For Whom the Minivan Rolls (22 page)

I decided to start following the money, but I
couldn’t go out and do that just now, so I’d have to follow it from
my office. This was difficult, since I didn’t know where the money
had gone, or indeed what money we were discussing. It’s very hard
to follow something when you haven’t a clue what it is or where it
started. They don’t teach you that in journalism school—I’m pretty
sure—but it’s still true.

Since I am not, never have been, and never will be a
business reporter, I didn’t have a prayer of deciphering Gary
Beckwirth’s finances. And since Beckwirth was the only person
involved in this whole mess who seemed to have an inordinate amount
of money, he would be the logical jumping-off point. So instead of
rooting around in his business and its dealings, which could have
been swindling every person in the entire state of California for
all I’d know, I decided to start 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 eyes were taking in.

Ethan was sitting on the edge of his bed, Nintendo
controller next to his mouth, and tongue pressed against it. He
took it away long enough to growl, “aren’t you supposed to
knock?”

“The door was open. Ethan. Please pause the game.”
He scowled, but did as I asked.

I sat next to him on the twin bed. He didn’t like
that, because he knew that meant I was going to try and be
reasonable, and that would make it harder to be mad at me, which
was his goal at this moment.

“Ethan, I’m sorry.”

His eyebrows raised a bit. A parent who apologizes?
This must be some devious ploy, designed to lull him into a false
sense of security. Besides, even if he knew that I had done a
hundred things to wrong him that day alone, it was just as true
that I probably hadn’t noticed them. Which of the offenses had put
me over the line?

“Yeah? For what?”

“For only telling you about the things you’ve been
doing wrong. For not pointing out that you’re probably the nicest
boy I know when you’re not mad. And for passing on to you my
temper, which I feel I should point out, I got from your
grandmother.”

That really got him. “Grandma? But
she’s. . .”

“You’re a grandchild. You could burn her house down,
and she’d talk about how resourceful you were to find gasoline in
the garage. That same woman would have put me through a wall if I
so much as wore socks that didn’t match.”

“She’d really put you through a wall?”

“Well, not really, no. It’s kind of an expression I
just made up.” I put my hand out. “Can we start again? Pretend you
just got home, and we didn’t grumble at each other?”

He liked shaking hands. It seemed grown-up to him.
“Sure,” he said, and took my hand. He gave it the exaggerated kind
of shake you’d see in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and I laughed and put
my arm around him.

“I do love you, you know,” I said. “And Ethan, I’m
sorry about the sign on the sidewalk. I’m doing my best to find out
who. . .”

He pulled away. “Uh, Dad? I’d rather not talk about
that, okay?”

That made sense. “Sure.”

“Can I go back to the game now?” We had made
progress, and he didn’t want to undo it. But hey, Nintendo must
take precedence.

“Okay.” I heard the phone ringing. “You go ahead.
And let me know if you do want to talk. . .”

“I don’t.” He was already putting the controller
back to his mouth again. How he could move the controls with his
fingers while sucking on the controller at the same time is beyond
me, but there it was.

I ran to get the phone before the machine got it. Of
all people, Barry Dutton was on the other end of the line, and he
sounded like he was calling from Beirut.

“Barry? Where the hell are you? I can barely hear
you.”

“I’m in the car. Look, Aaron, I didn’t want to call
from the office. Colette Jackson and the troopers are all over me
there.”

“So I take it you still love me?”

“As much as I ever did,” he said sourly. “But I
can’t give you special privileges in front of all them. Look, I’m
coming up on a tunnel, and I haven’t got much time. But you should
know that the prosecutor thinks there’s enough evidence to arrest
Gary Beckwirth for the murder.”

“What? One day of investigation and they’re already
making an arrest?”

“Shut up and listen! They found a gun in Beckwirth’s
house, and it matched the. . .” Static overwhelmed the
line.

Once again, modern technology at its best.

Sure enough, when I got to the Beckwirth compound
the next morning, two Midland Heights police cars and one county
police car were positioned out front. Next to them were two state
trooper cruisers and an unmarked car. Nobody was taking Gary
Beckwirth lightly, which under normal circumstances would probably
have made him feel great. A uniformed cop was at the front door,
which was open. Clearly, the arrest was going down. And Madlyn
Beckwirth’s body wasn’t even in the ground yet.

