No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (No Such Thing As...: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) (8 page)

The man lounging against the bar looked deceptively civilized, his lean, five-foot ten-inch frame draped in Armani, concealing rock-hard abs and a .38 caliber pistol tucked neatly against the small of his back. He was alone, but he wouldn’t be for long. Woman couldn’t help but flock to him. I shrank back against a potted plant, trying to catch my breath, which had been knocked out of me by the unexpected thrill of seeing him.

Nicholas Santiago was the double whammy—transcendentally beautiful and a certified Bad Boy. It doesn’t get any sexier than that. Nick and I met two months ago, and he’s been bailing me out of trouble ever since. Ironically, the only thing he couldn’t save me from was him.

It’s not like he hadn’t warned me.
“I’m not monogamous and I’m not permanent.”

And yet I’d jumped in looking. That night, the earth moved and my heart stopped and by the time it got going again, he’d moved on.

Last we’d spoken was about a month ago. John was there the day Nick had phoned, and he’d captured the aftermath with his Canon. Nick called to say he was going out of town on business. I didn’t ask what kind of business. I’m sure I didn’t want to know. If I believed a quarter of the rumors about Nick, I’d be scared. I believed all of them.

It was good that he was leaving. It would give me time to sort out my feelings. But the truth was I already knew, even if I couldn’t admit it. Only now there was no room for denial. It was written all over my face in the photo. I was in love with the guy. Oh crap.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” A busboy stood beside me, balancing a tray full of dishware in his hands.

“No. Shh. I’m fine.” I angled myself further behind the tree as a woman approached Nick and greeted him, European style, with two kisses, placed on either side of his cheek.
Pretentious twit. I’ll bet she’s not even really French. I hate her.

The busboy didn’t move.

“What? You’ve never seen a patron hide behind foliage before? I’m
kidding.
I lost an earring.” Quickly I bent down to retrieve the non-existent accessory. I couldn’t let him see me. Not like this.
If I could just find a way out of here… my meal hasn’t come yet, so it wouldn’t exactly be a “dine and dash”…

“Hello, Angel.”

Uh oh. Could I pretend I didn’t hear him? I guess not.
I stood slowly, the scotch on an empty stomach wreaking havoc with my equilibrium. “Oh, Nick, hi. Fancy meeting you here.”
Fancy meeting you here? What am I, Amish?

Nick leaned over to give me a friendly peck on the cheek, and I took a wobbly step back, knocking into the busboy. The busboy teetered backwards, flapping his hands in a futile attempt to catch the falling plates. They made a sickening crash when they hit the tile floor.

“Um, sorry.”
God, this couldn’t be any more humiliating. Oh wait. It could.
Nick’s date joined us behind the tree.
Please don’t introduce us, oh please don’t introduce us.

“Brandy, this is Pilar. Pilar, Brandy.”

Note to self: Change name to something exotic. Possibly Tanisha.

We did the whole nice to meet you routine and then mercifully, Pilar remembered a pressing engagement and left. While they were doing their double-cheeked goodbye kiss, I flagged down the waiter and handed him my credit card, asking him to pack my meal to go.

“Do you have to rush off?” Nick turned back to me, his voice soothing, his look penetrating and for a moment I forgot that I’d just seen a co-worker dead—not to mention naked and that I had vomit in my hair.

“Well, uh…”

He guided me towards the bar. “Two coffees, please.”

Oh, I get it. He thinks I’m drunk… which I am. Unhhh! There he goes bailing me out again! Does he have to be so damn gracious about it? And while I was on the subject of rhetorical questions, why was I feeling so angry with him?

The waiter came over and handed me my food.

“Gee, Nick,” I said, backing my way towards the door, “it’s been great seeing you. Well, take care.” I gave him a little salute with my free hand and then wondered why I made such an asinine gesture.

I turned and fled before I could do one more embarrassing thing and ran headlong into the glass door. I bounced off the glass and the cannelloni went flying, along with my pocketbook. My cell phone, pepper spray and stun gun sailed through the air as I hit the ground, my head landing with a clunk on the carpet. Then my phone started to ring. “Would you mind getting that?” I crawled to my knees, waving away help from the Maitre D’.

