Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery

by Maria Schneider

  “I meant why him and not you?”

  “Because he’s good at it. He has the credentials from his previous company. His name doesn’t look like some guy on the street hung a shingle and named himself CEO. It gives it a legitimacy that not everyone can bring. Plus, I don’t care one way or the other.”

  “No?” I teased. “You two seem competitive.”

  His eyes caught and held mine. “I care what some people think. How they feel about titles. How they feel about loyalty.”

  I didn’t drop my gaze. “Do you really think a lot of women would go for him strictly because of the title?”

  He didn’t answer, but anger flashed across his face, the kind of heat that tenses facial muscles, but is gone so fast you’re not sure it was there. “Why the fifty questions?” he asked.

  I handed him his coffee. “Your mom warned me off trying to date both of you, as if she was worried about my honest intentions.” I put my hand over my heart and smiled.

  Mark sighed, his exasperation obvious. “Steve and I competed over a girl a time or two in high school. It was stupid, and for a while we were more interested in the number of girls we could date than the who or why. Mom was less than pleased with us, especially when Steve lorded it over me when he asked a couple of girls out that I had just dated and they both said yes.”

  My eyebrows raised. “I could see where that would be a problem, especially if you actually liked one of them.”

  His expression was guarded, but he didn’t drop his gaze. “It was high school.”

  I nodded and waited because his frown was still fierce. “What else did she say?” he finally asked.

  “Nothing. She asked what I liked about Steve.”

  “And?”

  “It was one of those socially awkward moments.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t think of anything to say.”

  He studied me before asking, “Why didn’t you tell her you like working for him?”

  It was my turn to frown. “Strictly speaking, I don’t. He keeps hiring me, and I keep losing my regular employment. I can’t decide if that is because of him or if every company I work for is corrupt.”

  “You’re not bringing this up to try and tell me anything in particular, are you?”

  “Just that your mom seemed concerned and I wondered why. You and Steve get along okay from what I can tell, so it seemed odd that she mentioned it first thing.”

  Mark let out a big breath of air and took a sip of coffee before setting it aside. “I bought a ring once for a girl named Charlene. I never actually asked her because...I don’t know why. Mom was more upset than I was by the end of it. Steve had just finished investigating who had been skimming at his old company and left him holding the bag. He decided to use his investigation skills to prove one way or the other if my potential fiancee was really offering what he thought she was offering him.”

  I groaned. “He didn’t.”

  “Far enough to make sure it could have gone further. Mom was furious. She walked in on them.” Mark grinned.

  My mind stumbled over the possible scene and didn’t find anything to grin about. “I would imagine your mother was way less pleased with him about that than the high school shenanigans.”

  “Hysterical is probably a better word. For a while there, we thought she might beat Steve to death with her purse.”

  “You saved him?”

  Mark laughed. “No way. Even if he had a good excuse, he was on his own. As far as Charlene, I’d already realized that it wouldn’t ever work, and that had nothing to do with my brother. Charlene didn’t even realize he’d been fighting for his reputation. All she saw was the glamor of his CEO title, the cars, the swagger. She missed the important things, obvious things about me, about him, about...everything.”

  I nodded and put down my tea. “To be perfectly clear, I’m not after him.”

  “I am not my mother. I do not need reassurances.”

  Since my body was now skimming his, I wiggled and put my arms around his neck. “But I’m sooo convincing when I really try.”

  That got his attention.

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt if you spent some time convincing me,” he allowed.

  His eyes had a tendency to drown me, stealing my breath and my concentration. I was drawn to him as if he held the key to the universe, at least my part of the universe.

  “It’s a shame you don’t actually have a sword tattoo on your arm,” I murmured against his lips. When I’d first met him, he had been impersonating a thug. He not only had a motorcycle with a gorgeous sword along the side, he had a fake tattoo on his arm, fake contacts and the same attitude he had now.

  He laughed, nuzzling my neck. “What? You want me to get a tattoo?”

