Alice in Jeopardy: A Novel (16 page)

Judy can’t tell them where she was Wednesday afternoon at two-thirty because at that time she was on the backseat of an Oldsmobile parked behind A&L Auto Repair, where Ernesto and his brother work, and where everybody else who works there knows that Ernesto fucks the nice Jewish lady at two-thirty every afternoon on the backseat of his brother’s car. A&L Auto is where Judy first met Ernesto when she brought the white Jag in for a tune-up a month ago, little realizing that Ernesto would soon be giving her regularly scheduled tune-ups the likes of which she has never before had in her life. But she can’t tell the detectives any of this, not while her beloved husband Murray is standing there glowering with a dead cigar in the corner of his mouth. She thinks again that throwing herself out the window might not be such a bad idea.

“Ma’am?” Saltzman prods.

“Wednesday afternoon,” she says, thinking hard.

“Yes, ma’am. At two-thirty.”

“Why do you want to know this?”

“Were you in Cape October Wednesday afternoon at two-thirty?”

“No, I was not. I told you. I’ve never been to Cape October in my entire life.”

“At Pratt Elementary?” Andrews says.

“Is that a school down there?” Murray asks.

“It’s a school, yes, sir. Were you at Pratt Elementary—”

“I told you I’ve never been to Cape—”

“—behind the wheel of a blue Chevy Impala?”

“Did some schoolkid get run over?” Murray asks. “Is that it?”

“Were you, ma’am?”

“No, I was not.”

“Then where were you?”

“Tell them where you were, Judy.”

“Shopping,” she says.

This Murray can believe. His wife knows shopping. Boy, does she know shopping!

“Shopping where?” Saltzman asks.

“International Plaza.”

“Is that a shop, ma’am?”

“No, it’s a mall.”

“Where’s it located?”

“Near the airport,” Murray says. “Everybody knows International Plaza.”

“We’re not that familiar with Tampa,” Saltzman says. “Can you tell us where it’s located?”

“Boy Scout and West Shore.”

“Are those cross streets?”

“They’re boulevards. Boy Scout Boulevard, West Shore Boulevard.”

“Where in the mall did you shop?” Andrews asks Judy.

“Different shops.”

“Which ones?”

For a moment, she hesitates. But she’s been to the mall often, and she’s familiar with all the stores there.

“Neiman Marcus,” she says. “Arden B. Lord & Taylor. St. John Knits. Nordstrom. A few others.”

“Must’ve bought a lot of stuff,” Andrews says.

“No, I didn’t buy anything at all.”

This causes Murray’s eyebrows to go up onto his forehead. The detectives look surprised, too.

“I didn’t see anything I liked,” Judy explains.

“What time did you leave the mall?”

“Around three-fifteen.”

Which is about when she was pulling up her panties and rearranging her skirt on the backseat of Godofredo’s Olds.

“Spent about forty-five minutes there, is that it?”

“Little bit longer,” Judy says.

“Came right back home, did you?”

“No, I stopped for a small pizza at the California Pizza Kitchen.”

“Where’s that?”

“In the mall. On the first floor. Right by Nordstrom.”

“Had a pizza there, did you?”

“A
small
pizza, yes.”

“See anybody you know in the Pizza Kitchen?”

“
California
Pizza Kitchen. No.”

“Or anyplace else in the mall?”

“No.”

“So we just have your word for where you were.”

“Her word is good enough for me,” Murray says, smiling, and goes to her and takes her hand, and pats it.

“We’ll be checking all those shops you went into,” Andrews says.

“See if anybody remembers anyone answering your description,” Saltzman says.

“
Was
it a kid got run over?” Murray asks.

In the hallway outside,
Andrews says, “She’s lying.”

“I know,” Saltzman says.

“We really going to check out all those stores?”

“I don’t think so, do you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Cause if she kidnapped those kids, I’ll eat my yarmulke.”

Andrews looks at his watch.

“We’re gonna hit traffic going back,” he says, and sighs heavily.

Back at the lab
—which is a very modern lab for a town the size of Cape October—the boys print the latents they lifted at the Shell station, and run them first through their own Bureau of Criminal Identification, but they come up with nothing on the multitude of stuff they gathered. So they try the Automated Fingerprint Identification Section next, and come up blank with them as well. Having exhausted their own BCI and the nationwide AFIS, and having no other letters in the alphabet to turn to, they inform Captain Steele that the black woman Mrs. Glendenning met outside the toilet has never been in the armed forces, has never held a state or federal position, and has never been arrested for any criminal activity whatsoever, otherwise her prints would be on file someplace.

