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

seats in the windowed cry room at the back of the church. “No one needs to mention this to Mom or Dad. And who said this had anything to do with Huntington?  I was at work. A dead body appeared. My boss was passing out phones for us to test, and somehow I ended up with a phone that may have belonged to or been programmed by Joe!”
    Our heated whispers in the hallway caught Brenda’s attention. Since Mom was caring for Baby Samantha, Brenda scooted through the still open door and headed our way.  “You aren’t discussing baby presents are you?  Sedona, how is the bumper for Sammy coming along?  Huntington said you were sewing one so I put off buying it, but now we need it!”  She looked back at her daughter and blew her a kiss. Now that she had given birth, she was letting her pixie brunette hair grow out.  Even though she almost had her figure back, she still sported the glowing complexion of a new mother. “Auntie Sedona is sewing you a present!” she cooed.
    I didn’t know who I wanted to smack more—my brother or Huntington.  Mom caught my eye then, her eyebrows and head indicating we needed to get in there and sit down.
    I handed the suspicious phone to my brother. “Derrick is here. I saw him drive up as we were on the way in. You can give this to him.”
    Sean might be a royal pain, but he was my brother.  He frowned down at the cheap black plastic phone, his own temper at war with his lawyer instincts.
    I hurried into the cry room, knowing that when push came to shove, he wouldn’t desert me. He’d make me pay, but we both knew that me turning in that phone without a lawyer was not in my best interests.
    He and Derrick missed most of the Mass.  I made sure they both missed me on the way out, although I’m pretty sure Derrick had already left with the evidence, because otherwise he wouldn’t have allowed me to leave without answering a bunch of stupid questions.  Unfortunately, I didn’t happen to have any answers.

Chapter 9
     
    Some Mondays pretend they aren’t really Monday, sneaking up on you before you’re even fully awake enough to come to terms with it being that nasty first day of the week.  The second Cary cornered me in the break room it was clear that this Monday had plans to flatten me like roadkill on the highway—over and over. If Cary hadn’t been hiding behind the fridge door, I’d never have wandered into Monday unsuspecting like that.
    His stare was as icy as his voice. “Sedona.  You are the only employee who neglected to upload any test results this weekend.”
    Monique actually hung up her phone and blushed as though she feared what the person on the other end might think of the conversation. Kovid, one of the programmers, grabbed his coffee on his way to bolting. He was one of the really brilliant engineers, a young Indian guy with a great temperament.
    Cary held up his hand to stop him. “No, by all means stay.  Everyone on the team may as well know what was so critical that Sedona felt she could leave us high and dry. We all had our noses to the grindstone this weekend.  You don’t look dead or sick.  Maybe you’re not cut out to work at a startup. Or do you just want to reap the rewards of our hard work at the end?”
    “Dead or sick?”  He wanted me to be dead or sick? What kind of boss said things like that? My face flushed.  He was deliberately dressing me down in front of co-workers. “Are you crazy? One dead body wasn’t enough for you? You want the rest of us dead too?” 
    Monique gasped.  Kovid’s mouth fell open and stayed there.
    His reaction helped me rein in my temper before it galloped away completely. I delivered my prepared excuse through almost unclenched teeth. “The police confiscated the phone you gave me.  I had nothing to test. The police said there might be evidence on the phone that could help them solve the murder. They had a lot of questions.”  The last part was mostly a lie.  They hadn’t asked me any questions