A Game of Dons

by Nic Saint

  “This is an outrage!” cried Eddy Grabarski, who’d been standing near the cake, along with his wife.

  “Who put that dead man inside my boy’s cake?!” cried Pamela Grabarski.

  “Dead man! That just happens to my son!”

  “Who cares! He’s ruining my boy’s birthday!”

  Eddy had to control a powerful urge to strangle his wife, but managed to do so in the nick of time. “Security!” he bellowed. “Security!”

  Several of his men came running up. They all looked the part: dressed in black, with sunglasses in spite of the fact that the sun had set, and bulges where no bulges should have been.

  “Yes, boss,” said one of the many men in black.

  “Get my son out of there!” he cried.

  “Yes, boss,” said the man, and made a beeline for Heike, who stood staring at the cake with his mouth wide open.

  “Not that son, you idiot! The other one!”

  “The dead one, boss?” asked the guy.

  “Could you please show some respect?!”

  But before his men could remove Vic from the cake, a large figure stepped in front of them. Eddy recognized him as Chief Whitehouse.

  “Not so fast, boys,” said the chief. “This is now officially a crime scene.” And then he started bellowing out orders, much in the same fashion as Eddy had done. Only he didn’t bark his orders to a bunch of men in black, but a small cadre of police officers, of which there were plenty present. In fact the place was pretty much crawling with them!

  “Hey, what’s going on?!” Eddy yelled over the hubbub of sudden police activity.

  “Seal off the scene,” the Chief was saying, “and call the coroner.” He then walked up to Eddy. “A word, Mr. Grabarski?”

  “No,” said Eddy.

  “No?”

  “I’m not going to talk to you! My son has just been used as the butt of some kind of cruel joke in front of all of my guests, and I’m not going to stand idly by.” He yelled to his security team, “Find out who’s responsible and bring me their head on a plate—now!”

  “Yes, boss!”

  He smiled coldly at the Chief. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

  “Stand down, son,” said the Chief to the person in charge of Eddy’s security.

  “Yes, Chief,” said the burly security man.

  “Don’t just stand there!” Eddy said. “Get going!”

  “Stay put!” said the Chief.

  For a moment, the security expert seemed unsure as to how he should proceed.

  “If you dare move an inch I’ll have you arrested,” said the Chief. “Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the guard, and Eddy finally admitted defeat.

  “You can’t do this, Whitehouse,” he growled.

  “Oh, yes, I can. In fact I should have done this a long time ago.” He took out a pair of handcuffs and did the most outrageous thing: he placed them on Eddy’s wrists! “Eddy Grabarski, I’m arresting you—”

  “On what grounds!” Eddy shouted.

  “How about racketeering? Loansharking? And that’s just for starters.”

  “Are you nuts? Do you know who I am?!”

  The Chief’s heavy hand descended on Eddy’s shoulder and the burly copper gave him a meaningful look. “Oh, I know exactly who you are.” And Eddy had the sinking feeling that life, as he’d known it, was over.

  Chapter 32

  “Where is your dad?” asked Fee. “Have you found him yet?”

  “He’s busy arresting mobsters,” said Alice, looking surprised.

  “Your dad has just arrested Eddy Grabarski!” Rick said as he joined them.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Alice. “I don’t get it. Why is he suddenly arresting him now?”

  “You’ll never guess what your dad is doing right now!” Reece cried as he hurried up.

  “Let me guess,” said Rick. “Arresting Grabarski?”

  “How did you know?”

  Rick tapped his head. “Little gray cells, mon ami. It’s all about those little gray cells.”

  “Very funny,” said Reece good-naturedly.

  “I’d ask him what’s going on but he’s pretty busy,” said Alice. “He’s not just arresting Grabarski but a bunch of Grabarski’s associates, too. In fact this whole thing looks like a sting operation from what I can tell.”

  “A sting operation?” said Reece.

  “Alice’s dad must have planned this,” said Rick. “No way this came out of the blue.”

