Where's Hansel and Gretel's Gingerbread House?: A Gabby Grimm Fairy Tale Mystery #2 (7 page)

“In other words, the top three bidders
shouldn’t have had a chance to provide the concrete because of
failures?”

“Exactly, Gabby. It doesn’t make sense that
the projects were so much above the original Phase One bids,
especially because the average increase isn’t that high. Why did
these three companies get the opportunity to bid? Those previous
problems should have kept them out of the running.”

“It must involve kickbacks,” Gerhard
suggested. “Did you get a new boss?”

“No, same boss. He’s got a new wife,
Christine. Boy, is she a pain in the ass. She’s spending money
faster than her husband can make it.”

“Is that right?” Maybe the boss needed the
extra cash from the kickback to afford his new wife’s desire for
the good life.

“Yes. His divorce was really ugly and it cost
him a pretty penny. His ex-wife was a doll. The new wife? Not so
much.”

Was Mr. Frist expecting Annette to be called
as a witness against him? Maybe this was about destroying her
credibility as a potential witness by making her seem so
uninformed. Maybe someone wanted to knock her out of the running
before she could be tapped to testify.

“Too bad the documents are missing,” Ervina
sighed. Nettie and I looked at each other and grinned.

“Well, the paper versions are gone,” I
agreed, “but we have photos of them on my cell phone.”

“Are they legible?” Gerhard’s appetite for
investigation was whetted.

“I believe they are.” I flipped on my cell
phone and showed him. As he read, his eyes widened and narrowed. I
could only imagine what he was thinking.

“Can I download these?” Ah, the benefits of
buying the same Smartphone as my dad. I took his cord and plugged
in both ends to complete the transfer. Moments later, the data had
been copied to his laptop.

At eleven, I bid the group good night and
headed back to my carriage house. I got into my pajamas and poured
myself a glass of wine, settling on the sofa to watch the day’s
news. I turned on my laptop, hoping that Sam had left me a message.
It had been quite some time since he had sent me one. Coming up to
Christmas, I missed him more than I cared to admit. In all the
months we had been together, he had been gone more than he had been
around. I understood it was his job to travel the world, on the
hunt for terrorists, but that didn’t make life any easier,
especially at the holidays. Boy, New Year’s Eve was looking like a
bust, too.

I quickly cleared the spam from my inbox and
then went through the messages. A part of me felt like I was
wasting my time checking the emails, getting my hopes up for no
reason at all. And then I read the email from “Harry Mann”.
Instantly, I knew it was a message from Sam.

Dear Fraulein Grimm, we are sending your
Christmas marzipan pig and Schladerer pralines next week. Please
expect delivery of your order by 17 December. Sincerely yours,
Harry Mann, manager.

That rascal was sending me goodies again.
Only this time around, he would not be around to help me burn off
those calories. How cruel was that? I decided I would share them
with the family. Either that or go cross-country skiing for the
next six weeks. Boy, when I saw him again, I was going to wrap my
arms around that body of his and hold him tighter than tight. It
would take a lot to satiate my lust for him, given how long he was
gone this time. And I still had no way to know when I would
actually see him again. I longed for those lips on mine. I ached
for the touch of his hands on my naked skin, the feel of him on top
of me. This longing wasn’t going away anytime soon.

With a groan of frustration, I sipped my
Riesling, trying to think of anything but those strong hands and
that tasty mouth. No matter what I tried, I came back to Sam. I was
getting hooked on him. Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea, not if
he was going to be away more than he was home. And yet, he was
worth the wait. I was getting to the point I couldn’t imagine life
without him.

I felt a nudge on the back of my head. Puss
in need of a chin rub. I pulled the cat into my arms and settled
him down on my lap to watch the weather report. We were expecting a
light dusting of snow overnight, temperatures in the twenties. It
was enough to send me to my bed, pull the down comforter up to my
neck, and cork off for the night.

