For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,55

the morning. I’m surprised my editor hasn’t called me already. I couldn’t keep it quiet if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”

Milt cleared his throat for so long it would have been quicker to just send the Roto Rooter guy down there to see what the problem was. “I’m asking you as a friend, Aaron. Please.”

I wondered when Ladowski and I had become friends. “Does this have anything to do with your name being on Madlyn’s hotel bill?” I asked. What the hell, maybe Diane Woolworth had gotten the headline right and the details wrong. Maybe Madlyn had been having an affair with Milt Ladowski.

“Oh, for Chrissakes, Aaron!” he shouted. “This is a simple matter of human kindness. I don’t want to read the gruesome details of Madlyn Beckwirth’s death in the paper tomorrow morning. Is that so much to ask?”

Maybe I could get something out of him another way. “Okay,” I told him. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. But you have to tell me, can you explain your name on Madlyn’s hotel register?”

Milt didn’t talk for a long time. I knew I hadn’t been disconnected, because the car sounds were still there. There was a click when he picked the phone up to hold it next to his face.

“Honest to God, Aaron,” he nearly whispered. “I haven’t got a clue how that happened.”

Well, that didn’t help much, but I told Milt I’d call him in the morning.

When I put down the phone, Abby and the kids were nowhere to be seen. She had to be upstairs getting them into bed. I could call Barry Dutton, or. . .

I went upstairs. Abby was watching Ethan floss his teeth—something I hadn’t seen since the days of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers— and everything seemed under control. I walked into Leah’s room. The light was out, but I could see the mountain made in her blanket by her fully bent knees, and it was moving around. When she heard me come in, Leah sat up.

“Daddy?”

I didn’t say anything. I just walked over and held out my arms. Leah sat up and reached out, and I got my first Leah hug of the day. I held it for a very long time.

It had been, after all, a very long and unsettling day.

Chapter 6

Once the kids were officially “in bed” (meaning Leah was in bed and Ethan was playing games on his computer), Abby and I went downstairs. Without a word, she walked to the dining room, reached down and opened the door on our sideboard (I had recalled the word since this afternoon), the one we use as a liquor cabinet, and started rummaging through the bottles. I went into the kitchen, took out two glasses, and got a tray of ice from the freezer. I cracked the ice tray, causing cubes to fly all around the room, and corralled enough to almost fill the glasses. The rest went into the sink. What the hell, I’m decadent.

Abby walked in, carrying a bottle of vodka. She knows I don’t care much for the taste of alcohol, so she also carried a bottle of Kahlua. She mixed a Black Russian for me and poured herself a vodka on the rocks. During law school, my wife supported herself as a bartender in Chicago. She learned every drink ever invented, but says she never had to pour anything except Jack Daniels for boilermakers. This was before the Wrigley Field area was gentrified.

We adjourned to the living room, glasses in hand. Each of us took our traditional seat on the couch. I put my drink on the coffee table (okay, the Black Russian table) for a moment, put my arm around Abby, and pulled her close to me. She stayed that way for a sublime moment.

And then the phone rang.

I sighed, but took my drink with me. I already knew it was Barry Dutton, and he had waited as long as his patience would tolerate, hoping that I had developed enough sense to check in with him after having spent much of the day at the scene of a murder. He should have known better.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Atlantic City. It’s lovely there this time of year. And you?”

“This is the worst possible time to be funny, Aaron. Now, I want to hear the whole thing, from the beginning.”

I glanced across the room at my wife, who was plying herself with alcohol and stretching out on the couch, not turning on the television. Strangely,