For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,60
saw to it that I’d get screwed out of the $1,000 fee the paper promised to pay. I’d say we’re about even, Milt.”
“Any contract between you and the newspaper is completely outside this conversation, Tucker. We never offered you any money to write this trash in the press.”
Somebody once said that when they call it “trash,” you know you’ve gotten it right. Maybe I’d said it, now that I think of it.
“Is there a reason you called, Milt, or are you just a week behind on your pomposity orders?”
“I’m calling to tell you that my client will no longer cooperate with you in any way regarding the investigation of his wife’s death. He will not accept your phone calls nor allow you to enter his home. He is considering petitioning for a restraining order to ensure that you will not approach his son. You are allowed no access to Gary Beckwirth or his family again. Is that clear?”
“Geez, Milt, how long have you been rehearsing that one? You said it almost without taking a breath.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Tucker.” And he hung up. It was obviously my day to be hung up on, so I called my mother. She wasn’t home. That’s a mother’s equivalent of hanging up on you.
I called my wife. “Are they all after you yet?” she asked.
“Pretty much,” I said. “What you’d expect?”
“Stay away from the Beckwirth story, and all that,” Abby said. She has always been fascinated by my work, or more specifically, by the press. She studied journalism in college, and would have made an excellent reporter if she’d had a less logical mind.
“Yeah, but with a new twist, Abby. The Press-Tribune isn’t going to use me anymore.”
She absorbed that a moment. “You mean they got to your editor?”
I had to laugh. “They certainly have listened pretty hard to either Beckwirth or Ladowski, or they’re just plain paranoid.”
“Oh, Baby, I’m sorry,” she said sympathetically. There just wasn’t anything else to say.
“Do you get the feeling there’s something they don’t want me to find out?”
“Now who’s being paranoid? Besides, Madlyn’s dead. It’s the county prosecutors’ case now. Just report on what they find out.”
“Report for whom, exactly?”
“That’s your job, Sweetie.”
“I met the assistant county prosecutor who’s working the case. And I have to tell you, when she started asking me underwear questions. . .”
“You’re trying to make me jealous, aren’t you?” said Abby in an upper-crust accent. “How quaint.”
“Well, if that’s the way you’re gonna be about it. . .”
“I’ll see you later,” she said. “Don’t make dinner.”
“Words of support if ever I heard them.” I hung up just as the phone rang. It was Wilma, Ethan’s aide, with a long story about how something had almost gone wrong between Ethan and his friend Jon that morning, but Wilma had managed to snuff it out. Wilma’s stories are always about how she handled something efficiently. Makes you wonder why she bothers to call in the first place.
That reminded me: I still had the barbecue sauce mystery to solve. I made a mental note to call the remaining two sets of parents on Mrs. Mignano’s list after I got off the phone with Wilma.
But I didn’t have the chance. In the middle of the conversation, call waiting beeped, and I clicked off gratefully. Wilma’s a very nice woman, but I had an appointment the following Tuesday, and had to find a way to get her off the phone.
“Hello?” I began eloquently.
“Aaron,” he said, “this is Gary Beckwirth.”
Chapter 9
What do you say to a man whose wife was used for target practice in a gambling casino’s hotel room the night before? After the standard, “I’m sorry,” which I had used up in the casino security office, there isn’t a hell of a lot to fall back on.
“Gary, I’m so. . .”
“I don’t blame you, Aaron. I wanted you to know that. I know you tried the best you could.”
“I never guessed it would be this bad, Gary, believe me,” I said, even then realizing how blubbery I sounded. “I was always playing over my head.”
Beckwirth didn’t appear to be listening. It was like he was reading from a script—a variation on the way Madlyn had sounded when she called from Atlantic City. “I just didn’t want you to feel that I blamed you. I don’t,” he said again. “What happened to Madlyn. . . would have happened with you or without you.”
“Gary, are you okay?” Then, taking note of how stupid that sounded, I added, “I mean, considering.”