No Such Thing as a Secret: A Brandy Alexander Mystery (No Such Thing As...A Brandy Alexander Mystery) (3 page)

“Janine thinks I should have chosen something more subtle.” She made a face at her sister. “What the hell do I want subtle for? I’ve waited my entire life for this sucker.”

I smiled and hugged her. It was quite a stretch. Twin auburn haired goddesses, Franny and Janine stand 5’ 9” in their stocking feet. I’m 5’ 4” in two-inch heels.

“The ring is perfect,” I said. “So when do I get to meet Eddie?”

“Tomorrow night. We’re having a little blowout at Paul’s club. It’s Oldies Night.”

My brother is part owner of a small dance club in downtown Philly, off Market Street. He plays a mix of live local bands and canned music. Paul plays the saxophone. When he was twelve my parents had started him on lessons, thinking it would help boost his self-confidence. Growing up, my brother had a royal stutter. As a kid he was the butt of merciless jokes, (made mostly by me) but he kept it under control with the overuse of certain illegal substances (you know those wacky musicians!). It’s pretty much gone now and only reappears when he’s super tired or stressed.

“Frankie, Paul, take Brandy’s bags upstairs. Janine and John, come help me in the kitchen.” Franny disappeared into the other room as Paul and Frankie carted my bags up the narrow staircase to my old bedroom. Franny is an organizational freak. She manages a small law office in Center City. Before Fran started working there, the place was “going under,” but Franny whipped the office into shape in no time, and now they run a thriving business. Of course, everyone’s deathly afraid of Fran, which is exactly how she likes it.

I plopped down on the couch, exhausted, and began to survey the room. Everything looked exactly the same, not a plastic flower arrangement out of place. My mother prides herself on two things, good cooking and good taste. While it is a well known fact among family members that she has neither, no one would ever dream of letting her in on the general consensus.

She makes two meals, dry chicken and overcooked pasta, and she has the decorating sense of Martha Stewart on Acid. Colors clash, knick knacks abound and shag carpeting reigns supreme. As far as my mother is concerned, if God had meant for her to put fresh flowers on the table, He never would have invented plastic.

The house used to belong to my grandparents. My grandfather died when I was four, and my grandmother couldn’t bear to stay here without him. So my family moved in and she moved into a duplex, a few blocks away. That’s how I met Johnny. His family lived on the other half of the property. I have vivid memories of our first encounter. I was sitting outside on the little porch swing, kicking my feet high out in front of me. Johnny emerged from his apartment and sat down next to me, uninvited. Neither of us said a word for several minutes. We just sat there, swinging our legs. Finally John spoke up.

“You’re ugly.”

“So are you.” Ah, trading insults, the universal language of love. And that was the start of a lifelong friendship.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Carla arranged herself on the couch, next to me.

“I ran into Bobby at the Italian Market,” she said, without preamble. My head shot up so fast I thought it would fly right off my neck.

“Oh?”
Breathe, Brandy. Keep it light.
“I thought he was on vacation.”

Carla shrugged. “He’s back. He asked about you.”

“That’s nice.”
Oh my god, he asked about me!
“What did he say?”
A perfectly reasonable question.

“He said, ‘How’s Brandy?’”

“Hmm…”
Nice touch. This “faux casual” is really fooling Carla.
“And what did
you
say?”

“When?”

“When he asked about me. What did you say back?”

“I said you went on safari and were eaten by a gazelle, and then
he
said, ‘Oh, that’s too bad, Zimbabwe’s lovely this time of year.’”
I think she’s on to me
.

“Brandy, I love you, sweetheart, but this phony nonchalance isn’t fooling anyone. It’s been four years. You’ve got to come to terms with your feelings for that man.”

“I’m working on it,” I sighed, slumping forward on the couch. “So, really, how is he?”

Carla shrugged. “Truthfully, I don’t know. For a guy who just got back from a vacation he didn’t look too well rested.”

“What do you mean?”

Carla shifted in her seat and began picking at her left pinky nail. A bit of bright orange nail polish chipped off and fell onto her blouse. She flicked it away. “Damn. That’s what I get for using the store brand.”

“Carla!”

