“This is ridiculous.” My stray thoughts had me looking in my rear view mirror. Was I being followed? Was there anyone left to follow me?
I stayed on the trail long enough to verify we were headed to the ritzy part of town and then pulled into a gas station on Pine Ridge Parkway. I watched traffic for a full minute, but if someone was following me, I couldn’t spot the tail.
My phone was relatively useless because I didn’t have Huntington’s number with me. I’d never called him on this phone. Then again, I did know his Alpine Hills condo number. He’d always set his phones to roll over to his cell.
I dialed the number. It rang, but he obviously wasn’t at the condo. On the third ring it clicked and spattered. I smiled. The condo number was a land line so chances were good it was transferring the call.
He picked up on the seventh ring.
“Huntington? Sedona. Did you know you’re being followed?”
“This isn’t a good time,” he said tersely.
He was almost always terse with me unless he was trying to convince me of the ease and benefit of some new job. “It’s never a good time to be followed,” I said. “Black car. I missed the brand because I didn’t get close enough. Maybe an Infinity.”
“I meant it wasn’t a good time for me to talk,” he muttered.
“Never good to talk while driving and following a suspect. The guy in the black car is Clint Lewis.”
There was a long pause before he finally said, “The ballet guy?”
“Yup. Ex-marine, karate guy. He was at the investor meeting with you yesterday. Black guy with a trimmed beard. He’s shorter than you by a foot.”
“The guy sitting next to me?”
“That’s the one.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?”
I rolled my eyes. My thinking patterns were never likely to match his. “Clint has been around a lot lately.”
“Yeah. But is he following me or Lawrence? Gotta go.”
“One more thing, Huntington. Lawrence lives in Alpine—” There was no point in finishing the sentence. He’d already cut the connection.
The only net positive was that if anyone looked for me at work, they’d assume I was in one of the meetings because my backpack was still in my cube.
With that happy thought, I drove back to work. As soon as I arrived I texted Mark to tell him about Clint and Huntington.
He texted back almost immediately. “Clint was following Lawrence. Steve pulled over. Clint kept going.”
Interesting. “Was Lawrence headed home?”
“No. Had a tee time at Alpine Hills golf course.”
A light went off in my brain. “Any chance Huntington noticed if John, the CEO of Borgot, was at the course?”
I waited impatiently, but I’d been dead on. When the response came, it was one word. “Affirmative.”
Fiend. No wonder Lawrence had to schedule an early Saturday meeting for the rest of us. He was busy playing golf today.
I had another thought. “Did Clint join them on the course?”
“Negative.”
Hmm. So why was he following Lawrence?
Chapter 37
I didn’t think anything could ruin my Saturday until the phone rang at the ungodly hour of six-thirty. I looked at my phone. “It’s Sean.”
Mark opened one eye and sighed.
I mumbled something into the phone that didn’t have ‘good morning’ in it.
Sean was unnecessarily terse. “You don’t need to sew a baby bumper. Mom wants to do it, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her you already offered.”
Brenda and Huntington had done any and all offering when it came to baby bumpers, but I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if it was Sean making an excuse because he’d seen the awkward baby bibs on my table. “Great. I’m sure it will turn out perfect.” I still didn’t even know what a baby bumper was never mind how to make one. “I’m pretty busy anyway.” Distracted by Mark getting up and heading to the shower, I nearly mentioned the case, but Sean would go ballistic if he had any inkling there was still a game afoot.
“Just don’t bring up baby bumpers again,” Sean instructed. “Don’t mention baby bibs either. Ever.”
“Sure, fine, whatever.”
Sean grunted and hung up. No point in him faking pleasantries more than necessary.
Since Mark was already up and moving, I put coffee on. I wanted to check my bank account anyway.
Just as Howard had informed me, I had won the naming contest and a cool five thousand dollars had been sent to my bank account. I verified the amount had been deposited.
The money was definitely cause for a celebration. Oh sure, I’d have to save most of the bonus because the Borgot job wasn’t likely to last, but it was a thrill to have won the prize.
Just as Mark came into the living room, the doorbell rang.
“This place is like a train station this morning,” Mark said.
I opened the door to find Brenda on the stoop.
Brenda was slimming down from her pregnancy with remarkable speed. She was walking every day to make up for the fact she was on maternity leave and not doing rounds at her hospital job. Motherhood definitely agreed with her.
“Sedona,” she cried, her big brown eyes holding back tears, “Sean says you can’t do the baby bumper!” She wrung her hands.
“That was his opinion, yes. I didn’t say I wasn’t doing it.” As soon as the words were uttered, I realized I had trapped myself. A few seconds ago, I had technically been relieved of the project because Sean had decided Mom should do it. “Wait,” I said, looking at Mark for inspiration. He just shook his head at me and did not provide a new excuse.
“My mom is sewing one too,” I blurted out. “She’s better at it and faster.”
Brenda flapped her hands. “I don’t know how to sew either, but I thought between the two of us, we could figure it out. I left the baby with Sean. I didn’t tell him I was coming over here, but we can do it! We’ll sew it together, and won’t he be surprised!”
