No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (No Such Thing As...: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) (4 page)

“Look, Paul,” I said, gazing down at my rapidly wilting Cheerios, “it’s just Mom’s way of letting you know she’s accepted your decision to get Bar Mitzvah. I think she’d always hoped you’d come back to the church. And anyway, once Mom gets here she’ll be so busy running my life, she’ll have forgotten all about your suit.”

“You think so?” he asked hopefully.

I sighed. The sad fact was I could guarantee it.

I decided to go into work early. I was really hoping Tamra would ask me to lunch again. I am so broke. As I was leaving the house the phone rang. It was Megan, one of the P.A.’s. Turns out they were scrapping my segment, so they didn’t need me to come in after all. Damn. I was really looking forward to showing our viewers “how to turn ordinary dryer lint into works of art for fun and profit.”

I left the house at a little after 1:00 p.m. to meet John at “Lucinda’s on South,” one of a dozen up-scale art galleries that have sprung up on South Street in recent years. John is a portrait photographer, and his work is starting to garner a lot of favorable attention. He was having his first one-man show and he wanted me to check out the gallery space.

It was raining and the roads were slick with grease. I maneuvered my way through the narrow streets, pumping lightly on my brakes as I stopped for a light. They felt loose. I’d have to take them to Snake to get looked at, and while I was there I figured I’d do a little matchmaking for Heather.

I found John bent over a desk in the back room, matting some photographs. He glanced up when he saw me and quickly slipped one of the pictures under the pile.

“Hey, Sunshine.”

“What’cha got there, John?” I gestured towards the pile of photos on the desk.

“Oh, those,” John said. “Just some new stuff I’m still working on.”

“Can I see?” I craned my neck over John’s shoulder but he wedged himself between me and the pictures, striking a ridiculously casual pose.

“They’re not ready for the general public.”

“Since when am I the general public?” He was hiding something. Now I
had
to see them. I sized him up. John is an inch taller than me, but I outweigh him by about five pounds. I could take him. “Come on, John. Let me see.”

“No. God, you’re a pain.”

I decided to go with a diversionary tactic. “Wow,” I said, taking a sudden interest in his shoes. Those are nice. Are they new?”

John slid his eyes downward. “Cole Hahn was having a sale. How do you like them?” In lieu of an answer, I quickly sidestepped him and grabbed the pile off the desk.

“Jesus, Brandy,” he yelled, and there was genuine panic in his voice.

“I’m not going to hurt them. I just want to take a look.” But I waited, in case there were naked pictures of him in there or something.

“Oh, alright.” John heaved a resigned sigh. “But don’t get all mad, okay?”

“Why would I get mad?” Carefully, I began perusing the photos. His subjects were shot in black and white, mostly with a zoom lens so that he could get up close without intruding on the moment. Caught unaware, there was no pretense in their faces, only raw, honest, sometimes painfully intimate emotion.

I studied a picture of a homeless man, picking a half eaten soft pretzel out of the trash. “John,” I breathed. “These are beautiful.” I turned to the next shot and suddenly I understood what he’d been trying to hide. It was a picture of me.

I’ve been a television personality for over four years. I’m used to seeing my smiling, public persona plastered all over morning T.V. But this was different. The face that stared up at me was so lost, so forlorn, so—so vulnerable I flushed with embarrassment.

“Brandy, I—”

“When did you take this?”

“Last month. It was the day after you got out of the hospital. Remember, you dressed up the dog and wanted me to take pictures of him wearing antlers for your Christmas card, only he kept pulling them off and humping them.”

I did remember, but I was too mad at John to laugh. It was really funny, though.

“So anyway,” John continued. “You got a phone call and you went to talk in your bedroom—as if I’d listen in—and I was fooling around with my camera lens when you came out. You had this expression on your face. I don’t know. I’d never seen you look that way before.”

“So you thought you’d share it with hundreds of our closest friends and relatives? John, how could you not tell me?”

“I was going to. I was just waiting for the right moment.”

I stared down at the picture again, remembering. I’d been terrorized, shot in the gut and almost left for dead. But it was the phone call that had put me over the edge.

“Hello, Angel.” I didn’t think it possible to have such primitive urges two days after major surgery, but if anything could send my libido soaring, it was those words, spoken by that voice.

