Silenced by the Yams (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #3) (10 page)

He smirked. “What would you do if I did get serious with someone? You’d go crazy. No Colt at your beck and call. No string to pull.”

He caught me off guard, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. We’d gone from talking about Frankie to discussing the complications of our friendship. An awkward silence hung in the air.

“Besides,” Colt said finally, “I promised Howard I’d stay out of this one. He’s my landlord, remember? I like where I live.”

“Frankie saved your life, Colt.”

“Curly . . .”

“Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry that you feel used by me. Honestly, you’re very important to me and I would never intentionally do anything to make you feel otherwise. But Frankie is in trouble and I have my connections, so I’m clearing his name, with or without your help.”

Truthfully, I didn’t have that many connections. Just Guy Mertz, for what he was worth. He had an in with Randolph Rutter, although I didn’t know what good that might do. Then there was Clarence-the-odd-one who claimed to be employed by the ACL. I couldn’t deny that Colt’s contacts and know-how wouldn’t benefit greatly, but I wasn’t bluffing when I said I’d clear Frankie’s name with or without his help. I was determined to prove that Frankie was innocent and I was counting on Colt’s caring nature to come through and lend me a helping hand.

Colt furrowed his brows and leaned in close. “Have you forgotten that just this afternoon someone tried to fill you with bullet holes?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. I was a bystander to a drive-by shooting along with you and half a million others. It was probably some drug gang war incident. They happen in DC all of the time.”

The furrows relaxed a bit.

“Come on,” I wheedled, “be a good guy.”

Colt was crumbling, I could tell. I got down on my knees to push home my desperation. “Frankie needs your help.”

That did the trick. Colt blew out a frustrated sigh. “Fine. You can get off your knees. I’ll help. Under one condition—you run everything by me. No going off on your own, no meeting with odd people who say they know things. And if things get dicey and I say we’re done, then we’re done. End of story.”

I smiled and crossed my heart. “Promise, Captain.” Standing to pace the room, I pondered those witnesses in the kitchen. “First,” I said, “I want to find the missing bottle with the mystery ingredient that Frankie poured onto those yams. Which means we have to talk to Frankie. Now.”

Chapter Eleven

I needed to hear from Frankie, firsthand, what happened in that kitchen Sunday night. If he added something to those yams, he’d tell me and if he had any suspicions about who actually tried to kill Randolph Rutter, he’d tell me that, too. And the sooner the better since his indictment hearing was on Thursday. Plus, with the younger girls at friends’ houses, time was mine. For now.

“But,” Colt said, while peeling an orange he snatched from my fruit bowl, “have you forgotten that it’s eight o’clock at night? Way past visitor’s hours, I’m sure.”

In fact, I couldn’t remember when visitor’s hours ended. A quick re-visit to the FAQ page on the DC Department of Corrections website told us that we’d just missed our chance—they ended at eight. And as I already knew, our next possible date was Thursday. That just wouldn’t do. His hearing was at ten a.m. I scrolled down further hoping to find some loophole. “Look at this!” I turned the screen so Colt could read. “Legal visits are permitted 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

“That’s right!” Colt was exaggerating his own enthusiasm. “You just passed your bar last week—you’re all set Barbara Marr, Esquire. Go in and visit him tonight.”

I refused to let Colt’s sarcasm drown the spark of inspiration growing in my mind. Somehow, I knew, I could make this legal visitation rule work for me. I just had to figure out how. Did I know any lawyers? Yes, but none I dared approach with this scheme. I didn’t even know whether Frankie had a lawyer. If real life resembled the movies, he could either retain his own lawyer, or if he couldn’t afford one, the court would appoint counsel.

A really fine idea was brewing in my devious mind.

“So,” I said, “I would guess that criminal lawyers hire investigators, right?”

“Sure. Sometimes they keep them on staff, sometimes they hire out on a case-by-case basis, why?”

