Silenced by the Yams - By Karen Cantwell Page 0,22

his assistant killed. He spotted Colt and me walking to the van and decided to follow us.

“Why didn’t you just catch up and talk to us while we walked?”

“Because I wasn’t the only one following you.”

Colt broke a smile for the first time. “Kid with a goatee wearing cargo shorts and a red baseball cap?”

“You know him?”

I sighed. “He says he’s a projectionist at ACL and he knows who killed Kurt Baugh. I met him earlier, but Colt scared him off before he told me what he knew. For some reason he’s still following us.”

“He probably has a crush on you, Curly,” Colt said.

“Great. Now you call me Curly.” I turned my attention back to Guy. “Let’s cut to the chase. What evidence do you have that Frankie isn’t the murderer?”

Guy ran a hand over his partially balding head. “That’s a little complicated.”

Colt didn’t look happy and I thought he might grab Mertz by the scruff of the neck again and shake some stuffing out of him. “Either you have evidence or you don’t. Not complicated.”

“See, here’s the thing,” Guy said, sniffing and pulling on his skinny nose. “Things are tough at Channel 10 and—”

“You don’t have any evidence, do you?” Colt’s generally cool blue eyes were turning angry red.

“I might not make the cut!” Guy shouted. “I need a great story like this to save my job.”

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Guy, what did you do?”

“Do? I didn’t do anything. I was just hoping to . . . you know . . . you’re a great story. You find yourself in some pretty, I don’t know, exciting, dangerous predicaments. I thought if I could get the story on this one from the inside—you know, kind of like a war correspondent—I’d be able to hold my rank at the station.”

Colt looked ready to kill. “Who knew that you were planning to meet Barb at the hot dog stand?”

Guy shook his head. He looked confused. “I don’t know. My assistant, obviously . . .”

“Anyone else? Anyone else know about this hair-brained scheme of yours?”

“Sir, I take offense—”

“You can take a flying leap for all I care—who else knew?”

With a horribly defeated look on his hound dog face, Guy Mertz leaned back in the seat and began twirling his bushy eyebrows with his fingers. “Randolph Rutter,” he said finally.

My head was spinning. A crazy kid claiming to have valuable information was now stalking me, a down-and-out news reporter wanted to shadow me in hopes of getting the news story of the century, and Colt was ready to pop a gasket over who knew about our meeting plans. What? Did he suspect that someone was trying to have me snuffed? That was plain silly. Who would want me killed? I’m a nice person. Relatively speaking.

I was about to ask Colt where he was going with his line of questioning when my phone rang. I pulled it from the pocket in my shorts. Howard’s number showed on the caller ID. I took a deep breath and pressed talk. “Hi, Honey!” I said, chipper as a blue bird on a sunny morning.

“Where are you?”

Uh oh. I had to think back. What did I tell him I was doing? Certainly I hadn’t told him I was meeting with informants in Washington, DC. After a frantic rifle through my memories, I recalled my fib about Roz’s going-away party. Unfortunately, the pause was too long, and Howard answered his own question. “Smith told me you were in DC. At a drive-by shooting.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all you have to say—‘oh’?”

“No. I was also going that say that it was nice of her to call you and tell you I was okay.”

He didn’t respond right away, but I could easily picture him rolling his eyes. “Put Colt on the phone, would you?”

Uncle Sam! That Agent Smith was such a tattle-tale. I handed Colt the phone.

“How’s it hangin’ Howie?” Colt loved to tease Howard, but he became serious pretty darned quick. He nodded and frowned throughout what I assumed were Howard’s instructions to get me home, lock me in the house and throw away the keys. “Right,” he said finally. “I’m on it, Dude,” and he hung up.

I wanted to ask him what Howard said, but my phone went off again almost instantly in his hands. “Oh, right—someone was calling while I was on the phone.” He glanced at the caller ID, then threw the phone toward me as if it was infected with the plague. “It’s