Grace was in the midst of telling me stories about how cute, darling and destructive Rickie had always been when Fred came in.
“Lindsay, we need to leave,” he said, his voice pulling me from my Grace-induced stupor.
I wanted nothing more than to get away from the boring litany of Rickie’s charming misdeeds, but I felt guilty about leaving Grace alone.
“We’ll have to wait until Rick gets back,” I said, inclining my head toward Grace.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, lifting a crumpled tissue to blot the fresh flow of tears.
Fred checked his watch and heaved a huge sigh. “We can wait a few minutes. Rick should be here soon.”
“They already did the line-up?”
“They do things fast in a possible child abduction.”
Grace looked up from her tissue. “Did they find out anything about who took Rickie?”
Fred shook his head. “The kid couldn’t identify anybody. Said it was too dark, and he wasn’t paying attention. The guy had something on his head, probably a ski mask, so he didn’t see a face. As far as general body build, it could have been any of the men.” He looked directly at me. “They can’t find Bryan Kollar. We can wait for up to fifteen minutes if…” He paused and appeared to be in pain. Excruciating pain. “If you drive.”
I’m sure my chin dropped to the tabletop. It would have gone all the way to the floor if I’d been standing. “You’re going to ride with me?”
“I don’t have any choice. We can’t be late for this appointment.”
I smiled and leaned back, clasping my hands behind my head. “This day will go down in history.”
“Only if we survive.”
Rick was there in ten minutes. As soon as he came in the door, Grace ran to him, her tears starting again. He gave me a helpless look.
“You’re up,” I said to him as Fred and I headed for the door. “Grace has nowhere to go, and she shouldn’t be left alone.”
Rick tried to fend off Grace. “I can’t stay here. I have to hide. Akin threatened me right there in the police station!”
“Was he the one who took our son?” Grace asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Rick moved over to the window and looked out. “There he is! He followed me home! He’s going to kill me!”
Fred walked over to the window. “That big guy who looks like a basset hound?”
Rick turned away and drew a shaky hand across his upper lip, wiping away the perspiration. “That’s him. What’s he doing?”
“Nothing. Getting out of his car.” Fred turned back to Rick. “I’ll make you a deal. You stay here with Grace, and I’ll get rid of Akin.”
Rick looked doubtful.
Fred checked his watch. “We’re in a hurry. You have eight seconds to make a decision.”
“Yeah, sure, okay.”
Fred strolled outside. I watched through the window as he sauntered up to the oaf coming down the sidewalk. The man did, indeed, look like a sad old basset hound. I hadn’t seen a picture of Julia, but I assumed she was attractive or Rick wouldn’t have bothered with her. This creep must have money.
The two men met halfway down the walk. Fred was as tall as Akin, but Akin outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. It was going to be really funny when Fred took him down with a well-aimed kick. I smiled as I watched the confrontation.
Fred said something quietly, something I couldn’t hear. Darn.
“I want that little pipsqueak to look me in the eye and admit to me that he slept with my wife!” Akin bellowed. “I’m not going to hurt him, but I could, and there’s not a jury in the country that would convict me! He took my property!”
Now! I thought. Take him down now!
Fred spoke quietly again.
Akin paled, glared at the house then turned around and walked rapidly back to his car, got in and drove away.
That was disappointing.
Fred came back inside. “Ready, Lindsay?”
“What did you say to him?” Rick asked, his expression a blend of awe and shock.
“I told him I was going to kill you myself, and if he got in my way, I’d kill him too. Let’s go, Lindsay.”
Rick opened his mouth as if to speak but no words came out.
I walked out the door leaving Grace in the not-so-capable hands of her former lover.
“Is that really what you said to Akin?” I asked as we hurried to Fred’s car.
“In a way.”
He started to get in the driver’s side.
I stopped him. “We’re late. I’m driving. Remember?”
He looked at my car then at his. His face contorted as if he was making a life or death decision. “If we take your car, you have to drive both ways.”
“Or I drive one way and you walk back.”
He drew in a deep breath, crossed himself and handed me the keys to his car.
I stood for a moment in complete shock. “I get to drive your car?”
“Get in before I change my mind.”
“That cross thing, I didn’t know you were Catholic,” I said, sliding in the car while Fred held the door.
“I wasn’t until I started thinking about riding with you.”
And people say I’m sarcastic.
“Get in, hold on and don’t scream. It’s so distracting when people scream while I’m driving.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fred didn’t scream, but he did gasp a few times as we drove across town to an office building in a strip mall in Lee’s Summit, a quiet suburb southeast of Kansas City.
“Expert Enterprises?” I read the sign printed in black block letters on the window. “What does this company do?”
Fred unfolded himself from the car. “Expert stuff.” He extended a hand for the car keys.
Darn. I’d hoped he might forget. His Mercedes, big and bulky as it was, had a surprising amount of pep to it. Fred probably tinkered with the engine. Besides, watching him almost have a heart attack every time I slid around a corner or cut in front of another car with inches to spare was fun.
We entered through the glass door, and a perfectly groomed brunette woman sitting behind the desk looked up and smiled. “May I help you?”
