A Game of Dons Read online

  “He has a paper cut,” said Gertrude matter-of-factly.

  “A paper cut.”

  “Uh-huh. And you know men. Their pain threshold is so much lower than for us, ladies.”

  Iris couldn’t help but grin at that. “You’re right. It is.” But a paper cut? Hilarious!

  “Yeah, so he decided to pull out. Said he won’t compete if he’s not in peak condition. Doesn’t want to let his fans down.” She tapped the counter. “So take him off the roster.”

  “Will do,” said Iris, nodding. “Taking Heike Grabarski off the roster. Done.”

  “Great.” She gave Iris an infectious smile and strode out, heels clicking on the floor.

  Iris sighed wistfully. Gertrude’s dad might be one of the most hated people in Happy Bays, but he had produced an amazing daughter. She then remembered about Gertrude’s stepbrother and cursed herself for not offering her sincerest condolences. Although clearly Iris wasn’t too broken up about the death of Vic Grabarski. She shrugged off the visit. These Grabarskis were tough. Except Heike ‘paper cut’ Grabarski. He was obviously a wuss.

  Chapter 20

  Farmer Fred was talking to members of the press and proudly showing his tractor and the staging area where Vic’s body had been posed when he was approached by a man with a black little goatee, dressed in black leather from top to toe. He took Fred’s arm in a viselike grip and led him away from the collected members of the press.

  “Hey, I was giving an interview to the New York Post!” he said.

  “And now you’re giving an interview to me,” grunted the man, sounding like none of the reporters Fred had spoken to so far.

  “What paper are you from?” asked Fred, taken aback by the man’s forceful manner.

  “World of Pain.”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard of that particular publication.”

  “We operate on a simple principle,” said the man, looking left and right before lowering his sunglasses and growling, “You answer my questions or I give you pain. Understood?”

  The man’s voice sounded as if he liked to gargle with black tar every morning.

  “Um, I don’t think I understand,” said Fred, who nobody had ever accused of being quick on the uptake.

  The man tightened his grip on the farmer’s upper arm. It hurt.

  “Ouch, you’re hurting me!”

  “See?” said the man with a tight smile. “You’re grasping the concept already. Now tell me this: who knocked you out?”

  “Like I just told that nice woman from the Post: I have no idea. They must have snuck up on me from behind. I never saw their faces.”

  “Faces? There was more than one?”

  “Gotta be. No one person could have moved that body. That Vic Grabarski guy must have weighed in at three hundred pounds. There must have been more than one.”

  “Mh,” grunted the man, taking this into consideration. Possibly he was trying to decide whether Fred’s answer was to be chalked up in the No Pain or the Pain column. He then continued, “Tell me exactly what happened, and don’t leave anything out or else—”

  “You’ll give me pain. I get it.” He didn’t approve of this particular reporter’s attitude or the way he coerced his interviewees into acquiescence. When this interview was over he was going to write a strongly worded email to the editor of World of Pain. In a few brief words he told the man what he’d already told a dozen reporters and police officers, not to mention vloggers and even a bunch of fellow influencers like him, who had come to take selfies in front of his tractor. He thought he should probably have barred them access, but then again, him being an influencer himself he knew how hard it was to collect followers.

  When he’d told his tale, and told it well, the man eased up on the pressure on his arm. “Now you’re going to show me exactly where you were knocked out,” he said, and led the farmer back to his tractor.

  “Please leave Farmer Fred alone,” suddenly piped up another voice.

  The leather-clad man whipped his head around as if stung. “Mind your own business,” he growled viciously.

  The man who had spoken was a chubby youth with a pink round face and eyes that stood a little too close together. He was dressed in baggy pants and a T-shirt that proclaimed, ‘I’m a Genius.’ He didn’t look like no genius to Fred, especially when he went around annoying reporters from World of Pain.

  “I said, leave Farmer Fred alone,” the young man repeated. “He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” said Fred’s tormentor. “Now kneel!” he told the farmer. “And show me the spot where you were hit over the head!”

