For Whom the Minivan Rolls (5 page)

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

“Oh, boy. This must be a doozy.” Imagine a police
chief who uses the word “doozy.” Luckily, the man pumps iron every
day of his life, and has a chest the size of a five-drawer dresser,
so everyone is afraid to call him on it. He took a long gulp of his
coffee. “What is it?”

“Madlyn Beckwirth.”

Dutton’s mouth tightened down to a slit in his face.
His eyebrows threatened to meet in the middle. And his eyes
actually closed, as if he were grimacing in pain. It startled me,
and I leaned forward just a bit. Quick as a flash, Dutton reached
over and grabbed the chocolate frosted out of my hand. Hell, I
would have just given it to him.

“Why are you bothering me about Madlyn
Beckwirth?”

“I’m writing about it.”

“Why, did she take the stereo system with her when
she left?” It’s good to have a funny police chief. He must keep the
criminals in stitches —maybe laughs them into confessions. I knew
for a fact he’d never drawn his gun on anyone in his life.

“The
Press-Tribune
assigned her to me. I’m
looking into her disappearance.”

“You’re kidding.” I sat and looked at him.

“Would I have brought donuts if I were kidding?” I
tried to look intense, but that’s hard to do with a hot chocolate
mustache.

“Aaron,” Dutton said, “Madlyn Beckwirth probably ran
out on her husband because he’s an insufferable twit.” Even the
cops in Midland Heights sound like college professors. Can you
imagine a cop at the 23rd Precinct in New York City saying
“insufferable twit”?

“Probably. But
he
doesn’t think so.”

“They never think so. It’s part of what makes them
so insufferable,” Dutton said.

I took a bite of the cruller. Dunkin’ Donuts hadn’t
lost its touch. “Well, there’s more.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. More
what
?
More donuts?” He looked hopefully in the bag, but all he found were
packets of artificial sweetener and about fifty-eight napkins.

“You really
are
a carbohydrate addict, aren’t
you? No, not more donuts. More about Madlyn Beckwirth.”

“Oh yeah?”

I told him about the prior evening’s threatening
phone call, and I saw my friend Barry become Chief Dutton of the
Midland Heights Police Department. He sat back and listened,
absolutely all attention. If I could get Ethan to listen like that
in fifth grade, I could start filling out his application to
Princeton tomorrow. Dutton put his fingers together, like he was
going to show me the church and the steeple, and put them to his
nose. When I got to the end of the phone conversation, and my
attempt to trace it, he stood up.

“Outside the area? Maybe I can trace it here. Let me
get Verizon to send over your phone records from last night. Maybe
we can find out who made that call.” He looked at me, frowning.
“Were you going to tell me about this?”

“I just told you, didn’t I? And I made the
appointment to see you before it happened. I knew I’d be here this
morning.”

He didn’t like it, and neither did I. The only
people who knew for sure that I was looking for Madlyn Beckwirth
couldn’t have made the call, and the idea that, by finding her, I’d
be killing her just flat-out didn’t make sense. I asked Dutton what
the cops had been doing to locate her after Beckwirth reported his
wife missing.

“Well, he hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with help,
you know. Won’t let us talk to his son. Doesn’t want to let us into
his phone records. He ‘doesn’t see what that has to do with this.’
He’s convinced somebody just up and snatched the woman out of her
bed at two o’clock in the morning while he slept.”

I nodded. “So you sent a detective over.
Westbrook?”

“It’s a small town, Aaron, and a small police force.
You think I’m loaded with detectives around here? Beckwirth
wouldn’t talk to me, so yes, I sent Westbrook.”

“Is he around?”

Dutton picked up his phone and pushed a button.
“Marsha, ask Gerry to come in here, would you?” He put down the
phone and looked at me. “You take it easy on him.” A pause. “So you
come in with two donuts.”

“Three.” I waved the other half of my cruller at
him. He had inhaled the chocolate frosted, and probably was
thinking about pulling his gun on me for the rest of the cruller. I
bravely stuck it out, and had it just about finished when Westbrook
walked in.

