3 Silenced by the Yams Page 3

  Danny’s Donuts were the best, biggest, melt-in-your-mouth donuts not only in Rustic Woods, but the entire Washington, DC Metropolitan Area. I cringed a second time when the pounding of six feet scrambling on the floor upstairs actually shook the walls. Because, of course, there were no donuts, Danny’s or otherwise, in my house. The best I could come up with might be a moldy piece of toasted cinnamon bread or three freezer-burned French toast sticks. I was sailing on a sea of guilt by the time the girls had assembled before me in our foyer at the bottom of the stairs. Guilt that I was such a lame mother that I didn’t even have decent breakfast food in the house, guilt that I actually lied to get their attention, and guilt that I would never rise to Mama Marr’s standards of the perfect housefrau for her perfect only son.

  “Where are they?” asked Amber, who held a pathetic Puddles in her arms. He looked sadly at me in his blue, lace trimmed baby doll dress and matching bonnet tied neatly under his little gray chin. His despair was in direct contrast to Amber’s magnificent, semi-toothless smile that lit up her freckled face. Poor Puddles. I had to give him credit for putting up with Amber. Maybe he thought they were related since her hair was just as curly as his own.

  Everything had happened so fast, I found myself without a reasonable explanation for my lie. “Um . . .” I was vying for time.

  Bethany stood with a book in one hand and the other hand on her hip. A you-did-it-to-us-again look crossed her face as she peered through her smart, Tina Fey-style glasses. Bethany was eleven going on thirty-seven. She didn’t say anything, which was worse than her saying anything at all.

  I gulped.

  Sixteen year-old Callie, the spitting image of her father‘s dark eyes and hair, readjusted her long locks into a half-hearted ponytail and narrowed her eyes at me. “There aren’t any donuts, are there? This was your ploy to rally us for manual labor.”

  I shrugged. “You can write your tell-all book later. But just for the record, kids in Africa have to walk miles every day in the hot blistering sun to carry gallons and gallons and gallons of water to their town and all I’m asking you to do is vacuum a few floors and wash some windows.” When in doubt, try the privileged children lesson. All mothers attempt this. Few succeed. Yet, I couldn’t stop. “And you know what they get as a reward for their hard work? Not a Danny’s Donut, I guarantee you. Probably just a few grains of rice, or a half a potato. Raw.”

  Bethany slid Callie a look. “At least she’s off her Slumdog Millionaire ‘kids in the slums of Mumbai’ kick.” She turned back to me. “Have you been watching Out of Africa again?”

  “I needed a Meryl Streep fix, what can I say? But that does not negate the fact, Miss Smarty, that Mama Marr will be here by two o’clock and we’ve got a house to clean.” I pointed to Amber. “You—you’re on cupboard detail. Get a washcloth and start wiping. Bethany, your mission, which you have no choice but to accept, is to vacuum every floor, upstairs and downstairs. Callie, you’re bathrooms.”

  “Of course,” Callie said, rolling her eyes. “The oldest kids always gets the grossest job. Why don’t we have a maid like the Horners?”

  “Because your dad is an agent for the FBI, not a CEO for a Fortune 500 Company like Mr. Horner. Nor am I a DDS for a chain of dental offices like Mrs.—I mean Dr.—Horner. Poor people like us have to get our hands dirty.”

  “Well frankly,” said Amber, letting Puddles escape from her arms, “I think Dr. Horner is the poor one. I’d rather wipe cupboards than put my hands into people’s icky, slobbery mouths.” She scrunched up her face and stuck out her tongue. “She must cry herself to sleep every night.”

  I doubted that. Judi Horner was one of the most together women I’d ever met. She was Super Woman and Mrs. America all rolled into one. I’d hate her if she wasn’t so darned nice. And if she wasn’t our family dentist. I have to admit to buttering her up with compliments just to make sure she wouldn’t conveniently find five “cavities” to drill.

  Everyone agreed, grudgingly, to work, but only after I located Howard and convinced him to run and get two dozen Danny’s donuts, pronto. I had my sweaty head in the oven, scrubbing furiously with a steel wool pad, when someone tapped my shoulder. I jumped and bumped my head on the top of the oven. I extricated myself and discovered that the tapper was Peggy Rubenstein.