I woke up at seven and brewed myself a pot of
coffee. With a dish of Ervina’s cranberry-pecan Greek-style yogurt
and a whole-grain English muffin in front of me, I turned on my
laptop and downloaded the photos of the documents Annette had given
me in the car. I was missing something important. There was that
nagging doubt floating around in the back of my head as I scanned
the information. This was all about concrete, a subject with which
I had little familiarity. This was about financial bids for a
construction job. This was about kickbacks. So how did Joe Fortuna
fit into all this? How did the FBI become interested in my
cousin?

I stepped back a bit, trying to see the
bigger picture. What did I know about Annette’s work with Frist and
Company? I knew she started working there three years ago, after
she and Paul moved to their new condo in Manhattan. She had always
been a very organized person, used to managing the day-to-day
operations of Harvey Builders on Staten Island. The small company
was well-regarded in the tri-state area. Never building more than
thirty units in any one location, they specialized in luxury
townhouses in popular areas. No big fancy gym or swimming pool
attached to the property. No gold-plated bells and whistles. The
units were always solid, well-crafted buildings that increased in
value with time because Harvey Builders always selected great
locations for the properties. The company would tear down seven or
eight post-war tiny Cape Cod homes less than a mile from a train
station, houses that were slab construction and outdated by today’s
building standards. That gave the developers a chance to put in a
low-rise buildings with attractive architecture scaled to fit the
neighborhood. The landscaping was lush, the views were usually
decent, and the residents were extremely happy with their choices.
Turn-over on the units was low. Most folks who moved in had no
intention of moving out any time soon. That’s because Harvey
Builders gave the customers what they wanted, value in an
attractive package.

What about Frist and Company? I did an
Internet search. According to articles in several newspapers and
even the company’s website, Kevin Frist started out with his
brother, Kyle, back in 1982 as K and K Builders, constructing
single family homes in New Rochelle, New York. As the company grew,
the projects began to pop up in the city. A pre-war building here,
an old factory complex there, a row of townhouses by a park. The
more they renovated, the bigger their reputation became. Soon the
company was focusing solely on taking over established properties,
gutting them, building luxury housing from the shell up, and
getting top dollar for their efforts. Sometimes that meant buying
out rent-controlled units in established residential buildings.
Sometimes that meant unhappy people losing their homes to unhappy
accidents. The more I read about Frist and Company, the more I
began to see the pattern of bullying and buy-outs. Maybe Kevin and
Kyle wouldn’t take no for an answer when they wanted what they
wanted.

In 1993, Kyle Frist disappeared, and so did
1.2 million dollars from the company’s coffers. There were rumors
that he had run afoul of organized crime, but nothing ever came of
it. Exactly seven years, four months, and two days after Kyle was
last seen, Kevin Frist had his brother declared dead, collected on
the insurance policy he held for his business partner, and received
nearly two million dollars. What if Kevin had some kind of
involvement in his brother’s disappearance? It wouldn’t be the
first time that bad blood spoiled a family business.

Once he had that money in his hot little
hand, Kevin Frist had dissolved K and K Builders and created Frist
and Company. Suddenly, he went from being a small-scale business
owner to being a big-name developer. I still could remember how
excited Annette was when Kevin Frist approached her to come to work
for him. Harvey Builders folded up shop when Latham Harvey retired.
His daughters weren’t interested in keeping the company going. His
junior partner was planning to start his own remodeling business.
Nettie had run into Kevin Frist at a building trades show at the
convention center and he had offered her his card. “If you’re ever
in the market for a job, let me know.” She had been dazzled by the
fact that such a prominent businessman showed some interest.

Paul, on the other hand, was suspicious. I
remembered the holiday party at Mallow’s. My cousin had invited me
to join them in the hopes of finding me a “suitable man”, one not
connected to law enforcement.

“Kevin Frist wants to get into your pants,”
he told his wife. “The guy has a reputation.”

“That’s silly,” Nettie countered her
husband’s comment, glass of Chardonnay in hand. She waved it about,
punctuating her points. “In the first place, he’s married. In the
second, he knows I’m not interested. And,” that wine sloshed around
as it was launched above her head, “you’re presuming that my only
talents are superficial, just because I have a great-looking fanny
and face. I happen to be a good organizer, I am familiar with
construction from the inside out, and I know how to get permits and
inspections done without paying out bribes.”

