No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (No Such Thing As...: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) (15 page)

Nick’s mouth curved into a wicked grin. “Let that be a lesson to you, darlin’.

Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.” Somehow I didn’t think he was talking about the sauce.

In the hopes of regaining some sense of professionalism, I decided to change the subject. “Are you familiar with a guy named Anthony Mitchell?” I asked.

Nick shook his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells. “Why?”

“He was a friend of David Dwayne Harmon’s. His nickname is ‘Boner’.”

“Ahh. ‘T-Bone Mitchell.’ ‘Tony the Bone.’ The guy had a lot of street names.”

“Had? What happened to him?”

“He disappeared a few years back. Legend has it some of Harmon’s homies took him out after he testified against him in court.”

I eyed him. “What do you think?”

Nick leaned back in his seat, resting his arm on the top of the booth. “There’s another theory floating around, but it was never substantiated. He may have been paid to testify in that trial.”

“You mean lie.”

“Like I said, it’s just a rumor.”

“Any chance I could meet the folks who started that rumor?”

“Maybe. I’m acquainted with a few guys who ran in the same ‘social club’ as Harmon and Mitchell. They may be willing to talk to you. But I recommend you don’t go alone—or unarmed.”

A shudder ran through me. It was easy to forget the company he kept. It was also dangerous.

I sat back in the booth, pretending to study the paintings on the wall behind Nick’s head, but the truth was I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. His hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, revealing the tiny silver cross he wore in his left ear. On his wrist was a silver band. I don’t recall ever seeing him without it. One day I would ask about its significance but not tonight.

He hadn’t shaved in a day or so and a slight shadow edged his jaw line. He was undeniably beautiful and yet it wasn’t his most compelling quality. Damned if I knew what was. I only knew that it kept me coming back for more.

We’d just finished up our meal when in walked a familiar face. Two, actually. Mindy Rebowitz and her totally whipped husband, Terrence. Mindy and I had gone to high school together. She was a cloying, obnoxious brat back then and time had done nothing to improve her. What was she doing slumming in this part of town, anyway?
Oh crap, she was headed our way.
I grabbed a menu out of the hands of the guy seated at the next table and buried my face in it, but I wasn’t fast enough.

“Brandeee. I thought it was you. Don’t you just love this place? I read about it in
Philadelphia Magazine
.” She nodded her blond bobble-head at her husband. “Terrence, get a table near the window,” she ordered, making a beeline for our booth.

“Oh, hi Mindy,” I said, with as little enthusiasm as humanly possible.

Mindy’s sharp blue eyes did a quick appraisal of Nick. “Who’s your attractive friend?” she cooed.
Gack. Who talks that way?

Nick stood, taking her hand and she practically slipped into a coma. “Nick Santiago, he smiled. And you are—?”

“I—um…”

“Mindy,” I supplied, rescuing her. I stood up too. “Listen, we were just leaving.”

“Oh. Do you have to rush off?” She looked like she was about to cry. I really couldn’t blame her. Nick has that effect on women.

“Oh, great! Now the entire world is going to know I was here with you tonight,” I grumbled as we walked back to Nick’s car.

“Is that a problem?” He was smiling, clearly amused.

“You don’t understand,” I said.

“Explain it to me.”

“I live in a fish bowl,” I began. “My parents are in town… Bobby’s going to hear about it… I… oh, never mind.”

Nick leaned against the hood of his car, pulling me to him in a playful embrace. “So, are you and Detective DiCarlo an item now?”

“No, of course not,” I stammered. “Well—
maybe
.”

“Then I guess I shouldn’t be holding you,” he whispered in my ear.

“No, you
should
. I mean
you can if you want to
.”
God, I sound like an idiot
. I took a deep breath. “What I meant was Bobby and I are friends—and you and I are friends. And friends
hold
each other sometimes. Right?”

“Right.” Nick gazed down at me, his look intense, the light of the moon casting an unlikely halo around his head. “And sometimes they do more.” I felt the heat pooling in my belly as he cupped my face in his hands and kissed the living daylights out of me.

“Two guys in two days? Way to go, Alexander!”

“Yeah, well, it certainly beats my old record of two guys in two
decades
.”

