Silenced by the Yams - By Karen Cantwell Page 0,29

but it’s just kind of interesting that he would be doing a documentary on drug abuse, don’t you think?”

I wasn’t sure. He did look a little bloated when I thought about it, and the tone of his skin was definitely odd, but I just thought he’d experienced a sunless tanning booth malfunction. I filed the information into the trivia portion of my memory bank.

I thanked Judi again for having Amber over and got off the phone.

After checking in on Callie, I sat down to some serious research. Randolph Rutter had been Channel 3’s movie reviewer for quite some time, so it wasn’t hard to find information on him. I started with his bio on the Channel 3 website and learned that he had joined the team in 2001. He had graduated from Santa Fe University in 1988 with a degree in theater arts. He appeared in some small roles with touring companies until landing the job as the movie reviewer at WUVA in Kansas City. Channel 3 snatched him up a few years later. He lived in Georgetown and enjoyed spending time with his Springer Spaniels, Cary Grant and Bette Davis.

Okay, I didn’t expect to find anything juicy on his bio page, so I started clicking on links provided by Google and read a couple of interviews, a few blog articles and a Washington Post “About Town” feature. All I learned was that Rutter was as pompous in interviews as he was in real life, that he enjoyed the bachelor life, dated a lot of blondes, and believed Cary Grant was the most talented actor to grace the silver screen because he handled both drama and comedy with equal brilliance. Well, I certainly didn’t disagree with him there.

However, I wasn’t finding any smoking guns—no glaring reasons why someone would want him dead, except possibly James Cameron as revenge for the D-minus review of Avatar, which I also didn’t disagree with.

Appropriately bored by the boring life of Randolph Rutter, I did a search on Andy Baugh. That proved a little more interesting. The first link I clicked through was a post on a Hollywood gossip blog detailing a recent greenlighted blockbuster action film project—the directors would have been brothers Kurt and Andy Baugh until, for reasons unknown to the author of the blog, Andy Baugh was given the ol’ heave ho. Reportedly, tensions between the two brothers had been high ever since.

Surprised, since I hadn’t heard anything about this before the review screening, I checked the date on the post: it had been uploaded only a few hours before Kurt Baugh’s death.

Well now, wasn’t that interesting? I wondered at the possibility that Andy snuffed his own brother out of jealousy. But Colt said that Andy was the person who insisted the police investigate a possible murder, so that didn’t make sense. If he had left well enough alone, Kurt’s death never would have been considered suspicious. Most killers try to hide their crime, not call attention to it. Unless he was playing some sort of reverse psychology game.

And there was still the issue that the yams were meant for Randolph Rutter, not Kurt Baugh. Supposedly, Kurt just ended up on the wrong end of a purposeful poisoning. Was it possible that Andy and Randolph were in cahoots? It seemed a weak argument, but I scribbled notes on a steno pad anyway, so I could discuss this theory with Colt when we reconvened. I was dying to find out what Frankie had to say.

A peek at the clock on my computer monitor told me it was 10:20 p.m. After a stretch and a yawn, I decided a cup of coffee and a heavy dose of sugar would be necessary to keep me awake late enough to talk with Colt when he returned. I had just flipped the ON button to the coffee maker and was about to grab a handful of Oreos when the front doorknob jiggled.

The unexpected sound of someone attempting to enter my house late at night was enough to make the hairs on my neck spring up, but it was Puddles the burglar alarm dog that caused me to jump and drop my cookies. His yaps continued to pierce my ear drums as I scooped him up and tried unsuccessfully to hold his snout closed.

I moved toward the door and watched the knob intently, Puddles barking incessantly in my ear the entire time. Afraid he would wake Mama Marr, I ran him to the basement, locked him in, then