  He tightened his grip on Fred’s arm so much the farmer was forced to the ground.

  “Ouch!” he said, indicating he didn’t approve of the reporter’s modus operandi.

  The round-faced youth stepped up. “I said leave that man alone!”

  “Back off, buddy!” said the reporter. “Or else…”

  “Or else what?” asked a third voice. Fred now saw that the other reporters were all rounding on the black-clad reporter.

  “Who are you?” asked the woman from the Post.

  “Yeah, what publication do you work for?” asked the woman from the Daily News.

  The man eyed them furiously, but finally relinquished his grip on Fred’s arm and allowed him back up. He then wagged a finger in the farmer’s face. “If I find you’ve been lying to me…”

  “I think it’s time for you to leave now,” said Stephen Fossick, the editor from the Happy Bays Gazette.

  “Yeah, better get lost,” said the round-faced youth.

  For a moment, the man stared daggers at the other reporters, then finally seemed to reconsider and walked back to his bike, climbed on, and roared off in a cloud of dust.

  Fred blew out a sigh of relief. “He said he works for World of Pain,” he told the reporters, who’d gathered around. “I’ve never heard of it myself, but I guess there are so many magazines and papers it’s hard to keep track, right? And then there’s the websites.”

  “World of Pain?” asked Stephen Fossick. “Never heard of it.” And the others all agreed they’d never heard of such a publication either.

  “Ah, well,” said Fred philosophically. “With so many nice reporters such as yourselves there just had to be one bad egg, right?”

  They all laughed, and the interviews went on as if nothing had happened. One man didn’t interview him, though: the round-faced youth. Instead, he got back into his car and drove off. Weird, Fred thought, but then he was so busy telling his story for the hundredth time that he quickly put the events out of his mind.

  Chapter 21

  “Whatever it is, I know nothing about it!” Chazz exclaimed the moment he opened the door.

  They’d tracked him down in his home away from home: the mansion he lived in whenever he wanted to get away from New York, where he had a huge condo he liked to call his own. Then again, Rick’s dad probably had so many homes it was hard even for him to keep track. That’s what happened when you made your billions in real estate: you pick up a bijou little Manhattan residence here, a fancy little Hell’s Kitchen loft there, and before you know it you’re up to your eyeballs in homes, second homes, and about two dozen more.

  “Isn’t this where you grew up, Ricky?” asked Fee as they stepped inside and followed Chazz into the living room.

  “Yep. This was my humble home from the age of zero until I decided enough was enough and I struck out on my own,” said Rick.

  Fee glanced around. The place was swanky. The entrance had a checkered tile floor, a sweeping staircase that rose up to the second floor, and portraits of the man in charge adorning every surface. Chazz was not a modest man. Here he sat on an elephant, Hannibal style, there he was conquering the steps of the Acropolis, and there he was dressed in an Iron Man suit, defending the world and rubbing shoulders with the other Avengers.

  “Huh,” said Reece as he studied the Iron Man painting. “Funky.”r />
  It summed up the portrait perfectly. Then again, billionaires tend to be a little... eccentric. Especially Rick’s dad, who liked to live large and free.

  “As I said, I don’t know nothing about it,” said Chazz as he took a seat on a tawny leather sofa and leaned back. He was a tubby little man with an orange comb over, beetling brows and a face only a mother could love—though even she might have had a hard time loving a man with a face like a halibut and stalks for legs. Those stalks were sticking out of neon green board shorts and were white, thin and hairy.

  “You haven’t even asked why we’re here!” said Alice.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Chazz, looking ill at ease.

  “Dad, your dog Spot was spotted at the scene of a crime,” said Rick. “So don’t say you had nothing to do with what happened this morning.”

  “What happened this morning? Oh, you’re talking about the Dow Jones? That’s geopolitics, son. If you want to know the reason the Dow dropped, talk to the Fed!”

  “We’ll talk about this fella Fed later,” said Reece. “Right now we want to talk about Vic Grabarski.”

  “Who?” asked Chazz, his eyes flitting to and fro. “Never heard of him. Never!”

