For Whom the Minivan Rolls (30 page)

Abigail stood. “It’s necessary for us to go to Jeff
and Susan’s? We could all just stay upstairs. . . If
somebody comes, it’d be easier for us to call. . .”

I walked over to her and put my hands on her
shoulders. “Abby,” I said, “I’ll be fine. But I
won’t
be
fine if I have to worry about you and the kids while I’m doing
this. Go to Mahoney’s. I know you’ll be safe there, and I won’t
have to think about that part of it.”

She gave me a long kiss, which is also somewhat
unusual in the middle of the kitchen. Behind us, I suddenly heard
Ethan going “woowoo.” That’s my boy. Abby broke off the kiss and
looked around at him. Since our talk upstairs, Ethan had been a
model citizen, and Abby, though a little suspicious, had decided, I
think, not to question his good behavior. Leah sidled up next to
Ethan, her shoes already on.

“You ready to go?” Abigail said.

“Yeah!” Leah cried. “Dinner at Uncle Mahoney’s
house!” Ethan smiled and shook his head at his sister’s enthusiasm.
He hadn’t gotten that jazzed up about anything since Keenan and Kel
had starred in their very own movie.

“All right, then,” said my wife. “Let’s get going.”
She gave me what I’m sure she’d refer to as “one last look,” and
shepherded the kids toward the front door. I followed.

Leah looked up, a puzzled look on her face. “You’re
not coming, Daddy?”

“Not this time, Puss. I have to work. But I’ll see
you later.” Leah made her “disappointed” face, sticking her lower
lip out, and I laughed in spite of myself. I made her give me an
extra-long hug. It’s better to be safe than sorry. Then she turned
and walked out to beat Ethan to the “good” seat in the car.

Ethan stopped at the door, too, perhaps sensing
something unusual in how Abby and I were looking at each other. You
never know what Ethan’s taking in, and what he’s not. “See you
later, Dad,” he said, with a conspiratorial smile on his face. Then
he came over and gave me a hug, which isn’t unheard of, but is also
not terribly common. Either he was grateful I hadn’t grounded him
or he knew something was up. I stroked his hair for a moment, and
then he was out the door, too.

Abby was doing her best to look normal. She looked
around for her keys, found them on the kitchen counter, and picked
up her purse from the foot of the living room stairs. “Okay, then,”
she said. I stopped her before she reached for the door and gave
her a long, serious kiss. When I finally let go, she had that look
in her eye again.

“That was for luck,” I said.

“I hope you don’t need luck.”

“Who knows? Maybe nobody will show up at all,” I
said, knowing she wasn’t buying that for a second.

“I dunno,” Abby said. “You are awfully good at
pissing people off when you want to. The right one, whichever it
is, will probably come by. Do you know which one is coming?”

“I think I do, but I hope I’m wrong,” I said.

She nodded. “I hope nobody comes.” I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t tell her what I was really thinking—that I couldn’t
stand it if no one came. I needed this to be over, tonight. “Call
me as soon as we can come home,” Abby said.

“I will.” She gave me another kiss, a normal one
this time, and left. I stood in the doorway and watched her drive
the kids away in the Saturn. Mahoney’s house was only ten minutes
away—not even a long enough trip for a tape to keep the kids from
killing each other in the car.

I spent the early part of the evening quite
pleasantly, really. It was a warm-ish April night, and the Yankees’
game against Baltimore was on the tube. I made some pasta and
watched the game’s first few innings, making sure I was somewhat
visible through the front window, but not so visible that I’d be a
good target, though that wasn’t a tremendous concern. I’d seen the
wounds on Madlyn Beckwirth, and whoever the killer was, s/he
certainly wasn’t much of a marksperson.

In true Madlyn fashion, I left my front door
unlocked, although I stopped short of opening it just a crack. When
somebody decided to come in, the creak of the door would be enough
warning for me.

About nine, I closed the drapes in the front room
and turned on the outside light. Wouldn’t want the killer to fall
down the stairs and break a leg. In America, it’s better to get
killed than get sued. I did open the front closet door at one
point, and during the course of my visit there checked to see that
my thirty-six-ounce Bobby Mercer bat (which dates me pretty
seriously) was where I could get to it quickly. I slid the closet
door closed only half-way.

