But now the conversation has moved toward more basic matters, as for example how he happens to know Alice Glendenning. This is the moment of truth.
Rafe lifts his glass. He is drinking Wild Turkey bourbon on the rocks. He takes a sip, puts the glass down again. Looks across the table at her.
“She’s my sister-in-law,” he says.
Jennifer doesn’t seem at all surprised.
“I knew that,” she says. “I was testing you.”
“Did I pass the test?” he says.
“Is she your brother’s wife?”
“No. My wife’s sister.”
“Ah,” Jennifer says.
“Yeah,” he says, and lifts the glass again, and takes another sip.
“So what are you doing here with me?” she asks.
“I told you. I thought we might get to know each other better.”
“The way you know your wife’s sister better?”
“No, no. Hey, no! Definitely not. There’s nothing going on between me and Alice.”
“Then what were you doing there yesterday?”
“I happened to be in the neighborhood, so I stopped by to see her. She’s my sister-in-law, for Christ’s sake!”
“Okay,” Jennifer says, and nods again.
She sips at the Cosmopolitan. He sips at the bourbon. The table is silent for several moments. Somewhere across the room, the jukebox is playing some kind of country-western song about a guy leaving home in his pickup truck with his hound dog.
“So what are we supposed to do now?” she asks. “You being married and all?”
“That’s entirely up to you,” Rafe says.
“I’m not the one who’s married,” she says. “Being married is your problem, not mine.”
“I don’t see it as a problem. How do you see it as a problem?”
“Well, gee, let me think,” Jennifer says. “Being married means there’s a wife someplace, right?”
“Yeah, but not here,” Rafe says.
“Then where?”
“Right now, I guess she’s in a motel somewhere on the interstate.”
Jennifer looks at him, puzzled.
“Driving down from Atlanta to see her sister,” Rafe explains. “Won’t be here till tomorrow morning sometime.”
“Which means you’re alone for the night, is that it?”
“It would appear so, yes,” Rafe says.
“Is this what you do all the time? While your wife’s on the interstate?”
“First time,” he says.
“I’ll bet.”
Jennifer nods again, thinking it over. She is still jiggling her foot.
Rafe moves his glass around on the tabletop, making wet rings. He is sure her shoe will fall off.
“So what do you think?” he asks.
“I think I’d like another Cosmo,” she says.
Alice has just brought a pillow and a blanket into the living room when car headlights splash across the drawn blinds. Both she and Charlie turn at once toward the windows. Outside, they hear a car engine quitting. A car door slamming. Moments later, the front doorbell rings.
The grandfather clock reads 10:45 P.M.
“I’ll get it,” Charlie says, and motions for Alice to move back. She steps away from the door. Charlie glances over his shoulder to make certain she cannot be seen from the outside, and then he says to the closed door, “Who is it?”
“Dustin Garcia,” a man’s voice says.
“Who’s Dustin Garcia?”
“Cape October Trib. Could you open the door, sir?”
“Send him away,” Alice whispers.
“Only make it worse,” Charlie says, and motions again for her to stay out of sight. He unlocks the door, opens it, peers out through the mesh of the screen door. Bugs are clattering around the porch light.
The man standing there is short and slight. He is wearing a tan suit with a dark brown sports shirt, no tie. He is also wearing a brown snap-brim straw hat and brown shoes. He holds up a card with his photo on it and the word PRESS in green across its face.
“Sorry to bother you this time of night,” he says. “My editor says he talked to you earlier…”
“Yes, what is it?” Charlie says.
“Rick Chaffee, do you remember him calling?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“You are, sir?”
“Charlie Hobbs.”
“Nose for news, Rick has,” Garcia says. “He thought I ought to stop by and talk to you.”
“Is that what he thought?”
“Yes, sir. All right for me to come in?”
“Sorry,” Charlie says. “No.”
“Awfully buggy out here.”
“Then go back to your car,” Charlie says. “Bet it’s not buggy there.”
“Rick seems to think somebody’s been kidnapped here.”
“Rick’s wrong.”
“Two little kids, Rick seems to think.”
“Look, Mr. Garcia, it’s late…”
“I’d like to come in and talk to Mrs. Glendenning.”
“She’s asleep.”
“Do you live here, sir?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Where are the Glendenning children, Mr. Hobbs?”
“Asleep. Where are your children this time of night?”
“I don’t have any children.”
“I don’t, either,” Charlie says. “Mr. Garcia, it was nice of you to stop by, but nothing’s happened here, and you’re wasting your time.”
“Then let me talk to the kids.”
“No.”
“I’ll talk to someone at Pratt first thing tomorrow morning, you know,” Garcia says. “That’s where they go to school, isn’t it?”
“School’s closed tomorrow,” Charlie says.
“I’ll find somebody.”
“Good night, Mr. Garcia,” Charlie says, and closes and locks the door.
Rafe realizes that it might not be provident to ask a lady if she’d mind your parking a truck and trailer weighing some forty thousand pounds empty in front of her house overnight. He suggests that she follow him to a truck stop he knows near the airport — which is a good half hour away from Ronnie’s Lounge out on Willard — and she tells him to go park the truck there all by himself, thanks, and then catch a cab to her house if he’s still interested. He does not get to Mangrove Lane until eleven-thirty.
The only light burning in any of the houses on the street is a little blue one in the house next door to hers. Someone watching television. Otherwise the street is dark. He pays and tips the cabby, goes to the front door, and rings the bell. Jennifer answers it a moment later.
She is wearing red silk lounging pajamas, a black silk robe, and the same strappy black sandals she had on earlier tonight.
“Thought you’d never get here,” she says.
“The last flight came in from Tampa at nine,” he says. “Not a taxi in sight. I had to phone for one.”
“But you’re here,” she says.
“It would appear so, yes.”
“That’s a verbal tic,” she says.
“What’s a verbal tic?”
He doesn’t know what a verbal tic is. But she thinks he’s asking her to clarify exactly which words constitute the verbal tic, whatever it may be.
“Saying ‘It would appear so, yes.’ You said the same thing when I asked if you were alone for the night.”
“Then it must be true,” he says. “I am in fact alone for the night, and I am also in fact here.”
“While your wife is in a motel on the interstate.”
“That’s where I guess she is.”
“What does she look like, your wife?”
“She’s about five-six, and she has brown hair and blue eyes.”
“But you prefer blondes, is that it?”