For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,45

sixteen pictures Leah had drawn for my last birthday. They all had rainbows, and a girl with long brown hair. The girl’s hair usually was longer than her body, which was composed of sticks. Everything was relatively in proportion except the fingers, which were tremendously long. It looked like a girl with huge spiders on each hand. . .

“What’s just it?”

“The story. See, I’ve been at it a week now, and. . .”

“That sentence doesn’t end well, does it, Aaron?”

The man had keen instincts. “Well, no. See. . .”

There was another beep in the headset. “Dave, hang on. I’ll get rid of this one faster, I promise.”

“Great. I’ll hold my breath this time.”

I clicked on the flash button once again, steeling myself for a call from either my mother or Anne Mignano. “Hello?”

A woman’s high-pitched voice—with a nervous chuckle after almost every word. “Mr. Tucker? Aaron Tucker?”

Terrific. Now somebody’s going to try and sell me a subscription to Newsweek while I’m trying to wriggle out of a cheap newspaper assignment. “Yes, this is Aaron Tucker. But I’m not. . .”

“This is Madlyn Beckwirth,” she said. “I hear you’ve been looking for me.”

Chapter 26

There was a very long pause. It might have lasted hours. I’m not sure. They say when you go into shock, time really doesn’t register all that well on your brain.

“Hello?” the woman said.

“Um. . .” I stood up. When I’m having really important, or tense, conversations, I stand up. It’s a reflex. I paced around the room as far as the 25-foot phone cord would allow. “You’re Madlyn Beckwirth?” Stall. Find the functioning area of your brain while you keep her on the line with the other 90 percent.

“That’s right. They tell me you’re looking for me. I just wanted you to know that I’m okay, and there’s no reason to look for me anymore.” The voice certainly matched the photograph I’d seen—tentative, a touch naive—and yet not at all a voice to dismiss out of hand. A woman who probably sat in her perfectly appointed family room eating ladyfingers off a silver tray while watching a hockey game on TV.

“Who? Who tells you I’m looking for you?”

“I’m just calling to let you know I’m fine, and I’ll be back in a few days. This is really no big deal.” She didn’t seem to be reading from a script, and there wasn’t the kind of tension in her voice that would indicate anyone standing nearby with a gun trained on her.

“So you haven’t been kidnapped?”

Madlyn—if it was Madlyn—laughed, one of those explosions from pursed lips that Carol Burnett used to be so good at. A sound like “Pahhhh!” She composed herself quickly and said, “no, I’m not kidnapped. I’m fine. Really. There’s no reason to write about me in the paper.”

Ah-hah. So that was it. “If nothing’s wrong, why don’t you want your family and friends to know that?” I asked. “Your husband is very worried, and your son. . .” You need to know, I’m not a good liar.

“My son is. . . what? Worried I’ll come back?” The voice was sarcastic. Well, she knew her kid well, assuming it was Madlyn. An assumption that was getting harder and harder to avoid.

“He’s worried,” I said, very unconvincingly. “He wants to know where you are. Where are you?”

There was another stretch of silence in the conversation, this time coming from the other end of the phone. Damn! I wished Barry Dutton was listening in on my phone. He could have traced this call to its source. First time I’d ever wanted somebody to tap my phone.

The one thing I could remember to do was pull the little phone-to-recorder wire I keep for telephone interviews down from the shelf over my desk. I plugged one end into the phone line, for the briefest of seconds cutting off Madlyn, and pressed the exposed phone cord into the other, female, end. I could hear the caller again.

She said, “hello? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I replied. I found the portable cassette recorder behind my computer monitor, and plugged the other end of the phone line into the microphone jack. “I was asking where you are.” Damn! No blank cassette!

“I don’t think I want to tell you,” the woman replied. I crept into the living room, adjacent to my office, and tried to reach the blank cassettes, which we keep on the mantle of the non-operational fireplace. Must get that thing repaired one of these days, when I have $5,000