This is now almost five-thirty in the afternoon.

“So what are we dealing with here?” Steele asks Johnson. “Amateur night in Dixie?”

He is commenting about the kidnappers, Johnson hopes.

“We do have some nice hair and fiber samples,” he says. “We ever get anything to compare against.”

Rosie Garrity
is at home that evening when the local news comes on at six
P
.
M
. Her husband, George, is a waiter at the Unicorn Restaurant up in Sarasota, and he’s already left for work, so she’s alone, sitting in the genuine-leather recliner/easy chair he bought for her at Peterby’s Furniture on the Trail.

The television news anchor is a man named Taylor Thompson, handsome as homemade sin, with a voice as deep as an Everglades swamp. He is giving them the headlines of the stories he will discuss at greater length later. Rosie likes Taylor Thompson even better than she likes Tom Brokaw.

“…raging out of control in downtown Fort Myers,” Taylor is saying. “A pair of housewives foil a holdup attempt in a Sanibel supermarket. And in Cape October…”

Rosie leans forward in her recliner.

“…a cat in a jacaranda tree is rescued by heroic firemen. This is Taylor Thompson, back to you in a moment with all the news in the Fort Myers area.”

“Not a word about those poor little darlins,” Rosie says aloud.

More and more,
Alice is beginning to believe that the two women who kidnapped her children are lunatics. They
have
their goddamn money, why haven’t they called yet?

“And what is it Ashley couldn’t believe?” she asks Charlie, as though he’s been reading her thoughts. “That they were even letting her
talk
to me?”

She is pacing the room. The steady ticking of the grandfather clock is a constant reminder that they still haven’t called.

“Were they treating her so badly that just allowing her to talk to her own
mother…
”

“Don’t go there, Al,” Charlie warns.

“She sounded so
amazed,
Charlie! ‘Mom, I can’t believe it!’”

In her mind, she goes over the entire conversation yet another time.

Tell her you and your brother are okay, that’s all. Nothing else. Here.

We’re both okay. Mom, I can’t believe it!

What
can’t…?

Do you remember Mari—?

And she was cut off.

So… well, of course… she’d been about to say “Maria.” And that had to be Maria Gonzalez. What other Maria could it possibly be? Alice doesn’t
know
anyone else named Maria. Or even Marie. So, yes, the black woman grabbed the phone because she didn’t want Ashley saying Maria’s name.

But what is it that Ashley found so goddamn unbelievable?

Maria surfacing again after almost two years,
more
than two years, however long it was? Maria returning to
kidnap
her?

Well, yes, that’s unbelievable.

To Alice, it is
utterly
unbelievable that this mild-mannered, soft-spoken, chubby little girl who still spoke English with a Spanish accent would come to kidnap her children all this time after she’d babysat them, that is totally and completely unbelievable to Alice— but apparently not to Captain Steele, who has sent his Keystone Kops chasing after her.

We’re both okay. Mom, I can’t believe it!

And then, immediately:
Do you remember Mari—?

Even before Alice completed her sentence, even before she possibly could have known that Alice was about to ask “
What
can’t you believe, honey?”

Do you remember Mari—?

And silence.

A dead line.

“Something’s missing,” she tells Charlie.

And the phone rings.

It is ten minutes
past seven.

Charlie immediately puts on the earphones.

“Hello?” Alice says.

“Mrs. Glendenning?”

A male voice. No one she’s ever heard before.

“Yes?” she says.

Her heart is suddenly beating faster. Is this another accomplice? The blonde, the black woman, and now…

“This is Rick Chaffee, night editor at the Cape October
Tribune
?”

“Yes?”

“I hope I’m not—”

“What is it?” Alice says.

“We got a call from some woman… we get many such calls, Mrs. Glendenning, especially since Iraqi Freedom. You have no idea how many people see anthrax bubbling in their toilet bowls, or hear bombs ticking in their closet…”

Charlie is already shaking his head in warning.

“But this woman—”

“What woman?” Alice asks.

“Woman named Rose Garrity, does that name mean anything to you?”

