No Such Thing As a Good Blind Date: A Brandy Alexander Mystery (No Such Thing As: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) (23 page)

Franny rolled her eyes and went back to eating the wasabi nuts. I decided to forgive her, since she was my ride home. And anyway, another, more pressing thought occurred to me.

“If Keith couldn’t pay his bar tab, I wonder what else he wasn’t paying.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what if he ran up a tab at the tables and couldn’t pay it back? It would make sense that they’d send someone after him to collect. Someone like Bulldog, maybe.” But that still didn’t explain what was so important about the thumb drive and why they both seemed to need it so badly.

“I have to hit the john,” Franny announced. She was averaging about four times and hour, and she was only in her third month.

“Wait, I’ll come with you.”

“Let’s go to the one at Trump Marina. I hear they’ve got marble toilet seats and a breath mint dispenser.”

We passed the bartenders on the way out. The older one was crouched next to the dumpster, smoking a cigarette, while the younger one leaned against the side of the building, a sullen look on his handsome face. The older one was ranting in Chinese. I pulled on Franny’s arm, dragging her back around the corner, out of sight.

“Wow. I wonder what they’re fighting about.”

“They’re bartenders. They’re probably arguing over whether a martini should be shaken or stirred. Come on, I have to pee!” She began to pull away, but I yanked her back again. Another man joined them. He had several bags of trash, which he tossed into the dumpster. The younger man said something in English and the guy with the trash started to shake his head, vehemently. Either he strongly disagreed with what was being said to him, or he had water in his ears.

“I think this could be important, Fran. And I’m not just playing Nancy Drew. You said you wanted an adventure. Well, here’s your chance.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocketbook and dialed Fran’s cell. As soon as we connected, I handed hers to her and dropped mine back into my purse. Then I walked around the side of the building, towards the dumpsters. When the men saw me, all conversation stopped. I pulled a wad of paper out of my bag and crumpled it up, throwing it into the bin. As I went to close my purse, I “accidentally” spilled the contents onto the ground. The men paid little to no attention to me, just marking time until I left. Quickly I picked up my stuff, nudging the open cell phone under the dumpster. I walked back around the corner to Franny. She was holding her phone to her ear.

“Chinese…Chinese…Chinese…” she said, muffling the part you talk into. “Ooh, English.” She shoved the phone into my hand and we stood together, listening. The voices were distant, but discernible.

“I’m sick of this. If I had known it would be so bad, I would have stayed in China.”

“Well, you don’t have a choice now. Unless you want to go back the way you came.”

“Hah,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “He’ll go back in a body bag.”

Fran jerked her head up, her eyes so wide I thought they’d pop right out of her head.

There was a shuffling movement and then someone spoke. “What’s this?” The words came in loud and clear. I panicked and stuck my head out from around the corner. Oh shit. The smoking bartender was bending down to pick up my phone. I disconnected Fran’s, instructing her to stay put. Then I began running towards the dumpster.

Affecting a casualness I certainly didn’t feel I called out to them. “Hey guys, have any of you seen my cell phone? It fell out of my pocketbook when I went to throw some trash away. Oh, you found it.” I smiled, extending my hand expectantly. If suspicious looks could kill, I’d be writing this from the grave. He handed it to me and I plunked it into my bag. “Thanks.”

Franny was waiting for me on the boardwalk when I reappeared around the corner. The normally unruffled Di-Angelo twin was shaking in her high-heeled booties.

“Did you hear what those guys were talking about? Body bags! I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t
want to know
what’s going on, and if you had a brain in your head, you wouldn’t either.”

“What happened to all that need for adventure?”

“Okay, so maybe I was wrong about needing excitement in my life. I’m going to be a mother. That’s plenty exciting enough. I’m gonna go home, take up knitting and trade the T-bird in for a station wagon.” We’d reached the parking lot. The T-bird was the hottest looking car there. “Maybe I’ll just keep the T-bird for a little while longer.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Ya gotta work up to this motherhood business gradually.”

Franny dropped me off at the martial arts studio. I’d stayed over at Frankie’s last night, for various reasons, mostly having to do with my ever-growing feelings of lust for Nick. Plus, I figured he could use a break from me—too much of a good thing and all that. But the truth is, I missed him.

