Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery

by Maria Schneider

  The detectives remained by the doors, watching us stragglers.

  I let the casket get a head start and then stood. LeAnn was right behind me.

  Ichabod disappeared through a side door.

  Mark and LeAnn flanked me, which meant I didn’t have to pretend to stop and talk to the detectives. They followed us right out, though.

  The bright sunlight had me blinking tears that I hadn’t managed for Joe. I sucked in a lungful of fresh air, one that wasn’t canned and wasn’t as cold as the frozen air inside the viewing room. We stood with a few others on various levels of the steps, waiting for the crowd to disperse.

  Tank and the other pall bearers slid the casket into the back of a hearse. The young driver, in an ill-fitting black suit, hurried behind the wheel and slammed the door. The bang of that door was too reminiscent of the casket closing. The boom silenced the already subdued crowd.

  We all watched as the long black car shot away from the curb.

  “We don’t have to visit the gravesite, right?” I whispered.

  “There’s usually a ceremony there. We probably should,” LeAnn replied.

  “That driver left in a hurry,” Mark said, sounding puzzled. “Doesn’t at least one family member usually travel in the hearse?” We all looked around for Joe’s mother, but she hadn’t come out yet. “He could have at least waited for the pall bearers to get in their vehicles.”

  “You mean on their motorcycles,” I corrected.

  “Whatever.”

  The hearse was already well down the road. It turned at the stop sign and sped out of sight.

  We started down the steps again. From behind us, Ichabod burst out the doors.

  “Are the police here? Is anyone an official with the police department?” he gasped out. His adam’s apple bobbed as if it were diving after a lottery dunk. Long, bony fingers wiped sweat from his forehead.

  Adrian snapped around. “What’s the problem?”

  Ichabod pointed down the road, but the hearse had already disappeared from view. “My driver was in the back room, tied up! I stopped to untie him, but someone just stole my hearse!”

  Before Adrian could jump back up the two steps, Tank loosed a caveman roar. “Let’s get’m, riders! No one disrespects our dead!”

  I wasn’t sure Joe was really one of them, especially since Tank had separated the crowd, but apparently it didn’t matter to the clan of bikers at this particular moment. Leather and metal flashed.

  Instead of following the cops, Mark followed Tank. He hopped on a bike that had a lightning bolt down the side. I recognized it and sucked in a worried breath.

  LeAnn crossed her arms. “Well. That plan went to hell. This place is totally disorganized. It’s no wonder someone stole the hearse. You should see the back room in this place. It’s a miracle they get the right bodies in the right caskets. I’ve never seen such an unorganized mess. I just about died in that closet, it was so jammed with paperwork that should have been filed last decade.” She stomped down the steps and then glanced back over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”

  “Where are we going?” Gamely, I skipped down beside her.

  She waved up the road. “They’ll never catch him. Whoever it was will figure out the watch is a fake. We may as well go back to your place and wait for Mark to report.”

  I agreed. With Mark on the chase, we wouldn’t be making it to Clockworks today.

  In all the excitement, there hadn’t been a chance to ask Clint who had invited him to the funeral of a guy he couldn’t have met unless maybe Joe had worked at Clockworks. It was too late to ask now. Along with the rest of the revelers, he was long gone.

  Chapter 31

  LeAnn headed for the sewing table as soon as we arrived at my place. I headed for the kitchen. To each their own unwinding mechanism.

  While I concocted a chocolate mousse pie to calm down, she held up one end of the tank top I had cut out. She flipped it and studied it from the other end, but that didn’t seem to provide any additional clues.

  “Tank top,” I said. “I cut the pattern from one I found on the web. Well, it was a t-shirt, but I messed it up.”

  “The stretch has to go right to left, not up and down. You’ll never get this on.”

  I didn’t tell her that I never planned to finish it, especially since that part of the case was solved. “Yeah. Probably.” I left her to her hobby and attended mine.

  The pie was in the fridge setting up by the time Mark arrived. Dusk was already darkening corners of the yard outside.

  LeAnn had helpfully sorted all the thread and fabrics by color. Neat little stacks had been stowed in bags she must have sewn while I cooked. “Thanks,” I said.

  She shook out the tank top, eyed me and then the top. “I think it will fit.”

  I hadn’t even noticed the tank, but I smiled and accepted it before addressing Mark. “The driver escaped, didn’t he?”

  “Clean as a whistle. He didn’t drive far before he ducked into a side road, pushed the casket out and liberated the watch.” Mark turned his accusing gaze on his mother. “It might have been better if Joe hadn’t been wearing a watch in the first place.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “It was a great plan. It just didn’t happen quite as expected. It does prove that the guilty party was in attendance because someone noticed that watch and wanted it.”

  “Don’t worry, dear.” LeAnn stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “I wasn’t at risk and neither was Sedona. I didn’t tell her what I was up to.”

  He glanced at me. I nodded. I hadn’t had any idea she had planned to add a watch to Joe.

  “I have to get home,” she said. “I was hoping you’d run the guy to ground. Do you think the pie is ready?” she asked me.

