For Whom the Minivan Rolls (20 page)

Dutton’s eyes widened. He knew what I was saying,
and as much as he hated it, he knew I was right, too.

“I think we’re done here,” said Colette Jackson.
“Why don’t you go home now, Mr. Tucker?”

When I went home, things weren’t any better. The
answering machine was just bursting with thrilling phone messages:
one from Milt Ladowski, one from Abigail, one from Gary Beckwirth,
another from Ladowski, one from Ethan’s aide, Wilma,
another
from Ladowski, one from my mother, who had discovered that one of
the pills she was taking to lower her blood pressure had caused
impotence in rats, and one from Harrington. I called Wilma first,
but she was in class with Ethan, and would call back. So I called
Harrington.

“You see the story?” I said.

Harrington’s voice sounded, I don’t know, formal.
Like he was being listened to by people who intimidated him. Or
maybe I was being paranoid. “Yes, it was very good, Aaron,”
Harrington said. “A fine job of reporting.”

“You okay, Dave?”

“Sure. It’s just. . . I’m afraid this
isn’t the story we had discussed initially.”

I stood up and started pacing. “I know that,” I
said. “But this is the way the story developed. It’s actually a
better. . .”

“I’m afraid we’ll only be able to pay you the usual
two hundred,” he blurted out. “That’s all that’s in the budget for
a news story like this.”

I stopped pacing and my jaw hit the carpet. “Are you
serious?”

“I’m sorry.”

“But what about the follow-up? There’s got to be a
follow-up on a story like this. . .”

“We’re going to have our staff writer in your town
handle it.”

“Sheila Warren? Sheila Warren’s great for the
library benefit, Dave, but crime reporting. . .”

He started talking very quickly. That’s never a good
sign, unless the person giggles a lot between sentences and is
blonde. Sometimes, not even then. “Aaron, there have
been. . . changes in the way we’re budgeting the desk
these days. So. . .”

I’d heard this one before. “So you’ll be cutting
back on freelance, right?”

There was a long silence. “That’s right. I’m sorry.
Believe me, if it were up to me. . .rdquo;

“Dave, is someone there with you? Listening to this
conversation?”

“No. I’m sorry Aaron, I have someone on my other
line. We’ll mail the check.” And he hung up.

I absorbed that for a few minutes, and it turned out
to be a few minutes too long. This time, Ladowski found me in.

“Didn’t you promise me that you’d keep this story
out of the papers, Aaron?!”

“I said I’d do what I could. It turned out I
couldn’t do anything.”

“Your name is on the article! You didn’t even
try!”

“And your client saw to it that I’d get screwed out
of the $1,000 fee the paper promised to pay. I’d say we’re about
even, Milt.”

“Any contract between you and the newspaper is
completely outside this conversation, Tucker. We never offered you
any money to write this trash in the press.”

Somebody once said that when they call it “trash,”
you know you’ve gotten it right. Maybe I’d said it, now that I
think of it.

“Is there a reason you called, Milt, or are you just
a week behind on your pomposity orders?”

“I’m calling to tell you that my client will no
longer cooperate with you in any way regarding the investigation of
his wife’s death. He will not accept your phone calls nor allow you
to enter his home. He is considering petitioning for a restraining
order to ensure that you will not approach his son. You are allowed
no access to Gary Beckwirth or his family again. Is that
clear?”

“Geez, Milt, how long have you been rehearsing that
one? You said it almost without taking a breath.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Tucker.” And he hung up. It was
obviously my day to be hung up on, so I called my mother. She
wasn’t home. That’s a mother’s equivalent of hanging up on you.

I called my wife. “Are they all after you yet?” she
asked.

“Pretty much,” I said. “What you’d expect?”

“Stay away from the Beckwirth story, and all that,”
Abby said. She has always been fascinated by my work, or more
specifically, by the press. She studied journalism in college, and
would have made an excellent reporter if she’d had a less logical
mind.

“Yeah, but with a new twist, Abby.
The
Press-Tribune
isn’t going to use me anymore.”

She absorbed that a moment. “You mean they got to
your editor?”

I had to laugh. “They certainly have listened pretty
hard to either Beckwirth or Ladowski, or they’re just plain
paranoid.”

