Ed McBain - Alice in Jeopardy

“Minor disturbance,” Marcia explains. “No sweat, Sheriff.”

If anyone’s watching the house, Alice thinks, what they’ll see now is a sheriff’s car out there in the drive. They’ll think I’ve notified every damn law enforcement agency in Florida.

“What happened to your leg, lady?” the sheriff asks.

“I got hit by a car.”

“You report the accident?”

“Yes, I did,” she tells him, even though she still hasn’t.

“Well,” the sheriff says, “if everything’s all right here…”

“Everything’s fine,” Sloate assures him. “Thanks for looking in.”

“Just checkin,” the sheriff says. “Like I say, a neighbor saw the garage door goin up, strange car movin in, big truck parked outside, wondered just what was goin on here.”

Everyone in the state of Florida is calling the police on my behalf, Alice thinks. First Rosie sticks her nose into this, and now some neighbor…

“G’day, ma’am,” the sheriff says, and tips his hat to her.

“Good day,” Alice says.

Sloate closes and locks the kitchen door behind him. Alice goes into the living room and peers out through the drapes. Big red dome light flashing on top of his car. People coming out of their houses all up and down the street. He’s alerted half the damn neighborhood. If anyone is watching the house…

They’ll kill the children, she thinks.

Maria Gonzalez was fifteen years old the last time she babysat for Alice and Eddie Glendenning. At the time, she was a somewhat chubby little girl who had come over from Cuba many years ago in a boat with her mother, her father, and her older brother, Juan. Well, fifteen years and three months ago, actually, since Maria was inside her mother’s belly at the time. Agata Gonzalez was six months pregnant with her unborn baby daughter when she and her family undertook the perilous journey from Havana in a rickety boat with thirty-one other brave souls.

Maria Gonzalez is now seventeen years old, and even chubbier than she was two years ago. That is because she is now seven months pregnant with a child of her own. Maria’s father, a cabinetmaker who earns a good living down here where people are constantly buying and remodeling retirement homes, is not very happy to see two police detectives standing on his doorstep at six-thirty on a Thursday night, when he is just about to sit down to supper. When it turns out that they are here to talk to his daughter, he is even more displeased. Maria quit her job at McDonald’s two weeks ago, when she started to get backaches, and now what is this? Trouble with the police already?

The two detectives who are here to see her are Saltzman and Andrews. Saltzman is still wearing a yarmulke, which is appropriate to his religious beliefs, but which makes him look very foreign and strange to Anibal Gonzalez, who himself looks foreign and strange to a lot of people on the Cape, even though he’s an expert cabinetmaker. He does not look at all strange to Saltzman or his partner Andrews, who run into a lot of Cuban types in their line of work, and who would not be at all surprised if this fellow with the mustache here, about to sit down to dinner in his undershirt, turns out to be somehow involved in the kidnapping of the two Glendenning kids. They would not be surprised at all, and fuck what anybody thinks about profiling.

The girl turns out to be as pregnant as a goose, but this doesn’t surprise them, either, these people. Wide-eyed and frightened, she sits down with the detectives in a small room just off the dining room. There is a sewing machine in the room, and Maria’s mother explains that she does crochet beading at home, a fashion that has come into style again. Neither Andrews nor Saltzman knows what the hell crochet beading is, nor cares to know, thank you. All they want to know is why little Ashley Glendenning asked her mother if she remembered Maria Gonzalez. All they want to know is what Maria Gonzalez has to do with this kidnapping. So they politely ask Agata Gonzalez to get lost, please…

Actually, Saltzman says, “I wonder if we could talk to your daughter privately, Mrs. Gonzalez.”

…and then they explain to the girl that she is in serious trouble here, which is a lie, and that it would be to her best advantage to answer all of their questions truthfully and honestly, which are the same thing, but Maria doesn’t make the distinction, anyway.

“Do you know where Ashley Glendenning is right this minute?” Saltzman asks.

“Who?” Maria says.

“Ashley Glendenning,” Andrews says. “You used to babysit her.”

“I don’t know anybody by that name,” Maria says.

“Ashley Glendenning,” Saltzman says. “Ten years old. She was eight or so when you used to babysit her.”

“Out on Oleander Street,” Andrews says.

“Oh,” Maria says.

“You remember her now?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Has a little brother.”

“Yeah, Jimmy.”

“Jamie,” Andrews says.

“Jamie, right. What about them?”

“Well, you tell us,” Saltzman says.

“What do you want me to tell you?”

“Where they are.”

“How would I know where they are?”

“Ashley brought up your name.”

“ My name? Why would she do that?”

“Asked her mother if she remembered you.”

“Why would her mother remember me? That was a long time ago, I sat for those kids.”

“Two years ago,” Saltzman reminds her.

“I was a kid myself,” Maria says.

“We think she was trying to tell her mother something.”

“What was she trying to tell her?”

“Your name.”

“Look, what the fuck is this?” Maria asks, and then realizes her father is probably listening to all this in the next room, and hopes he hasn’t heard her say “fuck,” and suddenly wonders why he doesn’t throw these two cocksuckers out of the house.

“It’s all about Ashley Glendenning asking her mother if she remembered Maria Gonzalez,” Andrews says.

“So what’s so unusual about that? That it brings the cops here?”

“She’s been kidnapped, Maria.”

“Who?”

“Little Ashley. You remember little Ashley? Cause she sure as hell remembers you.”

“I don’t know nothing about no kidnapping,” Maria says.

“Then why’d she ask her mother…?”

“I don’t know why she asked her mother nothing. I’m pregnant, I’m seven months pregnant, why would I kidnap anybody?”

“How does two hundred and fifty thousand dollars sound?”

“What?”

“That’s how much little Ashley and her brother are worth to whoever kidnapped them.”

“I didn’t kidnap nobody. Look, this is ridiculous. Did Ashley say I kidnapped her? Why would she say that?”

“You tell us.”

“I am telling you. I haven’t even seen Ashley since, it has to be at least two years now. If I kidnapped her, where is she? More than two years. Do you see her here? We’re just about to have supper, do you see her here?”

“Where is she, Maria?”

“How the hell do I know where she is?”

“Has your husband got her someplace?”

“I don’t have a husband.”

“Your boyfriend then?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, either.”

“Whoever knocked you up then. Is he in this with you?”

“Santa María, me estás poniendo furioso con todo esto!”

“English, Maria.”

“My baby’s father is in Tampa. He found a better job and a blonde girlfriend there.”

“A blonde, huh?” Saltzman says, and glances at Andrews. Both men are suddenly alert.

“That’s what he told me on the phone.”

“Nice that gallantry’s still alive here in Florida,” Andrews says.