“Yes?”

“Said she’s your housekeeper, is that correct?”

“What’s this about, Mr…. Jaffe, did you say?”

“Chaffee. C-H.
Is
she your housekeeper, ma’am?”

Charlie is shaking his head again.

“Yes, she is,” Alice says.

“Well, ma’am, she called here some ten minutes ago to say she informed the police and then the FBI that your children were—”

“No,” Alice says.

“—kidnapped the other day…”

“No, that isn’t true.”

“It isn’t, huh?”

“It isn’t.”

“Claims there’s been no action from either the local police or the—”

“Perhaps that’s because nothing’s happened here. Mrs. Garrity is mistaken.”

“She seemed pretty sure some black woman—”

“I just told you she’s wrong,” Alice says, and slams the receiver down onto its cradle. She picks it up again at once, begins dialing a number by heart. Her eyes are blazing.

“Hello?”

“Are you trying to get my kids killed?” she yells into the phone.

“Mrs. Glen—?”

“Stay away from this, do you hear me?”

“I’m so worried about them…”

“Shut up!” Alice yells.

The line goes silent.

“Do you
hear
me, Rosie?”

“I was only trying to—”

“
No!
Don’t try to help, don’t try to do anything at all. Just keep your damn nose
out
of it!” she yells, and slams the receiver down again.

“Wow,” Charlie says.

“Yeah, wow,” Alice says.

But she knows the damage has already been done.

The three men meet
in a roadside joint that calls itself the Redbird Café. Not far from the Fort Myers airport, the Redbird is a shack adjacent to a gasoline station, open only for breakfast and lunch on weekdays, but also for dinner on weekends. This is now seven-thirty on a Friday night, and the three men are eating dinner.

Rafe has ordered the broiled catfish dinner with green beans and fries. The other two men are eating fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and the green beans. All three men are drinking coffee. They’re dressed casually, these three, Rafe wearing the blue jeans and denim shirt he always wears when he’s driving, the other two also wearing jeans and what look like Western shirts with those little darts over the pockets. The two men are wearing boots. Rafe is wearing loafers, which are easy to drive in. His rig is parked outside, alongside the Plymouth both the other men arrived in.

All three men did time at Rogers State Prison in Reidsville for violation of Code 16-13-30 of the Georgia State Statutes. That’s where they met, each serving what the three of them called “bullshit narcotics violations.” The prison facility was a small one, housing only twelve-hundred-some-odd inmates, some of them pretty odd, as the old joke went. It was easy for the men to make each other’s acquaintance in the yard, especially since their so-called crimes were similar in nature.

The Redbird is almost empty at this hour, but the men are speaking softly, anyway. Hell, they’re discussing big bucks here. It makes them feel important to be discussing $250,000 in hundred-dollar bills, even if the bills are counterfeit, even if their voices are low.

“Super-bills, huh?” Danny Lowell says.

“Is what the cops called them.”

“You ever hear of super-bills, Jimbo?”

“Never in my life.”

“So good you can’t tell ’em from the real thing,” Rafe says, and picks up some fries with his fingers and shovels them into his mouth.

“Is what your sister-in-law said, right?”

“Is what the
cops
said.”

“Two-fifty large, right?”

“Is how much they turned over to this black chick.”

“What makes me nervous,” Jimmy Coombes says, “is there’s a kidnapping involved here. I don’t know what the law is here in Florida, but back home, you do a kidnapping, you’re looking at the ‘Seven Deadly Sins,’ man. That means life without parole. I ain’t eager to do that kind of time.”

“I don’t think it’s the same in Florida,” Rafe says. “Besides, we wouldn’t be involved in no kidnapping.”

“I tend to agree with James,” Danny says. “We’d in effect be sharing in the proceeds of the crime, and that might be cause to link us to the crime as co-conspirators or whatever. If Florida has as tough a kidnapping law as Georgia, we could be looking at the long one, Rafe.”

Jimmy hates it when Danny sounds like a fuckin jailhouse lawyer. He also hates to be called either James or Jimbo, when his fuckin name is Jimmy. At the same time, Danny is agreeing with him. They have to be careful here. Doing time for kidnapping ain’t no walk in the park.

“There is no way we could be linked to the snatch,” Rafe says. “We don’t even know who these people
are.
How can we possibly get linked to a conspiracy?”

