Where's Hansel and Gretel's Gingerbread House?: A Gabby Grimm Fairy Tale Mystery #2 by Sara M. Barton

hatchback lift
with a little whirl of gears.
    “Gabby, would you give us a minute?” Will
asked. I saw the curiosity in Annette’s eyes. He wanted to talk to
her alone. She seemed to take that as a good sign. So did I.
    “I’ll just go use the ladies room,” I
promised. I strolled into the convenience store and kept myself
busy for the next five minutes, between the bathroom and gazing out
the window. The clerk looked up at me with concern, until I flashed
a cheerful smile, pointed to the pair talking in the parking lot,
and announced, “Lovers’ tiff. I wish they’d just kiss and make up.
It’s cold out there.”
    Even as I turned my attention back to the
window, I saw Will’s hand take Annette’s. It wasn’t a big gesture.
It was an intimate one. It was one lover trying to soothe another.
Even as her head fell forward towards his chest, the emotions
seemed raw. Maybe there really was something between them, but I
couldn’t afford to have Annette get all mopey over Will. I pushed
open the door and went back out into the cold.
    “Are we ready?” I asked cheerfully. The two
lovebirds seemed less than ready to part. Too bad. It was time to
get this thing done. I didn’t want to find myself surrounded by a
bunch of federal agents here at the Mobil station, and I sure
didn’t want Will to be shoved into sacrificing my cousin to save
his career. “Let’s go, before that window of opportunity shuts and
we lose our options.”
    “Oh,” Annette sighed forlornly.
    “You should go,” Will agreed, his heart
plainly on his sleeve.
    “Buck up. You two will hopefully be working
together on this case.”
    “I just explained to Annette that we won’t be
able to have a personal relationship for the duration of the case
and the subsequent trial,” the FBI agent informed me.
    “Then you two should get busy,” I reminded
them. “The sooner you wrap this up, the better. Chop, chop. Let’s
shake a leg.”
    Will put the gingerbread house in the back of
the cheese van and gently shut the door. He seemed to pause,
hesitant to walk away. I climbed into the driver’s seat to wait.
Sure enough, I caught a sly, furtive kiss between the lovers
through the side mirror before they parted. Did this mean they
would blow the game plan? The last thing I needed was the FBI
breathing down my neck about bad information. I sure didn’t want
anyone asking me what I knew about the relationship between Nettie
and Will.
    My cousin opened the door and crawled up into
the seat. Her chin seemed to quiver as she fought back the tears. I
was about to give her another speech when I realized it might
actually be okay for her to show up at the field office feeling
conflicted. After all, she was turning on her boss, and it would be
normal for her to have doubts about what she was doing. That would
give me the chance to suggest that she was being used by her boss
and that she didn’t really understand the whole concern about fraud
and organized crime.
    The start of the meeting was a little bumpy.
The agents seemed to doubt Annette’s story, convinced she was deep
into Frist’s fraud, helping her boss to cover the trail of
deception.
    “Ms. Dupuis,” said the assistant special
agent-in-charge, “are you sure you don’t want to have a lawyer
present at this meeting?”
    My cousin still looked rather frazzled, but
she was getting used to having me speak for her, explaining what
she did and why. I insisted that we were there to offer information
to the FBI on some potentially unsavory activities at Frist and
Company. The atmosphere in the room began to warm up as my cousin
got started explaining the new construction techniques and the
recommendations of the structural engineers. She was in her glory
as she told the agents what they should look for when they
inspected the place.
    The gingerbread house sat in the middle of
the table. They were happy to see it, given that they had sent a
couple of agents to collect the duplicate gingerbread