For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,5
the floor in front of the living room couch, and Leah had simply taken off her pajamas while watching The Wild Thornberrys that morning, and left them on the couch. Toys and school papers obscured the coffee table, which was not an antique but was old, and there was a distinct smell of cooking oil in the air, because I’d made some french fries to go with the hamburgers I’d cooked for dinner. Two nights ago.
Home, sweet home.
I took off my jacket and hung it on the banister at the bottom of the stairs, then took a left and walked past the $25 thrift store armchair into my office, otherwise known as the playroom, where action figures and fax machines co-existed peacefully as an example to objects worldwide. It made one proud to work at home.
The answering machine light was flashing, and there were three messages. One from the pediatrician’s office, confirming Ethan’s check-up for the next day at 4:30. One from my mother, who in fact doesn’t nag like Gary Beckwirth, but sometimes you have to exaggerate to make your point. The last was from Dave Harrington, an editor I’d worked with before at the Press-Tribune. My mother was fine, and wondered why I wasn’t in my office at 11 a.m. on a Thursday.
I called Harrington back first, since it was unlikely that talking to either the pediatrician or my mother would result in a paycheck. And I got him on the second ring.
“City desk. Harrington.” My eyes wandered to the lithograph of the Marx Brothers over my desk. Once, I’d had this idea for a screenplay where Groucho had to solve a murder mystery. Then some guy actually started writing Groucho Marx detective mysteries. All my best ideas have been used by other people. It can wear you down after a while.
“Explain to me how you can have a city desk when all you cover is suburbia.”
“You’re not starting this again, are you, Aaron?”
“Just doesn’t make sense, that’s all. There’s no city. What’s the desk for?”
“Holds paper clips, stuff like that. Without it, I’d just be sitting in a swivel chair with nothing to do.” City editors are damn witty people.
“How you doing, Dave?” Next to the Marx Brothers lithograph, which my parents had bought me when I was 14 and probably didn’t think I’d keep for 29 years, was a Bullwinkle clock. How would Rocky the Flying Squirrel solve this puzzler? Hell, there were only two criminals in his known universe. If Boris and Natasha hadn’t kidnapped Madlyn Beckwirth, I was out of luck.
“Not bad. You up for a feature?”
This was a bit of a surprise. So far, the best I’d gotten out of Harrington had been a business profile on a company that makes lottery tickets. They had made me sign a non-disclosure agreement when I entered the building. Imagine asking a reporter to sign a non-disclosure agreement. It’s my job to disclose things. But, I digress.
The point is, the lottery company story was just a sidebar, nothing major, since I hadn’t worked with the Press-Tribune very much yet and they didn’t know if they could trust me with something bigger. A feature, a longer piece with better placement, meant more money, and was definitely a step up on the paper’s pecking order.
“Sure. What’s it about?”
“It’s an investigative piece.” Harrington’s voice sounded funny, and I don’t mean ha-ha funny. “Woman from your town went and got herself missing and her husband thinks the cops aren’t looking into it enough.”
Wow. And it’s only a five-minute car-ride from Beckwirth’s house to mine. If I hadn’t stopped at the supermarket for a gallon of one-percent milk, I’d probably have gotten Dave’s call live. That Beckwirth sure moved fast for a guy consumed with worry.
“Madlyn Beckwirth?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
I groaned. “I’m incredibly intuitive. Who gave you this piece, Dave? Who mentioned my name? It wasn’t your idea, was it?”
“As a matter of fact, no. I got it from the exec editor maybe ten minutes ago. Funny, because I’ve been talking you up for weeks, trying to get you something better, and today they ask for you by name.”
Beckwirth must have walked straight out of the room with me, picked up a phone, and called Harrington’s publisher. Money knows money. The rest of us are from Central Casting.
“It figures. What does your exec want me to do?”
“The way I hear it, he wants you to forget the cops and find the wife. Apparently the guy thinks she’s been kidnapped, even though