“Brandy Alexander’s phone,” Nick announced.

“Who is this?” I could hear the voice on the other end and it was not a happy one.

Nick turned the phone around and checked the caller I.D. “Detective DiCarlo. What a pleasant surprise. This is Nick Santiago.”

I scrambled over to the phone and grabbed it out of Nick’s hand. He smiled benignly as I said hello into the receiver.

“What’s he doing answering your phone?” Bobby hissed. Bobby wasn’t exactly a fan.

“Long story—and none of your business,” I added. I’d had about as much grief as I could take for one day.

“None of my business? After what you put me through the other night?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, on the verge of a major meltdown. “There’s been another—” I hesitated—“development.”

“Yeah?” His voice softened. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Eventually,” I sighed. “Just not now. Did you ever find out anything conclusive about my car brakes?”

“No reports of other cars being tampered with,” Bobby said. “No suspicious people spotted in the neighborhood except for that report from Heather, and Snake swears he did a thorough job on the brakes.” Somebody had gone to an awful lot of trouble to silence the wrong person.

Nick reached out a hand to help me up. It was warm and reassuring and I wanted to hold it forever. His expression was that of mild curiosity, but I knew him well enough not to take it at face value. “When did you start packing heat?” he asked, holding the stun gun in his other hand.

“What? Oh. Long story.”

“And none of my business?” he asked, handing me back the gun.

“It’s really not that interesting.”

“Try me.”

I was sorely tempted to unburden the whole sorry mess on Nick, from my sleepless nights to the living nightmare of Tamra’s suicide and the misguided attempts on my life. But something stopped me. And the truth is I had no idea in the world what it was.

“Come on,” he said, finally, “I’ll take you home.”

“I don’t need a ride, thanks. I have my car.”

“And I have your keys.” He held them up for me to see, leaving no room for argument.

I called Fran the next day to fill her in on everything that had happened—not because I wanted her to worry—I just knew she’d be furious with me if she found out from someone else. Franny thinks that now that she’s pregnant she misses out on all the fun.

We met at Shorty’s Rib House, the carnivore’s equivalent to Disneyland. She said the baby needed the meat and I felt silly arguing with a six-month-old fetus, so I went along for the ride. I didn’t think my stomach could take another jolt to its system, so I ordered the House Salad—iceberg lettuce with a radish on the side. Yum.

“So then what happened?” Franny asked, through a mouthful of barbequed beef ribs, bits of which were stuck solidly between her teeth.

“Nothing. I fell asleep thirty seconds after I got in the car. I can only hope I didn’t snore.”

“Did he kiss you goodbye?”

“No! We barely said two words to each other. And that’s another thing. He’s been back in town for God knows how long and he never even called me. I’m telling you, Fran. That night I spent with Nick was a fluke. He is
so
not interested.”

“Don’t be so sure.” Franny gnawed thoughtfully on a bone. I could see the gears in her keen, analytical mind working overtime.

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying not to sound too excited and failing miserably.

“Well, Nick doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who waits for a woman to make up her mind—and let’s face it, Bran, you’re still emotionally joined at the hip with Bobby. I think you and DiCarlo should just do it and get it over with,” she decided. “See if the old spark is still there.”

“Jesus, Franny,” I yelled, and a piece of lettuce flew out of my mouth and landed on her side of the table. “If I wanted that kind of advice I’d be sitting here watching Janine chow down half a cow instead of you.”

“I hit a nerve, huh?” she grinned.

“No.”
Yes.
“And anyway,” I went on, lowering my voice to barely a whisper, “there’s something a little more pressing I wanted to talk to you about.”

Fran looked at her watch. “Better make it quick. I’m due back at the office in twenty minutes.”

I took a deep breath. “It’s about Tamra,” I announced. “I think she was murdered.”

I had plenty of time to think about it too, seeing as I was up all night again, so it gave me something new to dwell on besides where Bobby and I were headed and who Nick was sleeping with when he wasn’t busy selling arms to third world nations or whatever probably illegal thing he did for a living.

