Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 03 - The Great Chocolate Scam (15 page)

“
Yes, the DNA will prove one way or the other if he’s Rick’s son.” Fred and I started down the steps, then I stopped and looked back. “I was married to Rick. I know the truth about that boy’s parentage.”

Bryan’s
smile was still locked in place, but it looked pretty tight. Oh, yeah, there’d be trouble in Kansas City tonight.

Fred and I walked down the stairs and out to his car.

“That was clever,” he said, pulling out onto the street. “It will be interesting to see what Bryan does if he’s no longer so certain he’s going to get that property. The more stressed he is the more likely he is to slip up, make a mistake.”

I nodded and decided not to tell him I did it just for fun, to provoke another cat fight.

“Let’s stop and pick up some burgers and onion rings on the way home,” I said.

“
We’re not going home just yet. We have one more stop. I want to see what Bryan’s parents think about this situation with their flour mill.”

We drove across town to a neighborhood of well-tended lawns with trees mature enough to suggest the houses had been there for twenty or thirty years. We parked down the street from a tidy gray home with tidy white trim and a tidy yard marred by
“For Sale” and “Open House” signs linked together by a string of colorful flags.

“
Is that where they live?” I asked.

“
That is the residence of Walter and Alice Kollar, parents of Bryan Kollar.”

“
And we’re going to go in there and tell those poor old people we’re interested in buying their home, right?”

“
I wouldn’t refer to them as
poor old people
, but, yes, we’re potential home buyers, Jim and Penny Richards.”

“
Where do you come up with these names? Did you write a special software program to create them?”

“
Jim and Penny Richards are friends of mine, and they don’t have a problem with my using their names.”

“
More friends? Are these real friends or just virtual people you’ve created on the computer?”

“
Jim and Penny are real.” I noticed he skirted around the possibility of some of his friends being virtual.

“Can I meet these people?”

“
If we ever go to Las Vegas, yes, you can.” He reached inside his pocket and withdrew a gold ring etched with strange characters. “Put this on.”

I took the ring and looked at it curiously.
“What does it say? What’s that language?”

“It’s
the Black Speech of Mordor.”

I almost dropped the ring.
“This is the One Ring from Lord of the Rings?”

Fred sighed.
“It’s not the real thing. Put it on. You won’t become invisible or be under its spell.”

“
I know that,” I said. “I’m just surprised you have something so fanciful, though you do bear some resemblance to a younger, better groomed Gandalf.”

I slid the ring onto my finger then held my breath for a few seconds, waiting to see if I might disappear or develop an unnatural attachment to the ring. Considering who gave it to me, it actually could have been the real thing. With Fred, you just never knew.

Nothing happened. I knew it wouldn’t. Well, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t.

A man and woman in shorts and tank tops jogged down the street and turned into the Open House. A strange way to preview houses. Perhaps an impulse look.

“What are we waiting for?” I asked, impatient to get on with things.

Fred checked his watch.
“In a minute.”

A woman wearing a dark suit and a badge that I felt sure identified her as a real estate agent emerged from the house followed by the joggers. They shook hands, and the agent took down the
“Open House” sign along with the string of flags, got into the four door mid-sized car parked in the driveway and left. The joggers went back inside. Bryan’s brother or sister?

“
We’re up.” Fred opened his car door and got out.

“
Who were those joggers? Are they caretakers for the Kollars?”

He was already out of the car and heading for my side to open the door. I got out and followed him up the street.

The male jogger came to the door, still flushed from his run. Up close I could see that he had a few gray hairs, but he was in terrific shape…wiry and slim without an ounce of fat. “If you’re here to see the house, our real estate agent just left.”

“
Darn,” Fred said.
Darn?
Who knew that benign word was even in Fred’s vocabulary? “We got stuck in traffic and just couldn’t get here in time.”

“
And we were so anxious to see the place,” I said, holding up my end of the story even though the last time I did, my contribution wasn’t properly appreciated. “We just love this neighborhood.”

The man smiled, shrugged and stepped back, opening the door.
“Come on in. You don’t look like serial killers.”

“
Walter?” The female jogger came in from the kitchen holding two bottles of water. Up close she too had a few gray hairs in her pony tail, but I’d have killed to have a body with abs like hers.

“
A couple of late arrivals to look at the house,” the man said, turning to the woman.

“
Jim and Penny Richards.” Fred held out his hand.

The man took
Fred’s hand in a solid grip. “Walter and Alice Kollar.”

What had Bryan said about his parents?
Elderly? Senile?

Alice stepped forward, smiling.
“Can I get you something to drink?”

“
No, thanks,” Fred said, declining for us both. Good grief. We’d only been married ten minutes and already he was speaking for me. I wouldn’t have said no to a cold Coke. “We’d really appreciate a quick tour of the house, but we don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“
Don’t be silly,” Alice said, handing one of the bottles of water to her husband. “We just finished a five mile run, and we’re in for the evening. You’ll have to go through our real estate agent for any negotiations, but we’ll be happy to show you our home. This, as you no doubt noticed, is the living room with wood-burning fireplace.”

“We’ve
burned a lot of wood in there,” Walter said, glancing toward the stone structure. “I have the chimney cleaned every year. Never had a problem with it drawing properly, though I have to tell you, it doesn’t do a thing to heat the place!” He chuckled at his own comment.

“
But it looks nice,” Alice said with a smile. “That’s all modern fireplaces are supposed to do.”

“
It is beautiful,” I agreed.

“
Have you lived here long?” Fred asked as we strolled into the kitchen.

“
Almost thirty years. We built the place,” Walter said. “So we can assure you it’s solid. Steel I-beams in the basement, no foundation problems.”

