For Whom the Minivan Rolls

by JEFFREY COHEN

  Westbrook, modeling the latest from the Andy Sipowicz Collection, sat to the left of the door. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw the vestiges of a shit-eating grin on his face. He looked at me when I opened the door, but didn’t say anything. Barry barely got “shut the door” through his clenched teeth. I did as he said. I would have liked to have shut the door from the outside, but that didn’t appear to be an option.

  I immediately saw a woman sitting on the table behind the door. She was in her thirties, attractive, and dressed in a very conservative suit—the kind Abigail wears to her office. Had to be from the county prosecutor’s office.

  “Barry. . .” I started, but he shook his head vigorously and pointed toward the other chair in front of his desk.

  “You don’t get to talk right now,” Dutton said slowly. “Right now, I get to talk.”

  I nodded and sat.

  “What exactly do you think you’re doing,” Dutton began, “printing information about an ongoing investigation in the newspaper?”

  “I’m a reporter. . .” I began, but Barry shook his head again.

  “I said I get to talk now,” he said more forcefully. “Not you. Aaron, I’m always open to you, and I don’t play the kind of games other cops do with the press. You know that.”

  He left a pause, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

  “Well? Don’t you know that?”

  I nodded.

  “So why are you making me look bad in the paper, printing information I told you in the course of a private conversation? Don’t the words ‘off the record’ hold any meaning for you?”

  My face tightened a bit at that one. “Oh come on, Barry,” I said, and this time I didn’t stop when he shook his head. “I’m happy to speak to folks off the record, and I respect that whenever someone asks me for that arrangement. But you never said a word about our conversation being on background, and you know it.”

  Barry stole an embarrassed glance at the woman, and pointed at the newspaper. “When we spoke last night,” he said more quietly, “you never said this was an interview for the newspaper. I didn’t know I was talking to you as a reporter.”

  “What did you think—that I’d had a sudden change of heart and went into the upholstery business? Come on, Barry, admit it. You assigned Inspector Gadget here to the Beckwirth case because you didn’t think it was a big deal, and frankly, neither did I. But I beat you to her, and when it turned out to be a murder, you felt foolish. Now, you want to take it out on me because I reported all that in the newspaper.” I turned on a dime and extended my hand to the woman, who clasped it professionally. “He’s never going to introduce us,” I said, nodding in Dutton’s direction. “I’m Aaron Tucker.”

  “Colette Jackson,” she said. “Atlantic County Prosecutor’s office.”

  “I figured,” I told her. I gestured to Barry. “He doesn’t usually get anybody that well dressed here.”

  Westbrook cleared his throat, which I guess was his subtle little way of saying he was about to speak. It sounded like he was going to spit, and I involuntarily ducked.

  “What’re you gonna do to him, Chief?” he asked, the impatient child waiting to see what punishment the older sibling is going to get for pinching.

  “What can he do?” I answered. “I haven’t broken any laws.”

  “You didn’t call me when you heard from Madlyn Beckwirth,” Gerry said. “That could be considered obstruction.”

  I shot a glance at Colette Jackson, who was pursing her lips like a librarian getting ready to shush someone. “You didn’t call me with the information about the minivan or the area outside the Beckwirth house,” I told Westbrook. “Did you find out anything, or did you spend your whole shift at the all-you-can-eat buffet again?”

  Before Westbrook could even begin to react, Barry Dutton sat down, rearranged his face into a peaceful expression, and said, “tell him, Gerry.”

  Westbrook wanted to slug me, but his arms probably couldn’t reach past his own belt, and besides, all us alpha males in the room were showing off for the lady visitor. So he cleared his throat again and folded his hands on what would have been his lap, if he’d had one.

  “There was no debris of any kind on the bumper of the minivan you say was following you,” said Westbrook. “As for the undeveloped property next to the Great Big House, which by the way also belongs to the Beckwirths, it’s impossible to say. It’s been almost two weeks, and it’s usually just broken sticks and garbage, anyway.”