It was a little after ten, and the Yankees were
ahead of the Orioles by two runs in the ninth inning, when the
front doorknob started to turn. And the first thing I felt was
annoyance. This murderer was not only coming to do me harm, he was
going to make me miss the end of the game, too. After a
microsecond, though, my heart started pumping double-time, and I
stood and prepared to greet Madlyn Beckwirth’s murderer. The front
door creaked ominously. I made a mental note to plane that door
down one of these days.

Joel Beckwirth walked into the living room. He was
carrying a handgun.

“Oh, Joel,” I sighed. “I was really hoping I was
wrong.”

He closed the door behind him and leveled the gun at
me, but his face was scrunched up. “What the hell do you mean?”

Best to keep him talking. The more he talks, the
less he shoots. “I knew somebody would come to try and kill me, but
I was hoping it was Madlyn.”

“Madlyn? Madlyn’s dead.” He was forgetting why he
was here. That was good.

“I thought maybe the woman in the hotel wasn’t
Madlyn,” I babbled. “I thought maybe she and Martin had trumped it
up, you know, found themselves a prostitute in Atlantic City,
convinced her to come up to the room, and shot her so Madlyn could
pretend to be dead. Go on the ultimate vacation, you know? That
would have been good, huh?”

Joel was in about two feet over his head. “What do
you think this is?” he asked.
“Murder, She Wrote?”

“I didn’t know kids your age watch that,” I said,
talking much faster than usual. “Does it run on some cable channel,
or. . .”

“Shut up,” Joel said. “I’m not here to talk.” Uh-oh.
He remembered again.

“No,” I said, facing him. “You’re here because you
shot your own mother.”

“She
wasn’t
. . .”

“That’s true,” I said. “But she raised you. Your own
mother didn’t
want
you, did she? Madlyn pretty much adopted
you. And you shot her.”

He took a couple of steps closer, and let his eyes
scan the room, making sure the drapes were closed enough to block
the view of him from the street. “You weren’t there,” he said. “You
don’t know what it was like.”

“Oh, I’ll bet it was bad,” I told him sincerely.
“I’m sure she took every opportunity to tell you she didn’t want
you, didn’t love you, had-n’t asked for you. But still, she had
been there when you had a cold, and your own mother hadn’t. Madlyn
might not have loved you, but she took care of you. Did that mean
Madlyn deserved to die?”

Joel shook his head. If he’d known I’d engage him in
an emotional debate, he might have prepared more diligently. “Just
shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up and leave me alone!”

“Madlyn wasn’t going to come home this time, was
she, Joel? She was going to stay away, and blackmail the others
into letting her do it. Am I right?” He stayed silent, but didn’t
actually raise the gun to kill me, so I figured I was ahead. Delay
is all. “And when she tried to pressure Martin and Rachel, they got
scared. Something like this hits the fan, it’s gonna be hard to get
elected mayor.” I circled the whole time, trying to get closer to
the closet door, but Joel was keeping his back to the closet, and
blocking my way.

Joel actually seemed interested in our discussion,
like he hadn’t heard it put exactly this way before, and was seeing
things from a fresh perspective. “So they decided Madlyn had to go,
and when Rachel couldn’t talk Martin into getting rid of her, they
tried Gary,” I said. “But Gary, unlike everybody else in this
bizarre little story, actually loved Madlyn, and refused to discuss
it. How am I doing so far?”

“I wasn’t there for all of it,” he responded, quite
reasonably, but he didn’t seem to consider this whole thing to be
all that serious. It was like we were just talking about a little
dust-up at school. The worst he was looking at was a couple of days
suspension, and he could watch TV and eat pizza at home. How bad
was that?

I finally managed to get near the closet door, but
when I reached, Joel raised his gun. “What are you doing?” he
asked.

I dropped my hand and ignored the question. “I’m
betting that when they came to talk to Gary, you were upstairs, and
you heard them, just like you heard me talk to Gary today. And you
volunteered, didn’t you? You hated Madlyn enough to actually
volunteer.”

At this, Joel became quite animated, and shook his
head vigorously. “No, no,” he said. “I didn’t ask to do it. They
came to me. After my father left the house, Rachel came back.”

“Your birth mother.”

“Yeah, and she said she knew Madlyn had been bad to
me. She said Madlyn was being bad to them, too, and somebody had to
do something about it. I finally said I would.”

