For Whom the Minivan Rolls (13 page)

Clearly, her father was a Satan-worshipping,
heroin-addicted, alcoholic Hell’s Angel, since not one chromosome
in this young woman could possibly be traced to Diane Woolworth.
But then I looked on the baby grand piano and saw a picture of
Diane standing next to a man in his fifties wearing a seersucker
suit and bow tie, with close-cropped hair and tortoise-shell
glasses.

Maybe Diane had put her wild past behind her. Maybe
Jane had been adopted. Maybe she’d been raised by wolves, and Diane
and her husband had been jungle missionaries who had taken her back
to civilization, about, I don’t know, two weeks ago, and were still
teaching her about the ways of living among humans. Or maybe I was
making a snap judgment based on appearance.

“Where’s the car keys?” she said to her mother, not
even glancing in my direction. Jane held out her hand to Diane,
palm up. Give me the keys, Lady, and there won’t be no trouble. She
blew a bubble. Thank goodness it was gum after all.

“Jane, do you know Mr. Tucker? Mr. Tucker, this is
my daughter Jane. Jane, Mr. Tucker is looking into poor Mrs.
Beckwirth.” Clearly, Diane was going to keep her Merchant-Ivory
fantasy alive at all costs. Jane more or less turned her head in my
direction and grunted, which I assumed was a sort of greeting among
her people.

“Yeah. The car keys.” She chewed more violently now,
perhaps a subtle threat to hand over the keys and let her be on her
way. I figured I had virtually nothing to lose.

“I don’t suppose either one of you heard anything in
the middle of the night, Monday before last?” I asked, eyes wide to
show my complete non-threatening innocence.

Jane grunted again, but Diane, who had stood and
walked to the adjoining kitchen so as to get the car keys off a
calico-covered ring on the wall, stopped and put a finger to her
chin. This was obviously a gesture she had learned by watching
“Masterpiece Theatre.”

“Jane, didn’t you say you’d heard a motorbike or
something the night before we heard that Mrs. Beckwirth had gone
missing?”

“CYCLE, Mother! MotorCYCLE! How many times do I have
to. . .” Jane composed herself as best she could, which
meant she took two steps toward Diane and stuck out her hand again.
“NOW can I have the car keys?”

“You heard a motorcycle that night, Jane?” I asked
in my coolest, most grownup voice.

“Nah.” She turned toward me and sized me up, clearly
determined I was an inferior member of the species, and curled her
lip into a sneer. “I thought it was a bike, but it turned out to be
a minivan with a bad muffler. I went to the window and saw it.”

“Did you see Madlyn Beckwirth?”

“I dunno.”

Diane brought Jane the keys, which she pocketed
without a word to her mother. Jane headed for the door, and I
stood.

“You don’t know?”

Jane stopped, and the sneer became a look of
impatience and disgust I didn’t think was possible in a girl over
the age of seventeen. “I saw
something,
you know. I’m not
sure it was
her.
This minivan peals out, you know, like
ninety miles an hour, and I see something fall over the railing,
backwards, you know, down the hill over there next to that great
big house. Coulda been her, you know. Coulda been a sack of shit
too.”

“Jane! Really!” I thought Diane might actually put
her hands to her ears, but she managed to avoid the urge.

“Did you tell the cops what you saw?” I asked.

“What, that fat guy with the tie from 1972? Nah. He
didn’t ask, you know.” I knew. She turned and walked out the side
door without so much as a backward glance. Diane sat back down at
the dining room table and took a sip of tea.

“You sure you won’t have another crumpet, Mr.
Tucker?”

That was odd, in a way. I’d heard what Jane had
said, and that would seem to be the only useful information
available in the Woolworth home today. Would Diane continue the
conversation just to have someone to talk to, or did she have
something eating away at her that she wanted to spill? I didn’t
want another crumpet, but I sat down.

“Did
you
hear anything that night, Mrs.
Woolworth?” What the hell, you never know what you might hit. Diane
could have seen Madlyn flying over the side of the low railing next
to her house. She could have seen Madlyn hop on a broom and fly off
into the dark night. She might express her observations in terms
that would do justice to Emily Brontë, but it was possible she’d
seen something.

“Oh, no, Mr. Tucker. I sleep very peacefully. But I
did hear. . . and you understand, I’m not one to
gossip. . .”