  “So did he also plan for the dead guy to pop out of the cake?” asked Fee. She shivered. “There should be a law against that kind of thing. Cakes and dead bodies don’t mix.”

  “There is a law against that kind of thing,” Rick pointed out. “Plenty of laws, in fact.”

  Aunt Bettina, Uncle Alistair and Fee’s mom and dad walked up. “Terrible, what happened to that cake,” said Bianca, shaking her head.

  “The cake?” said Fee. “Think about the poor dead guy.”

  “I don’t care so much about him, but they can’t do this sort of thing to an innocent cake,” said Bianca, and her husband and brother-in-law, who was Bell’s cake baker, nodded somberly. This was obviously a sad day for cake bakers.

  More familiar faces flocked around: Mabel and her husband Mark, and Bettina and Alistair’s sons Busby and Bancroft.

  “What’s going on?” asked Mabel.

  “Curtis is rounding up the hosts of the party and half of the guests,” said Fee’s dad.

  “Yeah, looks like the party is over,” said Bancroft, and his brother agreed that from the looks of things that just might be the case. He was munching a piece of cake. The others all looked at him in horror.

  “Where did you get that cake?” Bettina demanded.

  “Where do you think I got it?” said Busby, a bodybuilding wannabe himself, just like the birthday boy.

  “Eww! You can’t eat that cake,” said Alice. “There was a dead man inside.”

  “There still is,” said Busby, taking another bite. “The trick is to eat around him.”

  “That’s what all those video games do to impressionable young minds,” Bettina said. “They turn them into mush.”

  “You’re assuming Busby has a mind,” muttered her husband darkly.

  “Hey, it’s all good,” said Busby. “The cake is delicious. Only problem I see? They’ve put a police cordon around it. So now I can’t come near it.”

  “Yeah, that’s the only problem I can see, too,” said his brother sarcastically.

  Alice gestured for Fee to join her, and they removed themselves from the group.

  “What is it?” asked Fee when they were out of earshot.

  “I have a feeling my dad planned this whole thing all along,” she said. “I mean, why suddenly arrest Grabarski at his son’s birthday party? And we’re no closer to figuring out what’s going on with Deanna.”

  “She must be around,” said Fee.

  Alice was right. The only person who could have put that body inside that cake was Deanna, with a little help from Chazz’s boys. So either Deanna was here, or Johnny and Jerry were. Either way, they were going to have to get to the bottom of this thing tonight.

  “Maybe we should just leave this to your dad,” Fee suggested when they’d circled the domain and had glanced at so many faces they were starting to become a blur. “He seems to know what he’s doing.”

  “Virgil asked us first,” said Alice stubbornly. “And now he’s going to jail for helping out a friend.”

  “He won’t go to jail,” said Fee. “Your dad won’t allow it.”

  People all seemed at a loss as to what was going on. Some people had been arrested, while others had been left in peace.

  “Are we free to leave?” Fee heard a woman ask her husband.

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Let’s get out of here. This party is a bust.”

  This party was a bust, Fee agreed. They’d walked around the house, and had arrived at th
e circular driveway, where several police vehicles were driving up and down, carrying away guests who’d been placed under arrest. Yep. This was a carefully planned sting operation.

  Fee spotted a van parked near a pagoda, and nudged Alice. “Let’s check out the van.”

  “Rhubarb Bakery? Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither. So let’s take a look.”

  They moved over to the van, and as they stared into the windshield, who would they find staring back at them but the two familiar faces of Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale!

  Johnny waved at them, but Jerry clearly wasn’t as happy to see them as his colleague.

  “Get us out of here!” Jerry was saying. “Get us out of here now, you moron!”

  But Fee leaned in through the driver’s side window and plucked the keys from the ignition. “Not so fast, boys. We have a few questions and I believe you may have the answers.”

  Jerry displayed a feeble smile. “Oh, hey, Felicity Bell. How nice to see you.”

  Johnny was more ebullient. “Alice! Fee! So great to see you!”

