Saturday Night Cleaver (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #4) by Karen Cantwell Page B

my second impulse, which was to open my big fat mouth, overpowered the first, as it often does. “Hey, Miss No-Speak-English! What’s the deal?”
    That got her to notice me.
    “You’re the lady from this morning,” she said, again, speaking better English than Colin Firth and Lawrence Olivier combined. “What are you doing here?”
    With a great deal of courage that surprised the heck out of me, I stomped down the five or six stairs between us, peeked around the corner and said to the man in baggy jeans standing there, “Excuse me, I have some important business to discuss with your...uh... partner.” I grabbed Shin Lee Cathy Black and pulled her up the stairs. “You have some ‘splainin’ to do,” I told her.
    “Get your hands off me. I’m not done with him yet.”
    “Really do not want to know the details, thank you.” I gripped her arm tighter and kept pulling. “What’s with the pretense that you don’t speak English?”
    She pulled back, but not hard enough to escape my grasp. “It’s a time saver. I had somewhere to be. And you had a crazy look in your eyes.”
    I didn’t know how she could have perceived my look as crazy, but I wasn’t going to go there. “Cheap trick,” I huffed.
    “Who are you?” She seemed very angry with me for interrupting her debauched merger.
    “Barbara Marr, Colt Baron’s friend. You’d know that if you’d have given me half a second.” I dragged her through the kitchen, into the living room and right up to Clarence and Guy, who were huddled together. Clarence was still holding my cell phone and Guy was scribbling notes on a ninety-nine-cent pocket note pad.
    I presented them with a task. “This is Shin Lee, code name, Cathy Black. Don’t let her fool you, she speaks English just fine. We saw her knocking on Colt’s door this morning and we found a business card in his condo with this address on it. We suspect he was working for her since we found pictures of an Asian man on his camera from yesterday morning.” I threw an apologetic glance to Shin Cathy. “Sorry if that sounds like racial profiling.” I pointed to my “gay” friends. “This is Clarence, he’s Colt’s son, and just as worried about him as I am. And this is Guy Mertz. If you watch Channel 10, you’ve probably switched to another station when he came on. Put your hat back on, Guy, so she knows it’s you.”
    The three of them were speechless, but Guy slipped his hat on anyway.
    “Guy, get as much information from her as you can. I’m going to find Howard. I want to get out of this place before things get too weird.” I was about to leave when I remembered something. “There were also pictures of a blonde in black sweatpants who we think is a woman named Rita Ash.”
    Clarence held up the phone for me to see. “Your friend Peggy called.”
    I turned on my heels to make an organized sweep for Howard.
    “Barb, can you get me that water?” called Guy.
    Right, the water.
    As I passed by a man in a gray striped shirt, he asked, “You’re Barb? Did you bring the tequila?”
    I frowned. “That’s Barbara Haynes. With a ‘y’ for spice.” I made the sign of a ‘y’ with my arms raised. “Look for a midget that can do the splits.” I shook my head, feeling bad for using that word. “I mean a vertically-challenged Southern drunk that can do the splits.”
    In the kitchen, I interrupted two women talking enthusiastically about some guy named John. “Excuse me, where could I find a glass?” I asked them.
    The two women shared she’s-so-dense sneers while pointing to the towel lined counter smack-dab in front of me loaded with clean hi-balls and wine glasses. The urge to stick out my tongue at them faded as my attention drew to a woman standing near a slightly opened pair of French doors that led outside. She was having a conversation with someone on the other side of the doors, but looking at me.
    “That’s not Barb,” said the woman. “Barb’s in the other room.” She