Finally! The busybody I’d been looking for!

“Of course not, Mrs. Woolworth. This is a strictly
confidential investigation.”

“Exactly. So my name will not appear in print?”
Diane eyed me carefully for signs of non-British behavior, but I
was having none of it. In a moment, I’d be saying “lift” instead of
“elevator.”

“Not at all.” I thought that sounded like something
Inspector Morse would say.

“Well then.” Diane seemed to compose herself, trying
to devise exactly the proper way to impart the information and
still seem like everything she said belonged on an embroidered
sampler. “There was talk around the department that Mrs. Beckwirth
and a certain gentleman were. . . friendly.”

“The department? What department?”

“The English department. I teach 19th century
English literature at the university.” Midland Heights has a large
population of professorial types who don’t want to live in the
small city across the river that the state university calls home.
It’s one thing to teach people, another to live near them, you
know.

“And you’d heard that Madlyn might be having an
affair?” The hell with being polite about it.

“Well, Mr. Tucker, that was the talk around the
department.” Diane was flustered that I wasn’t being British
anymore, and she nervously sipped from her cup, eyes watching me
over the rim.

“Why would this be the talk of the university
English department?”

Diane looked away. We were clearly in an area she
didn’t want to explore. But she had opened this particular can of
kippers, if you will, and she’d have to deal with the consequences.
“Well,” she said, “the gentleman in question is also. . .
employed at the department.”

“He teaches English at the university.”

“Yes.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with a
cloth napkin, again looking away. Maybe she was considering
adjusting the small photograph of Queen Elizabeth she had framed on
the wall. It was crooked by maybe a half-inch.

But I was getting impatient with all the cute little
games. “What’s his name, Mrs. Woolworth?” I asked in my best
Humphrey Bogart-without-the-lisp voice.

“Oh, I can’t decide if I should. . . it’s
all idle gossip, you know,” she twittered.

“Mrs. Woolworth?” I practically snarled. She lowered
her head a bit and spoke very softly.

“Martin Barlow.”

For a moment, I couldn’t make the connection. My
head for names isn’t great under normal circumstances. But in this
case, my head was now overloaded. The rush of information that came
from that name was almost too much to handle all at one time.

“Rachel Barlow’s husband? The guy whose wife is
running for mayor? The one who had Madlyn Beckwirth as her campaign
manager?
That
Martin Barlow?” I had risen out of my chair at
some point in this discussion, but couldn’t remember when.

Diane Woolworth nodded, just perceptibly.

“Well, why didn’t you say anything before this?”

She looked up at me, offended, and her eyes
widened.

“Well, Mr. Tucker,” she huffed, “I wouldn’t want
people to think that I’m a busybody!”

I couldn’t depart Diane Woolworth’s home fast
enough. After thanking her for the crumpet—and getting an
unsolicited recipe I threw away immediately after leaving—I all but
ran for the door, and headed out on foot across Midland
Heights.

Olszowy and Barlow campaign signs were already
littering lawns about town, as the academics and the relatively new
parents took up arms against the old fogies and the
traditionalists. You could tell a lot about a family by whether a
red Olszowy or a blue Barlow sign, each with understated stars and
stripes, was displayed on its lawn.

I was walking at about twice my usual pace, and
keeping my eye out for any unusually slow-moving minivans, as I
decided which new information I would act upon first. Should it be
Jane’s witnessing a blue minivan possibly knocking someone or
something over the guard rail to the side of McThemePark? Or should
I immediately work the sex angle, and question Rachel Barlow’s
husband Martin about his alleged hot affair with, of all people,
Madlyn Beckwirth?

It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. Jane’s
information was more easily and efficiently dealt with by the cops.
I lit out for the Barlow home. Removing my cell phone from my
jacket pocket, I dialed police headquarters, where Marsha the
dispatcher answered on the second ring.

“Midland Heights Police Headquarters. Sergeant
Ames.”

“Hi, Marsha, it’s Aaron Tucker.”

“This is getting to be a habit, Aaron.”

“I know. I’m gonna have to join Cops Anonymous. Is
Barry there?”

I picked up the pace just as a male bicyclist, a dog
on his leash, passed me. The poor mutt was probably as winded as I
was. “No, he’s out of the office meeting with the county
freeholders. Aaron, are you okay? You sound like you’re
running.”

