3 Silenced by the Yams Read online

  “Am I wrong?”

  I watched his fingers relax just enough for me to make my move. I swung the mace upwards. “I’m a woman, Clarence. We’re never wrong.”

  As I positioned my weapon, Colt stomped on Clarence’s foot, elbowed him in the ribs and ripped the knife from his grip as he doubled over. Before I knew it, Colt had instinctively poised the knife back at his attacker.

  “Colt! Careful! Look at him—he’s your son.”

  Five minutes later, Colt, Clarence and I were sitting at the round conference room table. Jorge was kind enough to give us time together, along with bottles of water. I drained mine, dehydrated from the nervous perspiration. I had no idea if my surprise-him-with-the-mace trick would work, but we needed something to give us the upper hand and get the knife from Clarence.

  After some gentle persuasion, I convinced Clarence to fill in the information I hadn’t already guessed. His given name was Clarence Coltrane Heatherington—his mother, Deena had named him after his grandfather and father, but she never told him his father’s full name. Not until hours before she passed away, that is. Clarence had pursued his grandfather’s love of film and trade as a projectionist, and when he was left alone after both of their deaths, he headed to Washington, DC for a dream job with the ACL and to find his father.

  I needed a confusion cleared up. “Why did you use the name Colt when you got your job here?”

  He snorted. “My grandfather was a good projectionist, but he had a reputation for being a real dick. I learned early on it was best to build a resume with a different first name.”

  Poor Colt was white as a sheet. I had the distinct impression that he wanted to run from the building screaming and seek out a scientist who had figured out how to turn back time.

  Clarence fidgeted in his seat. “Is he going to say anything?”

  “You have to admit, it’s a lot to take in.”

  He snorted again. “Tell me about it.”

  I rubbed Colt’s hand. “Colt, do you want to say or ask anything?”

  He shook his head.

  Clarence eyed me suspiciously for a long, uncomfortable minute. “My mom hated you, you know.”

  “What?” Not only was I stunned, I was hurt. I work very hard to make sure people like me. “Why?”

  He slid a nod in Colt’s direction. “Casanova here. He loved her, then left her because he was only ever truly in love with you. Like you held some sort of spell over him. Even when they dated, he’d talk about you till it made her sick. Look—he still follows you everywhere.” Then Clarence buried his head in his arms and wept. It broke my heart.

  I scooted my chair closer and rubbed Clarence’s back. Poor Clarence—lost his mother, and grandfather. Never had a father. I whispered at Colt. “Look what you’ve done. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Evidently a lot. And not enough.” I sighed. “Tell me you didn’t know anything about this.”

  He jumped from his chair and started to pace. “I didn’t know! I swear.” He stopped pacing for a minute to watch Clarence, who had lifted his head and started to wipe his eyes. Colt’s shoulders dropped as if in defeat. “She never told me.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” said Clarence. “He didn’t know.”

  Colt went back to pacing, stopping every few steps to observe his newly discovered progeny. Besides the sound of his shoes on the carpet, the room was awkwardly quiet. I thought about the first time I had seen Clarence by the reflecting pool that hot day and how he reacted when he saw the man he knew to be his father.

  Then it hit me. “So that day, when we met by the memorial—you didn’t have any information about Frankie?”

  His face brightened slightly and he lowered his voice. “Actually, I kinda did.” He rose from his chair, tip-toed to the door, cracked it open enough to peek out, then closed it quietly before returning to the table. He pushed stringy strands of blond hair behind his ears and kept his voice low. “I have a way of being in the right place at the right time.”

  Colt rolled his eyes.

  “Can you be more specific?” I asked.

  “I’ve heard things.”

  I could tell Colt was getting impatient. “Do you know the definition of ‘specific’?”

  Shooting Colt a nasty glare, I urged his eccentric son on. “What have you heard?”

  “Jorge and that sleazy reviewer from Channel 3.”

  “Randolph Rutter?”

  Clarence snorted again and I realized it was a quirk that could get old pretty quickly. “Can you believe that name? What were his parents thinking?”

  “You heard them how? Talking?”

  He nodded. “In the small screening room. They thought they were alone.”

  He had Colt’s full attention now. He leaned forward. “What were they talking about?”

  “It was the day of the preview screening. I was on my lunch break. Randolph asked Jorge if ‘everything was set.’” Clarence gestured finger quotes in the air. “Jorge said ‘he fell for it, hook line and sinker.’”

  “Did they ever mention a name? Do you know who ‘he’ was?” I asked.

  Clarence shook his head.

  Colt’s eye narrowed. “How did you hear this without them seeing you?”

  Clarence didn’t hesitate. “Jorge is a clean freak and a dictator. He comes across all nice and Mr. Amazing to guests, but around here, he’s more like Hitler. No one is allowed to eat anywhere in the building except for the tiny lunchroom, but I like to sneak food into the screening rooms. Lots of days, Jorge goes out for business lunches—celebs, politicians, wealthy donors. When he does, I put on a movie and eat lunch.”