If there was one thing in this world that was worse than me sewing, it had to be me trying to sew with Brenda.
“Oh, no.” I shook my head vehemently. “There is no way we can sew anything that complex today.” In desperation, I turned to Mark again.
“I’m not going to do it,” was his response.
That hadn’t been the kind of help I was hoping for. Neither was the beep of the alarm for the backyard. I started towards the kitchen, but the second and third warning beeps were much closer together this time.
Mark muttered something about it being too light outside for raccoons.
Whatever Radar and Turbo had improved, it wasn’t the noise. The backyard exploded with the sound of a banshee attacking a ghost.
Brenda screamed.
Mark spun for the bedroom where he had left his gun. “You two stay here and get down!”
As if. “Brenda, hide behind the couch! Call 911 if anything goes wrong.” I shadowed Mark as he positioned himself by the side of the back door.
“Shit!” He threw the bolt and the door wide in one motion as he crouched low.
That’s when the shooting started.
I crawled backwards just as Mark took aim with one arm out the door and yelled, “Hold your fire!”
An arm came flying off the robot and slapped into his hand, knocking his gun onto the concrete and forcing him back. “Shit.”
Through the opening, I could see Howard shooting at the scarecrow with wild abandon. Clint was barely recognizable because of all the blood, but he took a very precise swing at the guy standing behind him, connecting hard with his elbow.
The guy he hit was one of the ones who had been sitting near Howard at Joe’s funeral. Clint’s next blow smashed hard into his nose. The guy went down and didn’t even twitch.
Before Clint could take further action, Howard turned and shot him.
Clint was already bleeding from one arm and n
ow his leg blossomed dark red. His face contorted with pain. With superhuman determination he clawed his way towards Howard and the garden.
“That’s right, you bastard!” Howard yelled. “I said I’d bury you here, and I will! No one steals from me!”
Mark edged his hand towards his gun.
“Howard?” I screamed the distraction before he could shoot again. “Why are you burying people in my backyard?”
He swung around and took a shot at the open doorway. I was already behind the wall and back down flat, but thankfully his gun was out of bullets. He squawked loud enough to be heard over the security alarms in my yard.
I hit the buttons on the control switch, leaving him screaming into the silence.
“Why aren’t you at the patent meeting?” he sputtered.
“Why aren’t you?” I yelled back.
“You stole my idea! You’re going to pay.”
I didn’t have any idea what he was griping about. I pressed more buttons on the phone, but the robot was still flailing feverishly. The remaining arm windmilled around and around while the rest of the thing gyrated like a headless chicken.
Mark felt around the porch for his gun while staying mostly inside and keeping an eye on Howard.
Clint finally reached the garden. He grabbed wildly at the robot and yanked hard. A robot leg detached, pitching him sideways into the dirt.
Howard reached into his pocket.
Mark yelled, “Freeze, asshole!”
Howard ignored the order, pulled out a clip for the gun and would have been shot by Mark, except Clint swung the robot leg like a pro baseball player, nearly separating Howard from his head. “I don’t...deliver...” He had to stop to gasp in two quick breaths. “Illegal shit for...shitheads.” With a groan, Clint fell flat. He lay unmoving.
Howard clutched his head and groped around for his gun or the clip.
Mark and I both rushed him. Behind me, I could hear Brenda yelling.
Mark landed two punches before slamming Howard to the ground. A well-placed knee in his back kept him down.
I picked up the robot leg and held it ready to bash him in the head if he so much as wiggled. “What the hell are you doing here, Howard?”
Brenda rushed out with my medical kit in her hands. She went straight to Clint. “I swear, Sedona, I didn’t know you were working another case and had people coming over.”
The way she melded those two things together made my eyes cross. “Neither did I.”
“No one steals from me and lives to tell about it,” Howard bellowed. “First Joe thought he could steal one of the watches. Then it turns out Cary and he were stealing the phones and selling them to street thugs and cutting me out of the profit!”
“Those were Borgot phones, not your phones,” I pointed out.
“They put the plan at risk! We could have all been rich. All Cary had to do was follow directions and get the code to Rohit. But no! Lazy asshole hired an even lazier asshole!”
“Why sell it to Rohit in the first place?”
“Rohit was the best there ever was. I can code. I had special tutoring because the law department required that we know programming for filing patents. Rohit could code anything. When he started his own business, I knew it would make money.”
“You were friends?”
Howard snarled, “He wasn’t in my league or he wouldn’t have failed.”
It took me a moment to make the connection, but his mention of the law department and learning to code was a big clue. “Rohit was your computer programming tutor in college, wasn’t he?”
Howard’s head twisted, but he didn’t answer.
I pointed to the prone guy on the ground. He was also Howard’s age. His hair was black. He didn’t look it, but I guessed anyway. “He’s Hispanic, isn’t he?”
Howard’s eyes flicked to his buddy. “Vince? He’s Italian. Sosa’s the Spanish expert.”
“And they helped you code the languages. I bet Rohit tutored them too.”
“Borgot wouldn’t hire them, the idiots. I told Borgot they had nothing without the languages. These companies think they can stick any old crap out there and sell it, even with no new functionality.”