The guy on the bike made a left turn, nearly
julienning his dog with the rear wheel. “I’m all right, Marsha. I’m
just in a hurry. When’s Barry coming back?”

“Not until after two.” Shit. It wasn’t even eleven
yet. “You want to talk to Gerry?”

“No, I don’t
want
to talk to Gerry, but what
choice do I have?”

Marsha chuckled in her deep-throated way, a guttural
guffaw that indicated real amusement. “I’ll put you through,” she
said.

I walked half a block while Westbrook made it all
the way across his cubicle to the telephone, a distance of maybe
three feet.

“Westbrook.”

“You don’t have to be so proud of it.”

There was genuine consternation in his voice. “Who
is this?”

“It’s an obscene phone call, you dimwit. Gerry, it’s
Aaron Tucker.”

I was getting used to people groaning when they
heard my name on the phone, but with Westbrook, I actually took
some pleasure in it. Getting groaned at by Gerry Westbrook was
practically a red badge of courage. “What do you want, Tucker?” he
said when he was done grimacing out loud.

“I
want
Bob Zemeckis’ private phone line so I
can pitch him a script,” I said. “But I’ll settle for some
information on the Beckwirth case.”

“And why should I even bother telling you anything I
know?” He did his best to sneer.

“Because, in the extremely unlikely event that you
do know something, your chief has made it very clear he will not be
pleased if you withhold it from me,” I explained patiently. “And
because, in the extremely unlikely event that you do know
something, you probably don’t understand it, and I can explain it
to you in terms you might be able to absorb. I have a
seven-year-old, and she used to have the same trouble you do.”

I made a left turn onto North Seventh Street and
tried to remember which house was Barlow’s. It was brown, I was
pretty sure.

“You’re a real riot, Tucker,” Westbrook said, in his
imitation of wit. Jackie Gleason could have taught him a couple of
things about delivery, if he didn’t have the disadvantage of being
dead. And he was still funnier than Westbrook. “How about you tell
me what you know, and then maybe we can trade.”

“You’re eating an eggplant parm sandwich right at
this moment— that’s what I know,” I said. “Now, tell me if you
searched the area of undeveloped land to the north of Beckwirth’s
house the morning you got the call.”

“Why would we do that?”

I’d figured as much. “Because you’re the police,
Westbrook, and you’re supposed to investigate possibilities. I have
a witness who saw a minivan tear-assing around that bend at the
time Beckwirth supposedly went missing, and the witness may have
seen this minivan hit something, or someone, that fell down that
embankment. So how about you get somebody over there to look?”

Westbrook rumbled like an oncoming thunderstorm.
“You want to tell me who this
witness
is, Tucker?”

“No, I really don’t. This person may need protection
at some point, and I’d just as soon you didn’t know the name. You
might trip over your tie on the way into the safe house and set off
the alarm.”

“Very funny.”

“Oh, and while you’re at it, get somebody to check
the front bumper of that minivan that was tailing me. If it’s the
same one, there may still be some blood or cloth or something from
Madlyn Beckwirth on it.”

“Anything else,
Boss?”

“Nah, that oughta do it for this shift. Afterward,
you can go out to the Salvation Army Thrift Shop and buy yourself a
new sports jacket and tie. See ya, Westbrook.”

As I approached Barlow’s house (which was, in fact,
green), I started to close the cell phone, but heard Westbrook call
my name again, and reopened it before the connection could be
broken.

“Hey, Tucker!”

“Yeah, what is it, Gerry?”

“How’d you know about the eggplant parm
sandwich?”

I hung up on him.

When nobody answered the doorbell at the Barlows’, I
spotted some movement around the side of the house, so I walked by
a perfect white picket fence and through an impeccable trellis arch
into the backyard.

The Barlow home was something of an anomaly for
Midland Heights. It was new construction, for one thing—a variation
on the Epcot mini-mansions—with skylights coming out its ears. It
also had a backyard that would be medium-sized for a normal suburb,
meaning it was an enormous one for Midland Heights. You had to
wonder how a college professor and his non-working wife afforded
it. There was, of course, a “Barlow for Mayor” sign very tastefully
adorning the lawn.