“Oh, sorry, honey. I don’t know--he just didn’t seem himself. When I think about it, he’s been real distant lately, and I get the sense that he’s not real happy. Personally, I didn’t think his marriage was going too well, but then he announced that he and his wife and the baby were going on vacation.” She looked up at me with compassionate, mascara- laden eyes. “Are you sure you want to hear about him, honey?”

“Yes.”
No, not sure at all.
“Carla, when Bobby and I broke up, it almost killed me. But I always knew he never meant to hurt me. You said it yourself, I’ve got to come to terms with my feelings for him and move on. I’ve run away long enough.”

“Since when did you become so emotionally mature?”

“Since I started watching Dr. Phil.
What?
It gets really slow at work in the afternoons.”

I wanted to pursue my questioning about Bobby, find out more about his shift in personality, but Paul and Uncle Frankie chose that moment to reappear back down the stairs.

“I see Mom and Dad haven’t touched your room since you moved out,” Paul observed. They’ve still got your Julio Inglasias poster hanging on the wall.”

“That is
not
my poster. I think Mom put it up when she was going through ‘the change.’”

An hour and a half later, the various members of my Welcome Wagon had taken off, either for home or work. We had stuffed ourselves with lox and bagels and homemade cannoli. Now, I just wanted to curl up in my own little bed and take a nice long nap.

I was being chased by a herd of man-eating gazelles. They were bearing down on me, and I couldn’t outrun them. Just as I was about to be devoured by a particularly aggressive one, Julio Inglasias appeared and began singing to them in Spanish. That seemed to calm them, and they all went to sleep and began to snore.

The snoring became louder, more insistent. I sat up and looked around, groggily. Julio winked at me from the wall on the other side of the room. The phone on the bed-stand continued to ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey, sweetheart. How’s my girl?”

“Dad! I’m fine. How’s your leg?”

“Not so bad. Everyone in the complex thinks I broke it water skiing.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it sounds a hell of a lot better than tripping over a bowling ball.” He let out a hearty guffaw, and I laughed along with him. My dad has a knack for adjusting reality to suit the image he has of himself. It’s one of his most endearing traits.

“Lou, let me talk to her.” My mother grabbed at the phone.

“Just a minute Lorraine, I just got on.” A five- minute discussion ensued about whose idea it was to call in the first place, during which time I climbed out of bed, brushed my teeth and washed my face. My mother won.

“Honey, how was the flight? Did you meditate, like I told you?”

“Yeah, mom. Worked like a charm.”

“I knew it would. It’s supposed to be very calming. I heard it on ‘Oprah’”. My mother worships at the Oprah Altar.

“I miss you, honey.”

“I miss you too,” I said, automatically.

“So, what are your plans for the day?”

I checked the clock on the bed-stand. Ten thirty a.m. Great. That brings my total hours of sleep in the last two days up to “one.” I eyed my bed, not bothering to suppress a yawn.

“I don’t know yet, Mom. The meditation was great and all, very refreshing, but I’m still a little tired. I thought maybe I’d go back to sleep.”
Take the hint. Please, take the hint.

“Oh, honey, you really should get out and see what they’ve done to the neighborhood, since you’ve been gone. The Costellos got an awning, it’s so garish, and the new neighbors in the Lipskys’ old house just remodeled. Oh, and I hear St. Dom’s is having a Halloween Carnival. I wish I could be there with you now,” she ended wistfully. Somewhere in the back of my throat a lump was forming, and I began to miss my mommy in earnest.

We talked for another fifteen minutes, about Franny’s wedding and the psychological effects it will have on Janine. My mother thought she recalled an “Oprah” about twins and “wedding sibling rivalry.” Then, with great reluctance, she said her goodbyes.

“Mom, I love you. Kiss Daddy for me.”

I tried to get back to my nap, but it was a fruitless effort. Maybe I was having a delayed reaction to all the chocolate, but suddenly I was wide-awake. As I lay in bed, I stared at the ceiling at the Kurt Cobain poster I’d stuck up there when I was fifteen. I can’t say I was a huge fan, I just thought he was cute. That started me thinking about people I didn’t like but thought were cute, and those thoughts segued into people I like and think are cute but I wouldn’t want to sleep with, which made me think about Johnny, who is very cute in an Italian elf sort of way but not exactly the stuff female fantasies are made of.

