For Whom the Minivan Rolls (15 page)

Bob composed himself again while I contemplated
sending my lunch back to the chef with a negative review. “Geez,
Mister, you made my day, I gotta tell you,” he said. “Think I’d
recognize a squeeze bottle.” Chuckle. I was thrilled to bring a
little levity into what must obviously be a drab and dreary life.
“What do you want to know for, anyway? You a cop or something?”

“No,” I told him. “I’m not a cop. Or anything.”

I picked up the burger and took a bite. It was
barely cooked, and juice dripped down my chin.

“How’s the burger?” Bob asked.

“Perfect,” I said. “Now, where’s the Diet Coke?”

After eating maybe a third of Big Bob’s elegant
repast, I retreated to my office and spent the afternoon wrestling
with a love scene, which is the hardest thing to write for a movie.
There have been so many such scenes that it’s nearly impossible not
to repeat something that’s been done before, and virtually every
line of dialogue you can think of sounds like a cliché. But this is
the kind of work I desperately want to do, and so I toiled away at
it for a couple of hours, writing all of a page and a half, which
I’d probably delete tomorrow. Nobody ever accused writers of being
rational.

Maybe I wasn’t up to snuff because it was a tad
early. Under normal circumstances, I can’t write a word of
screenplay before three in the afternoon. I don’t know why. I can
know exactly what I’m trying to accomplish as early as ten in the
morning, but I can’t bear to bring myself to the keyboard and
create something new before that clock hits three. Then, of course,
I am wildly inspired, clear in my vision, unbridled in my
enthusiasm. And that’s when my kids get home from school. So I
periodically try to force myself to write earlier in the day, but
it’s never much of a success.

Today, however, I didn’t think that was the problem.
The Beckwirth story was invading my mind, and it was hard to
concentrate on the fiction I was trying to create. There was
something vaguely spooky about the look on Martin and Rachel
Barlow’s faces, that eerie laugh when I’d suggested that what Diane
Woolworth had heard was true. There was more to it than simple
amusement. They were
enjoying
Madlyn’s predicament. And that
didn’t jive, at least for one of them.

I gave up on the love scene because my characters
just wouldn’t cooperate. Ungrateful little bastards. You give them
life, you name them, you point them toward each other and make
their lives interesting, and they repay you by going off on their
own and screwing up your plans to exploit them. At least you don’t
have to pay their college tuition bills.

Why hadn’t Westbrook called yet? If he’d found
something, would he deliberately hold back? If he hadn’t found
something, would he deliberately take the rest of the day off to
visit Pizza Hut?

I checked the Bullwinkle clock. Almost two-thirty.
The kids would be home soon. But it was possible Barry Dutton would
be back in his office by now. Should I call?

Call and say what? That a crazy lady who thinks
she’s British heard that maybe Martin Barlow was having an affair
with a woman whose husband was about fifteen times better looking
and fifty times richer than him? That someone saw a minivan driving
away from Madlyn Beckwirth’s house during the night she left, but
not necessarily at the time she left? That Martin Barlow had a
guilty smile on his face? That I had to write something for the
newspaper by tomorrow? And that the question I
really
wanted
to answer was: who’s been writing nasty things about my kid on the
sidewalk with a zesty beef topping?

I’d had enough of this Beckwirth thing. It was
taking up too much time, leading to too many dead ends, and causing
me to come into contact with people I’d prefer to avoid at all
costs. I’d received a threatening phone call and been followed by a
threatening minivan. All this to make a measly thousand
dollars.

Okay, so I could use the thousand dollars. But it
wasn’t like the sheriff was at the door evicting us. Abby makes a
nice living, and even if I don’t, I did have other work. And I was
sure Spielberg would be calling directory assistance for my number
any minute now.

Did I really need this story? Couldn’t my time be
better spent finding out who hated my son, so I could beat that
child to a bloody pulp and feel better?

That did it. I picked up the phone and called Dave
Harrington. He sounded relieved when he heard it was me. “You got
the missing woman story, Aaron? Tell me you’re a day early.”

Swell. He was going to make this easy. “Well, to
tell you the truth, Dave, I was just calling to say, well, that
is. . .”

