By the time I reached Glen’s neighborhood the sky had turned a threatening gun metal gray. I really didn’t want to be there, but I’d run out of leads. New tenants had already moved into Glen’s old apartment. The screen door had been fixed and there was an old hibachi sitting right outside on the step. Someone was cooking a hotdog.
I slid out of the car and knocked on the neighbor’s door. A minute later a guy in a white wife beater undershirt came out and stood on the steps.
“Yeah?” He gave me a curious but friendly smile.
I introduced myself and said I was looking for Glen.
“Oh yeah, Didi said you might be coming around. I’m Tom. Sorry about your sister.”
It took me a minute to recall the lie. That’s why I should always tell the truth. Life is so confusing otherwise.
“Thanks,” I told him. “So, any idea where he may have gone?”
Tom shook his head. “Not a clue. When that guy left I thought to myself, ‘good riddance to bad rubbish.’ He is bad news any way you look at it.”
I thought for a minute. “Tom, did you ever notice anyone coming in or leaving the apartment, besides Glen?” Maybe I could find a lead in the company Glen kept.
“People would come and go all hours of the day and night. I think he was selling ‘ice’ out of the house. Sorriest bunch of losers you ever did see. I tried to mind my own business, ya know what I mean?”
I knew what he meant. “Did you maybe ever notice anyone in particular? Somebody who might have come over on a more regular basis?”
“Now that you mention it, I did see this guy here, a couple of times. I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup, but the reason I remembered him was he seemed a cut above the usual creep that hung around. I never paid much attention to him. I’m sorry. I know you really want to find your sister. Wish I could’ve been more help.”
Me too, Tom. I thanked him for his time and asked him to give me a call if he remembered anything else.
I still had an hour before I had to meet Franny, so I cruised the area on the crazy hope that I’d spot Davis standing on a street corner, shooting up or walking his dog or something. When I hit Jolly Jack’s I spied the woman I’d spoken to a few days ago, coming out of the bar. “Hey,” I yelled out the window.
She seemed confused for a second and then she looked away and started walking in the opposite direction. I double- parked and hopped out of the car.
“Excuse me,” I said, catching up to her. “Remember me? We met the other day and you gave me a lead on Glen Davis.”
She cast a furtive glance around, her head bent to block the wind. “I don’t know anything about the guy.” She walked on a few feet and I trailed her, close behind. “Hey, stop following me. I told you I don’t know anything.”
Wow. She was so helpful the other day. Something must have happened in the mean time to change her attitude. And then it struck me.
“Have you seen Glen? Is that it?”
“Leave me alone.” She broke into a trot and I had to run to catch up with her.
“That’s it, isn’t it? You saw Glen and he threatened you, didn’t he?”
She turned to face me and I got a good view of the scar that ran down her cheek. An involuntary shiver rippled through my body. “Look, I don’t want to get you in trouble. I just need to know if he’s still in the area.”
Her head moved a fraction of an inch, indicating I was right.
“Please. Just leave me alone,” she said, and took off full speed down the street.
I thought about following her, but what good would it do? She was clearly scared out of her mind. Glen was still in the area and word must’ve gotten back to him that she had spoken to me—which meant he knew someone was looking for him. The question is, did he know that someone is me?
Henry’s Bar & Grill is a white collar-casual restaurant located in Center City that specializes in seafood and steaks. Franny was already seated at the table when I arrived.
“Hey,” I said. “Am I late?”
“No, you’re right on time. I got here early.”
I sat down and picked up a menu. I was starving. “So did you tell Eddie about the T-Bird?”
“Sorta. I wrote him a note.”
“Oh.” It didn’t seem like the best approach, but like I said, I’m not an expert on relationships.
While we were waiting for our meals to arrive I filled Franny in on the latest developments.
“It came right out of his butt?”
“Yeah. Weird, huh?”
“Weird,” she agreed.
“I’ve been waiting for John to help me boot this thing up, but he’s been a little busy.”
“I could help you,” said Fran. “But let’s get back to the Mike thing.”
“Franny, there is no ‘Mike’ thing. He’s a really sweet guy, but…I don’t know, the chemistry just isn’t there. Ya know?”
“Gee,” Franny said, “I wonder why not. Could it be he’s too normal for you? He’s not mad at the world, he doesn’t have a secret life, he’s not an outlaw. Sheesh! What a loser.” She rolled her eyes at me.
“Okay, DiAngelo, I get your point. Can we drop it now?”
The server arrived and placed a 20-ounce steak in front of her. Franny cast him a critical eye. “That’s the biggest one you’ve got? What? I’m eating for two now.”
I picked up my burger and took a bite.
“Ya know what your problem is?” Fran said, pointing a steak fry in my direction.
“My best friend is a pain in the ass?”
“Your problem is you fall for the bad boys. Look, I love Bobby like a brother, but the guy is messed up.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she shut me up fast. “And don’t try to deny you still love him. It’s me you’re talking to. Then there’s the ultra mysterious Nick, who, according to Carla is on a first name basis with mafia kingpins and third world devil worshippers.”
“Franny, I’m not involved with Nick!”
