For Whom the Minivan Rolls (21 page)

What he did suggest, in no uncertain terms, was that
I had a son who was “a menace” to the school, and who should never
have been included in a “normal” class. Apparently, Ethan even went
so far as to suggest that Meckeroff’s son, Warren (you think I make
these names up, don’t you?), was, and I’m quoting now, “a
moron.”

There were about fourteen photographs of Warren, all
in the same pose, on a table in Meckeroff’s living room. I
recognized the envelope they were sitting on. It was from the
school’s photographer. Meckeroff had actually been cutting the one
large sheet into individual photographs. Not that this is so
unusual, but he was cutting up the tiniest photographs—the ones
that come about thirty-two to an 8"x10" sheet and that nobody ever
uses.

Warren Meckeroff’s school picture looked like that
of, well, a moron. He had the most vacant eyes imaginable in a
living person, and had a haircut that was reminiscent of that
intellectual giant, Alfalfa Switzer. That can be cute when you’re
six, but doesn’t work nearly so well when you’re twelve.

Come to think of it, his father looked roughly the
same, but he was at least thirty-eight. And considerably rounder.
Still, the biceps bulging in his T-shirt were impressive enough for
me not to argue the point too strenuously with him. Clearly, his
son was incapable of writing such a vile thing with something
intended for human consumption.

I would have gotten into a heated argument with the
man, but it was obviously fruitless to try. And there were those
biceps to consider. Besides, I wanted to get out the door as
quickly as possible with the photograph of Warren that I’d palmed
while listening to his father’s lecture.

My next stop was back at Big Bob’s, where once again
the proprietor was the only human present. This place was clearly a
front for the mob, or it would be out of business by the end of the
week.

Bob took one look and started laughing when I walked
in. If my screenplays were as funny as my face, I’d be a wealthy
man today.

“Well, look who’s here,” he said. “What is it this
time, pal? You got a salt shaker you want me to identify? Somebody
steal a pack of Sweet’N Low, and you want me to dust it for
fingerprints?” He was clearly warming up for a gig at the local
comedy club and wanted to try out his new material. But I
maintained my Cary Grant-like cool.

“Good,” I said, “you recognize me.”

He managed to suppress his hilarity long enough to
bark out, “how could I forget?”

“So maybe you’ll remember this face, too,” I said,
and whipped out the picture of Warren Meckeroff. Big Bob stopped
laughing for a moment and considered the tiny image.

“Geez, did you bring a. . .” I produced a
magnifying glass I had picked up at home. Okay, so this wasn’t
exactly the next stop after Meckeroff’s. I had gone home and
changed shirts again. Looked like tomorrow was going to be a big
laundry day.

“Mm-hmmm. . .” said Big Bob, and he used
the sleuth’s best friend to examine the picture.

“He a regular customer of yours?” I asked.

“See, now, bringing a picture was definitely the way
to go,” he said. “I don’t get to know their names, but I never
forget a face. No sir, when somebody comes in here for the second
time, a year could go by, and I’ll remember him—might even remember
what he ordered. . .”

It occurred to me that Big Bob being in business for
a full year would merit miracle status, but I held my tongue. He
did not hold his.

“Yessir, always remember a face. Every face. Big,
small, men, women. Some guys remember a woman’s tits. Not me. The
face. That I’ll remember every time. Now, names. . .”

“Bob,” I came close to hollering. “Do you know this
kid or not?”

He took another long look, and shook his head up and
down.

“Nope,” he said. “Never seen him before in my
life.”

This was not turning out to be a good day.

When I whipped the softball across the long,
spacious family room, Mahoney just barely managed to stick his hand
out and snare it from his armchair. “Watch it,” he said. “You could
have knocked out a window or something.”

We began this softball thing in high school. I don’t
remember exactly how. Mahoney used to live in the attic of his
parents’ house, in a room roughly three times the size of mine. And
whenever we needed to solve the problems of the world—which usually
involved the seventeen-year-olds we described as “women”—I’d climb
up the three flights of stairs to his lair, and we’d toss this old
softball back and forth. We never solved any problems, but our
hands got surer, and my fielding percentage went up in our
after-school pickup games—of softball.