I don’t have a press card. The state of New Jersey
requires that you get one from a publisher. All the newspapers and
magazines in the state are allotted a certain number, every last
one of which goes to one of their staff members. So freelancers
are, in effect, frozen out of press cards.

New Jersey driver’s licenses don’t necessarily have
photographs of the driver in question attached. So I went into my
wallet, took out my only photo ID, which happened to be my
membership card for the local YM/YWHA, and held it up in front of
the cop at the door. “Press,” I said. He stepped aside, and I
walked in.

The place was in shambles. Police call the process
of going through a residence for evidence “tossing,” and that is
exactly what it is. Every drawer, every cabinet, every closet door
in Beckwith’s mansion, was open. Items of clothing were strewn
about the floor, next to tennis rackets, books, umbrellas,
videocassettes (I knew Beckwirth had a VCR somewhere!), towels, and
all the packaged food in the kitchen. But for the fact that the
videocassettes were all ballet and opera performances, it looked
like my house.

The only other difference was the police. I didn’t
see Barry Dutton, but I knew he had to be there somewhere.
Westbrook was probably in the house, too, wedging the uniformed
cops into corners and stumbling over valuable evidence, rendering
it unusable.

I saw at least four uniforms, not counting the one
at the door. State troopers were, well, trooping through, and a
couple of plainclothes detectives I hadn’t seen before were
loitering in the living room, talking to each other.

Colette Jackson was in the room off the living room,
downstairs from where Gary Beckwirth had “advised” me to return to
his house only if I had cheerful news to report. This was not a day
for cheerful news. Gary hadn’t had many of those days lately.

I walked over to Colette and waited while she told
one of the uniforms to make sure to dust the master bathroom for
prints and to tag and inventory the contents of the medicine
cabinet. The trooper nodded, suppressed the urge to salute, and
headed for the stairs, double-time.

“There must be some serious evidence for all this to
be going on less than forty-eight hours after the crime itself,” I
said by way of a greeting.

Colette smiled the smile that will one day get her a
state judgeship, and said, “we believe we have sufficient evidence
to get an indictment, and a conviction, Mr. Tucker.”

“And that evidence would be. . .”

“I see absolutely no reason to release that
information to the press right now,” Colette said. “Besides, if I
recall correctly, you have no media affiliation as of this moment,
do you?”

A low blow, calling me a freelancer like that. “I
understand a weapon was found. Was it here in the house?”

She didn’t like at all that I knew about the gun.
And she didn’t like not knowing that I knew. That meant someone had
told me something, and now she had to determine who that might be.
To protect my source, I’d have to make sure to let Barry Dutton
show his natural contempt for me when he was in Colette’s
presence.

“I don’t recall saying anything about a weapon, Mr.
Tucker.”

“I didn’t say you said it. I asked if it was found
here.”

“I can’t confirm or deny any information at this
point. You can call my office tomorrow morning if you like.”

“I’m sure you’ll be happy to tell me all about it,
if you’re actually in the office when I call,” I said.

“Count on it,” she answered, and walked toward the
main staircase, where a group of men was descending from the second
floor.

In a cluster were three troopers, Dutton, Milt
Ladowski, and Dan Crawford, a uniformed Midland Heights cop I
recognized. In the center of the cluster was Gary Beckwirth,
wearing the scariest expression I had ever seen on a human
face.

He was smiling.

Beckwirth had the wide, satisfied grin of a child
who has just mastered “Chopsticks” on the piano. With all the law
enforcement personnel gathered around him, each saying something at
the same time, all wearing tense expressions and stealing glances
at the front door, Beckwirth was resplendent in handcuffs and a
beatific smile. It was a chilling look—something you see imprinted
on the insides of your eyelids for days afterward.

“Gary,” Ladowski was saying, “I’ll have you out in
two hours. Just stay quiet and calm, and we’ll make sure that
you. . .”

“Watch your step, Mr. Beckwirth,” one of the
uniforms said, and Gary paid him as much attention as he seemed to
be paying to Ladowski. It was a wonder he didn’t trip over the
bottom step.

Colette Jackson tried to stand in front of me and
block me, but I managed to nudge my way toward the stairs and the
still-moving group. It was almost funny, the way they all moved
like a hive, like the whole cast of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” in
the final episode, taking tiny steps toward a box of Kleenex.