  It wasn’t, but mousse was just as good lumped in a container for later as it was firmed up. I boxed up a generous piece.

  After LeAnn left, Mark helped himself to a piece of the soft pie. “If she had invited you along to sneak that watch on the corpse, you’d have gone, wouldn’t you?”

  I pretended to ponder the question, my eyes sliding up and down. I drummed my fingers on the table. “You know how women sometimes ask whether a particular outfit makes their butt look fat?”

  He blinked and then frowned. “Yeah, why?”

  “You know how you’re smart enough to avoid or not answer that kind of question?”

  He nodded.

  I nodded. “Me too,” I said.

  The confusion on his face cleared. He grunted and shook his head. “I think that’s a yes. But I knew that before I asked.”

  The phone Radar and Turbo had left sitting on my counter beeped.

  I about jumped out of my skin. Mark went for his gun. He positioned himself next to the back door in the blink of an eye. “Can you shut the security features off?” he asked quietly. “Before Miley starts dancing out there?”

  With the lights on in the kitchen, it was impossible to see anything in the dark yard outside. I crab-crawled to the phone on the kitchen counter. The watch had lit up and “Security Breach” showed on the face.

  Luckily, per my request, there was a list of instructions taped to the phone. Unluckily, the phone emitted a second warning beep. Hurriedly, I read through the instructions and figured out what to press to disable the various features. I punched each icon and then selected “disable,” while Mark attempted to see out the bedroom window.

  He was back by the door very quickly. “Can you turn on the floodlights without any of the water or dancing? On the count of three?” He crouched, one hand on the knob.

  I sat, cross-legged and scanned the list. “Okay, on three. Start counting.”

  Luckily, I recognized the floodlight icon. By the time he would have said four, the floodlights came on, and he had rolled out the door, coming up ready to fire.

  Somehow, Miley must have also come on because the sudden noise from out back was very loud. “Crap.” Had I not disabled her? Frantically, I punched the disable for the
robot, but the chatter and screaming hoots continued at full pitch.

  Mark rolled back inside the door and slammed it shut. He stayed on the floor, breathing harder than normal.

  “Are you hurt?” I dropped the phone and scurried over, frantic.

  “Ra...ccoons.”

  “What?”

  “Raccoons,” he repeated. “Those damn things are worse than rabid dogs. I didn’t want to have to shoot them.”

  I stretched up in order to peek through the window. Sure enough, the floodlights illuminated three raccoons the size of small German Shepherds scampering about the backyard. They were responsible for the shrill noises, not Miley.

  While I watched, one returned to excavating the garden. Blast his hide, there was already a hole large enough for me to fall into and be swallowed. There were two smaller holes nearby and enough other spots to make the whole plot resemble a whack-a-mole game.

  “Beasts.” I dove for the phone again.

  “Miley might be enough to frighten them off,” Mark said, standing so he could watch.

  “They’d probably just tear her arms off. Radar made the thing so that the arms and legs detach easily. They can be replaced with other tools.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I held up the list. “Precise instructions.” I punched in the manual start for the last icon. The sprinklers, which were more like blasts from a paintball gun, gushed.

  The raccoons bellowed more protests, but they did leave. Mark watched them waddle away, noting that one climbed the fence and the other two wedged through a spot behind a bush. “I’ll fix that fence in the morning. But it might not keep them out.”

  I worked on shutting off the security features before my neighbor called.

  Chapter 32

  Next morning, before I even got out of bed, Mark propositioned me. “Too bad you have to go to work,” he said. Unfortunately, he was not snuggled suggestively next to me. He stared up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head.

  “Hmm. What did you have in mind?”

  “I want to check out the Clockworks place this morning. I haven’t had much time for research, but I’ve checked the security on the place. There’s enough traffic and more than one company in the building. We can blend in easily.” He grabbed his phone from above his head where it rested on my bookcase headboard and began typing.

  “Good idea. I’ll text in sick, indigestion from rice cakes.”

  He stopped swiping at his phone. “What rice cakes?”

  “They served some at the ballet lessons the other day, and they’ve been sitting on the counter in the break room ever since.”

  He lifted up on one elbow and scanned my face. “You didn’t eat rice cakes.”

  “Of course not.”

  “This job isn’t working out very well for you, is it?”

  “How can it possibly last? Two people were murdered the same week, someone is selling the bread and butter code to another company, and the lead lawyer is ordering ballet lessons for the programmers.”

  “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound much like a dream job.”

  I shrugged. “I can find another one.”

  “Maybe we should stop finding you jobs and let you actually find your own.”

  I grinned. “There’s an idea.”

  He looked down and studied his phone for a few more seconds. “Did you know Clockworks is out by Dave’s Garden?”

  I started to shake my head, but changed my mind. “I wonder if it’s in the new office building across the street. There’s a huge fancy clock with the building directory underneath.”

  He nodded. “That’s the place. Top floor. The news cycle I just checked says it has gone bankrupt. It will be interesting to see who still works there or who has been picking up phones. The location would make it very easy for someone from Clockworks to have met Joe at Dave’s Garden during a garden meeting. Anyone from that building could walk across the road and pick up a phone with rogue code on it.”

