Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery (17 page)

A black car, one that looked suspiciously like the Viper Huntington had driven during the first case at Strandfrost, tried to pass the Silverado next. The Chevy nearly sideswiped him.

Wanda grabbed me around the throat, but LeAnn smacked her with her own purse.  I slowed down. No way did I want Mark driving a hundred...I looked down and took my foot completely off the accelerator.

Mark gained on us.  Huntington kept the Silverado busy, dancing close, pretending to pass, causing the Silverado to lurch from side to side in an effort to keep him from passing.

Where were the cops?  If the Huntington brothers were smart enough to follow us, why couldn’t Sean’s friends be that smart?

The box of pillowcases in the backseat, the one that Wanda had insisted on keeping with her, slammed into the side of the car. Wanda tried to grab the box, but it started ringing. It was one phone at first, but then the voice assistant kicked in on at least two other phones.  “Borgot at your service.”

“What?!?” No one heard my shout. The seatbelt audible never stopped screaming at us, the GPS was still giving directions and LeAnn had managed to turn the fan speed to full rather than turn the radio off.

Finally, ahead of us, flashing red and blue lights decorated the highway.  Luckily they didn’t have their sirens on or maybe they did, but we couldn’t hear them.

Wanda punched the box as if that would stop the phones from talking.

I didn’t care how the cops managed to get the jump on us as long as they kept Silverado and pals from shooting Mark.  Or us.  “Should I go faster?” I asked LeAnn.

She couldn’t hear me with the continuous din inside the car.

Eight-five was still well above the limit.  I took my foot off the gas again.  I let the car slow at its own pace before pulling over.  As soon as the wheels drifted over the white line, the audible for the lane warning started in.

“Huntington can keep this car,” I griped.

Wanda let out a screech from the back.  “What are you doing?”

“Stopping.  Cops ahead.”

“You can’t stop now!”

This was the same lady who had insisted we stop just moments ago.

As soon as the Porsche rolled to a stop, two of the audibles went silent.  Now I could hear the sirens even with the phones still babbling like a bar full of drunk idiots. “Would you shut those pillowcases off?” I yelled at Wanda. “They’re making a hell of a lot of noise.”

Mark glided next to us.  He wasn’t driving his bike with the lightning streak.  This was a sleek yellow model with panels that shone in the sun.  The side said Ducati 1199.

I rolled the window down.

“Everyone okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “In one piece, no blood.”

“Stay in the car.”

He took cover behind the front of the car and hopped off the bike.

Good idea.  A state cop car screeched to a stop nearby. Two policemen bounced out, their hands on their holsters, but none of us were threatening.

All eyes turned to track the Silverado. Without hesitation, it spun off the road and turned around, disappearing momentarily behind a billowing dust cloud. Two cop cars closed in from our direction and at least one other was coming at it from Denton.

The chicken truck driver ambled to a slow stop not fifty yards behind us. None of the crates had fallen, but at least one cage door had burst open.  Chickens were running and half flying at full squawk.  There were white ones and brown ones and at least two roosters.  The roosters might have been trying to herd the chickens, but they stopped to yodel every time the farmer flapped his hat at them.

The phones were still babbling in the back seat of the Panamera.

An unmarked car pulled up next. To my intense dismay, Detective Saunders stepped out. Of course he’d show up.  He was in charge of the case.

I opened the door and climbed out.

He eyed me up and down a little too gleefully.

Chickens were still pouring off the back of the flatbed truck. One of the crates was tilted, having slid partway off.  Two others must have opened as well because there were chickens all over the road.

Wanda climbed out and pointed at me. “I’m just delivering pillowcases! To a charity! She’s the driver, and she was the one speeding!”

Mark sidled next to me, but not in time to distract me from the chicken that hopped on the roof of the Porsche.

“Oh, crap.” And that is exactly what that chicken and two more proceeded to do on the top of Huntington’s dusty, but expensive vehicle.  I grabbed the white chicken, gently tucking its wings.  I handed her to LeAnn.

“Got her,” she said, holding the chicken a bit tighter than necessary and keeping her carefully away from her clothing.

“Just hang on, she’ll settle down.”

