A Farewell to Legs: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,58
assignment, we will never get another paying job for as long as we live. So immediately after the bags were lugged in the door, and while my wife bravely attacked the food supply in our refrigerator, and my children busied themselves with television, video games, and trying to kill each other, I checked my phone answering machine and my email.
I had not checked my messages from the road, since Abby gives me a funny look when I do that during a vacation, and there were twelve messages from the four days we’d been gone. The first was from my agent, Margot Stakowski of the Stakowski Agency of Cleveland, Ohio.
“Aaron!” As usual, she sounded shocked. “Didn’t I tell you there was no market for mysteries? Oh well. I’ll read it and call you back.”
Margot sounded as enthusiastic as if I’d written a screenplay about athlete’s foot, but that’s Margot. Hey, if I were some big-name screenwriter like Charlie Kaufman, I wouldn’t be represented by someone in Cleveland.
There were two messages from my mother, who apparently had forgotten I’d told her we were leaving on Thursday. She was considerably more frantic in the second message than the first. There was a message from Lydia Soriano at Snapdragon, not at all frantic but asking for a progress report. Leah’s gymnastics teacher called to ask where she was (I’d forgotten to call and cancel). Ethan’s friend Chris mumbled something about coming over to play Play Station. Melissa asked if Leah could come over and play. An editor at the Star-Ledger asked if I might be interested in a story about the latest in the commercial and industrial real estate market. A telemarketer asked if we wanted to refinance our mortgage. And Barry Dutton asked me to call him as soon as I got back.
I was just about to do that when the last message kicked in. “This is Preston Burke,” the whiny little voice said. “I’m looking for Abigail Stein, but that was a man’s voice on the machine. Am I calling the right number? I’ll call back.”
Thank goodness Abby didn’t hear that message, as she was in the kitchen turning whatever dross we had left over into something that would be magnificent to look at and delightful to taste, much like herself. I stared at the machine a moment, then dialed Barry Dutton’s home number.
“Dutton.”
“Barry, it’s Aaron Tucker. I just heard a message. . .”
“Aaron. I wanted you to know, I heard on Friday that the charges against Preston Burke had been dropped.”
My voice sounded like I’d been swallowing razor blades again. “I beg your pardon?” I rasped.
“You heard me,” Dutton said. He actually sounded a bit amused, the swine. “You’re gonna love this one.”
“I’d be willing to lay money I won’t.”
“Let me see if I can’t make you feel better,” he said. “It turns out that Burke actually didn’t do it.”
“Wait a second,” I said, and put him on hold. I beckoned to Abby in the kitchen. “Pick up on the wall phone,” I told her. “Preston Burke’s charges have been dropped.”
“What?” She walked to the phone double-time and picked it up. I pushed the button on my desk phone.
“Go ahead, Barry. Abby’s listening in.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. I got a call from the Bergen County prosecutor on Friday. Turns out Burke really didn’t shoot his girlfriend at all, just like he’s been saying.”
“That’s impossible,” Abby told him. “Six different witnesses all saw him do it.”
“That’s the funny part,” Barry said. He waited, but neither of us was in a laughing mood. “It turns out there’s this guy, Waldrick Malone.”
“Waldrick?”
“Shut up, Aaron. I’m talking. Yeah, Waldrick Malone. Same size as Burke, same general build, and—get this—same face. People who have seen them side-by-side swear they could be twins, but they’re not even distantly related.”
“Oh, come on,” Abby said. “You’re telling me these two guys look so much alike that people standing in broad daylight could-n’t tell them apart? People who knew Preston Burke thought this Malone guy was him?”
“I’m telling you, Abby. I saw both mug shots, and I would have sworn it was the same guy.”
Abby sat in one of the kitchen chairs. “How could I have missed this?” she said. How could she have missed it? How could she have found it?
“Hold it, Barry,” I said. “So this guy looks like Burke. Let’s say for the sake of argument he sounds like Burke, too. How did he happen to get mad enough at Burke’s girlfriend to shoot her?”