  “And who would notice such a clandestine meeting, especially if it took place during a legitimate lunch break?” I hopped out of bed, made my excuses to work via text, and showered.

  * * *

  Had I been nosing about Clockworks for information by myself, I’d have stopped at the reception desk first and nervously asked a bunch of nosy questions about the company. It was vastly more fun to watch Mark in action. He barely glanced at the reception desk, other than to give the guy sitting there a short nod. He didn’t keep his head down to avoid the cameras, nor did he change his smooth stride. He didn’t try to appear “important businessman” even though it was a look he could pull off if he cared to.

  He just strode to the elevators without checking the directory, like he’d been here before and had no interest in anything special.

  When the door closed behind us, he put his arm around me and pretended to nuzzle my neck. “There is a back exit if you walk past the elevators. If we leave in a hurry, we take that route.”

  I had seen the doors. Mark was rubbing off on me in more ways than one.

  When the bell chimed for three, we exited. In front of us, there was a glass door, locked. Behind it, there were other solid doors that likely led to offices. Light from a big window at the end of the hall lit the place. Maybe because Clockworks was supposedly bankrupt, only every other fluorescent light was illuminated.

  Mark patted his pockets. There was a badge scanner to the right of the door. The scanner light was off. I wasn’t surprised when Mark pulled out his keys, the ones with his lock picks. He made it look as though he was trying more than one key while he picked the lock. Then, very politely, he held the door for me. He was always prepared.

  I started counting the minutes. If the guard behind the reception desk was watching camera monitors, he’d have seen us enter. He probably couldn’t tell a pick from a key on the camera feed, and Mark was quick with the lock picks.

  My heart still beat faster. Maybe I should have stayed downstairs and chatted with the guy while Mark came up here to see what he could learn. “When you said Clockworks went bankrupt, I didn’t expect the place to be completely shut down.” I kept my voice very low.

  “Me either. Not with phones being delivered to the reception desk.”

  There were no visible cameras inside the area, but the doors were locked, two pairs on either side of the hallway. Mark unlocked the first and we slipped inside. There was an open space that had partially torn down cubicles with a few offices along the outside wall.

  I checked the office doors. They weren’t locked, but the rooms were empty except for giant dustballs drifting aimlessly.

  We checked the area in silence, opening the remaining cubicle desks to look for remnants and glancing at the squiggles on the white boards. The few pens and paperclips left were not the types of things that offered extensive clues.

  We exited. I checked the bathrooms while Mark opened one of the doors on the other side of the main hallway. The remaining door at the far end was a fire exit stairwell. Mark pointed to it to make sure I saw it.

  The other side of the office hallway wasn’t as empty as the first area, but the equipment made little sense. While there were two laptops sitting on a table, the rest of the place looked like a wizard’s laboratory. Two giant five-gallon office water bottles contained some kind of brown murky sludge. If it was meant to be fresh water for the office, it had gone seriously bad. The place had a musty smell, almost like bread, or maybe there were questionable contents leaking from the fridge against the wall.

  “Beer brewing,” Mark said quietly, but not without a slight question in his voice.

  Now that he pointed that out, I noted the case of empty beer bottles and what looked suspiciously like a keg. My mind had associated those items with one hell of an office party, not brewing.

  I headed for the computers, bumping the one laptop so that it came out of sleep mode. On the table with the two laptops, five watches and three Borgot phones were s
cattered about. The watches were replicas of the one Joe had worn, but only one had a band. It was a silicone band unlike the worn leather one on Joe’s watch.

  Had Joe somehow gotten in here, and stolen the watch when he dropped off code?

  The Borgot phones made sense. Smartwatches worked with a phone—showing who was calling, showing text messages, and if whoever ran this place had any say, the smartwatch would run Borgot’s translation programs. The table also contained an iPhone and a Samsung phone. Whoever was working on this project wanted the translation code to work on more than just Borgot phones.

  Since the computer was sitting there, I used it to do a quick search on Clockworks while Mark finished searching and took inventory of the rest of the place to make sure we hadn’t missed anything.

  The place certainly looked as though someone was using the empty building to finish the smartwatch project. I didn’t see how they thought they could manufacture the things with two or three test watches, but then, not being of a criminal mind, there were probably a lot of things about stealing programming code that I didn’t understand.

  The internet told me that Clockworks hadn’t been a public company. It was a startup funded by the usual “angel” investors. The venture capitalists hadn’t given it more than two years before funding dried up. The company had disbanded at the end of last year.

  At least one employee hadn’t given up on the idea of a smartwatch. Now that the project lacked legit funding and engineers, that someone had decided to just steal the code from Borgot and brew beer in the extra space.

  I wrinkled my nose. The smell of yeast and whatnot wasn’t really unpleasant, but there was definitely an odor to it. The equipment took up more room than the laptop and watches. Maybe Joe had been in on the beer stuff, and when he moved back in with his mother, he couldn’t take it with him so he moved it here.

  I frowned. Joe didn’t have the experience or ambition to brew beer. You had to know how to follow specific recipes and buy the grains and hops and...hops.