Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

in anything anymore.
    I sighed. But honestly. I hadn’t seen Mark in weeks. My parents had only been here one night, and they had already turned me into a lunatic.
    “Sure,” he said. “Good to see you.”
    He followed me to his SUV.
    “I packed you an egg sandwich for breakfast.”
    “Thanks.”  He held the door open for me, accepted the sandwich and went around to his side.  As he pulled out of the driveway, he asked, “Do you know how to sew?”
    I slanted my eyes to him, but he was chewing and driving so he missed my suspicious gaze. “Nope. Unless you lost a button, you are out of luck. I can’t sew.  I’ve barely even threaded a machine before. I completed a pillow one time, but that was with Mom’s help.” This conversation was obviously a roundabout interrogation because of Steve gifting me a machine. Mark didn’t care for his brother stepping too close to me.  Sometime in the past, at least one woman had used Mark to get close to Steve, and Mark wasn’t quite over it.  “I did not ask him for a present, and I didn’t accept it either.  Or the plants.”
    “The plants?  Those aren’t from your dad?”
    I groaned. “No, they weren’t, but they might as well be.  Dad saw them and started putting in a garden at five this morning.”
    A muscle in Mark’s jaw ticked. “He didn’t tell me about the plants.  Neither did you, for that matter.”
    “When?” I threw up my hands. “I forgot all about them when we were telling Radar about Joe Dork’s phone.  I was actually enjoying myself for a few minutes there at dinner. And I haven’t the foggiest idea why Steve—”
    Mark held up his hand to stop my explanation. We were barely outside of town, but he pulled over, parking in a small dirt lot. “I wasn’t too happy about him showering you with expensive presents so I went over to the condo last night after I left your place.”
    Instead of facing me, he crumbled the breakfast foil, and then gripped the steering wheel.
    “Mark, Steve is not interested in me.  Well, he’s interested in me, because he still believes that I should work on his investigations and—”
    “I told him to butt out.”  Mark’s voice held a finality that sounded a bit like a threat.
    “So did I!”
    He finally faced me, but his face was not any less tense. “Steve talked my mother into joining a sewing group to gather information.”
    I was ready with a winning argument about how I planned to give the serger to my mother, but his sentence derailed me instantly.  I snapped my mouth closed.  I opened it again, but it took a moment for me to manage any sound. “What?”
    Mark nodded. “His own mother. Then, after he involved her in his latest investigation, he decided it was too risky to send her in there on her own with no backup.”
    My brain turned.  So did my stomach. “Wait a minute. It’s too risky for your mother so he decided he’d hire me instead?”
    Mark’s teeth clenched. “His logic was missing past that point.”
    “Oh no,” I disagreed. “His logic has been missing for a long time. And I’m going to tell him that I don’t appreciate him deciding that it’s okay for him to put me on risky jobs, but not his mother.”
    “He is putting you both in a position of risk! ” 
    My ears popped.  I sat back and waited for the windows to stop vibrating from his fury. “Well, I’m not in any danger yet because I haven’t joined any sewing groups.  Did your mom join?”
    One perfunctory nod. “Mom isn’t about to back out either. Steve has her convinced she is the only way he’ll solve this case.”
    “Oh.” I shook my head.  “That’s bad.”
    Mark slammed out of the vehicle and stomped down the trail. I followed, pretty certain this was not the original hike he had planned.  As I marched along behind him, I tried to think of something clever to say to defuse the situation, but nothing helpful came to mind.
    He strode ahead, and I half-ran to keep up.
    This close to town,