Gerry Westbrook had spent twenty-five years as a
Midland Heights cop. It took twenty-two of them to make detective.
His shift to plain clothes was so impressive—to him—that he
actually wore his shield on the outside of his jacket. And not just
on the job, either—at the movies, in the supermarket, at the
florist, wherever. If his I.Q. were as large as his hat size after
the swelling of his head, he’d have been the greatest detective in
history.

He was of average height, making him taller than me,
and needed to lose fifty pounds, so at least I could feel superior
in the waistline. He also had lost almost all his hair, and was
doing that Larry Fine thing with what was left. I, of course, have
every follicle I started out with, although some of it is not the
original color. Westbrook grunted in my direction as he came
in.

“What’s the electronics press doing here, Chief? We
installing a big-screen TV in the squad room?” The level of wit in
a room always rises when Westbrook leaves.

“You have to have a squad before you can have a
squad room, Westbrook,” I told him. “Of course, if you gain another
couple pounds, you might qualify as a squad all by yourself.”

Dutton stifled a chuckle. Westbrook would have
reacted to the fat joke, but he was trying to sneak a peak inside
the Dunkin’ Donuts bag to see if there might be some powdered sugar
he could lick up.

“Gerry,” Dutton said, trying to re-establish some
sort of professional tone, “Aaron is working on an article about
the missing persons report you took the other day.”

“Bulworth?”

I groaned.
“Bulworth
is a movie with Warren
Beatty, Gerry. This is
Beckwirth
. Madlyn Beckwirth.”

“Yeah, yeah. Beckwirth, Bulworth. . .
what’s the difference?”

I looked at Dutton. “Is it any wonder the case isn’t
solved yet? With Inspector Clouseau here working his usual magic,
it’s a wonder more people aren’t missing.”

Westbrook’s face turned red, matching his nose.
“You’re
gonna be missing in another minute, pip-squeak!” I
think he would have lunged at me, if he were capable of lunging,
but the extra fifty pounds made it more like a lumber than a lunge.
Pip-squeak?

Dutton said, “oh, sit down, Gerry.” Westbrook lost
his bluster and sat in the chair next to me. But he moved it a few
inches away, so our sleeves wouldn’t touch on the armrests. I was
hurt, but I managed not to show it.

Dutton leaned across his desk and pointed a finger
at Westbrook. “You’re going to cooperate fully with Aaron on this,
Gerry, or I’m gonna know about it. Is
that
clear?”

Westbrook flapped his jaw a little, but nodded. Then
Dutton pointed his finger at me. “And you, Mr. Tucker, are going to
be respectful of my detective at all times, or I will bring the
full power of the legal system to bear on you. Is that clear?”

I blinked, but managed “sure.”

“Good,” said Dutton. “Now, both of you get the hell
out of my office.” He pointed toward the door.

Westbrook managed to extricate himself from the
chair, while I contemplated how a system of pulleys and
chain-hoists might be more efficient. He walked out first, and I
turned at the door to face Dutton.

“
The full power of the legal system
?” He
chuckled. “That’s right. I’ll tell your wife on you.” You gotta
love funny cops.

Gerry Westbrook knew roughly as much about Madlyn
Beckwirth’s disappearance as I know about Organic Chemistry, and
that’s a course I assiduously managed to avoid in high school.

Westbrook had faxed the State Police and the
surrounding cops about Madlyn, checked the morgue and the
hospitals, and then gone out to Denny’s and forgotten the whole
thing.

After the necessary 30-second conversation with
Westbrook to find this out, I walked out of the police/fire
building and inhaled as much air as my little lungs could hold.
We’d been experiencing typical March weather—one day of
unseasonable warmth, followed the next day by a slap in the face of
late-winter chill. This was one of the warm days, so I decided to
walk to Gary Beckwirth’s house from the police station.

I had stuck the cell phone in my jacket pocket on
the way out. Flush with a $6,000 paycheck sent me by the online
service of a cable entertainment network, I had bought myself a
wireless phone a couple of months before. Abby had had one for a
few years already. Since I’d covered the wireless industry for
years, I got a deal. I was still trying to figure out how to pay
the monthly rate, but what the hell, I looked cool talking while I
walked, like I was negotiating a three-picture deal with Paramount
on the way to the Foodtown. On a whim, I whipped the phone out and
tried Abigail’s office number. Surprisingly, she answered.

