For Whom the Minivan Rolls (18 page)

When I reached the end of the long drive, my front
door opened and Abigail Stein was standing in the doorway, a
concerned expression on her face. It is what makes the most
difficult of days worth getting through.

I had barely made it out of the car before she had
run down the porch steps and into my arms, hugging me tighter than
I could remember for quite some time. I stroked her hair and found
time to exhale. Abby sniffed a little.

“You could’ve called,” she finally said.

“No, I couldn’t,” I told her. “I had some thinking
to do.”

It was after nine, and I hadn’t eaten since noon.
Abby, who made a pasta salad for me, actually sat me down and
served it to me while I gave her the rundown on my late afternoon
and evening. She gave me her undivided attention, asked very few
questions, and nodded at several points. I didn’t tell her about my
brainstorming in the car. Abby doesn’t embrace self-pity the way
artists like myself do.

“How’d I do?” I asked when the story was
finished.

“Perfectly,” she said. “You couldn’t have handled it
better if I were there to guide you every step of the way. By the
way, Barry Dutton wants you to call him when you get home.”

“I am home.”

“Yeah, but only technically. You haven’t eaten yet,”
she said.

She wouldn’t let me call Barry until I’d eaten.
Frankly, I was more interested in the pasta than the salad, but
Abby was sitting there with me, and it was hard to avoid the
tomatoes. I hate raw tomatoes—they don’t look finished. So I went
after the romaine, green and red peppers, scallions, and other
greens (Abby had even included celery, since this was for me and
not for her) until I declared myself full. I wasn’t completely
full—nothing the odd package of Yodels couldn’t fix later.

“I’ve been sitting here all night wondering,” Abby
said. “That is, when I wasn’t worried sick about some stupid man
who wouldn’t call from the car.”

I let it pass. “Wondering what?”

“Who do you think did it?” she said, the smile of a
ruthless criminal lawyer spreading across on her face. Abby, never
the literary snob, has been known to pick up one or two of my
mystery novels after I’m finished reading them. She enjoys the
mental exercise required, and admires the work of Robert B. Parker,
particularly his Spenser novels, though she thinks Susan Silverman
(the girlfriend) is a pain in the ass.

“I’ve been giving that a lot of thought,” I told
her. “All I’m sure of right now is that I didn’t do it.”

“Good. I didn’t take you in the office pool.”

“The way I see it,” I said, “it all hinges on
whether Madlyn was really having an affair, and if so, whether it
was with Martin Barlow. Because that means either Gary was so
jealous he went nuts and shot her himself. . .”

Abigail frowned. “That doesn’t seem logical,” she
said. “He’s more the type who would kill the male offender.”

I was so grateful to her for having dinner waiting
that I didn’t mention I’d already considered that.
“Or,”
I
said, “it could mean that Martin killed Madlyn so Rachel wouldn’t
find out, or that Rachel
did
find out her campaign manager
was screwing her husband and decided to eliminate the
competition.”

“Say
screwing
again,” Abby said in an
exaggeratedly deep voice. “You know how it makes me crazy.”

“There are any number of other expressions I could
have chosen,” I said. “If you have a preference, I’d certainly like
to know about it, for future use.”

“I’ve always liked. . .” and she stopped,
of course, because Ethan, in his undying quest for snacks, chose
that moment to wander into the room. He marched directly to the
snack cabinet and began rummaging.

“Hello to you, too,” I said sarcastically. “You
know, I haven’t seen you all day.”

“Uh-huh. Mom, where are the Nutter Butters?” Nutter
Butter cookies are Ethan’s snack of choice, and he will eat them
day in and day out an hour before bed, until he inexplicably
decides they are inedible and moves on to some other calorie-laden
goodie. This will happen with no warning at all, but by rule of
thumb, it’s usually a day or two after we break down and buy the
super-humongous size box of Nutter Butters. Leah is a chocolate
fiend and will not touch the Nutter Butters. All the remaining
stock will be left to the only other person who has 24-hour access
to the kitchen (that is, the only resident who doesn’t leave for
work or school every day). His task is to eliminate all traces of
the current snack of choice. It’s a dirty rotten job, but
somebody’s got to do it.