“Aaron, this doesn’t sound good. . .”

There was a
beep
in my ear, my call waiting
device indicating another call on the line. We home office workers
are so high-tech!

“Can you hang on a second, Dave? I’ve got another
call.” I hit the “flash” button on my phone, and immediately found
myself voice-to-voice with my agent, Margot Stakowski, of the
Stakowski Agency of Cleveland, Ohio.

“Aaron!” That’s Margot’s way of saying “hello.” And
she always sounds surprised, as if she were calling Francis Ford
Coppola and got me by accident.

I rolled my eyes, and managed to stifle a sigh at
the sound of her voice. “How you doing, Margot?”

“This business sucks,” she said. “I’m just checking
in to see what’s going on.”

This took a moment to sink in, just like it always
does. “You’re calling
me
to find out what’s going on? Isn’t
it supposed to work the other way around? Aren’t you supposed to
know what’s going on, and then let me know?”

“Don’t get testy. I had to drive my mother to her
rehab today, and I’m buried under a pile of scripts.” Margot’s
chief function as an agent is to read other people’s scripts. She
read mine once, and since she was the only agent to offer me
representation, I was thrilled to sign on. But nothing had happened
since then. And now she called every week to find out if I’d
managed to make myself a deal she could siphon ten percent
from.

“Is anything up, Margot? I’ve got an editor on the
other line.”

“Oh! No, go ahead. Let me know if you get a book.”
Margot always thought the mere mention of the word “editor” meant
“book.” In fact, “publisher” means “book.” “Editor,” at least in my
world, means “cheap newspaper or magazine work.”

“Okay. Talk to you next week.”

I clicked the flash button again, and got Dave in
mid-cupcake. “I’m not taking up too much of your time, am I,
Aaron?”

“I’m sorry, Dave. It was my agent. She calls every
Wednesday, and never has anything to tell me. I don’t know why I
still. . .”

“Aaron! The missing lady? What have you got?”

“Dave, I’ve got to level with you. This
story. . .”

“Don’t tell me you need more time, Aaron. I’ve got a
hole in the local section Friday that I was counting on filling
with the juicy details of a missing woman from Midland Park.”

“Midland Heights.”

“Wherever. Where’s the story?”

“Well, that’s just it, Dave.” I started staring at
each of the sixteen pictures Leah had drawn for my last birthday.
They all had rainbows, and a girl with long brown hair. The girl’s
hair usually was longer than her body, which was composed of
sticks. Everything was relatively in proportion except the fingers,
which were tremendously long. It looked like a girl with huge
spiders on each hand. . .

“What’s just it?”

“The story. See, I’ve been at it a week now,
and. . .”

“That sentence doesn’t end well, does it,
Aaron?”

The man had keen instincts. “Well, no.
See. . .”

There was another beep in the headset. “Dave, hang
on. I’ll get rid of this one faster, I promise.”

“Great. I’ll hold my breath this time.”

I clicked on the flash button once again, steeling
myself for a call from either my mother or Anne Mignano.
“Hello?”

A woman’s high-pitched voice—with a nervous chuckle
after almost every word. “Mr. Tucker? Aaron Tucker?”

Terrific. Now somebody’s going to try and sell me a
subscription to
Newsweek
while I’m trying to wriggle out of
a cheap newspaper assignment. “Yes, this is Aaron Tucker. But I’m
not. . .”

“This is Madlyn Beckwirth,” she said. “I hear you’ve
been looking for me.”

There was a very long pause. It might have lasted
hours. I’m not sure. They say when you go into shock, time really
doesn’t register all that well on your brain.

“Hello?” the woman said.

“Um. . .” I stood up. When I’m having
really important, or tense, conversations, I stand up. It’s a
reflex. I paced around the room as far as the 25-foot phone cord
would allow. “You’re Madlyn Beckwirth?” Stall. Find the functioning
area of your brain while you keep her on the line with the other 90
percent.

