For Whom the Minivan Rolls

by JEFFREY COHEN

  Abigail stood. “It’s necessary for us to go to Jeff and Susan’s? We could all just stay upstairs. . . If somebody comes, it’d be easier for us to call. . .”

  I walked over to her and put my hands on her shoulders. “Abby,” I said, “I’ll be fine. But I won’t be fine if I have to worry about you and the kids while I’m doing this. Go to Mahoney’s. I know you’ll be safe there, and I won’t have to think about that part of it.”

  She gave me a long kiss, which is also somewhat unusual in the middle of the kitchen. Behind us, I suddenly heard Ethan going “woowoo.” That’s my boy. Abby broke off the kiss and looked around at him. Since our talk upstairs, Ethan had been a model citizen, and Abby, though a little suspicious, had decided, I think, not to question his good behavior. Leah sidled up next to Ethan, her shoes already on.

  “You ready to go?” Abigail said.

  “Yeah!” Leah cried. “Dinner at Uncle Mahoney’s house!” Ethan smiled and shook his head at his sister’s enthusiasm. He hadn’t gotten that jazzed up about anything since Keenan and Kel had starred in their very own movie.

  “All right, then,” said my wife. “Let’s get going.” She gave me what I’m sure she’d refer to as “one last look,” and shepherded the kids toward the front door. I followed.

  Leah looked up, a puzzled look on her face. “You’re not coming, Daddy?”

  “Not this time, Puss. I have to work. But I’ll see you later.” Leah made her “disappointed” face, sticking her lower lip out, and I laughed in spite of myself. I made her give me an extra-long hug. It’s better to be safe than sorry. Then she turned and walked out to beat Ethan to the “good” seat in the car.

  Ethan stopped at the door, too, perhaps sensing something unusual in how Abby and I were looking at each other. You never know what Ethan’s taking in, and what he’s not. “See you later, Dad,” he said, with a conspiratorial smile on his face. Then he came over and gave me a hug, which isn’t unheard of, but is also not terribly common. Either he was grateful I hadn’t grounded him or he knew something was up. I stroked his hair for a moment, and then he was out the door, too.

  Abby was doing her best to look normal. She looked around for her keys, found them on the kitchen counter, and picked up her purse from the foot of the living room stairs. “Okay, then,” she said. I stopped her before she reached for the door and gave her a long, serious kiss. When I finally let go, she had that look in her eye again.

  “That was for luck,” I said.

  “I hope you don’t need luck.”

  “Who knows? Maybe nobody will show up at all,” I said, knowing she wasn’t buying that for a second.

  “I dunno,” Abby said. “You are awfully good at pissing people off when you want to. The right one, whichever it is, will probably come by. Do you know which one is coming?”

  “I think I do, but I hope I’m wrong,” I said.

  She nodded. “I hope nobody comes.” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell her what I was really thinking—that I couldn’t stand it if no one came. I needed this to be over, tonight. “Call me as soon as we can come home,” Abby said.

  “I will.” She gave me another kiss, a normal one this time, and left. I stood in the doorway and watched her drive the kids away in the Saturn. Mahoney’s house was only ten minutes away—not even a long enough trip for a tape to keep the kids from killing each other in the car.

  I spent the early part of the evening quite pleasantly, really. It was a warm-ish April night, and the Yankees’ game against Baltimore was on the tube. I made some pasta and watched the game’s first few innings, making sure I was somewhat visible through the front window, but not so visible that I’d be a good target, though that wasn’t a tremendous concern. I’d seen the wounds on Madlyn Beckwirth, and whoever the killer was, s/he certainly wasn’t much of a marksperson.

  In true Madlyn fashion, I left my front door unlocked, although I stopped short of opening it just a crack. When somebody decided to come in, the creak of the door would be enough warning for me.

  About nine, I closed the drapes in the front room and turned on the outside light. Wouldn’t want the killer to fall down the stairs and break a leg. In America, it’s better to get killed than get sued. I did open the front closet door at one point, and during the course of my visit there checked to see that my thirty-six-ounce Bobby Mercer bat (which dates me pretty seriously) was where I could get to it quickly. I slid the closet door closed only half-way.