“Fred Sommers to see Donato Orsini.”
With all the vowels in the man’s name and the generic company name, I was suspicious about what kind of place we’d come to. Kansas City used to have a huge mob presence. They didn’t make the headlines much anymore, but I felt sure there were still some of them around.
An inner door burst open and a short, dark man with gray hair and a wide grin stepped out. “Fred Sommers!” He came over to Fred and the two men embraced. Fred had to lean down about a foot. The man punched Fred’s arm. “Long time no see! Come on in. How you doing? Bring us some coffee, Teresa, and hold my calls. Me and Fred got a lot of catching up to do.”
He led us into his sedate, immaculate office, an office that matched the man’s dark silk suit but seemed at odds with the rough-hewn man himself. “This your woman?”
“This is my associate, Lindsey Powell. Lindsay, an old friend, Donato Orsini.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Orsini.” I extended a hand across the desk.
He grasped my hand in both of his. “Please, I’m Donato. I’m not old enough to be Mr. Orsini. Nice to meet you, Lindsay.” He looked at Fred and winked. “Associate, eh? Whatever you say, buddy.” He winked again and finally released my hand. “Sit, sit.”
We sat in the two client chairs. The place looked like a made-for-TV version of an office. Desk, chairs and file cabinet, all the right furnishings. But the only items on the polished walnut surface of his desk were a telephone, a wooden box and a crystal ashtray. What sort of business was conducted in this room, and what were we doing there?
Donato opened the wooden box, took out a cigar and extended it to Fred.
Fred frowned. “Donato, haven’t you read the reports on smoking? Are you suicidal?”
I wondered if Fred was suicidal, asking a question
like that of the man in front of us.
Donato cracked up laughing. “I forgot how much you hate smoke,” he said, putting his own cigar back into the box. Whatever business the man was in, I couldn’t fault his manners.
He leaned back in his leather desk chair and folded his hands over his comfortably rounded stomach. “So what have you been up to the last few years? You’re looking good, my man.”
“I’m retired. How about you?”
Donato waved an arm around the office. “Retired and got a legitimate business going.”
“I’ll keep you in mind if I need any experts.” Fred smiled.
Donato chuckled and winked. “You do that. I got the experts, all right.”
Teresa appeared carrying a tray with three mugs of steaming coffee, all imprinted with the Italian flag and Italians rule.
I tried to keep my hand from shaking as I took one of the mugs. I don’t drink coffee, but I wasn’t about to refuse that cup.
Was Fred retired from the mob?
Teresa set three coasters on the desk and left.
Fred sipped his coffee. “Excellent.” He placed his cup squarely on one of the coasters. “I’m not in the market for an expert today, but I could use some information.”
“Got plenty of that too.”
“Bryan Kollar. I understand you know him.”
Donato nodded. “The Kollar kid. He’s done all right for himself.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Bennie Fanello’s kid.”
“I thought his parents were teachers,” I blurted then immediately regretted drawing attention to myself.
Donato looked at me. “The people that adopted him, yeah, they’re teachers. But he’s Bennie’s kid, all right. Looks just like him. Remember, they used to call him Bennie the Beautiful, but only behind his back!”
Fred nodded. “I remember.”
“One of Bennie’s bimbos got pregnant and wanted him to leave the missus and marry her. That wasn’t happening, of course, so she gave the baby away. Probably a good thing. The Kollars, they’re good people. The girlfriend, not so much.” He took a sip of his coffee.
I held onto my cup, uncertain if it would be an insult if I set it on his desk untasted, and unwilling to find out.
Donato noticed. “You don’t like the coffee?”
“She’s a Coke drinker.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Teresa!” he bellowed. “Go down the street and get Fred’s woman a Coke!”
“No,” I protested. “I’m fine, really.” I set the cooling cup of coffee on one of the coasters.
“She’s trying to quit,” Fred said.
Donato shrugged. “Never mind, Teresa!”
“About Bryan Kollar?” Fred prompted.
“Anyway, Bennie didn’t know what happened to the kid. Probably didn’t give it much thought, you know? But then one day one of his people comes in from selling some stuff to the college kids and says he’s seen a boy looks like Bennie. Bennie checked into the records and found out it was his son.”
Checked into the records? He made it sound so easy, like the easy way Fred did things. My suspicions about Fred’s past grew.
“You’re not going to believe it,” Donato continued, “but that kid was skin and bones when Bennie found him. He was mixed up with a bunch of losers, experimenting with drugs. Bennie wanted to do the right thing by the boy. He got him off drugs and into body building, and right away—” Donato spread his arms. “Overnight that kid turned into the man you see on television today.”
“Off drugs?” I asked. “He did all that without steroids?”
Donato shrugged. “Got him off the bad stuff. That kid was a skeleton. He needed all the help he could get.”
“Bennie give him the money for his first gym?” Fred asked.
“Yeah, sure. It was a business deal. Bennie gave him the money, and Kollar gave him a percentage of his business.”
“Is he still paying?”
“I guess. I’m not really sure what happened after Bennie died.”
“What about the Kollars’ sporting goods store?”