“Um, actually, I think we’re out of Nutter Butters,
Ethan,” Abby said, and we both braced ourselves.

His brow furrowed for a moment. “Oh. Okay,” he said,
and walked away from the cabinet. I never would have predicted
anything less than a raging tantrum and an emergency trip to the
supermarket. Abby and I exchanged an incredulous stare. Ethan
started for the living room (after all,
Spongebob Square
Pants
wasn’t getting any younger), but I grabbed him by the arm
playfully as he passed.

“Okay, who are you, and what have you done with my
son?” The phone rang. Abby, sitting next to it, stared at me.

“What do you mean? I
am
your son.” It rang
again. Not a muscle moved on my wife. I sighed and stood up. The
break must be over.

“I was just kidding, Ethan.” I walked to the phone
and picked it up, as my wife grinned her cat-with-canary grin. As I
suspected, the call was from Milton Ladowski, Juris Doctor.

“We just left the casino, Aaron,” he told me. “I put
Gary in his car and sent him home.”

“Why didn’t you drive him there? Didn’t they call
you after they called Gary?”

“Yes, but I was out,” said Milt. “I was in a
conference with another client, and my secretary didn’t let me know
until after I came out. By then, Gary was already on his way to
A.C.”

“So, what’s the story?” I asked him, wondering
silently what would be a big enough emergency for Ladowski’s
secretary to call him out of a meeting. “Godzilla laying waste to
Midland Heights? Hope the lot’s still there. He’ll get back to you
after the real estate closing. Try and keep Mr. Zilla away from
North Seventh.”

“They questioned Gary for a good few hours,” Milt
said. “I tried to get them to wait until tomorrow, you know, give
him some time to absorb his loss, but they plowed ahead
immediately. Said they wanted it while it was still ‘fresh in his
mind.’”

“Wanted
what?
Do they think Gary killed
her?”

I could practically hear Milt’s mustache
bristling—it was that hard for him to contain his irritation. “Of
course
they think he killed her. It’s the easiest theory,
and the cops always go for the easiest theory. Their problem is, he
didn’t do it, so they have no evidence. Otherwise, he’d be behind
bars already.”

“So what did he tell them?”

“The truth. He was at his office, he has witnesses
by the dozens, and he has no reason to want Madlyn dead. But does
that slow them down, even one bit? Of course not!”

I considered explaining to Milt that the conduct of
the Atlantic City police wasn’t necessarily my responsibility, but
he was on a roll. “They don’t even bother looking into the matter
enough to find the
real
killers, so they’ll probably get
away scot free.”

“Easy, Milt. You’re starting to sound like O.J.”

He cleared his throat. I knew he had his car phone
on hands-off, because the noise in the car was almost too loud to
hear Milt. “Listen. Aaron. I’d appreciate it if you could keep this
out of the papers for the time being.”

Okay, I admit it. This caught me off guard. “What?”
I practically screamed. “The man who dragged me kicking and
screaming onto this story is asking me to keep it out of the papers
now? Tell me you’re kidding, Milton, please, or I may be forced to
tell the cops about the rumors that Madlyn was having an
affair.”

“That’s horseshit, Aaron,” Milt said, clearly
annoyed. Good. “Madlyn never slept with anyone outside her
marriage. That’s just preposterous. But think of the boy for a
moment. Reading in the papers about what happened to his
mom. . .”

“Oh come on, Milt, you can do better than that. The
kid never picked up a newspaper in his life other than to read the
TV listings. Besides, the police report is going to be all over the
place by the morning. I’m surprised my editor hasn’t called me
already. I couldn’t keep it quiet if I wanted to. And I don’t want
to.”

Milt cleared his throat for so long it would have
been quicker to just send the Roto Rooter guy down there to see
what the problem was. “I’m asking you as a friend, Aaron.
Please.”

I wondered when Ladowski and I had become friends.
“Does this have anything to do with your name being on Madlyn’s
hotel bill?” I asked. What the hell, maybe Diane Woolworth had
gotten the headline right and the details wrong. Maybe Madlyn had
been having an affair with Milt Ladowski.