“No, but you’d like to be.” Who wouldn’t? The man is a walking pheromone.
“Did I tell you that Monica Sargenti gained sixty-five pounds during her last pregnancy?” Okay, so it was mean, but at least it got her off the subject of my nonexistent love life.
Chapter Eight
At ten-thirty the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“I’m coming over.”
Fifteen minutes later my doorbell rang. I spent the interim fourteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds in a deep and abiding panic. I knew that voice. That was not a happy voice. That was the voice of trouble hitting the fan. I just wasn’t sure why.
I thought briefly about not answering, but curiosity got the better of me, and I unlatched the deadbolt and pushed open the storm door. Bobby didn’t wait to be invited in. He walked though to the living room like he owned the place and sat down heavily on the couch. He was wearing his leather cop jacket and a ski cap that said Phillies on it, which he pulled off and stuffed in his pocket. Now I could see lines of exhaustion around his eyes and the grim set of his mouth. Something told me this wasn’t a social call.
“Ya know where I was earlier this evening?”
I shook my head no.
“Picking a dead girl out of a dumpster.”
“Bobby,” I said, taking a seat on the other end of the couch, “I’m so sorry. It must have been awful.”
He nodded. “She was about your age.”
I wanted to reach out; to pull him towards me and hold him until the image of what he’d left behind was wiped from his memory. Instead, I offered him a TastyKake.
He gave a mournful little snort. “I didn’t come here to be fed.”
“Why did you come here, Bobby?” I asked as gently as possible. “I thought we agreed to put our friendship on hold for a while.”
He stood up and rubbed the palms of his hands against his thighs, a gesture meant to calm himself down. After a moment he pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and tossed it on the coffe
e table. “This was found in the dead girl’s jacket pocket. Look familiar?”
I stared at the paper, afraid to open it. Anyway, I already knew what it was.
“Brandy,” he said, and there was quiet rage in his voice, “what was your name and phone number doing in this woman’s possession? How the hell did you know her?”
The irony is, I didn’t know her. But I was the reason she was dead.
I sat in silence, holding my head in my hands, drowning in a sea of guilt.
“Answer me, Brandy. How did you know her?”
“I just met her the other day. I—I was looking for someone and she told me where I might be able to find him, and now—”oh shit—the tears started falling before I could do anything to stop them.
Bobby sighed and sat down on the couch again. He waited for me while I wiped my face on my shirtsleeve and took a couple of deep breaths. When he was sure the waterworks were over he tried again.
“You okay?”
I nodded.
“Now start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
I told him everything—well, almost everything.
“You’re holding something back. Who told you that the refrigerator was this Davis creep’s?”
I hesitated.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t tell you. I’m protecting my source.”
“And I’m trying to keep your ass out of jail. A young woman was murdered tonight and she had your name and phone number in your pocket. I pulled evidence for you. Do you have any idea what they could do to me if I get caught?” Bobby’s face loomed mere inches from mine. “Now you tell me who this fucking source is or I’m going to rip your fucking head off.”
“Oh, like that’s really going to get me to open up.”
Bobby slapped his hand against his head so hard I’d thought he’d knock himself out.
“It was Toodie, wasn’t it?”
My non-response spoke volumes.
“Do you know where he is?”
“No. I swear it. He called me the night I discovered the body, but he wouldn’t tell me where he was. He told me when he moved the freezer for Glen he had no idea what was in there. He thought they were steaks. And he asked me to try to find Glen. Toodie’s scared, Bobby. He figures if we can find Glen, then maybe the cops will believe him.”
Bobby got up again and began pacing the room, wearing little holes in my carpet. “Do you have any idea what kind of danger you put yourself in? Not to mention the legal trouble. Look, I know you thought you were helping Toodie, but if you had come to me sooner—”
“Don’t you think I know all that? But by the time I thought it all through it was too late. I didn’t want to involve you because I knew you’d try to help me, and I didn’t want to put you in the middle.”
“Well, I’m in it now.” Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. When he spoke again, it was with his cop voice. “Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go down to the police station and make a statement that Toodie contacted you and told you about Glen. Then you’re going to stay put and pray that they don’t look too closely on the timing of events. And if you’re very lucky, we’ll be able to keep your butt out of jail. But I’m warning you, Alexander, from here on in, you stay the fuck out of this investigation.”
“You’re warning me?”
“Don’t start.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
Bobby pulled open his jacket and reached in, and for a brief panicky moment I thought he was going to whip out his .38 and shoot me. Instead, he pulled out a couple of Polaroids. “Maybe these will change your mind.”
It was the girl from Jolly Jack’s. Only she was lying in a pool of her own blood. Her neck was an open gash and stuff was oozing out of her. Bile rose up in my throat and I shoved Bobby’s hand away.
“Look at them.” He grabbed me by the wrist as I turned away and I struggled against him, knocking the Polaroids onto the rug. He swept them up in his hand again, forcing me to look. “Don’t you understand, you idiot, this could’ve been you.”
