For Whom the Minivan Rolls (26 page)

“Well, thank you for letting us come on such a hard
day for you,” I said, and stood up. Abby looked a little surprised,
but patted Ethan on the leg to let him know it was time to go. He
stood and walked to the door without taking his eyes off the
Gameboy, a skill at which I have often marveled.

“It’s all right,” said Mrs. Rossi. “I appreciate
being around the young people. And I appreciate what you’re trying
to do. If I can help in any way, please let me know.”

I stood and walked to the door, and Abby picked Leah
up off her lap and informed her we were leaving. Leah stared at the
TV, and moaned, “but we were just getting to the good part.”

Mrs. Rossi gave me Marie Aiello’s address in
Westfield, but when we stopped by the house, nobody was home. I
left a business card wedged in the door, the one with “Aaron
Tucker, Freelance Writer/ Screenwriter” and my phone numbers, fax
machine number, email address, home address and, if I remember
correctly, hat size. On the only open space, the back, I wrote,
“Please call re: Madlyn Rossi.”

Then we took the kids to see some god-awful movie.
If some non-Asperger’s 11-year-olds saw a poster for this dog,
they’d have stayed three blocks away—it was that uncool. But Ethan
and Leah, the whole way home, re-enacted the film’s supposedly
hilarious highlights.

I had just been paid for a
Parenting Magazine
piece the day before, and was feeling flush, so, on the spur of the
moment, headed to dinner at the Italian restaurant where we knew
Ethan would be able to find pasta prepared to his exacting
standards. By the time we got home, it was late, and Leah had
fallen asleep in the car. Ethan attached the light to his Gameboy
and remained relatively quiet, occasionally humming what he
considered to be mood music appropriate to the game he was
playing.

We hadn’t planned on being out this late, and hadn’t
turned on the front porch light before leaving, so the house was
unusually dark when I carried Leah up the brick steps to the front
door. I had my keys in my right hand, and was about to lean over
the lock, when something stopped me.

“What’s the matter?” said Abby, but I put a finger
to my lips the best I could and shushed her. I motioned to her to
take Leah from me and back to the car, which isn’t so easy to do
when you’re trying not to wake a sleeping seven-year-old.

I put a finger to my ear, and then pointed toward
the door. “I hear something inside.”

Abby immediately turned and walked back down the
steps, carrying Leah. She made it to the car, huffing and puffing,
and put down Leah, who was finished pretending to be asleep because
this was just too darned interesting. I followed her to the car.
Ethan was still in the back seat, playing Gameboy. We’d left him
there until we were inside because, well, it’s just easier that
way.

“What did you hear?” Abigail asked.

“I don’t know. It sounded like somebody knocking
around in the living room. But the lights were out. I’ll go in and
take a look around.”

Abby gave me a look which froze me in my tracks, and
opened the passenger side door of the car. The dome light came on,
which made Ethan smile, and Abby reached in for the cell phone. She
handed it to me.

“Nine-one-one,” she said.

I called police headquarters at the regular number,
and got a dispatcher I didn’t know. I asked for Barry, but he was
not in the station, and the dispatcher asked what my problem was. I
didn’t have time to provide a long explanation, so I told him I
thought there was some intruder inside my house.

“Are you inside the house now?” he asked.

“No, I’m outside in my driveway. We just got home,
and I heard something inside the house.”

He asked for my address, and when I gave it to him,
there was a long pause. “Aaron Tucker?” he asked. I acknowledged
that I was, indeed, myself. “It may be a while before we can send
someone, Mr. Tucker,” he said with a sneer in his voice. “You know,
Saturday nights are awful busy, and. . .”

Abby, who had been listening at my shoulder, grabbed
the phone out of my hand. “This is Abigail Stein, attorney at law,”
she snarled into the phone. “If you don’t get a patrol car to my
house in five minutes, I’ll see to it that the department is
investigated by the state Attorney General’s office and you
personally will be under indictment by the end of the week.” More
than just a pretty pair of legs, my wife.

The cops showed up in three minutes—two cars, each
with a uniformed officer. The lights were flashing and one had the
siren on as he pulled up.

