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.”
“He can’t be. How could he be? He wouldn’t have slept with me if he was a cop!” she corrected me. “Cops aren’t allowed to do that kind of thing! Besides, he would have told me he was a cop.”
There it was, the self-appointed expert on life, oblivious of her own naivety, coming through loud and clear. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that men, even men who were supposed to uphold the law, could and did often put their careers ahead of their ethics. If Joe Fortuna was a fed, and I was beginning to suspect he was, then my cousin, with her pretty face and pleasing fanny, was just a rung on his career ladder. If the FBI was out to get Frist and Company, Nettie was collateral damage. Had Joe flipped her before resuming his real life as Mike Alves? Or was that his real life?
“When did he get the job with Frist?”
“About a month after we met.”
“How soon after you broke it off with Pete did you meet Joe?”
“Let’s see.” She added a carrot nose to a snowman gingerbread cookie. “I knew Pete for about a month before we hooked up. That was in June, half a year after Paul died.”
After Paul died. Those words still caught in her throat. I let her tell her story her own way, figuring she needed to put it all in perspective. As a woman married to the love of her life, Annette had spent much of her adult life cherished by a man who adored her. His death cut her loose from all that love, and in her search for some semblance of romance, she was easy prey. Maybe part of it was that Nettie didn’t actually want to replace Paul. Maybe she was going through the motions, needing the physical contact without the emotional attachment.
“And he lasted three weeks before his wife caught you two?” Even now, her face went red at the memory of that embarrassing incident in the elevator, despite her best efforts to fight the blush. Finally, she shrugged and gave me a nod. “When did Joe show up?”
“A month later. At first, we just got together for a meal here or there, talked about the business. It didn’t turn...romantic,” she confided, stumbling over the memory like she was climbing a pile of rubble, “until the night I was robbed after I left the office.”
“You were robbed?”
“It was no big deal. Joe chased after the guy and got my purse back. It had my cell phone in it, with all my photos of Paul. That was the first time Joe came to my place. He transferred all the photos from the phone to my computer, and even put them on a USB stick, so I would have back-up copies.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it? Why?” Those big blue inquisitive eyes bore right through me. “I want to know, Gabby.”
“Because it was a nice thing for him to do for you. Did Joe ever make promises he didn’t keep? Offer you things he never delivered?”
“If you’re asking me if he treated me like Pete, the answer is no.”
“Did your boss know you were seeing Joe? Did anyone at Frist and Company know?”
“Not after that thing with Pete. I wasn
’t about to be a joke at the water cooler again.”
“People at work knew about Pete?”
“His wife showed up at the office, screaming at the top of her lungs about me being a slut. Mr. Frist had her escorted out of the building.”
That explained the deep red flush to her cheeks. The word got around that the widow was interested in sex again. And yet, when Joe Fortuna entered the picture, he didn’t rush into a sexual relationship with her and he didn’t seem determined to go public. So, why did he give her a phone number he also used for Mike Alves? Who was Mike Alves, another cover? Had he worried about Annette and given her that phone number as an emergency precaution? Maybe Joe-Mike thought she could end up in danger. Maybe Joe-Mike knew that if she called the number, he’d at least know something was wrong and be able to funnel help to her through back channels. Maybe that’s why the FBI was so upset when I left the message as a sheriff’s deputy. But did it explain the substitution of the gingerbread house? In my book, that was just too weird.
“Annette, let me just change the subject here a minute.” I saw the relief on her face as the topic moved from sex to baking. “When you made that replica in gingerbread, you made templates from the actual blueprints of the 1423 condo project. Were there any revisions of the blueprints at any time?”
“There are always revisions as any project goes forward. Plumbing gets moved, electrical gets added, a wall goes up there or comes down here.”
“Was your cookie version very different than the actual building the company constructed?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet. Mr. Frist asked me not to go down there until the decorator had finished. He said he wanted it to be a surprise for me.”
“Was this before or after you made the gingerbread house?”
“It was after I brought in the display. He took one look at it and called me into his office. He said, ‘Annette, that’s amazing. It’s so well-done, I want to do you one better. Let Paula finish decorating before you take the tour of the model.’ So, I haven’t seen the completed unit yet.”
“This was after Joe disappeared?”
“No, maybe a day or two before.”
“Did Joe see the display you made?”
“Are you kidding? He was there the night I finished it. I had to let the royal icing harden before I attached the roof. Joe said the trusses were interesting, because they looked like the real thing in the blueprints.”
“You gave Joe the concrete bids the next day at Louie’s, when you had dinner?”
“He looked over the plans the night before, while I was finishing the gingerbread house. We talked about the actual condos and the problems the structural engineers found. Joe asked me about the concrete used for the project, and we got to discussing the differences in the bids on Phase Two. The weight of the walls and floors dictated the positions of the trusses and, in this case, because it was an old factory building, it was necessary to fortify everything, because the original building had a number of weak points, according to the structural engineers who inspected it.”
“These structural engineers wanted Frist and Company to strengthen the building?”
“Yes, to handle the added weight of new floors, systems, and all the rest. The load-bearing walls were missing support beams and headers, so when the building was divided up into individual units, each one had to be crafted to overcome the original construction faults.”
“If the changes weren’t implemented, Nettie, what would happen to the 1423 condos?”
“Well, they’d probably be okay for a few years, but eventually the unsupported weight would probably take its toll. You’d have serious structural problems.”