  “Ciao, Bella!” she said with a smile. “Didn’t mean to scare you—Amber let me in.”

  My fine friend Peggy was a pasty-skinned, red-headed, stout lady of obvious Irish lineage who had converted to Judaism before she married and then to Italian-ism after she married. She and her husband, Simon, spent a month-long honeymoon in Italy. Ever since, she has talked Italian, walked Italian, cooked Italian and often forgotten that her maiden name was O’Malley, not Minnelli.

  “It’s okay,” I said, pulling off the long blue rubber gloves. “I needed a bit of a break.”

  “Spring cleaning?” she asked.

  “It’s July.”

  “Summer cleaning?”

  “More like panic cleaning.”

  She nodded her head slowly and with instant understanding. “That’s right. I forgot Howard’s mother was coming—when does she get here?”

  I looked at my clock. “A little over an hour. Howard should be leaving for the airport soon.”

  “How long is she staying?”

  “A week. I think.” I pulled myself off the floor, every joint in my body screaming as I did so. “Actually, I forgot to ask.”

  Peggy shook her head and frowned. “That’s not smart. If I didn’t set a time limit for Mrs. Rubenstein, she’d never leave.”

  “You call your mother-in-law Mrs. Rubenstein?”

  “She won’t let me call her Mother. She says she wants to be certain this marriage is going to work out first.”

  “How long have you and Simon been married?”

  “Nineteen years.”

  “What’s she waiting for?”

  She shrugged. “My untimely death, I think. Anyway, I just stopped by for a minute. I promised Roz I would help her pack today.”

  Roz Walker was our friend and my next door neighbor. She had finally had too much of the “dangerous living” in Rustic Woods and convinced her husband, Peter, to ask for a transfer. His company was more than happy to send him to Oakland, California. When I showed her an internet article that listed Oakland as one of the Top 10 most dangerous cities in the U.S., she didn’t even blink before saying, “Yes, but you won’t be there, so it has to be safer for me.” She tried to back peddle and tell me that I shouldn’t take that statement personally, but truthfully, it was hard not to. And if she learned that not only was I in the same room as a dead man last night, but that my friend, Frankie, had been arrested for the man’s murder . . . well, that’d pretty much nail it for her. The fact of the matter was that I did seem to attract trouble the way the North Pole attracts toymakers with odd wardrobe choices.

  “Tell her I’d love to help too,” I said, “if I didn’t have Mama Marr coming.”

  “I’m sure she’ll understand. You’re coming to the farewell party, right? You can bring Howard’s mother.”

  “Of course we’ll be there. She’s my friend and I love her. I may never forgive her for moving, but I love her.”

  She nodded, but didn’t say anything else. An awkward silence set in. Peggy is never at a loss for words, so I jumped on it right away. “Spill the beans,” I said. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “I was afraid of this.” Her expression was sympathetic. “You haven’t seen it. I wasn’t sure.” She took a deep breath and reached into her purse, pulling out a piece of newsprint that looked like it had been clipped from the morning paper. She handed it to me. “I’m sorry,” she winced.

  I took the paper with a terrible sense of dread. “So I guess I don’t have to tell you what happened to me last night, huh?” I asked, assuming she’d read the whole story with any half or full untruths included.

  When I unfolded the newsprint, I gaspe
d at the headline, which was way worse than I ever could have imagined. Local Movie Reviewer, Barbara Marr, Linked to Mafia-Related Murder of Action Movie Director, Kurt Baugh.

  Boy, I thought. When Roz read this, she’d order Peter to seek a transfer to Mars.

  Chapter Four

  I’D ONLY FINISHED READING THE headline and taking my pulse when Howard appeared in the doorway. “Hi, Peg,” he said. “Barb, I’m heading to the airport.” He spotted the paper in my hands. “What’s that?”

  I folded it fast and slipped it into the pocket of my shorts. Howard would learn about the headline eventually, but I didn’t want him getting upset and being late to pick up his mother. “Just a recipe. Something Peggy thought I’d like to try.”

