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

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