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

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Don’t you know the Office of Professional Responsibility will hang you out to dry for compromising an investigation by sexually taking advantage of a vulnerable woman to get information on a criminal enterprise when the woman has no direct connection to the criminal activities? You think I can’t find a good lawyer to represent Annette and expose your shady dealings? Film at eleven, pal.”

  “Look,” the voice on the other end suddenly dropped the hostile tone and became conciliatory, “it’s not like that.”

  “Oh?” I gave him a good dose of Ice Queen, letting the frosty word put a chill on his attempt to sweet talk me.

  “Gabby..., er, Deputy Grimm,” he replied. “I really like Annette. She’s a good, decent woman. Why do you think I stole that gingerbread house?”

  “Because you’re the Grinch and you wanted to spoil Christmas for a woman who’s still grieving for her late husband?”

  “No. She’s too smart for her own good. Why do you think I disappeared? I needed her to get out of town. I knew that she’d go running to you the second there was any trouble. That’s what she did when that jerk, Pete, used her.”

  “You’re telling me that you wanted her to come to me for help?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Sure,” I replied nicely. Good cop, bad cop works for me. I don’t mind being nice, but if you screw around with me, I’ll turn bad cop in the blink of an eye and take you down, even if you’re a federal agent.

  “My bosses wanted me to turn her into an informant. She would be the star witness in the federal trial. I...I wasn’t willing to do that.”

  “Meaning you have feelings for her?” I demanded.

  “I...um, it’s complicated.”

  “Give me the uncomplicated version.”

  “We went into the investigation assuming that Annette was apprised of her boss’s criminal background and his mob connections. Once I got to know her, I realized that she was too distracted by Paul’s cancer to have absorbed any real information until after she returned to work. But my bosses didn’t care. They figured we had spent all that time and money trying to get inside Frist and Company, she was still going to be our source.”

  “Which means you reported my call to you, and your boss called my boss, because you wanted us to interfere with the FBI’s investigation?”

  “I know I crossed the line with Annette. I shouldn’t have...”

  “Slept with her?”

  “It wasn’t like that. She’s a nice woman. I didn’t want her to be forced into becoming an informant.”

  “You compromised her by sleeping with her. Your bosses wanted to keep using her as an informant because she was suspected of being a willing participant in Frist’s criminal activities. What part of all this makes you a hero, pal?”

  “When I realized she was innocent, I tried to get her out of it. What more can I do? I’m between a rock and a hard place!”

  “Oh, I think you’ve got a ways to go before that happens. You obviously still have room to wiggle your sorry ass. You’re about to find out how much tighter that squeeze can get, pal, if you don’t start telling me the whole truth!”

  “Deputy, give me a break here. You owe me.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Albany. The Mobil station.”

  “You fired those shots?”

  “I had to,” he insisted. “I couldn’t let those punks kill Annette over small change. They were a couple of crack heads bent on robbing the convenience store for cash to buy drugs.”

  “Why did you steal the gingerbread house?” I wanted to know.

  “My bosses heard that it was an exact replica of the 1423 model. The Assistant United States Attorney thought it would make a great courtroom display. Annette would be known as the gingerbread lady who brought down the condo king with her baking.”

  “So you arranged not only for a replacement, but for that sergeant to call me and let me know it had been found?”

  “I had to, Gabby. If I just stole it, you’d waste time looking for it and people would pay too much attention to it. Annette would just be in even deeper. As we speak, Assistant US Attorney Rita Maloney is asking a judge for a warrant to seize it.”

  “And you want them to have the duplicate gingerbread house, not the original?”

  “I do. I want them to think Annette doesn’t bring anything to the table.”

  “How are you going to clean up this big mess on Aisle Four?” I demanded. “How do you repair the damage to Nettie’s reputation and still make the case?”

  “Ah, that’s the problem,” he admitted. “I still need to make the case. Frist is a bad guy.”

  “No kidding. You know that the building isn’t structurally sound, right?”