I closed the driver side door of the Porsche, but a brown chicken burbled a hearty cry and defied my attempt to capture it.  The other white one flew off and landed on Mark’s Ducati.

“Hold still, bird!” The chicken ignored my orders. The passenger side of the car was still open wide.  Two more birds approached, one landing on the top of the car, the other flapping at Detective Saunders.

“Sedona...” Mark rolled his eyes, but he went around the front of the car.

“If any of these birds poop in the front seat, Huntington will kill me!” I flew faster than the chicken. My little brown friend hopped from the roof of the car to the top of the car door, balancing easily.

Mark shooed it away before it could enter the Porsche, but with me coming at it from the other side, it flew in my face. “Hey!”  One claw caught my arm. It beat me half to death with its wings as I attempted to subdue the beast.  Good thing Dad used to have chickens or I’d never have caught it.

“Okay,” Detective Saunders bellowed. “That’s enough. Hands up on the car and spread’em.”

“What?” I was still fighting feathers. None of us were the least bit threatening if you didn’t count Wanda, who was still busy shouting about her innocence and convicting herself all at the same time.

“I’d never have been involved if not for Joe,” she sobbed. “It was all him. I had to deliver the phones or they would have killed me. And I can’t get any more untraceable phones because Joe is dead. I’ve told them he’s dead, but they won’t listen.”

I stared at her and then at the box that still rang and talked, but not as often.  Her back door was still wide open. “Untraceable phones...”

“Hands up and turn around,” Detective Saunders demanded again, coming around the car at me.  He was worse than the chickens. I didn’t like the gleam in his eyes.  This guy was not patting me down.

I stared at him over the top of the squawking chicken I held.

“You heard me.”  He would have been in my face, but kept his distance because of the flapping wings of my feathered friend.

“What do I do with the chicken?” I asked.

“What?”

“The chicken. I can’t release it.  It might get run over.  Or escape.”  I had her feet secured, but her wings flapped and then randomly tucked or stayed out. “Here, you better hold her.”  I offered the bird up.

He took a step back.

Mark was suddenly next to me again, his arms at his sides.  He was wearing his black leather jacket.  On the best of days, he could look threatening. Today, he’d had more than enough playing around. His eyes were flat and cold.

“You’ll probably want to start with me,” he growled. “No telling what I might be hiding under my coat.”  He lifted the edges, clearly showing nothing but a t-shirt.  He made sure the two state guys could see that he wasn’t carrying.

“Do you want the chicken?” I asked Saunders.  More birds approached, two more flying onto Huntington’s car, competing with the ones already there.

“Put that damn thing down,” he bellowed.

The chickens on the roof took umbrage with his tone. Two of them launched off the side of Huntington’s car and headed for the road.  The other one came at me, but I stepped away, using the chicken I already had to push the new one into Saunders. “Grab it before it gets away,” I yelled at the detective.

Saunders gave a good imitation of a chicken squawk as he batted at the flapping bird.  Feathers flew.  Poop dropped. “Get that thing away from me!”  The more he danced, the worse it went for him.  The first chicken landed, but went right up again, catching his arm.  Several others flapped, landed, pecked and ran rampant.

Mark coughed away what might have been a stifled laugh. The chickens now had us surrounded. It was the farmer’s fault really. He was chasing them our way, grabbing them one at a time and stuffing them in a cage.  When the cage was full, he went back for another cage, but in the meantime, our bunch of cars and humans looked like the nearest roost.

A bawking beast rushed us. Saunders dodged, causing those that had settled to fly again. He took a direct hit in the chest, a lone feather sticking solidly on his jacket.  It looked to be smeared with a smelly offering from the chicken.

LeAnn handed her bird to one of the troopers.  “I’ll get it.”

She was off, chasing chickens. She clapped, a mistake if you wanted to catch a bird, but it worked well for making several more take flight, including at least three landing on the front seat of Saunders’ car.  She seemed determined to bury the detective’s car in chickens.

I grinned.

The next vehicle to pull up was the one I wanted to see.  Huntington could barely inch the Viper forward, forcing Sean to pop out several yards away.

My dear lawyer brother didn’t appear much calmer than Mark.  His face was an unhealthy red. “Sedona!”  He shot me a glare dark enough to kill the chicken I was holding, but if there is one thing we O’Halas understand, it’s loyalty and family.

