Silenced by the Yams - By Karen Cantwell Page 0,23
your mom.”
It was that kind of reaction to my mother that made it hard for me to keep friends when I was growing up. I clicked the talk button. “Mom?”
“First, let me tell you, Alka is fine, but we’re at the hospital.”
“What?”
“She took a little tumble while trying a move at my new dance class. We’re just waiting to see a doctor.”
“What happened?”
“I thought I just told you what happened.”
“Which hospital?”
“Rustic Woods.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
My phone beeped in my ear, telling me another call was coming in. I looked at the caller ID. Virginia Ham! It was my home phone. “Mom, I’ve gotta go. The girls are trying to reach me. Tell Mama Marr I’m coming.” I clicked over to the incoming call without waiting for my mother’s response. “Is everything okay?” I answered, skipping the ‘hello’ stuff altogether. My heart skipped a beat when I heard screaming in the background.
“Mom,” said Bethany calmly. “We have a problem. Someone left Mama’s door open and we just found Indy and Mildred Pierce in there.”
Bethany had a way with understatement.
“Where’s the bird?” I asked.
“Right. Well, that’s the problem. We don’t know.”
I started banging my head against the head rest. “This can’t be happening,” I heard myself say.
“We found the cage on the floor and the door was open, but Pavrotti is gone.”
Amber screamed again in the background.
“Wait,” Bethany said. “Callie says she found him.”
“Alive?” I asked, closing my eyes in a moment of prayer. Mama Marr was already lying injured in a hospital. The last thing she needed to hear was that her beloved Pavrotti was now singing his canary arias to a higher power.
Bethany hollered to Callie and I had to pull the phone from my ear to avoid going deaf. “Is he alive? Mom wants to know! Okay, scratch that. It’s only a pile of feathers. Oh, and Puddles pooped on the floor.”
I groaned and instructed her to tell Amber to stop screaming and put the cats in the basement, pronto. Then they were to find that bird. If he still had a breath of life in his little yellow body, they were to put him back in the cage and close the guest room door—tight. Finally, don’t forget to clean up the poop and make sure to let the dog out to do his business next time. I hung up the phone and banged my head on the head rest a few more times. It seemed the appropriate thing to do.
“Wow,” Guy said after a second. “If that’s married life in the suburbs, I don’t want it.”
I highly doubted he had much choice in the matter. Women probably weren’t knocking down his door looking for someone to mate with. “Yeah,” I said. “I need to take care of some things. Can you go now?”
“Sure,” he nodded. “But about—”
“Now,” Colt added.
Guy hung his head, pulled the sliding door open and stepped out, but before he closed it again, I grabbed a pen and piece of paper from my purse. “Wait,” I said. I scribbed down my cell phone number. “Here. Call or text if you hear anything more about Frankie or the murder. And tell me when you know more about your assistant.”
He scratched his head and smiled. “Gladly.”
“By the way,” I added, “why did you tell Randolph about our meeting? I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t. He called me. He was pretty unglued knowing those yams were for him. Wanted to know if I knew anything. Just to jerk his chain, I told him I was meeting with you to get some inside information, but I wasn’t going to be able to share it with him.” He slammed the door shut, waited for traffic to ease up, then ran across.
As I pulled from the parking space to speed toward Mama Marr’s bedside at the hospital, I spied Clarence far off under a cluster of trees, standing on a park bench, watching us drive off.
Chapter Nine
After dropping Colt at the commuter parking lot where he had left “The Judge,” I zipped like a speed demon to the Rustic Woods Hospital ER, where I was directed to a curtained triage room. Mama Marr was resting on a gurney bed in the half-raised position while a very nice looking man in a lab coat sat on a stool next to her and typed into a laptop. She smiled when she saw me.
“Barbara!” she shouted. “How good of you to come see me here! This is my very