And she was cut off.
So… well, of course… she’d been about to say “Maria.” And that had to be Maria Gonzalez. What other Maria could it possibly be? Alice doesn’t know anyone else named Maria. Or even Marie. So, yes, the black woman grabbed the phone because she didn’t want Ashley saying Maria’s name.
But what is it that Ashley found so goddamn unbelievable?
Maria surfacing again after almost two years, more than two years, however long it was? Maria returning to kidnap her?
Well, yes, that’s unbelievable.
To Alice, it is utterly unbelievable that this mild-mannered, soft-spoken, chubby little girl who still spoke English with a Spanish accent would come to kidnap her children all this time after she’d babysat them, that is totally and completely unbelievable to Alice — but apparently not to Captain Steele, who has sent his Keystone Kops chasing after her.
We’re both okay. Mom, I can’t believe it!
And then, immediately: Do you remember Mari—?
Even before Alice completed her sentence, even before she possibly could have known that Alice was about to ask “What can’t you believe, honey?”
Do you remember Mari—?
And silence.
A dead line.
“Something’s missing,” she tells Charlie.
And the phone rings.
It is ten minutes past seven.
Charlie immediately puts on the earphones.
“Hello?” Alice says.
“Mrs. Glendenning?”
A male voice. No one she’s ever heard before.
“Yes?” she says.
Her heart is suddenly beating faster. Is this another accomplice? The blonde, the black woman, and now…
“This is Rick Chaffee, night editor at the Cape October Tribune?”
“Yes?”
“I hope I’m not—”
“What is it?” Alice says.
“We got a call from some woman… we get many such calls, Mrs. Glendenning, especially since Iraqi Freedom. You have no idea how many people see anthrax bubbling in their toilet bowls, or hear bombs ticking in their closet…”
Charlie is already shaking his head in warning.
“But this woman—”
“What woman?” Alice asks.
“Woman named Rose Garrity, does that name mean anything to you?”
“Yes?”
“Said she’s your housekeeper, is that correct?”
“What’s this about, Mr…. Jaffe, did you say?”
“Chaffee. C-H. Is she your housekeeper, ma’am?”
Charlie is shaking his head again.
“Yes, she is,” Alice says.
“Well, ma’am, she called here some ten minutes ago to say she informed the police and then the FBI that your children were—”
“No,” Alice says.
“—kidnapped the other day…”
“No, that isn’t true.”
“It isn’t, huh?”
“It isn’t.”
“Claims there’s been no action from either the local police or the—”
“Perhaps that’s because nothing’s happened here. Mrs. Garrity is mistaken.”
“She seemed pretty sure some black woman—”
“I just told you she’s wrong,” Alice says, and slams the receiver down onto its cradle. She picks it up again at once, begins dialing a number by heart. Her eyes are blazing.
“Hello?”
“Are you trying to get my kids killed?” she yells into the phone.
“Mrs. Glen—?”
“Stay away from this, do you hear me?”
“I’m so worried about them…”
“Shut up!” Alice yells.
The line goes silent.
“Do you hear me, Rosie?”
“I was only trying to—”
“No! Don’t try to help, don’t try to do anything at all. Just keep your damn nose out of it!” she yells, and slams the receiver down again.
“Wow,” Charlie says.
“Yeah, wow,” Alice says.
But she knows the damage has already been done.
7
The three men meet in a roadside joint that calls itself the Redbird Café. Not far from the Fort Myers airport, the Redbird is a shack adjacent to a gasoline station, open only for breakfast and lunch on weekdays, but also for dinner on weekends. This is now seven-thirty on a Friday night, and the three men are eating dinner.
Rafe has ordered the broiled catfish dinner with green beans and fries. The other two men are eating fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and the green beans. All three men are drinking coffee. They’re dressed casually, these three, Rafe wearing the blue jeans and denim shirt he always wears when he’s driving, the other two also wearing jeans and what look like Western shirts with those little darts over the pockets. The two men are wearing boots. Rafe is wearing loafers, which are easy to drive in. His rig is parked outside, alongside the Plymouth both the other men arrived in.
All three men did time at Rogers State Prison in Reidsville for violation of Code 16-13-30 of the Georgia State Statutes. That’s where they met, each serving what the three of them called “bullshit narcotics violations.” The prison facility was a small one, housing only twelve-hundred-some-odd inmates, some of them pretty odd, as the old joke went. It was easy for the men to make each other’s acquaintance in the yard, especially since their so-called crimes were similar in nature.
The Redbird is almost empty at this hour, but the men are speaking softly, anyway. Hell, they’re discussing big bucks here. It makes them feel important to be discussing $250,000 in hundred-dollar bills, even if the bills are counterfeit, even if their voices are low.
“Super-bills, huh?” Danny Lowell says.
“Is what the cops called them.”
“You ever hear of super-bills, Jimbo?”
“Never in my life.”
“So good you can’t tell ’em from the real thing,” Rafe says, and picks up some fries with his fingers and shovels them into his mouth.
“Is what your sister-in-law said, right?”
“Is what the cops said.”
“Two-fifty large, right?”
“Is how much they turned over to this black chick.”
“What makes me nervous,” Jimmy Coombes says, “is there’s a kidnapping involved here. I don’t know what the law is here in Florida, but back home, you do a kidnapping, you’re looking at the ‘Seven Deadly Sins,’ man. That means life without parole. I ain’t eager to do that kind of time.”
“I don’t think it’s the same in Florida,” Rafe says. “Besides, we wouldn’t be involved in no kidnapping.”
“I tend to agree with James,” Danny says. “We’d in effect be sharing in the proceeds of the crime, and that might be cause to link us to the crime as co-conspirators or whatever. If Florida has as tough a kidnapping law as Georgia, we could be looking at the long one, Rafe.”
Jimmy hates it when Danny sounds like a fuckin jailhouse lawyer. He also hates to be called either James or Jimbo, when his fuckin name is Jimmy. At the same time, Danny is agreeing with him. They have to be careful here. Doing time for kidnapping ain’t no walk in the park.
“There is no way we could be linked to the snatch,” Rafe says. “We don’t even know who these people are. How can we possibly get linked to a conspiracy?”
“Conspiracy to commit kidnapping,” Danny says reasonably, and looks to Jimmy for confirmation.
“Which is another thing that bothers me,” Jimmy says. “Our not knowing who they are.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Rafe says.