Our first high school softball, Mahoney says, is in
a box in his present attic, where, as far as we know, nobody
actually lives. It shares that space with our old tripod, some
movie lights, a Super 8 sound movie camera for which nobody on this
planet makes film anymore, and a deer skull Mahoney found in the
woods in 1974, which he named “Elmo.” Don’t ask.

I can’t explain it, but throwing the softball around
gets our brains into problem-solving mode, and that is exactly what
I needed today. After Big Bob’s, where I ordered a black-and-white
milk shake and received a black-and-white ice cream soda, I called
Mahoney on the cell phone, intending to leave a message asking if
we could meet later. Instead, I got the man himself, since he’d
finished his last job of the day a couple of hours early (“the
power of being the best at what you do”) and had come home. I said
I needed to throw the softball. He said come on over. And here I
was. But it wasn’t like the old days. Now Jeff Mahoney, of all
people, was worried that I’d break some household item or fixture
with an errant throw.

“You afraid Susan will yell at me if I knock over a
vase?” (I used the flat “a” pronunciation to show how classy I
am.)

“My wife actually likes you,” he countered. “You
knock something over, she’ll give you a hug and blame me for the
broken glass.”

“Can I help it if I’m irresistible?” I grinned.

“That’s not what Janet Marsden thought,” Mahoney
shot back. A painful memory. Old friends know the most about you.
They remember how you got all your scars.

“ANYWAY,” I moved on, “I don’t understand anything
that’s happened on this story. I have nothing to go on, and
everybody’s telling me to quit, so I feel like I have to keep at
it.”

“And you don’t have anybody paying you for it,
right?” he said, not needling now, just clarifying.

“Right.”

“Well, it’s obvious you have to investigate further.
They’re trying to keep you from finding out
something
.”

He pitched the ball back at me, and of course it
landed right in my unmoving hand, chest high. And I was easily ten
feet away on a low sofa. That’s what I hate about Mahoney. He never
loses his touch.

“Who? Who’s trying to keep me from something? And
what? I don’t have any clues. I have nowhere to go.” I tried
tossing him a curve ball, and it bounced, but Mahoney still managed
to scoop it up.

“Before you get the answers, you have to figure out
what the questions are,” he said, and tossed another one that
swerved directly into my hands. The swine.

“Oh thank you, Grasshopper, but I think I know what
the question is. The question is, who killed Madlyn Beckwirth?” Now
I managed one he could catch without moving too much. He nodded
encouragement.

“No, you’re looking at too big a picture,” Mahoney
said. “Look at the little things. Check out the pieces of the
puzzle, not the whole puzzle. What things that you have found out
don’t add up?”

I caught his next throw and held it, thinking.
“That’s just it—
nothing
adds up. Somebody killed Madlyn
after she left her bed and her house in the middle of the night and
went to Atlantic City. What doesn’t add up? I could give you a
laundry list of what doesn’t add up.”

He sat and looked at me, patiently. Like Master
Yoda, he has the patience of the ages.

I let out a long breath. “Okay. In no particular
order: Who called me to warn me off looking for Madlyn? Why do
that? Why does the phone number match the cell phone of a little
old man in a greenhouse in Emmaus, Pennsylvania? Who sent somebody
to follow me in a minivan, and why? How come Madlyn decides to call
me out of the blue, and why is she killed immediately
thereafter?”

Mahoney closed his eyes. I considered smoking him
one at that very moment, but he’d probably just put up his hand and
catch it out of reflex, and I’d be even more outclassed. Then he
wrinkled his brow, and I sat back. Here it came.

“What’s interesting,” he said, “is that all the
clues in this story seem to center around an outside party.”

“Who?”

“You. Whoever killed Madlyn spent an awful lot of
energy trying to keep you away. What does that tell you?” I tried a
new gambit, and rolled the softball across the hardwood floor
Mahoney had sanded and refinished. The ball rolled straight, with
no bumps. Naturally.

“That I have an inflated sense of my own
importance,” I suggested.