  “Talk to me.” As soon as he said that, I knew he was in. I went over the conversation I had had with my cousin.

  “If I had to guess, Whatever-Your-Name-Really-Is,” I started to say. He cut me off.

  “Jondahl. Will Jondahl.”

  “Okay, Jondahl. If I had to guess, I’d say that Frist is onto you. He told Nettie he doesn’t want her to see the showcase unit until the decorator is finished with the place. He’s trying to buy time. Maybe he suspects she will recognize the differences in what the blueprints called for and what construction was actually done. And to my mind, that can only mean one thing. He’s got to destroy the condos before Nettie can see them.”

  “An explosion would do it, right?” Even as he said that, I could see the potential. What were the pitfalls?

  “Sure. But he’s risking public safety. If he blows up the building, it’s likely to result in a massive loss of life.”

  “Not really,” said the now enthusiastic FBI agent. “The 1423 location is in an area of vacant old factories that are in disrepair. Phase One, which is just being completed, is in the center of the complex. The buildings of Phases Two and Three surround it. That means they could safely blow up the first building, collect the insurance money, and keep their investors happy by rebuilding Phase One. Frist keeps the money he stole from Phase One of the project and uses the insurance money to start again, and no one is supposed to be the wiser.”

  “Your job is to catch him in the act before he can destroy the evidence?”

  “That’s it in a nutshell. The trouble is I haven’t figured out how to do that without putting Annette at greater risk. Frist has some serious organized crime connections. I have a couple of informants inside and they tell me that when the renovations were going on, they deliberately bollixed up the gas pipes, vents, and furnaces they installed. Phase One is rigged to blow the day they turn on certain sections of the gas lines. The condos will slowly fill with gas overnight. There are lights operated by timers throughout the complex. One of those will create the spark that will ignite a blaze, blowing the place to Kingdom Come. Frist was afraid Annette would figure it out, so he hired me to wine and dine her.”

  “You worked for Frist? You walked down both sides of the street? You bastard!” I was ready to report his lying fanny to the powers that be. To think I was starting to trust him. The man was unbelievable! How could he do that to Nettie?

  “It wasn’t like that, Gabby. I was working undercover. The FBI sent me to flip Annette and others at Frist and Company. I was in the process of that when Frist hired me to break her heart. I thought if she believed I was a rat who set her up, she’d go to you for help, and you’d do what you did, which was to check me out. I also knew that when you checked me out, I’d have an excuse to tell my boss you were interfering, and my boss would threaten your boss. That would get Annette out of the way until things got sorted out. Once the FBI serves that warrant and takes custody of the gingerbread house, Annette will no longer be of any value to the case. I think we can both agree she doesn’t really have any information of value.”

  “Not exactly true,” I corrected him. “She actually does have some. She knows more about building construction than you might think. Annette understands those blueprints. Sh
e can tell you what’s missing and what’s not missing in Phase One.”

  “I can get a structural engineer to do that,” he replied.

  “But it will take time, won’t it? And it won’t save Nettie’s reputation. I don’t want her spending the rest of her life hiding from the world.”

  “It’s a risk.”

  “What if we could let her contact the FBI on her own, to share her concerns? What if we could put it all out there as a complete package from Santa, wrapped up with a big red bow? I could drive her to the Albany FBI field office.”

  “She can’t just show up with that gingerbread house, not with the US attorney’s office grabbing up a warrant,” Jondahl insisted. “How do we explain the duplicate?”

  “Simple. It was a diversion to protect the real one until it could be delivered to the FBI. I have photos of the missing documents on a cell phone I bought in Manhattan when we took possession of it. We could turn that over as evidence that we intended to provide the material to the FBI. I can fill Nettie in on the drive.”

  “Only one problem. The gingerbread house is down here in New Jersey.”

  “Then I guess you’d better get moving, Jondahl, if you’re going to get to the Albany rendezvous in time.”