I sat, feet tucked beneath me, on the closed lid of Janine’s toilet seat, watching as she slathered her face in green clay. She was giving herself a facial. I’d stopped in to see her on the way home from retrieving my car from the body shop. She knew something was up the minute I’d walked in the door. “Okay, spill it,” she said. “Have you and Bobby done ‘it’?”

“No! Why would you think that?”

“You have a hickey on your neck the size of Lake Erie.”

“I do? Oh crap.” I ran to her mirror.
I do!
I began massaging my neck, hoping it would somehow miraculously disappear, but that just made it worse.

“So if it’s not Bobby, then…”

I sighed. “We need to talk. But you can’t tell anyone. Swear to me, Janine.”

“My middle name is ‘Discretion’,” she said, making the sign of the cross.

“Your middle name is Christina. And you’re not that good with secrets, Neenie, but I really need to tell someone.”

“And Franny wasn’t home?” she laughed.

“No. I mean I don’t know. But this one’s for you.”

Franny and Janine are my closest girlfriends in the world. Separate but equal. When I need good, strong, heads-up advice I tell Fran. When I want a non-judgmental ear to vent to I go to Janine.

I started at the beginning and told her everything. About Tamra and how I’d been investigating her death and how Franny and Vince and Bobby had warned me off it but I wouldn’t listen. And how I’d gone and almost gotten myself killed, but for some unfathomable reason I had no intention of stopping. And then I told her about Bobby and Nick.

“So who gave you the hickey?”

“Nick.”

“Cool.”

“That’s it?”

“You might want to apply a cold compress,” she said, pointing to my neck. “Twenty minutes on, twenty off. And if that doesn’t do the trick, Maybelline makes a terrific concealer.” Wow. No lectures, warnings or judgments. Just total, Zen-like acceptance with a helpful hint thrown in for good measure.
Which is why I chose Janine.

It was after nine p.m. when I finally pulled onto my street. I took a few extra minutes to grab the stun gun and pepper spray from my pocket book and check the street for stalkers and then I made a mad dash for the house. I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed without having to pretend that everything was okay. I sent up a silent prayer that my parents had turned in early, but I guess God was busy with more pressing matters.

I opened the door and Adrian shot towards me, barreling through a thick cloud of cigar smoke as a chorus of male, middle-aged voices shouted hello to me. My dad was hunched over the dining room table, flanked by three old lodge buddies. A pile of poker chips sat in the center of the table. Sam Giancola emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of hoagies from his deli, followed by Jerry Morgenstern and six Heinekens.

“Hope you don’t mind, doll,” my dad said. “The boys wanted to get the old gang together. Hey, pull up a chair and join us.”

“Um, thanks, Dad. Maybe later. Where’s Mom?” I asked.
Maybe I could sneak up to my room before she knew I was home.

My dad cast an apologetic glance around the table. “She’s in the kitchen making her special homemade brownies.”

“Cripes,” Sam grumbled under his breath. “Do we have to eat them?” I knew how he felt. Even I wouldn’t eat my mom’s brownies. They taste like mud pies rolled in chocolate.

I gave my dad a kiss on the cheek and walked into what used to be my kitchen. On the counter sat a pair of Campbell Soup Kids salt and pepper shakers that belonged to my grandmother when she owned the house and a hideous plastic flower arrangement that I’d buried in the basement.

“Brandy, honey,” my mother said, as she scoured the stove within an inch of its life. What my mom lacked in culinary skills she made up for in obsessive cleanliness. “I thought you’d be home for dinner.”

“Sorry, Mom,” I said, feeling fourteen again. “I was working.”

“What kind of a boss doesn’t let a person come home for dinner? By the way, did you see this box of knick knacks I’d left for you when we moved to Florida?”

“Oh. Gee, I’d wondered where they’d gone.”

“Good thing I found them,” my mother said. “You needed some color to brighten up the place. Now doesn’t this look much better?”

“Much better,” I agreed. “Listen, Mom, I really appreciate all the nice things you’re doing for me. But—”

“Honey,” she replied, cutting me off. “You’re a responsible adult and I wouldn’t dream of treating you otherwise. Now go upstairs and clean your room. It’s a mess.”

Kevin L. Starnes sounded exactly like Apu from the TV show The Simpson’s. This was all the more disturbing seeing as he was a white guy born and raised in Pittsburgh. Starnes was the latest in a series of less than stellar court appointed legal representatives assigned to David Dwayne Harmon. I got his name from a recent newspaper article.

