Yes.
Love ya, babe.
Love ya, too.
Yes, they had not forgotten.
The phone begins ringing almost the instant she enters the house; she rushes to it, out of breath when she gropes for the receiver. Outside, she can hear Webb starting the Mercury and pulling away from the curb.
“Hello?” she says.
“Alice, it’s Charlie. I’ve been trying you for the past fifteen minutes. What happened? Have you got the kids?”
She tells him what happened. Tells him the cops left here the same time she did this morning, tells him she saw the woman who—
“You saw her?”
“Yes. She’s black, Charlie.”
“She let you see her?”
“They have the kids, Charlie.”
And that says it all.
“She told me to go home. Said they’d call me.”
“Anybody there with you now?” he asks.
“No one. I’m alone.”
“Where the hell are the cops?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can come over this afternoon,” he says. “Shall I do that?”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes. You shouldn’t be there alone, Al.”
“All right, come,” she says.
“I’ll see you later,” he says, and hangs up.
She replaces the receiver on its cradle, and goes into the kitchen to prepare a pot of coffee for when Charlie gets here. There is a note on the refrigerator door, held there with a magnet in the shape of an ear of corn:
Alice—
Sorry I have to run. The open road calls.
Thanks for your hospitality. I spoke to Carol. She will be calling you.
Rafe
She looks at her watch. The coffee is taking forever to perk. It suddenly begins bubbling, and in that instant she hears a car pulling into her driveway. She goes to the drapes, parts them. A red convertible is there, the top down, a blonde at the wheel.
Jennifer Redding is here again.
This time, she lets her into the house.
All the wiretap and tracing equipment is still sitting on the long table in the living room. Alice wonders if the police will be coming back for it. Jennifer looks at the black boxes, the dials, the switches, the trailing wires, the earphones.
“I’m having a new phone system installed,” Alice says.
“I hate new phones,” Jennifer says, peering around the room appraisingly now. “Cute,” she says at last.
“Thanks.”
“How’s the foot?”
“Beginning to itch. And throb a little.”
“Have you been driving?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“The doctor said I could drive.”
“Doctors don’t know,” Jennifer says. “I once had poison ivy all over, they said I could drive.”
Alice wonders what poison ivy has to do with driving a car.
“I called the police,” Jennifer says. “I told them what happened. They said I should have reported the accident at the scene.”
“Yes, you should have. I told you.”
“I told them I had to rush you to the hospital. They said next time I should be more careful. They thought I was a ditz. Everyone thinks I’m a ditz.”
Alice says nothing.
“It’s because I’m a blonde. Do you still have any of that fudge left?” she asks.
“I think so,” Alice says, and opens the fridge door, and looks inside for the white box she put in there earlier today. When she opens it, half the fudge is gone. Good old Rafe, she thinks.
“And you do have coffee this time, I see,” Jennifer says, and helps herself to a mug on the drain board. Sipping at the coffee, nibbling on a piece of fudge, she says, “Something’s going on here, right?”
“No. What do you mean? No.”
“Big truck outside when I came here the other day. What was that?”
“My brother-in-law drives a truck.”
“Was he the company you said you had?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you wouldn’t invite me in? So I wouldn’t meet your brother-in-law?”
“We had a lot to talk about.”
“Was it a lover instead?”
“What?”
“Was he your lover? Instead of your brother-in-law? Your truck-driver lover?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“It just seemed funny, your not letting me in the house when the only person here was your brother-in-law.”
“Look,” Alice says, “I hardly know you. You run me over the other day…”
“Run you over, come on!”
“Well, what would you call it? You come barreling around the corner…”
“What is it, Alice?” she asks suddenly. “Tell me. What’s happening here you’re trying to hide?”
Her blue eyes hold Alice fixed in a steady gaze.
Alice is remembering that the woman who was seen picking up her children was a blonde. Hair down to here, just about the length Jennifer Redding wears it.
“I want to help you,” Jennifer says. “I’m very smart about some things.”
“You’re not being smart now,” Alice tells her. “Look, I’m sorry I have to rush you out of here…”
“There is something, I know it,” Jennifer says, narrowing her eyes, and Alice realizes that she is involved here with one of those people who watch too much television and who think they are world-class snoops on the order of Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher. Either that or she is the blonde accomplice who drove that car on Wednesday.
Alice does not for a moment believe this is even remotely possible. A blonde exists; Alice is sure of that. The woman in that Shell station was definitely black and no one has yet described the driver of the Impala as a black woman. So there is a blonde, yes, but Alice doesn’t believe Jennifer Redding is that blonde. She believes Jennifer Redding is just a meddling pain in the ass, and she wants her out of here before that phone rings again, whenever it rings, if it rings, with instructions on when and where she can pick up her kids.
“I’ll find out, you know,” Jennifer says, and nods sagely, like a woman who is accustomed to solving all sorts of heinous crimes when she is not out in her red T-bird knocking down real estate brokers. She swallows what’s left of her coffee, sets the mug in the sink as if she lives here, says, “I can help you if you’d let me,” gives Alice an unexpected hug, and then marches out of the house like a model on a runway.
Alice shakes her head in amazement.
The phone rings.
She looks at the clock.
It is now almost ten past twelve. It can’t be the black woman calling, can it? Not so soon. Or can it? She yanks the receiver from its cradle.
“Hello?”
“Al? It’s Carol. Rafe just called me. Are the kids back?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait. Hope they call me. She told me to go home. She said they’d call. I’m hoping—”
“Who, Alice? Who said that?”
“The woman who has them.”
“Is it some kind of crazed person who doesn’t have kids of her own?”
“I don’t think so. She didn’t look crazy.”
“You saw her?”
“Yes.”
“She let you see her?”
Same thing Charlie asked. And she gives the same answer now.
“They have the kids, Carol.”
And again, this says it all. They have the kids. If I do or say anything that will compromise their position, they will kill my children. That is the simple truth of the matter.
“They?” Carol asks. “Who’s they?”