Then I began thinking about Johnny stumbling onto a police investigation. Some people have all the luck. I’ve waited my entire life to sink my teeth into something like this, while John just snaps some pictures in the wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly he’s swapping doughnut recipes with Philadelphia’s Finest. It is
so
not fair.

Then, I thought John could introduce me to the cop in charge of the murder investigation, and we could work shoulder to shoulder to solve the crime (me and the cop, not me and Johnny) and we’d fall in love (again, me and the cop, not me and Johnny) and get married, and we’d become this dynamite investigative team, a sort of Nick and Nora for the new millennium, and…
Okay, get a grip. We haven’t even been introduced yet.

I glanced at the clock. Eleven a.m. which would make it eight o’clock in L.A. The morning news would be in high gear by now. My segments are generally pre-taped, but I do get to go on the occasional shoot. Real high profile stuff too, like The Burbank High School Spelling Bee Championships, or a freak snowstorm in Crenshaw. I honestly don’t know what they’d do without me to cover these world-changing events. Feeling pretty high on myself, I called my boss to see how they were faring without me. One of the P.A.’s, a nineteen year old UCLA student name Jeannie, answered the phone.

“Hey, Jeannie, it’s Brandy.”

“Oh hi, Brandy. We miss you.”
Sweet kid.

“Thanks. Is Gail in?”

“Yeah, but we’ve got our hands full right now.”

“Oh? What’s up?”

“A big fire broke out in an apartment building, down town, and according to our sources it may be the work of a serial arsonist.”

“No kidding!” I said, salivating at the assignment. “So, is Brian out covering it, or is he still home, flossing his teeth?” I chuckled good naturedly to let Jeannie know I was just joshing old Brian.

“Actually, Brian’s home with the flu and Mark’s covering a murder-suicide in Echo Park. Connie’s investigating the noxious fumes on Fairfax, so that just leaves me!”

“You!”

“Yeah,” she gushed. “Can you believe it? I’m going out on an honest-to goodness assignment—something important, and life changing. I just can’t believe my incredible luck.”
She stole my assignment, the Bitch!

“Oh, listen, Brandy, I’ve got to run. I’ll tell Gail you called.”

“You do that, Jeannie. Oh, and Jeannie” —

“Yes?”

“Break a leg.”

“Thanks, Brandy!”

I slammed down the phone, furious. Three years! I’ve worked my ass off for these people for three years! Squeezing into a phone booth with sixteen sorority sisters for a segment on “Campus Antics,” walking eight, yapping mutts at a time to bring our audience the “true L.A. dog walking experience,” eating sushi on Sunset, masquerading as a Mariachi on Cinco de Mayo, and I’ve done it all without complaint. But this time they’ve gone too far!

Somehow, my righteous indignation failed to recognize the fact that I was three thousand miles away when the arsonist decided to get match-happy. It’s not that I begrudged Jeannie her big break, (okay, I did, but I didn’t
want
to begrudge her, so that should count for something.) It’s just that I wanted to make a difference in the world. I knew I was capable of much more than the fluff pieces I was doing, and I wanted a chance to prove it. It was time to take stock of my life, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. Finally, I reached into my bag and extracted the last Hershey’s Kiss. When in doubt, eat more chocolate.

S
am’s Italian Deli makes great hoagies. They’re crammed with every kind of Italian cold cut imaginable, plus provolone, Swiss, tomatoes, onions, shredded lettuce, oregano and generously doused with olive oil. There are lots of restaurants sprinkled around the L.A. area touting “authentic Philly hoagies,” but no self-respecting native Philadelphian would be caught dead eating one of those glorified subs.

If you asked a Philadelphian what the difference is, they probably couldn’t tell you. Some would say it’s the rolls. Others might argue over cuts of meat. A few may chalk up the superiority of a hoagie made in Philly to old-fashioned city pride, but on one thing they would all agree; you can’t take the hoagie out of Philly. And Sam’s hoagies are among the best.

I’ve known Sam all my life. I went to elementary school with his kids, and his delicatessen’s been a neighborhood fixture for a long as I can remember. In Philadelphia, especially in the older neighborhoods lots of “Mom and Pop” stores are located on residential streets. Sam’s deli is located on the corner of 9th and Christian. He and his wife live in the apartment above, where they’d raised five kids in very tight quarters.