For Whom the Minivan Rolls (23 page)

“Milt, is Gary confessing to his wife’s murder?” I
shouted as they neared us.

“Who the hell let him in?” Dutton yelled at the
cops. Good move, Barry.

“Shut up, Barry, I’m press.” Why not give Colette
the whole show? But I’d better be careful not to go over the top
and protest too much. She’d get suspicious.

Barry, knowing when to quit, gestured to the cops,
who walked over and stood intimidatingly over my shoulder, making
sure I couldn’t reach Beckwirth.

“Milt, did you hear my question? Is Gary
confessing?”

Ladowski didn’t answer, but Gary Beckwirth seemed to
wake up on hearing my voice. He looked over at me, still wearing
his Rod Serling smile.

“Aaron,” he said. “Aaron’s here.”

“Gary, are you. . .”

“Don’t talk to him!” Ladowski yelled. “Don’t say a
thing!”

They’d almost made it to the door, when Beckwirth
turned to talk to me, as calm and peaceful as I’d ever seen a
man.

“It’s all right, Aaron,” he said. “It’s really
better this way. Madlyn will understand. Don’t worry. She’ll
understand.”

They practically pushed him out the door. Colette
Jackson gave me one last sneer before leaving the house. I stood
rooted to the spot.

I just couldn’t move until I knew Gary Beckwirth had
been driven away. The sight of that smile again would have been
more than I could bear.

“The murder weapon?” Abby asked. “To arrest him that
fast, they must have Gary’s fingerprints all over it and a match on
the bullet.”

The kids were in bed and I was having a bowl of
cereal, the finest nighttime snack ever invented. How this whole
breakfast thing got started is anybody’s guess. Abby, meanwhile,
was eating a piece of melon with a spoon. A visitor to our kitchen
would have assumed that there had been a total eclipse of the sun
and it was actually seven o’clock in the morning.

“Barry Dutton called me after he got home,” I told
her. “They have a match on the bullet, a .38-caliber Smith &
Wesson police special, which they said is probably the most popular
gun on the planet. They found this particular gun under a bush in
the backyard, where he’d thrown it. Registered legally to Gary
Beckwirth three months ago.”

“I thought Madlyn wouldn’t let him have a gun,” Abby
said, wiping some melon juice from the corner of her mouth. “I
thought they scared her.”

“As well they might,” I said. “Maybe Gary just
didn’t tell Madlyn he had one.”

“So did Gary confess?”

“No, not according to Barry. But he’s not exactly
saying he
didn’t
do it, either. He just keeps smiling that
psychotic smile of his and saying ‘it’s all for the best.’ I’m
telling you, he looked like Tony Perkins at the end of
Psycho
, sitting there in the hallway with that weird grin on
his face.”

“At least Gary hadn’t dressed up like his dead
mother.”

“Not that we know of,” I said.

“Well, they have the gun, they have the bullet, they
have Gary acting nuts. That might be enough, but I can’t see them
moving on it that fast unless they had something else,” Abby said,
in full attorney mode.

“Like what?”

“A witness, maybe. Someone willing to testify they
saw Gary shoot Madlyn, or heard him say he was going to shoot
Madlyn.” She looked at the kitchen ceiling for a moment, apparently
in deep and sober thought. “We could use a dropped ceiling in here
to cover the water damage,” Abby said.

I laughed in spite of myself. She gave me a glance,
realized how quickly, and without notice, she’d moved from one
subject to the other, smiled guiltily, and shrugged. If she got any
more adorable, I might have to throw myself on the kitchen floor
and let her take advantage of me.

“I’d like to talk to Lawyer Abby now, please,” I
said.

“Wait,” she said, doing her best imitation of Joanne
Woodward in
The Three Faces of Eve.
She rolled her eyes back
in her head, allowing her head to fall back. Then, Abby “came to,”
and looked me in the face, dropping her voice a full key lower on
the musical scale.

“Ask your question.”

“What advantage is there for a couple to buy a very
expensive property and only put one name on the mortgage and the
title?”

