Alice in Jeopardy

by Ed McBain

  “If you’re busy,” he says, “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  “I’m not busy,” she says. “And you’re not bothering me. It’s just… I don’t know you at all.”

  “Well, that’s the idea,” he says.

  This is getting too difficult, he thinks. Fuck it. I’ll go back inside and hit on the waitress again.

  “Get to know each other a little better,” he says.

  “Well, now, why would I want to do that?”

  It suddenly occurs to him that she may be flirting.

  “Friend of Alice’s and all,” he says.

  “I told you,” she says. “All I did was run over her foot.”

  “Glad it wasn’t my foot,” he says.

  She laughs.

  “I’ll bet,” she says.

  “So what do you think?” he asks. “Coffee? A drink? Or get lost?”

  She laughs again.

  “Can you be at the Hyatt by ten?” she asks.

  “I’m not dressed for the Hyatt,” he says.

  “What are you wearing?”

  “I’m driving a rig. I’ve got on jeans and a denim shirt.”

  “Casual, huh?”

  “And loafers,” he says.

  “Okay, drive out to the end of Willard Key. There’s a place out there on the water, it’s called Ronnie’s Lounge, which sounds gay but it isn’t. You’re not, are you?”

  “No, ma’am, I am not.”

  “Who shall I look for?”

  “Big handsome guy in jeans and a denim shirt.”

  “Modest, too,” she says.

  But she laughs again.

  “Ten o’clock,” he says.

  “See you,” she says, and hangs up.

  Hot damn! he thinks.

  Actually, Rafe has done this sort of thing many times before. The trick is to make it look as if he’s never done it before. In the past, he’s never blatantly flashed his wedding band—nor is he doing that tonight—but if the subject happened to come up, he never denied he was married, either. The way the conversation is going here in Ronnie’s Lounge, it looks as if the subject might come up any minute now.

  Jennifer Redding is wearing a little black fuck-me dress that’s cut high on the thigh and low over what Rafe considers an exuberant set of lungs. She is wearing strappy black sandals with a stiletto heel, and her legs are crossed, and she is jiggling one foot, which always makes him think a woman is about to come. She looks overdressed for the kind of place this is—especially after he told her on the phone he was in denim and jeans—but she doesn’t seem uncomfortable here. In fact, some of the other women draped here and there around what is essentially a wooden shack hung with fishing nets and buoys are also dressed to the nines whereas the guys look like they just got off either a boat or a horse.

  Jennifer is drinking a Cosmopolitan, which he never heard of before tonight, and which she earlier explained is a cocktail composed of four parts vodka, two parts Cointreau, one part lime juice, two parts cranberry juice, a dash of orange bitters, and an orange twist.

  “You’re supposed to set fire to the oil from the orange peel before you drop it in the glass, but I never saw any bartender down here do that,” she told him.

  But now the conversation has moved toward more basic matters, as for example how he happens to know Alice Glendenning. This is the moment of truth.

  Rafe lifts his glass. He is drinking Wild Turkey bourbon on the rocks. He takes a sip, puts the glass down again. Looks across the table at her.

  “She’s my sister-in-law,” he says.

  Jennifer doesn’t seem at all surprised.

  “I knew that,” she says. “I was testing you.”

  “Did I pass the test?” he says.

  “Is she your brother’s wife?”

  “No. My wife’s sister.”

  “Ah,” Jennifer says.

  “Yeah,” he says, and lifts the glass again, and takes another sip.

  “So what are you doing here with me?” she asks.

  “I told you. I thought we might get to know each other better.”

  “The way you know your wife’s sister better?”

  “No, no. Hey, no! Definitely not. There’s nothing going on between me and Alice.”

  “Then what were you doing there yesterday?”

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood, so I stopped by to see her. She’s my sister-in-law, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Okay,” Jennifer says, and nods again.

