Alice in Jeopardy

by Ed McBain

  So what is this all about?

  Is this some kind of cop trick?

  Are they working in cahoots with the newspaper?

  In which case, the police have taken some action, after all. In which case, her efforts have not been in vain. There is still hope for those two innocent little kiddies.

  But what are they trying to accomplish with their lies about Mrs. Glendenning’s sister and a trip to Disney World? Rosie knows Mrs. Glendenning and her sister didn’t take their kids to no Disney World. Little Jamie and Ashley, poor dears, were picked up by a blonde in a blue Impala, all right, but that wasn’t no Carol Matthews, and there wasn’t no trip to Orlando in the offing. That was somebody working in cahoots with a black woman who called to say she had the kids and would kill them if the police were informed.

  She feels like calling Mrs. Glendenning right this minute, tell her that instead of screaming at her on the phone the way she did Friday night, she should get down on her hands and knees and thank God for people like herself, Rosie Garrity, who did in fact inform the police, and who is damn glad she did!

  Something’s in the wind now, she feels certain of that, all those lies in the paper.

  “So what’s new today?” her husband asks.

  “Bunch of lies, is what,” Rosie says.

  “Who’s lying now?” he asks.

  He is still in his pajamas. She hates it when he comes to the breakfast table without even throwing on a robe. Almost one-thirty, he’s still in his pajamas.

  “Mrs. Glendenning,” Rosie says. “What time did you get in last night, George?”

  “Little before midnight,” George says, and pours and drinks a glass of orange juice. “What’s she lying about?” he asks, and pops a pair of frozen waffles into the toaster.

  “Her kids getting kidnapped.”

  “Oh?”

  “I told you, remember? She’s now saying they weren’t kidnapped at all.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,’ is why.”

  “Uh-huh,” George says, totally uninterested, and pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove. He butters the waffles, pours maple syrup on them, and then sits down at the table to eat. He is silent for several moments. Then, suddenly, he snaps his fingers.

  “That’s who he looked like!” he says.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, George.”

  “Her husband who drowned.”

  “What about him?”

  “I thought I saw him last night.”

  “Well, that’d be some kinda miracle,” Rosie says, “seein’ as how he’s been dead these past eight months.”

  “Well, of course,” George says. “I know it wasn’t him. I’m just saying it looked like him. Even though the blond hair was long, like a hippie. Besides, he was with some black girl, so of course it wasn’t him. Especially since he’s dead.”

  Long blond hair, Rosie thinks.

  Black girl, she thinks.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God!” she says aloud.

  If the FBI or the local cops knew that Edward Fulton Glendenning was still alive, their check of real estate agents on the Cape and in neighboring vicinities would most likely include a search for an Edward Fulton as well as any recent renter with the initials EG. As taught in Identity Change 101, they know that a person deliberately getting lost will often use his own initials in choosing a new name, or simply use his existing middle name as his new surname. Rarely will he change his given name. He is too used to being called Frank or Charlie or Jimmy.

  But the law enforcement people making phone calls in Alice’s living room do not know that Edward Glendenning is still alive, or that he is now an entirely new individual who calls himself Edward Graham. So their calls to various real estate agents and condo rental offices ask only for a possible renter named Clara Washington, the only name they have, who they know is a black woman in the company of a blonde.

  Listening to them making their fruitless phone calls, Alice realizes they are merely clutching at straws. She stopped believing in God on the morning they informed her that her husband had drowned in the Gulf of Mexico. If God truly existed, He would not have allowed such a thing to happen. But now she begins praying, desperately and silently, that Clara Washington and her blond girlfriend will call again soon to tell her they’ve now “checked the money,” whatever that means, and are letting the children go. Please, dear God, she prays, let the phone ring.

  It does not ring.

  Instead, the doorbell does.

  The first thing Holmes sees when the door to the Glendenning house opens is a chesty black woman holding what looks like a nine-millimeter Glock in her fist.

  He backs off at once, almost knocking Angelet off the front steps.

  “Hey, sistuh,” he says, holding up both hands, palms toward her, “ain’ no need for the cannon.”

  “You’re no brother of mine,” Sally says.

  Angelet is already turning to run.

  “Hold it right there!” she snaps.

  He freezes in his tracks.

  “Both of you step inside here,” she says.

  Holmes goes in first, sidling past her, looking around as he enters. Angelet comes in behind him. Sally closes the door. Neither of the men knows what the hell is going on here. Is this a holdup they’ve stepped into? Everybody seems to be strapped, except for the Glendenning woman and another woman who looks just like her. There are four women and two men altogether. The big busty sister who answered the door with a gun in her hand—and it is a Glock, Holmes now confirms—another woman wearing a shoulder holster and sitting behind what looks like some kind of electronic equipment, plus the Glendenning woman and her look-alike. The two men are also wearing shoulder holsters and packing big weapons. It suddenly occurs to Holmes that perhaps Alice Glendenning has informed the law on him and his good buddy Rudy here. Which, if true, was not a very nice thing to do.

