No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (No Such Thing As...: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) (6 page)

So I told him.

Bobby pulled a pad of paper out of his top drawer and began taking notes, interrupting me for more detail. I knew he was worried, because he was all cop now with none of the joking, flirty manner I’d grown accustomed to.

“You think someone screwed with the brakes, don’t you?” I asked, keeping my voice as devoid of emotion as possible. I needed him tell me the truth, and if he thought I was going to fall apart he’d sugar coat it.

“Looks like it, Bran.” Not the answer I wanted to hear, but at least it was honest.

Bobby leaned back in his chair and picked up the phone. He punched in some numbers and waited for a response.

“Yeah, Heidi,” he said, to a voice on the other end, “could you do me a favor? Check and see if we’ve gotten any calls in the last couple of weeks—I don’t know, anything to do with cars in the neighborhood being tampered with. Maybe suspicious characters being spotted in the area. See if anyone’s reported a guy in a mechanic’s outfit hanging around. Yeah, I know it’s vague, but see what you can do, okay, sweetheart?”

Sweetheart? He called her sweetheart? I always thought that was just what he called me. I didn’t realize it was his pet name for every bimbo in the Lehigh Valley.

Bobby hung up the phone just as Mike Mahoe appeared at the door. Mike flashed me a grin. “Hey, Brandy, how’s it going?”

“Hi, Loverboy.” As soon as the words left my mouth I cringed.
Unhh! I’m such a geek.

Mike turned an interesting shade of red, mumbled something about lunch and left.

Bobby stared at me. “Loverboy?”

“Sweetheart?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to salvage what little dignity I had left. “So do you really think other people’s cars are being messed with and it’s not just mine?” Somehow, it didn’t seem so awful if I were just one of a bunch of anonymous souls whose cars were randomly sabotaged in the middle of the night. I could chalk it up to good-natured psychotic hijinks, instead of a personal attack.

“That’s what I’m trying to try to determine,” Bobby told me. “In the mean time, I’m going to talk to Snake again. He could be wrong about the brake line, and it may end up all being a bizarre coincidence.”

“As my mother would say, ‘from your mouth to God’s ear’.”

I went home to make some lunch and wait for the security people to come set up the alarm system. While I was waiting I made a fried egg sandwich on week-old organic wheat bread. There was some mold in the center, but since that was the only bread I had, I punched a hole out of the middle and ate it anyway. That’s what I get for trying to eat healthy. I never have this problem with Wonder Bread.

After lunch I turned on the TV to take my mind off things, but Saturday afternoon television sucks, so I spent my time alternating between peering out the window in search of car bombers and working up a list of people who might want me dead, just in case it turned out it
was
personal.

First I went with the obvious; relatives and close friends of Bobby’s ex-wife. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time one of them tried to kill me. Next, I wrote down the names of people associated with criminal cases I’d inadvertently become involved in. Then, I added anyone I’d had a disagreement with in the past month or so. I stopped when I reached twenty-five names. Turns out, I can’t get along with anybody.

“So how’s the new job goin’, Neenie?” I was seated cross-legged on the bed in Janine’s studio apartment, shelling peanuts for her pseudo pet pigeon, Ozzie. Ozzie was hanging out on the ledge outside her windowsill crapping up a winter storm.

After the security guys had left, Janine called. There’s a new Greek restaurant that just opened in Center City West, and Janine heard all the waiters looked like a cross between Grecian Gods and Chippendale dancers. Seeing as the only thing I had on my agenda for the evening was trimming Mrs. Gentile’s toenails, (there’s no end to what I’ll do to get someone to like me) I decided instead to accompany Janine on her quest for cultural diversity.

Janine stepped out of the bathroom, wriggling her perfect five-foot nine-inch body into ultra skin-tight hip huggers. “The job didn’t work out,” she said, pulling a too-small t-shirt out of her closet and yanking it over a pair of size 36C breasts.

“Oh. But last week you were so sure that ‘motivational speaking’ was your calling. What happened?”

Janine shuddered. “Too depressing. All those needy rejects with no hope of succeeding. They were draining my essence.”

“So you quit?”

“They fired me.
Can you believe it?
They said I ‘lacked compassion’ and I kept making the clients cry. What babies.”

“Hey,” I sympathized. “Their loss.”

