Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery by Maria Schneider Page B

Pig Latin on one of my three test phones.  “Yup. Still there.”  Thankfully on these phones, the robotic assistant’s voice pronounced the words, rather than Joe’s voice. His nasal translations from the grave had been far too creepy.  But it did beg the question of just why the phone that I had been given had contained Joe’s voice recordings.  It had to have been his personal phone.
    I shuddered.
    All of my test phones readily went in and out of Pig Latin translation mode.  If there were any coded messages on Joe’s phone, maybe Radar would find them, because as far as the Pig Latin went, it seemed to work the same—and perfectly on every phone in the bunch.
    The test for sending text messages worked fine as well. The phone assistant was supposed to be creative enough to handle a variety of tasks, including answering questions that relied on artificial intelligence to come up with an appropriate answer to miscellaneous questions.  The AI was my favorite part of testing. “Recommend a good book to read,” I instructed.
    “Anything by Frank Tuttle.”
    “Tuttle?  Who is Frank Tuttle?”
    “An author.  Or Big Foot.”
    “ Big Foot ???” 
    The phone repeated itself.  I felt like shaking it, but stared at my test sheet instead. “I don’t know if this is a legit bug to report or if Borgot’s phone has solved the mystery of Big Foot.  Big Foot? Who programmed this thing?”
    I tested Kovid’s new code for naming the phone assistant.  It was a bit of a hassle at the moment because it required both typing in the name and speaking it into the phone. Without both steps, the robotic voice mangled the pronunciation.  Despite my careful pronunciation, “Unicorn” still came out Un-I-Corn. Worse, the phone stuttered, making it sound like listening to rap music while popping popcorn.
    “You can’t say ‘unicorn’ but you can pronounce ‘Tuttle’?”  Maybe Tuttle was some famous monster hunter or something.
    I tested the phones all day, completing all my usual tests and creating several new ones. Despite expecting Cary to stop by, he was a no-show.  Without him around to nag me, I scooted out of work at five.  It was almost like being on vacation.  And my parents had left that morning.  I called Mark before reaching the car.  “Want to get together for dinner?”
    “What did you have in mind?”
    “Who cares? We can get Chinese or I can cook.  Mom left the pantry stocked.”
    “I could grab some steaks.”
    “Works for me.  There’s tiramisu for dessert.”
    “That wasn’t the dessert I had in mind.”
    It hadn’t been the dessert I’d had in mind either, but I there was no way I would say that out loud.
    For once, traffic didn’t attempt to kill me on my way home even though I was in a hurry.  This time, I left my backpack in the car because this was a “no phones” kind of date.
    Before changing out of my jeans, I stepped out back to ready the grill.  I stopped cold in the doorway. “Oh, my God.  Who? Why?”
    My beautiful garden and its neatly arranged rows was a mess. The blueberry plants were no longer in the ground.  One lay on its side by the cute brick edge Dad had installed. Another was halfway across the yard.  “Who?”  The entire backyard had been sprayed with the garden hose.  In fact, the water was still on.
    I hurried to shut it off, my shoes squishing in the mud.  “Crap.”  I was still in my work sneakers and jeans.  No point in ruining them.  I raced inside and changed into my oldest sweatpants and a shirt that should probably have been thrown out two decades ago.  I never wore it anymore, but it had a picture of a cow skull and desert sun with the words, “But it’s a dry heat” across the front.  I loved that saying.
    My oldest sneakers weren’t that old, so I grabbed up the beach water shoes meant for a trip to Hawaii. I’d never gone to Hawaii, but I had big plans for someday.  My feet would be cold in the shoes, but at least I could