Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery (4 page)

“Yeah, he was a dork. His last name was Black, but I always thought of him as Joe Dork because it fit better.”  I shuddered. “I don’t know how he could have talked someone into uploading Pig Latin to the Borgot phones.”

“Maybe he made one of the Borgot phones his personal phone, and he loaded his own phrases.”

My first instinct was to drop the phone cold. If this was Joe’s personal phone, I didn’t want to touch it, and that would have been true even if he were still alive.  “Eww. That’s possible. But what was it doing in the box of phones being handed out for testing?”

“Hard to ask him now.”

“I wonder where Cary kept the box. He did say they came in late last night.”

“In which case, they would have been sitting around. All night, maybe?”

I nodded. “It’s an open floor plan.  Cary wouldn’t bother to lock them up. He doesn’t even track who gets which phone for testing. Although that doesn’t tell us how or why Joe’s phone landed in there. I should probably turn this in to the cops in case it really is his personal phone or the last one he used for testing.”

His eyebrow lifted. “Only probably?”

Sheepishly, I grinned. “I was thinking it would be a good idea to have Radar duplicate whatever code and messages are sitting on it first.”

“Don’t trust the cops to do their job?”  He held his hand out for the phone. He wasn’t trying to confiscate it; he wasn’t that controlling.

I handed it over.  “The police might be able to glean something useful,” I admitted. “But Radar’s the best there is. He could copy everything on here and tell me when the code was loaded and whether those Pig Latin phrases were in the original load or something that was added.”

“Good idea.”

I was a little surprised at his quick acceptance since he had a tendency to warn me away from involvement in anything sinister, but if Mark was anything, he was logical. He wasn’t one to pass up an opportunity just for the sake of stubbornness.

He used his own phone to call Radar, and then made a second call that I assumed was to Huntington.

Once he hung up I asked, “How did you hear about the murder?”

“Police scanner.  I followed up with Derrick, and then headed over here hoping you were done and had come home.”

“Derrick wasn’t working the case. His partner was there, though. If Adrian hadn’t been there, I might still be answering questions.”

“Radar said he can meet us for Chinese and pick up the phone to examine it. You okay if I get the copy of anything on it to Steve?”

“Are you guys planning to investigate?”  I hadn’t thought past obtaining a copy of whatever was on the phone.

“It might be a good idea to check a few things, especially since you are working at a company where a guy turned up murdered.”

I blinked. I hadn’t seen enough to guess how Joe Dork had died, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he probably hadn’t ended up in the ladies room on his own. “Okay by me.”

Chapter 6

By the time we finished eating and drove back to my place, my parents had also returned.  From the front porch, the steady drone of the television could be heard. I stifled a sigh.  Mark and I had barely had any time together lately.  With my parents in town, the situation wasn’t improving.

“Pick you up to hike tomorrow?” Mark asked.

I nodded. Had my parents not been around, I’d definitely have invited him in, but flaunting my personal life, even in front of them—
especially
in front of them, would be a huge mistake.  I didn’t need the complications, the lectures or snide remarks about good Catholic girls and “in my day.”  “Seven,” I said. “I’ll be up early even if it is Saturday, just for you.” 

He leaned in to steal a goodnight kiss just as the front door opened.

Mom was all smiles.  “Hi, Mark! Sedona, did you know the sewing machine is a finishing machine? Sergers don’t handle the regular stitching.  You can’t sew very much with it until you buy a regular machine.”

My life was out of control. I pinched the bridge of my nose in the vague hope the gesture would keep my few remaining brains from leaking out. “Well, no, I don’t know what kind of machine it is. It was a gift. I don’t sew.”

“A gift.” Mark glanced at me and then leaned in close to look over my head.  “Sewing machine.” The gears in his brain were almost audible as they turned. “Steve?  He gave you a gift? Why didn’t you mention—” He bit off his question, either because he was angry or because my mother was dividing her bright-eyed curiosity between us.