  Rick’s dad would make a lousy poker player, Fee thought. She’d taken a seat on the sofa across from the billionaire, and so had Reece. Rick, meanwhile, remained standing, possibly hoping this would help him get the upper hand. And Alice was admiring Chazz’s comic book collection. They were on display in a glass cabinet, and there were easily hundreds of them, if not thousands.

  “I’m particularly proud of the Iron Man ones,” Chazz called out when he saw that Alice had discovered his treasure trove.

  Glancing around the room, Fee saw that more paintings of Chazz dressed up as Iron Man bedecked the walls. It was a little weird for a grown man to be so into comic books. Then again, he probably wasn’t the only one of his generation who loved this stuff.

  “Victor Grabarski,” Fee said. “Also known as Vic or Hot Vic. His body was found in Grimey Hill this morning, then vanished without a trace, only to show up again in a field near Fred Decker’s farm. And I have a feeling it just might pop again.”

  Chazz pursed his lips and pointed at them. “See these lips?” he said. “They’re sealed.”

  “They’re not sealed, Dad,” said Rick. “You’re talking, so how can they be sealed?”

  “I promised not to tell, all right?!” he cried, spreading his arms. “It’s a secret. Big, big secret. And what kind of friend would I be if I gabbed? I’m not a gabber!”

  Chazz was a gabber. One of the worst ones, in fact, so Fee knew it was only a matter of time before he would spill his guts and then some.

  “Virgil is in big trouble because of this thing, Dad,” said Rick, gesturing to Virgil, who sat drooped on a settee as if he were part of the furniture and not a living, breathing person.

  “I’m in big trouble,” confirmed the cop.

  “See? You heard it from the man himself.”

  “What trouble?” asked Chazz, glancing at Virgil as if seeing him for the first time. “And who is this guy anyway?”

  “I’m Virgil Scattering,” said Virgil, in his best imitation of the voice from the tomb. “And I’m a cop.”

  “So?”

  “So he helped a friend get rid of a body this morning,” said Fee, “Only for that body to disappear.”

  “So? Good riddance is what I say. Vic Grabarski was no Mother Theresa.”

  “I thought you’d never heard of him?” asked Rick.

  Chazz spread his arms. “So I heard of the guy. Big deal!”

  “I lost my badge,” said Virgil sadly.

  “Call lost and found. Why bother me with this stuff?”

  “Because one of your dogs is in the picture with the dead man,” said Fee, and held out her phone for Chazz to see.

  He watched it, his face working, then said, “I plead the fifth.”

  “This isn’t a court of law, Dad,” said Rick. “This is me—your son.”

  “That guy over there just told me he’s a cop,” said Chazz, jerking his thumb in Virgil’s direction. “I’m not going to discriminate myself in front of the long arm of the law.”

  Virgil inadvertently looked at his arm. It wasn’t all that long.

  “Incriminate, Dad,” said Rick. “Incriminate.”

  “I just want my badge back,” said Virgil. “I don’t care about the rest.”

  “He just wants his badge back,” said Fee. “Is that too much to ask?”

  Chazz seemed to consider this. Finally, he said, “Like I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if I did know what you were talking about,” he added over the hubbub of five people starting to talk at the same time, “hypothetically speaking I just might be able to get a message across and make sure they get rid of the badge.”

  “Don’t get rid of the badge,” said Virgil. “I’m attached to that badge.”

  “Fine! I’ll tell them to give you back your stupid badge. Okay?”

  “Who’s they?” asked Rick.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Chazz, and this time he folded his arms across his chest, as if trying to prevent himself from revealing anything else.

  “But, Dad!”

  “I’ve said enough—in fact I’ve probably said too much.”

  “You haven’t said anything!”

  “And now get out of my face.” He got up with an alacrity that belied his age. And as he ushered them from his home, he added, with a twinkle in his eye, “If you want to see something fun, make sure you’re at Heike Grabarski’s birthday bash. It’s gonna be a smash.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Fee, but the door was already closing in their faces.

  Chapter 22

  “What was that all about?” asked Alice as they converged on the doorstep.