Mahoney smiled because he is smarter than me. “No.
What’s interesting is that the
biggest
concern of the
person—or people—who killed Madlyn Beckwirth is that you don’t find
out about it,” he said. “Every move they made since she disappeared
seemed to be designed to keep
you
away—not to keep the cops
or her husband away—but
you.
”

I waited, but nothing more came. “So, what does that
tell us?” I said.

He picked up the softball and examined it. “This one
isn’t as good as the old one,” he said. “Too rubbery.”

“Jeff,” I said, “what does all that tell us? Am I in
danger from these people, too?”

“Only if you get close to finding something out,” he
said.

“Well, then I have nothing to worry about.” He added
zip to his throw this time, and my hand stung when I caught it.

“People kill other people for two reasons,” Mahoney
offered. “Sex or money.”

“Kay Scarpetta teach you that?” I asked.

“Nah. She just deals with the dead body. She’d tell
you what was in the intestines. I’m telling you. Sex or money.”

“Either one of which could apply here,” I said.
“Madlyn was expecting something more than croissants from her room
service, if you know what I mean. And Gary has piles of cash.” I
threw the ball back, harder, and he caught it as if it were a Nerf
ball.

Mahoney grumbled. He stood up and walked toward the
kitchen. “I want some potato chips,” he said. “You?”

I shook my head. The ice cream soda had been bad
enough. But there had also been a brownie in the morning. I would
have to do six thousand sit-ups to burn it all off—tomorrow.

Mahoney opened one of the kitchen cabinets he had
hung from the cathedral ceiling he raised in the kitchen. You had
to be as tall as a tree to get any food in this house, but luckily
Mahoney’s wife was close to six feet tall herself. I had to rely on
the kindness of strangers.

“But nobody ever called Beckwirth to ask for his
money,” he said, grabbing a family-sized bag of Ruffles from the
cabinet and tearing it open carefully. “Madlyn wasn’t kidnapped.
She went away on her own.”

“So we focus on the sex?” I suggested.

“Nah,” Mahoney said through a mouthful of Ruffles.
“That’s just what they want us to do. Remember what Woodward and
Bernstein said.”

“Follow the money.” I gave him back what he wanted
to hear.

“Exactly. Follow the money.” Suddenly grabbing the
softball again, he rifled it toward me, and I caught it neatly and
without pain. “Now you’re getting it,” Mahoney said.

I got home just in time to receive a lecture from my
son about the continued necessity of being inside the family
residence whenever he got home from school in the afternoon. He’d
actually had to use his key to get in the door, and had been
watching television himself for an entire eight minutes. For crying
out loud, what kind of father was I, anyway?

It got worse when I turned off the TV and reminded
him that he had homework to do. He leapt at the remote control,
switched the set back on, and screamed, “I was WATCHING that!” just
as Ren and Stimpy appeared to sing “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy.” This
was what happens whenever you throw him off his routine. His
discipline collapses like a house of cards.

“I don’t
care
what you were watching,” I
said. “It’s time to do your homework.” And, because I was born
towards the middle of the twentieth century, walked over to the TV
and actually knew how to turn the set “off” manually—by pressing
the power button.

He stood, dramatically, knowing that the remote’s
infrared beam couldn’t reach the TV through the all-too solid body
of a father. And he was about to wail when he saw my face, which
must have resembled that of the Devil, and my hand, which was in
the perennial parent pose—forefinger pointing directly upward, at
God, since he/she/it is the one who created this whole parenting
system in the first place, and therefore deserves all the
blame.

Ethan stopped, considered his options, and in a rare
display of common sense, decided against trying to knock me over
and turn the television back on. He made a screeching noise, then
stomped over to his backpack and began getting his books out.

It was going to be another great day at the old
homestead, and Abigail had already let me know she’d be home late
tonight. One of the partners in her firm was retiring, and there
was a dinner that night, attendance mandatory.

While Ethan slammed his books down and started
working, talking to himself all the while, Leah walked in the door,
gave me the customary hug and kiss, and started in immediately on
that most odious of tasks, penmanship. Today’s assignment was to
write about 154 “R”s on a page for no particular reason. She smiled
through it, on the opposite side of the coffee table (excuse me,
the homework table) from her brother, who was working himself into
a lather over having to read a chapter from a book that he actually
liked. A study in contrasts, from the same set of parents. Go
figure.