“And if an investigator needed information from the lawyer’s client in order to, you know, investigate, then that would fall under the category of ‘legal visits,’ right?”

He narrowed his eyes and imitated Ricky Ricardo. “I don’t think I like where this is going, Lucy.”

“So you could get in tonight?”

“If I lied, I could. And I don’t lie.” He popped an orange slice into his mouth.

“Never?”

He shook his head while he chewed on another juicy slice.

“So in all of the years you’ve been investigating, you’ve never pretended you were someone else to get information?” I smiled an extra sugary smile. “And remember, just two minutes ago you promised you’d help. You don’t break promises, do you?”

Colt handed me the rest of the orange and complained that he’d lost his appetite. He sat at the table, silent and morose. The only sound was the drumming of his fingers. Finally, he looked at his watch and sighed. “I’ll have to see what strings I can pull and I’m not saying this will work, but just in case, what do you want me to ask him?”

“Can’t I go with you?”

He pulled his car keys out of his pants pocket. “I just told you that I’m not even sure this is going to happen. I’m certainly not going to bring the Queen of Fiascos in on a scheme already rife with potential complications.”

“But I was there when Kurt—”

“No.” Colt’s eyes were hard and stern and I knew he meant business. I wasn’t talking him into this one. And truthfully, it wasn’t a good idea to leave the kids alone with Mama Marr all doped up on muscle relaxants.

I slouched in my chair. “Oh, poo. I wanted to see Frankie. I want to be doing
something
.”

“You can do some research. Then we’ll get back together here and compare notes. I’ll text you when I’m leaving DC.”

So I wrote up a list of questions for Colt to ask Frankie, and Colt gave me a list of things to look up on the internet. He wanted me to start with Randolph Rutter—find out if there was any reason why someone would want him dead, and more importantly, why they would want him to die in such a public fashion.

Colt headed out, albeit reluctantly. After checking on Mama Marr, I was about to settle down in front of the computer when I realized that I hadn’t called Judi Horner to let her know Amber could spend the night. Emily Horner was one of Amber’s best friends, so Judi was on my speed dial. She picked up after two rings and we discussed the specifics of Amber’s sleepover, but she didn’t let me get off the line without mentioning my recent brush with the media.

“You didn’t tell me when you were in that you’d had such an exciting time the night before.”

“Yeah, well. It’s all a little embarrassing, as you might guess.”

“I met him, you know.”

“Who?”

“Kurt Baugh.”

Well, that certainly caught my attention. Suburban dentist meets famous Hollywood action film director? It didn’t quite jive.

“Really? When?”

As it turned out, Judi was the president of a growing non-profit organization designed to raise awareness of prescription drug abuse in the United States—Dentists Against Prescription Abuse (DAPA). She said that Kurt Baugh had contacted her and asked her to be interviewed for a documentary he was filming about the escalating statistics of children and teens becoming addicted to and dying from illegally obtained prescription drugs. She agreed and did the interview some nine months ago. He had called her just the day before he died and said that the film was in post-production, would hopefully be released in November, and would she be willing to do some local publicity for the film when that happened?

Of course, I wasn’t surprised to hear that Judi was the president of such a worthwhile organization since I suspected she was also president of the Secret Order of Wonder Women (SOWW). I was surprised to hear about the documentary, though. Not that I followed Kurt Baugh’s career all that closely—I’d only become more interested in him since the rumor that he would be collaborating with Steven Spielberg.

After relaying her story, she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You know, I have my suspicions about him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He showed the signs.”

“Signs?”

“Of drug abuse.”

“Really?” Sadly, even though I had a teenage daughter, I was horribly ignorant of the physical indications of drug use. Beyond the bloodshot eyes of a pot smoker, I probably wouldn’t suspect anything unless someone popped a pill or shot up right in front of me. “What kinds of signs?” I asked.