He was teaching a class when I walked in. I stood in the doorway and watched for a while, but all that testosterone flying around made me kind of nervous. I looked instead, for Tanya, figuring we could have some “girl talk”—you know, where do you shop for clothes, who cuts your hair, have you ever slept with Nick—but she didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight. Finally, I went back into Nick’s office to wait for class to be over.

While I was back there, I hit the Internet looking up articles on illegal immigration in the state of New Jersey. Bobby always told me to start with what I already knew. Okay, what did I know, or at least suspect? The casino owners had been investigated for hiring illegals. The majority of the “grunt” workers were Asian. The employees I had contact with were unhappy with their work situation, but seemed too frightened to do anything about it.

According to the articles I read, the illegals are smuggled into the country, via Mexico, and shipped to various states including New Jersey. They then pay back their passage, essentially, by becoming indentured servants. Could the bartenders have been part of an illegal alien smuggling ring? No wonder they were so grumpy.

So where did Keith fit in to all this? Was he just some hapless compulsive gambler who owed money to the Diamond Casino, which co-incidentally is a hotbed of illegal activity, or does he play a broader role in this?

I went back to looking for common threads. Bulldog and Harrison were both connected to the casino—Bulldog was the bouncer, Harrison was a patron who owed them money. Both men were after the thumb drive, ergo, the thumb drive is in some way connected to the casino. I paused for a minute. When did I start using words like ergo? But I digress.

The more I thought about it, the more I was sure Bulldog was the guy who beat up Keith. On the one hand, maybe he just did it as payback for the money Harrison owed the casino. But what if there were more to it than that? What if Harrison was supposed to bring the owners the thumb drive, only the dog ate it? The key was in finding out just what was on the damn thing. Then the pieces would start falling into place.

Carla called me, just as I was dozing off in the red velvet chair. She caught me off-guard, or else I’m sure I would have put up a better fight when she told me what she wanted. “Bran, I was talking to Mrs. Starlucci, down at the shop. Her nephew is new in town and—”

“Forget it, Carla. The last guy you set me up with was a hundred and eight.”

“Will you listen? I’ve met this one. He’s your age and he’s
hot.”

“How hot?”

Okay,” she conceded, “maybe not ‘Nicholas-Santiago-Columbian-Underworld’ hot, but a nice, respectable P.E. teacher hot. Cute, good build, never been married—”

“He’s gay.”

“He’s not gay. He just broke up with a woman he’d been seeing for two years.”

“Oh. Rebound.”

“It was mutual and they’re still good friends.”

“Republican?” Carla paused, and I could hear her eyeballs rolling around in the back of her head.

“Independent,” she said through clenched teeth. “Anything else?”

I’d run out of objections so I decided to play my Ace card. I sucked in a dramatic breath. “Now’s not a good time. I’ve got a homicidal maniac after me.”

“Well, when don’t you?” She had a point.

Nick’s phone rang and I automatically leaned over and checked the caller I.D. The readout said Alana. Alana of the Jimmy Choos. Was she calling for a rain check on her interrupted evening? The thought propelled me into a deep funk. I sighed.

“Okay, Carla. I’ll go out with Mr. Wonderful.”

“Great, honey. I’m sure you’ll have fun.”

Maybe Carla was right. This might actually be fun. After all, anything that could possibly go wrong on a blind date already did. The way I figured it, I was home free.

“I saw Nick.”

Janine took a sip of her diet coke and tore off a chunk of Italian bread. We were having dinner at Sargenti’s, in celebration of Janine’s new job as the newest member of Team Tony, Tony being Tony Tan, South Philly’s premier realtor. “Aren’t you staying with him?” she asked. “You must see him every day.”

“No, I mean I
saw
him—ya know, in the ‘biblical sense’.”

“What?”

I pointed “down there.”

Janine stopped eating the bread. “Shut up! I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me. I want details, girl.”

“No. No details. He took a shower, dropped the towel, I saw him. End of discussion.”

“Well, what did he look like? Oh my God, he must be incredible.”

I had no choice but to tell her. “I think I insulted him.”

“Did he seem insulted?”

