Read Online Saturday Night Cleaver (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #4) by Karen Cantwell - Free Book Online Page A

She’s an angel. You’re so lucky to have her for a mother.”
    I wondered how much my mother paid her to say that. It spilled out too easily, like an amateur bit of dialogue in a movie on Lifetime.
    “What do you do in a pediatric intensive care?” I asked my mom, trying to bite back my skepticism that she did anything more than sort their mail.
    She brushed me off. “Nothing much.”
    “Nothing much?” scoffed Martha the overly enthusiastic nice nurse. “She spends hours with the babies who don’t have mommies to hold them.”
    I couldn’t believe there were that many babies who didn’t have mommies to hold them, but Martha corrected me. While there was the occasional baby who was born underweight or malnourished to mothers who did not want their children, there was also a growing number of babies born to mothers who were addicted to opiates. Their mothers had lost parental rights and the poor babies had to spend weeks in the NICU while being weaned off of the drugs.
    “There aren’t enough nurses to go around sometimes to hold the babies as much as they need, so your mother and some other wonderful ladies,” she stopped herself for a second, “and gentlemen too” she added, “offer their time and love.”
    “You mean Crack babies?”
    Martha winced and shook her head. “Some people call them ‘Oxycontin babies’ but I don’t like the term. Here at Fairfax General, we call them ‘babies-in-need.’”
    I expected my mother to tell me that I should try volunteering sometime, as I could obviously use the exposure to human kindness. But she didn’t.
    During our brief talk with Martha, not less than four nurses, a doctor, and a janitor (who looked suspiciously like that guy on the TV show Scrubs ) waved to my mother and shouted a friendly, “Hello, Diane!”
    On our drive from Fairfax back to Rustic Woods, I tried to focus on Colt’s mysterious disappearance, but my mind kept drifting to visions of Diane Pettingford—hard-line, no-nonsense mother—gently holding and cradling poor little drug-addicted babies. The two images just didn’t mesh.
    Maybe, I thought, it was time to get to know my own mother a little bit better.
    Then I thought, Barb, are you out of your freaking mind?

Chapter Seven

    C olt’s old, worn key stuck in the GTO’s door lock. I feared for a minute while Howard jiggled it back and forth, that we would have to resort to the coat hanger method of breaking in. His persistence prevailed, however, and soon we were not-so-systematically digging through the belongings in Colt’s precious automobile. The papers on the passenger’s side floor amounted to nothing more than a three-month-old receipt for an oil change and tire rotation at Speedy Lube, two empty McDonald’s bags, a paper ripped from a steno pad with an address scribbled on it, and a faded flier advertising the Rustic Woods Summer Jamboree at Rustic Woods Town Center which had probably been placed on his windshield while parked in the Town Center lot months earlier.
    Howard used his cell phone to search the address on the steno paper and came up with the office of NOVA Urology, Drs. Robert Markleson, MD and Kyung Kong, MD, F.A.C.S.
    “Kyung Kong?” I asked with a half-chuckle. “Seriously?”
    “It’s what it says.”
    “Poor guy. I hope he uses a nickname like Joe or Willy or something.” I thought about that and realized that Willy Kong was probably no better. “What does F.A.C.S. stand for?”
    Howard googled the acronym zippy quick on his smart phone and had an answer before I could vocalize my next thought which was, Is Colt seeing a urologist?
    “Surgeon. Kong is a licensed surgeon.”
    “Ouch.”
    “Tell me about it,” Howard cringed.
    “Do you think Colt is seeing one of these guys as a patient?”
    “Either that, or working for him, or following him.” He pointed to my purse. “Get your phone out, we’ll eliminate or confirm the first possibility.”
    Whoa, my husband was so cool and in charge. I