No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (No Such Thing As...: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) (7 page)

After a few minutes, I wiped my nose on my sleeve and tried to get some perspective on the situation. Okay, the good news was, no one was trying to kill me after all. They’d simply mixed me up with someone else. And when you think about it, they were really quite gentlemanly about the whole thing. Once they realized their mistake, they let me go. I was in the clear. No need to drag this on, what with my parents arriving in town and Paul’s big day coming up. To tell the truth, I was happy to put it all behind me. There was just one nagging, little detail. If I was the
wrong
girl, who then, was the right one? Crap. I took out my phone again.

I woke Bobby out of a sound sleep. He was there in less than twenty minutes, dressed in sweat pants and his motorcycle jacket, his hair tousled; the rough stubble of a five o’clock shadow running the length of his jaw line. He picked me up off the curb and opened the passenger door.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, shivering my brains out as hypothermia set in.

He turned up the heat and pointed the vents in my direction. “What happened?” he said quietly. So I told him.

“I can see where you might not want to mention this down at the station,” he said when I was finished.

“But you believe me.” It wasn’t a question.

“I believe you. So what were you doing making out with a nineteen-year-old kid?”

“Unhh! I think you’re missing the point here, DiCarlo.”

Bobby pulled up in front of my house and cut the engine. He turned around in his seat, facing me. “I’m not missing the point. I’m changing the subject. Jesus, Brandy, I am so damn relieved to know these people weren’t after you. Cut me a break here and let me enjoy it for a minute and a half.”

“Bobby,” I said, touched by his words, “I know you’re just looking out for me, but there’s some poor woman walking around out there who has “hit” men after her and she may not even know it. How are we going to find her before they do?”

“We?”

“Yeah.
What?”

“Didn’t you hear a word I just said? Look at you! You came this close to sleepin’ with the fishes tonight. You haven’t slept in weeks, your nerves are shot and now you’re talking about plunging into another life threatening situation. What is wrong with you?”

I pushed open the car door. “Do me a favor. When you figure it out, let me know.”

L
ynne Schaffer stopped me in the hall. It was Monday morning. I’d spent all of Sunday in bed, watching kick-ass movies like “Die Hard” and Walking Tall,” getting vicarious thrills out of watching the good guys beat the tar out of the bad guys.

“You’re filling in for Tamra today,” Lynne said. “Be ready in half an hour.”

Normally, this would have been great news. I’ve been dying for an opportunity to break out of the puff piece mold. But this just felt creepy. “Why?” I asked. “Where’s Tamra?”

“How should I know?” Lynne groused. “Look, Alexander, you wouldn’t be my choice, but you’re here and there’s no one else to fill in on such short notice. Oh,” she added, “and see if you can lose the Goth look before you go on air. You look like something out of a Dracula movie.”

I felt like decking her, but she did have a point. Pretty soon the bags under my eyes were going to need their own porter.

Eric was waiting for me when the show ended. “Nice job,” he said, absently. “Listen, could you come into my office?” His baby face showed signs of strain. I felt sorry for him.

“What’s wrong with Tamra?” I asked, taking a seat on the couch. “Why didn’t she come in today?”

“I don’t know,” Eric said, “and to tell you the truth, I’m worried. I’ve been trying to call her all morning and I just keep getting her voicemail. This isn’t like her. She’s always been rock solid. I’m thinking maybe something happened to her.”

My heartbeat kicked up a notch. “Have you tried calling her husband? He works at the university.”

Eric nodded. “He’s not there. They said he took the week off and won’t be back until next Monday. Look, I’ve heard some rumors. Their marriage isn’t so hot, but Tamra wouldn’t bail on work. She knows it could cost her her job.”

“Car accident,” I suggested. “Maybe she was taken to the hospital and wasn’t able to call.” I knew if there had been a serious wreck we would have heard about it, but I was grasping at straws.

“I’m gonna need you to cover again tomorrow if we don’t hear from her,” Eric said.

I felt a little wave of excitement, which of course quickly turned into a massive wave of guilt. Being the product of a Catholic mom and a Jewish dad, it was a familiar feeling.