“No, he was really cool. Said a lot of women find it more—”

“Pleasurable,” Janine nodded, dreamily. “It’s true. You are one lucky woman.”

“Janine, he thinks I’m a sexual retard, and he’s right. Now he’s never going to try anything with me again. As we speak he’s probably whipping it out for someone else and I’ll die alone with a houseful of cats feasting on my decaying body.”

“Yep,” Janine agreed, tearing off another chunk of bread. “That’s just what’s going to happen.”

Tony called, midway through our meal. Seems he had a hot prospect for a property in Bella Vista and needed Janine’s special touch to seal the deal. Considering the prospect was a horny hetero twenty-nine year old, single male, I began to suspect Tony had hired Janine for more than her typing skills—which were negligible.

“Sorry to skip out on you, Bran. I hate to leave you alone. Can you call someone?”

I assured her I was a big girl and was perfectly capable of getting myself back to Nick’s in one piece. Truth is, I was scared shitless, so when Bobby walked in ten minutes later, I called him over to the table and offered him a seat.

“I’m on a dinner break. Just getting some “to go” food for some of the guys.” He had on his black leather bomber jacket and black jeans. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and hadn’t slept in longer than that. Crap. I hate it when he looks endearingly vulnerable. It rips my heart out.

“How’s Toodie doing?” I asked. “Have you seen him?”

Bobby sat down opposite me and started tearing at the bread Janine had left. “Not great. They won’t bond him out because he’s a flight risk.”

I still thought the cops were pinning this on the wrong guy and said as much to Bobby.

“I know your feelings about this. I mean you’re not exactly shy about sharing your opinions.” His eyes crinkled and his mouth curved into a grin, and for a split second there was the old Bobby. The one who used to love me. “I’ve been up for three days trying to track this asshole Davis down. I don’t know if he was involved with Ilene Werner’s death. We don’t even have any proof that he knew her. There isn’t much to link him to that besides Toodie’s word, and let’s face it, that’s not worth much at the moment. But he killed Andi. I feel it in my gut. I just don’t have any hard evidence to link him to her murder.”

My lasagna arrived. I picked up a fork and handed Janine’s to Bobby. “Help yourself. I can’t finish all this.”

“Since when?”

Since I realized the possibility of Nick seeing me naked.

“Do you have any clues at all in Andi’s murder?”
Besides the glaring fact that if I hadn’t hassled her about Glen, she’d be alive today.

Bobby hesitated. I knew that look. He was waffling between respecting police confidentiality and telling me what all he knew. I waited and he caved.

“There were some skin samples under her nails. Looks like she put up a struggle and might’ve dug her nails into his scalp. But we don’t have anything to compare it with. Not until we find Glen and do a DNA test.”

“So if you had a sample of say, hair, you could compare that with whatever you found under her nails?”

“That’s right.”

“Bobby,” I gulped. “I have some good news and some bad news.”

The bad news was I’d forgotten (really!) that when I went through Glen’s house, I’d picked up the few remaining personal items that he’d left there and stuck them in my bag. The good news is I still had the hairbrush with Glen’s hair entwined in its bristles, tucked away under my bathroom sink.

Bobby stood and yanked me out of the booth by the elbow.

“Ow. What are you trying to do, break my arm?”

“You’re lucky it’s not your neck.” He threw some bills on the table. “Let’s go.”

He was dragging me through the restaurant and I had to break into a trot to keep up with him.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Your house.”

It was just as I’d left it, sliced couch and all. My eyes swept the room, taking in the devastation. I just don’t understand it. Bad things never happened when my parents lived here. Although my mom did get an obscene phone call once. Turned out to be my father, trying to spice up their sex life.

I refused to go upstairs alone. It had been days since anyone had tried to break in, and I figured I was due. Bobby led the way.

“There,” I said, pointing to the cabinet under the sink. He retrieved it and opened the baggie. “Smells like Cheeze-its.”

We drove back to the restaurant in silence. Once or twice I caught Bobby looking at me, but he turned away each time, careful not to make eye contact. He was mad at me. Okay, so inadvertently I’d withheld evidence—again. It’s not like I did it on purpose this time, and he should be glad I’d remembered at all.