For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,59
shut up.
“No woman wears that kind of stuff for the hell of it, Mr. Tucker. She wears it only if she thinks it’s going to be seen.” The three of us— Barry, Westbrook and I—picked out three spots in the room to look at, so as not to be discovered wondering what it was Ms. Jackson had on under her suit.
“You also said that the door was ajar when you walked up to the hotel room, is that right?” I nodded again, still looking at the picture of Barry Dutton, framed on the wall, shaking hands with former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman. “Did you knock first?”
“When I knocked, the door swung open. I called inside, and then walked in when I got no answer. Madlyn was on the bed, and she had clearly been shot dead.”
“Have you ever seen a murder victim before, Mr. Tucker?”
“No, but. . .”
“Okay. So, how did you react? Did you gasp? Cry out? Throw up? What was the first thing that ran through your mind?”
The last thing I wanted to say was that I considered Madlyn Beckwirth’s death to be a superior plot point for one of my forthcoming screenplays. “Why are you asking me this?” I said. “Am I a suspect? Do I need to call my lawyer?”
“Leave your wife alone,” Dutton said. “Nobody thinks you killed Madlyn Beckwirth.”
“Then what is this about?”
“We’re trying to determine what your interest in this case is going to be now that you’ve written your story,” said Colette, smiling.
So that was it. They felt I had shown them up, and now they were going to freeze me out of the rest of the story. I stared at Dutton.
“I would have believed it of Westbrook, and Ms. Jackson I’ve never met, but you, Barry. I thought you’d be fairer than this.”
Dutton’s eyes widened. He knew what I was saying, and as much as he hated it, he knew I was right, too.
“I think we’re done here,” said Colette Jackson. “Why don’t you go home now, Mr. Tucker?”
Chapter 8
When I went home, things weren’t any better. The answering machine was just bursting with thrilling phone messages: one from Milt Ladowski, one from Abigail, one from Gary Beckwirth, another from Ladowski, one from Ethan’s aide, Wilma, another from Ladowski, one from my mother, who had discovered that one of the pills she was taking to lower her blood pressure had caused impotence in rats, and one from Harrington. I called Wilma first, but she was in class with Ethan, and would call back. So I called Harrington.
“You see the story?” I said.
Harrington’s voice sounded, I don’t know, formal. Like he was being listened to by people who intimidated him. Or maybe I was being paranoid. “Yes, it was very good, Aaron,” Harrington said. “A fine job of reporting.”
“You okay, Dave?”
“Sure. It’s just. . . I’m afraid this isn’t the story we had discussed initially.”
I stood up and started pacing. “I know that,” I said. “But this is the way the story developed. It’s actually a better. . .”
“I’m afraid we’ll only be able to pay you the usual two hundred,” he blurted out. “That’s all that’s in the budget for a news story like this.”
I stopped pacing and my jaw hit the carpet. “Are you serious?”
“I’m sorry.”
“But what about the follow-up? There’s got to be a follow-up on a story like this. . .”
“We’re going to have our staff writer in your town handle it.”
“Sheila Warren? Sheila Warren’s great for the library benefit, Dave, but crime reporting. . .”
He started talking very quickly. That’s never a good sign, unless the person giggles a lot between sentences and is blonde. Sometimes, not even then. “Aaron, there have been. . . changes in the way we’re budgeting the desk these days. So. . .”
I’d heard this one before. “So you’ll be cutting back on freelance, right?”
There was a long silence. “That’s right. I’m sorry. Believe me, if it were up to me. . .rdquo;
“Dave, is someone there with you? Listening to this conversation?”
“No. I’m sorry Aaron, I have someone on my other line. We’ll mail the check.” And he hung up.
I absorbed that for a few minutes, and it turned out to be a few minutes too long. This time, Ladowski found me in.
“Didn’t you promise me that you’d keep this story out of the papers, Aaron?!”
“I said I’d do what I could. It turned out I couldn’t do anything.”
“Your name is on the article! You didn’t even try!”