  It was a little after ten, and the Yankees were ahead of the Orioles by two runs in the ninth inning, when the front doorknob started to turn. And the first thing I felt was annoyance. This murderer was not only coming to do me harm, he was going to make me miss the end of the game, too. After a microsecond, though, my heart started pumping double-time, and I stood and prepared to greet Madlyn Beckwirth’s murderer. The front door creaked ominously. I made a mental note to plane that door down one of these days.

  Joel Beckwirth walked into the living room. He was carrying a handgun.

  “Oh, Joel,” I sighed. “I was really hoping I was wrong.”

  He closed the door behind him and leveled the gun at me, but his face was scrunched up. “What the hell do you mean?”

  Best to keep him talking. The more he talks, the less he shoots. “I knew somebody would come to try and kill me, but I was hoping it was Madlyn.”

  “Madlyn? Madlyn’s dead.” He was forgetting why he was here. That was good.

  “I thought maybe the woman in the hotel wasn’t Madlyn,” I babbled. “I thought maybe she and Martin had trumped it up, you know, found themselves a prostitute in Atlantic City, convinced her to come up to the room, and shot her so Madlyn could pretend to be dead. Go on the ultimate vacation, you know? That would have been good, huh?”

  Joel was in about two feet over his head. “What do you think this is?” he asked. “Murder, She Wrote?”

  “I didn’t know kids your age watch that,” I said, talking much faster than usual. “Does it run on some cable channel, or. . .”

  “Shut up,” Joel said. “I’m not here to talk.” Uh-oh. He remembered again.

  “No,” I said, facing him. “You’re here because you shot your own mother.”

  “She wasn’t. . .”

  “That’s true,” I said. “But she raised you. Your own mother didn’t want you, did she? Madlyn pretty much adopted you. And you shot her.”

  He took a couple of steps closer, and let his eyes scan the room, making sure the drapes were closed enough to block the view of him from the street. “You weren’t there,” he said. “You don’t know what it was like.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet it was bad,” I told him sincerely. “I’m sure she took every opportunity to tell you she didn’t want you, didn’t love you, had-n’t asked for you. But still, she had been there when you had a cold, and your own mother hadn’t. Madlyn might not have loved you, but she took care of you. Did that mean Madlyn deserved to die?”

  Joel shook his head. If he’d known I’d engage him in an emotional debate, he might have prepared more diligently. “Just shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up and leave me alone!”

  “Madlyn wasn’t going to come home this time, was she, Joel? She was going to stay away, and blackmail the others into letting her do it. Am I right?” He stayed silent, but didn’t actually raise the gun to kill me, so I figured I was ahead. Delay is all. “And when she tried to pressure Martin and Rachel, they got scared. Something like this hits the fan, it’s gonna be hard to get elected mayor.” I circled the whole time, trying to get closer to the closet door, but Joel was keeping his back to the closet, and blocking my way.

  Joel actually seemed interested in our discussion, like he hadn’t heard it put exactly this way before, and was seeing things from a fresh perspective. “So they decided Madlyn had to go, and when Rachel couldn’t talk Martin into getting rid of her, they tried Gary,” I said. “But Gary, unlike everybody else in this bizarre little story, actually loved Madlyn, and refused
to discuss it. How am I doing so far?”

  “I wasn’t there for all of it,” he responded, quite reasonably, but he didn’t seem to consider this whole thing to be all that serious. It was like we were just talking about a little dust-up at school. The worst he was looking at was a couple of days suspension, and he could watch TV and eat pizza at home. How bad was that?

  I finally managed to get near the closet door, but when I reached, Joel raised his gun. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I dropped my hand and ignored the question. “I’m betting that when they came to talk to Gary, you were upstairs, and you heard them, just like you heard me talk to Gary today. And you volunteered, didn’t you? You hated Madlyn enough to actually volunteer.”