“Conspiracy to commit kidnapping,” Danny says reasonably, and looks to Jimmy for confirmation.

“Which is another thing that bothers me,” Jimmy says. “Our not knowing who they are.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Rafe says.

“Are your chops okay?” Jimmy says.

“Yeah, they’re fine,” Danny says. “Why?”

“Mine are a little overdone.”

“They have to cook pork that way. Because of trichinosis,” Danny says.

“They don’t have to
burn
the fuckin things,” Jimmy says.

“Mine are fine,” Danny says, and shrugs.

“I got a cholesterol problem,” Jimmy says, “I eat red meat—”

“Pork is white meat.”

“Yeah, bullshit,” Jimmy says. “I eat beef, pork, maybe once a month, twice if I wanna live real dangerously. So when I order pork chops, I don’t expect to get burnt shoe leather. I mean, this is a
treat
for me, eating pork.”

“So send them back if they’re not the way you want them,” Danny says.

“I’m almost finished with them already.”

“Then finish them already.”

“I’m just saying,” Jimmy says, “this is supposed to be a fuckin
treat
here. Instead, they’re burned to a crisp.”

The men eat in silence for several moments.

“Also,” Danny says, “there’s more than one of them. That’s what you said, right, Rafe?”

“Yeah, but one of them’s a chick. Maybe both of them, for all I know,” Rafe says. “Maybe these two chicks got it in their heads to steal my sister-in-law’s kids. They know she’s coming into big money…”

“You’re sure about that, huh?”

“Positive. It’s a double indemnity policy. It’ll pay two-fifty.”

“
When
it pays,” Danny says.

“
If
it pays,” Jimmy says.

“It’ll pay,” Rafe assures them. “Besides, who cares about the policy? We’re talking about the
fake
money here. We’re talking about two-fifty large
already
in the hands of whoever’s got the kids. We’re talking about
retrieving
that money.”

“Who we don’t even know who they are,” Danny says.

“Miss?” Jimmy says, and raises his hand to the waitress. She signals that she hears him, finishes taking the order at a table across the room, and then comes over to them.

“Freshen it?” she asks.

“Please,” Jimmy says. “Also, my chops were overdone.”

“Gee, I’m sorry about that,” she says.

She’s maybe eighteen years old, little blonde girl in a yellow uniform, big tits and frizzy hair, Southern accent thick as molasses.

“You’da told me, I’da ast the chef to do them all over again,” she says. “You want me to do that now?”

“No, that’s okay,” Jimmy says.

“Won’t take a minute,” she says.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Jimmy says.

“Y’all want more coffee, too?” she asks the other two men.

They both nod. Danny, in fact, lifts his cup and puts it on her tray, smiling. He fancies himself a ladies’ man even though he’s ugly as homemade sin. That’s another thing Jimmy doesn’t like about him. His vanity. Vanity just ain’t appropriate on a man. The waitress fills their cups, returns Danny’s smile even though he’s ugly, and leaves the table. Jimmy is having very serious doubts here about going into an enterprise with a man like Danny, who calls him Jimbo and James and who thinks he’s handsome as hell when he ain’t. Also, kidnapping is a serious offense.

“Also,” he says, thinking out loud, “suppose there’s
more
than just the two chicks? Or suppose it’s just the black chick your sister-in-law knows about, plus some
guys,
let’s say. Maybe some hardened
criminals,
let’s say, and not some small-time drug shits like the three of us. We go after that money…”

“He’s got a point, Rafe. We could be walking into a hornet’s nest here.”

“Or not,” Rafe says. “Instead, we could be walking away with two hundred and fifty thou in bills that look so real you can lick them off the page.”

“If it’s true.”

“It’s what the cops said.”

“Cops,” Jimmy says.

“You trust what cops say?” Danny says.

“The bills
have
to look good,” Rafe says. “You think they’d endanger those kids’ lives? Come on, be reasonable.”

“He’s got a point, James,” Danny says.

“So let’s say, for the sake of argument,” Jimmy says, “these bills
do
look like the real thing…”

“Exactly my point,” Rafe says.

“And let’s also say, for the sake of argument, that we manage to somehow get our hands on these bills…”

“And split them three ways, don’t forget.”

“What does that come to?” Danny asks.

“Eighty-three K for each of us.”