  She sips at the Cosmopolitan. He sips at the bourbon. The table is silent for several moments. Somewhere across the room, the jukebox is playing some kind of country-western song about a guy leaving home in his pickup truck with his hound dog.

  “So what are we supposed to do now?” she asks. “You being married and all?”

  “That’s entirely up to you,” Rafe says.

  “I’m not the one who’s married,” she says. “Being married is your problem, not mine.”

  “I don’t see it as a problem. How do you see it as a problem?”

  “Well, gee, let me think,” Jennifer says. “Being married means there’s a wife someplace, right?”

  “Yeah, but not here,” Rafe says.

  “Then where?”

  “Right now, I guess she’s in a motel somewhere on the interstate.”

  Jennifer looks at him, puzzled.

  “Driving down from Atlanta to see her sister,” Rafe explains. “Won’t be here till tomorrow morning sometime.”

  “Which means you’re alone for the night, is that it?”

  “It would appear so, yes,” Rafe says.

  “Is this what you do all the time? While your wife’s on the interstate?”

  “First time,” he says.

  “I’ll bet.”

  Jennifer nods again, thinking it over. She is still jiggling her foot.

  Rafe moves his glass around on the tabletop, making wet rings. He is sure her shoe will fall off.

  “So what do you think?” he asks.

  “I think I’d like another Cosmo,” she says.

  Alice has just brought a pillow and a blanket into the living room when car headlights splash across the drawn blinds. Both she and Charlie turn at once toward the windows. Outside, they hear a car engine quitting. A car door slamming. Moments later, the front doorbell rings.

  The grandfather clock reads 10:45 P.M.

  “I’ll get it,” Charlie says, and motions for Alice to move back. She steps away from the door. Charlie glances over his shoulder to make certain she cannot be seen from the outside, and then he says to the closed door, “Who is it?”

  “Dustin Garcia,” a man’s voice says.

  “Who’s Dustin Garcia?”

  “Cape October Trib. Could you open the door, sir?”

  “Send him away,” Alice whispers.

  “Only make it worse,” Charlie says, and motions again for her to stay out of sight. He unlocks the door, opens it, peers out through the mesh of the screen door. Bugs are clattering around the porch light.

  The man standing there is short and slight. He is wearing a tan suit with a dark brown sports shirt, no tie. He is also wearing a brown snap-brim straw hat and brown shoes. He holds up a card with his photo on it and the word PRESS in green across its face.

  “Sorry to bother you this time of night,” he says. “My editor says he talked to you earlier…”

  “Yes, what is it?” Charlie says.

  “Rick Chaffee, do you remember him calling?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “You are, sir?”

  “Charlie Hobbs.”

  “Nose for news, Rick has,” Garcia says. “He thought I ought to stop by and talk to you.”

  “Is that what he thought?”

  “Yes, sir. All right for me to come in?”

  “Sorry,” Charlie says. “No.”

  “Awfully buggy out here.”

  “Then go back to your car,” Charlie says. “Bet it’s not buggy there.”
r />   “Rick seems to think somebody’s been kidnapped here.”

  “Rick’s wrong.”

  “Two little kids, Rick seems to think.”

  “Look, Mr. Garcia, it’s late…”

  “I’d like to come in and talk to Mrs. Glendenning.”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “Do you live here, sir?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Where are the Glendenning children, Mr. Hobbs?”

  “Asleep. Where are your children this time of night?”

  “I don’t have any children.”

  “I don’t, either,” Charlie says. “Mr. Garcia, it was nice of you to stop by, but nothing’s happened here, and you’re wasting your time.”

  “Then let me talk to the kids.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll talk to someone at Pratt first thing tomorrow morning, you know,” Garcia says. “That’s where they go to school, isn’t it?”

  “School’s closed tomorrow,” Charlie says.

  “I’ll find somebody.”

  “Good night, Mr. Garcia,” Charlie says, and closes and locks the door.