  “No, I don’t like tattoos, but it went well with your bad boy image,” I whispered in his ear as I nibbled.

  He lifted his head to look at me. “My what?”

  “Your image.” I ran my hands down his arm and soaked in the scent of him. His eyes dropped to my chest and that made me take another big breath, although for a different reason.

  His hand on my lower back tightened, pressing me closer. “And just why is a tattoo important to my image?”

  “Well, you know. It made you…dangerous.”

  “A tattoo made me dangerous?” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “A guy with a tattoo was likely to be…” He lowered his head, hovering above my lips impatiently. With my breasts pressed tight against his body, I could feel his hard muscles against my heart. “Be demanding.”

  “Don’t worry,” he threatened softly. “It wasn’t the tattoo.”

  Chapter 20

  We spent significant time reassuring each other of our loyalties before falling asleep. I was wrapped tightly in his arms when a long but faint beep woke me. I reached for the alarm clock out of habit, but quickly realized the buzzing was coming from the kitchen. A fourth beep was my final warning.

  A siren blasted across my backyard. An unholy cacophony of bells and lights joined in. Mark sat up and rolled off one side of the bed. In the next two seconds, I was on my feet ready to run for my life. Cary’s ghost must have risen from the dead because haunted wails penetrated the closed window.

  “What the hell?” Mark didn’t waste time getting dressed. He went for his gun and headed for the back door in his boxers.

  I had on a t-shirt, but wished for a pair of shorts. Since he had the gun and was already halfway to the back door, I grabbed a pair of light sweatpants from the floor and stuffed myself into them on the run. “Why is it so bright?” It wasn’t the sun because a quick glance at the clock showed it was three in the morning.

  Mark was outside already and couldn’t have heard my question over the noise.

  The lawn was fully lit by floodlights. “I don’t own this many lights,” I muttered.

  The odd ghost wail continued to shriek banshee threats. A jet spray of water shot sideways from four different sprinkler heads that I didn’t own. That is to say, I hadn’t installed any sprinklers in the back and instead of watering the lawn, these things formed a square around the garden, forcing anyone who had gotten inside to run through the nearly lethal blasts of water on their way out.

  “I guess we’re looking for a soaking wet burglar?” I blinked against the bright glare, staring at the grotesque ghost bobbing about my garden. It was beyond frightening.

  “Is that scarecrow having a seizure?” Mark kept his gun pointed at it.

  “That’s a scarecrow? I think it’s channeling Miley Cyrus.”

  Mark actually backed up a step. “Your friends made a scarecrow that twerks?”

  It was hard to know for certain what the thing was doing. It flopped over at the waist, jerked its butt back and forth and convulsed, much like Miley Cyrus did when she tried to dance. “If it sticks its tongue out, shoot it,” I advised.

  Mark’s eyes widened in fear. He obviously didn’t know whether he should grab me and run or ju
st start shooting. It warmed my heart. Mark was becoming more and more like family.

  With one final butt jerk, the head flew off of Radar’s robot. My ears rang from the sudden silence, but I was fairly certain none of the noise had been Mark shooting. Yet. “You’re right. My friends are scary.”

  “Damn straight. Not only will birds not go near your garden, you’re going to have to start carrying liability insurance for shock therapy if your neighbors see that.”

  “I can’t believe Turbo and Radar thought this was a good idea. Did you see what set it off? Or hear anything?” I asked.

  Mark just stared at me, his mouth opening and then slamming shut. “I’m going to get dressed. You might want to figure out where the off switch is in case that thing starts up again.”

  Good point. What had Turbo said about the security features? Hmm. Something about looking for the app on the phone or smartwatch. I hadn’t picked up either, never mind attempted to run any apps.