Her mouth formed a little round “oh” before she remembered her manners. She stepped back and waved her hand at the living room. “Don’t just stand there! You should come in. Oh, dear.  We took the cake to Sean’s house! I didn’t think about Sedona having company.”

“Thanks, Mrs. O’Hala, but I have to head home.  Early morning date tomorrow.”  His smile was forced.  “We do have a date, right?” He searched my face as if something had changed.

“Of course!”  He wasn’t thinking of canceling, was he?

“Well, there’s no need to run off,” my mother pattered. “Hmm.  I’ll make another cake.  Or you can come for breakfast if you’re making plans for early!” She beamed.

There was no answering happiness on my face. “Mom.”

She sniffed. “Oh, all right.  I’ll mind my own business.”

Before I had a chance to tell him about Steve stopping over, Mark gave a perfunctory wave and strode off the porch.

Great.  Now I had another problem to solve and once again it was Huntington’s fault.  I turned around to find Mom watching me.  From the thoughtful look on her face, my best guess was that a lecture full of not-so-helpful hints was coming my way, despite me trying to keep my private life private.

* * *

Dad hopped out of bed at five a.m. the next the morning, announced to the world at large that it was time to get started and took himself out back.

Mom was used to the morning flurry and ignored it.  Since I had a seven o’clock date, one that I had originally thought would start
last
night and continue blissfully from there, I was less than pleased with this new arrangement. 

I stumbled out of bed, showered, dressed for hiking and scrambled some eggs and bacon. Dad had somehow managed to have a load of limestone bricks delivered yesterday while Mark and I were delivering the phone to Radar.

Dad whistled while arranging the bricks alongside rolls of weed-blocking burlap. Maybe the neighbors would find the noise a cheerful awakening. His trilling was almost birdlike if you ignored the fact that it was interspersed with the clank of large rocks being plunked down. Yup, that was Dad, a springtime horde of melodic ostriches.

I packed sandwiches for later and then brewed tea and coffee.

Mom wandered in when the smell of coffee drifted through the house.

She peered into the backyard.  “It looks like he’s planning two beds?  Did he okay that with you?”

I waved my hand.  “If I installed a rocket launching pad back there it wouldn’t stop him at this point.  He’d just shift it aside.”

She shook her head. “You should have hidden those plants, you know. He never could mind his own business when it came to gardens. Do you want me to help you pick out a sewing machine? To go with the serger?”

The doorbell rang, saving me from throwing myself into the washing machine and trying to drown myself. I grabbed the backpack with our packed lunch.  With my free hand, I extracted Mark’s foil-wrapped egg sandwich from the toaster oven.  “Gotta go!” I yelled, giving Mom a quick peck on the cheek.  “There’s eggs and bacon in the oven in the covered dish.”

I ran for the door, grateful that Mark had arrived fifteen minutes early.  After his reaction last night, I was thrilled he had shown up at all. I opened the door and rushed out, bouncing sideways off of his broad chest when he was unable to move out of the way fast enough.

He caught hold of my arm to keep me from falling. “I take it you’re ready to go?”

Mom ignored my antics and greeted Mark.  “Sedona made eggs.  Have you eaten?”

Mark smiled. “I think so.”

He got the answer right without even checking with me first.  Maybe it was the wild desperation lurking in my eyes or the fact that my feet were dancing in their hurry to depart.

“Well, I do hope you’ll be able to stay for dinner.”  Mom winked at me as though I had any say in anything anymore.

I sighed. But honestly. I hadn’t seen Mark in weeks. My parents had only been here one night, and they had already turned me into a lunatic.

“Sure,” he said. “Good to see you.”

He followed me to his SUV.

“I packed you an egg sandwich for breakfast.”

“Thanks.”  He held the door open for me, accepted the sandwich and went around to his side.  As he pulled out of the driveway, he asked, “Do you know how to sew?”

