For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,24
wasn’t as healthy as he seemed. The hearing was definitely going.
I spoke up a little more, but fell down on my heels. I wasn’t intimidating him anyway. I was just pissing him off. “I’m looking for Arthur P. MacKenzie,” I came close to shouting.
“Yes?” Ah. Not deafness. Alzheimer’s. A shame.
“Is Mr. MacKenzie home?” I just about screamed.
He looked at me with a mixture of pity and aggravation. “Yes, he is,” the old man said. “I’m Arthur MacKenzie.”
There was nothing else to do. I signaled for Mahoney to come out from around the corner.
Chapter 15
Arthur P. MacKenzie was as surprised by the reason we were there as we were at finding out he was Arthur P. MacKenzie. He offered us hot coffee, which Mahoney accepted, and served it in the greenhouse, where MacKenzie had been working when we arrived. Vivaldi played on a stereo system he had set up in the large structure, with speakers situated strategically throughout the room. The plants were getting very clear, very well amplified musical nourishment. MacKenzie was, among other things, about six decibels off of deaf. But the sound system, it had to be noted, was quite a step up from “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” in Mahoney’s “Trouble-Mobile.”
We spoke up and over “The Four Seasons” to be heard.
“This is your phone number, isn’t it, Mr. MacKenzie?” I showed him the police printout that Dutton had given me. Verizon clearly showed the number of the call at exactly dinner time on the evening in question. I hadn’t received a phone call for an hour before or after, so there wasn’t any way to make a mistake.
“It might be my cellular, but I’ll have to check,” MacKenzie said. “My daughters gave me the silly thing for when I’m working back here in the greenhouse, but I never use it. You know they charge you even when someone calls you?” He shook his head at the impudence of the phone companies—probably had a nostalgic rush of warmth for the times when Ma Bell was the only monopoly in town—and walked over to a small metal box on a table near some hothouse roses.
MacKenzie opened the box and sorted through a number of “3x5” index cards, each of which bore a phone number neatly printed in dark marker. He found one marked “CELLULAR,” and compared it to the paper I’d handed him.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said in a dreamy voice. “It’s my number, all right.”
“And I’ll bet you didn’t call me that night,” I offered as he stashed the card in the box and set the box back carefully in exactly the same place.
“Mr. Tucker, before your unannounced arrival here tonight, I had never heard of you, and no offense, my life didn’t seem all that much emptier.”
“No offense taken,” I said. I was starting to like this guy.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you gentlemen,” he said, “but I’m sure, Mr. Tucker, I’ve never called you and threatened some woman I’ve never met.”
“Are you sure nobody else could have used your phone, Mr. MacKenzie?” Okay, so I was grasping at straws, but I’d driven all that way, and was looking at another two-hour trip down the musical memory lane of my youth on the way back. I had to come home with something.
MacKenzie shook his head. “No, nobody ever comes in here except me and occasionally one of my daughters. Besides, I’d never leave someone alone in here. I’m very protective of my plants.”
“Maybe somebody picked up the phone without your hearing. . .”
“I know my hearing isn’t what it used to be, Mr. Tucker, but I like to think I would have noticed someone using my phone while I was in the room. And as I said, only my daughters come here to visit me. You did say the caller was male, didn’t you?”
I forced a smile and shook MacKenzie’s hand. “Yes, I did. And I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time, Mr. MacKenzie.”
“Not at all. And put that phone down, Mr. Mahoney.”
Mahoney looked sheepish and replaced the phone in the drawer. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You needed to try. But you see, I did notice. I hope you didn’t call out of the area. They charge you for that, you know—at least on my plan.”
“I didn’t get to call anybody, Mr. MacKenzie. You were too quick for me.”
MacKenzie laughed until he started to cough. “That is the first time anybody’s said that to me since Jimmy Carter was in office,” he said.