“That was a separate deal. Kollar wanted to do that for his folks, so Bennie made him a personal loan. He paid back every penny with interest.”
“Was Bryan ever an employee?”
Donato shook his head. “Nah. He runs his gyms and pays his dues. Bennie didn’t want him to get involved. Didn’t want his wife to know he was helping his son by another woman, either.”
We’d learned that Bryan did steroids and was in bed with the mob, which was pretty interesting, but it didn’t prove Bryan tried to kill Rick, didn’t give him a motive.
I summoned up my courage. “Mr. Orsini…Donato…do you know of any reason Bryan Kollar would be unwilling to part with his family’s old flour mill out north of town?” I asked.
Donato scratched his nose and looked at me then at Fred. “You trust her?”
“With my life.”
Considering he’d just ridden with me across town, that was no idle remark.
“That old flour mill, it hadn’t been used by the Kollar family in over fifty years. The kid sort of leased it to Bennie back in the day. Let him hide a few bodies there.”
“A few?” I choked on the words.
“A hundred, two hundred. I don’t think anybody kept track of them on a spreadsheet.” He laughed at his own joke.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Call me. Let’s go get some dinner sometime. Don’t be such a stranger,” Donato said as we walked through the front office of Expert Enterprises.
“I will,” Fred promised.
“You too, associate.”
“You bet,” I said.
“Coke, no coffee.” He winked. “Next time.”
We got in the car, and Fred began his slow crawl across town. Now that I knew how much power that car had, his insistence on observing the speed limit really baffled me. And irritated me. It wasn’t like he didn’t break the law in plenty of other ways.
“Were you a member of the mob?” I asked.
He frowned. “No, of course I wasn’t.”
“Then how do you know this guy?”
“I know a lot of people. Comes in handy. Now we have a motive for Kollar wanting to get the flour mill back. He may not have known what Rick wanted to do with the property, but he couldn’t take any chances.”
“Which gives him a motive for killing Rick when Rick refused to sell it to him. It also gives him a reason to want Rickie out of the way especially now that he knows about the plans for a shopping center. As long as Marissa inherited, he could get the property back, but Grace was going to hang onto everything for her son. So now Rickie’s missing, and Bryan couldn’t be found for the line-up. That does look pretty suspicious.”
Fred nodded. His expression was grim. Fred doesn’t often do grim. When he does, I know things have become serious. “There’s probably no chance the boy’s still alive,” he said, “but on the slim chance he is, we need to find Kollar as soon as we can.”
I swallowed around the huge lump that suddenly rose in my throat. “You’re right. Just taking Rickie wouldn’t accomplish anything. He needs to get rid of him. You think he killed him?” My last words came out barely above a whisper. I couldn’t stand the awful child, but I couldn’t stand to think of him being murdered either.
“Probably. We won’t know until we find Kollar.”
“The cops already looked for him to get him in the line-up. I wonder if they checked the old flour mill.”
“Did you say anything to Trent about that deal?”
“No, I don’t think so. There’s been so much else to talk about…Marissa and the boys, Rickie, Rick’s reincarnation.”
“Then there’s no reason they would go out there. The place was never in Bryan’s name.” Fred made an abrupt turn. Well, abrupt for him. For me it would have been a lazy amble around the corner. “Since it’s been a body dump site before, it would be the logical place for
him to hide a body. You might want to call Trent and give him a heads up.”
I took my cell phone out of my purse and hit speed dial for Trent’s cell. To my amazement, he actually answered.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“At the courthouse trying to convince a judge to sign off on a search warrant for Bryan Kollar’s condo.” He sighed. “Everybody agrees it’s significant that we can’t find the guy right after Rickie disappears and the news hits all the local television stations that Rick’s still alive, but nobody seems to think it’s enough to justify a search warrant.”
“The news is out that Rick’s still alive? When did that happen?”
“Shortly after we pulled him out of hiding today to question him about Rickie’s disappearance. We don’t seem to have any secrets from the media.”
I turned to Fred. “Bryan may know that Rick’s still alive.”
“Which means Rick may not be alive much longer.”
“Who are you talking to?” Trent asked.
“I’m talking to Fred.” I told Trent our theory about Bryan’s possible involvement in Rickie’s kidnapping and the attempt on Rick’s life. “We’re on our way to the old Kollar Flour Mill out north. When you were trying to find him for the line-up, did you check there?”
“No, we had no reason to. We went to his condo, but he didn’t answer, then we went to all seven of his gyms. Everybody said they hadn’t seen him today, but everybody lies.”
I couldn’t argue with that since I’d done my share of lying lately. But always in a good cause.
“If he’s the one who took Rickie, we think he might go out to the flour mill because…”
I looked at Fred. He didn’t move his eyes from the road, but he shook his head firmly. Yeah, we didn’t want to be squealing on the mob.
“Because why?” Trent asked.
“Because…that’s the only place you haven’t looked. Just trust me on this one, okay? And you don’t need a search warrant to go there because Rick owns it and can give you permission. If he’s still alive.”
I can’t say I felt happy and excited at the thought that I had another chance at getting rid of Rick. But I can’t say I didn’t either.
Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 03 - The Great Chocolate Scam Page 16