She got up to throw out the melon rind. I pinched
her on the butt as she passed, and Abby said, “hey,” involuntarily,
not even really thinking about anything but my question. It’s my
gift of irresistibility. Don’t ask me to explain it.

“Well, if they weren’t married, or thought they
wouldn’t stay married, the one with more money might not want the
house to revert back to the partner in case. . .”

“Exactly. In case one died prematurely.”

“But Madlyn wasn’t the one with the money,” said
Abigail.

“That’s the confusing part. Are there any other
reasons, legal reasons, to do it that way?”

“Well, the only thing I can think of is that one of
the people might not want their name to show up on a legal
document.”

Something about that made me sit up and ignore my
Golden Grahams for a moment. “Why wouldn’t they want that?”

“If they own a business, they wouldn’t want the
property in their name because it could be claimed in a suit
against the business. Or maybe they’re using an alias, they have
outstanding warrants, they don’t want their name to show up in a
computer somewhere,” Abby said, completely in hypothetical mode
now. “If the other one can afford to assume the debt all alone, why
risk putting up a red flag?”

I got up and kissed my wife with a passion I usually
reserve only for. . . well, my wife, actually. But this
time, it took even her by surprise.

“What was
that
for? Not that I didn’t like
it, but. . .”

“You may have just given me my first actual, bona
fide idea in this story.”

“What story? You don’t have an assignment.”

“Don’t sweat the details. There’s only one thing
that bothers me, though.”

Abby’s eyebrows crinkled. “Only one thing? I’d have
thought there’d be hundreds.”

“Yeah. If you were going by an alias, would you
choose
to be called Madlyn Beckwirth?”

The Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick is
tall, white, and old, and looks like it should house the National
Widget Corporation. One summer, when I was a student at Rutgers
University, a friend clerking in the building got us up to the roof
to watch Fourth of July fireworks from six neighboring towns
simultaneously. That’s the best use I can think of for that
courthouse.

Strangely, it has the look of a building in which
nothing much happens. And for the most part, that’s true. Criminals
come and go, jurors are shown the “welcome film” daily in the
basement, then spend their day reading paperback novels and the
local newspapers until three o’clock comes around and they can go
home.

If you walk into the County Courthouse, you have to
make a choice in the lobby. To the right is the court system, and
to the left, the county government’s offices. The birth
certificates for those born in the city’s two major hospitals or
anywhere in Middlesex County are kept there, along with death
certificates, marriage licenses, some automobile records, and other
governmental dross. Much of it is on paper, since the county is
still hoping that this whole computer thing will just blow over,
and everybody can get back to work.

The County Building side, specifically the county
clerk’s office, is where I found myself late the next morning. I
had already fielded a call from Barry Dutton, who was making it a
point to keep me informed whenever he was not in his office, and
treating me like the political leper I am while he was in his
office. Dutton said Gary Beckwirth had made bail after an
arraignment (big surprise), and was now at home.

Madlyn Beckwirth’s funeral was scheduled for the
next morning. At one o’clock this afternoon, however, the Barlow
campaign was still going ahead with its scheduled fundraising
“coffee” (nobody wants to go to a tea anymore, apparently) in
Martin and Rachel Barlow’s backyard. All the best Democrats would
make an appearance, but there would be no music, out of respect for
poor departed Madlyn. Matters of life and death come and go, but
the race for mayor in Midland Heights must go on, you know.

Standing in front of the clerk’s window, I was
patiently explaining for the third time why I was not the person
whose records I was requesting.

“I’m a member of the press,” I said. “This is a
matter of public record. I don’t want a copy of anything. I just
want to see the public record. It’s very simple.”

Apparently, not that simple. The very large lady
behind the window scowled at me as if I had requested her underwear
size, so I could publish it in the newspaper the next morning.

“This isn’t your marriage license,” she said.
“Right?”

Eye-rolling wouldn’t be sufficient here to make my
point. I would have to do a dramatic double-take. Lucky for her, no
glass of water was handy, or she would have gotten a spit-take that
would have made Mel Brooks jealous.