  “Look,” he says, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but nobody’s done nothin to—”

  “What’s going on here,” Sally says, “is you’re trying to extort money from Mrs. Glendenning here...”

  “Extort? Hey, no…”

  “Hey, no, no,” Angelet says, holding up his hands in denial. “All we’re doing—”

  “All you’re doing is threatening to harm her if she doesn’t make good on her—”

  “No, no, hey—”

  “—deceased husband’s debt!”

  “Threaten her? Who threatened her? Lady, did we threaten you?” Holmes asks Alice, and takes a step toward her, which must appear menacing to the lady with the Glock because she raises it again and points it at his head.

  “Hey,” he says, “watch it with that gun, okay? Who the hell are you, anyway? What’s it to you, this woman’s—?”

  “Special Agent—”

  “—husband owes us—”

  “Sally Ballew, Federal Bureau of—”

  That’s enough for Holmes. He knows the rest of the sentence, doesn’t have to hear the rest of it. The titty sister here is an FBI agent. Eddie Glendenning’s widow done called the fuckin FBI on them!

  “Okay, we’re out of here,” he says. “Lady, forget what your husband owes—”

  “Just one damn second!” Sally shouts.

  Alice blinks.

  The pistol is steady in Sally Ballew’s hand. It is undeniably pointed straight at David Holmes’s head. It is aimed directly between his eyes, as a matter of fact.

  “Put it in writing,” Sally says.

  “Whut?”

  “Put it in writing. Felix, get the man a pen and some paper.”

  “Yes, Sally,” Forbes says, and reaches into his inside jacket pocket to remove from it a genuine bona-fide fountain pen, which Holmes didn’t know people actually wrote with anymore. Forbes tears a page from a little leather-bound notebook, and hands both pen and paper to Holmes, who looks at Sally and shrugs expectantly.

  “Writ
e what I tell you,” Sally says.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Satisfaction of IOU,” she says. “Write it.”

  “How do you spell ‘satisfaction’?” Holmes asks.

  Angelet spells it for him. He is very eager to get out of here. He will sign a satisfaction agreement or whatever the hell this document is supposed to be—which he doubts is legal, by the way, and talk about extortion—he will even sign his own mother’s death warrant if he can get out of here before the black FBI agent puts any holes in him. Holmes is already writing. He’s not too enthusiastic about hanging around here, either.

  “Satisfaction of IOU,” he repeats aloud, writing.

  “Underline it,” Sally says.

  He underlines the words.

  “Now write the name Edward Glendenning…”

  “Edward Glendenning.”

  “And under that… how much was it, Mrs. Glendenning?”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars,” Sally says.

  “Two hundred thousand dollars,” Holmes repeats, writing.

  “Two hundred thousand dollars,” Angelet agrees, and gives a little encouraging nod to Holmes, urging him to write faster so they can get the hell out of here.

  “Now write ‘Paid In Full…’”

  “Paid In Full,” Holmes repeats, writing.

  “And both of you sign it.”

  Holmes signs it. Angelet takes the pen from him at once. He signs his name with a flourish, and then puts the cap back on the pen and hands it to Forbes.

  “Now fold it and give it to Mrs. Glendenning,” Sally says.

  Holmes folds the page. He hands it to Alice.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “My pleasure, ma’am,” Holmes says.

  “The debt is satisfied, is that correct?” Sally asks.

  “Yes, ma’am, the debt is satisfied,” Holmes says.

  “It’s satisfied,” Angelet agrees, nodding.

  “Which means you have no further reason to bother this woman, is that also correct?”

  “That is correct, yes, ma’am,” Angelet says.

  Until now, he always thought it might be pleasant to go to bed with a black woman. He has now changed his mind about that.

  “And just for your information,” Sally says, “in case you ever decide to come near Mrs. Glendenning again, in the state of Florida extortion is a second-degree felony punishable by up to fifteen years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. Not to mention the civil suit that might ensue if you breach the document you just signed. My advice?”

  Both men look at her like kids who’ve been rowdy in class and are now in the principal’s office.

  “Crawl back in your holes and don’t come out again,” Sally says.

  “Good advice, ma’am,” Angelet agrees. “Can we go now?”

  “Go,” Sally says, and points the Glock toward the front door.

  They are gone in a flash. Alice goes to the drapes, parts the Venetian blinds. She sees the white Caddy burning rubber out of her driveway, hears it scratching off. Behind her, Sloate tells Sally, “That paper they signed is total bullshit.”

  “I know,” Sally says.

  Alice is wishing that she herself could behave the way Sally Ballew just did. She is thinking that from the minute she met Edward Fulton Glendenning, she was dependent on him for her every move. And the minute Ashley was born, and later Jamie, she became even more and more reliant on her husband, until finally she lost sight of herself entirely, became merely an extension of Eddie, a mere “Mrs. Glendenning” who was essentially unable to function without him.

  She remembers an argument she and Eddie had several weeks before the accident. The fight was about money. That was the only thing they ever fought about, money. There never seemed to be enough money. Even though he was always at the office working late, studying his damn computer, trying to figure out his next market move, they never had enough. The argument that night…

  “I’m investing in stocks for us,” he tells her.