“Oh, Baby, I’m sorry,” she said sympathetically.
There just wasn’t anything else to say.

“Do you get the feeling there’s something they don’t
want me to find out?”

“
Now
who’s being paranoid? Besides, Madlyn’s
dead. It’s the county prosecutors’ case now. Just report on what
they find out.”

“Report for whom, exactly?”

“That’s your job, Sweetie.”

“I met the assistant county prosecutor who’s working
the case. And I have to tell you, when she started asking me
underwear questions. . .”

“You’re trying to make me jealous, aren’t you?” said
Abby in an upper-crust accent. “How quaint.”

“Well, if that’s the way you’re gonna be about
it. . .”

“I’ll see you later,” she said. “Don’t make
dinner.”

“Words of support if ever I heard them.” I hung up
just as the phone rang. It was Wilma, Ethan’s aide, with a long
story about how something had
almost
gone wrong between
Ethan and his friend Jon that morning, but Wilma had managed to
snuff it out. Wilma’s stories are always about how she handled
something efficiently. Makes you wonder why she bothers to call in
the first place.

That reminded me: I still had the barbecue sauce
mystery to solve. I made a mental note to call the remaining two
sets of parents on Mrs. Mignano’s list after I got off the phone
with Wilma.

But I didn’t have the chance. In the middle of the
conversation, call waiting beeped, and I clicked off gratefully.
Wilma’s a very nice woman, but I had an appointment the following
Tuesday, and had to find a way to get her off the phone.

“Hello?” I began eloquently.

“Aaron,” he said, “this is Gary Beckwirth.”

What do you say to a man whose wife was used for
target practice in a gambling casino’s hotel room the night before?
After the standard, “I’m sorry,” which I had used up in the casino
security office, there isn’t a hell of a lot to fall back on.

“Gary, I’m so. . .”

“I don’t blame you, Aaron. I wanted you to know
that. I know you tried the best you could.”

“I never guessed it would be this bad, Gary, believe
me,” I said, even then realizing how blubbery I sounded. “I was
always playing over my head.”

Beckwirth didn’t appear to be listening. It was like
he was reading from a script—a variation on the way Madlyn had
sounded when she called from Atlantic City. “I just didn’t want you
to feel that I blamed you. I don’t,” he said again. “What happened
to Madlyn. . . would have happened with you or without
you.”

“Gary, are you okay?” Then, taking note of how
stupid that sounded, I added, “I mean, considering.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” he said, operating on
auto-pilot. “I’ll be okay. I’m just worried about Joel, that’s
all.”

Oops. I wondered if Beckwirth knew that Milt had
told me not to talk to him. “Gary, should we be talking right
now?”

“Why, are you busy?” He sounded worried that he was
interrupting me.

“No, it’s just that I talked to Milt
Ladowski. . .”

“Oh, Milt.” Now I recognized that tone. Beckwirth
wasn’t reading from a script. He was talking through a haze of
tranquilizers. “Milt worries too much. I just worry about
Joel.”

“Gary, you don’t have to worry about Joel.” I
wondered if Joel had emerged from his room long enough to find out
his mother was dead. “Joel will survive just fine.”

“I hope so,” he said. “Well, nice talking to you,
Aaron.” I suddenly panicked, thinking that Beckwirth might do
something to himself if I left him alone with his thoughts long
enough.

“Gary,” I said, “can I come over and see you?”

“Oh, no,” Beckwirth sing-songed. “You can’t come
here anymore. You can’t ask any more questions. No more, Aaron,
please, no more. No more.”

He hung up.

Well, that did it. Barry Dutton, Colette Jackson,
and Gerry Westbrook had all told me not to investigate any further.
Milt Ladowski had told me not to investigate any further. My editor
had fired me and told me specifically not to investigate Madlyn
Beckwirth’s murder. My own wife was assuming I should stop, since I
no longer had a paying client. And now Beckwirth himself was
telling me that I was no longer allowed to ask questions about what
had happened to his wife.

There was only one thing left to do. And I was just
stupid enough to do it. I went to the sporting goods store, and
bought myself a softball.

Christine Micelli looked concerned. I expected that.
What I hadn’t suspected was that she’d also look shocked.