“Yellow skin, bloated belly. At the very least, I’d suspect virus induced liver disease or alcoholism, but it’s just kind of interesting that he would be doing a documentary on drug abuse, don’t you think?”

I wasn’t sure.  He did look a little bloated when I thought about it, and the tone of his skin was definitely odd, but I just thought he’d experienced a sunless tanning booth malfunction. I filed the information into the trivia portion of my memory bank.

I thanked Judi again for having Amber over and got off the phone.

 After checking in on Callie, I sat down to some serious research. Randolph Rutter had been Channel 3’s movie reviewer for quite some time, so it wasn’t hard to find information on him. I started with his bio on the Channel 3 website and learned that he had joined the team in 2001. He had graduated from Santa Fe University in 1988 with a degree in theater arts. He appeared in some small roles with touring companies until landing the job as the movie reviewer at WUVA in Kansas City. Channel 3 snatched him up a few years later. He lived in Georgetown and enjoyed spending time with his Springer Spaniels, Cary Grant and Bette Davis.

Okay, I didn’t expect to find anything juicy on his bio page, so I started clicking on links provided by Google and read a couple of interviews, a few blog articles and a Washington Post “About Town” feature. All I learned was that Rutter was as pompous in interviews as he was in real life, that he enjoyed the bachelor life, dated a lot of blondes, and believed Cary Grant was the most talented actor to grace the silver screen because he handled both drama and comedy with equal brilliance. Well, I certainly didn’t disagree with him there.

However, I wasn’t finding any smoking guns—no glaring reasons why someone would want him dead, except possibly James Cameron as revenge for the D-minus review of
Avatar
, which I also didn’t disagree with.

Appropriately bored by the boring life of Randolph Rutter, I did a search on Andy Baugh. That proved a little more interesting. The first link I clicked through was a post on a Hollywood gossip blog detailing a recent greenlighted blockbuster action film project—the directors would have been brothers Kurt and Andy Baugh until, for reasons unknown to the author of the blog, Andy Baugh was given the ol’ heave ho. Reportedly, tensions between the two brothers had been high ever since.

Surprised, since I hadn’t heard anything about this before the review screening, I checked the date on the post: it had been uploaded only a few hours before Kurt Baugh’s death.

Well now, wasn’t that interesting? I wondered at the possibility that Andy snuffed his own brother out of jealousy. But Colt said that Andy was the person who insisted the police investigate a possible murder, so that didn’t make sense. If he had left well enough alone, Kurt’s death never would have been considered suspicious. Most killers try to hide their crime, not call attention to it. Unless he was playing some sort of reverse psychology game.

And there was still the issue that the yams were meant for Randolph Rutter, not Kurt Baugh. Supposedly, Kurt just ended up on the wrong end of a purposeful poisoning. Was it possible that Andy and Randolph were in cahoots? It seemed a weak argument, but I scribbled notes on a steno pad anyway, so I could discuss this theory with Colt when we reconvened. I was dying to find out what Frankie had to say.

A peek at the clock on my computer monitor told me it was 10:20 p.m. After a stretch and a yawn, I decided a cup of coffee and a heavy dose of sugar would be necessary to keep me awake late enough to talk with Colt when he returned. I had just flipped the ON button to the coffee maker and was about to grab a handful of Oreos when the front doorknob jiggled.

The unexpected sound of someone attempting to enter my house late at night was enough to make the hairs on my neck spring up, but it was Puddles the burglar alarm dog that caused me to jump and drop my cookies. His yaps continued to pierce my ear drums as I scooped him up and tried unsuccessfully to hold his snout closed.

I moved toward the door and watched the knob intently, Puddles barking incessantly in my ear the entire time. Afraid he would wake Mama Marr, I ran him to the basement, locked him in, then snatched up my cell phone. Callie appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Mom, what’s going on?”

Putting my finger to my lips, I let her know to keep it quiet, then whispered. “Not sure. Someone’s trying to get in.”

She whispered back. “Is it Dad?”