I left work at 4:00 p.m. making a detour on the way home. According to her personnel records, Tamra lived in Pennsauken, New Jersey, which was right across the bridge. I didn’t know what I’d hoped to accomplish, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least drive by and see if her car was there. I pulled onto her street just as the last vestiges of daylight were slipping away.

Townshend Drive was a tree lined cul de sac located in a quiet, upper middle class neighborhood. Her place was at the end of the block, a two story slate gray Cape Cod style house with an attached garage.

Tamra’s car was parked in the driveway. I walked up the pathway, stooping to pick up the Sunday Times, and then I rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing. I went around to the side of the house and tried to peer in a bottom window, but the shades were drawn, no light coming from inside.

“What are you doing?”

I jumped a mile and spun around, knocking over a big clay pot. It looked expensive.

A skinny kid about eleven years old was sitting astride his bike, watching me.

“Hi,” I said, brightly. “Do you know Tamra and Jeff?”

He nodded, inching closer. “I live right next door. What are you doing?” he asked again, this time with a proprietary edge to his voice.

“I’m looking for Tamra. Is she home?”

The kid shrugged. “Dunno. Jeff took off on Saturday morning. I saw him hauling a bunch of suitcases with him. He seemed like he was in a hurry.”

“Did Tamra go with him?”

“I didn’t see her. But if they were going away together,” he mused, “why didn’t they ask me to feed Mittens? Whenever Tamra goes away, she pays me five dollars a day to feed her cat.”

“You wouldn’t by any chance have a spare key, would you?”

“What for?”

Well, you see, as far as I know it’s a felony to break into someone’s home, uninvited. But if you gave me the key, it would knock it down to a misdemeanor.

It was probably just my imagination working overtime, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I spoke to Tamra. She’d had a fight with her husband, she’d tried to reach me on Thursday night and now she’s a no-show at work.

Tamra’s a consummate professional. She’d never jeopardize her job over a personal problem. She would have at least called in. Even Eric thought it was weird. I thought about calling the police, but what if it turned out to be nothing and I broadcast her marital problems all over town? The press would have a field day over it.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Ricky.”

“Okay, Ricky, so here’s the thing…”

It took me fifteen minutes and twenty bucks to convince Ricky to let me borrow the key. He relented after I showed him my WINN I.D. card. “Hey, now I know who you are,” he smiled triumphantly. “You’re the lady who does all those crazy things around the city. Remember the time you visited a compost farm? You ate worms just like on Fear Factor. That was so cool.”

Ricky took off with my twenty bucks and returned a few minutes later with Tamra’s key.

“Wait here,” I said, as he followed me to the door. “If Tamra is home, she may not be up for entertaining. She hasn’t been feeling well, and I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the house was the stench. Like someone had pooped their pants. I stood just inside the foyer and called Tamra’s name. There was no response, so I ventured further inside. It was dark and I reached along the wall for a light switch. Something brushed past my leg and I screamed, losing my balance and crashing into the wall.

“Are you okay?” Ricky stuck his head inside the door and flipped on the hall light. “Eewww. Somebody forgot to clean out Mittens’ litter box. C’mere, baby.” Ricky reached out and scooped up an orange tabby. It meowed piteously in his arms.

The downstairs looked to be in order; no dead bodies sprawled on the living room rug, no tell tale bloody butcher knife lying about in the kitchen sink. I should have been relieved but I wasn’t.

Ricky came up behind me, cradling the cat in his arms. “Think I’ll feed Mittens,” he said. “I guess Tamra
did
go away and she just forgot to tell me.”

“I guess so.”

Even as I voiced agreement I knew it wasn’t true. The house was beyond quiet, the air fetid and suffocating. A feeling of dread washed over me, taking up space like a third person in the room. Something was horribly wrong.

My instincts said to grab the cat and the kid and get the hell out of the house, but my conscience wouldn’t allow it. Damn conscience. I instructed Ricky to stay in the kitchen, as I took a few reluctant steps up the stairs. When I got to the top I called her name softly, not really expecting an answer. I flipped on the light and worked my way down the hall.

There was a bedroom on the left. The king sized bed was unmade, the sheets and comforter all twisted together forming a huge lump. I held my breath and poked tentatively at it. Just sheets. I let out my breath and kept moving.