“
The cabinets are oak,” Alice said, waving a hand about the spacious, airy kitchen. “All these appliances have been replaced at least once over the years, some a couple of times.”

Fred opened cabinet doors and pretended to be interested.
“This is a very nice home. Why are you selling?”

“
We’re retiring and plan to do a lot of traveling,” Walter said.

“
We love to run in marathons all over the country, so we thought we’d just get a small condominium close to our son and then we won’t have to worry about the grass dying in the middle of August or what happens if our pipes freeze in Kansas City while we’re running around Corpus Christi.”

Elderly? Senile?

We toured the house and made the appropriate sounds of approval. It was a nice house, three bedroom, two bath, two car garage, finished basement with an extra half bath. Nothing fancy, but, as Walter said,
solid.
Well cared for. It was hard to imagine someone as flashy as Bryan Kollar growing up in that house.

Finally we returned to the living room and took seats on the comfortable sofa and matching loveseat facing the stone fireplace that looked pretty but did
n’t heat effectively.

“
Where do you work?” Walter asked.

“I’m
an actuary for Bremington Investments.” Fred produced a card from his pocket and handed it to Walter.

Walter accepted the business card and looked at it.
“You work right down the street. This would be a convenient location for you. Where do you live now?”

Fred gave a location across town.
“Tired of all the driving.”

Walter nodded.
“I hear you. My sporting goods business is…was…located in the Bottoms. I had to fight all that downtown traffic for years.”

“
Was
?”

Walter patted Alice’s leg, and they both smiled.
“Sold the business, selling the house, becoming mobile.”

“
Kollar,” I said, rolling the name around on my tongue. “You had a sporting goods business? Are you related to Bryan Kollar?”

Alice smiled and nodded.
“Our son. He’s the reason we’re able to do all this.”

“He’s
very successful,” I said. “That’s great that he’s willing to help his parents.”

“
Oh, no,” Walter protested, “we’d never take money from Bryan. Alice just meant that he’s the reason we opened the sporting goods store and started running. Changed our lives.”

“It’s
hard to believe looking at him now,” Alice said, “but Bryan was a sickly child. He’s adopted, and we’ve often wondered about his birth mother, if she did something that got him off to a rough start in life. But practically overnight while he was in college, he got into vitamins and supplements and working out, and then he opened his first gym.” She smiled and lifted her hands. “And the rest is history.”

Walter leaned back.
“We were teachers and led a fairly sedentary lifestyle. But after we saw what happened with Bryan, we took up jogging, quit our jobs and opened the sporting goods store.”

“That’s
amazing,” I said. “He started his first gym right after he graduated?”

Alice shifted uncomfortably and looked at her husband.
“Actually, he didn’t graduate. He quit during his third year because he knew what he wanted to do and didn’t see any reason to spend more time in school.”

Fred gave a sad smile.
“You’re lucky. Our son’s been in college for five years and still doesn’t know what he wants to do.” Married half an hour, and already we were parents of a grown son who showed signs of being a perennial student. “As far as I can tell, all he wants to do is call home for more money and go off to the next party.”

Alice nodded, her expression sympathetic.
“I know what you mean. Bryan went through that stage. His first couple of years in college, he got in with the wrong crowd, and we were pretty worried for a while. But then he got into weight lifting and all of a sudden he straightened up. He found his purpose in life. Your son will be fine. Look what a success Bryan made of himself.”

“
Did your son ever…” Fred’s voice trailed off, and he dropped his gaze to the floor. I decided I’d better do the same thing since he was apparently about to confess something horrible our son had done. I felt guilty. Had we failed to give him enough chocolate? “No, never mind,” he said. “I’m sure Bryan Kollar would never have…” Fred swallowed then resumed speaking as if it was difficult to say the words. “Our son, we think he may be doing drugs.”

I knew it! Chocolate deficit disorder!

Walter and Alice exchanged glances. “Don’t worry,” Walter reassured us. “It happens. It’s a stage lots of kids go through.”

“
We’re pretty sure Bryan was using…substances he shouldn’t have been using,” Alice said. “The crowd he got involved with…well, they weren’t other college students. They were some pretty rough characters.”

“
How did you handle it?” I asked, trying to sound worried about my fictional son. I felt certain it was Fred’s fault he’d gone astray. I had done my best to provide the boy with adequate chocolate.

“
It was very scary,” Alice said. “We just let him know we were there for him and we loved him no matter what but we didn’t approve of his bad choices. It was a rough time. We got through it. You’ll get through it.”

“
Thank you so much for sharing that with us,” I said, feeling a little ashamed of myself for eliciting such personal information on a phony basis, but it was for a good reason. “It does help us to see how your story turned out. Your son’s a success, and now you’re going to retire thanks to selling the business your son inspired you to start.”

“
Well,” Walter said, “that and the sale of an old flour mill that belonged to my great grandfather. Some real estate guy came along out of the blue and offered us more money for it than I’d ever have thought about. Gave us the extra boost we needed to retire.”

Bryan’s
parents were not old or senile, and they didn’t seem the least bit upset about selling the flour mill. Whatever reason Bryan had for wanting it back, it had nothing to do with his parents. Rick and his family weren’t the only liars around.

The Kollars gave us their real estate
agent’s business card, and we promised to call her.

Okay,
we lied, but Bryan started it.

*~*~*

“Our son?” I asked when we were back in the car and heading home. “You let them think I’m old enough to have a son who’s been in college for five years?”

“
You were precocious.” He guided the car around a slow turn. “It worked. They admitted that their son had some problems, got in with the wrong crowd.”

“
Apparently he got away from that crowd. The man won’t even eat sugar. I can’t imagine him doing drugs.”