For Whom the Minivan Rolls (25 page)

I had wanted to talk to MacKenzie on the phone, but
his number was unlisted. And I didn’t have time for Barry Dutton to
come home (where he wouldn’t be overheard consorting with the
enemy), get the number from Verizon, and call me back with it. But
this way, MacKenzie wouldn’t know I was coming beforehand, and with
his hearing, it could be a while before he knew someone was at the
door, especially if he was in the greenhouse.

He took a couple of minutes to answer my ring, and
did seem surprised when he saw me at his door. The trip had taken
twenty minutes less than the first time, mostly because this time I
knew where I was going. MacKenzie invited me into the living room
for coffee, but I asked if we could talk in the greenhouse. He
seemed puzzled, but agreed. He didn’t walk as quickly as he
probably had at fifty. Or sixty. The walk to the greenhouse was
probably more than he was prepared for, but he didn’t complain.

Once there, he asked if I was here to buy some
flowers or a shrub, assuming that I’d asked to come into the
greenhouse to choose the one item I wanted to take home. I assured
him that wasn’t the reason for my trip.

“Then I can’t say I completely understand,” he said
slowly. “I’ve already told you I can’t help with the matter of the
phone call.”

I walked to the drawer where he had gotten the cell
phone on the last visit, and asked if I could take it out.
MacKenzie nodded, but still seemed puzzled. I turned the phone on
and pushed a couple of buttons.

“You see, Mr. MacKenzie, you and I were both thrown
off the track the last time. Could you do us a favor, and get for
me the card with your cell number on it?”

He thumbed through the index cards again, and
retrieved the card while I talked. “We forgot to think that someone
might have wanted to deceive both of us, that they’d know we’d
check the phone number on the threatening phone call.”

MacKenzie found the cell phone number on his card,
and I walked to him to get it. “I don’t see why that would make a
difference, Mr. Tucker,” he said. “I still know I didn’t make that
call.”

“And I don’t think you did, sir, but I do think that
someone you know made it.”

His eyebrows jumped up. “Really? But the only ones
who come back here are me, my daughters. . .”

“. . . and the people who come to buy your
plants,” I said.

There’s a button on every cell phone that will tell
you what phone number it’s using. That is, if you forget your own
phone number, it will be glad to show it to you. And when I pressed
that button on MacKenzie’s phone, and compared it to the number on
the index card. . .

“They don’t match,” MacKenzie said, his voice
confused. “What does that mean?”

“That means this isn’t your cell phone,” I told him.
“It means someone who has the same model phone came here, switched
phones with you when you weren’t looking, and took yours home with
him. Since you never use the cell phone, you’d probably not even
notice the one or two calls he made using your phone—it would
hardly stand out on your bill. If you were scrupulous enough to
check the bill when it arrived, it would be so long ago that you
wouldn’t remember this guy being here.”

“I did notice an increase of a dollar or so on the
bill the last time,” MacKenzie said. “But I didn’t bother to call.
I figured the rates had gone up again. Goddam phone company, you
know.”

“Exactly.”

“Why would someone do that?” he asked as I checked
the number on the phone in MacKenzie’s drawer again, wrote it down
on the back of an ATM receipt in my pocket, and handed the phone
back to MacKenzie.

“Because they didn’t want the calls to be traced to
them,” I said. “They knew there’d be an investigation, and they
knew that you were far enough away and unlikely enough a suspect to
confuse everybody.”

MacKenzie nodded. “Very clever. But you said you
think I know who might have done this. Who was it?”

“I was at a party yesterday in Midland Heights, New
Jersey, and I saw a pink rose bush whose petals had little blue
specks in the shapes of diamonds, Mr. MacKenzie.” “Do you know
Martin Barlow?”

MacKenzie sat on a stool near a workbench, and
slowly nodded. “I met him through my attorney, Milton Ladowski,” he
said.

“That figures.”

“Mr. Barlow?” MacKenzie marveled. “Who’d have
thought it? He speaks so well.”

“Has he been up here in the last month or two to buy
a plant?”

Again MacKenzie nodded. “Yes, yes he was. He bought
one of the rose bushes, and a rhododendron. Didn’t know how he was
going to get them home, but he had a minivan, and they just fit in
the back.”