“Good,” I said to Crawford as he got out of the car.
“I think you snuck up on him.”

“Just keep the children out of the way,” he said
without looking at me, and got out his flashlight. He motioned to
the other cop, whose name, according to his badge, was Morgan.
Morgan went around the back of the house to make sure nobody got
out that way.

“Any sign of forced entry?” Crawford said to
Abigail, who shook her head. He turned in my direction. “Any
enemies you might want to mention?”

“None you don’t know about.”

“Is the door locked?” I nodded, and held out the
key. Crawford took it, and motioned us back toward the car.

Crawford approached the front door very slowly,
tried to see into the living room through the front window, but
couldn’t get a good look. It was too dark inside, and the
streetlight, instead of illuminating the interior, was reflecting
off the window glass and made it more, not less, difficult to
see.

“Daddy,” Leah said, “is there a robber inside our
house?”

“We’ll see, Honey,” I said. “If there is, the police
officers will get him.”

Abby told Leah to get in the car with Ethan, but she
didn’t want to. The only way Abigail could get our daughter to sit
inside the car was to get in the front seat herself and close the
door. The dome light went off, which made Ethan scowl.

Crawford picked up his walkie-talkie and said
something into it, then listened. He nodded, although Morgan
certainly couldn’t see him from the back of the house. Crawford
took the key I had given him and slowly turned it in the lock. When
the door was unlocked, he took his gun out of the holster on his
hip, and Leah’s eyes grew wide. Crawford checked the gun, put his
hand on the doorknob, and his lips started to count: one,
two. . .

Abby, her car window open, reached out and grabbed
my hand.

Crawford abruptly slammed open the front door,
holding the flashlight in one hand and the gun in the other.
“Police!” he shouted, and started moving the light around the room.
His head turned abruptly, and Morgan came in from the back, also
with his flashlight on. They both scanned the living room with
their lights, and suddenly, Crawford shouted, and held open the
screen door as wide as it could go.

Just then a little brown bat flew out through my
open front door. He headed directly for the trees across the
street, then toward the park, and was out of sight in a matter of
seconds.

The cops turned on the living room light and looked
around. Morgan even went upstairs and turned on the lights in all
the bedrooms.

“Did we make the bed this morning?” Abby asked me
quietly. I shrugged.

Crawford walked out the front door, smiling. Morgan,
behind him, merely waved, got into his car, and drove off. Crawford
couldn’t resist the temptation. He walked over to me.

“Got rid of your intruder, Mr. Tucker,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said sincerely. “Glad nobody was
hurt.”

“Better get a cap for your chimney. And next time,
before you call the cops, try the old tennis racket bit,” he said.
“I hear that works real well with flying rodents.”

He got into his car and drove off.

“Bats aren’t rodents,” Ethan said in the back seat.
“They’re chiroptera mammals.” Abby just stared at him, then turned
her head to me.

“I guess we were worried for nothing,” she said.

“No, we weren’t,” I told her. “We just weren’t right
this time. And I’m tired of it.”

“Next time we’ll know better,” she said as she
opened the car door for Leah.

“There’s not going to be a next time,” I said. “I’m
putting an end to this show right now.”

This time, I wasn’t going to devise a plan, much
less put it in motion, without first discussing it with Abby. And I
did. She said she wasn’t crazy about the particulars, but overall
didn’t see any other way to end this whole mess. So she finally
consented. Secretly, I’d been hoping she’d suggest some
improvements.

I couldn’t start anything on Sunday, but I could
prepare. Abby took the kids to a children’s museum we like in
Staten Island so I could do some research.

The freelance writer’s best friend used to be the
public library. Now it’s the Internet. You point your browser
toward any keyword you happen to like, and the next thing you know,
all sorts of information about your friends and neighbors pours
into your living room.

In this particular case, I used a search program
called Copernic, which consolidates a number of search engines, to
get me some background on “Respa, Worthington and Mattingly,” the
Wall Street firm that Gary Beckwirth worked for before hitting it
big in the Internet stock lottery. A number of the search engines
that Copernic uses found sites that mentioned the firm, and
eventually I was able to come up with the information I wanted,
which was a personnel list for the years Beckwirth worked
there.

