“You’re looking into poor Mrs. Beckwirth, then, are you, Mr. Tucker?” Diane asked, stirring the fat-free milk (you can’t call it “skim” anymore) into her tea. “The poor woman. I can’t imagine what might have happened to her.”
It occurred to me to ask why she’d invited me in if she had no information, but one thing a reporter learns is to let people talk. They’ll eventually say something you can use, even if they don’t intend to. Especially if they don’t intend to. So I sat back and took a bite of my crumpet, which is the dirtiest sentence I’ve ever committed to paper. (A crumpet, by the way, is nothing more than an English muffin that has a publicist.)
“You know, I used to see her out in her garden with her gardener, telling him where to put the shrubbery,” Diane continued. “You get used to seeing someone, and then just out of nowhere, they’re gone. Unsettling, it is.”
The lamentations went on for a few more minutes while Diane drank two cups of “very nice tea” and offered me another crumpet, which I declined. I began to wonder if my reporter’s tricks would come up short this time, and I’d just walk away with a crumpet-enhanced waistline and no additional information.
Just when I was about to stand and thank Diane for her hospitality, her daughter Jane, about 22 and one tattoo short of a biker chick, stormed down the main hall stairs and into the dining room, where Diane and I were having our very nice tea and crumpets. It was as if Freddy Krueger had wandered onto the set of The Remains of the Day.
She was short—around five-foot-one—not slim, dressed in old, unwashed jeans, an Aerosmith T-shirt, and no bra. Her feet were bare, and had last been washed when I was still a real investigative reporter. I was willing to bet that beside her ears and her nose, there were other parts of Jane that were pierced, but I was better off not speculating about what they might be. She was vigorously chewing a piece of gum. At least I hoped it was gum. Tobacco stains the teeth, and no spittoon was visible in the room.
Clearly, her father was a Satan-worshipping, heroin-addicted, alcoholic Hell’s Angel, since not one chromosome in this young woman could possibly be traced to Diane Woolworth. But then I looked on the baby grand piano and saw a picture of Diane standing next to a man in his fifties wearing a seersucker suit and bow tie, with close-cropped hair and tortoise-shell glasses.
Maybe Diane had put her wild past behind her. Maybe Jane had been adopted. Maybe she’d been raised by wolves, and Diane and her husband had been jungle missionaries who had taken her back to civilization, about, I don’t know, two weeks ago, and were still teaching her about the ways of living among humans. Or maybe I was making a snap judgment based on appearance.
“Where’s the car keys?” she said to her mother, not even glancing in my direction. Jane held out her hand to Diane, palm up. Give me the keys, Lady, and there won’t be no trouble. She blew a bubble. Thank goodness it was gum after all.
“Jane, do you know Mr. Tucker? Mr. Tucker, this is my daughter Jane. Jane, Mr. Tucker is looking into poor Mrs. Beckwirth.” Clearly, Diane was going to keep her Merchant-Ivory fantasy alive at all costs. Jane more or less turned her head in my direction and grunted, which I assumed was a sort of greeting among her people.
“Yeah. The car keys.” She chewed more violently now, perhaps a subtle threat to hand over the keys and let her be on her way. I figured I had virtually nothing to lose.
“I don’t suppose either one of you heard anything in the middle of the night, Monday before last?” I asked, eyes wide to show my complete non-threatening innocence.
Jane grunted again, but Diane, who had stood and walked to the adjoining kitchen so as to get the car keys off a calico-covered ring on the wall, stopped and put a finger to her chin. This was obviously a gesture she had learned by watching “Masterpiece Theatre.”
“Jane, didn’t you say you’d heard a motorbike or something the night before we heard that Mrs. Beckwirth had gone missing?”
“CYCLE, Mother! MotorCYCLE! How many times do I have to. . .” Jane composed herself as best she could, which meant she took two steps toward Diane and stuck out her hand again. “NOW can I have the car keys?”
“You heard a motorcycle that night, Jane?” I asked in my coolest, most grownup voice.