  What is it about men? They love to ask questions, but rarely have the attention span to wait for an answer. He was already grabbing his keys from the counter and heading for the door. Under ordinary circumstances, I’d be ready to grab his Brazil nuts and crack them for not paying full attention to me, but this time I was only too relieved to be ignored. “Bye, Sweetie!” I said with a wave.

  “Dad!” I heard Callie call after him. “Can I drive?”

  “Sure, Cal. Come on,” Howard answered.

  A few bangs and thumps were followed by the sound of our side door slamming shut.

  “Callie’s driving?” Peggy asked with wide eyes.

  I nodded. “She got her permit two weeks ago.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “After our first time out together, she announced she’d only drive with Howard. Says I ‘freak out’ too easily.” I made finger quotes in the air for emphasis.

  “Did you?”

  I bit my lip. “Maybe.”

  In truth, I might have gone a little overboard. When she’d rolled through a stop sign instead of coming to a complete stop, I ordered her out of the driver’s seat, then drove her to the Rustic Woods Police station, marched her up to an officer at the front desk and asked him to give her a lesson on why traffic signs weren’t optional. She was, of course, mortified. I thought the keepers of the law would be impressed that a mother cared enough to teach her teen good driving habits. Instead, I’m pretty sure I heard a group of blue and whites snickering when we left.

  “Okay, Signora,” Peggy sighed, “I need to get over to Roz’s. Sorry to be the bearer of that bad news.”

  “Yeah,” I rolled my eyes. “I’ll read the article once I’ve put all these cleaning supplies away. I’m afraid Howard may regret renewing our wedding vows.”

  She patted me on the back and headed out. I quickly finished the oven cleaning, stashed the supplies, and checked out the rest of the house. The girls had done a beautiful job. The carpets were free of cat hair, the toilets sparkled, and all fingerprint smudges had been removed from the kitchen cupboard doors.

  I was just tucking fresh sheets under the guest bed mattress when the phone rang. I called downstairs for someone to pick up or at least see who was calling, but none of the girls answered. They were probably in their rooms stuffing their faces with Danny’s Donuts and avoiding another set of grueling chore assignments. Since our upstairs phone was on the fritz, I had to take the stairs three at a time, thinking it might be Howard with a delayed plane update. Caller ID said “unknown” was attempting to reach me. I hate to be caught off guard by telemarketers. I considered ignoring the call so I could finish tidying the guest room, but clicked the talk button just in case.

  “Hello,” I answered warily, readying for some man or woman to roll out a mile-a-minute monologue touting the benefits of superior grade vinyl windows at never-before-heard-of, all-time-low rates.

  Silence. I wondered if Mr. or Mrs. Unknown had hung up.

  “Hello.” I waited a beat. “Anyone there?”

  “Yes,” a male voice whispered.

  Even though I suspected a phone prank, I inquired further. “Who is this?”

  “Is this Barbara Marr?” the voice whispered again.

  My safety circuits kicked in. “You’ve got three seconds to tell me who you are or I’m hanging up.”

  “Clarence.”

  “I don’t know a Clarence.”

  “You don’t know me, but I saw you last night. At the screening. If you are Barbara Marr, that is.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “Can we talk?”

  “We are talking.”

  “In person.”

  “Listen, I’m going to be honest—you’re creeping me out. I’m going to hang up—”

  “No!” Clarence whisper-shouted. “Don’t hang up! I’m a projectionist at the ACL. Your friend Frankie didn’t kill Kurt Baugh. Somone else did.. Are you still there?”

  “You have my attention.”

  Silence again.

  “Clarence?”

  “Gotta go. Meet me tomorrow at noon—the reflecting pool by the Lincoln Memorial. I’ll be on a bench wearing a red baseball hat. Password is Casablanca.” CLICK.

  The dial tone buzzed in my ear.

  Flim Flam!

  I slammed the phone into its cradle. Great balls of fire. Howard would kill me if I even considered meeting this Clarence person. He could be a serial killer. Or a lunatic.