“I hear there’s a job opening for a slut goddess down at the Peeping Tom,” she said.

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Actually, I’d considered it, but when I mentioned the idea to Franny, she flipped out. She said,” Janine continued, slipping her feet into a pair of banana colored Frye Dorado Slouch boots, “that as long as I’m walking around with
her
face I’m not exposing
my
ass to a bunch of slobbering, horny losers. Sheesh. She’s so touchy lately. Do you think it has something to do with her being pregnant?”

“Could be. Y’know, I’d hold off on the whole ‘slut goddess’ thing for a while if I were you. Franny’s under a lot of pressure right now.”

“I was never serious about it anyway. So, who are you taking to the bar mitzvah?” Janine grabbed a pink lip gloss off the dresser and held it up to the light. “What do you think? Too Britney Spears?”

“Whoa,” I said. “Back up.” I got off the bed and tossed a few peanuts to Ozzie. He cut me an accusatory look as I held back a few for myself. “What do you mean, ‘who am I taking to the bar mitzvah?’ I thought we agreed to go together.”

Janine hesitated. “There’s gonna be dancing.”

“So?”

“So I wanna dance—and no offense, but I don’t wanna dance with you. Look, the invitation says ‘and guest’.”

“Oh, fine,” I sulked. “So who are you bringing?”

I don’t know. Maybe Tony Tan.” Tony Tan is Janine’s former boss and the Number One Sleazeball Realtor of the tri-state area.

“Tony? But I thought you couldn’t stand him.”

“I ran into him at “Ducky’s” the other night. He’s a good dancer.” She shrugged. “And kisser.”

My eyes narrowed into slits. “You already asked him, didn’t you?”

At least she had the good grace to blush. “Sort’ve. I can un-ask him if you want.”

“No,” I sighed. “That’s all right.” Suddenly I panicked. “Is DiCarlo bringing a date?”

“I don’t know. I saw him talking to Tina Delvechione outside the post office the other day. They looked pretty chummy.”

“Get out!” Back in junior high, Tina Delvechione was the first girl to “develop” and by the looks of her, there’d been no sign of stopping. Oy. This was not good.

“Hmm,” said Janine.

“Hmm, what?”

“I thought you said you just wanted to be friends with Bobby.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So then why should you care if he brings a date?”

“I don’t care,” I said, a little too petulantly to be believable. I was really going to have to work on my delivery. “I just don’t want to be the only one there without a date, is all.”

“Bran, we are independent women. We don’t need men to show us a good time.”

“So does that mean you’re going to ditch Tony and come with me?”

“Not a chance.”

“But, what about all that stuff about being independent women?”

“I lied. Let’s go eat.”

Janine was right about the waiters. They were all drop dead gorgeous. Turns out, Demitri’s was a family owned restaurant, and all the guys who worked there were related. They kept coming over to our table to see us—okay, technically, they came over to see Janine, but I was there too—and filling our glasses with ouzo.

I ended up getting really drunk and spent much of the evening making out with a nineteen-year-old busboy named Alex—a cousin who had just arrived from Greece and was looking for an American wife. I found this out from his uncle, the head chef and another Alex, who offered to broker the marriage for me. I think I agreed. I really can’t remember.

At closing time, Alex the Younger asked to drive me home.

“Go on,” Janine prodded me.

“Janine, he’s a baby.”

“Who cares? He’s legal. You’re entitled to have a little fun, and you may wind up with a date for the bar mitzvah after all.”

In the end, I decided to let him drive me home. In my altered state of consciousness, Janine’s reasoning sounded pretty good. Plus, he’d promised me leftovers from the kitchen.

I waited outside in the parking lot while Alex locked up the restaurant. The cold air sobered me up a bit, and I started to feel the first pangs of regret over my decision. I am not a “one-night-stand-with-a-stranger” kind of girl, no matter how much I’d like to be. It’s awkward, at best, and even though I was pretty sure Alex Junior wasn’t a serial killer, I didn’t think I’d feel too good about myself in the morning. I was just going to have to tell him that the wedding was off and, by the way, I wouldn’t be sleeping with him. I really hoped he’d still let me have the leftovers.

The street was dark and empty, so that even the sound of a car door softly closing somewhere nearby put me on edge. I decided to wait for Alex inside. As I began walking towards the door, I got the sudden and distinctly creepy feeling that I wasn’t alone.