“Nah.” She turned toward me and sized me up, clearly determined I was an inferior member of the species, and curled her lip into a sneer. “I thought it was a bike, but it turned out to be a minivan with a bad muffler. I went to the window and saw it.”
“Did you see Madlyn Beckwirth?”
“I dunno.”
Diane brought Jane the keys, which she pocketed without a word to her mother. Jane headed for the door, and I stood.
“You don’t know?”
Jane stopped, and the sneer became a look of impatience and disgust I didn’t think was possible in a girl over the age of seventeen. “I saw something, you know. I’m not sure it was her. This minivan peals out, you know, like ninety miles an hour, and I see something fall over the railing, backwards, you know, down the hill over there next to that great big house. Coulda been her, you know. Coulda been a sack of shit too.”
“Jane! Really!” I thought Diane might actually put her hands to her ears, but she managed to avoid the urge.
“Did you tell the cops what you saw?” I asked.
“What, that fat guy with the tie from 1972? Nah. He didn’t ask, you know.” I knew. She turned and walked out the side door without so much as a backward glance. Diane sat back down at the dining room table and took a sip of tea.
“You sure you won’t have another crumpet, Mr. Tucker?”
That was odd, in a way. I’d heard what Jane had said, and that would seem to be the only useful information available in the Woolworth home today. Would Diane continue the conversation just to have someone to talk to, or did she have something eating away at her that she wanted to spill? I didn’t want another crumpet, but I sat down.
“Did you hear anything that night, Mrs. Woolworth?” What the hell, you never know what you might hit. Diane could have seen Madlyn flying over the side of the low railing next to her house. She could have seen Madlyn hop on a broom and fly off into the dark night. She might express her observations in terms that would do justice to Emily Brontë, but it was possible she’d seen something.
“Oh, no, Mr. Tucker. I sleep very peacefully. But I did hear. . . and you understand, I’m not one to gossip. . .”
Finally! The busybody I’d been looking for!
“Of course not, Mrs. Woolworth. This is a strictly confidential investigation.”
“Exactly. So my name will not appear in print?” Diane eyed me carefully for signs of non-British behavior, but I was having none of it. In a moment, I’d be saying “lift” instead of “elevator.”
“Not at all.” I thought that sounded like something Inspector Morse would say.
“Well then.” Diane seemed to compose herself, trying to devise exactly the proper way to impart the information and still seem like everything she said belonged on an embroidered sampler. “There was talk around the department that Mrs. Beckwirth and a certain gentleman were. . . friendly.”
“The department? What department?”
“The English department. I teach 19th century English literature at the university.” Midland Heights has a large population of professorial types who don’t want to live in the small city across the river that the state university calls home. It’s one thing to teach people, another to live near them, you know.
“And you’d heard that Madlyn might be having an affair?” The hell with being polite about it.
“Well, Mr. Tucker, that was the talk around the department.” Diane was flustered that I wasn’t being British anymore, and she nervously sipped from her cup, eyes watching me over the rim.
“Why would this be the talk of the university English department?”
Diane looked away. We were clearly in an area she didn’t want to explore. But she had opened this particular can of kippers, if you will
, and she’d have to deal with the consequences. “Well,” she said, “the gentleman in question is also. . . employed at the department.”
“He teaches English at the university.”
“Yes.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with a cloth napkin, again looking away. Maybe she was considering adjusting the small photograph of Queen Elizabeth she had framed on the wall. It was crooked by maybe a half-inch.
But I was getting impatient with all the cute little games. “What’s his name, Mrs. Woolworth?” I asked in my best Humphrey Bogart-without-the-lisp voice.
“Oh, I can’t decide if I should. . . it’s all idle gossip, you know,” she twittered.
“Mrs. Woolworth?” I practically snarled. She lowered her head a bit and spoke very softly.
“Martin Barlow.”
For a moment, I couldn’t make the connection. My head for names isn’t great under normal circumstances. But in this case, my head was now overloaded. The rush of information that came from that name was almost too much to handle all at one time.