  Rafe realizes that it might not be provident to ask a lady if she’d mind your parking a truck and trailer weighing some forty thousand pounds empty in front of her house overnight. He suggests that she follow him to a truck stop he knows near the airport—which is a good half hour away from Ronnie’s Lounge out on Willard—and she tells him to go park the truck there all by himself, thanks, and then catch a cab to her house if he’s still interested. He does not get to Mangrove Lane until eleven-thirty.

  The only light burning in any of the houses on the street is a little blue one in the house next door to hers. Someone watching television. Otherwise the street is dark. He pays and tips the cabby, goes to the front door, and rings the bell. Jennifer answers it a moment later.

  She is wearing red silk lounging pajamas, a black silk robe, and the same strappy black sandals she had on earlier tonight.

  “Thought you’d never get here,” she says.

  “The last flight came in from Tampa at nine,” he says. “Not a taxi in sight. I had to phone for one.”

  “But you’re here,” she says.

  “It would appear so, yes.”

  “That’s a verbal tic,” she says.

  “What’s a verbal tic?”

  He doesn’t know what a verbal tic is. But she thinks he’s asking her to clarify exactly which words constitute the verbal tic, whatever it may be.

  “Saying ‘It would appear so, yes.’ You said the same thing when I asked if you were alone for the night.”

  “Then it must be true,” he says. “I am in fact alone for the night, and I am also in fact here.”

  “While your wife is in a motel on the interstate.”

  “That’s where I guess she is.”

  “What does she look like, your wife?”

  “She’s about five-six, and she has brown hair and blue eyes.”

  “But you prefer blondes, is that it?”

  “I prefer blondes who look like you,” he says.

  “Do you have any children?”

  “Two.”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself, fucking around this way.”

  “Well,” he says, “so far I’m not doing much fucking around, am I?”

  Jennifer laughs. Her laugh is raw and sexy. He hopes this doesn’t turn out to be a false alarm here, because he’s already getting hard in his jeans and he doesn’t want to have to call another cab.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asks.

  “I think I’ve had enough to drink.”

  “I’m going to have another drink,” she says, and crosses the living room to where the drop-leaf front of a wall unit is hanging open. The black silk robe flutters about her like the wings of a butterfly. He wonders if she’s wearing anything under those red silk lounging pajamas. He’s never seen Carol in lounging pajamas. Do women wear anything under lounging pajamas? He sure as hell hopes she doesn’t turn out to be a cock tease.

  “Sure?” she says, and turns from the bar to hold up a glass.

  “Positive,” he says.

  She shrugs, pours vodka for herself into a short fat glass, and screws the cap back onto the bottle. Leaving the glass on the open bar top, she moves to the audio equipment in the wall unit, slides a couple of CDs into the player, and presses a button. A female singer whose voice he can’t recognize begins singing a bluesy number. Jennifer picks up her glass and dances over to him, arms wide, robe fluttering, floating again to where he is still standing across the room. She takes a swallow of her drink, looks at him over the rim of the glass, smiles, and kisses him on the mouth. She pulls away just as he starts getting hungry.

  “How do I know you’re not fucking Alice?” she asks.

  “Nobody’s fucking Alice,” he says. “Her husband drowned eight months ago. She’s still grieving.”

  “Did you try?”

  “I knew better,” he says.

  “How come you didn’t know better with me?”

  “Did your husband drown?”

  “I don’t have a husband.”

  “Then let’s go to bed,” he says.

  “No, let’s dance,” she says, and sips at the drink again, and goes into his arms.

  They move about the floor slowly. His hand slides from the small of her back to the swell of her ass under the silk garments. She backs away from him, raises her eyebrows like a virgin, and then moves out of his arms completely to sip at her drink again. Her nipples are puckered under the silk. Jesus, he thinks, please don’t let this be a false alarm.

  “What time will your wife be getting down here tomorrow?” she asks.

  Back to the wife again.

  “Around breakfast time, I’d guess.”

