For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,22

I thought of looking at my shoes for a while, but decided that would be too over-the-top.

“Chief,” said Westbrook. It was hard to know what that meant. I considered telling Westbrook not to call Barry “Chief,” but decided that might not be what Barry had in mind about getting along, and all that. I stayed quiet.

“Here’s what we have,” Dutton continued. “We have a missing woman who hasn’t contacted her family in a week. We have a husband who’s not exactly cooperative. We have speculation that the woman’s disappearance might be tied to the Rachel Barlow campaign for mayor. We have a blue minivan with stolen license tags following a private citizen down the street for no apparent reason.”

I interrupted. “Rachel Barlow also told me that Madlyn had been getting threatening phone calls, from outside the Verizon coverage area, for a few weeks before she disappeared. That sound familiar?”

“If you hadn’t interrupted,” Dutton added with the trace of a gleam in his eye, “I was about to say that we have all those things I listed, plus a call to your home the other night, Aaron, from the cellular phone of a Mr. Arthur P. MacKenzie of Emmaus, Pennsylvania.”

I searched my brain, taking in the information. “Who the hell is Arthur P. MacKenzie of. . . where?”

“Emmaus, Pennsylvania.”

“Emmaus? Sounds like a cyber-rodent.”

“Come on, tell the truth,” Dutton said. “You just needed the time to think up that joke, didn’t you?”

“No, I honestly can’t think of an Arthur MacKenzie. Why in God’s name would he call me up and threaten me?”

“The very question we’ll ask when we get the Pennsylvania State Trooper to go out and talk to him,” Westbrook said.

I immediately decided that was a bad idea, but I couldn’t be sure if I thought that just because it was Westbrook’s. I looked at Dutton.

“Barry,” I said, “could we maybe keep the Pennsylvania boys out of it for the time being? We don’t really know what we’re looking for, and a trooper at the door is going to scare off this MacKenzie guy before we find out anything.”

Barry’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I can’t spare Westbrook to drive all the way out to Pennsylvania. You know, someone else might commit a crime while he was gone. Not to mention the travel voucher that the new mayor, if she’s elected, might consider a waste of the taxpayer’s money.”

“I was thinking maybe I’d go myself,” I said.

Westbrook snorted.

“What was that, Gerry?” I said. “I couldn’t hear you over your tie.”

Westbrook started to tell me what an ass I was making of myself, sticking my nose in police business and all those other clichés he was undoubtedly ready to trot out. But Dutton was too fast for him.

“You really want to drive all the way out there to see a man who made what could be construed as a threatening call to your house? Without a police backup?” He seemed surprised when I grinned at him.

“I don’t need the police,” I told Barry. “I’ve got a rental-car mechanic.”

Chapter 14

“I should get my head examined,” Mahoney said. We were tooling down the highway in his rental car van—he calls it “The Trouble-Mobile,” and refers to himself as “Chief Troubleshooter” for the rent-a-car guys. Sorry, but I’m not allowed to mention the name of the company. But remember the last time you rented a car, and they couldn’t find the two-door sedan you had reserved two months in advance? It’s them.

“Why a head examination now,” I asked. “You getting that bad dandruff again?”

“No, because I let you talk me into driving out to some hick town in Pennsylvania to get shot at by a guy who likes to make phony phone calls to freelance writers.”

“Yeah, if he’d just stuck with ‘do you have Prince Albert in a can’, we’d all be better off,” I said. “But nobody said you had to come.”

“Abby did. She said if I didn’t protect you, she’d never let me forget it when your body was discovered.”

I sighed. “Abby spent three years working in the county prosecutor’s office,” I told him. “She’s seen too much crime.”

“Well, she married you, didn’t she?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. I thought you’d let it go.”

We drove in silence for a while because we had obviously hit a valley in the wit department. Mahoney stuck an Electric Light Orchestra eight-track into the “Trouble-Mobile’s” tape-deck. He insists that eight-track is a misunderstood technological miracle, that having four program tracks makes it easier to hear your favorite