“Rachel Barlow’s husband? The guy whose wife is running for mayor? The one who had Madlyn Beckwirth as her campaign manager? That Martin Barlow?” I had risen out of my chair at some point in this discussion, but couldn’t remember when.
Diane Woolworth nodded, just perceptibly.
“Well, why didn’t you say anything before this?”
She looked up at me, offended, and her eyes widened.
“Well, Mr. Tucker,” she huffed, “I wouldn’t want people to think that I’m a busybody!”
Chapter 22
I couldn’t depart Diane Woolworth’s home fast enough. After thanking her for the crumpet—and getting an unsolicited recipe I threw away immediately after leaving—I all but ran for the door, and headed out on foot across Midland Heights.
Olszowy and Barlow campaign signs were already littering lawns about town, as the academics and the relatively new parents took up arms against the old fogies and the traditionalists. You could tell a lot about a family by whether a red Olszowy or a blue Barlow sign, each with understated stars and stripes, was displayed on its lawn.
I was walking at about twice my usual pace, and keeping my eye out for any unusually slow-moving minivans, as I decided which new information I would act upon first. Should it be Jane’s witnessing a blue minivan possibly knocking someone or something over the guard rail to the side of McThemePark? Or should I immediately work the sex angle, and question Rachel Barlow’s husband Martin about his alleged hot affair with, of all people, Madlyn Beckwirth?
It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. Jane’s information was more easily and efficiently dealt with by the cops. I lit out for the Barlow home. Removing my cell phone from my jacket pocket, I dialed police headquarters, where Marsha the dispatcher answered on the second ring.
“Midland Heights Police Headquarters. Sergeant Ames.”
“Hi, Marsha, it’s Aaron Tucker.”
“This is getting to be a habit, Aaron.”
“I know. I’m gonna have to join Cops Anonymous. Is Barry there?”
I picked up the pace just as a male bicyclist, a dog on his leash, passed me. The poor mutt was probably as winded as I was. “No, he’s out of the office meeting with the county freeholders. Aaron, are you okay? You sound like you’re running.”
The guy on the bike made a left turn, nearly julienning his dog with the rear wheel. “I’m all right, Marsha. I’m just in a hurry. When’s Barry coming back?”
“Not until after two.” Shit. It wasn’t even eleven yet. “You want to talk to Gerry?”
“No, I don’t want to talk to Gerry, but what choice do I have?”
Marsha chuckled in her deep-throated way, a guttural guffaw that indicated real amusement. “I’ll put you through,” she said.
I walked half a block while Westbrook made it all the way across his cubicle to the telephone, a distance of maybe three feet.
“Westbrook.”
“You don’t have to be so proud of it.”
There was genuine consternation in his voice. “Who is this?”
“It’s an obscene phone call, you dimwit. Gerry, it’s Aaron Tucker.”
I was getting used to people groaning when they heard my name on the phone, but with Westbrook, I actually took some pleasure in it. Getting groaned at by Gerry Westbrook was practically a red badge of courage. “What do you want, Tucker?” he said when he was done grimacing out loud.
“I want Bob Zemeckis’ private phone line so I can pitch him a script,” I said. “But I’ll settle for some information on the Beckwirth case.”
“And why should I even bother telling you anything I know?” He did his best to sneer.
“Because, in the extremely unlikely event that you do know something, your chief has made it very clear he will not be pleased if you withhold it from me,” I explained patiently. “And because, in the extremely unlikely event that you do know something, you probably don’t understand it, and I can explain it to you in terms you might be able to absorb. I have a seven-year-old, and she used to have the same trouble you do.”
I made a left turn onto North Seventh Street and tried to remember which house was Barlow’s. It was brown, I was pretty sure.
“You’re a real riot, Tucker,” Westbrook said, in his imitation of wit. Jackie Gleason could have taught him a couple of things about delivery, if he didn’t have the disadvantage of being dead. And he was still funnier than Westbrook. “How about you tell me what you know, and then maybe we can trade.”