“And I’m telling you the guy is a weasel.
He’s going to bide his time before he makes his move. You mark my
words.”

It took him a few months, but Kevin Frist
managed to prove Paul right. Unfortunately, by that time, Nettie’s
husband was going back and forth to Sloan-Kettering for cancer
treatment and she needed the job. Debilitated by chemotherapy and
fighting a losing battle, Paul worked from home for the first two
years as a policy analyst for an insurance company. Eventually, he
was forced to cut back his hours as his energy waxed and waned. He
took on some consulting jobs, but there came that point where he
needed to retire and he did, spending his days in the chair in
their living room. Annette took a leave of absence for the last
three months of his life to care for him. Once he was buried, Kevin
Frist asked her to come back and fix the mess her replacement
made.

Was any of that important to the
investigation? Had Nettie come across something when she was
reorganizing the office after Paul’s death? Maybe it wasn’t just
the concrete bids on the 1423 condo project in Queens. Her career
at Frist and Company was clouded by Paul’s cancer. Maybe she was
more distracted during those years than she appreciated. And maybe,
when she went back to the office, she noticed the things she missed
the first time around.

Even as unfocused as she was made by Paul’s
cancer, I knew Nettie was capable of keeping up a good front. She
often busied herself straightening things up wherever she went. She
blustered on, charging through life like she could control the
chaos, even as Paul slipped away from her on his way towards death.
I thought about Joe Fortuna. Had he played some kind of role in
this mess? Was he working for Frist and Company or working for the
feds? Was he there to get information or for another reason?

I still couldn’t figure out why someone had
made a replica of Annette’s gingerbread house. What kind of baker
goes to such trouble to create such a realistic replacement in
cookie dough? Why substitute the second display for Annette’s
original? Even more important, why leave it for the cops at the
Mobil station after the robbery. It was almost like someone was
creating a mystery, drawing our attention to the switch, sucking us
into something unsavory.

Chapter Eight --

“How did I meet Joe Fortuna?” Nettie was in
the kitchen of Gerhard and Ervina’s farmhouse, trays of plain and
decorated gingerbread cookies everywhere. The spices filled the air
with the aroma of Christmas. I sat down across from her and started
pumping her for information. It was just the two of us. Ervina was
down at the goat barn, getting ready to make another batch of goat
cheese for the Three Bears Winery. Gerhard was gathering frozen
grapes in the vineyard to press the ice wine. Pablo and Steve were
taking a few hours off from their dairy barn duties to pitch in
with the other farm hands. “That’s what you’re asking me?”

“Yes,” I repeated. “How did you two meet? At
Frist and Company?”

“No, I was getting a permit for Phase Two of
1423 at the Department of Buildings and I bumped into him as I came
out of the elevator. We got to chatting and he gave me his card. He
said we might get a drink sometime, talk about construction.”

“And did you?”

“A week later. I was filing papers for
plumbing and heating in the same office, he walked in, and after we
had a friendly conversation, we agreed to get together for a drink.
We met after work at the Roost.”

“What happened next?” I wanted to know. I was
beginning to think she hadn’t told me everything about her
relationship with the fictitious Joe Fortuna.

“We started seeing each other once, maybe
twice a week.”

“Were you sleeping together?”

“Gabby, what does that have to do with
anything?”

“Annette, I’m trying to figure out if Joe
Fortuna played you. Were you having sex with the guy?” I studied
her reaction. She flinched like I’d slapped her hand away from the
cookie jar. Oh, yes. They were hitting the sheets and doing the
horizontal mambo.

“Look, I’m not proud of the fact that I may
have made some mistakes in my personal relationships. But I have
needs, Gabby!”

“We all do, Annette. What I’m trying to
figure out is whether he maneuvered you into helping him get a job
at Frist because he’s a cop or because he’s a creep.”