Ed McBain: Alice in Jeopardy

When the same nightmare awakens her, she sits bolt upright in the middle of the bed.

Where am I? she thinks.

And blinks at the bedside clock.

7:15 A.M.

She is instantly wide awake.

“Kids!” she yells. “Jamie! Ashley! Up! We’re late! Up, guys!”

She hears grumbling down the hall. Ashley’s voice. Jamie hasn’t spoken for almost eight months now.

“Guys, are you up?” she shouts.

“Yes, Mom!” Ashley calls.

Ten years old, the elder of the two. Her eyes and her hair brown, like Alice’s. Eight-year-old Jamie favors his father. Blond hair and blue eyes. She can never look into those eyes without recalling that terrible day.

She shakes off the nightmare and gets out of bed.

In the shower, she realizes she set the alarm’s wakeup time, but neglected to slide the ON-OFF switch to the right. Hurrying to lather, she drops the soap, the heavy bar falling onto the little toe of her left foot. Yelping in pain — it feels as if someone has hit her with a hammer — she yells, “Damn it to hell!” and bends down to recover the slippery bar. Her butt hits the HOT-COLD lever on the tiled wall. The water turns instantly ice cold. She straightens in surprise, drops the soap again, missing her foot this time, and backs away from the icy stream, thinking None of this would be happening if Eddie were still alive.

But Eddie is not still alive, she thinks, Eddie is dead — and almost bursts into tears.

She reaches through the slanting curtain of frigid water, and turns off the shower.

The kids are supposed to be at school at eight-fifteen. She is twenty minutes late getting them there. Jamie has forgotten his lucky red cap, so she has to drive all the way back to the house for it, the traffic on U.S. 41 impossible even now in the off-season. By the time she brings the cap to him at school, and then drives to the office on The Ring, it is almost 9:30. Her appointment with Reginald Webster is at ten. She barely has time to check her e-mail, go over the new listings that Aggie has placed on her desk, put on some lipstick, which she didn’t have time to do before they left the house, visit the ladies’ room one last time, and here he is!

Forty-three years old perhaps, tall and somewhat good-looking in a dissipated way, suntanned from hours spent aboard his thirty-foot Catalina. He is looking for a house on deep sailboat water.

“People call me Webb,” he says. “Better than Reggie, don’t you think?” Holding her hand. “Anything’s better than Reggie. Have you found some good houses for me?”

“I think so,” she says, and withdraws her hand. “Would you care for some coffee, or should we just get started?”

“I wouldn’t mind a cup, if it’s already made,” he says.

She buzzes for Aggie and asks her to bring in two cups of coffee. While they are waiting, she shows Webb pictures of the dozen or so houses she’s pulled from the internet. He seems interested in two of them on Willard, and another one out on Tall Grass. The two keys are at opposite ends of Cape October. It is going to be a long day.

Aggie comes in carrying a tray with two coffee cups, a creamer, and a sugar bowl on it. As she is placing the creamer and sugar bowl on the desk, she accidentally knocks over Webb’s cup, spilling the contents onto his left trouser leg. He jumps up, bellowing in surprise, and then immediately recovers his cool.

“That’s okay,” he says, and laughs. “I’m about coffeed out, anyway.”

She is starting to tell Reginald Webster how Cape October got its name. They have already seen the two houses on Willard Key, and are driving out to Tall Grass.

“Because that’s when the first tourists come down,” Webb says. “October.”

“No, no,” she says. “Actually, the name is an odd combination of Seminole and Spanish.”

She goes on to explain that when the Spaniards first came to southwest Florida, the Seminole word tha-kee for “big” was already in place, and they added the Spanish word cabo to it, and came up with the name “Cabo Tha-kee,” or “Big Cape.” This eventually became slurred and contracted to “Cab’Otha-kee,” which was then finally Hispanicized to “Cab’Octubre,” which of course was “Cape October” in English.

“Or so the story goes,” she says, and turns to him and smiles.

The eastern rim of October Bay is jaggedly defined by U.S. 41, more familiarly known as the Tamiami Trail. Frank Lane, the owner and sole proprietor of Lane Realty, believes that “Tamiami” is redneck for “To Miami.” Alice doesn’t know if this true or not. But if you follow 41 south, it leads eventually to Alligator Alley, which then crosses the Florida peninsula to the east coast and, of course, Miami. So maybe he’s right.

There are four keys off the Cape’s mainland. Beyond these so-called barrier islands lies the vast Gulf of Mexico. Sail out due west from the Cape, and eventually you’ll make landfall in Corpus Christi, Texas. If you’re lucky.

“So how old are you, Alice?” he asks her. “May I call you Alice?”

“Sure,” she says.

“So how old are you, Alice?” he asks again.

She doesn’t think that’s any of his business, but he is a client, and neither does she wish to appear rude.

“Thirty-four,” she says.

“Married?”

“Widowed.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yes,” she says.

“Any children?”

“Two, a boy and a girl.”

“Tough break.”

“Yes,” she says again.

“How long ago?” he asks.

“You know,” she says, “I’m sorry, but I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Okay,” he says, and shrugs. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“That’s okay,” she says, and then softens her tone. “It’s just that it’s still painful.”

“Must’ve been recent then, huh?” he says, and when she doesn’t answer, he says, “Sorry.”

They ride in silence for several moments.

“Was it an accident?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer.

“Sometimes it helps to talk about it,” he says. “I figure he had to’ve been young, right? I mean, you’re only thirty-four. So it had to’ve been either a heart attack or some kind of accident, am I right?”

“He drowned eight months ago,” Alice says, and Webb remains silent for the rest of the trip to Tall Grass.

“The house was built in 1956,” she tells him. “Named for Jennifer Bray Healey, who had it designed by Thomas Cooley and his son. They’re famous Cape October architects.”

“Never heard of them,” Webb says.

“They designed a great many of the buildings downtown, I’ll take you to see some of them later, if you like. The Healey house is considered a hallmark of the Cape’s modern architectural movement.”

They are standing in the oval driveway in front of the house. Alice is deliberately postponing that moment when she unlocks the front door and opens it onto the spectacular panoramic view of Little October Bay. It never fails to knock the socks off any prospective buyer.

“The house fell into disrepair after Mrs. Healey died,” she says, searching in her bag for the key to the lockbox. “The present owners — Frank and Marcia Allenby — bought it two years ago. They’ve been renovating it ever since, all in accordance with historic guidelines. The rules are that you can make changes provided you don’t alter any ‘historically or architecturally significant aspects of the design,’ quote unquote.”