“Oh, for Chrissakes, Aaron!” he shouted. “This is a
simple matter of human kindness. I don’t want to read the gruesome
details of Madlyn Beckwirth’s death in the paper tomorrow morning.
Is that so much to ask?”

Maybe I could get something out of him another way.
“Okay,” I told him. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. But you have to
tell me,
can
you explain your name on Madlyn’s hotel
register?”

Milt didn’t talk for a long time. I knew I hadn’t
been disconnected, because the car sounds were still there. There
was a click when he picked the phone up to hold it next to his
face.

“Honest to God, Aaron,” he nearly whispered. “I
haven’t got a clue how that happened.”

Well, that didn’t help much, but I told Milt I’d
call him in the morning.

When I put down the phone, Abby and the kids were
nowhere to be seen. She had to be upstairs getting them into bed. I
could call Barry Dutton, or. . .

I went upstairs. Abby was watching Ethan floss his
teeth—something I hadn’t seen since the days of
Mighty Morphin
Power Rangers
— and everything seemed under control. I walked
into Leah’s room. The light was out, but I could see the mountain
made in her blanket by her fully bent knees, and it was moving
around. When she heard me come in, Leah sat up.

“Daddy?”

I didn’t say anything. I just walked over and held
out my arms. Leah sat up and reached out, and I got my first Leah
hug of the day. I held it for a very long time.

It had been, after all, a very long and unsettling
day.

Once the kids were officially “in bed” (meaning Leah
was in bed and Ethan was playing games on his computer), Abby and I
went downstairs. Without a word, she walked to the dining room,
reached down and opened the door on our sideboard (I had recalled
the word since this afternoon), the one we use as a liquor cabinet,
and started rummaging through the bottles. I went into the kitchen,
took out two glasses, and got a tray of ice from the freezer. I
cracked the ice tray, causing cubes to fly all around the room, and
corralled enough to almost fill the glasses. The rest went into the
sink. What the hell, I’m decadent.

Abby walked in, carrying a bottle of vodka. She
knows I don’t care much for the taste of alcohol, so she also
carried a bottle of Kahlua. She mixed a Black Russian for me and
poured herself a vodka on the rocks. During law school, my wife
supported herself as a bartender in Chicago. She learned every
drink ever invented, but says she never had to pour anything except
Jack Daniels for boilermakers. This was before the Wrigley Field
area was gentrified.

We adjourned to the living room, glasses in hand.
Each of us took our traditional seat on the couch. I put my drink
on the coffee table (okay, the Black Russian table) for a moment,
put my arm around Abby, and pulled her close to me. She stayed that
way for a sublime moment.

And then the phone rang.

I sighed, but took my drink with me. I already knew
it was Barry Dutton, and he had waited as long as his patience
would tolerate, hoping that I had developed enough sense to check
in with him after having spent much of the day at the scene of a
murder. He should have known better.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Atlantic City. It’s lovely there this time of year.
And you?”

“This is the worst possible time to be funny, Aaron.
Now, I want to hear the whole thing, from the beginning.”

I glanced across the room at my wife, who was plying
herself with alcohol and stretching out on the couch, not turning
on the television. Strangely, I didn’t want to spend time on the
phone with Dutton. I forced myself to look away from Abigail and
opened a reporter’s notebook sitting on my desk.

“Can’t it wait until the morning, Barry? I’ve
been. . .”

“No, it can’t wait until the goddam morning! This
isn’t a woman running out on her husband anymore, Aaron. This is a
murder! I’m going to have the Atlantic County prosecutor’s people
here in the morning, and I have to be able to tell them
something.”

I hate it when Dutton is right. There wasn’t any way
around it. I gave him the shortest possible version of the facts
while Abby continued to lounge, finished her drink, and picked up
the
TV Guide
.

“That’s it,” I said when I finished. “Now, what have
you
found out?” I took out a legal pad and pen to take
notes.

“Well, the autopsy won’t be available for a couple
of days, but I don’t think there’s any doubt she died of gunshot
wounds.”

“I was there. There isn’t any doubt.”

“And Gary’s identification confirms that it was
Madlyn,” Dutton added. The thought had occurred to me during the
long ride home that, given my great memory for faces, I might have
looked at someone of Madlyn’s general physical type and wrongly
assumed it was her. So that was that.