  “Now,” Dutton interrupted, “you tell us what you know.”

  I sighed. “Oh come on, Barry,” I said. “I told you everything last night. I told it to the troopers about sixty-eight times last night. I’ve said it so many times I could recite it by rote, like I did at my bar mitzvah. I’m thinking of putting it out on CD.”

  “But Ms. Jackson hasn’t heard it yet.”

  Colette, to her everlasting credit, stood up and said, “I’ve seen the reports of the state troopers, Chief. I don’t need to hear Mr. Tucker tell the whole story again.” When she saw me smiling, though, she added, “Still, I do have a few questions.” I believe I saw Barry Dutton grin a little as my face tightened. I nodded.

  “Mrs. Beckwirth was probably dead a little less than two hours when you found her. She was wearing, according to the troopers and your report, a black lace teddy and garter belt. Is that correct?”

  I nodded. I think Westbrook wiped a little drool from the corner of his mouth, but he might have been thinking that lunch was coming in only three and a half hours.

  “So we can assume that she was anticipating a lover, don’t you think?” Colette Jackson asked.

  “I guess so,” I said. “She might have just worn that kind of stuff. . .” Colette’s face told me to shut up.

  “No woman wears that kind of stuff for the hell of it, Mr. Tucker. She wears it only if she thinks it’s going to be seen.” The three of us— Barry, Westbrook and I—picked out three spots in the room to look at, so as not to be discovered wondering what it was Ms. Jackson had on under her suit.

  “You also said that the door was ajar when you walked up to the hotel room, is that right?” I nodded again, still looking at the picture of Barry Dutton, framed on the wall, shaking hands with former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman. “Did you knock first?”

  “When I knocked, the door swung open. I called inside, and then walked in when I got no answer. Madlyn was on the bed, and she had clearly been shot dead.”

  “Have you ever seen a murder victim before, Mr. Tucker?”

  “No, but. . .”

  “Okay. So, how did you react? Did you gasp? Cry out? Throw up? What was the first thing that ran through your mind?”

  The last thing I wanted to say was that I considered Madlyn Beckwirth’s death to be a superior plot point for one of my forthcoming screenplays. “Why are you asking me this?” I said. “Am I a suspect? Do I need to call my lawyer?”

  “Leave your wife alone,” Dutton said. “Nobody thinks you killed Madlyn Beckwirth.”

  “Then what is this about?”

  “We’re trying to determine what your interest in this case is going to be now that you’ve written your story,” said Colette, smiling.

  So that was it. They felt I had shown them up, and now they were going to freeze me out of the rest of the story. I stared at Dutton.

  “I would have believed it of Westbrook, and Ms. Jackson I’ve never met, but you, Barry. I thought you’d be fairer than this.”

  Dutton’s eyes widened. He knew what I was saying, and as much as he hated it, he knew I was right, too.

  “I think we’re done here,” said Colette Jackson. “Why don’t you go home now, Mr. Tucker?”

  Chapter 8

  When I went home, things weren’t any better. The answering machine was just bursting with thrilling phone messages: one from Milt Ladowski, one from Abigail, one from Gary Beckwirth, another from Ladowski, one from Ethan’s aide, Wilma, another from Ladowski, on
e from my mother, who had discovered that one of the pills she was taking to lower her blood pressure had caused impotence in rats, and one from Harrington. I called Wilma first, but she was in class with Ethan, and would call back. So I called Harrington.

  “You see the story?” I said.

  Harrington’s voice sounded, I don’t know, formal. Like he was being listened to by people who intimidated him. Or maybe I was being paranoid. “Yes, it was very good, Aaron,” Harrington said. “A fine job of reporting.”

  “You okay, Dave?”

  “Sure. It’s just. . . I’m afraid this isn’t the story we had discussed initially.”

  I stood up and started pacing. “I know that,” I said. “But this is the way the story developed. It’s actually a better. . .”

  “I’m afraid we’ll only be able to pay you the usual two hundred,” he blurted out. “That’s all that’s in the budget for a news story like this.”

