Ed McBain - Alice in Jeopardy

“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?”