“You’re eating an eggplant parm sandwich right at this moment— that’s what I know,” I said. “Now, tell me if you searched the area of undeveloped land to the north of Beckwirth’s house the morning you got the call.”
“Why would we do that?”
I’d figured as much. “Because you’re the police, Westbrook, and you’re supposed to investigate possibilities. I have a witness who saw a minivan tear-assing around that bend at the time Beckwirth supposedly went missing, and the witness may have seen this minivan hit something, or someone, that fell down that embankment. So how about you get somebody over there to look?”
Westbrook rumbled like an oncoming thunderstorm. “You want to tell me who this witness is, Tucker?”
“No, I really don’t. This person may need protection at some point, and I’d just as soon you didn’t know the name. You might trip over your tie on the way into the safe house and set off the alarm.”
“Very funny.”
“Oh, and while you’re at it, get somebody to check the front bumper of that minivan that was tailing me. If it’s the same one, there may still be some blood or cloth or something from Madlyn Beckwirth on it.”
“Anything else, Boss?”
“Nah, that oughta do it for this shift. Afterward, you can go out to the Salvation Army Thrift Shop and buy yourself a new sports jacket and tie. See ya, Westbrook.”
As I approached Barlow’s house (which was, in fact, green), I started to close the cell phone, but heard Westbrook call my name again, and reopened it before the connection could be broken.
“Hey, Tucker!”
“Yeah, what is it, Gerry?”
“How’d you know about the eggplant parm sandwich?”
I hung up on him.
Chapter 23
When nobody answered the doorbell at the Barlows’, I spotted some movement around the side of the house, so I walked by a perfect white picket fence and through an impeccable trellis arch into the backyard.
The Barlow home was something of an anomaly for Midland Heights. It was new construction, for one thing—a variation on the Epcot mini-mansions—with skylights coming out its ears. It also had a backyard that would be medium-sized for a normal suburb, meaning it was an enormous one for Midland Heights. You had to wonder how a college professor and his non-working wife afforded it. There was, of course, a “Barlow for Mayor” sign very tastefully adorning the lawn.
Martin Barlow was wrist-deep i
n soil, although the gardening gloves he had on his hands were probably keeping the wrists clean, too. Barlow appeared to be the kind of man who would wear Audrey Hepburn evening gloves while gardening if he didn’t think people would laugh at him. He was wearing a salmon-colored T-shirt that once had a logo of some kind on its back, but had been washed so many times it was no longer legible, a pair of khaki carpenter’s shorts that showed off his knobby knees, and a painter’s hat that read “Midland Paint and Hardware.” Gotta show support for your local businesses when your wife is running for mayor.
He was planting, or digging a hole in which to plant, a bush whose buds one day would become stunning pink roses. On a fine late March day, when his students were no doubt cramming like mad to read five complete Dickens novels in three days in preparation for Barlow’s midterm exam, it was good to be the professor.
Martin looked up when he saw me walk toward him. Since we’d never met (at least not that I could recall), he looked tentative, wondering if I was going to try to sell him an encyclopedia on CD-ROM or convert him to Christian Science.
“Is there something with which I can help you?” English professors—man, you gotta love ’em. Such great grammar! His voice was as reedy as he was. Slim to the point of skinny, Barlow had the body of a marathon runner. He had the face of a beached haddock—pockmarked, with deep eye sockets and a nose that could have sucked in the whole backyard if he’d inhaled hard enough. If Madlyn Beckwirth had indeed forsaken her pretty-boy husband Gary for this guy, she had a perverse sense of irony. Somehow, that possibility elevated Madlyn in my estimation.
I stuck out my hand and identified myself, adding the Press-Tribune’s name for added credibility. I didn’t notice any eye-widening or any other register of apprehension at being questioned about Madlyn Beckwirth. He suggested that I might really want to talk to Rachel, since she was Madlyn’s closest friend, but I informed him, to his apparent surprise, that I’d already interviewed his wife.
For Whom the Minivan Rolls Page 10