  I stopped pacing and my jaw hit the carpet. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But what about the follow-up? There’s got to be a follow-up on a story like this. . .”

  “We’re going to have our staff writer in your town handle it.”

  “Sheila Warren? Sheila Warren’s great for the library benefit, Dave, but crime reporting. . .”

  He started talking very quickly. That’s never a good sign, unless the person giggles a lot between sentences and is blonde. Sometimes, not even then. “Aaron, there have been. . . changes in the way we’re budgeting the desk these days. So. . .”

  I’d heard this one before. “So you’ll be cutting back on freelance, right?”

  There was a long silence. “That’s right. I’m sorry. Believe me, if it were up to me. . .rdquo;

  “Dave, is someone there with you? Listening to this conversation?”

  “No. I’m sorry Aaron, I have someone on my other line. We’ll mail the check.” And he hung up.

  I absorbed that for a few minutes, and it turned out to be a few minutes too long. This time, Ladowski found me in.

  “Didn’t you promise me that you’d keep this story out of the papers, Aaron?!”

  “I said I’d do what I could. It turned out I couldn’t do anything.”

  “Your name is on the article! You didn’t even try!”

  “And your client saw to it that I’d get screwed out of the $1,000 fee the paper promised to pay. I’d say we’re about even, Milt.”

  “Any contract between you and the newspaper is completely outside this conversation, Tucker. We never offered you any money to write this trash in the press.”

  Somebody once said that when they call it “trash,” you know you’ve gotten it right. Maybe I’d said it, now that I think of it.

  “Is there a reason you called, Milt, or are you just a week behind on your pomposity orders?”

  “I’m calling to tell you that my client will no longer cooperate with you in any way regarding the investigation of his wife’s death. He will not accept your phone calls nor allow you to enter his home. He is considering petitioning for a restraining order to ensure that you will not approach his son. You are allowed no access to Gary Beckwirth or his family again. Is that clear?”

  “Geez, Milt, how long have you been rehearsing that one? You said it almost without taking a breath.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Tucker.” And he hung up. It was obviously my day to be hung up on, so I called my mother. She wasn’t home. That’s a mother’s equivalent of hanging up on you.

  I called my wife. “Are they all after you yet?” she asked.

  “Pretty much,” I said. “What you’d expect?”

  “Stay away from the Beckwirth story, and all that,” Abby said. She has always been fascinated by my work, or more specifically, by the press. She studied journalism in college, and would have made an excellent reporter if she’d had a less logical mind.

  “Yeah, but with a new twist, Abby. The Press-Tribune isn’t going to use me anymore.”

  She absorbed that a moment. “You mean they got to your editor?”

  I had to laugh. “They certainly have listened pretty hard to either Beckwirth or Ladowski, or they’re just plain paranoid.”

  “Oh, Baby, I’m sorry,” she said sympathetically. There just wasn’t anything else to say.

  “Do you get the feeling there’s something they don’t want me to find out?”

  “Now who’s being paranoid? Besides, Madlyn’s dead. It’s the county prosecutors’ case now. Just report on what they find out.”

  “Report for whom, exactly?”

  “That’s your job, Sweetie.”

  “I met the assistant county prosecutor who’s working the case. And I have to tell you, when she started asking me underwear questions. . .”

  “You’re trying to make me jealous, aren’t you?” said Abby in an upper-crust accent. “How quaint.”

  “Well, if that’s the way you’re gonna be about it. . .”

  “I’ll see you later,” she said. “Don’t make dinner.”

  “Words of support if ever I heard them.” I hung up just as the phone rang. It was Wilma, Ethan’s aide, with a long story about how something had almost gone wrong between Ethan and his friend Jon that morning, but Wilma had managed to snuff it out. Wilma’s stories are always about how she handled something efficiently. Makes you wonder why she bothers to call in the first place.

  That reminded me: I still had the barbecue sauce mystery to solve. I made a mental note to call the remaining two sets of parents on Mrs. Mignano’s list after I got off the phone with Wilma.

