Ed McBain - Cinderella

“Two weeks ago come Saturday,” Sandy said.

“You got tired of it long?”

“Sort of.”

“You like it better red, huh? Than blonde?”

“Sort of,” Sandy said.

She was silent for the space of a heartbeat, and then she said, “How much are they looking to buy?” and Merilee’s eyes met hers in the mirror.

Yellow flags and banners were flying outside 1237 Hacienda Road when Matthew pulled into the condominium’s parking lot that Thursday afternoon. A huge sign outside the sales office read:

Frank had told him that Florida State First had been forced to foreclose on the condominium’s contractor and was virtually giving away the unsold units in an attempt to get rid of them. Sixty units in the entire complex, twenty-four of them still unsold. Last week, Otto had questioned the occupants of seventeen apartments. Seventeen plus twenty-four came to forty-one. From sixty came to nineteen. Still nineteen apartments to tackle. Assuming Frank was right about the number of unsold units.

Frank had also told him the latest condominium joke:

This man comes down to Florida looking for a condominium. He pulls his car into the nearest parking space and is looking for the sales office when he spots a woman and asks her, “Can you tell me where the sales office is? I’d like to see one of the condominiums.”

The woman says, “Why do you need the sales office? I live here, come look at my condominium.”

“Well, thank you, that’s very kind of you,” the man says and follows the woman upstairs to her apartment.

“Would you care for a drink?” the woman asks.

“Well, thank you, I wouldn’t mind,” the man says.

She brings him a drink, and they sit in the living room, drinking.

“Would you care for some sex?” the woman asks.

“Well, thank you, I wouldn’t mind,” the man says.

“Some kinky sex?” she asks.

“Well, yes, thank you,” he says.

“Unzip your fly,” she says.

He unzips his fly.

“Put your member on the palm of my left hand,” she says.

He puts his member on the palm of her left hand.

She raises her right hand and begins smacking his member, smack, smack, smack, each smack punctuated with the words, “Don’t... ever... park... in... my... space... again !”

Matthew hoped he hadn’t parked in anyone’s space.

He looked for the Resident Manager’s office, found it tucked in a corner of the building that housed the workout room and the rec room, and knocked on the door.

“Come in!” a woman’s voice called.

He opened the door onto a small reception room with a desk and chair in it, no one in the chair, no one behind the desk. This was one o’clock in the afternoon, he assumed the receptionist was out to lunch.

“I’m in here!”

He followed the voice into a larger office with a larger desk in it. An attractive, dark-haired woman sat behind the desk. She was, he guessed, in her late thirties, early forties, a pleasant smile on her face, her brown eyes studying him from behind tortoiseshell glasses. Behind her was a rental calendar with large blocks of in-season time marked with different colored strips of tape.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m Matthew Hope,” he said.

“Anne Langner,” she said. “Please sit down, won’t you?”

“Thank you,” he said, and took a seat opposite her desk. “Miss Langner,” he said, “I wonder if you remember... on the sixth of June... that would have been two weeks ago this coming Friday... a man named Otto Samalson...”

“Oh, yes,” she said at once.

“You do remember him?”

“Well, of course. With all the stories about him on television and in the papers? Yes, certainly. He was here asking about a beautiful young woman, I forget her name just now.”

“Well, I’m sure he asked about several names,” Matthew said.

“Yes, now that you mention it, he did. I’m sorry but I didn’t recognize the girl in the picture he showed me. She isn’t one of our owners, and she isn’t renting an apartment here, either.”

“ Would you have recognized her?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Even if she was living here with someone else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, not an owner, not a renter, but living with someone who is an owner or a renter.”

“Oh. Well... I don’t know. There are sixty units here, twenty-four of them as yet unsold, the others either owner-occupied or in our rental program. It would be difficult to—”

“How many are owner-occupied?” Matthew asked.

“Nineteen.”

“Year-round residents?”

“Not all of them. Seven are owners who only use the apartment two or three months out of the year but prefer not to rent it when they’re away.”

“That leaves twelve year-round residents.”

“Yes.”

“Of the seven absentee owners, are any of them here now?”

“I really couldn’t say. This isn’t a full-service condo, you see, we don’t check on the comings and goings of anyone whose apartment isn’t in our rental program.”

“How many apartments are rented right now?”

“All of the seasonal renters are already gone, they usually disappear just after Easter, the beginning of May at the very latest. We have three summer rentals, but they’re unusual. The rest are renting by the year, people who come down here with a job, expect to buy a house, rent a condo while they’re settling in and looking.”

“So,” Matthew said, “right now how many apartments are occupied?”

“Twelve owner-occupied. Three summer rentals. Six annuals.”

“Twenty-one in all.”

He was thinking Otto had already covered seventeen of those twenty-one. But which seventeen?

“Plus any absentee owner who may be in residence just now,” Anne said. “They come and go.”

Better yet, Matthew thought.

“Would you mind if I knocked on some doors?” he asked.

“It’s a free country,” she said, and arched one eyebrow. “Will you need any help?”

Matthew knew an arched eyebrow when he saw one.

“Maybe,” he said, and smiled. “I’ll let you know.”

When Matthew was a boy in Chicago, the one thing he’d hated more than anything else in the world was going around with his kid sister Gloria when she was selling Girl Scout cookies. His mother had said she didn’t want little Gloria knocking on doors all by herself, you never knew who or what might be behind one of those doors.

So Matthew had gone along with a scowling and embarrassed Gloria — her goddamn big brother leading around a Girl Scout who could make fires by rubbing two sticks together and everything — and he’d knocked on doors and listened to his sister giving her spiel, “Morning, ma’am, would you like to buy some delicious Girl Scout cookies?” and he’d felt like a horse’s ass. Especially since no one at all tried to rape or kill Gloria.

By three o’clock that afternoon, Matthew had knocked on twelve apartment doors.

At two of those apartments, he’d got no answer at all.

At four of them, he was told that they’d already answered questions about the girl with the long blonde hair. One man asked if this was a contest or something, and if so, what was the prize?

At five of them — after describing the girl known variously as Angela West, Jody Carmody, Melissa Blair, Mary Jane Hopkins, and Jenny Santoro — he was told that maybe the girl sounded familiar, but didn’t he have a picture?