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

government possess the technology to pick up my conversation at a whisper, they could probably grab my thoughts from mid-air too.
    “Where are you parked?” I asked him.
    “I wouldn’t bring The Judge down here and risk her getting hurt. I took the Metro train.”
    ‘The Judge’ was Colt’s car. It was a red, lovingly restored GTO and evidently, everyone referred to these cars as The Judge. Me, I don’t name my cars. I’m too hard on them. If I named them, I’d feel guilty every time I hit a pot hole or went a year without an oil change.
    Since I was parked near the Tidal Basin at the Jefferson Memorial, Colt agreed to head in that direction and hitch a ride home with me. He didn’t know I had one more stop on my agenda.
    We climbed into my van. I turned the ignition and flipped the AC to ultra-freeze.
    “Which way to the DC city jail?” I asked after we’d both buckled in.
    Colt threw his hands in the air. “You have to be kidding me! Really? You haven’t had enough connection to murder and mayhem for one day? Now you want to go talk up a wiseguy?”
    “Oh, give it a break. He’s not a wiseguy anymore. He’s a chef. Sometimes good people get caught up in bad situations and they deserve the chance to make things right and move forward.”
    “Spending thirty plus years in the Mafia is hardly getting caught up in a bad situation, Barb.”
    I gasped. “You did it again!”
    Colt’s expression was blank. “What?”
    “You called me Barb!”
    He spoke slowly, as if I was missing a few marbles. “It’s your name.”
    “Not to you it isn’t.” I’d put the van into drive but kept my foot on the brake. “Curly. You call me Curly. You’ve never called me Barb.”
    “Never?”
    “Never ever. Not until yesterday when you brought Meeeee-gan by.”
    His lips curled into a devious smile. “I think you’re jealous.”
    “I think you’re stupid.”
    “Now you’re just being childish.”
    “Childish is holding back information from the FBI. I’m pretty sure you just broke a few laws back there.”
    “That’s not being childish. That’s being smart. To cover your ass, I might add. And you’re changing the subject.”
    “Give me a break. How were you covering my . . . derriere?”
    “Giving up swear words again?”
    “I’m trying.”
    “Good for you.” He adjusted the ac vents on my dash so they blew directly onto his face. “It occurred to me while we waited. Suppose that really was Guy Mertz they were rolling into one of those ambulances. And suppose we’d told Agent Smith that you were on your way to meet this victim, who just yesterday on his newscast linked you to a famous murder.  Seems to me the police would be interested in more than just what you might or might not have seen. I was getting us out of there fast before they put two and two together and hauled you in. Capisce?”
    I threw the gear shift back to park, took my foot off the brake and sat back in my seat feeling defeated. “So you think it’s a mistake to go talk to Frankie?”
    “Big one.”
    “But I know he didn’t kill Kurt Baugh. He brought those yams to the table for Randolph Rutter.”
    “Well, it’s a bad name, but I doubt Frankie’d want to kill him for that. Didn’t you say that Randolph insulted his food?”
    I shook my head. “No. He said his yams were cold, but Frankie didn’t seem mad about it. Certainly not mad enough to poison him.”
    Cars whizzed past us on the road where I sat, parallel parked.
    “I think someone else poisoned those yams either to frame Frankie for Randolph Rutter’s murder which then went awry. Either that, or they were meant for someone else altogether and Frankie just grabbed them and passed them on to Randolph. Kurt was just an innocent yam stealer. Either way, I’m positively certain Frankie’s not involved. I feel it in my gut, Colt.”
    He thought quietly for a minute. “Do we know for a fact the yams were poisoned?”
    “I don’t know anything except what Guy