  But I didn’t have the chance. In the middle of the conversation, call waiting beeped, and I clicked off gratefully. Wilma’s a very nice woman, but I had an appointment the following Tuesday, and had to find a way to get her off the phone.

  “Hello?” I began eloquently.

  “Aaron,” he said, “this is Gary Beckwirth.”

  Chapter 9

  What do you say to a man whose wife was used for target practice in a gambling casino’s hotel room the night before? After the standard, “I’m sorry,” which I had used up in the casino security office, there isn’t a hell of a lot to fall back on.

  “Gary, I’m so. . .”

  “I don’t blame you, Aaron. I wanted you to know that. I know you tried the best you could.”

  “I never guessed it would be this bad, Gary, believe me,” I said, even then realizing how blubbery I sounded. “I was always playing over my head.”

  Beckwirth didn’t appear to be listening. It was like he was reading from a script—a variation on the way Madlyn had sounded when she called from Atlantic City. “I just didn’t want you to feel that I blamed you. I don’t,” he said again. “What happened to Madlyn. . . would have happened with you or without you.”

  “Gary, are you okay?” Then, taking note of how stupid that sounded, I added, “I mean, considering.”

  “Oh, I’m all right,” he said, operating on auto-pilot. “I’ll be okay. I’m just worried about Joel, that’s all.”

  Oops. I wondered if Beckwirth knew that Milt had told me not to talk to him. “Gary, should we be talking right now?”

  “Why, are you busy?” He sounded worried that he was interrupting me.

  “No, it’s just that I talked to Milt Ladowski. . .”

  “Oh, Milt.” Now I recognized that tone. Beckwirth wasn’t reading from a script. He was talking through a haze of tranquilizers. “Milt worries too much. I just worry about Joel.”

  “Gary, you don’t have to worry about Joel.” I wondered if Joel had emerged from his room long enough to find out his mother was dead. “Joel will survive just fine.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “Well, nice talking to you, Aaron.” I suddenly panicked, thinking that Beckwirth might do something to himself if I left him alone with his thoughts long enough.

  “Gary,” I said, “can I come over and see you?”

  “Oh, no,” Beckwirth sing-songed. “You c
an’t come here anymore. You can’t ask any more questions. No more, Aaron, please, no more. No more.”

  He hung up.

  Well, that did it. Barry Dutton, Colette Jackson, and Gerry Westbrook had all told me not to investigate any further. Milt Ladowski had told me not to investigate any further. My editor had fired me and told me specifically not to investigate Madlyn Beckwirth’s murder. My own wife was assuming I should stop, since I no longer had a paying client. And now Beckwirth himself was telling me that I was no longer allowed to ask questions about what had happened to his wife.

  There was only one thing left to do. And I was just stupid enough to do it. I went to the sporting goods store, and bought myself a softball.

  Chapter 10

  Christine Micelli looked concerned. I expected that. What I hadn’t suspected was that she’d also look shocked.

  “He wrote what on your sidewalk?” Her eyes, which were black, were wide, and not pleased.

  We were sitting in Christine’s kitchen, which was the very antithesis of Rachel Barlow’s. There were dishes in the sink. There were crumbs on the floor. There were pieces of opened and unopened mail on the countertops. A box of cereal, left over from breakfast, was still open on the kitchen table. I felt very much at home.

  “I don’t know for sure that Vinnie wrote anything, Ms. Micelli,” I said. “I just know somebody wrote something. . . inappropriate. . . on my sidewalk, clearly directed at my son, and I know that he and Vincent have had arguments in the past. I’m asking you if you think it’s possible. I don’t want to accuse anybody of anything.”

  If there’s something in this world more uncomfortable than going to the mother of a 10-year-old and suggesting that her son writes dirty words with barbecue sauce, I sincerely don’t want to know what it might be. This was the first of two such scenes I was planning for today, and already, I knew I’d have to change my shirt between them.