For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,51

hand might have brushed the table, you know a side. . . what’s the word?”

“A sideboard.”

“Right. Sideboard, in the hall, on my way in. Besides that, I haven’t touched anything.”

“Look down,” Abby said. “Did you step in, you know, anything?”

That hadn’t occurred to me. If there had been blood on the rug, would I have seen it? I didn’t want to look, but now I had no choice. I examined the carpet from the door to the spot in which I was standing.

“No. I didn’t step in anything.” There was a faint “beep” in the phone. “I’m going to lose you in a second, Abby. The battery’s running out. . .”

“Don’t worry. Go down into the lobby and get casino security. The state has troopers who work in the casinos, and they’ll deal with this.

I’ll call Barry Dutton and let him know what’s going on. Tell the troopers everything you know. And Aaron. . .” “Yeah, Baby?” “It’s okay. I love. . .” The battery on the goddam phone died.

Chapter 4

The state troopers assigned to casino security were, as Abby had predicted, completely uninterested in me after confirming a few things with Barry Dutton. Their lack of interest, however, didn’t stop them from keeping me for three hours. They took me to a bare office in the bowels of the hotel and did the usual checks on my driver’s license to make sure I was who I said I was (who else would want to be me?), questioned me a couple of hundred times about how I’d come to be there, went over my phone conversation with Madlyn to the point where I could recite it in my sleep, and determined beyond a shadow of a doubt (never mind how) that I didn’t have a firearm in my possession.

Unfortunately, all this took time, and they had called Gary Beckwirth almost immediately upon my reporting the murder. So by the time they were done talking to me, Gary was sitting in the security waiting room, waiting his turn to be questioned. He was on a metal folding chair—the hotel, which had blown its budget on wallpaper and crystal chandeliers in the casino, had spared considerable expense in its security section. It had the curious effect of reminding me how Jews, when we are mourning, sit on the least comfortable things we can find to remind us of our loss.

I had to walk right past Gary to get to the door. But he didn’t cause the scene I was expecting. He didn’t leap out of his chair, burst into tears, and accuse me of killing his wife. He didn’t scream that I had botched my job and led violent criminals to his defenseless spouse’s bed. He didn’t even take a swing at me. What he did was worse.

Gary Beckwirth watched me walk through that room, never taking his dead, expressionless eyes off me. Milt Ladowski was sitting next to him, and Milt stood when he saw me. But Gary never acknowledged my presence other than to stare unblinking into my face the whole time we were in the same room. I wondered where Joel was, and whether he cared that his mother was dead.

I walked over to Milt, who offered me his hand.

“Aaron.”

I gently shook Milt’s hand, and tried to avoid looking at Gary. “We need to talk,” I said, with an exaggerated sense of urgency in my voice.

Milt nodded. “I’ll call you when we’re. . . through here.”

I couldn’t avoid it. I had to talk to Gary, too. I stepped to the side, in the square-dance move you make when you’re proceeding down a receiving line. Gary did not stand up, but he kept staring at me.

“Gary, I’m so sorry.” For once, I wouldn’t have minded if he’d stood up and hugged me.

Instead, he stared. That’s all. Just those big matinee-idol eyes, devoid of any feeling, only beginning to understand the hole left in his life, staring. At me.

“Don’t be,” he rasped, and then turned away. He sat with his chin resting on his fist, like Rodin’s “Thinker,” but it wasn’t a comical pose. It was the position of a man who literally couldn’t hold his own head up without assistance.

I nodded back at Milt, and walked out of the casino as quickly as I could without running.

Facing a two-hour drive in the dark, I plugged the cell phone into the cigarette lighter in the car, but I didn’t need to talk at this point. I needed to think. I’d just