“Look, I’ve explained this three times. Is there a
problem, or is there someone else back there I can talk to? Is the
great Oz behind the curtain? One of his minions? Somebody?”

Somehow, my natural charm was eluding this woman,
and she made a sound very much like a growl before saying, “I’ll
check.” Then she turned and walked away, probably to check the job
postings on the bulletin board so she’d
never
have to come
back. The three people behind me in line grumbled—that’s New Jersey
for you. If you stand in a line long enough, somebody will stand
behind you, figuring there must be something good at the front of
the line, or you wouldn’t be bothering. But the real pleasure in
lines is complaining about their length and the amount of time you
waste standing in them.

I turned to the one woman and two men standing
behind me and let a frustrated sound out between my lips. “Civil
service,” I said.

“I’m civil service,” said the burlier of the two
men. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be back at my desk.” The woman
didn’t look especially pleased, either. I turned back toward the
window, properly chastised.

After several eternities, the large window woman
returned with another, older woman dressed in a suit from J.C.
Penney. “I’m the supervisor,” she said. “What’s the problem?”

I moaned and explained the situation to her again.
“You want the county archives,” she said. “Not the clerk’s office.
That’s upstairs on Three.” She pointed at the ceiling, so I’d know
which way was up.

I thought the two men and the woman, now joined in
line by two other women, would break into applause as I left. I
considered coming back to do an encore, but humility prevented
me.

Upstairs on Three, amazingly, was a room marked
“County Archives,” in which a very helpful woman named Louise
listened to my spiel, showed me the proper computer, and explained
its operation in words designed for a backward nine-year-old.
Within minutes, I was deep into the records of other people’s lives
(okay, so I looked up Leah and Ethan’s birth certificates to see my
name listed as father).

Turning my attention to the task at hand and not my
own personal history, I very quickly located the title on the
property. Sure enough, Gary Beckwirth’s was the only name listed
under “purchaser.” Current ownership records on the property showed
the owner (or lien holder) as the Summit Bank Corporation, and
Beckwirth again as the sole mortgagee.

That much I had already known. But when I dug back
further, I found a marriage certificate for Gary Beckwirth and
Madlyn Rossi from February 2, 1978, from a ceremony performed right
across the street in New Brunswick City Hall by Judge H. Raymond
Jones. The couple listed their address as Middlesex Borough.

What’s scary, looking back on it, is how close I
came to missing what was important. After checking the marriage
license, I started to search for the next milestone in Gary and
Madlyn’s lives. And that meant Joel’s birth, fourteen years ago. So
I scanned through a considerable amount of material, and was
gaining speed when something in the back of my brain noticed the
name “Beckwirth” go by. I almost didn’t go back, thinking I’d only
imagined seeing it, but a good reporter doesn’t take anything for
granted, and neither, in this case, did I.

And there it was: on June 1, 1978, less than four
months after they were married, there appeared in the court of
Judge Roger C. Lienhart a petition for the annulment of the
marriage of Gary Beckwirth and Madlyn Beckwirth, née Rossi. The
petition had been granted the same day.

That’s why Madlyn Beckwirth’s name didn’t appear on
the title to Gary Beckwirth’s home. She wasn’t his wife, and hadn’t
been for more than 20 years.

Stunned, I started searching for more bombshells,
but there was no record of other marriages for either Gary or
Madlyn. Oddly, I couldn’t find a birth certificate for Joel
Beckwirth, either. That meant that Joel was not Beckwirth’s son,
and therefore didn’t really share his last name, or that Joel was
born in another county, or something else I hadn’t thought of. I’d
have to examine some statewide records to find that out. Of course,
if Joel had been born in New York City, for example, it might be
more difficult to find his birth certificate. For all I knew, he
had been born on a kibbutz in Haifa. Or maybe he hadn’t been born
at all, but was actually the product of a laboratory experiment
gone horribly wrong.

It led to a whole slew of new questions: if Madlyn
and Gary’s marriage had been annulled so soon after they were
married, more than twenty years ago, who was Joel’s father? Why
were they still living together? Was that even Madlyn who had been
killed in the hotel in Atlantic City?