wasn’t supposed to be difficult, but sewing it on there got complicated in a hurry. Maybe ripping hooks out of an old bra and triple sewing each eye and each hook to make sure the bra didn’t fall off wasn’t the best idea.

  My technique resulted in two broken needles, one very bent hook and a lot of used thread. But hey, huge amounts of thread were required because this thing was not going to pop off if I happened to sneeze at the wrong time.

  Oh, who was I kidding. I wasn’t about to wear the thing in public even if I used half a spindle of thread on each hook. No sense in taking a chance.

  It was rather ugly when I finished, but I tried it on anyway. I kept my expectations low. Very low.

  It was a nice pink color. Very soft cotton. I hadn’t ruined that part. And, hey! Mark’s mom had fixed the one side so it no longer pulled halfway around my back. I could get my arm through the arm hole and everything.

  The first hook was a bit snug. I wrestled with it some. Using so much thread made the openings smaller. And the hook caught on bits of extra thread twice. But with a little forcing, I was able to fasten all of the hooks. I peeked in the mirror.

  Okay, no one would award any prizes for the thing, but it held everything in! There were a couple—or a hundred—threads hanging from it, but it actually resembled a bra. Maybe not one you’d pay for, but it was a bra, and I had made it myself. Well, almost.

  I tried on a t-shirt. Nothing bulged where it wasn’t supposed to. No bits of material floated under or over the shirt. I smoothed a hand down over the front. “Not bad.”

  I flounced into the living room. Nothing fell out. “I’m not fooled by you,” I addressed the sewing machine. “I know you will betray me.”

  The bra was comfortable. Maybe I would wear it in public. After all, no one could see it, right?

  Chapter 22

  LeAnn and I decided to hold a pow wow Monday after work to discuss the delivery of the pillowcases. I dithered about whether or not to mention the discussion to Sean because, while he had been dutifully acting as my lawyer, he was also a pain in the ass. My instincts were to leave him out of the process entirely, but there was a chance he could be useful—and that he wouldn’t dump me as a client if I included him.

  Unfortunately, Sean showed up first, and began pacing like a trapped lion. One such caged route took him past the mess of sewing on the kitchen table. He zeroed in on the baby bibs I had never finished.

  He stared at the misshapen bits of cloth. He fingered the edge of the tan material gingerly, his mouth set in a firm line.

  Well, good. After a few years of marriage, he might have learned the value of keeping his mouth shut on occasion. “I am pretty sure the baby won’t notice if the bib isn’t perfect,” I said. “I made that one so you can tie it to the highchair and grab it when you need to wipe her mouth.”

  He shifted his lawyer gaze to me and then back to the bib. He muttered something about Brenda that sounded remarkably like, “I can’t show this to Brenda.”

  I sniffed. His wife could set off the smoke alarm just by getting a pan out of the kitchen cupboard. I doubted she’d be any handier around a sewing machine. So much f
or hoping they’d like my creations just because “Aunt Sedona made them.” I’d fallen short of even that save.

  Sean muttered again, this time something about calling Mom.

  I don’t know what good he thought that would do. Not even Mom could save that baby bib.

  Huntington showed up with Radar, saving us from a family argument. LeAnn and Mark weren’t far behind.

  LeAnn gave everyone the rundown on what had happened at the sewing circle. The cookies were already baked, so all I had to do was serve them with tea and coffee.

  The Huntington brothers were not sanguine about inserting LeAnn and me into the pillowcase delivery process.

  “If there’s contraband from a burglary in those boxes and you turn it in to the police, you mark yourselves as informants. It won’t prove Joe’s mother is guilty, but she’ll know you were responsible as soon as she asks Barb who delivered the pillowcases,” Mark pointed out. “You do not need a target on your back.”

  Sean was against the entire idea too and demanded we turn all evidence over to the police immediately. The problem with his argument was that we had no evidence yet.

  “We don’t even have a pillowcase at this point,” I said. “All we know is that Joe sometimes delivered them. He probably had a dual reason for being involved, but we don’t know that for a fact.”

  “Tell Detective Saunders and let him confiscate the pillowcases,” Sean said.

  “That would mean we couldn’t ever attend another sewing meeting.” The idea actually had merit on that basis alone, but I plowed onward. “If Saunders shows up, it would blow our cover and any chance of our gaining any additional information if the pillowcases are guilty!”

  LeAnn chimed in. “We have to do this right and make sure that no one suspects we are undercover.”

  I nodded quick agreement. “What if we managed to meet the cops on the way to the charity? How about a routine traffic stop...Hey, I know. What if I used Huntington’s new car? The cops could pull me over because they see a cool, hot looking car and then find the contraband if it’s in the pillowcase boxes!”

  “You are not using the Porsche,” Huntington sputtered. “It’s a brand new car!”

  “They can’t pull you over without a reason,” Sean said, lawyer mode at the fore.

  “No, but the Porsche is perfect for a speeding ticket! How many seconds from zero to sixty?”

  “You are not using the Porsche!”

  “Maybe I can just take off quick from a traffic light when there is a cop at the intersection.” Huntington changed cars every month or two, but the Porsche hybrid he currently drove was a step above his normal cars. “I need something that screams ‘I’m up to something’ without doing anything illegal.”

  “Anyone who knows you at all has plenty of reason to suspect you of illicit activity,” Huntington groused.

  Sean nodded in complete agreement, but he was in lawyer mode, never losing focus on the legal aspects. “A speeding ticket will work. That would be the easiest for me to deal with after the fact.”

  “With the Porsche, the cops will know right away that it’s me. How many other people are cruising around Denton in one of those things?” I asked.

  “You do not need the Porsche for this. You can speed in the Mercedes.”