Prickles of sweat broke out on the back of my neck as my imagination raced. Slowly, I reached into my coat pocket for the set of “Clear Knuckles” I found on the Internet,
“designed to tear flesh and inflict topical pain. Legal in every state!”

As I reached the building I breathed a sigh of relief, and then a hand came out of nowhere, grabbing me by the back of my head, its fingers fisting in my hair. I tried to scream, but another hand, large and gloved, clamped itself over my mouth and nose. A slightly sweet odor filled my nostrils, making me dizzy. I held my breath and swung my arm backwards, blindly reaching for my assailant’s face. He growled low in his throat as the Clear Knuckles made contact with soft muscle tissue.

The hand over my face tightened and I tore at his arms, struggling to loosen his grip on me. I was suffocating and I gasped for air, sucking the sickly sweet scent into my lungs. It was the last thing I remembered before I passed out.

“Do you think she’s dead?” The voice was muffled and seemed to be coming from far away.

“Christ, I hope so. The bitch took a chunk out of my face with her fist.”

I was just conscious enough to realize that the person he was calling a bitch was me and to take offense to it. But it was hard to muster up righteous indignation for name-calling when the real offense seemed to be they were plotting to kill me.
Whoever they were.
I was still too groggy from my chloroform and ouzo cocktail to believe any of this was real.

I had been blindfolded and stuffed into a cramped, dark space, my hands and ankles bound with some kind of cloth. The earth seemed to move beneath me, making it hard to get my bearings. I struggled to sit up and bonked my head against something hard, a tire iron, I think.
Shit. I’m in the trunk of a car. What’s that thing you’re supposed to do if you’re ever kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a vehicle? Oh yeah, kick the taillights out. Okay… where are my feet?

While I pondered this, the car stopped moving. The driver cut the engine and popped the trunk. I thought about jumping out, but then what? Yell, “Surprise!” and hop away on my shackled legs? I could barely lift my head—or remember my own name.

Another car approached and stopped and soon I heard footsteps crunching along the ground. I lay motionless, doing my best impersonation of a dead person, which I would be soon if I didn’t get my wits together. I was too out of it to be scared, which was actually a good thing, because if I fully understood how much trouble I was in I’d have peed my pants.

“Where is she?” asked a new voice, male and slightly more upscale.

In response, the trunk lid was yanked open, letting in a blast of fresh air.

“Signed, sealed and delivered.”

I braced myself for the worst, made the sign of the cross in my head and began to thrash about, shouting my lungs out. “Help! Someone help me! Call 911!”

Mr. Upscale banged his fist against the trunk and the lid slammed shut again. “For Christ’s sake, you morons, you got the wrong girl.”

His outburst was followed by a moment of stunned silence, which I felt compelled to fill. “Hey, anyone can make a mistake,” I yelled through the closed lid. “No harm, no foul.”

There was the sound of crunching gravel, as three sets of feet stomped away from the car. More muffled conversation; quiet murmurings punctuated by angry expletives. Then the trunk popped open and the gloved hand pressed itself against my nose once again. I tried to fight the guy off, but there were three of them and one of me and I was just too damn tired. For the second time that evening I was out like the proverbial light.

I woke up, face down in the gutter about three blocks from where I’d been abducted. It was two a.m. by my watch. My pocketbook lay on the curb next to me, my arms and legs freed from the bonds that had constrained them. The Clear Knuckles were gone, but beyond that, everything was as it had been. It was as if it had all been a horrible nightmare, conjured up after eating bad oysters or watching The Fox News Network.
Had I dreamed it?

I ripped open my bag and fumbled around for my cell phone. When I found it I began to punch in 911 but stopped midway through the call.
What would I even tell the police? And would they even believe me? I could hardly believe it myself.
Nothing was stolen, I wasn’t dead, there were no telltale marks on my body. I hadn’t seen a thing and I couldn’t identify any of those guys if they came up and bit me in the butt. I had nothing to offer the cops and no matter how I sliced it, I’d end up sounding like some nutcase rambling on about UFO’s and alien abductions.

The effects of the alcohol and chloroform had, for the most part, worn off, leaving me depressed and vulnerable. I hated feeling so defenseless. I put my phone back in my pocket, willing myself not to cry. It didn’t work. Big, fat tears spilled out of my eyes and rolled down my cheeks.