  “So tell me,” said Fee. “What’s going on? And since when are you guys in the cake baking business?”

  “We’re not in the cake baking business,” said Johnny with a laugh. “We’re in the dead people moving business.”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” growled his partner.

  “It’s Alice and Fee! They’re good people. We can tell them.”

  “No, we can’t. We’re sworn to secrecy, remember?”

  “Who are you working for?” asked Alice, who was leaning in through Jerry’s window.

  Johnny looked pained. “Why, Fee’s boyfriend’s dad, of course. Didn’t you know?”

  “Shut up!”

  “I know it’s a little unconventional, this job we’ve been asked to do, but that’s the fun of working for Chazz. You never know what crazy idea he’s going to come up with next!”

  “Shut. Up!”

  Dogs suddenly started yapping, and Fee discovered a whole bunch of them sitting in the footwell at Jerry’s feet.

  “I think they want to go for a walk,” said Johnny. “They don’t like being cooped up for too long, you see.”

  Fee leaned in further: five Pomeranians and one Maltipoo were barking their little heads off. She smiled. “Is that Gertrude Grabarski’s dog?”

  “Yes, it is. Apple, her name is. I’ve been meaning to give her back, but we were under strict orders—”

  “Shut up,” Jerry snapped. “Shut up shut up shut up.”

  “Are you feeling all right, Jerry? You keep repeating yourself.”

  “That’s because you can’t stop blabbing, you blabbering idiot!”

  “But it’s Alice and Fee!”

  “Chazz said talk to no one so we talk to no one!”

  Johnny stared at him for a moment, then turned to Fee. “I don’t know how you women do it,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Multitasking! I’m Chazz’s official dog handler. Which means I handle his dogs,” he added, making his meaning perfectly clear. “And you probably didn’t know this, but dogs and dead bodies don’t mix. Those cuties did not like the smell of the dead dude we’ve been lugging around all day, even though we kept him in the freezer so he would stay crunchy.”

  “Johnny!”

  “Huh?”

  Jerry made a face. Johnny ignored him.

  “And then there was the whole cake debacle,” he said with a laugh. “So tough to keep dogs away from cake. But then when we put the dead dude inside the cake, they suddenly didn’t want to come near it. So if you want to keep your dogs away from your cake, put a dead dude inside it. Free advice for your dad. He might want to consider that.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him,” said Fee.

  Jerry threw up his arms and sank down in his seat. “Oh, what’s the use,” he muttered.

  “I think you better tell them everything,” a strange voice sounded from the back of the van. And from the shadows a blond-haired woman emerged. “Hello, girls,” she said.

  Both Alice and Fee stared at her. Virgil had been right, Fee thought. Deanna Kohl was probably the most stunningly beautiful woman she’d ever seen.

  Chapter 33

  “Scoot over, boys,” said Deanna, and took a seat between Johnny and Jerry, who both smiled affectionately when the stunning blonde graced them with her presence. Virgil didn’t seem to be the only male she affected powerfully.

  “So you’re the one that started all this,” said Alice, staring at the woman.

  Deanna shook her head. “Vic Grabarski is the one that started it.”

  “When you were teaching at police academy,” said Alice.

  “That’s right.”

  “So what happened, exactly?” asked Fee.

  Deanna took a deep breath. “Vic almost killed my little sister. And then he left her for dead. It’s a miracle she survived, but even then she’s scarred for life.”

  “Your sister?” asked Alice.

  Deanna nodded. “Roxana.” She smiled. “You met her, haven’t you, Johnny?”

  “Roxana is the best,” said Johnny.

  “She is. Unfortunately she used to have this thing about dating the bad boys. And of course she picked the baddest of the lot in Vic Grabarski. We all told her to break it off, but Roxana can be stubborn, and she was extra stubborn about Vic. So when I discovered that he was involved in all kinds of illegal activities, I rushed to tell her. It didn’t matter to her. She wouldn’t even listen.

