Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery by Maria Schneider Read Free Book Online

sew articles without a lot of expertise either.  “Oh, this is bad news.”
    The guy who designed the thing was obviously a very angry car mechanic. He wasn’t an engineer, because no self-respecting engineer would have made such a mess out of four threads.  The engineer would have simply designed a computer to control the thread tension.  No, this guy had been repairing a Yugo the day his wife nagged him to finish the serger design.  He had muttered, “You think working crammed in a tiny space with poor lighting all day is fun?  You think I enjoy working by feel, hoping I get it right?  See how you like it!”  Presto, the serger was born, the most convoluted sewing nightmare ever to grace the earth.
    Instead of four separate channels with tension levers that made sense, the threads had to be wound up and around, crisscrossing, looping under and over this lever and that thingamabob as if Silly String had exploded in one giant mess.
    The end result was ugly.  Very ugly.
    “Maybe I don’t need professional finishing.” I turned to the baby bib pattern.  It was a complex design with some kind of teddy bear sewn across the middle and a different colored fabric trimming the edge all the way around.  The pattern mentioned something about “binding,” but there was no definition. “Why do you have to trim the edge of the bib?  Waste of time for something that is going to be spit on.”  I had made a pillow once. I could just sew the seams on the inside of the bib and turn it out like the pillow.  “Who has time for trim?  Samantha will love it because I made it.”  The real meaning of that mantra hit me for the first time.
    I trolled the internet and found a simpler pattern, one that didn’t involve a teddy bear on the front. The search for small sewing projects also yielded a pattern for a bra.  That looked simple enough.  I downloaded it as well.
    “Gosh.  Surely, this is enough for the day. I need a snack.”  There would be no sewing on an empty stomach in this house.  And I hadn’t even tested the serger yet.  “Hmm.” Progress was slow.  “Good thing I decided against doing a bumper. Or bump-up.  Whatever.”
    I made cookies.  Priorities had to be adhered to in times of stress.
     
    * * *
     
    What with one thing and another, mainly the return of my parents, Dad’s deliveries to my backyard and my ability to procrastinate as if my life depended upon it, sewing took a back seat for the rest of the evening.
    Sleeping on the problem didn’t help any either. When my alarm clock next struck me awake on Sunday morning, none of Cinderella’s mice had shown up to produce a baby bib or any other useful  pieces of clothing.
    We all trooped off to church, something I would have skipped had my parents not been there with their high expectations.  It was all for the best, however, because I needed to corner my brother, Sean.
    It didn’t take me long to find him and explain that the phone my boss had given me to test might belong to the murder victim. “You need to hand it off to the police.”
    Sean grabbed his hair and yanked on it.  His brown locks were the same color as mine, but his eyes were a dark blueish gray to my greenish-gray ones.  He used to keep his hair military short, but these days, he didn’t have time to get it cut regularly.  It was combed back and starting to grow out of even that style, drooping over his ears. “What makes you think I should turn over evidence for you?”
    Because he was in danger of hyperventilating, I waved my hand in front of his face. “Hello?  You’re a lawyer?”
    “You’re hiring me to represent you? Do you know what I charge?”
    I’d walked into that trap. “Sean.”
    “What do Mom and Dad think of this mess you’re in?  I thought you weren’t accepting these bogus jobs from the Huntington brothers anymore?  I knew you couldn’t be trusted!”
    “What about attorney-client privilege?” I hissed, eyeing our parents as they took