For Whom the Minivan Rolls

by JEFFREY COHEN

  Madlyn, 44, had been a college student when she met young Gary and fell head over heels. Problem was, every other girl in the dorm fell head over heels for Gary, too, so she had to make herself stand out. Madlyn wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the dorm, or even on that floor, but she made sure she slept with Gary first, and that had forged a certain kind of loyalty. I guess what the beer company says is true— you never forget your first girl. Gary had his flings, but he kept coming back to Madlyn. When he was 22 and in business school, he came back once too often, and Madlyn got pregnant. They knew all their options, but still chose to go the old-fashioned route, and got married. Two months later, Madlyn miscarried.

  Bucking the odds, they stayed married, Ladowski continued. Gary worked, and Madlyn finished her degree in history, with an eye toward law school. But they didn’t have enough money to swing the tuition during those years. And by the time they did, they had a son.

  The little Nazi—pardon me, Joel—was born when Gary was just starting to earn bonuses on Wall Street, and was toilet trained roughly when his dad was getting into the computer end of the biz. By the time Joel was in second grade, his father, already a very rich man, continued to provide venture capital to online businesses and invested heavily in web-related companies. He had a good eye for a coming windfall, and generally got himself caught up in the breeze. He also had the rare ability to know when to get out before the roof caved in.

  Madlyn, meanwhile, was doing the housewife thing, and happily, according to her husband. She had precipitated the move to Midland Heights five years ago, just about the time Gary had hit the online jackpot. She doted on her son, according to Milt, but couldn’t have any more children because of damage done to her uterus during Joel’s delivery. In the womb, the kid was already making sure nobody would have it as good as he had it.

  This had gone on for 14 years, until now. Gary was rich, Joel was rigid, and Madlyn was gone.

  If I’d had to guess, my instinct told me she’d tired of life with Gary and Joel and decided to move on. But who moves on at two o’clock in the morning on an entirely ordinary Monday? Nobody in town seemed to know anything about tension in the Beckwirth house, Milt concluded.

  I had to start somewhere, so I decided the first order of business would be to talk to Joel. Kids see and hear more around the house than their parents give them credit for. Maybe I could grill him long enough that he’d have to sweat a trip to the bathroom. Give him a taste of his own medicine. I’d have to have Milt call Gary and make sure I could talk to everyone I needed.

  First, I called Barry Dutton at borough police headquarters. Luckily, he knows my name, and took the call. Any other reporter calling the chief would have gotten the message taken, and a call-back sometime around seven, when the chief was done for the day and the reporter, in all likelihood, would be at home, covering a municipal meeting, or catching a quick dinner.

  Dutton was in the middle of something, so I asked if he’d be around the next morning, and he said he would. I told him I’d bring the coffee and donuts, and he said to stop making cop jokes. I didn’t tell him my coffee would be hot chocolate. Ruins the macho image.

  It was just about six, and I had to start thinking about dinner. I do most of the cooking for the kids, since my wife is the commuting breadwinner and the kids get hungry early. I’ve learned, painstakingly, over the years, to make macaroni and cheese. Out of the blue box. She does most of the cooking for the adults, since she is a good cook.

  That was another reason I couldn’t be a private investigator. I know about cooking what Dr. Seuss knew about the Great American Novel—how to do it for kids. You read enough mystery books, you find that cooking is practically a pre-requisite for a gumshoe. Spenser cooks for himself and Susan Silverman, usually something involving lamb and champagne, and they invariably have sex while the lamb’s in the oven, which is a suggestive image, I guess. What do you want from a guy with no first name?

  Elvis Cole is always making venison for himself and Lucy Chenier, but his partner, Joe Pike, is constantly crashing the party, and that means Elvis has to switch to something vegetarian. So all your big detectives cook. Probably Sherlock Holmes could make a steak and kidney pie that would knock your eyes out.

  I put a large pot of water on to boil. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was making for the kids, but hot water is the basis of virtually everything they eat.