I circled away from the closet, and he followed me,
lowering the gun but still watching my every move. “Did Rachel get
you the gun?”

“Nah. My dad had it around the house. He didn’t tell
Madlyn about it because he knew she was scared of guns.” Joel was
proud of himself now. He’d been smart enough to find a gun without
help. “But Rachel and Martin gave me a ride down to Atlantic City
in a rental car, so if anybody saw the car, they wouldn’t think it
was us.”

“And you went up to the room and shot her.”

“Jesus, man, you should have seen her. Waiting for
her precious Martin to show up, all dressed in dirty underwear. I
couldn’t look. I just pointed the gun and pulled the trigger
without looking. Then I went home.”

It was perfect. Rachel and Martin got what they
wanted, Gary would protect Joel out of parental guilt, and Joel,
little budding sociopath that he was, didn’t even see the wrong in
what he’d done.

“You killed her, Joel. You ended her life. She can
never have her life back again. Is that fair?” Maybe I could get
him to feel something.

“She got in the way, and she deserved it. Just like
you deserve it.” Then again, maybe I couldn’t.

“I don’t think you want to kill me, Joel.” Joel
shrugged and raised his left eyebrow. I could almost read his
thoughts: “What the hell? Kill one person, kill another. What’s the
difference?”

“You’re a problem. You need to be solved.”

“Where’d you get
this
gun?” Keep him
talking.

“From Rachel and. . . oh, no,” Joel said.
“Not this time.” And he raised the gun to fire.

I moved quickly to my left as Joel shot. The sound
of a gun going off in a small room is truly jarring, not like it
sounds in the movies. Stunned, I stopped and stared at Joel. The
bullet missed its intended target—me—by several yards and blew out
the woofer on my left stereo speaker, four feet over my head and
way to my left. If all this took two seconds, it was a lot, but it
was enough to throw off my rhythm, and my composure, and I became
rooted to the spot where I was standing. This time, Joel held the
gun with both hands and aimed it straight at my chest, and he
squinted.

Jeff Mahoney came barreling out of the front closet
on slightly shaky legs. The barstool he’d been sitting on inside
the closet fell over and Joel half-turned, reacting to the sound.
But it was too late. Mahoney, a good six inches taller than Joel
and fifty pounds heavier, had a bear hug around Joel’s arms,
causing him to drop the gun even before Joel knew what was
happening.

I, of course, bravely dove behind the couch until
the whole thing blew over. Joel shouted, but was quickly subdued.
Mahoney held him tight while I picked up the gun with a pencil.

“So,” I said to Mahoney, “finally out of the closet,
eh?”

“Just tell me one thing, Joel,” Mahoney said. “That
rental car— what company was it from?”

The Yankees gave back the lead in the ninth inning,
but managed to eke out a win in the thirteenth. Ken Singleton, the
former Oriole who now announces Yankee games, called it “a typical
game between these two teams.”

Barry Dutton showed up with Westbrook, and promised
to let me have all the information on the arrests of Martin and
Rachel Barlow/Beckwirth, who would be charged with conspiracy to
commit murder, among other juicy crimes. Barry scolded me for not
warning him beforehand, and Westbrook said some things so stupid I
chose not to remember them.

I called Abby as soon as the cops left. She and the
kids were home in maybe twenty minutes. Abby gave Mahoney a longer
hug than she gave me, which was probably his reward for saving my
life, and my punishment for putting her through this. Mahoney, for
his part, gave his statement to the police, hugged Abigail and
Leah, shook Ethan’s hand, and left, after shaking his head at me
and laughing. Sitting in a closet all night—some plan.

Joel Beckwirth would probably not be tried as a
juvenile, Colette Jackson told me the next morning, but as an
adult. This came as no surprise to me, since Abby had predicted and
explained it the night before. But there was significant evidence
Joel had no earthly idea what he did was wrong. He’d been screwed
up on so many levels for so many years that it was hard to know
exactly what had penetrated his defenses, and what had merely
bounced off. He’d either be declared incompetent to stand trial, or
be declared not guilty by reason of insanity. When he’d shot
Madlyn, he’d been glad he could rid himself of someone he saw as a
tormentor, but he couldn’t look at her while he did it. In all
likelihood, he’d be hospitalized for a good few years.