For Whom the Minivan Rolls (19 page)

“Do the state troopers really think Beckwirth did
it?”

“Aaron, almost every time someone is killed, it’s
done by someone they knew, usually a family member. When a married
woman is killed, the first logical suspect, given no obvious
outside motive, is the husband.” Barry didn’t sound especially
convinced himself. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Abby reach
for the remote control.

“Well, let me come in tomorrow morning, and we’ll
talk about it,” I suggested.

“Okay,” Dutton sighed. “But I want you here first
thing, as soon as the kids. . .”

“I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up. I practically
flew across the room, spilling a little of my now watered-down
drink (the ice had melted) on the musty carpet in my office.

“Hold it right there,” I said to Abby. I slithered
in next to her on the couch and grabbed the remote out of her hand.
“Don’t touch that dial.” She grinned, and I gave her the kiss I had
been waiting for all day.

And what happened after that is, quite frankly, none
of your business.

Later that night, I called the
Press-Tribune
,
got the night editor, and told her about Madlyn Beckwirth’s death.
The night editor, maybe two years out of college and still
struggling not to say “y’know” after every phrase, got very excited
and insisted I write the story myself and email it to her
immediately. I told her the writing would take me about an hour,
and she promised to find space for the story on the front page.

Life is funny. There once was a time when writing a
front-page story would have been a great professional thrill for
me, but that time had come and gone, along with the beard I wore in
my twenties. Now, the only thing that would have gotten my
professional blood flowing rapidly would be a call from a two-bit
producer promising to turn one of my 120-page fantasies into a bad
movie that some director straight out of film school would hack up,
with maybe three lines of my original dialogue intact. And I’d get
paid maybe ten grand.

I again promised the nice night editor that I would
send the story as quickly as possible, so I sent Abigail up to bed
to minimize her ability to distract me and sat down at the
Macintosh to turn what I knew into what I hoped would be a coherent
news story.

The next day, with minimal editing, the front page
of the
Central Jersey Press-Tribune
featured (above the
fold) the following article whose headline, I hasten to interject,
I didn’t write.

Local Woman Found Murdered Killing May Be Tied To
Midland Heights Mayor Election

By Aaron Tucker

Madlyn Beckwirth, 44, was found shot to death
yesterday at an Atlantic City hotel. Beckwirth, a resident of
Midland Heights, had been reported missing by her husband, Gary
Beckwirth, last week.

She had been campaign manager for the Middle Heights
mayoral campaign of Rachel Barlow. Barlow is attempting to unseat
long-time mayor Sam Olszowy in a Democratic primary election less
than two weeks away.

Beckwirth was shot in the stomach and the head, and
an autopsy confirmed that the shots were the cause of death. Gary
Beckwirth, president of Beckwirth Investments, identified his
wife’s body late last night.

Madlyn Beckwirth had been missing since last Monday,
when her husband filed a report with Midland Heights Police Chief
Barry Dutton. An investigation into the disappearance by Detective
Gerald Westbrook had proved fruitless until yesterday, when a
Press-Tribune
reporter received a phone call from Mrs.
Beckwirth and traced her to Bally’s Casino Hotel in Atlantic
City.

There is still no explanation for Madlyn Beckwirth’s
disappearance, and no arrest was made in connection with her
murder. Her husband was questioned last night, but was not held or
charged.

“When a woman is killed, the first logical suspect,
given no obvious outside motive, is the husband,” Dutton said last
night. He added, however, that he knew of no evidence tying Gary
Beckwirth to his wife’s death.

Prior to her disappearance, Madlyn Beckwirth had
been receiving threatening phone calls tied to the mayoral
campaign, according to Rachel Barlow.

Questioned about her disappearance yesterday hours
before her body was discovered, Madlyn Beckwirth said only that she
was “fine,” and would “be back in a few days.

“This really isn’t a big deal,” she said.

Gary and Madlyn Beckwirth have a son, Joel, who is
14. According to Milton Ladowski, the Beckwirth family attorney,
the investigation into Madlyn’s murder will be conducted by New
Jersey State Troopers, the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office, and
the Midland Heights police.

The story went on to detail the political infighting
in Midland Heights and the tension between Barlow and Olszowy,
strictly because the night editor had asked me to include it. I
thought the odds that Madlyn Beckwirth had been killed because of
the mayor’s race in Midland Heights to be awfully long.

Of course, I had also thought Madlyn was a simple
runaway wife who’d charge up the credit cards and be back in a few
days. What I thought didn’t seem terribly relevant right at the
moment.

The next morning, I got the kids out to school and
myself out of the house as quickly as I could, successfully
avoiding the inevitable phone call that would result when Milt
Ladowski, the morning paper in hand, choked on his egg white omelet
and decaffeinated coffee. I walked over to police headquarters and
Marsha immediately pointed me toward Barry’s office.

“He’s in there,” she said. “He’s not happy.”

“You think I should have brought donuts?” I
asked.

She shook her head. “You could bring the whole
Drake’s bakery in there today,” she said. “Wouldn’t help you.”

I took a deep breath and knocked on Barry’s door.
The guttural grunt from within indicated that I should enter, and
against my better judgment, I did.

The first thing I saw in the office was the
Press-Tribune
on Dutton’s desk. It was turned to the inside
page that my story on Madlyn had jumped to. Barry, reading
half-glasses in his hand, was behind the desk, doing an imitation
of a college professor in the body of an angry grizzly bear. His
eyes were wide, and his hands were clenched. I wouldn’t have been
surprised to see him chewing through a two-by-four.

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.”