  “The SUV?” I snorted. “It’s a family car. No, I need something that looks illegal standing still. That way the cops instinctively know the driver is up to something.”

  “A speeding ticket is a speeding ticket!” Huntington yelled. His blue eyes flashed with annoyance.

  “She doesn’t have any speeding tickets in the SUV, even though it’s a pretty fancy Mercedes,” Radar said. “No infractions at all. Might look suspicious that she suddenly gets one when she’s on a charity mission.”

  Huntington and I both glared at him, albeit for different reasons. “Stay out of my driving record,” I ordered.

  Radar took too much pride in his skills to bother acting innocent. “Heh-heh.” Hacking the DMV was not something he’d consider the least bit challenging.

  “Your mom will be with me,” I said to Huntington. “She’ll make sure I take good care of the car.”

  His mother grinned. “Of course I will.”

  “Mom.” Huntington had lost any trace of humor. “Do you know how much that car is worth?”

  “We want our cover to be perfect,” LeAnn said. “Sedona borrowed the car from her boyfriend, who borrowed it from you. Got a little carried away with the foot pedal and gets caught speeding.” LeAnn spread her hands. “It fits.”

  He snarled, an actual guttural growl. “Not one mark on it. And don’t drive more than five miles over the speed limit. I can track every single inch of that car from my phone.”

  “Ten miles over,” I said, glancing at Sean for verification. “They don’t normally pull people over unless it’s eight to ten, and we have to make this realistic. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m a narc.”

  “We don’t want any lasting trouble, that is for certain,” Sean agreed. “And ten over won’t require any special favors to have it removed from her record.”

  Huntington glared at Mark next. Mark didn’t smile. “You hired her.”

  They stared at each other wordlessly, letting the seconds tick by. Huntington didn’t lose an ounce of his glare when he said, “I’ll bring the Porsche by in the afternoon. You drive it straight to Bobbins, get the stuff, get pulled over and then return it right to me.”

  “I still have to deliver the pillowcases.”

  Sean shook his head. “The police will confiscate them all as evidence if there’s anything in those boxes. Just make sure that if there is contraband, it spills out. Give them every reason they need to demand a search and take everything off your hands.”

  “Well, if they take the pillowcases, I hope no one expects me to sew enough replacements for the charity,” I huffed.

  Mark broke the staring match to grin at me.

  Chapter 23

  With Cary dead, no one nagged me to stay after five. I went in at seven and bolted at four o’clock to allow me enough time to meet LeAnn and Huntington at my house. Huntington had insisted on providing lessons on driving the Porsche.

  Predictably, he had to lecture about every detail, when really, no matter how fancy the dash, whether it takes a key or a push button to start, the concept is the same: Push one pedal to go and the other one to stop.

  When I finally backed out of my driveway with LeAnn in the passenger seat, I grinned. “Ready?”

  She nodded. “Yup. I hope this solves Steve’s case for him.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What? Do you think we’ll fail?”

  I shook my head as I cautiously steered the Porsche around the corner at the stop sign. The car drove like a magic carpet ride without the sound of wind to distract from the smooth ride. “No, we won’t fail. It’s just that his cases are never easy. At least they haven’t been.”

  “Well, he never had my help!”

  I had to smile. “True.”

  Driving Huntington’s expensive car made me more than a little nervous, but we made it to Barb’s Bobbins without incident.

  Barb was ready for us.

  We loaded three boxes in the backseat where LeAnn could easily dump them out once we were well away from Barb and her bobbins. When the cops pulled us over, they’d be able to see anything and everything in those boxes.

  Our hands were dusted off, and we were ready to leave when a Harley blew into the lot at full throttle. Well, it was a Harley so it probably wasn’t at full throttle, it just sounded like it was about to run us all down.

  “OhmyGod, what is Wanda doing here?” Barb gasped.

  I hadn’t met Wanda yet, but who else could she mean other than Joe’s mother?

  Wanda sputtered to a stop and yanked off her rainbow-colored helmet while dismounting. She wore jeans and leather boots with a fringed pink leather jacket.

  “I’ve got pillowcases,” she said. Her eyes were n
early obscured behind heavy black designer eyeglasses. Instead of complimenting her, they overwhelmed her brown-turning-gray hair, making the glasses more memorable than her face, except for her nose. She had shared her nose with her son; it was just as large, and neither the glasses nor the nose stud distracted from its size.

  She untangled a long skinny box that was strapped down on the Harley and hurried over to join us, a tornado spinning and then stopping in front of the car.

  “I made some extras. Came to help. This was my...my son’s route.” She swallowed hard. Her arms shook.

  “You didn’t need to come,” I said. “We have this covered.”

  Her chin, a foot under mine, lifted. “It was his route. Now it’s mine.”

  I waved at the already crowded backseat. “If you want to add yours, we’ll get them all delivered.”

  “Nonsense. I’m small. I’ll fit just fine in there. I gotta live up to the boy’s memory.” She yanked the door open and wedged herself in without ever taking her hands off the cardboard box. The thing resembled a tall, unwieldy shoebox, one that would easily fit a size thirty shoe.

  With the other boxes already packed in the backseat, she couldn’t set her box down. She propped it upright on her lap, extending it almost a foot above her head, blocking a good half of the rear window.

  “I’m not sure it’s legal to have a package blocking the right side like that,” I said hesitantly, just as my brain realized the benefit.

  LeAnn and I shared a glance. This wasn’t according to plan, but with her sitting there blocking the back window, we might not even have to speed to get pulled over. Maybe this was a boon rather than a bother. And maybe she had brought her coded pillowcases, all neatly packaged in a separate box. So far, she was the only one who had touched that box, too. Maybe there was enough proof of wrongdoing in the box for the cops to arrest her.