Silenced by the Yams (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #3) (14 page)

“I don’t think that information has been made public. How did you know?”

“Are you serious?”

I stared at him, knowing somewhere in my mind, there was a reason why that combination of poisons was familiar to me. Yet I just wasn’t getting it.

“Arsenic and Old Lace,” he reminded me, shaking his head at my cinema trivia deficiency. “And you call yourself a movie buff.”

Groaning, I gave myself a head slap. “Of course!”

Colt did not seem to be amused and asked us to stay on topic.

“You don’t get it, Colt,” I replied. “This is on topic. I wasn’t connecting the dots last night. How stupid could I be? Randolph Rutter’s favorite actor is Cary Grant.”

“The smoking gun!” Colt’s exclamation was sarcastic rather than enthusiastic. “Randolph Rutter is a Cary Grant fan. That’s why he ordered poisoned yams for himself, knowing that Kurt Baugh would steal them from his plate and keel over. Let’s call the police. We’ve wrapped this case up neatly. They’re sure to release Frankie within the hour.”

I sighed. “Colt, Cary Grant starred in the movie version of
Arsenic and Old Lace
. He played Mortimer Brewster, whose two nutty aunts murdered lonely men with poison-laced elderberry wine.” I counted them off on my fingers: “Arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide.”

“I agree,” said Clarence as he played with his goatee. “There’s something here. We should look deeper. Randolph isn’t the only Cary Grant fan. Jorge has a shrine to the man in his office.”

Colt sat quietly eyeing Clarence. He glanced at me once, then back at Clarence. I was pretty sure his mental cogs were turning, but I didn’t know how much of it was invested in solving the case of who killed Kurt Baugh and how much was spent coping with the reality of sudden fatherhood. Finally, he took his smartphone from his pocket and tapped the screen.

I was starting to get nervous that Jorge might be right outside the door. “What are you thinking?” I whispered.

“Googling Jorge Borrego. Shoulda done this earlier.” He tapped and scrolled and tapped and scrolled, squinting while he read.

“You need my reading glasses?” I offered.

He shook his head. My friend wasn’t being his usual jovial, happy-go-lucky self. I knew being a parent tended to bring out the serious side in people, but I didn’t think it could happen so quickly. I was trying to think up some witty banter to liven up the mood when he leaned closer over the table. “Okay, he was born in 1964 to Maria and Alfonso Borrego of Tularosa, New Mexico. He graduated with a BA in theater arts from Santa Fe University.”

Holy cow, I couldn’t believe it. “Wait—I’m pretty sure that’s where . . .” I started digging through my purse for the information I’d dug up on Randolph Rutter, “here it is.” I scanned my barely legible scrawl. “Yes! He did. Randolph Rutter, Santa Fe University. 1988, BA Theater Arts.”

“It doesn’t say here when he graduated,” Colt said. Then he listed theaters in Santa Fe where Jorge served as stage manager. “He moved to Minnesota and took over management of the Starcrest Theater when the Minneapolis Historical Society purchased and restored it in 1996.”

I fell back in my chair. “Randolph Rutter was in Minneapolis at the same time. He was a movie reviewer for their ABC affiliate.”

It didn’t take us long to verify that Randolph and Jorge moved to Washington, DC within four months of each other and Colt agreed that while the “coincidence” wasn’t a smoking gun, it was a smelly shoe. I wrinkled my nose at his interesting metaphor, but didn’t dare say anything. He didn’t seem in the mood.

Clarence jumped at the knock on the door. “Excuse me,” Jorge yelled, “is everything okay in there?”

Standing and pantomiming orders to Colt and Clarence, I scooted just in time to stop Jorge from stepping in. I held the door and talked through a crack while the two men got in position. “It’s still . . . touchy,” I told Jorge with a wince. I tried to read his expression, wondering if he was suspicious of us or just truly concerned. I didn’t know him well enough to tell. “As you can imagine, this is an emotional time for them both.” Colt gave me the thumbs-up, and I opened the door wide enough for Jorge to view a weepy Clarence being consoled by his caring new father. It was a touching scene, worthy of a Golden Globe nomination at the very least. Dustin Hoffman would have been proud.