  “That was about my dad being a jerk,” said Rick with a frown.

  “He did give us an important clue,” said Reece, twirling an imaginary mustache. “A very important clue, mon ami.” He turned to Rick. “Can you tell me what clue it was, my dear Watson?”

  “Hastings!” cried Rick.

  Reece thought for a moment, then said, “No, that wasn’t the clue I had in mind. Though Hastings sounds like a great clue, too. You have to tell me more about it in a minute. But mine first.” He dropped the Hercule Poirot voice. “We have to wrangle us some tickets to this Grabarski birthday bash, you guys.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Alice. “Heike Grabarski’s brother died and he still wants to have a birthday party? That’s crazy.”

  “Who is this Heike Grabarski anyway?” asked Fee.

  “He’s a son from Pamela Grabarski’s previous marriage,” said Virgil. “Which makes Eddy Grabarski his stepdad, and Vic his stepbrother.”

  “What I want to know is how my dad is involved in all of this,” said Rick. “Why the Grabarskis? And why truck around Vic’s body as if this is some weird game of hide the salami?”

  “Hide the salami,” said Reece with a grin. “And Vic is the salami.”

  “There must be some kind of connection between Chazz and Virgil’s Deanna,” said Alice now.

  “She’s not my Deanna,” Virgil protested, though it was obvious he wouldn’t mind if she was.

  “We need to do some more digging,” said Alice. “Let’s convene at Bell’s and talk this thing through with my dad. He might know more than he’s letting on.”

  It seemed like a good strategy. If there was anyone in this town who knew more about the ties that bound Chazz to Deanna and the Grabarskis, it was the Chief of Police.

  Rick suddenly uttered a cry of surprise. He’d been checking his phone.

  “What is it?” asked Fee.

  In response, he held up his phone. “Look at this.”

  They looked at that. A picture of a man was displayed, strapped to the statue of Mayor Aldrich in Town Square. Hot Vic had resurfaced yet
again.

  “You have to remove him at once!” said the Mayor. “At once, you hear me! Right now and speedily!” He stabbed his finger at the disconnect button and stared up at the dead body strapped to the statue of former mayor Toby Aldrich.

  “Nice work, Mr. Mayor,” said town drunk Mr. Gulley as he surveyed the scene. “What does it represent?” The white-bearded old man was slurring his words a little, and sat at the foot of the statue.

  “Can’t you see? It’s a dead man!” said Mayor MacDonald snappishly. A rotund man with a florid face, he was in a foul mood, and getting fouler every second he had to stand there, faced with this crisis of monumental proportions. A dead body in Town Square—really!

  “Well, I can see it’s a dead man,” said Mr. Gulley, “but who is he? Some general? Some old fogey who fought against the Germans? Who?”

  “It’s Vic Grabarski, and he’s the son of one of Happy Bays’s most prominent citizens,” said the Mayor through gritted teeth. He didn’t understand why this inebriate was still talking. Didn’t he have someplace to be?

  Mr. Gulley had been the one to discover the dead body. Upon which he’d stumbled into Town Hall and had told the story of the dead man to Mabel, the Mayor’s secretary. Mabel had then confirmed the tale by looking out of her window, and had waltzed into the Mayor’s office as he was feeding his parrot Moe a mid-afternoon snack.

  “Mr. Mayor! Ted!” Mabel had cried. “The dead man! He’s strapped up to Aldrich!”

  The Mayor had stared at Mabel. “There’s no dead man strapped to Aldrich, Mabel. Aldrich is the dead man. Or, rather, the statue of a dead man.”

  “Just look for yourself!” She had pointed a frantic finger at the window. Deciding to humor his otherwise capable secretary who now had clearly lost her marbles, the Mayor had glanced out the window. And there it was: the dead dude, who’d been popping up all over town, desecrating the Aldrich statue!

  “Not on my watch!” the Mayor had cried, and had stalked out of his office, down Town Hall’s hallowed halls, out the front door, and across the street to the square where his predecessor had been immortalized.