“He wrote
what
on your sidewalk?” Her eyes,
which were black, were wide, and not pleased.

We were sitting in Christine’s kitchen, which was
the very antithesis of Rachel Barlow’s. There were dishes in the
sink. There were crumbs on the floor. There were pieces of opened
and unopened mail on the countertops. A box of cereal, left over
from breakfast, was still open on the kitchen table. I felt very
much at home.

“I don’t know for sure that Vinnie wrote anything,
Ms. Micelli,” I said. “I just know somebody wrote
something. . . inappropriate. . . on my
sidewalk, clearly directed at my son, and I know that he and
Vincent have had arguments in the past. I’m asking you if you think
it’s possible. I don’t want to accuse anybody of anything.”

If there’s something in this world more
uncomfortable than going to the mother of a 10-year-old and
suggesting that her son writes dirty words with barbecue sauce, I
sincerely don’t want to know what it might be. This was the first
of two such scenes I was planning for today, and already, I knew
I’d have to change my shirt between them.

None of this was helped by the use of the word
“fuck,” which I’m not terribly comfortable saying in front of
people I’ve just met, particularly when they’re offering me
brownies.

“Well, Vinnie
did
mention your son, once,”
she said uncomfortably. Christine got up and walked to a coffee
maker on the counter, but I noticed her cup was still half full.
She was doing what I had done at Gary Beckwirth’s house, just using
the coffee as a prop to kill time.

“I take it he mentioned Ethan in a negative
way.”

She filled up the coffee cup again, and was about to
ask me if I wanted more, but remembered I had declined the offer to
begin with. Christine put the pot back in place and sat down.

“Well, you know what kids say about each
other. . .”

“Christine—may I call you Christine?”

“Sure. Chris, really.”

“Chris, let me tell you something that may make you
feel better. My son can be a colossal pain in the ass sometimes. He
annoys me on a daily basis, and I love him dearly. So whatever
Vincent said, believe me, is in all probability true. He may even
have watered it down for you.”

It worked. She visibly relaxed. Some parents think
their children are incapable of anything other than good
intentions, and it disarms other adults when you prove to them
you’re not like that. Besides, Ethan really
can
be a pain in
the ass if he puts his mind to it.

“Well, then I can tell you,” Chris said. “Vinnie
said Ethan called him an asshole, and tried to pull out some of
Vinnie’s hair.”

“That sounds like Ethan,” I told her, “except the
‘asshole’ part. Why didn’t you call me when this happened?”

Chris blushed just a bit. She had a round face, and
looking at it was like looking at one of the Campbell’s soup twins.
But in a nice way.

“Tell the truth, I was afraid to. I thought maybe
you
were an ass-hole, too.”

We both laughed over that one, and I took a bite of
the brownie in front of me. Dammit, it was really good. Of course,
a bad brownie is like a bad orgasm—still better than a normal day
of existence.

“Well, now that I’m here, I’ll tell you that Ethan
will be warned against doing anything like that again. But my
question stands: do you think Vinnie held enough of a grudge
against Ethan to write that on the sidewalk?”

She frowned, and seemed to be thinking deeply. “No.
No, I really don’t. It’d be more Vinnie’s style to beat Ethan up in
the schoolyard or yell. . . that. . . to his
face. He wouldn’t go to the trouble of stealing barbecue sauce and
writing it on the sidewalk. For one thing, he’d want to see Ethan’s
face when he found it.”

I finished the brownie, considered asking for
another, and decided I’d best flee this place as quickly as
possible. I thanked Chris for her candor, and for the brownie. As
she walked me to the door, she shook her head and chuckled.

“You know, it sounds like we have two sons who act
out in the same inappropriate ways,” she said.

“Yeah. It’s a wonder they don’t get along better.” I
said my good-byes and left.

Outside, it was cool, but with a whiff of spring in
the air. I stepped out of the house and stood on the sidewalk a
moment, appreciating the breeze.

I’d still need to change my shirt before the next
parent, though. This one was soaked clean through.

Let’s just say that the next interview didn’t go as
well. For one thing, David Meckeroff, the father of the boy in
question, had no brownies on hand. And if he had, he probably
wouldn’t have offered them to the likes of me.