“Abigail Stein.”

“How dare you defile my wife’s name like that?”

“I know. I feel so cheap. How are you?”

“Fat,” I told her. “I just bribed the chief of
police with fried dough.”

“You should go to the Y.”

“Can’t. I have to go talk to Beckwirth. I only have
until next Thursday on this, and right now I’m nowhere.”

Abby was silent. She was probably in her
problem-solving mode, frowning.

“I can hear you frown,” I said.

“You should be here. It’s quite fetching,
really.”

“I had a dog once who was quite fetching.”

She groaned. I have that effect on women. “Was there
a point to this call, or are you just trying out awful puns and
figured I didn’t have anything else to do but listen?”

“I’m strolling up Edison Avenue in the warm March
sunshine, and the blue sky made me think of you.” There was more
silence on the line. “Now I can hear you smile.”

“It’s even better than hearing me frown.”

I smiled. “I know.”

I usually change topics in a conversation like a
1986 Dodge pickup in need of a ring job. Abby shifted
conversational gears smoothly, like a BMW. “What did Barry have to
say about the phone call?” she asked. She was already calling it
“the phone call.” Eventually, it would become “The Phone Call,” and
then I’d really be in trouble.

“He’s going to get our phone records from Verizon.
He’ll trace it.”

“Good,” she said. “I shudder to think what would
have happened if one of the kids had answered the phone.”

“I’d have died of a heart attack. They don’t answer
the phone when they’re sitting right next to it. They inherited
that gene from their mom.”

I was now passing the supermarket. Industrious
Midland Heights residents were jockeying for parking spaces in the
store’s woefully inadequate lot. Of course, because this is New
Jersey, nobody was walking, not even the people who lived across
the street from the supermarket. So naturally the parking lot was
woefully inadequate. Because I was counter-culture, and walking
outside to get to my destination, I might have patted myself on the
back for my commitment to the environment, but then, to be a
complete environmentalist, I probably would have had to jettison
the cell phone I was holding next to my ear (hadn’t it been linked
to cancer somehow?).

“Is it possible that it was Madlyn Beckwirth herself
calling you?” Again, my wife’s amazing capacity to change the
subject served her well.

“No, it was definitely a male voice on the phone. On
the other hand, since I wouldn’t be able to pick Madlyn out of a
line-up, it’s equally possible I wouldn’t know if she had a voice
like James Earl Jones.” A woman in the Foodtown parking lot was
wrestling with this weird gadget they have that makes you pay
25-cents for a cart, then pays you back when you leave. She shook
the gadget both ways, then hit it with her purse. Clearly, it
wouldn’t give her back her quarter. Finally, she kicked the cart,
yelled something in the store’s direction, and stomped back to her
minivan. Another quarter in the pockets of the Establishment. If
she came back with a pair of channel locks and cut the gadget off,
every citizen of the borough would have applauded.

I passed the supermarket and crossed the main drag
of Midland Heights, Midland Avenue (original, huh?), against the
light, trotting across the far lane. A guy in a Mercedes-Benz 4x4
honked and gave me the finger as he passed. Probably on his way to
pick up his tuxedo for some mountain climbing.

“That call really worries me, Aaron,” said Abigail.
“Somebody knows what you’re doing, and they know where you
live.”

“That’s why I have you to protect me, Love.”

“Everything’s not a joke, Baby,” she said. “We have
two small children living in our house.”

I considered pointing out that Ethan is not close to
being a small child, and could in fact take me two out of three
falls, but I saw her point. “I’ll be careful, Honey. And if this
gets out of hand, I’ll tell Harrington he can have the assignment
back.”

Beckwirth’s house was a block past the library, and
I was approaching it now. “I’ll talk to you later, Abby. Don’t
worry.”

“What, me worry?” My wife—a regular Alfred E.
Neuman.

I said a few loving-husband things far too mushy to
record for posterity, put the phone—which was already flashing the
“battery low” signal—back in my pocket, and rang the bell on
Beckwirth’s door. The huge house stood silent, and I half expected
a thin, bald-headed butler with a British accent, to open the door.
Ian Wolfe, maybe. John Gielgud, if it was going to be a big part,
and he was still alive.