  At this, Joel became quite animated, and shook his head vigorously. “No, no,” he said. “I didn’t ask to do it. They came to me. After my father left the house, Rachel came back.”

  “Your birth mother.”

  “Yeah, and she said she knew Madlyn had been bad to me. She said Madlyn was being bad to them, too, and somebody had to do something about it. I finally said I would.”

  I circled away from the closet, and he followed me, lowering the gun but still watching my every move. “Did Rachel get you the gun?”

  “Nah. My dad had it around the house. He didn’t tell Madlyn about it because he knew she was scared of guns.” Joel was proud of himself now. He’d been smart enough to find a gun without help. “But Rachel and Martin gave me a ride down to Atlantic City in a rental car, so if anybody saw the car, they wouldn’t think it was us.”

  “And you went up to the room and shot her.”

  “Jesus, man, you should have seen her. Waiting for her precious Martin to show up, all dressed in dirty underwear. I couldn’t look. I just pointed the gun and pulled the trigger without looking. Then I went home.”

  It was perfect. Rachel and Martin got what they wanted, Gary would protect Joel out of parental guilt, and Joel, little budding sociopath that he was, didn’t even see the wrong in what he’d done.

  “You killed her, Joel. You ended her life. She can never have her life back again. Is that fair?” Maybe I could get him to feel something.

  “She got in the way, and she deserved it. Just like you deserve it.” Then again, maybe I couldn’t.

  “I don’t think you want to kill me, Joel.” Joel shrugged and raised his left eyebrow. I could almost read his thoughts: “What the hell? Kill one person, kill another. What’s the difference?”

  “You’re a problem. You need to be solved.”

  “Where’d you get this gun?” Keep him talking.

  “From Rachel and. . . oh, no,” Joel said. “Not this time.” And he raised the gun to fire.

  I moved quickly to my left as Joel shot. The sound of a gun going off in a small room is truly jarring, not like it sounds in the movies. Stunned, I stopped and stared at Joel. The bullet missed its intended target—me—by several yards and blew out the woofer on my left stereo speaker, four feet over my head and way to my left. If all this took two seconds, it was a lot, but it was enough to throw off my rhythm, and my composure, and I became rooted to the spot where I was standing. This time, Joel held the gun with both hands and aimed it straight at my chest, and he squinted.

  Jeff Mahoney came barreling out of the front closet on slightly shaky legs. The barstool he’d been sitting on inside the closet fell over and Joel half-turned, reacting to the sound. But it was too late. Mahoney, a good six inches taller than Joel and fifty pounds heavier, had a bear hug around Joel’s arms, causing him to drop the gun even before Joel knew what was happening.

  I, of course, bravely dove behind the couch until the whole thing blew over. Joel shouted, but was quickly subdued. Mahoney held him tight while I picked up the gun with a pencil.

  “So,” I said to Mahoney, “finally out of the closet, eh?”

  “Just tell me one thing, Joel,” Mahoney said. “That rental car— what company was it from?”

  Epilogue

  The Yankees gave back the lead in the ninth inning, but managed to eke out a win in the thirteenth. Ken Singleton, the former Oriole who now announces Yankee games, called it “a typical game between these two teams.”

  Barry Dutton showed up with Westbrook, and promised to let me have all the information on the arrests of Martin and Rachel Barlow/Beckwirth, who would be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, among other juicy crimes. Barry scolded me for not warning him beforehand, and Westbrook said some things so stupid I chose not to remember them.

  I called Abby as soon as the cops left. She and the kids were home in maybe twenty minutes. Abby gave Mahoney a longer hug than she gave me, which was probably his reward for saving my life, and my punishment for putting her through this. Mahoney, for his part, gave his statement to the police, hugged Abigail and Leah, shook Ethan’s hand, and left, after shaking his head at me and laughing. Sitting in a closet all night—some plan.

