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

“What is going on, Nettie? First, you call me
up, begging me to come down and help you with a problem you won’t
explain, and now you’re telling me to forget it. I just spent
almost ten hours on the train to get here. Please tell me I didn’t
waste my time sitting on my fanny all day on the ‘Vermonter’.”

“It doesn’t matter. There really isn’t
anything you can really do,” she insisted.

“Try me.”

“No, Gabby. Let’s just make the best of a bad
situation and have a pleasant weekend.”

“I didn’t come to have a pleasant weekend, as
tempting as that might be,” I retorted. “You said you had a
problem. What was it?”

“I’d rather not say,” she replied, brushing
at imaginary lint as she sat on the edge of the chair.

“I don’t really care whether or not you feel
like telling me. I want to know.”

“It’s...it’s embarrassing.” Sure enough,
there was the telltale blush spreading up from her neck like a
flame.

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?”