  One of the problems with Asperger’s kids is that they tend to have somewhat limited menus. Some will eat the same thing, at the same time, every day, just like Woody Allen and Alfred Hitchcock. Others, not being famous filmmakers, are not indulged quite this completely, and will accept two or three variations on a theme at any given meal. That’s the way Ethan is. So my creative choices here were somewhat limited.

  I took out some boneless chicken breasts from the meat compartment of the refrigerator, and in a bowl, mixed matzo meal, garlic salt, bread crumbs, and onion powder. I cut the chicken into strips, dredged the strips in the coating mixture, and made sure each piece was covered completely. Then I got a piece of aluminum foil, sprayed it with cooking spray, and put it on the top rack of the oven, which in a triumph of foresight, I had previously turned on. The chicken went onto the aluminum foil.

  That would be for Leah. Ethan wouldn’t hear of a piece of chicken that wasn’t cooked at Burger King, so I decided against having the “you’ve-got-to-try-new-foods” argument tonight and stuck a couple of hot dogs in the broiler. So call the child welfare people. At least he eats.

  Ethan, up in his room with his Nintendo, wouldn’t be coming down until called, but Leah wandered into the kitchen, bored with Nickelodeon and looking for someone to talk to.

  “Daddy?” She always asked, like she wasn’t really sure it was me. “I can think of six words that rhyme with ‘bat.’”

  “No kidding.” The water was boiling, so I got out a box of Ronzoni elbow macaroni—the biggest bang for your pasta buck—and dumped the entire box into the water. Well, okay, it was just the macaroni. The box I put in the recycling bin under the sink.

  “Yeah. Cat, sat, fat, rat, hat and. . . um. . .”

  I stirred the pasta in the hot water to keep it from becoming one huge ball of elbow, then put the top back on the pot and lowered the flame considerably.

  “‘Mat’?” I asked, reflexively. Big mistake.

  “Daddy! I’m supposed to do it myself!” Leah, although the most adorable child in the tri-state area, has developed a whine that could decalcify the spinal column of the strongest adult. I bent down to look her in the eye.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What word were you thinking of?”

  “You used mine!” J’accuse!

  Just then the front door opened with its customary creak and Abigail Stein walked into the house. Her legs still looked every bit as good after a long day.

  “Mommy!” Leah yelled, and ran to the door. She did her best to take Abigail down in a flying tackle, and came damn close, but my wife managed to put down her briefcase and drape her raincoat over the railing on the stairs in time to avoid hitting the deck.

  “Hello, my love,” she said to Leah. “How was your day?”

  “Good.”

  Abigail looked at me. “So. Trying to pick up women at Borough Hall again, huh?”

  “I couldn’t resist, Honey. She had these great legs. . .” I walked over and gave her a welcome home kiss. Any excuse will do.

  “Oh, knock it off. They’re not that good.”

  Trust me, they are.

  Chapter 6

  The kids had eaten by the time Abby came downstairs. We long ago gave up on the idea of a nice family dinner during the week, since for Ethan, eating is merely a quick snack to be gulped down as quickly as possible between cartoon shows, and Abigail gets home on the late side for the kids, so there’s no sense in delaying dinner. They’re dangerous when hungry. On weekends, or the days when Abby gets home early enough, or when the kids have late snacks, we eat together.

 
I was cutting up salad stuff when Abigail walked into the kitchen, having changed into a pink T-shirt and gray sweatpants. She frowned, because I was cutting lettuce with a knife. I frowned, because the sweatpants prevented me from seeing her legs.

  “You know you’re supposed to tear lettuce.” She had passed both children on the way in, and they were so deep into the umpteenth rerun of Hey Arnold that neither could be bothered to turn around and talk to her. The thrill of her homecoming, like every night, had been brief. For them.

  “I don’t see how it tastes any different torn, and this is faster.” She did one of her “you’re-such-a-guy” eye-rolls, and reached under the counter for a pot, which she filled with water and put on the stove. I guess she didn’t know what she was going to cook yet, either.

