Free Silenced by the Yams (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #3) by Karen Cantwell Page A

asked.
    “Right. Well, that’s the problem. We don’t know.”
    I started banging my head against the head rest. “This can’t be happening,” I heard myself say.
    “We found the cage on the floor and the door was open, but Pavrotti is gone.”
    Amber screamed again in the background.
    “Wait,” Bethany said. “Callie says she found him.”
    “Alive?” I asked, closing my eyes in a moment of prayer. Mama Marr was already lying injured in a hospital. The last thing she needed to hear was that her beloved Pavrotti was now singing his canary arias to a higher power.
    Bethany hollered to Callie and I had to pull the phone from my ear to avoid going deaf. “Is he alive? Mom wants to know! Okay, scratch that. It’s only a pile of feathers. Oh, and Puddles pooped on the floor.”
    I groaned and instructed her to tell Amber to stop screaming and put the cats in the basement, pronto. Then they were to find that bird. If he still had a breath of life in his little yellow body, they were to put him back in the cage and close the guest room door—tight.  Finally, don’t forget to clean up the poop and make sure to let the dog out to do his business next time. I hung up the phone and banged my head on the head rest a few more times. It seemed the appropriate thing to do.
    “Wow,” Guy said after a second. “If that’s married life in the suburbs, I don’t want it.”
    I highly doubted he had much choice in the matter. Women probably weren’t knocking down his door looking for someone to mate with. “Yeah,” I said. “I need to take care of some things. Can you go now?”
    “Sure,” he nodded. “But about—”
    “Now,” Colt added.
    Guy hung his head, pulled the sliding door open and stepped out, but before he closed it again, I grabbed a pen and piece of paper from my purse. “Wait,” I said. I scribbed down my cell phone number. “Here. Call or text if you hear anything more about Frankie or the murder. And tell me when you know more about your assistant.”
    He scratched his head and smiled. “Gladly.”
    “By the way,” I added, “why did you tell Randolph about our meeting? I thought you didn’t like him.”
    “I don’t. He called me. He was pretty unglued knowing those yams were for him. Wanted to know if I knew anything. Just to jerk his chain, I told him I was meeting with you to get some inside information, but I wasn’t going to be able to share it with him.” He slammed the door shut, waited for traffic to ease up, then ran across.
    As I pulled from the parking space to speed toward Mama Marr’s bedside at the hospital, I spied Clarence far off under a cluster of trees, standing on a park bench, watching us drive off.

Chapter Nine
    After dropping Colt at the commuter parking lot where he had left “The Judge,” I zipped like a speed demon to the Rustic Woods Hospital ER, where I was directed to a curtained triage room. Mama Marr was resting on a gurney bed in the half-raised position while a very nice looking man in a lab coat sat on a stool next to her and typed into a laptop. She smiled when she saw me.
    “Barbara!” she shouted. “How good of you to come see me here! This is my very nice doctor.” She put a hand on his arm. “What is your name again Mr. Doctor Man?”
    If I didn’t know better, I would have thought Mama Marr had been sipping a few dry martinis instead of trying a new dance move at my mother’s class.
    Mr. Doctor Man stood and extended his hand. “Lott,” he said.  “Dr. Lott.”
    “He’s a lotta handsome, is he not Barbara?” Mama Marr giggled.
    I blushed for her.
    “We gave her a muscle relaxant,” Dr. Lott explained. “It can . . . reduce some inhibitions.” He smiled then turned his attention back to Mama Marr. “Now Alka, no more pole dancing lessons for you, right?”
    At first I thought I’d misheard him. Surely he didn’t say pole dancing. No. He must have said . . . my mind ran through the list of possible words. . . soul dancing.