No Such Thing As a Good Blind Date: A Brandy Alexander Mystery (No Such Thing As: A Brandy Alexander Mystery) Read Free Page B

subscription to the Inquirer when she moved to Florida?
    “Brandy, are you there?”
    “I’m here, Mom. Listen, I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m perfectly safe.”
    “Well, keep the doors locked—and call your brother.” That’s my mother’s solution to everything.
    She filled the next ten minutes detailing her trip to the podiatrist. I care, I really do, but I’m a little on the squeamish side. So when she started in with her toe fungus, I decided to wrap things up.
    “I’ve got to run, Mom. The butler wants to use the phone.”

Chapter Two
     
    “Ya know the nose, ya know the man.”—Janine DiAngelo, twin sister of Franny and the definitive expert on key male anatomy.
    “I’d always heard it was the thumbs.”
    Janine took a swig of Rolling Rock ale and considered this. “No, Danny Margolis has huge thumbs.” She shook her luxurious auburn haired head, lost in promises unkept. “He was a big disappointment.”
    Reflecting on my own meager experience in this department, I deferred to Janine’s wealth of knowledge.
    It was five p.m.—Happy Hour at the Pensacola Bar & Grill, an after-work hangout for the actual employed. Young urban professionals flocked here, presumably, after a hard day at the office, to unburden themselves of the pressures of the working world. Sitting among them at the bar, munching free snacks and nursing beers, Janine and I were Happy Hour frauds.
    I glanced over at my cohort in unemployment. Janine looked like a goddess in her “weather be damned” short tight skirt, which accentuated her legs, and a form-fitting turtleneck, which accentuated other parts of her near perfect five foot nine inch body. I slumped beside her in my uniform jeans and sweatshirt, looking like the shortstop for a peewee softball team.
    “So how’s it going with Toodie?” she asked.
    It had been a week since the big move, and I had to admit to being pleasantly surprised. He’s sweet, in a loopy sort of way, and as a plumber he knows only too well what can befall a person who doesn’t clean the hair out of the shower drain. Plus, he cooks. I reported all this to Janine.
    “Brandy,” she said, one eye on me and the other on a six foot two inch suit and Armani tie that was making its way over to the bar, “don’t you think it’s a little odd that in the all the time you’ve been back, the only socializing you’ve done is with a thirty year old jailbird who still lives with his granny?” Well, when you put it that way…
    “I socialize. Yesterday I had a dental appointment, and just last week I took Rocky to the vet’s to get spayed.” Rocky is my twelve-week-old kitten, who, judging by the hordes of Tomcats sniffing around the house, has no trouble getting dates.
    The Armani tie reached the bar and slid onto the stool next to Janine. His sandy-haired, equally well-dressed friend sidled up next to him, giving me the once-over. To his credit, he didn’t try to slip me subway tokens or point me in the direction of the nearest homeless shelter.
    “Hey,” he said, reading the logo on my sweatshirt. “South Street Boxing Gym. Do you know Frankie Brentano? He’s the manager there.”
    Janine flashed me the “thumbs up” sign and deliberately turned her back to me.
    “Yeah, I know him,” I said. “He’s my uncle.”
    Uncle Frankie is my mother’s significantly younger, formerly delinquent brother and one of my favorite people in the world. “How do you know him?”
    Stan, it turns out, is an avid boxing fan. He is also an accounts exec at a nearby advertising firm, a Lacrosse player, divorced from his childhood sweetheart and a former spelling bee champion. I learned all this in the space of three minutes. I also learned that Stan likes to work with his hands. One arm leaned on the bar while the other snaked up my back, rubbing concentric circles along my spine and settling around the vicinity of my chest.
    “Stan,” I asked, smiling, “did we meet in a former life and it