Where's Hansel and Gretel's Gingerbread House?: A Gabby Grimm Fairy Tale Mystery #2

by Sara M. Barton

  Chapter Two --

  “This is me, Gabby. Your cousin. The one relative who has been with you through thick and thin. What could possibly be more embarrassing than the Pete DeGeneres episode?”

  “Oh, crap!” she groaned. Pete was the first guy after Paul died. He lasted all of three weeks before he went back to the wife he forgot to tell Nettie he had. Not much of a romance there, but boy, was there sex. It turned out that far from being the misunderstood husband in a loveless marriage, Pete’s thing was to get himself entangled with available women and then drop hints to his wife. He knew she’d come after him -- it turned out he liked to stage big public scenes when he was ready to dump his latest conquest. In Nettie’s case, they were in the elevator of her apartment building, getting naked between floors. Apparently, when the button didn’t summon the elevator car, Pete’s wife happened to catch a passing maintenance man, who pried open the doors from the outside, giving the rest of the lobby crowd quite a peep show. That time, Nettie took a week’s vacation time and consoled herself up at Black Forest Farm, in the bosom of her loving family. By the time she left Latimer Falls, she was almost back to normal, at least enough to notice the muscles Earl was sporting under his rather tight deputy shirt. Something told me this new problem also involved a man.

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Him?” There was alarm in those eyes.

  “What’s his name? How did you two meet?” I paused, waiting for her to fill in the blanks. Alas, she simply stared down at her lap, avoiding eye contact. That’s never a good sign. “Let me try it from a different angle. You said you’re afraid you’re going to lose your job and that you won’t get another. Why would you get fired?”

  “I did something dumb, Gabby.”

  “And?” I prompted her.

  “There was a man at work,” she sniffed. “We got involved. It didn’t last long.”

  I waited for more, but it didn’t come. From where I sat, it was beginning to look like a very long evening. “What’s the problem?”

  “I...I might have given him some confidential information about...about the company.”

  “Oh, dear.” Nettie worked for a real estate developer. The only information I could see that might have value would involve either money or land. “What kind of confidential information?”

  “About 1423, the new condos in Queens. It’s an old factory complex we’re renovating.”

  “How confidential?” I was beginning to feel like I should have gone to dental school, because this was a lot like pulling teeth. Too bad I didn’t have any laughing gas handy. I could have used a whiff myself along about now.

  “He wanted to know about the bids we received on the concrete.”

  “Why would he want to know about that?”

  “The starting bid for Phase One of the project was $300,000.” Nettie sighed, her shoulders slumping in the chair. “I should have known better, Gabby. I should have realized that he was using me to get the information for nefarious purposes.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He only romanced me to get the details.” Those blue eyes slowly rose up, chin following. When they finally met my gaze, they locked on, hard and fast. For the first time since I could recall, my cousin was genuinely perplexed, unable to hoist the baton and lead the parade through town. I was in charge by default.

  “Maybe. How did he end the relationship?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He didn’t?” I decided to try a different venue. “When did you last see him?”

  “Two weeks ago. He said goodbye at the end of the day and that was that. He never came back to work. He never collected his paycheck. He never called in sick. He just disappeared. Now my boss is all over my ass about how the bids for Phase Two are due to be presented to the investors and they’re out of whack with Phase One. The lowest is nearly twice the price of the original.”

  “Maybe the price of concrete has gone up.”

  “I checked. The market price went up anywhere from about seven to twenty percent last year, not eighty. It doesn’t make any sense. And we only got three bids this time, instead of six.”

  “Why do you think Prince Charming is involved? And what exactly do you think he did?”

  “He had to have taken the job at Frist and Company to get information, Gabby. Once he got it, he was gone within twenty-four hours.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Joe Fortuna.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Jersey.”

  “Oh?” That sounded really vague. Too vague. There was something about that answer that raised suspicion. “In other words, you never saw where he lived?”

  “No. He...stayed here half a dozen nights.” I couldn’t help it. My eyebrows went up. Had Nettie met another Pete, a guy out for a quickie? “It wasn’t like that! He slept in the guest room!”

