3
At 8:45 A.M., Rosie Garrity is still watching television, hoping to hear something about the kidnapping.
There was nothing on last night until she went to bed at eleven, and there’s nothing on this morning, either, not on WSWF, anyway. WSWF is Cape October’s own Channel 36, the “SWF” in the call letters standing for Southwest Florida. Rosie starts surfing the cable channels, one after the other, figuring a kidnapping always gets covered on the cable shows, but there’s nothing there either.
She’s beginning to wonder if whoever she spoke to at the police yesterday has taken any action on the case — Sloane or Slope or something like that, said he was a detective. Because if he was just sitting on this thing instead of doing something about it, why, he should be reported to a superior officer for disciplinary action, these were two innocent little kids out there. She is just about to dial the police again, when the phone rings, startling her. She picks up at once, thinking this might be Detective Sloane wanting further information.
Instead, it is Alice Glendenning.
“Hello, Mrs. Glendenning,” she says. “Have you heard anything further from that black woman?”
“No, nothing yet,” Alice says. “Rosie, the reason I’m calling…” She suspects that she is going to be bawled out for having called the police. But then Alice says, “I don’t think you should come in today,” and Rosie immediately believes she’s about to be fired.
“Why not?” she asks defensively.
“Because my children are gone, and I want to be alone here when that woman calls, if she calls.”
Alone.
She has just told Rosie that she is alone.
Which means the police have not contacted her, as that Detective Sloane said they were going to do, which means the police are most certainly being derelict in their duty.
Well, we’ll just see about that, Rosie thinks.
“I understand, Mrs. Glendenning,” she says. “Just call me if there’s anything you need, okay?”
“I will, Rosie. Thank you.”
But there is something odd in her voice, something cool and distant. Rosie wonders just what the hell is going on here.
“Good-bye now,” she says.
She hangs up, and immediately begins searching the Cape October-Fort Myers-Sanibel directory under GOVERNMENT AGENCIES.
When the phone rings at 9:10 A.M., Detective Marcia Di Luca says at once, “I’m not ready here yet, Will.”
Alice can only think they’ve been working here all damn night, and she’s still not ready. Alice can only think her children’s fate is in the hands of Keystone Kops.
Sloate is putting on the earphones.
“I don’t think it’s her again, so early,” he says. “But if it is, just let her talk, hear what she has to say.”
The phone is still ringing.
“Shall I pick up?” Alice asks.
Sloate hits some buttons on his recording equipment. Reels begin spinning.
“Go ahead,” he says.
Alice picks up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Alice?”
A woman’s voice. She recognizes it at once. Aggie Barrows, her assistant.
“Yes, Aggie,” she says.
“Did you forget your nine o’clock?”
“My…?”
“With Mr. Webster.”
“Oh Je—”
“He’s here now. What shall I tell him? Are you coming in?”
“Let me talk to him, Agg.”
She waits.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Webster, hi, I’m so sorry.”
“That’s all right,” he says. “What happened?”
“I broke my ankle.”
“Well, that’s a new one,” he says.
“I really did,” she says. “I got knocked down by a car yesterday afternoon.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says.
“I’m in a cast. I should have called you, I know, but what with the hospital and all…”
“Hey, that’s all right, we can do it another time.”
“I hope so.”
There is a silence on the line.
“Is… everything else all right?” he asks.
Sloate glances up from his recording equipment.
“Yes, I’m fine, thanks,” Alice says. “I really am very sorry about this.”
“Long as it wasn’t anything I said yesterday.”
“No, no, I really did have an accident.”
“I thought maybe I’d been out of line.”
“No, no, not at all.”
“None of my business, after all.”
“That’s okay, really. I took no offense.”
“I hope not. So how shall we leave this? Will you call me? Shall I look for another broker?”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Mr. Webster…”
“Webb.”
“I’d love to find a home for you here on the Cape, I really would. But it may be a few days before…”
“I have some other business to take care of down here, anyway. Why don’t we just play it by ear? Just call me when you think you’ll be up and around again.”
“Well, I’m able to walk now,” she says. “It’s just…”
It’s just my children have been kidnapped, you see. It’s just I have two detectives here in the house with me right now, one of them listening to every word you and I are saying. It’s just that in less than three hours, a woman is going to call here again to tell me what I have to do next if I ever want to see my kids alive again. It’s just all that, Mr. Webster, Webb, it’s just I am going out of my mind with fear and anxiety, that’s all it is, Webb.
“I have your number,” she says. “I’ll call you.”
“Please do,” he says, and hangs up.
She looks at the receiver. She places it back on its cradle.
“Sounds like a nice fellow,” Sloate comments.
“Yes,” she says.
“How you doing with that?” he asks Marcia.
“Getting there,” she says.
Sloate looks at his watch.
“You’ve got two and twenty-five,” he says.
“Thanks a lot,” she says dryly.
“Just thought I’d remind you.”
There is between them the easy banter of two people who have worked together for a very long time. It is almost like a good marriage, Alice realizes. Sloate isn’t going to start yelling at her if she doesn’t have her equipment set up in the next two hours and twenty-five minutes, and Marcia is not going to have a hysterical hissy fit if she doesn’t come in under that deadline. Sloate seems confident that she will have the job done in that time. And she seems confident that she will not fail him. As he takes off the earphones, he nods assurance to Marcia, and she looks up from where her rather delicate hands — Alice notices for the first time — are twirling dials and throwing switches, and she winks at him to let him know the situation is completely under control here.
Alice wonders if it really is.
There was a time…
Alice was twenty-two years old, and just completing NYU’s film program. Her idea was to become a famous director. That was before she met Edward Fulton Glendenning. Eddie was twenty-four, a graduate student in the business school. They met in University Park, on a bright afternoon in June.
She was sitting on a bench, crying.
He appeared out of the blue.
Tall and slender, crew-cut blond hair glistening in the spring sunshine, cherry trees in bloom all up and down the side streets surrounding the school. She saw him through the mist of her tears, standing suddenly before her.
“Hey, what’s this?” he said, and sat, and took her hands in his.
His hands were soft. Delicate. She looked into his face, into his eyes. A narrow fox face, with a slender nose and fine high cheekbones, nearly feminine in its elegance, as sculpted as a Grecian mask, the eyes a pale blue, almost gray. She allowed him to hold her hands. Her hands were clasped between his own two hands, slender, a pianist’s hands with long tapering fingers, everything about him so beautifully exact.