The room next to the master bedroom was set up like an office. Computer, fax machine, shelves crammed with books and framed pictures of Jeff and Tamra in happier times. A radio tuned to a classical station played softly in the background.

Finding nothing out of the ordinary, I moved on to the bathroom, peeked my head in and promptly threw up.

The water in the tub had turned pink, matching the Laura Ashley towels hanging from the rack on the wall. Tamara’s naked body lay beneath the surface. Her head had slipped under the water, her hair a tangled mass of brown seaweed, her face almost unrecognizable; a grotesque, bloated distortion of her former self. It seemed redundant to check to see if she were really dead.

Stepping over my own vomit I braced myself against the doorframe. I tried to keep my voice steady, not wanting to alarm the kid. “Um, Ricky?” I called down the stairs.

“Coming.”

“No, no. Tamra’s here, but she’s not feeling well.”
Master of the understatement.
“She needs you to take the cat over to your house.”

“Okay. Hey, do you want me to make some chamomile tea? Grandma says it’s a miracle cure.”

Sirens blaring, the police pulled up in front of Tamra’s house. I don’t know why they deemed it necessary to turn them on. At this stage of the game, there was no big rush.

Paramedics zoomed past me, racing up the stairs. Guess my layman’s diagnosis of “dead as a door nail” wasn’t good enough.

“Someone threw up,” one of the cops observed.

“That would be me,” I called from downstairs. “Sorry.”

The house filled to overflowing with police, paramedics and the coroner. Outside, a news van was parked on the lawn. Bad news travels fast. I spied Ricky on the edge of the pathway, talking animatedly to a silver-haired reporter from a rival station.

A young officer approached me, holding a blanket. “Thought you might need this,” he said, wrapping it around me. I had no idea how hard I was shaking until I tried to sit down on the couch and it fell away beneath me. The cop caught me before I hit the floor.

I told him everything I knew about Tamra, which unfortunately wasn’t much. Her husband was out of town. They’d had a fight; she’d tried to call me. She seemed upset.
Upset enough to slit her wrists.
She had reached out to me in the newsroom. She was my only friend there. And somehow, without meaning to, I’d failed her.

I drove myself home, ignoring some very good advice to ask someone to come pick me up. I was crying so hard I couldn’t see out the windshield. The good news was I hadn’t thought about the whole “somebody’s trying to kill me” scenario in hours. There’s nothing like a decomposing corpse to take your mind off your own troubles.

Eric called on the way home. He’d already heard about Tamra. I half expected him to be mad that I didn’t get an “exclusive.” He was uncharacteristically kind and told me to take the next day off. He didn’t have to tell me twice. I didn’t relish running into Lynne at the office. She probably thinks I handed Tamra the razor, just so I could fill in for her.

I called John from the car and asked him to go over to my house to feed Rocky and Adrian. My head was splitting and I had to get some food in me, seeing as I’d left my lunch at Tamra’s. There’s an Italian restaurant on the corner of 16
^th
and Passyunk Avenue that’s famous for their cannelloni and Caesar’s salads. I had just enough credit on my Visa card to eek out a meal and a tip. I figured after the day I had, I deserved it.

I pulled into the tiny parking lot and squeezed into a spot marked “compact”. As I inched my way out of the car, I caught a glimpse of myself in the side mirror of the Lexus parked next to me. Two sunken eyes peered back at me from under a frame of stringy hair, accentuating the ghostly pallor of my face. I popped a breath mint and was good to go.

Normally I don’t like eating alone in restaurants. I’m afraid people will think I have no friends. But at this point I was too tired to care. I got a table for two in the back and looked around like I was waiting for my date to show up. Okay, so I guess I cared a little. The waiter brought me a basket of bread and asked if I’d like something from the bar. I ordered a beer, thought better of it and made it a scotch. This was, after all, an occasion.

I started drinking before the meal came. Not one of my brighter ideas. It made me dizzy, and I went in search of the bathroom to splash some cool water on my face. It didn’t really help, so when I spied a familiar figure a moment later, on the other side of the room, I thought it was the Johnnie Walker talking.