Jorge seemed sympathetic. “Sure. I understand. Can I get them anything?”

I shook my head. “Time.” I paused for increased dramatic impact. “Time is what they need now.”

“A meatball sub would be good too,” Clarence added between sobs. The Swiss Army knife was out of reach, so I attempted to kill him with my glare. It didn’t work.

“Low blood sugar issues,” he explained. “I’m upset enough as it is. I miss a meal and things could get real ugly.”

As I turned my attention back to Jorge, I took a deep cleansing breath. “Could you get us a meatball sub?”

Clarence cleared his throat. “From Sam’s Sandwich Sanctum.”

My fists were clenching. “Did you hear that?” I asked Jorge.

“And a bottle of water.”

Jorge smirked. I guessed he was used to Clarence’s quirkiness. “I’ll send someone out for the sub, and I’ll get . . . three more bottles of water?”

I nodded. “That would be nice. Thank you. Just knock and leave them outside the door please.”

The man was being awfully helpful. Could he really be a killer? I closed the door and spun around, full of fury. “A meatball sub? Really?”

Clarence shrugged and looked just like Colt when he did so. It was downright eerie. “I wasn’t making it up. I can’t miss a meal.”

I plopped like an anchor into the chair that Colt had been sitting in. My body literally ached from lack of sleep, so worrying about someone’s schedule-driven dietary needs wasn’t even on my radar. Another couple of sleepless hours and I was likely to start hallucinating or imitating Mae West. Neither prospect was pretty.

Colt ran a quick search on Susan Golightly of Climax films. He didn’t find any obvious links to Jorge and Randolph, but that really didn’t mean anything. The mere fact that her company screened their films at the ACL’s Tanner building was a connection.

“What do we do now?” I asked after a deep yawn. As if on cue, my cell phone buzzed, notifying me that a text had come through. It was Guy Mertz. “Randolph Rutter at my office. Acting strange. Asking about you. Wants to have lunch.”

Boy, what timing. It took me about two seconds to know what to do with that information. I started texting back.

“What are you doing?” asked Colt.

“Texting Guy Mertz.” I kept typing, my fingers making mistakes all over the place.

“About what?”

“I think I have a plan.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me. I get enough of that from my family.”

A knock on the door barely preceded my hitting the send button. I smiled, proud of myself, then opened the door. On the floor in front of me was a brown paper bag and three bottles of water. I bent over to pick them up, but turned my head when a familiar voice sounded from the hallway. My heart pounded with fear and excitement at the same time. Either we’d been caught, or we were the luckiest ducks on the planet, because Jorge stood at the corner of the two hallways, talking with none other than Susan Golightly of Climax films.

I slipped back quietly, pretty sure that they hadn’t seen me.

“Fellas,” I said as I dropped the goods on the table. “We’ve got a script to write.”

Chapter Seventeen

Clarence used the conference room phone to intercom the receptionist and find out why Susan Golightly was in the building. He was told that she wanted to discuss the possibility of arranging a celebration of action films, dedicated to the memory of Kurt Baugh.

Okay, so my paranoia abated and I started feeling lucky again.

Colt, on the other hand, wasn’t even ambivalent. He wanted nothing of my plan. I pointed out that he’d come this far—why did he even show up at the ACL if he wasn’t going to take it all of the way?

“Truthfully?” he said. “Despite some mildly interesting theories, I figured I’d come up empty handed. I would leave able to tell you that all roads were dead ends and that, sadly, Frankie’s goose wasn’t just cooked, it was deep fried. You’d go back to taking care of your family and writing your movie reviews and I would take Meegan to Ocean City for a few days. Happy ending.”

“Not for Frankie.” I folded my arms and pouted.