“Could Frist and Company have changed their construction to cut costs?”
“How could they? They’d have to bribe the building inspectors, get them to sign off on the construction without doing the proper work. That would be unconscionable. Not to mention dangerous, Gabby.”
“And criminal,” I added. “I think you’re the skunk at the Frist and Company picnic, Nettie. You’re too ethical. You see too much. That’s why Kevin Frist didn’t want you near the showcase unit. You studied those blueprints. You would have recognized things weren’t where they should be.”
Maybe that’s what Joe Fortuna noticed before he made a quick exit. Maybe he wanted the information on the concrete bids because he knew the concrete hadn’t been poured or the building properly fortified. Had Kevin Frist defrauded his investors, jacking up the costs of Phase Two, bribing building inspectors to pass the shoddy construction on Phase One, all while pocketing the profits and the kickbacks?
“How was 1423 financed? Loans?”
“No, Mr. Frist sold the controlling shares of the company to Blue Ridge Investments last year. He only owns a third of the company. The venture capital investment firm took on the debt, betting on the success of 1423.”
“When are the condos going to be sold?” I wondered.
“Oh, most are already under contract. A lot of buyers are using them for investment purposes, and once the whole development is finished, many of them will sell their individual units for a hefty profit.”
“Unless the development goes belly up when the shoddy construction is revealed.”
“Gabby! How can you think I would work for a company like that! I would never condone anything like that. Never!’
“Which is why you’re a target.”
“That’s crazy!”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I think I know now why that gingerbread house disappeared. And I think I know who stole it.”
“You do?” She looked at me in wonder. “Who?”
“Someone who cares about you. Someone who was protecting you.”
“Mr. Frist?”
“Hardly. The guy’s a creep, Annette. His brother, Kyle, disappeared and he made a fortune off the insurance money. Now his condo development is owned by investors who are being defrauded. Kevin Frist is hardly your champion. He’s a mobbed-up creep.”
Chapter Nine --
“That’s not nice. You shouldn’t talk about my boss that way, Gabby.” I could see Little Miss Sunshine was disappointed in my cynical mindset, as far as her boss was concerned. “He was very good to me when Paul was ill. He let me take a lot of time off with pay.”
“Did he? And never expected anything in return?”
“No. As long as I kept up with the filings, the permits, and the rest of the paperwork, he didn’t care if I worked from home, from the construction site, or from the office.”
“Listen, Nettie. I’ve got to go see Rufus and get this mess straightened out. Just tell me one thing. Did Joe know I was a deputy sheriff?”
“Sure. We often talked about you. I told him all about you and Sam, how you saved the Klarsfeld family from those terrorists.”
“What about your boss? Does Kevin Frist know about me?”
“Oh, heavens no! I don’t discuss that sort of thing with Mr. Frist. He doesn’t have time for that. He’s a very busy man.”
“Okay. I’ll be back later. You can reach me on my cell if you need me.”
“The old one or the new one?”
“The old. By the way,” I said as I got up, “you missed your calling. You’re a genius with gingerbread.”
“Thanks. You should see the architectural models I made for Mr. Frist. They’re even more amazing in cardboard.”
“You make his models?” I was surprised by that bit of news.
“Sure. I used to do all the models for Harvey Construction when I worked there. When Mr. Frist found out, he asked me to do the same for his company.”
That explained why Annette was such an attractive target. No wonder the FBI was all over this.
Rufus was in his office when I got to the Latimer Falls Sheriff’s Department. After Marge buzzed him, she told me to go right in.
“Brief me,” he demanded, sitting behind his massive desk. He waved me into a chair opposite and waited. I obliged, fi
lling him in on all the information I had developed on the case. We talked over a couple of possible scenarios and kicked around a few ideas on how to proceed. We came to a consensus half an hour later, after I outlined a scheme I thought might yield dividends. Rufus agreed.
“Do it, Gabby. Put his feet in the fire, don’t take any crap, and don’t worry about me. I can handle the FBI.”
“Think it will work?” I wondered.
“It’s worth a shot. At the moment, we don’t really have much, do we?”
I had to agree about that. Between the duplicate gingerbread house, the likelihood that I was being tailed by the feds, and the fact that Joe Fortuna was a possible undercover FBI agent who set up my cousin, there was too much confusion clouding our view. We couldn’t afford to sit around waiting for the dust to settle. Better to stir it up and see what surfaced.
I left him as he sat at his desk, making phone calls and cashing in old favors for current information. I stopped at the winery for a quick conversation with Gerhard. And then I called Mike Alves and got his voicemail.
“Joe,” I said breathlessly, in my sexiest voice. “This is Harriet. I have those bids on the concrete you wanted. Can you meet me?”
Twenty minutes later, my cell phone buzzed and an unfamiliar number with a New Jersey area code popped up on the screen. I counted to ten before answering.
“Talk to me, Mike, or I’ll nail your ass to the wall a hundred different ways for messing with my cousin.” That’s the thing about me. When I get my dander up, it’s tough to smooth those feathers into submission. Nobody messes with my cousin, just to make a case.
“Don’t you know better than to threaten a federal agent, Deputy Grimm?” There was some serious venom in the hiss of that snake. I wasn’t about to let the reptile bite me.
Where's Hansel and Gretel's Gingerbread House?: A Gabby Grimm Fairy Tale Mystery #2 Page 6