  Chapter Ten --

  “You want me to what?” That was the first thing out of my cousin’s mouth when I arrived back at the farmhouse. She was incredulous. Not to mention furious. I thought she was going to take a chunk out of me. “You must be joking.”

  Ervina and Gerhard met us there a few minutes later, so I could go over the plan. They would handle the FBI when the agents arrived to accept possession of the gingerbread house, taking them to collect it at the winery. Hopefully, that would give us enough time to walk into the Albany field office, toting the original gingerbread house, the photocopies, and the photos on the phone I bought, to offer our services in bringing down Frist and Company.

  “No, Nettie. I am not joking. We have to do this, not just for you, but also to prevent Frist from getting away with his scheme.”

  “But how do you know he’s involved?” There was disbelief written all over her face. Jondahl predicted she would be skeptical. Part of the reason she was suspected of being a co-conspirator by the FBI was that she was a champion of her boss and her company. We expected her to deny any possibility of wrongdoing by Kevin Frist and she did, talking about all the charity work he did and the scholarships he funded. By the time she finished, I was almost convinced the man walked on water and turned the water into wine.

  “I’ll explain it on the way,” I promised, “but we have to go now. Ervina, can we borrow the cheese van?”

  “Of course. I put gas in it yesterday.” She went to the key rack and pulled down a key chain with a plastic cow dangling from the silver ring. “Take good care of her.”

  That was “Ervina speak” for don’t get shot at or run off the road, her way of telling me she would worry about us the whole time we were gone. Far from being the archetypical evil stepmother, she was a very warm, caring person, and sometimes that made my job as a deputy even harder. Lord knows I didn’t plan on throwing myself into danger on a daily basis, but sometimes it’s just what happens when bad guys do what they do. I occasionally managed to keep the less serious incidents from her, but in the case of the tumble off the roof of the Kinsey Building, some idiot by the name of Earl shot his big, fat mouth off and asked her how I was the next day at the post office. I had a very frantic stepmother on my doorstep at nine in the morning, wanting to make sure I was still alive and kicking.

  “This is nuts,” Annette announced, shaking her head as she pulled on her parka. She was still glaring at all of us, annoyed that Gerhard and Ervina were in agreement with me. “It will never work, Gabby.”

  “It has to work. The FBI is planning to force you into becoming an informant by threatening to charge you with federal offenses. We’re going to grab that bull by the horns and take charge of the situation, so we can better control the outcome. We want you to look like a heroine, not some floozy who can’t keep her panties on.”

  “Gabby!” The woman was positively apoplectic. But let’s be honest. Her post-husband interludes with men were less than stellar. Having been someone’s wife for so long, she was out of practice with the dating game, and that made her look like bait to the circling sharks.

  “Nettie!” I returned fire.

  “That was unnecessary!”

  “On the contrary, it was very necessary. You’re in deep doo-doo and we’re doing this to get you out. Unless you want everyone to find out that you slept with Willy Boy!” I gave her another dose of reality to help her understand just how embarrassing this was going to get if we didn’t make this work. Sometimes ripping that Band-Aid off quickly yields the best results. If she was appalled that Gerhard and Ervina knew about her sex-capades, how was she going to feel when it was in all the newspapers during the trial?

  “How dare you!” Those big blue eyes were blazing, her fists were tightly clenched, and for a fleeting moment, I actually thought my cousin was going to slug me.

  “You slept with the FBI agent on the case?” Thank you, Gerhard, for putting two and two together and shouting out the answer. “What were you thinking?”

  “I didn’t know he was an FBI agent!” she cried, like a wounded bear.

  “He took advantage of you?” Ervina wanted to know. “That wasn’t very nice.”

  “Yes. I was used. He fooled me.” Perfect. She walked right into the “I was a victim because I am an idiot” scenario. Even as my cousin defiantly stood her ground, my stepmother shook her head sadly.