I printed out that screen, then went to Beckwirth’s
current company’s web site, and compared the personnel roster
against the paper. There were three matches. One was Beckwirth. The
other two were Miriam Lybond, a bond trader, and William Ryan, who
worked in the accounting department.

I was willing to bet that Miriam knew Beckwirth
better personally, and that Ryan knew more about his finances. As
it turned out, Beckwirth’s finances were not the most interesting
part of this story, so I looked up Miriam Lybond on the Internet
White Pages, and found her in North Brunswick, New Jersey. I called
the number, and found Miriam at home.

When I told her I was a reporter working on the
Madlyn Beckwirth story, she almost hung up. “I don’t believe for
one minute that Gary had anything to do with her death,” Miriam
said boldly.

“Neither do I,” I told her. “I’m working on the
story to see if I can prove he
didn’t
do it.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.
Miriam clearly hadn’t expected to hear that. She began to
reconsider. I could practically hear the wheels turning in her
mind.

“What do you want to know?” Bingo.

“I’m working on background,” I said. “Nothing really
pertaining to the crime itself. You knew Gary when he was working
at Respa, Worthington, right?”

“Yeah. He was setting up the web trading, and I was
selling municipal bonds.”

“Was he married to Madlyn then?” I asked.

“That’s right. It was when they were married the
first time.”

“Sure. The. . . first time. Do you know
what happened after they broke up?”

“Well, Gary was devastated. I mean, you never saw a
man pine for his wife like that. He couldn’t believe she’d leave
him for another guy.”

The surprises were coming too fast for me.

“Did he manage to get over it?”

“Well, you know that he got married again, don’t
you?”

The way she said it, Miriam made it clear she
didn’t
mean that Gary had married Madlyn again, or at least,
that wasn’t what she was referring to. When in doubt, tell the
truth. It’s too hard to remember the bullshit.

“No, I didn’t know,” I said. “This is exactly the
kind of background I need. Who was the new wife?”

“Well, she was this blonde who started as a
secretary, like me, and eventually ended up running the whole
futures division. One of those. A real cheerleader type. All the
guys were after her. Except Gary. Maybe that’s what made her set
her sights on him. And once she decided she wanted him, there
wasn’t any doubt. God, I wish I could remember her
name. . .”

“Rachel,” I said. “I think her name was Rachel.”

An awed pause. “That’s right!” shouted Miriam. “How
did you know that?”

“I’m not really sure,” I said.

“Rachel Aston,” she said. “Now I remember. I guess
they didn’t stay married that long, because he went back with
Madlyn again. Whatever happened to Rachel? Do you know?”

“I’m not really sure.” It was the only thing I knew
how to say now.

“I’ll bet she’s the CEO of some big corporation,”
said Miriam. “That woman was the most ambitious person I ever
met.”

I hung up feeling absolutely dizzy, and felt the
immediate need to recap our game of “Marital Musical Chairs.” Gary
Beckwirth marries Madlyn Rossi because he gets her pregnant. For
some reason, they decide to abort the pregnancy, and in a matter of
weeks, Madlyn leaves Gary for an as-yet-unnamed guy.

Rachel Aston, who, the smart money would wager, now
goes by the name of Rachel Barlow, nabs Gary, after an extended
bout of the bummers. But Gary and Rachel don’t stay married,
because by the time everybody decides to move to Midland Heights,
Gary’s back with Madlyn and Rachel has married a proper-sounding
English professor whose connection to this wacky story was, so far,
somewhat hazy.

After downing a salad, I really didn’t want lunch,
so I went to Richardson Park, just a few blocks from my house, for
a rally in honor of our beloved Mayor, Sam Olszowy. Actually, I
went to the preparations for the rally, which was going to start at
four. It was one o’clock, and Olszowy was already there, watching
his minions build a tent for the speeches and inevitable coffee.
Nobody ever furnished hot chocolate at these events.