  As I turned to follow Mark inside, my gruff older neighbor’s face popped up over the fence planks separating our yards. Thankfully, he was too short to peer over without a stepladder. Retrieving one must have delayed him long enough that he had missed the worst of the show. An orange Broncos cap was smashed down against his tightly curled, nearly white head of hair. His black-rimmed glasses blended well with his skin, but the frames were somewhat lopsided as if shoved on in a hurry.

  I shivered from the cold air and apologized. “Sorry,” I called out. “False alarm.”

  Mr. Jackson was a nice neighbor. He used to plow my driveway now and then. Since I’d been involved with the Huntington brothers I hadn’t seen him much. I owed him cookies to make up for this little incident—the whole pan. “I’ll stop by tomorrow and explain?”

  He gave me a very truncated nod before disappearing back into his own yard. Luckily the house on the other side of mine was further away and was occupied by an old lady who was renting the place. She was almost completely deaf without her hearing aid in.

  I hurried inside to hunt for the phone and hoped Turbo had left written instructions for controlling the lights, robot and watering system.

  The phone was right on the counter where he said he’d leave it, lit up and loaded. I stared down at the app. The watch had a message scrolling across it that said, “Security Breach! Security Breach!”

  I already knew that.

  Since I didn’t have any idea which buttons to push or what to swipe on the smartwatch, I tried the phone. It warned me of a security breach too and there were rows of icons. I pressed the one that looked like a light. When that turned the floodlights off, I hunted for the robot controls and hoped for the best.

  * * *

  Mark and I spent the next hour showering, getting dressed and inspecting the yard. There were paw prints coming into and leaving the yard from over the privacy fence. A fairly large hole had been dug in one corner of the garden, but no bodies had been left behind.

  “They came in under the alarms.” Mark shone his flashlight across the yard. We kept the floodlights off since at least one neighbor had already been woken up. “Maybe it was a skunk,” he mused.

  I shook my head. “We’d be able to smell it. Shoot, after that thing went off, a skunk would have sprayed every inch of this yard.”

  “Good point.” His flashlight found a pile of scat. He studied the nearby prints. “Whatever it was, it shit its pants when Miley started her dance.”

  “Probably not the first creature to do that,” I said.

  “I can look up these paw prints in the morning.” He continued to shine the light around, hunting for clues.

  I stomped over to the kitchen window and peered in. “It’s five. Not much point in going back to bed.”

  He agreed. “Let’s go eat breakfast.”

  “At this hour?”

  “I know a place.”

  “Okay.”

  The tiny restaurant he chose was perched next to a truck stop on highway twenty-four. Mark held the door open for me. “They serve a great breakfast.”

  Since my stomach was growling, who was I to argue?

  The diner contained two rows of worn tables and a waitress pouring coffee behind a long counter with stools. An order window was behind her. I never saw a cook, but a hairy arm slid a plate onto the pickup ledge. The counter was half full of sleepy truckers and a biker couple.

  We were the first to take a table even though it was nearing six o’clock. The place smelled of fresh coffee and syrup with a hint of french fries from the night before.

  The waitress had Mark’s coffee poured and a teabag for me within the first minute. It was warm in the restaurant, so I slid out of my coat.

  We had just put in our order when the gal with the bike leathers stood up and grabbed her bright red and black leather jacket off the back of her chair. In her struggle to wrap herself in the snug coat, she managed to expose an alarming amount of flesh at both the bottom and top of her shirt. Her short top showed off an impressive muffin top tummy roll, and even though the leather pants weren’t super tight, they weren’t flattering because they squished even more of her out the top of the pants.

  When she was finally settled into her tight jacket, she pulled out a phone to check her text messages while she waited for the guy with her to collect his change and leave a tip.

  The basic black phone looked just like a Borgot phone. I sighed with guilt over the testing I had not gotten done.

  After they left, Mark shook his head. “Why do women wear that kind of stuff?”

  “Because when we get dressed and look in the mirror, we suck in our guts and pull the shirt down nice and neat,” I explained, automatically sitting up straighter, but trying not to be too obvious about it. “We don’t stare in the mirror when we’re hunched over our phones and our fat is hanging out.” My back was ramrod straight now, but there was no easy way to suck in my stomach without being completely obvious.

