No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (No Such Thing As...: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) (21 page)

Bobby sat up in the seat, his jaw muscles clenched so tight he looked in danger of breaking a couple of teeth. “Yeah. As a matter of fact I do. The guy is bad news. And if you’re falling for that creep, somebody needs to straighten you out before you get hurt or worse.”

“Oh. And you think it’s
your
job? Well, I’ve got a news flash for you, DiCarlo. It’s not. Who I choose to spend time with and
how
we choose to spend that time is none of your business.”

“You made it my business when you kissed me the other night,” he growled.

“You kissed me! And anyway, we never should have gone there. We talked about this and we agreed it wasn’t a good idea.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve changed my mind. I know you still have feelings for me and it’s no secret I want you back. So all bets are off, sweetheart.”

Bobby leaned forward, our knees touching, his eyes locked on mine. My insides responded with a familiar rush and I tried to turn away but he wouldn’t let me. He reached out and cupped his hand behind my head, his lips perilously close to mine. “I’m going to keep on reminding you of how good we are together every chance I get,” he murmured. It was a really big reminder.

“I
swear to God, Fran, if Vincenzio hadn’t come along and tapped on the car window, we would have done it right then and there in broad daylight. Mrs. Gentile was taking out the trash and saw the whole thing. My mother is so mortified she’s refusing to leave the house. It’s a stinking mess… and stop laughing. It’s not funny.”

“Yes, it is.”

Yeah, actually I guess it was.

After I swore to my mom that I’d go to church next Sunday to confess my sins, (which seemed redundant, seeing as Father V. was there for a goodly portion of it) I took the rest of the afternoon to deliver copies of Heather’s sketch around to local auto shops. At 4:30 p.m. I started thinking this was a really dumb idea, and then at 4:45 p.m. I hit pay dirt.

I’d been cruising down Germantown Avenue when I spied Ditto’s Car Repair at the corner of Germantown and Belmont. I pulled into the alley just as a guy with a military buzz cut, wearing a grey mechanics coverall was closing up shop. I parked behind a blue, 1968 corvette that Paul would have killed for and got out of the car, taking the copy of Heather’s sketch with me.

He walked towards me, wiping grease laden hands on a towel he kept in the back pocket of his coveralls. The name on his shirt said Mel. “Sorry, we’re closed. But if you want to park it here tonight, I can take a look at it in the morning.”

“Oh, thanks, but actually, I’m looking for someone.” I handed him a copy of the picture. “Do you by any chance know this guy?”

Mel took the sketch from me and held it up in the dimming light. “Yeah. I know him. His name’s Zack Meyers and he’s a real jerk.”

My heart beat quickened. “Does he work here?”

“Used to,” Mel said. He was fired about three months ago. The inventory kept disappearing. He was stealing the owner blind. Nobody could prove anything for sure, but we all knew it was him.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have an address for him, would you?”

He looked me up and down. “Are you a cop?” he asked.

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “Listen, it sure would help me out if I could locate this guy. He screwed me over pretty good too and I’d really like to find him.”

I followed Mel back into the office. Thumbing through an old Rolodex, he extracted a card and handed it to me. “If you go looking for Meyers, take somebody with you. The guy’s got a real temper. I wouldn’t want to see him use it on you.”

My impulse was to drive directly over to Meyers’ house and beat a full confession out of him. However, the saner side of me, glimpses of which I was still able to conjure up upon occasion, prevailed, and I decided to think things through a little more.

I had to tell Bobby I now had a name and an address. But first, I had to confirm it was the right guy. If I could get a picture of him, I could bring it back to Heather to I.D. Once I knew for sure it was the same man she had seen under my car, the cops could bring him in for questioning. It was too dark outside to get anything useful accomplished tonight. But early tomorrow morning I’d go over and stake out his place.

My parents weren’t home when I got back to the house. My mom had left a note saying they’d been invited to play Pinochle at the Giancola’s and there was dinner in the fridge. I opened the refrigerator and took out a container and opened the lid. Uh-oh. Smorgasbord Stew. It was something my mom had concocted when Paul and I were young; the ingredients consisting of whatever leftovers existed in the refrigerator at the time and were in danger of exceeding their shelf life. I emptied the container into the garbage disposal and made a box of chocolate pudding.

