Ed McBain: Alice in Jeopardy

Still holding both her hands in his, he draws her close to him, and kisses her on the mouth. She kisses him back. They pull apart from each other at last, still holding hands, and he nods silently and solemnly, and finally drops her hands and climbs into the cab and rolls down the window.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promises, and starts the engine.

She watches as he backs the truck out of its space. She watches as he drives it over to the exit. Before he pulls out onto U.S. 41 North, he waves back at her from the open window. Then he is gone.

She walks over to where she parked the red convertible. She puts the key into the ignition, and sits there for a long while without starting the car. Then, aloud, she says, “You’re all so full of shit,” and starts the car, and turns on the radio very loud, and drives out of the lot.

Sally Ballew calls her boss at eight-thirty in the morning. She sounds jubilant. She tells him that GTE here in Florida was able to provide a New Orleans phone number for the call made to Harper Realty in Calusa Springs.

She tells him that Ma Bell in New Orleans was able to give them the name of the subscriber for that number, and the name wasn’t Clara Washington, it was Edward Graham, no middle initial.

She tells him that the FBI’s regional office up there in the Big Easy was able to obtain a list of calls made from Edward Graham’s number to Florida in general and more specifically to Cape October, and one of the numbers called was for a marina out on Crescent Island.

She tells him that a call to that marina…

“Which happens to be called Marina Blue,” she says, “which I think is what the little girl was trying to tell her mother on the phone…”

“Uh-huh,” Stone says.

“A call to the marina,” she says, “confirmed that a man named Edward Graham booked docking space there for the months of April and May—”

“Have you been watching television?” Stone asks.

“No. What? Television? No. Why?”

“It’s been on television since late last night,” Stone says.

“What’s been on television?”

“The woman shot him. They got both him and his accomplice. Her husband and his bimbo.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sally says.

“The Glendenning woman. Her husband never drowned, Sally. In fact, he’s still alive after she plugged him three times. They got the woman, too. Where’ve you been, Sally?”

“I’ve…”

Sally looks at the list of phone numbers she’s been calling.

“Who gets credit for the bust?” she asks.

“A security guard at the marina,” Stone says.

There are television cameras all over Alice’s front yard when Charlie gets there at nine-fifteen that morning. Her sister’s Explorer is still parked in the driveway. He pushes his way through all the microphones being thrust at him, and almost knocks a young reporter on his ass as he shoves his way to the front door and rings the doorbell.

“Are you a cop?” a woman reporter asks him.

“I’m a painter,” he says, and rings the doorbell.

The door opens. The crowd of reporters instantly surges forward, but Charlie has already eased his way in.

“You okay?” he asks Alice.

“Fine, Charlie.”

“The kids?”

“Asleep.”

“Did they book you?”

“Not yet.”

“Will they?”

“I don’t think so. They said there’d be an investigation.”

“You should’ve seen her,” Carol says proudly.

“I almost killed him, Charlie.”

“You should have,” Charlie says. “Is there any coffee?”

The story that runs in Dustin Garcia’s column that morning makes it sound as if the Cape October Tribune, and more particularly Dustin Garcia himself, played a major role in locating and apprehending the couple who’d kidnapped the Glendenning children.

Were it not for the fabricated story this columnist reported in the “Dustbin” yesterday, the perpetrators would not have ventured to be so bold as to…

And so on.

No Pulitzer prize maybe, Garcia thinks, but close enough for a cigar.

At ten past eleven, Reginald Webster appears at Alice’s front door. Through the peephole, she sees behind him a phalanx of reporters still waiting patiently for a glimpse of her. It appears that she has achieved fifteen minutes of fame she is not especially eager to claim.

“Want me to get rid of him?” Charlie asks.

“No,” she says, and opens the door.

Flashbulbs pop, and cameras begin rolling. The same woman who earlier asked Charlie if he was a cop now shouts, “How’d it feel to shoot your own husband, Mrs. G?”

“Good morning, Alice,” Webb says.

“Good morning, Webb,” she says.

“Was your little girl molested?” a male reporter shouts.

“I was worried,” Webb says. “I saw it on television this morning…”

“I’m all right,” she says.

“Well, good,” he says.

“Were you trying to kill him?” another reporter yells.

“I still want a house down here, you know.”

“I’ll find one for you.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It’s a promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” he says.

As he starts up the walk to where he’s parked his rented Mercury at the curb, the woman reporter shouts, “What are your plans now, Mrs. G?”

Alice merely smiles, and closes the door, and goes to where Charlie is brewing a pot of coffee in the kitchen.