  “Well, when do these stocks begin paying off, Eddie? I look at our savings account, it just keeps going down every month.”

  “Well, shit,” he says, “I wish I had a crystal ball, too, Alice, but I don’t. I’m just a poor working stiff trying to earn enough money to support—”

  “Oh, please, Eddie, where are the violins?”

  “You’re worried so much about money, why don’t you go get a job at Mickey D’s?”

  “I have a job, Eddie! I’m raising two kids.”

  “I mean a real job.”

  “That is a real job, Eddie.”

  “Yes, I know, you’ve told me at least—”

  “And I’d have what you call a real job if—”

  “Yes, here we go again.”

  “Yes, if I’d gone in with Denise when she—”

  “Right, you’d be a big movie producer now.”

  “I’d be somebody, Eddie. Instead of a person whose husband thinks raising two kids isn’t a real—”

  “Oh, fuck the kids!” he shouts.

  “Don’t you dare…”

  “You keep using the kids as an excuse for—”

  She rushes him with her fists clenched and raised, her eyes blazing, ready to strike him for what he just said.

  “No, Mommy!”

  Jamie’s voice.

  She turns. He is standing in the doorway to his bedroom, tears in his eyes.

  “Don’t hurt Daddy,” he says.

  She takes him in her arms.

  She hugs him close.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

  Three weeks later, Eddie drowned at sea.

  And she wonders now if Jamie stopped talking only because he overheard their bitter argument and somehow blamed Alice for what happened out there in the Gulf of Mexico.

  Ashley is talking in whispers because she doesn’t want her father or Christine to hear what she’s saying. She knows they are going to get under way as soon as it’s dark. She has heard them discussing this. She is afraid of what might happen after they get under way.

  “What Daddy said is that he kidnapped us, do you know what that means, ‘kidnapped’?”

  Jamie nods and pulls a face.

  “And he asked for a ransom, do you know what ‘ransom’ is?”

  Jamie rolls his eyes heavenward.

  “So what he told Christine is that he can’t just let us go, he’s got to figure out what to do with us.”

  Jamie looks puzzled.

  “I think he’s afraid we’ll tell on him,” Ashley says.

  Jamie is listening intently now.

  “I think he’s going to drown us, Jamie.”

  They get their first real clue on a call they make to Calusa Springs. The woman at Barker Real Estate there says, “What’s all this sudden interest?”

  “What do you mean, sudden interest?” Sally asks.

  “Second call we’ve had today about a black woman and a blonde,” the woman says.

  “Oh?” Sally says. “What do you mean?”

  Alert now. Alice senses this in her posture, her entire attitude. Doesn’t know exactly what Sally’s hearing on that telephone, but realizes it may be important.

  ”Policeman called here an hour or so ago,” the woman tells Sally. “Said he was trying to locate two women traveling together, a blonde and a black woman, who may have rented recently here in Calusa Springs. I told him I hadn’t rented any property to any people answering that description.”

  “Nor anybody named Clara Washington, is that right?” Sally asks at once.

  “Now how do you know that name?” the woman asks.

  “How do you know that name?” Sally asks.

  “She called me, had to be two months ago, said she’d seen on the Internet I had some cottages for rent, wondered how much they were renting for and whether I had one available for April and May.”

  “Called from where?”r />
  “New Orleans.”

  “This was when did you say?”

  “Had to be the middle of March.”

  “Said her name was Clara Washington?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Did she give you an address where you could reach her?”

  “No, but she gave me a phone number. Is she wanted for something?”

  “May I have that number, ma’am?”

  “Well, I don’t have it anymore, I’m sorry. I told her I’d need a hundred-dollar deposit if she wanted me to hold the rental and I also told her I could only hold the reservation for ten days. When I didn’t hear from her again, I tossed the number.”

  “But it was a number in New Orleans, is that correct?”

  “It was a 5-0-4 area code. That’s New Orleans, isn’t it?”

  “That sure is New Orleans, ma’am. Tell me about this policeman who called you. Did he give you a name?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Would you happen to remember it?”

  “Well, it was only an hour or so ago, I guess I can remember it.”

  “Can you tell me what it was?”

  “Ralph Masters,” the woman says.

  Sally merely nods.

  Alice knows she’s onto something. Maybe there’s a God, after all.

  “Thank you very much,” Sally says, and hangs up, and turns to where Carol is sitting alongside her sister on the living room sofa.

  “Mrs. Matthews?” she says.

  “Yes?” Carol says.

  “Your husband’s name is Rafe, isn’t it? Rafe Matthews?”

  “Yes?”

  “He ever use the name Ralph Masters?”

  “No. Ralph Masters? No. Why would he?”

  “Just curious,” Sally says. “His own initials being RM and all. Maybe he’s sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.” She turns immediately to Alice. “We’re going to have to leave you for a while,” she says.

  “What is it?” Alice asks.

  “Clara Washington called Florida from New Orleans. If the phone company can give us the information we need—”