“Comes to a big thousand bucks a year,” Jimmy says.

“I don’t follow.”

“Assuming Florida’s as tough on kidnapping—”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“—and assuming I live to be eighty-three years old,” Jimmy says.

“Behind bars,” Danny says, nodding in agreement.

The table goes silent.

“So what are you saying here?” Rafe asks.

“I’m saying count me out,” Jimmy says.

“Me, too,” Danny says.

Rafe sits alone at
the table long after his so-called friends have got into their car and driven off. Man, he thinks, you can’t count on a fucking soul these days. Asshole buddies in the lockup—well, not literally—they get a taste of fresh air and then chicken out of the sweetest little setup anyone could ever want. Two-fifty large sitting out there someplace in the hands of two dizzy chicks, just waiting to be ripped off. Well, he can’t do it alone, that’s for sure, everybody needs their back covered, man.

He drinks a second cup of coffee, checks the cash Danny and Jimmy left on the table as their share of the bill and tip, adds his own share to it, and then calls the little blonde waitress over.

“S’pose I oughta get out of here, huh?” he says with a grin. “Before you start charging me rent.”

“Oh, don’t let that worry you none,” she says. “We got plenty to do here ’fore we close.”

“What time would that be?” he asks.

“We’re usually out of here by ten.”

The clock on the wall reads five minutes to nine.

“What do you do then?” he asks. “After you get out of here?”

She knows at once he’s putting the moves on her. She takes a deep breath to fill out the uniform chest, rolls her big blue eyes, and says, “Well, usually, my boyfriend picks me up here.”

“How about tonight? Is he picking you up tonight?”

“I reckon,” she says, without a trace of regret. “Did you want me to take this now?” she asks, and lifts the plate with the cash and the bill on it.

“Sure,” he says. “Thanks.”

Her rejection annoys him even more than his so-called pals’ did. Telling him, in effect, she prefers a pimply faced kid who probably slings burgers at McDonald’s to a sophisticated thirty-five-year-old man who’s been around the block a few times, sweetheart, and who can teach you some tricks you never learned here at the old Redbird Café. He’s beginning to regret having left a fifteen percent tip on the plate. Ten percent would’ve been enough. More than she’d see down here in a week. Pay for a fuckin two-week vacation. He leaves the table before she comes back.

His rig is parked outside.

He settles himself in the cab, starts the engine, and then turns on the cell phone. Nothing he can do down here anymore, he might as well head back home. He dials his home number, lets it ring three times, and is surprised when a voice he doesn’t recognize answers.

“Hello?”

“Who’s this?” he asks.

“It’s your nickel, mister,” the woman says. “Who’s
this
?”

“This is Rafe Matthews, and I
live
there, ma’am! Now who the hell…?”

“Oh, golly, Mr. Matthews,” the woman says, “I’m sorry, this is Hattie Randolph. I’m sittin your kids while your missus is gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Down to Florida. To see her sister.”

“Cape October?”

“I reckon, sir. She gave me the number there, if you’d like it.”

“I have the number. When did she leave?”

“Early this afternoon. Said she should be there by tomorrow morning sometime.”

“Okay,” Rafe says.

He is already thinking.

“Did you want me to tell her anything? If she calls?”

“No, I’ll get in touch with her myself, Hattie, thanks. How are the kids?”

“Fine. I just put them to bed.”

“Well, give them a kiss for me in the morning, okay?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”

“Good night, Hattie.”

“Good night, Mr. Matthews,” she says.

He turns off the phone, and sits alone in the cab, in the dark, thinking. He doesn’t like the idea that Carol just picked up and left for Florida without first consulting him about it. On the other hand, the fact that she’s on the road and doesn’t expect to get down here in Florida till tomorrow morning means that she’ll be stopping at a motel to sleep over, which further means he’s free as a bird till morning, when he’ll give her a call to bawl her out.

Rafe doesn’t realize this about himself, but his usual way of dealing with disappointment or frustration is to look for female companionship. His rejection by first his former jailhouse cronies and next the big-titted little blonde waitress might have remained just mere annoyance if Carol had been home where she was supposed to be. Instead, he calls and gets some black woman he never heard of, while his wife is driving alone in the dark and sleeping Christ knows where on the road, and this pisses him off further, this truly pisses him off mightily.