  “Uh-hmm.”

  “And we never look at our butts because no matter how long we study the problem or what we wear, our butts are big. Trust me. There’s no truth to that whole ‘black is slimming’ thing.” Black leather pants hadn’t helped the biker gal’s cause.

  Mark took a sip of coffee and gave me a full grin. “You have a cute butt. And for the record, I was asking why anyone would wear a top that was glaring purple with bright yellow flowers.”

  I blinked. “Oh.” I shook my head. “I don’t have an answer for you on that.”

  Mark laughed. “That’s okay. Your answer was better anyway. I’m not dumb enough to bring up some biker chick and ask why she was wearing something to show off her fat. It’s not something you ask your girlfriend.”

  I grinned a goofy grin, but it was more because I loved hearing him refer to me as his girlfriend than my dumb answer.

  The pancakes were as good as Mark promised, but the cafe attracted an odd collection of customers. Four more bikers came in and sat alongside a couple of local ranchers. By the time we left, the place was filling up with truckers making a stop to eat and fill the trucks.

  Mark dropped me off at my place with a promise to come by for dinner.

  I spent Sunday morning practicing my sewing. Not only did I finish a few pillowcases, I got brave and started on the tank top. When that didn’t work out, I switched to the bra pattern.

  Mark’s mom showed up just before lunch.

  “Are you ready for the meeting this afternoon?”

  I nodded and showed her the pillowcases. One had turned out really short for a pillowcase. “I added straps to this one, so it’s a grocery bag.”

  “You’re really getting the hang of this! All of these pillowcases will fold and fit in the bag. You’ll look like a pro!”

  I beamed until her eyes caught the mess that was currently in the machine.

  “This doesn’t look like a baby bib.”

  The soft pinned material was little more than a tangle of thread and elastic. It would make a better bir
d’s nest than a bra. A used dust rag would provide more support.

  That gave me my answer. “A dust rag?”

  “Working with elastic is one of the hardest things to learn.” She lifted the part of the bra not actually under the needles. “And a waistband might have been a better place to start than a bra. Goodness. You are ambitious, aren’t you?” She smiled. “No wonder Mark likes you.”

  I was pretty sure my ambitions—in jobs and in sewing—were not an ongoing attraction for Mark. “Uhm...”

  She sat down at the machine and managed to extract the bra in under my usual hour. “Have you tried it on?”

  I nodded. “One side fits. The other, not so much.” My face could not possibly flush any redder. Was there anything more embarrassing than getting caught making underwear??? If she asked me to try it on, I would just die on the spot and save us both the trouble.

  Something on my face must have signaled, “Not in this lifetime. You could be my mother-in-law someday, but at this point you are my boyfriend’s mother. I do not know you well enough to get half-naked and work on intimates even if those intimates don’t involve lace.”

  Her mouth twitched. She turned to the machine, picked up the scissors and then the seam ripper.

  “Can I make you some coffee? Or tea?” I asked.

  “Iced tea would be great.”

  Tea I could do. Sewing, not so much.

  She fiddled with the bra and the elastic while I baked cookies and made tea. By the time I was done, so was she.

  “You’ll have to size it and sew the clasp on to create a good fit. But I straightened out the other part and finished the elastic.”

  “Thanks.” I was so relieved she didn’t ask me to try it on, I helped myself to another chocolate chip cookie. If I kept eating cookies at this rate, I’d need to make myself bigger pants.

  After our snack, we gathered up our pillowcases and headed off to the meeting.

  Barb had more snacks for us and a cute little cookbook for sale that contained the recipe for the coffee cake and jelly roll that she served. Frankly, I was more interested in the cookbooks than discussing “pinmoors” for quilting. The pins were supposed to be better than safety pins and keep me from pricking myself when sewing the quilt that I had no intention of ever starting.