For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,11
to the phone, picked it up, and punched *69. If I knew the number from which my last call had come, I’d be able to trace. . .
“This service cannot be activated, because the telephone number is not in our service area.” I hung up. Abby looked at me with that same concern, as I must have looked completely baffled.
“What?”
“The call came from outside Verizon’s coverage area. That means that unless Beckwirth or Ladowski got into a car and drove west at 80 miles an hour from the moment they last saw me, it wasn’t either of them.”
Now Abby looked baffled. “So who else knows that you’re looking for Madlyn Beckwirth?”
“Apparently, somebody who doesn’t want me to find her.”
The sun-dried tomatoes sizzled on the stove, and Abby took a moment before walking over to deal with them.
We exchanged tense glances all through dinner. Fortunately, the kids managed not to crack under the strain, because Catdog was now on.
Chapter 8
The next morning, after making lunches and breakfasts and kissing my wife good-bye and making sure all the homework was in backpacks and walking Ethan through the ritual of putting on his shoes and picking up his stuff and putting on his jacket and walking out the door, (then coming back in to say good-bye, then forgetting to close the door on the way), and after putting my daughter on the schoolbus, I walked into Barry Dutton’s office carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts bag.
“Morning, Chief.”
“Don’t call me Chief!” We laughed at the joke from the old (and I do mean old) Superman TV series. We are both George Reeves fans.
Barry is a year older than me, which would make him 44. He stands about six feet tall, and isn’t fat. I stand considerably under six feet tall, and I could lose ten pounds. Okay, fifteen. But we go back a long way, and he doesn’t scare me. Anymore.
He gestured to the chair in front of his metal desk (with maple woodtone top, of course), and I walked to it. Before I sat, though, I opened the bag, carefully checked the two cups, and gave him the one with the coffee. Light, no sugar. Like it changes the taste of that stuff at all.
Dutton saw me take another hot cup out of the bag, and snickered.
“Is that cocoa?”
“We who have taste prefer to call it hot chocolate.”
“Hot chocolate is two adjectives. You work with words, you should know that. Hot, chocolate what?”
I sat down and sighed. “You’re a real pain in the ass, Barry. You should have been a freelance writer.” He laughed. The really intelligent people laugh all the time at what I say.
“I assume you’re not here just to buy me a cup of coffee, are you?” Dutton walked to his desk and sat on the edge. I shook my head “no,” and then reached into the bag. I took out two donuts: a regular cruller for me, and for Dutton, a creme-filled chocolate. His eyes widened. His wife had been after him to lose weight (like he needed to) for months, and he hadn’t seen a creme-filled chocolate (you’ll notice they don’t spell it “cream,” and there’s a reason) since roughly last spring.
“This is serious, isn’t it?” He considered, almost walked away, then picked up the donut and smelled it, inhaling deeply, a man enthralled. “You know I’m on the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet, don’t you? I’m not supposed to have anything like this.”
“You gonna let Donna push you around? Who wears the gun in your family?”
“Oh, what the hell.” He bit greedily into it, and a little of the chocolate stuff masquerading as cream squished out from the hole they put in the donut for exactly that purpose. There was a low rumble, something like a small earthquake, which I came to realize was Barry enjoying the donut. He smiled, and sat down in his swivel chair.
I took a napkin out of the Dunkin’ Donuts bag and threw it at him. “Here. You got powdered sugar all over yourself, and you’re going to lose the respect of your men.”
“It’s worth it,” he said. At least, I think that’s what he said. He could barely get a sound out through the mouthful of donut. What actually came out sounded more like “iss worf id.” With the donut nearly consumed, Dutton’s eyes narrowed, he swallowed one last time, sat up, and considered me. “You’re plying me with a donut.”
I reached into the bag for the chocolate frosted. “You want another one?”