  “So this guy wants you to, what, find his wife?” Abby squeezed in between me and the countertop to reach up for some of what we call “the adult noodles.” The flavored pastas we keep in an upper cabinet. I didn’t make much of an effort to get out of her way, and she smiled. She knew I liked being squeezed next to her.

  “Yeah, it’s ridiculous. He thinks I’m Mannix or somebody.”

  “God, you are old.” She went to work with some sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, and garlic to make a pasta sauce that might once have been in a cookbook. Or not. All I know is, it involves the food processor, which means extra clean-up time for the kitchen crew, which is mostly me.

  “Look on the bright side,” I said. “I could have made a passing but obscure reference to C. Auguste Dupin.”

  “Edgar Allan Poe, right? The Purloined Letter? Murders in the Rue Morgue?” I started slicing two celery stalks. Abby wrinkled her nose a little. She won’t admit it, but she doesn’t much like celery. It’s one of the few vegetables I can claim an edge on.

  “Very good. Keep that up, and I’ll make you stay after school.” I gave her my best Groucho eyebrow-wiggle, but she was too intent on cooking to swoon.

  “So, why exactly does he think that you’re New Jersey’s answer to Elliot Ness?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. But if it means I’ll keep running into you in the middle of the day, I don’t really mind.” The lid on the pot was leaking steam, so Abigail put in the linguine and lowered the flame.

  “Don’t count on it. I’ll be in the office the rest of the week.” She turned back to face me, and I slipped my arms around her waist and kissed her.

  “This is my favorite part of the day,” I told her. I spend half my time trying to come up with new ways to tell her I love her. And we’ve been married 14 years. Disgusting, isn’t it?

  “Well then, anything that would have happened later tonight would have been a letdown, wouldn’t it?”

  “What’s this ‘would have’ stuff?”

  “Well, I don’t want to disappoint you. . .”

  I was just about to kiss her again when the phone rang. Abigail was standing right next to the kitchen wall phone, but simply stood and looked at me. She refuses to answer the phone at home, insisting that it’s either a business call for me or someone she doesn’t want to talk to. Luckily, I wasn’t far from her, and I reached past her head to pick up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  The voice was muffled, as if a cloth had been placed over the mouthpiece, and the caller mumbled, just in case the cloth wasn’t doing its job properly. The caller was definitely male, but that’s all I could tell. In fact, I barely made out a sound before I heard the name “Madlyn Beckwirth.”

  “What? What did you say?”

  Whoever it was spoke up just a little, as if irritated by my inability to hear him the first time. “I said you should leave Madlyn Beckwirth alone. Find her, and you’ll kill her.”

  “Who is this?” Bright question. Like the guy’s going to just give me his name, address, and social security number while perpetrating what I was relatively sure was a crime. And there are people who think I’m a detective. “Hello?”

  Click.

  Chapter 7

  I must have been staring at the phone, because Abby looked at me with concern. Her eyes kept moving from my face to the receiver in my hand.

  “Somebody selling us something?”

  I hung up the phone and walked to the kitchen table. I sat down. Abby walked over, worried now.

  “What is it? Who was that?”

  “I don’t know. Somebody said that if I find Madlyn Beckwirth, I’ll kill her.”

  “WHAT? What the hell does that mean?” She sat down in another of the kitchen chairs, which creaked. I made a mental note to tighten the screws under the chairs. Somehow, that didn’t seem terribly important right now.

  “I have no idea. Some guy said I should leave Madlyn Beckwirth alone, because if I found her, I would kill her.”

  “Jesus!” But even then, I could see the legal mind going to work. She frowned. “Who knows you’re looking for Madlyn Beckwirth?”

  I thought. “Nobody. Gary Beckwirth, Milt Ladowski, and Dave Harrington. I think we can eliminate Harrington from the suspects. Beckwirth is desperate for me to find Madlyn, so he wouldn’t call, and Milt is the one who hired me.”

  “Milt Ladowski wouldn’t make a call like that,” said my wife. “His whole law practice could be ruined if he’s found making a threatening call.” One of Abby’s few failings is that she thinks everyone else thinks like her. Nobody would ever do anything irrational, or not consider the consequences, because she would never do anything irrational, or not consider the consequences.

