Free No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (No Such Thing As...: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) by Shelly Fredman Page B

miserably.
    “Well, Nick doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who waits for a woman to make up her mind—and let’s face it, Bran, you’re still emotionally joined at the hip with Bobby. I think you and DiCarlo should just do it and get it over with,” she decided. “See if the old spark is still there.”
    “Jesus, Franny,” I yelled, and a piece of lettuce flew out of my mouth and landed on her side of the table. “If I wanted that kind of advice I’d be sitting here watching Janine chow down half a cow instead of you.”
    “I hit a nerve, huh?” she grinned.
    “No.”
Yes.
“And anyway,” I went on, lowering my voice to barely a whisper, “there’s something a little more pressing I wanted to talk to you about.”
    Fran looked at her watch. “Better make it quick. I’m due back at the office in twenty minutes.”
    I took a deep breath. “It’s about Tamra,” I announced. “I think she was murdered.”
    I had plenty of time to think about it too, seeing as I was up all night again, so it gave me something new to dwell on besides where Bobby and I were headed and who Nick was sleeping with when he wasn’t busy selling arms to third world nations or whatever probably illegal thing he did for a living.
    The police were handling it as a routine suicide. As if deciding to end one’s own life could ever be considered routine. But when I really thought about it, things didn’t add up. Tamra just didn’t appear all that depressed. Certainly, she wasn’t thrilled the day her husband showed up at the restaurant, but she seemed more pissed off than suicidal. And she’d been so excited about a story she had been working on. I couldn’t imagine her checking out when her investigation was going so well.
    I called Detectives Moody and Hahn, the cops in charge of the case, with my theory about how Tamra had really died. I thought maybe they’d invite me to come in so we could pool our information, but all they’d said was thank you and they thought they could handle it from here. “But what about her husband?” I’d persisted. “Have you checked out his alibi? And what about a suicide note? Isn’t it standard practice to leave some kind of message behind, explaining why they didn’t want to live anymore? I mean,
come on, people,
what was her motivation?”
    Detective Moody didn’t feel inclined to discuss the subtleties of the suicidal mind with me. In fact, he suggested that I was looking for trouble where there wasn’t any, as a way of lessening my own feelings of guilt over not being able to save my friend from herself. I made a counter suggestion for Detective Moody to perform an anatomical impossibility involving his head and his butt and then the line went dead. Must’ve been a bad connection.
    “So what do you think?” I asked Franny, when I’d caught her up to speed.
    She gave me a long look, and I swear there was pity in her eyes.
    “You’re not going to like it,” she said finally.
    “Then never mind.”
    “Too late,” she said. “You already asked. Brandy, did you ever think there might be a little bit of truth to what that cop said about you feeling guilty? Not that you have anything to feel guilty about,” she rushed on. “But you said yourself you barely knew this woman. Isn’t it possible she was more troubled than you thought, and it just got to be too much for her?” Franny nabbed me with a look. “Hon, I think you may be plunging headlong into this whole murder theory as a way to avoid your own issues.”
    “What issues, Fran? I have no issues. I am issue-free.” I folded my arms in front of my chest, my body language screaming,
“Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
    “Fine,” said Fran. “You’re the picture of mental health. I’ve got to get back to work.” She squeezed her way out of the booth, pausing to take one last chomp on a rib.
    “Franny,” I sighed.
    “Yeah?”
    “I’ll admit I may have a few
teensy
issues where I
might
benefit