  “Weekends or weekdays?”

  “Why?”

  “Married guys aren’t usually available for weekends. During the week, they can claim to their wives they’re away on business and it sounds legitimate in most cases.”

  “Oh,” she nodded. A moment later, I got my answer. “Both. Three weekend nights, three weekday nights.”

  “Listen, I’m kind of tired after being on the train for so long. Do you have a decent bottle of wine in this place? And how about we call out for pizza, so we can hash this mess out?”

  Two hours later, we had established that Nettie photocopied those bids and brought them to Louie’s Restaurant, where Joe bought her dinner and plied her with Chianti Classico and Amaretto. Apparently, the man knew Nettie’s weaknesses. He came to work the following day, spent most of his time working on the monthly reports, and stopped at her desk on his way out, to say he’d see her in the morning.

  “Joe didn’t call? Didn’t email you?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “And you checked his apartment in Jersey?”

  “I can’t. I don’t know where he lives, Gabby. And the only phone number I have for him is his cell. I left him ten messages. I even checked the papers to make sure that he wasn’t injured or dead. Do you know I can’t find any Joe Fortuna at that cell phone number? According to the search I did, it belongs to a Mike Alves.”

  “Okay,” I told her. “That’s something. Did you do an image search?”

  There it was again, that little nod of defeat. She picked up the bottle and poured some more into my glass, before emptying the rest into her own. “It was him.”

  “Ha,” I said, more to myself than to Nettie. Something wasn’t right. For a guy who was out to get information, he wasn’t coming off as a complete rat. He was beginning to look like a cop on a case.

  “Who else had his cell phone number?” I asked her. “Everyone at work?”

  “No. The company provides cell phones for some of the employees, and Joe had one. But one night when we were out, he said he often let phone calls go to voicemail after hours, and he wanted me to have his personal cell number.”

  “Which phone did you use to leave him messages?” I wondered.

  “Both. I called his work cell during the day because Mr. Frist wanted to know where that report was. And then, when I hadn’t heard from him all day, I tried his personal cell.”

  “And there was no response at all? No missed calls? No emails that could have been from him, even using a different name?”

  “I don’t follow you, Gabby. Are you suggesting he tried to get in touch with me and I missed it?”

  “Don’t know,” I admitted. “He doesn’t come off as a total bum. Did you check the hospitals to see if he had been injured, or did you just read the papers?”

  “You think something happened to him?”

  “It’s possible, Nettie, that his disappearance isn’t what you think.” The more I thought about it, the more it seemed likely. He kept her at arm’s length, but gave her his personal cell phone number. He stayed in her guest room, but didn’t put the moves on her? Right there,
that’s highly suspicious. Either the guy is the last living gentleman on the planet or he didn’t want to compromise his source of information. Maybe this was more about those concrete bids and less about the romance. In a way, that seemed like harsh news to share with Nettie. If I pointed out the fact that he was a gentleman who scammed her out of confidential business news, she’d think it was because she was totally undesirable. But the truth is there is often an organized crime element in the building trades, especially in a city like New York. If Joe Fortuna wasn’t working for a competitor, it was possible he was a cop doing his job, and that could only mean one thing. He was working undercover on a case. Maybe he was trying to keep her name out of it. Only one way to find out.

  “You still have that number?”

  “Gabby, what are you planning to do?” I had a sudden flashback to the summer Nettie turned twenty-two and she confided to me that she had a crush on the cute guy from Poughkeepsie. She didn’t want him to know she thought he was Adonis in jeans. Me? I was nearly seventeen and full of myself. When she pointed him out at the coffee shop, I marched right up to him and asked him why he hadn’t yet asked her out. What did he think was wrong with my cousin? Put on the spot like that, Paul stuttered that as far as he knew, there wasn’t any problem. And could I please tell him who my cousin was? I had pointed to the mortified Nettie across the room, cringing behind the post. With a grace that marked their nearly-twenty-year marriage, he crossed the distance, put out his hand, and introduced himself to her with enough gallantry to choke a horse. Annette was more than smitten. She was head over heels. Before that cup of coffee ended, so was Paul.

