For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,66

with what I could understand.

I searched web sites with local real estate connections until I found a record of Gary Beckwirth’s purchase of the old “White House” site. I recalled that at the time (Abby and I had moved to Midland Heights about four years before Gary and Madlyn), there had been considerable talk about the great deal the new owners had gotten on the property. The “Mean Old Man” had no heirs, and the estate had been directed to dispose of the property as quickly as possible.

But it was still something of a shock to come across the purchase price of $1.2 million. Five years ago, that was a tremendous amount of money. It wasn’t exactly pocket change to me now. I looked around at the crumbling shell of my $140,000 house, and marveled at how I was still able to keep up with the mortgage payments.

Even more interesting was the fact that the transaction appeared to be solely in Gary Beckwirth’s name. Even though he was clearly supplying the money, most married couples (and even those who aren’t married) will opt to put a house in both spouses’ names, just in case. . . well, in case one of them dies, so the other will have a clear title to the home.

Could it have been that Gary knew Madlyn was going to die first? Might he have cooked up this whole kidnap subplot to put everybody off the scent? I really wanted to assume the Barlows were to blame, but I was lacking anything resembling motive, evidence, or even the suggestion of hostility from either one of them toward Madlyn.

Ethan and Leah know that even when I’m working, so long as I’m not on the phone, they are to bring completed homework to my desk so I can look at it. I’m not the teacher, but I do need to see what they are having trouble with, and in Ethan’s case especially, it had become such a routine that it wasn’t questioned anymore. I could set my pants on fire, and be leaping around the room looking for a bucket of water, and he’d bring over his math homework.

In fifth grade, Ethan was bringing home math problems I had trouble with in my sophomore year of high school. My father was very strong in math, and probably should have pursued engineering instead of house-painting, but the math gene had skipped my generation and gone right to Ethan.

He walked over, still sulking, and tossed the sheet with geometry problems onto my desk with disgust. He had, as usual, written “Math—Ethan” on the top of the paper, despite the fact that the math teacher would know it was math, what with all the numbers and the fact that she had assigned it and all, but that’s Ethan. You put the subject and your name on each assignment, and that’s that.

“There. Can I watch TV now?” he mumbled, sneering out of one side of his mouth. Despite my complete inability to decipher what this sheet might cover, I made a show of examining it for a long time, just to prove to him that homework was important and shouldn’t be rushed through, and, I admit it, to piss him off, since he was pissing me off. So withdraw the nomination for “Father of the Year.”

I handed him back the sheet and nodded, and he tromped up the stairs to his room, where I’d be sure not to set eyes on him for another two hours. Leah, deep into her “R”s, was leaning on the table, tongue sticking out the right side of her mouth, the most adorable child of the millennium.

A groan was audible in the room, and it wasn’t until Leah looked up that I realized it had come from me. “Are you okay, Daddy?” she asked.

“Sure, Puss. I’m fine.”

But there was no disputing it: I wasn’t being a great father to her brother, and I knew it. So I dragged my weary butt out of the chair and up the stairs to Ethan’s room.

It was its usual maelstrom of used socks, videocassette boxes with no cassettes, cassettes with no boxes, and video games. The unmade bed at least still had its sheet on, which was a welcome sight. There were crumbs on the floor, and a peeled apple from the night before had turned pectin brown in a bowl on his nightstand. I remembered I was here to make up with the boy, so I ignored virtually everything my