  But Frankie needed help, and this Clarence guy might be for real. Of course, I was about to have a guest in my home—was I just supposed to take off tomorrow and forget about Mama Marr? This would all take some serious thinking, and that required serious thinking food.

  Donuts would have been the junk food of choice, but ravenous, overworked young women had consumed the full dozen. Instead, I grabbed three Oreos from the cupboard, pulled the newspaper article out of my pocket and sat at the table for a snack and a dose of masochism.

  The article, flanked by a head shot of Kurt Baugh, was short: “Movie director, Kurt Baugh, died last night at the local reviewer screening of Hell Hath No Fury, a new action adventure directed by his brother, Andy Baugh. While police have not revealed details of his death, they have announced the arrest of the mafia boss, Frankie Romano. Sources say that Romano was hired by the American Cinema League (ACL) to cater the pre-screening dinner at the request of web movie reviewer, Barbara Marr. Witnesses on the scene tell DC Daily that Romano and Marr fought violently with Baugh prior to his suspicious death. A hearing will be held this week to seek Romano’s indictment. Meanwhile, he’s being held without bond. The Baugh family did not wish to comment on the circumstances of Kurt’s death at this time.”

  I banged my head on the table three times. It didn’t help. The article was still there. Could this nightmare get any worse?

  And of course, the author got the facts all wrong. Frankie was never a Mafia boss. He was just a soldier. And we didn’t fight violently. Frankie was a gentleman defending my honor. I looked at the byline—Gina King. I felt like picking up the phone and giving Gina a piece of my frazzled mind. Right. I could only imagine the subsequent headline: Suburban Soccer Mom with Friends in Mafia and Personal, Inside Understanding of Crime Syndicate Structure, Threatens Local Washington DC Reporter.

  I was beginning to wonder when Howard would return when the phone rang. Howard’s cell number showed on the caller ID.

  I took a deep breath and put on a happy voice. “Hello, Handsome. Do we have a Mama Marr yet?”

  “She wasn’t on the plane!” Howard yelled into the phone. Howard never yells. He’s an FBI agent and they’re trained to be cool under pressure.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her name wasn’t even on the passenger list.”

  “You mean she didn’t have a ticket?”

  “Not for that flight she didn’t. I’m heading to National Airport right now. There’s another American flight from Philly coming in at 2:35. Maybe she gave me the wrong information.”

  And just because my life can’t ever be easy, a crash from upstairs was followed by Bethany’s shrill scream. “Mommy! Come quick! Amber’s hurt! There’s blood everywhere!”

  After picking my heart up from
of the floor and flying up the stairs, I quickly determined that Amber was injured, but not dying of blood loss. She was, however, losing a good amount of it from a cut on her lip. Through sobs, she explained that she had been pulling a box of Barbies from a high shelf in her closet when a plastic Barney toy on top of the box slipped off and cracked her in the mouth. A closer inspection with my finger told me Barney had not only cut her lip, but had also broken two teeth.

  “Thtupid Barney,” she said, her tears drying.

  We cleaned up the blood, put an ice pack on her lip, and I called Dr. Horner’s office. They told us to come right away and they’d slip her in between patients. I thanked my lucky stars I’d worked so hard to be extra nice to her all these years.

  I had Amber by the hand and Bethany trailing behind me when I pulled the front door open to head out.

  Usually, when I open my front door, there isn’t a four foot nine, white-haired lady with two suitcases standing on my stoop. But then again, today was proving to be unlike my more usual days.

  “Mama Marr!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  “What?” she asked with an innocent look on her plump face. “You weren’t expecting me?”

  “Howard went to the airport to pick you up, but you weren’t on the plane.”

  She shook her head so hard I thought the glasses on her nose would fly off. “No plane. They wouldn’t take Pavarotti.”

  That was when I noticed the bird cage. Canary.

  I took a few deep cleansing breaths. There was no time to ask Mama Marr why she brought her feathered companion, Pavarotti, or more importantly, why she didn’t tell us that she’d changed her travel plans. After a round of hugs, we moved the suitcases and Pavarotti up to the guest room, being sure to close the door behind us. I wondered how long it would take Indiana Jones and Mildred Pierce to smell him and start making dinner plans.