  “Wait a second. . .” I got up and walked to the phone, picked it up, and punched *69. If I knew the number from which my last call had come, I’d be able to trace. . .

  “This service cannot be activated, because the telephone number is not in our service area.” I hung up. Abby looked at me with that same concern, as I must have looked completely baffled.

  “What?”

  “The call came from outside Verizon’s coverage area. That means that unless Beckwirth or Ladowski got into a car and drove west at 80 miles an hour from the moment they last saw me, it wasn’t either of them.”

  Now Abby looked baffled. “So who else knows that you’re looking for Madlyn Beckwirth?”

  “Apparently, somebody who doesn’t want me to find her.”

  The sun-dried tomatoes sizzled on the stove, and Abby took a moment before walking over to deal with them.

  We exchanged tense glances all through dinner. Fortunately, the kids managed not to crack under the strain, because Catdog was now on.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning, after making lunches and breakfasts and kissing my wife good-bye and making sure all the homework was in backpacks and walking Ethan through the ritual of putting on his shoes and picking up his stuff and putting on his jacket and walking out the door, (then coming back in to say good-bye, then forgetting to close the door on the way), and after putting my daughter on the schoolbus, I walked into Barry Dutton’s office carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts bag.

  “Morning, Chief.”

  “Don’t call me Chief!” We laughed at the joke from the old (and I do mean old) Superman TV series. We are both George Reeves fans.

  Barry is a year older than me, which would make him 44. He stands about six feet tall, and isn’t fat. I stand considerably under six feet tall, and I could lose ten pounds. Okay, fifteen. But we go back a long way, and he doesn’t scare me. Anymore.

  He gestured to the chair in front of his metal desk (with maple woodtone top, of course), and I walked to it. Before I sat, though, I opened the bag, carefully checked the two cups, and gave him the one with the coffee. Light, no sugar. Like it changes the taste of that stuff at all.

  Dutton saw me take another hot cup out of the bag, and snickered.

  “Is that cocoa?”

  “We who have taste prefer to call it hot chocolate.”

  “Hot chocolate is two adjectives. You work with words, you should know that. Hot, chocolate what?”

  I sat down and sighed. “You�
��re a real pain in the ass, Barry. You should have been a freelance writer.” He laughed. The really intelligent people laugh all the time at what I say.

  “I assume you’re not here just to buy me a cup of coffee, are you?” Dutton walked to his desk and sat on the edge. I shook my head “no,” and then reached into the bag. I took out two donuts: a regular cruller for me, and for Dutton, a creme-filled chocolate. His eyes widened. His wife had been after him to lose weight (like he needed to) for months, and he hadn’t seen a creme-filled chocolate (you’ll notice they don’t spell it “cream,” and there’s a reason) since roughly last spring.

  “This is serious, isn’t it?” He considered, almost walked away, then picked up the donut and smelled it, inhaling deeply, a man enthralled. “You know I’m on the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet, don’t you? I’m not supposed to have anything like this.”

  “You gonna let Donna push you around? Who wears the gun in your family?”

  “Oh, what the hell.” He bit greedily into it, and a little of the chocolate stuff masquerading as cream squished out from the hole they put in the donut for exactly that purpose. There was a low rumble, something like a small earthquake, which I came to realize was Barry enjoying the donut. He smiled, and sat down in his swivel chair.

  I took a napkin out of the Dunkin’ Donuts bag and threw it at him. “Here. You got powdered sugar all over yourself, and you’re going to lose the respect of your men.”

  “It’s worth it,” he said. At least, I think that’s what he said. He could barely get a sound out through the mouthful of donut. What actually came out sounded more like “iss worf id.” With the donut nearly consumed, Dutton’s eyes narrowed, he swallowed one last time, sat up, and considered me. “You’re plying me with a donut.”

  I reached into the bag for the chocolate frosted. “You want another one?”