I couldn’t argue the point because it was often true. “So you sold the code to Rohit at Clockworks instead.”
“We were so close to production when the venture capitalists yanked the funding at Clockworks. We were gonna be rich. And Borgot was raking in plenty of funding for a stupid phone! That watch is going to make way more money than just another stupid phone. When Rohit takes it to market, I’m going to be right there, funding it and getting my piece.”
“Yeah, funding it with the money Rohit paid you for the modules you stole from Borgot and your two language experts.”
He didn’t have an answer for that, but he spit at me. “You’re supposed to be at a patent meeting.”
A meeting that would have left my house empty in the early morning hours so that another body could be buried here. A meeting supposedly planned by Lawrence, whose email was readily available to his assistant, Howard. “There is no meeting this morning, is there?”
Mark didn’t give him a chance to answer. He pinned Howard’s arm behind his back and yanked him to his knees. “Get some rope, Sedona, unless you happen to have handcuffs or strong tie wraps.”
I headed for the porch, but had one more important question. “Why kill Joe and Cary?”
“Cary hired Joe, that was his problem,” Howard grumbled.
“That left you with Cary as your problem.”
“The idiot didn’t even recover the stolen smartwatch. Claimed Joe wasn’t wearing it. He probably stole it himself.”
“Probably,” I agreed, not about to admit that I had sat on the watch and then absconded with it. “Any special reason you picked my yard to dump Cary?”
Howard laughed, hysteria having parked and stayed. “During the code review, you blurted out my idea for letting the customer name the phone assistant. It was my idea, and I would have won if you hadn’t yelled it out first in public! Cary was the perfect way to warn you that if you steal from me, you die!”
Cary’s body had been a personal threat alright, even if I hadn’t known what the warning was about. If I had managed to suggest a patentable idea, Howard probably would have moved me up the kill list because he believed all good ideas were his personal property.
“Did you call 911?” Mark demanded as he dragged Howard towards the house. On his way past the prone guy, he checked to make sure the guy was still out cold.
“Not yet.” I leaned over and pushed Howard’s gun further away from him even though the clip was empty and Mark had him immobilized. The gun had a silencer on the end, but it had been plenty loud anyway.
Brenda said, “I need an ambulance.”
I picked up the robot leg and dragged it inside with me to call 911. No way was I going to stand around without a weapon of some sort.
Chapter 38
I dialed 911 and began answering questions over and over while dragging around the robot leg and hunting for duct tape or rope. I finally set the leg against the couch and went into the garage.
There was a roll of twine on a shelf with a whole host of gardening tools, including orange oil, seed packets, a small trowel and, yes, a list of instructions from Dad. I grabbed the twine.
“Are there shots still being fired?” the voice in my ear asked.
If I said no, were they planning on taking their time? “I need an ambulance,” I repeated, scurrying out through the back door. I tossed Mark the twine and yanked a robot arm free in case I needed it. Radar had probably not intended the limbs as weaponry, but the arm was nice and heavy.
“I’ve stopped the bleeding,” Brenda said. “He may still need a transfusion.”
“I asked for an ambulance,” I told her, ignoring the 911 operator squawking in my ear.
“Oh good. I called Sean. I told him to find a babysitter before he comes over and to bring my medical su
pplies.” She continued bandaging Clint’s leg. His eyes were open.
“She’ll take good care of you,” I told him. “Why did Howard shoot you? Are you working for him too?”
“No!” He closed his eyes and breathed steadily for a few breaths. “I got curious after your visit. I wondered about the phone and being asked to do a forty-thousand-dollar ballet lesson. I started poking around to see what I could learn about who sent me the original email.”
I shook my head. “You shouldn’t get involved in this investigation stuff. It’s dangerous.” I shot a pointed look at Brenda, but she was too busy to notice.
Clint glared up at me. “I had a buddy do some background checks for me, but nothing came up except on the dead guy, Joe. He had a record for petty theft and a hell of a lot of traffic tickets.”
We knew that already and both Huntington brothers were more than capable of background checks. Even if they weren’t, Radar could have gotten the information. I looked over at Howard and his cohort, Vince. “How’d you end up shot?”
Clint grunted. “Keiko has contracts with some big companies, so I’ve gotten to know a few bigwigs. One of the guys put in a good word for me at Borgot, telling them I was a player looking to invest. I figured the investor meeting would let me meet Lawrence face-to-face and maybe find some clues to what was going on. But even using an alias and dressed in a suit, Howard recognized me.”
“So did I.”
“Yes, but you didn’t come gunning for me. He decided I stole the code you took when you switched the phone out. He came to retrieve it.”
“And you told him I had it?”
Clint closed his eyes again. “No. I have no idea why he dragged me here. He showed up with two other morons and shot me before stuffing me in the trunk of a car.”
“Two guys?” I started to panic. “There’s only one guy with him now.”
“I kicked the other guy backwards down the stairs at my place. That’s when I got myself shot the first time.”
“They left the other guy there? Was he dead?”
Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery Page 21