I shook my head to clear away the memory of the phone call. “John, tell me you weren’t planning on using this picture in the exhibit.”

John wouldn’t make eye contact. That was a bad sign.

“John—”

“Please, Bran, I wouldn’t ask, except that Lucinda saw the picture and that’s what sold her on showing my work. She thinks it’s the lynchpin of the entire collection. If I take it out now she’ll say I’ve reneged on the deal and I’ll never get another show in a reputable gallery again. But if you want me to take it out, I will.”

“I want you to take it out.”

“No way! It’s a friggin’ masterpiece.”

“I look pathetic.”

John leaned over me, gently taking the photo out of my hands. “Sunshine, I don’t know who or what you were thinking of, but I’ve never seen you look more beautiful.”

“You are so full of shit.”

John grinned. “Can I take that as a yes?”

“Yes,” I sulked. “But only because I don’t want you to end up a penniless wino, living out on the streets because I ruined your one chance at success. Look, just promise me you’ll stick it in the corner somewhere—and no back lighting and—and you can’t sell it. Not that anyone would want it, but—”

John interrupted me. “Come on. I’ll take you to lunch.” He knew how to shut me up in a hurry.

John’s BMW was parked in a garage so I drove. It was raining harder now, the rain coming down in icy sheets. I blasted the heat and turned onto the Schuylkill Expressway, careful to avoid the merging traffic.

The road is a death trap, but it’s fast and I was hungry. I’d just gotten up to speed when a car came out of nowhere and swerved in front of me. Cursing, I slammed on the brakes, but for some reason we kept on moving.
Uh oh.

“Yo, Sunshine, slow down. I’m gettin’ carsick here.”

“I’m workin’ on it.” I tried pumping the brakes but it was no good. Frantically, I tromped on the pedal. It went all the way to the floor.

“What do you mean you’re ‘workin’ on it’?” John screeched, his voice a full octave higher than normal. He was leaning against the door, hanging onto the handle for dear life. “Stop fooling around. Just take your lead foot off the gas and slow the hell down.”

I shot my arm out reflexively and whacked him in the arm. “I’m not fooling around,” I yelled. “The brakes aren’t working.” And in a split second I was drenched in sweat and I knew that we were going to crash.

“Oh fuck, John. Hang on.” I leaned on the horn, zigzagged across three lanes, said a quick Hail Mary and squeezed between a big rig and a tour bus, narrowing missing an SUV coming up on my right. Suddenly, the road began a downhill slope and the car picked up speed. “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” someone screamed, but I honestly couldn’t tell if it was Johnny or me.

Vehicles careened past as I jumped into the far right lane. The hill was getting steeper, so I stomped on the clutch and shifted into second, in a desperate attempt to slow the damn thing down. The Mercedes shuddered from the abrupt change and I lost control of the steering. The car pitched sideways and hurtled into the guardrail. The sound of crunching metal was the last thing I remembered before blacking out.

I opened my eyes slowly. I was still sitting in the car, but now there was an unfamiliar hand on my shoulder. It belonged to a chubby, uniformed man named Leon. At least that was the name that was embroidered on his shirt pocket. “Don’t try to move,” Leon said.

I looked out the shattered windshield and saw a TastyKake delivery truck stopped nearby. I’d always suspected that TastyKakes were heaven-sent. Now I was sure of it.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

My chest hurt and my head felt like a boulder had just landed on it.

“I’m fine.” For some reason the car was facing the wrong direction, and I had the vague feeling I was forgetting something.
Johnny!
The passenger door was ajar and the seat was empty. “My friend—” I stammered, struggling to clear the fog in my brain.
He must have been thrown from the car on impact. Oh my God, I’ve killed him.

At that moment, John appeared in front of me, pasty-faced and streaked with blood from a gash on his forehead, but otherwise alive and kicking. He wobbled toward the car, followed by a leather jacketed Philly motorcycle cop and a couple of paramedics.

“You okay, Bran?”

I nodded. “You?”

“I’m good, but the shoes are wrecked. You can’t get blood off of leather.”

“I guess this means you’re not taking me to lunch, huh?” I was only half joking.