It was nice to have the house to myself for a change. I went into the living room with the entire sauce pan of pudding and popped in a movie.
The Princess Bride.
Somewhere around the time when Vizinni started ranting to the Dread Pirate Roberts about never getting involved in a land war in Asia I fell asleep.

I woke up an hour later and turned off the movie. It was 10:30 p.m. and Adrian needed to go pee. I took out my stun gun and stayed close to the front door while he made his deposit on Mrs. Gentile’s Azalea bush.

The night was clear and crisp. I breathed in deeply and scanned the block checking for signs of anything amiss. About four houses down on the other side of the street I spotted a white Toyota Corolla. I know every one of my neighbors’ vehicles and this wasn’t one of them. My guts twisted in fear as I flashed on the white Corolla that had cruised down my block earlier in the day. I whistled for Adrian and he came trotting back inside. I slammed the front door shut and locked it.
Is someone spying on me? Should I call the cops? Bobby? Nick? My mommy?

While I was debating this the doorbell rang. I jumped a mile. Clutching the stun gun in my hand I balanced on tiptoe to peer out the spy hole. My parents peered back at me. I opened the door to let them in. “Why didn’t you use your key?” I asked, forgetting all about the faux cell phone I was holding.

“Oh, honey,” my mother said, wrestling it out of my hand. “I need an upgrade on my phone. Does this one take pictures?” She held it up and aimed it at my father.

“No, Mom. Don’t!” I grabbed it back from her before she zapped my dad into tomorrow. “Um… I’m expecting a call.” I said goodnight, ignoring the “Where did we go wrong?” look that passed between my parents and went upstairs.

Grabbing a pair of binoculars out of my bedroom closet, I crept over to the window and pulled the curtains back slightly. The white Corolla was still out there. I could barely make out a shadowy figure sitting behind the wheel. I dragged a chair over to the window and sat down. It was going to be a long night.

At around 3:00 a.m. someone emerged from the car. He looked to be about 5 feet nine or so, wearing a bulky, hooded jacket. His back was to me and by the way he was standing, I’d say he was taking a bathroom break. He finished up and got back in the car. I fell asleep after that and when I awoke at six, the car was gone.

I pulled on some jeans and a long sleeved tee shirt and threw on a hooded sweat shirt on top of that. Then I grabbed the binoculars and my digital camera off the dresser and headed downstairs.

Rocky was in the kitchen scooting a hockey puck around on the floor.
Where’d he get a hockey puck?
I bent down to pick it up and discovered it was actually one of my mom’s homemade biscuits. Seeing as it looked like a piece of blackened rubber, I could understand how my kitten might mistake it for sports equipment. I thought about letting her play with it some more, but I doubted my mom would find the humor in that, so I tossed it into the garbage disposal where it joined the stew.

When I got outside, Heather and her dog were just getting back from their morning stroll. She waved hello and crossed the street to meet me. I was anxious to get underway but I didn’t want to be rude, so I started walking backwards to the car to sort of let her know I was in a hurry.

“Thanks for all your help yesterday,” I called out to her, making a big deal out of opening the car door and tossing my stuff inside. I slid behind the wheel and stuck my key in the ignition.

“Did you find the guy you were looking for?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I’m on my way over to his house now to try to get a picture of him. When I get back I’ll show it to you.” I started up the car.

“Take me with you, Brandy.”

I turned off the ignition. “What?”

“That way you won’t have to take a picture,” Heather said. “I’ll know him if I see him. It’ll save you time.”

She had a point. But not a strong enough one to endure what could turn out to be hours on end of her company, riding shotgun in the Le Sabre.

“Heather, why would you want to come along? I mean who knows how this guy will react if he catches us spying on him. This could turn out to be really dangerous.”

Heather looked down at her feet. “Brandy, I’m thirty-one years old and I’ve never had a boyfriend. I still live with my parents, my job bores me to tears and Mr. Wiggles is my only friend. And he just barely tolerates me. Your life is so exciting. Just once I want to do something crazy.”

I sighed. “Don’t you have to go to work?”

She whipped out her cell phone. “This is Heather.
Cough. Cough.
I’m not coming in today.” She hung up and looked at me. “Please?”