  “Nettie, that’s no good. You sound like a loose woman who sleeps with every Tom, Dick, and Harry.” That was the wonderful thing about Ervina. Good-hearted, decent, she understood a lot more about people than most of us.

  “Not to mention Joe,” I pointed out helpfully. “And don’t forget Pete.”

  “How many men were there?” my father wondered. He’s rather old-fashioned and circumspect, believing that people should control their passions in a reasonable fashion. It’s not that he’s a prude. He just thinks you shouldn’t discuss your steamy sex-ploits of swinging on the chandelier or share photos of your naked water skiing adventures on Lake Champlain in mixed company.

  “You’re just plain mean!” Here come the waterworks, I warned myself. Annette was always good at turning on that faucet when all else failed. I went to the hallway and I grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the bachelor’s chest there. Returning to the kitchen, I thrust my hand out, the tissues flapping like a white flag. She snatched them out of my fingers and drew them up to her damp eyes, dabbing delicately. Classic stage performance. It wasn’t going to work today. Time to kick some sense into her.

  “You don’t think the defense attorneys will bring that up on the stand? Or that Rita Maloney, the Assistant United States Attorney will keep that quiet if you don’t give her what she wants? We need to control the damage on this, Nettie. That was part of the sheriff’s reason for getting some legal advice from Ronny Glieb, the defense attorney. Rufus doesn’t want your reputation smeared all over Manhattan, and mine with it.”

  The death glare my cousin shot me would have been really scary had I been a civilian, but I’ve worked in law enforcement circles a long time. I know that sharks are born swimming, they have really sharp teeth, and if you don’t keep up, you become chum. I wasn’t about to leave my cousin dangling on that federal fish hook. I was going to reel her back in the boat in once and for all. We were going to march into that office with the evidence in hand and present it like we had no idea that Joe Fortuna and Will Jondahl were one and the same man. And then, if we were lucky, the FBI would arrange for my cousin to work with their inside guy.

  The drive was quiet, thanks to the wet blanket sulking in the passenger seat. I put my foot on the accelerator once we were on I-87 and never let up. Annette slouched down lower than a teenager who’s grounded for the big dance, so I
waited until she thawed out a bit before I explained about Will. She took it about the way I expected, calling him every name in the book and likening his morals to those of Jack the Ripper. I let her get it out of her system before I laid out the plan.

  “We want the FBI to suggest that you help him build the case.”

  “But that means I have to go back to Manhattan!”

  “Yes, Annette, it does. I’m really sorry.” I kept my tone even and my eyes on the road. “It also means you have to act surprised when you find out that he’s not Joe Fortuna, Frist employee, but actually an FBI agent.”

  “I hate that bastard!” she growled. “Wait until I get my hands on him! I will lay him out in lavender.”

  “For God’s sake, restrain yourself from threatening to kill the guy. Must I remind you that assault on a federal agent is a serious crime? You do not want to display any hostility to Will, Nettie. That’s a sure giveaway that you two were more than just co-workers at Frist. This is going to take some serious acting skills.”

  “I still want to....”

  “You really are dumb when it comes to men,” I declared, hoping to distract her away from Will Jondahl’s lesser qualities.

  “Excuse me? This from the woman who has never been married? Who are you to give me advice on men? At least I was married to one!”

  “Ouch! I stand corrected. You’re a real expert on the male species. That’s why you shed your panties faster than a co-ed on spring break in Cozumel. What’s next? A wet tee shirt contest at the local grocery store? Boinking against the bookshelves at the New York Public Library? Mimicking Rodin’s lovers statue in the sculpture gallery at the Metropolitan?”

  “You,” she sniffed with an air of great disdain, “are a real stinker, Gabriella!”

  “Do you want to know a secret, or are you going to spend the entire ride being your obstinate self?”

  “What secret could you have that I would possibly be interested in?” she scoffed. There she went, picking that imaginary lint off her lap again. She was like a porcupine, all her quills ruffled and ready to inflict some serious pain if I got too close.