For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,18
hook into the pilot hole.
“Hold it,” Mahoney said. I stopped immediately, and he took the hook out of my hand and removed the spring from the hook. “Put the spring on after you’ve got the hook in. It’s easier.”
I did just that. “Anyway,” I said, trying to regain a little self-respect, “I don’t care what V.I. would have gotten for the job. I’m not a detective, and her movie was boring.”
“Bad script,” said Mahoney. “Kathleen Turner was good to look at, though.”
“She generally is,” I agreed, “but the aforementioned lack of script definitely sunk the movie.”
“What do you know?” he said, with just the hint of a twinkle in his eye. “You’re not a detective.”
The goddam hook wouldn’t get started in the hole, and I was getting frustrated. “I’m a screenwriter.”
“I thought to be considered a screenwriter, you have to get paid for it.” That’s what the twinkle was about. He was looking for a place to stick the needle in, and he’d found my soft spot. Right where he knew it would be.
I didn’t rise to the bait. “I’ve gotten some option money,” I said. “Besides, I’m living three thousand miles away from the right place for that kind of work. And how is this helping me find Madlyn Beckwirth?”
He knelt down, taking the hook out of my hand and starting it himself. Of course, for him, it went in like it was dying to start its new life as a spring anchor. “I thought I was helping you put up a screen door. Since when am I supposed to help you find Madlyn Beckwirth?”
The hook was in, and I actually managed to attach the spring without any outside help. “Since you decided to belittle my fee,” I told him. “You want to mock me, you can at least help me, too.”
“I do all the work around here.” He started attaching the hook to the door, and neither of us tried to perpetuate the myth that I was actually doing anything useful in this project. I sat down.
“Let’s assume for the moment that I can’t talk to the kid and I can’t get the phone records,” I said. “Where does that leave me? I have no options.”
“Sure you do.” Mahoney had the hook embedded in the door securely and was stretching the spring to meet it. This door would close faster than a frog’s tongue going after a fly. “You can still talk to the friends of the family, you can go after this girl who’s running for mayor, you can get the cops to run Madlyn’s credit cards and see if she’s charging up a storm in Vegas on the old man’s Visa.”
He attached the spring to the hook, and tried the door. Sure enough, it closed perfectly, with a satisfying SNAP! that would undoubtedly become tiresome this coming summer. “I don’t want to talk to the woman who’s running for mayor,” I said thoughtfully.
“Why not?”
“Because the rich guy wants me to. That’s what this whole maneuver has been all about. He wants to control the way I track down his wife.”
Mahoney set about measuring for the doorknob. “You got any coffee?” he asked. That was it—I’d been relegated to kitchen duty. I got up. He chuckled as I walked away from the front door and toward the kitchen.
“Rich people suck,” he said to himself.
Chapter 11
Rachel Barlow sat in her kitchen, which was bright and airy and had nice white lace curtains on the windows. Plants hung from the space over the sink, where they’d be sure to get plenty of light and moisture. The wallpaper was a subdued pattern of milk pails and straw piles. The floor was ceramic tile. The chairs and table were country oak. There was absolutely nothing out of place. It was like being in the Museum of Suburban Kitchens.
Rachel herself, every inch the political candidate, subsection: female, was in a very sensible skirt and blouse, not showing anything above the knee or below the shoulder blades. Thank goodness, or my uncontrollable male urges might have moved me to throw her down on the center island and have my way with her. She was tall and blonde, and looked like she really wished she could wear a beehive hairdo, because it would have made her more comfortable.
“Can I get you some coffee?” she asked in a voice that sounded very much like that of a Barbie doll who had grown up and gotten her MBA. “We have regular and decaf.”