  “But he didn’t go out to lunch that day and you ate in the screening room anyway?”

  “No, that’s the point. He left for lunch, alright.” Clarence raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything else.

  Colt blew out a frustrated sigh and threw his hands in the air.

  This story felt like it was going no where fast, but I tried to remain calm since Colt seemed to be on the edge of loosing it. “So, do want to elaborate?”

  A smile tugged at the corner of Clarence’s mouth. “Ask me who with.”

  Colt and I exchanged expressions of annoyance.

  “Who with, Clarence?” I asked. “Who with?”

  “Kurt Baugh.”

  We all took a moment to register the significance of that detail. Clarence continued: “I’d finished lunch and was throwing my trash away in the lunchroom when I realized that I left my soda on the floor next to my favorite seat. I was back in the theater picking it up when I heard Jorge’s voice. I dropped to the floor just in time. I could see them from between the seats.”

  Colt didn’t seem convinced. “Why should we believe you?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  The two men stared each other down and I was getting tired of the distrust in the room. “Colt, what’s your problem? It doesn’t sound plausible to you?”

  He blew out a heavy sigh and sat back in his chair. “Actually, it fits in with what Frankie told me last night. Guy Mertz too.”

  “So you did talk with Guy?” I asked. We had been so preoccupied with the father-and-son reunion that I’d never had a moment to talk to Colt about what he’d learned. “I tried calling you this morning,” I told him.

  “I know.”

  I didn’t like that answer. Something smelled. Something smelled real bad. “You didn’t answer my phone calls on purpose.” I pointed an accusing finger at him. “You were cutting me out of the loop!”

  “I was trying to keep you out of trouble.”

  “You dope! You made me worry for nothing.”

  “You couldn’t have been worrying too hard, because you still managed to show up here to snoop around.”

  Clarence shook his head. “Beware. Anger, fear, aggression—the dark side they are.”

  Well. Clarence could be profound, despite the flaky exterior. “Thank you,” I s
aid to him. “You’re right.”

  “Right about what?” Colt looked confounded. “What the hell did he just say?”

  “He was quoting Obi Wan Kenobi,” I answered. “He’s saying we should stop fighting and focus on Frankie.”

  “It’s Yoda—I was just reading the poster.” He pointed above Colt’s head where a framed light-saber wielding Yoda stood above the deeply meaningful quote.

  Or, maybe the kid was just plain peculiar.

  “Okay,” I said, “but let’s take a cue from Mr. Yoda there, and move forward without bickering. We’re all here now, right? And Jorge’s going to start wondering what’s taking us so long.”

  So, in hushed tones, Colt relayed his conversation with Frankie, who was more than happy to have someone listen to his side of the story. Frankie said he hadn’t added anything to the yams he heated for Randolph Rutter. He simply ladled the last of the remaining yams from the large pot on the stove and dumped them into a smaller sauce pan to heat. He did remember seeing a bottle of vanilla extract on the counter—remembered it well, because he had no idea what it was doing there. None of his recipes had called for vanilla.

  Frankie was convinced, himself, that he was being framed by Vivianna Buttaro, his ex-boss who was doing time because of the information Frankie gave up in return for amnesty. He figured Vivianna had arranged it from the inside.

  Anyway, Colt considered the possibility that he was right about a Vivianna-ordered frame-up until hearing Clarence’s experience. Mostly because Frankie said a few other things: first, the bottle of vanilla disappeared sometime after Kurt’s death, because it wasn’t there when he supervised the clean up later that night. Second, he told Colt that Jorge had asked Frankie to hire one of the waiters as a favor. Jorge claimed the waiter was his cousin, but during the dinner the “cousin” referred to Jorge as “Mr. Boreggo.” Frankie thought it more than odd. Finally, Jorge also told Frankie to make sure candied yams were on the menu—a woman named Susan Golightly from the film’s production company was adamant, as they were a favorite dish of the director, Andy Baugh.

  “Very interesting,” was the best I could muster while processing Colt’s summary. Even though motives were fuzzy at best, certainly leads were pointing to Jorge, Randolph, Andy Baugh, Susan Golightly, or possibly all four.

  “It gets better,” Colt said. “Guy Mertz wanted to talk to you last night to relay some gossip floating around the Hollywood news water cooler. Apparently, Susan Golightly and Randolph Rutter were an item until recently.”

  “They broke up?”

  “She left him. For Kurt Baugh.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  CLARENCE ASKED WHAT A BOTTLE of vanilla extract looked like. I told him small and brown, usually. He perked up. “Yeah, yeah, yeah! Before he left, Randolph gave Jorge something. I couldn’t see very well, but Jorge dropped it, so I got a glimpse before he picked it up. It was just like that—small and brown. I thought it was cough syrup or something. What’s so important about the bottle?”

  “Three poisons were found in the yams that Frankie handed to Randolph—arsenic, strychnine and—”

  Clarence finished my sentence. “A pinch of cyanide.”

  “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.”