  You might wonder what brought that up. The answer is simple. Nettie can be one giant pain in the presidulator, at times overbearing and pushy, but when it comes to her heart, she’s not one to take a leap, especially when she thinks a man has doubts about her. When Paul told her he needed to take a break from their relationship, she was convinced it was because he didn’t love her. The truth was the man was steeling himself to make the biggest decision of his life. Nettie totally freaked out and started dating every guy who asked her out. She made a big show of moving on, but I wasn’t buying it. Unfortunately, she was pretty successful at convincing Paul. When he saw she wasn’t home pining away for him, he decided that she didn’t care about him after all, so he took a job in Long Island. I ran into him one day in Central Park, when I was playing Frisbee with some friends.

  “Boy, you’ve got some nerve dumping my cousin,” I had warned him at the time. “You must be completely out of your head!”

  “Me? What about her? She’s dating the entire cast of ‘Aida’!”

  “Only because you don’t want to see her anymore!”

  “That’s not true!” he snapped at me. “I want to marry her!”

  “Well, you’d better hurry up and tell her that, because a couple of those guys are in line to heal her broken heart!”

  Looking back on that fortuitous meeting and the marriage that resulted, I studied Nettie now. Was it possible that Joe Fortuna actually cared about my cousin? I had to know.

  “Can I have it?” I pulled out my cell phone, ready to dial. With a shrug of her shoulders and a feigned disinterest, she read off the numbers and waited for me to punch them in. When it rang and went to greeting, I listened.

  This is Mike Alves. I have been called away from my phone, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll call you back as soon as I can.

  I put a hand over the phone and quickly asked a vital question. “Nettie, when you called that number the first time, what was the name of the man doing the greeting?”

  “Joe Fortuna,” she responded. I cut her off to leave a message for Mike Alves.

  “Mr. Alves, this is Deputy Gabriella Grimm of the Latimer Falls, Vermont Sheriff’s Department. You’re probably wondering why I am calling you. I have a spot of trouble here concerning a woman by the name of Annette Dupuis. This number was found on her cell phone and I was wondering if you could help us to clarify the nature of your relationship. If you could call me back at your earliest convenience, I’d appreciate it.” Before I hung up, I left my cell phone number, and reiterated my request that Mr. Alves contact me.

  “You think he’ll call back?”

  “Maybe,” I told her. The truth was I was hoping that he would and that he’d have a logical explanation.

  Ten minutes later, my cell phone buzzed on the coffee table, as Nettie and I were reminiscing about Paul. It was the sheriff.

  “Rufus, what’s up?” My boss knew I was headed to see my cousin in the city. Why was he calling me?

  “Gabby, what the hell kind of mess have you gotten yourself into now?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I just got a call from an assistant special agent-in-charge in the New York FBI field office, wanting to know how you got the phone number of a man by the name of Mike Alves.”

  “Long story,” I said in reply.

  “Give me the short version.”

  “The guy was romancing my cousin. He compromised her and left her in the lurch. I’m trying to figure out how to resurrect her reputation.”

  “Well, I just got my ass chewed out by a very irate FBI agent, who told me in no uncertain terms that I was to call you off the case.”

  “Uh....”

  “You can thank me later for not telling him there is no case. I suggest you get back here pronto and bring your cousin with you, so I can say we actually have a case and the jurisdiction that goes with it.”

  “Right.” That sounded an awful lot like a direct order.

  “By the way, this self-important, sanctimonious FBI piece of head cheese warned me that your cousin is in deep trouble for her connections to organized crime.”

  “What? That doesn’t sound like Annette.”

  “Well, that’s the word he gave me. The FBI is taking a long hard look at her for federal charges.”

  “Seriously? Rufus, something’s just not right here. This guy, Joe Fortuna....”

  “Gabby, save it. Don’t tell me over the phone. Get back here now and we’ll work it through in person. In the meantime, I’ll call Ronny Glieb, just in case either of you need a good defense attorney."