I yanked my arm hard and he lost his balance and fell, taking me with him. Bobby rolled and landed on top of me, heaving with anger and sadness, loss and frustration. All the fight drained out of me and I just gave in to the feel of his body pressed solidly against me. He laid his cheek against mine; the roughness of his unshaven face sending ripples of heat though my entire body. Finally, he raised his head and our eyes locked. Neither of us took a breath. And then the moment was gone. He rose up on his elbows and pushed himself off the floor. I didn’t hear him leave.
I fell asleep on the rug, exhausted from an hour-long crying jag. He was right, of course. Bobby was trying to protect me and I was acting like a brat. It could have been me, lying in that dumpster. It was only by the grace of God that it wasn’t. If there is any justice in the world the cops will find that bastard Davis. I only wish it hadn’t cost someone else her life to make me see the light.
The ringing of the house phone woke me up. It was John.
“You sound terrible. Who died?”
I crawled to a sitting position and flopped down on the couch.
“No one you know.”
“What?”
“Nothing. What time is it?”
“Six-thirty.”
“In the morning? You couldn’t wait until, say, nine?”
“I’m depressed.”
Rocky sauntered into the living room, looking for something to eat. She followed me into the kitchen and I filled her bowl with cat crunchies.
“Why are you depressed?” I asked John. “I thought your blind date went well. It was certainly long enough,” I added.
“It was going well…until his wife called.”
“He’s married?” Adrian padded into the kitchen and I let him out the door to pee.
John sighed. “Go figure. I really liked him, Bran.”
“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to be giving a pep talk, but I gave it a shot. “Ya know what my Bubbie Adele used to say? She’d say, ‘every pot has a lid.’”
“No disrespect to Bubbie Adele, but what the hell does that mean?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, letting Adrian back into the house. “I think it means there’s someone out there who’s just right for you.” Or, as in my bubbie’s case, lots of someones. Bubbie Adele was married five times.
After work I took the thumb drive over to John’s so that we could take a look at it on his computer. John’s a bit of a tech-head. He lost me after the first mumblings about a USB port, the gist of it being he had one and I didn’t and we needed it to view the drive.
On the way over to John’s apartment, my cell phone rang. It was Mike returning my call. I ran through my theory about Connie Harrison and her father. “Anything’s possible,” Mike conceded. “But it would be difficult to prove, seeing as the victim’s version of events paint it as a standard mugging.”
“Yeah, but it is possible, right?” I argued. “Mike, the guy is obviously lying. Harrison was almost beaten to death and yet nothing was taken. His wife admitted he cheats on her constantly. The witness overheard something about ‘Conley,’ which could easily have been ‘Connie.’ She’s rich enough, or at least her father is, to hire someone to scare her husband into fidelity. The person who did this could have killed him, but he didn’t. I think this was a warning.”
Mike said he’d run it by his superiors and see what they had to say, but not to hold my breath.
There was no parking the entire length of John’s block. I ended up around the corner on a side street, which didn’t thrill me, but I parked right under a street lamp and ran like crazy until I reached John’s door.
“Hey, Sunshine. Sorry about the parking. My neighbor is having a party.”
“No problem.”
“So let’s see this mysterious thumb drive.”
I spent the next few minutes hanging around while John booted up his compu
ter, but he has a new flat screen television and pretty soon I was ensconced on his couch, watching Blossom—The E! True Hollywood Story.
There was a sudden explosion of laughter from John’s bedroom and then, “Come here, you’ve got to see this.”
I took one look at the screen and sank back onto the bed. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. Porn? My dog swallowed a skin flick?” Unless Keith was starring in the damn thing, I just couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Ooh! Maybe he is starring in the damn thing! John and I watched until it got really embarrassing and then he pulled the plug on it.
“Mystery solved,” John said.
“I guess.”
He gave me back the thumb drive. “Okay, I know that look,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Well, there are just too many unanswered questions, John. For instance, why did Keith pretend the dog was his, when his wife said they didn’t even own a dog? And does the drive belong to Keith? And if so, why would he go to all that trouble just to retrieve porn? I mean he could easily get another copy…and how the heck did the dog end up swallowing the drive in the first place? And another thing, who is Adrian’s real owner?”
“You named the dog Adrian?”
“Yeah, you know—Adrian! Adrian!”
John rolled his eyes. “You are seriously weird.”
“I’m also starving. You need to feed me.”
It was after eleven when I left John’s apartment. He’d made pasta primavera, which, after I picked out the cauliflower, was delicious. In my opinion, cauliflower is the devil’s work. It smells awful, tastes worse and looks like an albino brain. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about it.
The street was deserted so I stepped up my pace until I reached the car. I had my keys in my hand, sticking out from between my fingers like some funky brass knuckles, the way my mom taught me. I knew I was safe; this was one of the better neighborhoods, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I felt anxious and scared but I didn’t know why. And it didn’t help that the street lamp I’d parked under had been blown out. Damn kids and their BB guns.
My phone rang and I jumped a mile. “Hello?” I said, fumbling with the keys in the lock. I opened the car and slammed the door behind me.
No Such Thing As a Good Blind Date: A Brandy Alexander Mystery (No Such Thing As: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) Page 12