  “I was teaching the night the call came. I’d just finished a night exercise. There had been an accident. Locals had seen a car veer off the road and into Lake Joy. They’d seen a man flee the scene and had immediately called 911. A passerby had seen a woman in the car, and later reported the couple arguing just before the car had gone off the road. That same person dove into the lake and found my sister still inside the car. He managed to get her out but she was unresponsive. He worked on her, applying CPR.” She shook her head. “If that man hadn’t done what he did, Roxana would have been dead for sure.”

  “No thanks to Vic,” said Alice softly.

  “The bastard first drove his car into the lake, then left my sister to die. She was in a coma for three years and barely survived.”

  “Wait, when was this?” asked Fee.

  “Eight years ago.”

  “So…”

  “She woke up five years ago. It’s been a slow process, but she pulled through—she’s still pulling through. She’s actually made amazing progress, and the doctors are optimistic she’ll make a full recovery—at least physically. Mentally she’ll probably be in therapy the rest of her life. Especially after what happened this morning…”

  “Tell her about how Vic took his hands off the wheel,” said Johnny.

  “Roxana doesn’t remember everything about that night, but what she does remember is that at some point Vic took his hands off the wheel, and allowed the car to go into the lake. He jumped out just before it hit the water.”

  “He drove into the lake on purpose?” asked Alice, shocked.

  “Yeah. He wanted to make a point. Or punish her. Or maybe he was just being a reckless idiot.”

  “He’s not a nice person,” said Johnny.

  “We know he’s not a nice person, Johnny,” said Jerry. “Now be quiet and let the lady finish her story.”

  Deanna gave Jerry a grateful smile and Jerry whimpered slightly.

  “The trouble began when Roxana decided to get back in touch with Vic. She said she needed closure and the only way she saw how was to meet him and talk things through. Ask him about that night. I told her this was a bad idea, but she insisted. Without consulting me or our parents she arranged to meet Vic at the old house where we used to live.”

  “Wait, that house on Grimey Hill was yours?” asked Alice.

  “It was the house I grew up in,” Deanna confirmed. “My parents were forced to sell when Roxana landed in the hospital. We all pitched in to
pay the bills—which were numerous.”

  “Couldn’t you have asked Vic or his dad to pay?”

  “We tried. We reported him to the police, of course, but even with the testimony from the witnesses he managed to get off squeaky clean. He claimed my sister was driving, and so the blame fell squarely on her.”

  “But the witness who saved her…”

  “Unfortunately he received both a large sum of money from Eddy Grabarski and a threat that if he talked he would be in the hospital himself, or the morgue. So he recanted.”

  “What did my dad have to say about it?”

  “There wasn’t much he could do. But he believed us. I knew him a little from the academy, and he said that if I ever needed something, I just had to come knocking.”

  What a story, Alice thought. And she had a feeling the worst was yet to come.

  “So my sister decided to meet Vic, and of course they had a flaming row, just like the night of their fatal date. Only this time Vic attacked her, and tried to throttle her. So she stabbed him in the neck with a hairpin, and while he was clutching at his neck, he took an ax that was lying around and tried to bean her over the head with it. Lucky for her my mom had found out about the meeting and I arrived just in time to tackle him. We struggled, and to protect me my sister hit him with the ax. This time he didn’t get up again.”

  “And that’s when you called Virgil,” said Fee.

  Deanna nodded. “He owed me a favor. He’d gotten in bad with Eddy once and Roxana put in a good word for him with Vic and Eddy agreed to let him off the hook.”

  “You told Virgil you killed Vic.”

  “I just wanted to protect my sister. She’s already suffered enough.”

  “You could have called 911 and said it was self-defense. It was the truth.”

  “Eddy’s lawyers would have massacred my sister in court. And Eddy’s buddies would have killed her in prison. No, we couldn’t risk that.”

  “So you buried him.”

  “I sent Roxana home, called Virgil, and we buried Vic.”

  “So how did his body end up being lugged all over town?” asked Alice.