  Is she building up to kicking him out of here? Once, in St. Louis, he made the mistake of hitting on a flight attendant staying at the same Holiday Inn he was, but it turned out she was a friend of the flight attendant he’d fucked two weeks earlier. Gave her the same line. Only she knew the line already because her friend had told her all about him. So she let him buy her dinner and walk her back to her room, even invited him in for a drink, where he kept giving her the same jive he’d given Gwen—that was the first girl’s name—two weeks earlier. She finally told him he should change his line at least as often as he changed his underwear, and showed him the door. Couldn’t even remember her name now, the bitch, but was this the same thing here? Was Jennifer getting him all hot and bothered only to turn him out into the night?

  “Aren’t you afraid she might see your truck where you parked it?”

  “She won’t be going near the airport. Anyway, what I do is my business.”

  “Oh? Is that right? Have you got some kind of arrangement or something?”

  “No, but I’m my own man.”

  “Oooo, big macho man,” she says.

  “Look,” he says, “if you’re not—”

  “Be still,” she says.

  “I mean, I’m married, okay? If that—”

  “I said be still.”

  She moves away from him, glides to the bar, sets her empty glass down in front of the bottles arrayed there, and then lifts the folding top, closing the bar. As she turns back to him, she lets the black silk robe slide from her shoulders. And then she is fiddling with the silken cord at her waist, loosening it, untying it, allowing the pajama bottoms to slide down over her thighs and her knees, bunching at her ankles, stepping out of them in her high heels and taking a stride toward him, the palms of her hands flat on her naked thighs now.

  Her pubic hair is black.

  “Are you sure you prefer blondes?” she asks, and when he doesn’t answer, she says, “Why don’t you just come on over here and eat me, hmm?”

  Saturday

  May 15

  8

  By midnight, they have already fucked once and are lying naked on Jennifer’s king-sized bed in a bedroom overlooking a sm
all lagoon in her backyard, getting ready to have another go at it, from the look of things. Rafe feels no guilt whatever; he has done this many times before, with many different women. In fact, he feels exhilarated. She is more spectacularly beautiful than he could have prayed for, lying beside him now with her Miss Clairol Blondest Gold hair spread on the pillow, her legs spread below where her unbleached coal-black hair tufts in crisp anticipation, one hand lying palm up on the pillow above her head, the other hand already stroking his cock again.

  The combination of black and blond is somehow very exciting. My head may be fake, it seems to declare, but, baby, what you get down here is the real thing. Moreover, his being able to witness the disparity brings a sense of greater intimacy to their nakedness. Here I am, her bush is saying, this is what I’m really like, and you alone are privileged to see it. Me alone, and ten thousand other guys, Rafe thinks, but he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth or any other open orifice.

  What she’s doing now is positioning herself so that she can maneuver the head of his cock against her nether lips. She does this with total disregard for his own needs or desires. It is as if his cock isn’t even attached to him. She uses it like a dildo, pushing the head this way and that until she finds her clitoris and then rubbing herself against it gently at first and then more vigorously and then straddling him completely and sliding herself onto him, wet and open and savage and totally absorbed with pleasuring herself alone. She seats herself firmly and deeply, grabbing her breasts in both hands, working the nipples with thumbs and forefingers, head thrown back, blonde hair above, black below, it is almost like having two women in bed with him.

  She keeps him deep inside her, insistently moving her clitoris against his shaft, locked onto his cock, lost in herself, tossing her head, murmuring cunt and fuck and cock and yes and do it and fuck me, and then pulling herself back just on the edge of orgasm, and gliding up to the head of his cock again, almost losing it, capturing it again at the very last moment, and then sliding down deep again, repeating the action, over and over again and again and again, his hands clutching her ass, yes, fuck me, she says, and then screams aloud and hangs above him in agonizing orgasm and flings herself onto him, breasts crushed against his chest, mouth seeking his, tongue lashing, oh jesus, she murmurs, oh jesus.