“Oh, what the hell,” I relented. “Ditch the dog and climb on in.”

Zack Meyers lived at Front and Duncannon Avenues, across the street from a high school. His neighborhood is an older, more dilapidated version of mine, with double wide porches, bars on the windows and aluminum awnings stretching across the tops of the entrances to the houses.

We parked a few doors down across the street and I cut the engine. Heather had changed from her work clothes into what she imagined the well dressed spy was wearing these days—black turtleneck, black jeans and a black ski mask. I told her to lose the ski mask, unless she was planning to rob a bank afterwards.

I’d felt really sorry for her after she told me that Mr. Wiggles was her only friend, so I’d stopped at Starbucks along the way and bought her a Mocha. Then I drove by Dunkin’ Donuts and picked up half a dozen of the powdered jelly-filled. I’d never been on a stake out before, but it just seemed like the right thing to bring along and I wanted to look professional.

“This is fun,” Heather said, slurping her mocha. “We should hang out more often.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, swept away by a sugar induced euphoria. I’d already eaten all three of my doughnuts and Heather still had one left. I eyed the bag longingly.

“You can have it if you want,” she said.

“If you’re sure,” I said and took it out of the bag before she had a chance to change her mind. I bit into the doughnut and raspberry jelly squirted out the side, landing on my chest. I looked like I’d been shot. Note to self: Take etiquette lessons.

Time went really slowly after all the doughnuts were gone. I knew Meyers was at home. I’d called his house line when we first got here. Judging by the way he answered his phone, the guy was definitely not a morning person.

“Well, we can’t just go marching up to his door and ring the bell,” I said, “so we’ve got to find a way to lure him out of the house. But how?”

“Yo Bran,” Heather said slowly. “Remember that Halloween about fifteen years ago, when you and Bobby DiCarlo went around the neighborhood lighting bags of dog poop on fire and then ringing door bells and running away?”

“Hey. Why do I always get blamed for everything? That was
not
me.”

“Sure,” said Heather. “Anyway, remember?”

And suddenly I knew why the Universe conspired to make me bring Heather along. I smiled at her. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a really smart cookie?”

“You’re the first,” she said, smiling back at me. “Thanks.”

Okay, even though our goal was not to get some poor schlub to stick his foot in a pile of flaming dog poop, the same principle applied. I handed Heather the binoculars and told her to wait inside the car while I gathered some dried twigs to fill up the doughnut bag. Then I crept up to Meyers’ porch and laid it down on the top step.

People would be leaving for work soon so I had to hurry. I have to admit I was a little nervous. Bobby had always been the one to do the actual torching. I was just the “Lookout.”

I took a book of matches out of my pocket and struck two at once, touching the burning tip to the paper bag. The bag was slow to ignite. That was good. It would give Meyers a chance to stamp out the flame before it set the entire neighborhood on fire.

Once I got it going I rang the door bell a bunch of times and then ran like crazy back to the car. I almost made it too, except for that icy patch on the sidewalk. For the second time in a week my feet flew out from under me and I landed on my butt on the muddy ground. Heather stuck her head out the car window. “Are you okay?” she asked. I could tell she was trying hard not to laugh.

I hauled myself up and scrambled back into the car. “Don’t say a word,” I warned her. She made a sign like she was zipping her lips and throwing away the key.

Suddenly, the door to Zack Meyers’ house flung open. Although we could barely make out the bulky figure inside, we heard him loud and clear. “Goddamn kids!”

“Get ready,” I said to Heather. She lifted the binoculars to her eyes. I set my camera to zoom lens and poked my head out the window.

Dressed in a ratty old robe, Meyers took a tentative step out his front door. I looked down at his feet. He was barefoot. How the heck did he think he was going to put out a fire with bare feet?

I began clicking away on the camera while Heather fiddled with the focus on the binoculars. Meyers looked up, debating his options and I got a clear shot of his face. I turned to Heather. “Did you get a good look at him?” I asked.

She nodded, the binoculars trained on the man standing on the porch. Only she wasn’t looking at his face. Her aim was significantly lower. I dropped my gaze down too, to see what had grabbed her attention. Oh crap.