  Joel Beckwirth would probably not be tried as a juvenile, Colette Jackson told me the next morning, but as an adult. This came as no surprise to me, since Abby had predicted and explained it the night before. But there was significant evidence Joel had no earthly idea what he did was wrong. He’d been screwed up on so many levels for so many years that it was hard to know exactly what had penetrated his defenses, and what had merely bounced off. He’d either be declared incompetent to stand trial, or be declared not guilty by reason of insanity. When he’d shot Madlyn, he’d been glad he could rid himself of someone he saw as a tormentor, but he couldn’t look at her while he did it. In all likelihood, he’d be hospitalized for a good few years.

  Marie Aiello called, as promised, the next morning, and I told her the whole story. She was shocked, but sounded relieved that she could put the whole thing to rest. She said we should meet someday, so I could pay her the ten dollars I owed her, but neither of us tried to make a firm date of it.

  I didn’t call Charlotte Rossi. There are some things even I don’t have the nerve to do.

  Milt Ladowski called, too, but he wasn’t sure why. We talked for a few minutes, and he blustered and tried to get mad at me, but his heart wasn’t in it. He didn’t face any criminal charges, and wasn’t going to be disbarred. He did, however, resign as Borough Attorney. Luckily, he had something to fall back on.

  I had something to fall back on, too, so I started going to the Y again the next day in an attempt to get rid of it. But that morning, the first day after Joel’s visit, I had work to do.

  Once I had all the facts, I called the night city editor at the Newark Star-Ledger, the biggest newspaper in New Jersey, and offered her the story, although we’d never met. She asked me to fax a couple of clips, I did, and she bought the Beckwirth story. For a lot less than a thousand dollars, but hey, it was an “in” at the Star-Ledger. You could do worse. I used the money to replace the stereo speaker Joel shot out. My first murder investigation, and I had managed to break even.

  The next morning I deleted from my computer files the romantic comedy screenplay I’d been struggling with, and started work on a murder mystery. They say “write what you know.”

  Gary Beckwirth actually called me later that day, his voice almost robotic. He said he wanted to apologize, and for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why.

  “For sending those men to follow you in the minivan,” he said. “They had Madlyn under surveillance, but they panicked when they saw her outside that night, and look what. . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Forget it, Gary,” I said. “Until you just mentioned it, I had.”

  “Well, Milton said you were upset,” Gary said. “It wasn’t my intention to upset you.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, so I asked, “How are you holding up?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” Beckwirth said. “Really.” I wasn’t sure if he’d be facing any criminal charges, but I never thought for a moment he’d spend a night in jail. Sad to say, it wouldn’t surprise me if he killed
himself within the year.

  Barry Dutton asked me to come to his office and give a full statement in the presence of Colette Jackson and a videographer, and I did, explaining what I knew and how I knew it. It took quite some time, but when it was over, I managed to pull Barry to one side.

  “Okay, what’s the latest?” I asked him.

  “It’s okay,” Barry said. “I can talk in front of this crowd. The killer’s been found.”

  “Yeah, and he was a fourteen-year-old kid. Jesus!”

  “The interesting ones are the Barlows. Or, at least, Martin and Rachel. Renting a car to drive the kid to the casino. Suggesting he kill his own, um, stepmother?”

  “I’ll bet they say it wasn’t them,” I said.

  “Are you kidding? According to them, they never heard of Joel Beckwirth, much less gave him a gun. They don’t drive cars, they’ve never been to Atlantic City, and, I’m guessing, they probably never met Madlyn Beckwirth in their lives. And all this because they were afraid Rachel would lose the election.”

  “At least you don’t have to worry she’ll fire you.”

  “You never know,” he said seriously.

  They held the primary election the following Tuesday, and sure enough, Sam Olszowy managed to beat the accused conspirator to homicide by a neat thirty-five votes. Maybe if Sam had been convicted of a sex crime, the margin of victory would have been wider. Rachel, from her jail cell, vowed to call for a recount.

  I was going to ignore the election entirely, but decided instead that I’d use my vote as a protest against a system that makes us choose between an old, bigoted moron and a homicidal, scheming moron. I punched the little key that allows for a write-in vote and very carefully recorded my choice for the job of Midland Heights mayor—Abigail Stein. I was crushed when she lost.