“I’m fine,” I told him.

“Were you speeding?”

I shook my head. “Um, there was a Silverado chasing us and they shot at us!”

Sean was already in lawyer mode.  Saunders didn’t have a chance, and he knew it.  Within a minute, Sean had the troopers admitting they had nothing conclusive on radar. How could they?  All of us had been speeding, including the Ducati.  But by the time they aimed radar at us, I was probably traveling the slowest of the lot.

“I’m impounding this car,” Saunders announced.

Sean switched gears. “We’ll allow you to inspect the contents, but the car is legally registered and up-to-date. No reason to impound it.”

Huntington added his two cents, but he was fighting off a chicken as he tried to extract the talking phones from the back. “This isn’t my stuff. You can have it.”  The phones hadn’t gone silent either.  As Huntington yanked the box from the back, the voice of the phone assistant clearly read out a location and time.

Wanda froze and so did I.  I knew that voice. I’d recognized it right away. It was the Borgot assistant voice, which meant these were not phones that had ever been sold. They had to be test phones that should have remained at the company.  Untraceable, unowned, unregistered phones would be very valuable to a criminal.

“That’s supposed to be a box of pillowcases,” I said.

“Your fingerprints anywhere on those talking pillowcases?” Sean demanded.

I shook my head and pointed at Wanda.  “She brought them.  She’s the only one who touched that box.  LeAnn, Barb, and I put the other pillowcases in the back.”

“I had to do it. They killed Joe! If I didn’t deliver the phones Joe stole, they woulda come after me.”  She pointed back down the road. “You saw them! They had a gun! I promised I’d bring them, but they didn’t wait at the charity where Joe usually delivered them. I thought maybe they’d leave me alone if I came with you and delivered the last batch of phones he had taken from his work!”

Saunders started reading her her rights.  She’d already confessed to having the phones, but she hadn’t been the one to steal them.  Joe had.  He’d taken the phones from Borgot and sold them to the bikers—or whoever wanted to buy them.

Even though the phones had been stolen and probably used to commit crimes, Joe’s mom couldn’t have been the one who had murdered Joe.  Although, having known how annoying Joe could be, anything was possible.

LeAnn handed her chicken over to the farmer.  I gave mine up too, and since I had already been pooped on, decided to help catch the rest.

Sean and Detective Saunders argued over who would keep the car.  Huntington tried to get in a word edgewise while still holding the box of talking phones.

I was almost relieved when Radar and Turbo drove up in a white van. “Need a ride?”

Neither of them owned a van. This one looked as though they had borrowed it from an airport shuttle service.  The old lettering had peeled away, but it was still possible to read the “Ride’n Fly” logo.

“How’d you guess we needed wheels?” I stuffed a last chicken into one of the cages and inspected my pants.  There was only one or two poop smears, but no way would Huntington let me drive any of his cars back.  I wasn’t even fit to ride on the back of a nice Ducati motorcycle, not that I had a helmet.

Turbo turned to Radar. “Good call on the vehicle.”

LeAnn strolled up behind me. “Is this our ride?  Oh, how low we’ve fallen already.”

“Heard on the radio there were phones in the box,” Radar said.

“They announced that?”

He shrugged. “Not exactly.”

I nodded. “Yes, phones.  From Borgot.  Free minutes because they are test phones, I’d bet.”

“Did you snatch one for me to examine?”

I shook my head.  “I was never near the box, but Huntington pulled it from the back seat. Maybe he’ll be smart enough to confiscate one.”

“And we thought maybe information was sewn into the pillowcases.”  LeAnn shook her head.

“Those phones are unmarked, unowned, and Borgot is paying for the air time.” Turbo waggled his eyebrows. “Untraceable and if used in a crime and dumped later, it’s a test phone assigned to nobody.”

Radar nodded. “Even if conversations are recorded or locations tracked, that wouldn’t prove who was using the phones unless they were caught in the act because no one ever bought them. Perfect for heists, kidnappings, bank robberies, whatever.”

“Probably drug drops,” Turbo declared.

“If Huntington can get us even one of the phones, we’ll know more,” Radar said.