Ed McBain: Alice in Jeopardy

Tells him about the school guard, Luke Farraday, seeing the kids getting into a blue car driven by some woman. Tells him she got a call around four o’clock, four-fifteen it must’ve been, from a woman telling her not to call the police or her children would die. Tells him the same woman called again at six to say they wanted a quarter of a million dollars in cash by tomorrow at noon, hundred-dollar bills…

“There’s more than just her,” she tells him. “She said we want the money, we’ll call again tomorrow. Should I call the police, Charlie? I don’t know what to do. Rosie said I should call the police. But if I do that…”

Inside the house, the telephone rings.

Charlie goes up the steps. Alice follows him.

His studio overlooks the Gulf, where the sun is just beginning to dip low over the water. The huge canvases stacked against the walls resemble sunsets themselves, oranges and reds and yellows streaked in harmonious riot against backgrounds of blues, violets, deeper purples, and blacks. They walk through the studio and into the adjoining kitchen, where Charlie lifts a portable phone from its cradle.

“Hobbs,” he says.

“Mr. Hobbs, this is Detective Sloate, Cape October Police Department. Is there a Mrs. Glendenning there with you?”

“Why do you want to know?” Charlie asks.

“We understand she might be in some kind of trouble. If she’s there, would you please put her on, sir?”

Charlie covers the mouthpiece.

“It’s a police detective,” he says.

“What!”

“Wants to talk to you. He knows you’re in trouble.”

“How…?”

“I think you’d better talk to him, Al.”

She takes the phone.

“Hello?” she says.

“Mrs. Glendenning?”

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Wilbur Sloate, Cape October PD. I understand you’ve got some kind of trouble, ma’am. Would you like to tell me about it?”

“Where…? What makes you think…?”

“We received a phone call from a Mrs. Rose Garrity, says she works for you. Is that right?”

“Yes?”

“She says someone took your children, warned you not to call the police, is that right, too?”

Alice says nothing.

“Mrs. Glendenning?”

This, now, is the moment of decision.

Tell this Detective Wilbur Sloate of the Cape October Police Department that yes, her children were picked up outside Pratt Elementary by some woman driving a blue automobile, year and make as yet unknown, and that she has been told to assemble $250,000 in hundred-dollar bills by noon tomorrow, Thursday, the fifteenth day of May, at which time she will be contacted again. Tell him all this and immediately bring in all the local law enforcement agencies, the Cape October Police, of course — who are already here — and the Sheriff’s Department as well, she feels certain, and undoubtedly the FBI…

Or—

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. “My children are here with me this very minute. Anyway, how’d you…?” “May I speak to one of them, please?”

“How’d you find me here?”

“Mrs. Garrity told us you had a friend named Charles Hobbs, Junior, lived out on Willard. May I please speak to one of the children, ma’am?”

“They’re outside playing,” Alice says.

“Could you please call one of them to the phone for me, ma’am?”

“I will not have you frightening my children,” she says.

“Ma’am,” he says, “I’m trying to help you here. If someone has taken your children…”

“No one has taken my children. I just told you…”

“Mrs. Garrity was there when you received that phone call, ma’am. She told us a black woman—”

“She’s mistaken.”

“Ma’am, you stay right where you are with Mr. Hobbs, and someone will be there to talk to you.”

“I don’t want anyone to come here,” Alice says. “I’m telling you my children are here with me, my children are safe.”

“Then let me talk to one of them, ma’am.”

“No.”

“Ma’am…”

“And stop ma’am -ing me. I’m not your grandmother!”

“Mrs. Glendenning, I’ve already called Pratt Elementary and I talked to a Miss Phoebe Mears there who told me you’d spoken to her at a little past four today, asking did your kids get on the wrong bus and all…”

“Yes, that was before they came home,” Alice says.

“You’re saying they finally got home?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Then they weren’t picked up by a woman driving a blue car, is that it? The way Miss Mears says one of the school guards had told her they were?”

Alice says nothing.

“Mrs. Glendenning? Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Did someone in a blue car bring your kids home to you?”

“No,” Alice says. “What happened is they realized they were on the wrong bus, so they asked the driver to let them off at a phone booth. My daughter phoned me at home, and I went to pick them up.”

“The driver let them get off the bus?”

“Apparently so.”

“And your daughter called home, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“She’s how old, your daughter?”

“She’s ten.”

“Knows your home phone number, does she?”

“Of course she does. My office number, too.”

“And you went to pick her up?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Where was that, ma’am, Mrs. Glendenning?”

“Outside the Eckerd’s on Kalin and U.S. 41.”

“And she’s there with you now, your daughter?”

“Yes. Outside.”

“And your son, too.”

“Yes, my son, too.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind showing them to the officer when he comes knocking on your door in, it should be two, three seconds, will you?”

“Officer? What?” she says, and hears a car pulling into the shell driveway outside.

The uniformed cop standing beside the right front fender of a Tall Grass police cruiser takes off his hat when he sees Alice coming down the steps at the front of Charlie’s house. Charlie is walking out just behind her.

“Mrs. Glendenning?”

“Yes?” she says.

“Officer Cudahy,” he says. “I’m sorry to be bothering you, ma’am.”

“No bother at all,” she says. “What is it?”

“We got a call from a Detective Sloate downtown, he says you might be in need of some assistance.”

“No, everything’s fine, thanks,” she says. “But thanks for your concern.”

“Mrs. Glendenning,” Cudahy says, “I wonder if you’d mind my speaking to your children for a minute.”

“My children aren’t here,” Alice says at once.

Charlie gives her a sharp look.

“It is Detective Sloate’s understanding that they’re outside playing,” Cudahy says.

“He must have misunderstood me.”

“It’s what he told me on the radio, ma’am.”

“Yes, well, he must’ve heard me wrong.”

Cudahy looks at her. Then he turns to Charlie.

“Are you the lady’s father, sir?” he asks.

“No, I’m just a friend,” Charlie says.

“Would you happen to know the lady’s children?”

“I would.”

“Are they here, sir?”

“They are not.”

“Would you know where they are?”

“I would not.”

“Mrs. Glendenning, do you know where they are?”

“Yes, I took them to the movies. I’ll be picking them up when the show breaks, at nine-fifteen.”

Cudahy looks at her.

“That’s not what you told Detective Sloate,” he says.

“Detective Sloate seems to have misunderstood a great many things,” Alice says.

“I’ll have to tell him the children aren’t here,” Cudahy says, and goes back to the car and pulls a mike from the dash. From where Alice stands with Charlie on the front steps of the house, she can hear first some static, and then only some garbled words. She does not know what she can tell the police next. She only knows there is one thing she can not tell them. She can not say her children have been kidnapped. If she brings the police into this, Ashley and Jamie will be killed.