Seated next to Colt, Clarence had just chomped deep into the meatball sub. His cheeks bulged and red sauce trickled out of one side of his mouth. He put the sandwich back on its wrapper, wiped the sauce away with a napkin and chewed while indicating, with a raised index finger, that he had something to say. A much-anticipated swallow finally allowed him to speak. “I don’t think Meegan will be interested in Ocean City.”

  Colt’s eyes narrowed. Admittedly, I was surprised by the statement myself and wondered what the heck he was talking about. I guess I’m not always as smart as I think I am, because I really didn’t have a clue, but Colt seemed to be stewing, as if he did. “Have you been following me?” he asked finally.

Clarence grabbed a bottle of water and twisted the cap off. “In a manner of speaking. I had a spy.” He tipped the bottle back and guzzled. “On the inside.”

Uh oh.

I may be slow, but I was catching on. “You know Meegan?”

He nodded. “Really well, actually. She’s my sister.”

Double uh oh.

A little part of me (okay, maybe a big part) was laughing inside. But holy cow, I thought Colt was going to bust a gasket. I don’t ever think I’d ever seen him so serious or so angry. He had that look on his face that Howard gets when I’ve done something silly, like walking into a den of mafia crime bosses or blowing up a building with a hand grenade. Although really, it wasn’t my hand grenade.

I tried to diffuse the ticking time bomb by asking Clarence to clarify his statement. “You mean, you’re such good friends that she’s
like
a sister to you?”

“Nope. Like, my mother gave birth to her, so she’s my sister.”

Kaboom! That one blew up right in my face.

Here I was with a plan to expose Kurt Baugh’s killers just like a perfect episode of Murder She Wrote, and we were playing out a bad version of a twisted Greek tragedy. Or a really sick sequel to the
Crying Game
.

It wasn’t hard to imagine what was going on in Colt’s mind. He started pacing like a nervous hyena, uttering unintelligible phrases like: “whaaaoher uhhhhh” and “maahal guhkew.”

Clarence’s gaze followed Colt around the room. “She got on a plane this morning. Going back to Bakersfield. It’s her dad’s birthday tomorrow.”

Phew. There is a God.

Was he trying to mess with Colt, or was Clarence really just odd and not familiar with proper procedures for doling out pertinent information? Hard to tell, but the immediate crisis was over and my plan needed some direction. I was expecting a text from Guy any minute alerting us to his arrival with Randolph Rutter in tow. And who knew how long we’d have Susan Golightly in the building?

“Okay, okay,” I said, working to calm the turbulent air. “Crisis averted. Colt, you’re not guilty of incest.” I snapped a finger in front of his glassy eyes. “Stay with me Colt. Come on, baby.”

“Is that what you’re thinking?” Clarence shook his head and readied his sub for another bite. “She didn’t sleep with him. That was our deal.”

Way more information than I needed to know.

***

Thankfully, it took just minutes rather than hours, to convince Colt to follow through on my idea of getting three of our suspects in a room together. And having satiated his hunger for food, Clarence was now hungry for some action.

The terms of Colt’s agreement were simple and not negotiable: we’d round them up, ask a few subtle but indirect questions and see what happened. If, at any time, he thought things were getting dangerous or out of hand, he’d give the signal and we’d skedaddle our hineys outa there. Those kind of terms were A-OK in my book—I’d had enough kidnappings at gunpoint and escapes from explosive environments to last a lifetime. Subtle and indirect and safe. I was all over that.

My plan required a safe, secluded location where we could collect Jorge, Randolph, and Susan Golightly together. Ideally, our targets would believe they had coincidentally run into each other, with us along for the ride. And we needed to be far away from innocent bystanders so we wouldn’t create a scene if things got heated.

Clarence said that public walk-ins were rare, but they did happen, so a confrontation in the lobby was definitely a no-no. “Why not just call everyone in here?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, that’s awkward. I want it to look like we walked in on them.”

Clarence thought about this for a minute, then picked up the phone and buzzed the receptionist again. “Stacy, are you bored today?”

I assumed that she answered him, because he laughed. “Good. Stay tuned. We’re going to have some fun.”

He returned the receiver to its cradle and smiled. “I know just the place.”