The police were handling it as a routine suicide. As if deciding to end one’s own life could ever be considered routine. But when I really thought about it, things didn’t add up. Tamra just didn’t appear all that depressed. Certainly, she wasn’t thrilled the day her husband showed up at the restaurant, but she seemed more pissed off than suicidal. And she’d been so excited about a story she had been working on. I couldn’t imagine her checking out when her investigation was going so well.

I called Detectives Moody and Hahn, the cops in charge of the case, with my theory about how Tamra had really died. I thought maybe they’d invite me to come in so we could pool our information, but all they’d said was thank you and they thought they could handle it from here. “But what about her husband?” I’d persisted. “Have you checked out his alibi? And what about a suicide note? Isn’t it standard practice to leave some kind of message behind, explaining why they didn’t want to live anymore? I mean,
come on, people,
what was her motivation?”

Detective Moody didn’t feel inclined to discuss the subtleties of the suicidal mind with me. In fact, he suggested that I was looking for trouble where there wasn’t any, as a way of lessening my own feelings of guilt over not being able to save my friend from herself. I made a counter suggestion for Detective Moody to perform an anatomical impossibility involving his head and his butt and then the line went dead. Must’ve been a bad connection.

“So what do you think?” I asked Franny, when I’d caught her up to speed.

She gave me a long look, and I swear there was pity in her eyes.

“You’re not going to like it,” she said finally.

“Then never mind.”

“Too late,” she said. “You already asked. Brandy, did you ever think there might be a little bit of truth to what that cop said about you feeling guilty? Not that you have anything to feel guilty about,” she rushed on. “But you said yourself you barely knew this woman. Isn’t it possible she was more troubled than you thought, and it just got to be too much for her?” Franny nabbed me with a look. “Hon, I think you may be plunging headlong into this whole murder theory as a way to avoid your own issues.”

“What issues, Fran? I have no issues. I am issue-free.” I folded my arms in front of my chest, my body language screaming,
“Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

“Fine,” said Fran. “You’re the picture of mental health. I’ve got to get back to work.” She squeezed her way out of the booth, pausing to take one last chomp on a rib.

“Franny,” I sighed.

“Yeah?”

“I’ll admit I may have a few
teensy
issues where I
might
benefit from professional help. But if I’m right about Tamra and her death wasn’t a suicide, don’t you think she deserves to have the truth come out?”

“Even if you are right, Brandy, why does it always have to be you?”

Boy. First Bobby and now Fran. How could they ask me to just ignore two people who can’t defend themselves? Jeez. Don’t they know me at all?
“If not me, Fran, then who?”

I thought about our conversation all the way back to my house. I mean it’s not like I went looking for trouble. I didn’t ask to be kidnapped and I certainly could have lived without the image of Tamra’s decomposing body… Y’know the average person could go through his entire life without experiencing even one of these events… How weird is that, anyway? I get mistaken for some unknown woman and almost killed because of it, and then my co-worker ends up dead… Talk about co-incidence… Shit! I am so stupid!
I flung myself through the front door, grabbed the phone and punched in Bobby’s number.

B
obby didn’t pick up. Damnit! I tried his cell, the station and his house. I even called DiVinci’s Pizza, thinking he may have stopped in for a quick lunch. He wasn’t there, but since I had them on the line I ordered a large pepperoni and a root beer.

While I waited for my pizza to arrive, I called Eric. “Have you heard anything more on Tamra?” I asked when he picked up the phone.”

“Just that her husband’s back in town. Lisa Stanley interviewed him last night. He’s staying at his brother’s. Apparently he’s too broken up to stay at the house. She said Rhineholt appeared pretty devastated. They were coming up on their fifth wedding anniversary.”

“When’s the funeral?”

“Tomorrow. A small private service, family only, after the cremation.”

Cremation. Shit.

I leafed through the phone book and punched in the number for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office.

“Giancola.”

“Vince, it’s Brandy.” Vincent Giancola was my boyfriend in the third grade. He used to cheat off of me during spelling tests. He’s an assistant D.A. now.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to call you. My mother told me your parents will be in town on Saturday and your mother’s invited me over for dinner.” He hesitated a beat, and when he spoke again his voice turned raspy, like he’d swallowed a lemon. “The thing is,” he said, “I think I’m coming down with something,” which was followed by the fakest cough I’ve ever heard.