I slanted my eyes to him, but he was chewing and driving so he missed my suspicious gaze. “Nope. Unless you lost a button, you are out of luck. I can’t sew.  I’ve barely even threaded a machine before. I completed a pillow one time, but that was with Mom’s help.” This conversation was obviously a roundabout interrogation because of Steve gifting me a machine. Mark didn’t care for his brother stepping too close to me.  Sometime in the past, at least one woman had used Mark to get close to Steve, and Mark wasn’t quite over it.  “I did not ask him for a present, and I didn’t accept it either.  Or the plants.”

“The plants?  Those aren’t from your dad?”

I groaned. “No, they weren’t, but they might as well be.  Dad saw them and started putting in a garden at five this morning.”

A muscle in Mark’s jaw ticked. “He didn’t tell me about the plants.  Neither did you, for that matter.”

“When?” I threw up my hands. “I forgot all about them when we were telling Radar about Joe Dork’s phone.  I was actually enjoying myself for a few minutes there at dinner. And I haven’t the foggiest idea why Steve—”

Mark held up his hand to stop my explanation. We were barely outside of town, but he pulled over, parking in a small dirt lot. “I wasn’t too happy about him showering you with expensive presents so I went over to the condo last night after I left your place.”

Instead of facing me, he crumbled the breakfast foil, and then gripped the steering wheel.

“Mark, Steve is not interested in me.  Well, he’s interested in me, because he still believes that I should work on his investigations and—”

“I told him to butt out.”  Mark’s voice held a finality that sounded a bit like a threat.

“So did I!”

He finally faced me, but his face was not any less tense. “Steve talked my mother into joining a sewing group to gather information.”

I was ready with a winning argument about how I planned to give the serger to my mother, but his sentence derailed me instantly.  I snapped my mouth closed.  I opened it again, but it took a moment for me to manage any sound. “What?”

Mark nodded. “His own mother. Then, after he involved her in his latest investigation, he decided it was too risky to send her in there on her own with no backup.”

My brain turned.  So did my stomach. “Wait a minute. It’s too risky for your mother so he decided he’d hire me instead?”

Mark’s teeth clenched. “His logic was missing past that point.”

“Oh no,” I disagreed. “His logic has been missing for a long time. And I’m going to tell him that I don’t appreciate him deciding that it’s okay for him to put me on risky jobs, but not his mother.”

“He is putting you
both in a position of risk!
” 

My ears popped.  I sat back and waited for the windows to stop vibrating from his fury. “Well, I’m not in any danger yet because I haven’t joined any sewing groups.  Did your mom join?”

One perfunctory nod. “Mom isn’t about to back out either. Steve has her convinced she is the only way he’ll solve this case.”

“Oh.” I shook my head.  “That’s bad.”

Mark slammed out of the vehicle and stomped down the trail. I followed, pretty certain this was not the original hike he had planned.  As I marched along behind him, I tried to think of something clever to say to defuse the situation, but nothing helpful came to mind.

He strode ahead, and I half-ran to keep up.

This close to town, the trail was not as isolated as hikes we’d enjoyed in the past. We passed one other couple and two single hikers with dogs.  At the pace Mark was setting, I didn’t have time to smile and wasn’t inclined to waste breath on a “good morning.”

After forty minutes of pounding the trail, he finally stopped near a large boulder and a stand of scattered pines.  He turned to face me, the shadows from the trees not nearly as dark as the clouds across his face. “Sedona, you know I don’t want you in any danger.”

I nodded, sucking in air. Before I had recovered enough to answer, a mountain biker approached from around the hillside, heading down fast.

We both scooted behind the trees.

Once the biker was clear, Mark said, “I don’t want you to join the sewing group. And I have no idea what is up with the plants because my brother didn’t bother to provide details on that, but I’ll find out.”

“I’ll join the sewing group and the gardening group.” I hurriedly shared the few details Huntington had let slip. “Apparently the mother of someone Huntington is investigating, I don’t even know whose mother, is in both groups.  We can’t leave your mom there all by herself.”

Mark dropped his gaze and ran his hand across his face. “Sedona, I would never willingly put you in any kind of dangerous position.”

“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.