“Yes,” I said to MacKenzie, who was still a little
glassy-eyed over all the revelations. “Everybody in Midland Heights
has a minivan. Even me.”

I didn’t attend Madlyn Beckwirth’s funeral. I know
it’s something that Miss Marple would have done. Just as Sam Spade
would have been there, or Dashiell Hammett’s nameless Continental
operative from all the short stories. Any of them would have gone,
to observe the suspects and various untoward glances back and
forth, but it wasn’t for me. I hadn’t been a friend of Madlyn, and
I don’t think she would have appreciated my presence.

Besides, I was going to visit her mother only a
little while after the service. That was enough of a nervy move, I
thought, and if the annals of investigative reporting judged me
harshly for not watching Madlyn’s “closed casket” (I later
confirmed that) lowered into the earth, so be it. Instead, I woke
up early, checked my email, and starting about nine o’clock made
some phone calls.

Naturally, when Barry Dutton checked the number I
had written down from MacKenzie’s cell phone against Verizon’s
records, it matched Martin Barlow’s. And according to the Verizon
Wireless records, Barlow’s was the same model as MacKenzie’s cell
phone.

It was Saturday, so I didn’t have to worry about
Colette Jackson or Westbrook being with Barry when he called from
his office with the news. But when I suggested that this link
should put a crimp in their case against Gary Beckwirth, Dutton
chuckled.

“You want me to let Beckwirth off the murder charges
because a nasty phone call to your house was made on Barlow’s cell
phone?” He laughed. “How do you know Beckwirth didn’t just borrow
Martin’s phone? Or that anybody else on the planet did? Besides,
there’s no proof that whoever made that call was the person who
shot Madlyn Beckwirth. And guess what? I have a credit card found
in Beckwirth’s wallet that bears the name Milton Ladowski. I still
have a gun with Beckwirth’s fingerprints on it. I have rumors that
Madlyn was sleeping around on Beckwirth. And I have Beckwirth
acting very much like somebody who shot his wife.”

“I can tell you for certain that Beckwirth didn’t
shoot his wife,” I told Barry. “He might have killed Madlyn, but
she wasn’t his wife.” I then told him about the annulment records
I’d found. Barry stammered for a moment, but held his ground.

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t shoot her,” he said.

“No, but it sure is interesting,” I told him. “First
I’m hearing about this credit card, too. Do you think Milt Ladowski
knows?”

Barry’s voice dropped about one and a half octaves.
“Mr. Ladowski does not take me into his confidence very often,” he
said.

Since I wasn’t the chief of police, I figured there
was no reason Mr. Ladowski couldn’t take
me
into his
confidence, but it was Saturday, and I couldn’t go to his office
and be annoying now. I’d have to put off that pleasure for two
days. I hung up the phone and sought out my wife, who was sitting
on our back steps looking out over the tiny expanse of concrete and
cheap flagstone we call a backyard.

“What we need,” she said, “is grass.”

I sat down next to Abby and kissed her on the
shoulder. “As an officer of the court, you should know that pot
smoking is illegal,” I said. She did not smile.

“This backyard is depressing,” she said.

“So is our bank statement,” I said. “And the phone
hasn’t exactly been ringing off the hook with editors offering me
plum assignments— only cranks who want me to come and explain the
Madlyn Beckwirth murder to their tiny groups for free.”

“You couldn’t explain it for money, either,” she
reminded me sourly.

“Wrong side of the bed this morning?”

“I’m not crazy about having to have Mahoney play
bodyguard here while you’re away,” she said. “I don’t like worrying
that you’ve gotten us into a situation that could endanger the
kids, and you didn’t even talk to me about it first. You worry me
sometimes. You think you know how to control or fix everything, and
you really don’t. How do you know that whoever killed Madlyn
Beckwirth isn’t going to show up here tonight with a gun?”

“I don’t,” I admitted, “and I should have talked to
you first. I’m sorry. But the Barlows seem like such a couple of
pompous asses, I felt I had to annoy them just to keep myself sane.
I don’t like being manipulated, especially by people who consider
me insignificant. I reacted emotionally instead of thinking it
through, and I was wrong to do that. I’m a very emotional guy, you
know.”

She finally smiled at me. “I know. So what’s on the
agenda for today?”

“Going up to visit Madlyn’s mom in Westfield,” I
said. “That’s about it.”