The TastyKake man went back to his truck and returned a minute later, carrying a box of chocolate cupcakes. “Here ya go, honey. You earned these. By rights you guys should be dead.” He gave me a quick pat on the back. “That was some seriously awesome driving.”

With trembling hands I ripped open the box and before the paramedics could stop me, I popped a cupcake into my mouth. The chocolate provided just the rush I needed to keep from passing out again. I turned to thank the TastyKake man, but, like the Lone Ranger, he was gone.

Half an hour later I was sitting alone in a tiny cubicle in the emergency room of Jefferson Memorial. The paramedics had insisted we get checked out at the hospital. Since the car was inoperable, the cops called in for a tow while the paramedics took us to the E.R. John thought it was a great idea. He’d never had the thrill of a ride in an ambulance before, and he all but hung his head out the window like an overgrown puppy.

A large, smiling woman entered the room and took my face in her competent hands. I recognized Dr. Martine Sanchez from another one of my near-death experiences and was comforted by the sight of her. “Dios Mio! It’s you again. What have you gotten yourself into now?”

“I missed you. What’s it been, a month?”

“I don’t like repeat customers,” she scolded. “You need to stay out of trouble.” It would have been funny if there hadn’t been such a hard ring of truth to it. My only consolation was that at least nobody was
trying
to kill me this time. It was an accident, pure and simple.

“Well,” Dr. Sanchez announced after examining me, “you’ve suffered a mild concussion and your chest is going to be sore for a while, but the good news is nothing’s broken. All things considered, you’re fine.”

Johnny and I met out in the lobby. He’d gotten five stitches over his right eyebrow.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“I’ll let you know after the Vicodin wears off. By the way, I’m telling everyone I was in a bar room brawl and they should see the other guy.”

“Speaking of big fat lies,” I said, “don’t tell Paul about this, okay?”

“You don’t think he’s going to notice the entire right side of his car has a guardrail attached to it?”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Not by much.”

“All the more reason not to tell him. Look, John, you know how Paul is. He’s going to blame himself for the brakes messing up. He’ll say he should have had them checked out before he started letting me use his car. Paul’s really happy right now. I don’t want anything to take away from that.” Miraculously, the car wasn’t totaled. All it needed was a new set of brakes and some cosmetic surgery. With any luck, I’d have it back in no time.

“It’s your call, toots.”

We took a cab back to my house. “Do you want to come in?” I asked. “I could make some grilled cheese sandwiches.” Dr. Sanchez made me swear I wouldn’t be alone. It was the only way she’d agree to release me.

“Thanks,” John said, “but I think I’ll take a rain check—unless you need me to stick around for a while.” He looked exhausted.

“No, I’m fine.” I tried to give him cab money but he swiped my hand away.

“Are you kiddin’ me? You saved my life today. I guess all that drag racing we used to do at Front and Delaware when we were kids finally paid off.”

Somewhere in my mind, John’s words hit home.
We could have died in that crash.
The realization was overwhelming, and I reached out and hugged him to me. We stayed that way for several minutes, until the cabbie interrupted in a thick Russian accent. “Okay, lady, in or out?”

I pushed open the door and climbed out of the cab.

It took me ten minutes to negotiate the three steps up to my front door. The initial adrenalin rush and my natural instinct to fake being brave for Johnny had finally worn off, and I was left with a major headache and rubbery legs. Mrs. Gentile found me kneeling on the top step. She paused on her way out to the trashcans, scrunching her unibrow into half its original size. “Are you drunk?” she demanded.

“Rip roarin’, Mrs. Gentile.”

“You’re going to Hell,” she said, with smug satisfaction. She should know. The woman has a direct pipeline to Satan.

While I was gone, one of the animals had gotten into a vicious brawl with my mother’s plastic statue of the Virgin Mary. For as long as I can remember, it sat on her bedroom windowsill, overlooking the street below. When I bought the house, I’d left it there. I just sort’ve liked the idea of someone watching over me when I came home late at night. Now, she lay at the bottom of the stairs, tiny teeth marks embedded in her head.

I picked it up and looked around for the culprit. Adrian was lounging on the couch, eating the TV remote. Rocky sat beside him, clawing at a cushion with her tiny paws.

“Okay, which one of you ate Grandma’s statue?”