“Visiting an inmate on Death Row isn’t as much fun as one might think,” he said, in a clipped, “cartoon Indian” accent. “There are many bad people there and you may be cavity searched.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. Can you get me in?” I didn’t relish the idea of any of my cavities being searched, but I had to talk to Harmon.

Nick was right when he told me to be careful what I wished for. Starnes arranged for a visit. No cavity searches but the guy sitting across from me in the visitor’s center was freakin’ scary. It looked like Harmon had been on the losing end of a knife fight. There was a scar on his face that he didn’t have in the pictures I’d seen of him. It cut a diagonal line from his forehead to his lower lip, causing, I suspected, nerve damage and setting his mouth in a permanent sneer.

The glass partition and leg shackles didn’t do much to allay my fears about being there, but his warm greeting more than made up for it.

“Fuck
you
want?” he spit into the phone.
Okay, no need for full sentences. I’m cool.

I smiled and picked up the receiver, dropping it once and causing ear-splitting damage on his end. “I’m Brandy Alexander,” I told him, when he was through cursing me out. “I was a colleague of Tamra Rhineholt’s. She thought you were innocent and so do I. I want to try and help you, if you’ll let me.”

Harmon dropped his voice to a whisper. It made my skin crawl. “Why do you want to help me? You got a thing for me? Is that it? You lookin’ for some lovin’? Be happy to give it to you.” He spread his legs, surreptitiously grabbing his crotch with his free hand. “I’ll give it to you real good.”

I blew out a sharp burst of air. Looking directly into his eyes, I spoke slowly and calmly into the phone. “Listen, David. May I call you David? Or would you prefer ‘Shithead’? I’m here because a friend of mine died trying to save your sorry ass. So if I can figure out who really killed that girl, I’ll know who murdered Tamra. Saving you is strictly incidental. If there was a way around that, I’d take it in a heartbeat.”

Harmon leaned forward. His rage was swift and palpable. “You talk big with this glass wall between us. I get you alone some time—”

I stood. “It’s been real.”

Just as suddenly he relaxed in his seat, his face splitting into a wide grin. The mood swing was unnerving. “That’s some mouth you got. But I like you. I do. What you want to know?”

I took out a notepad and we began.

According to Harmon, Tamra Rhineholt started out doing a piece on capital punishment, but after hearing his story about incompetent lawyers, a flawed judicial system and an admittedly unsympathetic defendant, she was convinced he’d gotten a bum rap. Harmon hadn’t put much stock in Tamra championing his cause. Over the years he’d seen “do gooders” come and go. She was just another face in the crowd. He refused to get his hopes up, even when she told him she may be getting close to the truth. He told her not to bother him until the day she knew for sure. That day never came.

“All along my lawyer told me to plead guilty. Said the best he could do would be to bargain it down to a lesser charge. The man didn’t want to work for his money.”

“So why didn’t you plead guilty? I mean wouldn’t you have been better off?”

“Shit. I didn’t kill that woman and I wasn’t gonna say I did. Don’t get me wrong. I messed up a few people in my time, but I never killed nobody. She came on to me that night. In front of her friends she act like she wasn’t interested. But I seen her in there before. Only she act like it’s the first time she ever set foot in the place. So I slip her my phone number before she leaves and she calls me later on and invites me over. She was one wild bitch. Kept wantin’ me to do shit to her. Damn, I felt like I should’ve paid her for all that fun. Tell you the truth I never even knew her name.”

“Wait. Back up,” I said, trying hard to keep the revulsion out of my voice. “If she called you, there would have been a record of it. Why wasn’t that introduced as evidence?”

“Because my cocksuckin’ lawyer never bothered to check the phone records. I told him to but he didn’t. Then he says it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.”

“Are you serious?”

“Damn right I’m serious. Happens all the time. Hey, you think I’m the only one in here got screwed by the system? This joint’s filled with guys who’da been better off representing themselves than to trust some court appointed asshole who hates you for breathin’.” He gave me a long look. “So what do ya think
you
can do for me, little girl?”

I was torn between utter loathing for the man and feeling like a terrible injustice had been done to him. “I’ll get back to you,” I said.