“How do you know the gunman won’t shoot me and the
kids while you’re away?”

“Because you’re all coming with me.”

And three hours later, in Charlotte Rossi’s living
room, a very brown place with lace curtains and framed high school
graduation pictures of two girls, my son slumped in an armchair,
engrossed in Gameboy as only an Asperger’s child can be, oblivious
to all else going on around him. Leah sat very quietly on Abigail’s
lap, on a couch opposite Mrs. Rossi’s television. Leah’s attention
was on the tape of
The Little Mermaid
that we had brought,
and that Mrs. Rossi had graciously agreed to play on her VCR.
Abby’s attention was on Charlotte Rossi, and on me, since I was
sitting next to Abby and asking the questions of Mrs. Rossi.

That is, I had offered condolences, declined an
offer of coffee (which Abigail had considered accepting, but had a
girl on her lap), and asked one question: “tell me about Madlyn,”
and Mrs. Rossi was off and running. After much talk and any number
of old photographs, I managed to get a word in edgewise.

“How did you feel when she got married?”

Mrs. Rossi, a slim, vibrant woman with hair that
might not have been its natural color (jet black) and large, very
aware eyes, sat back in her armchair just a bit. This was not the
memory she wanted to dredge up today.

“Well, I thought they were too young, you know.
Madlyn was, what, twenty, twenty-one? But she was”—her voice
dropped to a whisper for Leah’s benefit—“
pregnant,
and she
wanted the pretty boy.” Charlotte turned to Abigail, with whom she
clearly felt more comfortable. “At that age, you can’t tell them
anything.”

“At
any
age,” Abby agreed, and Charlotte
chuckled, the black dress she had worn to the funeral in sharp
contrast to the laughter.

“You got that right,” Mrs. Rossi agreed. “Later on,
when they got it annulled, I thought she had come to her senses,
but. . .”

“You knew about the annulment?” I asked.

Charlotte looked offended. “I’m the mother,” she
said. “Of course I
knew
. But by then, well, Maddie and I
weren’t really talking all that much.”

Leah looked up from “Under The Sea” long enough to
look amazed. “You didn’t talk to your own
daughter
?” She
looked at Abby, who hugged her and said, “watch the movie.”

Mrs. Rossi put a hand to her mouth, and lowered her
voice again. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I hope I didn’t upset
her.”

“Not at all,” I told her. “Leah likes to be
dramatic. But I am curious. What came between you and Madlyn, if I
may ask:?”

Charlotte didn’t want to answer, but she knew I was
trying to do right by her daughter, and she knew her response would
help. She bit her lower lip for a moment, and kept her voice to a
barely audible whisper.

“It wasn’t easy,” she said. “But I’m a good
Catholic.”

Yeah, and I was a Jewish agnostic, but what did that
have to do with anything
?
“So. . . did Madlyn want
to convert?” I asked.

“No,” Charlotte said. “She still considered herself
a Catholic. But, you know, the Church frowns on how
she. . . ended her pregnancy.”

Huh? “Madlyn had an
abortion?
” I said
stupidly.

Leah looked up at Abby again. “Mommy, what’s an
abortion?”

Abby smiled at her and said, “watch the fish.”

“He’s a crab.”

I leaned forward, and probably blushed at my own
indiscretion. “But I thought Madlyn miscarried the first baby.”

“First?
Only
baby. And that was just what
they told people—she miscarried. She. . . actually
terminated the pregnancy. And after that, we didn’t talk very much.
I would hear things from her sister, and then after the annulment,
we really didn’t hear from Maddie very often at all. A card at
Christmas, my birthday, that sort of thing. She never called, and
when she moved out, she didn’t let us know where she was living. I
found out about. . .
this
from the newspapers.”
Her eyes misted.

“Was there anyone who did hear from her regularly?”
I asked, and Charlotte nodded, although she seemed to find it hard
to speak.

“She kept in touch with Marie Aiello,” she managed,
and opened the 1974 high school yearbook on the coffee table to a
picture of Marie, a very attractive girl with dark hair and eyes.
“I think Ree-Ree heard from her quite often.” Her voice was getting
shaky, and she was staring bravely at Leah. Charlotte was trying
very hard not to break down in front of my daughter. I thought that
was too much to ask of her.