“That’s right. They tell me you’re looking for me. I
just wanted you to know that I’m okay, and there’s no reason to
look for me anymore.” The voice certainly matched the photograph
I’d seen—tentative, a touch naive—and yet not at all a voice to
dismiss out of hand. A woman who probably sat in her perfectly
appointed family room eating ladyfingers off a silver tray while
watching a hockey game on TV.

“Who? Who tells you I’m looking for you?”

“I’m just calling to let you know I’m fine, and I’ll
be back in a few days. This is really no big deal.” She didn’t seem
to be reading from a script, and there wasn’t the kind of tension
in her voice that would indicate anyone standing nearby with a gun
trained on her.

“So you haven’t been kidnapped?”

Madlyn—if it
was
Madlyn—laughed, one of those
explosions from pursed lips that Carol Burnett used to be so good
at. A sound like “Pahhhh!” She composed herself quickly and said,
“no, I’m not kidnapped. I’m fine. Really. There’s no reason to
write about me in the paper.”

Ah-hah. So
that
was it. “If nothing’s wrong,
why don’t you want your family and friends to know that?” I asked.
“Your husband is very worried, and your son. . .” You
need to know, I’m not a good liar.

“My son is. . . what? Worried I’ll come
back?” The voice was sarcastic. Well, she knew her kid well,
assuming it was Madlyn. An assumption that was getting harder and
harder to avoid.

“He’s worried,” I said, very unconvincingly. “He
wants to know where you are. Where
are
you?”

There was another stretch of silence in the
conversation, this time coming from the other end of the phone.
Damn! I wished Barry Dutton was listening in on my phone. He could
have traced this call to its source. First time I’d ever wanted
somebody to tap my phone.

The one thing I could remember to do was pull the
little phone-to-recorder wire I keep for telephone interviews down
from the shelf over my desk. I plugged one end into the phone line,
for the briefest of seconds cutting off Madlyn, and pressed the
exposed phone cord into the other, female, end. I could hear the
caller again.

She said, “hello? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I replied. I found the portable
cassette recorder behind my computer monitor, and plugged the other
end of the phone line into the microphone jack. “I was asking where
you are.” Damn! No blank cassette!

“I don’t think I want to tell you,” the woman
replied. I crept into the living room, adjacent to my office, and
tried to reach the blank cassettes, which we keep on the mantle of
the non-operational fireplace. Must get that thing repaired one of
these days, when I have $5,000 I’m not doing anything with.

“Why not?” Got to keep her talking. If I could just
reach that box of cassettes. . . got one!

“I don’t want to be found. . . just yet,”
the voice said. I raced back to the desk, trying desperately to
take the wrapping off the blank tape package. Finding a corner on
one of these things was like finding a compassionate literary agent
in Hollywood. You could do it, but it took a hundred times more
work than it should.

“Don’t you want everyone to see you’re all right?” I
asked as I finally slammed an unwrapped cassette into the recorder.
I pushed the button and thanked all the spirits in the room that at
least the batteries in the recorder were functional. The tape
started to turn.

“That’s why I called you,” she said.

And then she hung up.

Madlyn hung up the phone and lay back on the
king-size bed, sighing contentedly. Now maybe this reporter guy
would stop bothering everybody, and she could enjoy her vacation a
while longer. Maybe for good.

In retrospect, almost getting killed by a minivan
had been exactly what she’d needed. When she fell back to avoid a
collision, over the little metal divider and down the hill, she’d
thought she was going to die. But she hadn’t even been badly
injured—just a couple of cuts and bruises.

It had made her think, though. You don’t have any
guarantees. You can’t put off your own happiness and expect to pick
it up again when you have the time. What if you don’t have the
time?

She had gotten herself up from the base of the ridge
beside her house, right next to the creek that ran to the river.
She’d inspected her bumps and cuts, decided they were unimportant,
and started walking.

Madlyn had no intention whatsoever of returning to
the house that night. Keeping that place together and keeping the
boy in line was more than a 24-hour-a-day job. It was a career she
hadn’t studied for in college. So given this unexpected
opportunity, she turned her back on the house.

By morning, she had reached the highway, and a
little before noon, drawing stares because of her outfit (and
obvious lack of underwear), she’d found a convenience store and
called her husband, collect.