For Whom the Minivan Rolls (8 page)

“Was that sound I just heard the minivan
accelerating at a great rate of speed?” Barry asked.

“Lord, you
are
a great detective, Chief. It
was too hard for me to get the whole plate, but I got
Thomas-Victor-seven. And there can only be one minivan doing sixty
through this town’s streets. Maybe one of your crack officers can
track down this dastardly villain.”

“Maybe. But only if he’s black.”

“I thought you had to say African-American.”

“I
am
African-American! I can say ‘nigger’ if
I want to! Aaron, get over here as fast as your little white feet
can carry you, okay?”

“Gotcha, you racist. I’m five minutes away.”

“And Aaron?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t call me
Chief
.”

Gerry Westbrook was already in Dutton’s office when
I got there, wearing a tie that looked exactly like the Formica top
of a diner table from the ‘50s. I’m pretty sure there was a shirt
under it, of a clashing pattern, but the tie was so wide, it was
hard to tell. Westbrook had last seen the inside of a clothing
store when John Travolta was staging his first comeback.

I figured the best way to deal with Westbrook was to
ignore him, so I spoke directly to Barry. “Did your guys find the
minivan?”

“In this town, you want us to find one minivan?”
Dutton smiled. Westbrook scowled, probably because I hadn’t offered
to polish his detective’s shield when I came in.

“You’re telling me you couldn’t
find. . .”

“We found it,” Barry said. “The plates are stolen.
We’re tracking the ID number. And the van was empty when we got to
it.” Dutton sat back in his chair and every once in a while flipped
his eyes toward Westbrook, trying to remind me to include him in
the conversation.

“Did you find anyone suspicious walking nearby?”

“Gee, Tucker, you gonna tell us how to do our jobs
now?” Westbrook decided that if I wasn’t going to include him, he’d
include himself. As usual, he did so with the subtlety of a tank
battalion.

“Yeah, that’s it, Westbrook. I’m not concerned about
someone following me down the street with possible intentions of
harming me. No. What I’m worried about is hurting your feelings.
Always a top priority.”

“When you have twenty years in on this job,
Tucker. . .”

“I’ll be about six grades above you, Westbrook.”

“You little. . .”

Barry smacked his hands on his desk, palms down, to
silence us, and it worked. He stood up, glaring at both of us.

“Do I have to separate you two, and write on your
report cards that you don’t play well with others?”

“Sorry, Barry,” I mumbled. I thought of looking at
my shoes for a while, but decided that would be too
over-the-top.

“Chief,” said Westbrook. It was hard to know what
that meant. I considered telling Westbrook not to call Barry
“Chief,” but decided that might not be what Barry had in mind about
getting along, and all that. I stayed quiet.

“Here’s what we have,” Dutton continued. “We have a
missing woman who hasn’t contacted her family in a week. We have a
husband who’s not exactly cooperative. We have speculation that the
woman’s disappearance might be tied to the Rachel Barlow campaign
for mayor. We have a blue minivan with stolen license tags
following a private citizen down the street for no apparent
reason.”

I interrupted. “Rachel Barlow also told me that
Madlyn had been getting threatening phone calls, from outside the
Verizon coverage area, for a few weeks before she disappeared. That
sound familiar?”

“If you hadn’t interrupted,” Dutton added with the
trace of a gleam in his eye, “I was about to say that we have all
those things I listed, plus a call to your home the other night,
Aaron, from the cellular phone of a Mr. Arthur P. MacKenzie of
Emmaus, Pennsylvania.”

I searched my brain, taking in the information. “Who
the hell is Arthur P. MacKenzie of. . . where?”

“Emmaus, Pennsylvania.”

“Emmaus? Sounds like a cyber-rodent.”

“Come on, tell the truth,” Dutton said. “You just
needed the time to think up that joke, didn’t you?”

“No, I honestly can’t think of an Arthur MacKenzie.
Why in God’s name would he call me up and threaten me?”

“The very question we’ll ask when we get the
Pennsylvania State Trooper to go out and talk to him,” Westbrook
said.

I immediately decided that was a bad idea, but I
couldn’t be sure if I thought that just because it was Westbrook’s.
I looked at Dutton.

“Barry,” I said, “could we maybe keep the
Pennsylvania boys out of it for the time being? We don’t really
know what we’re looking for, and a trooper at the door is going to
scare off this MacKenzie guy before we find out anything.”

Barry’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I can’t spare
Westbrook to drive all the way out to Pennsylvania. You know,
someone else might commit a crime while he was gone. Not to mention
the travel voucher that the new mayor, if she’s elected, might
consider a waste of the taxpayer’s money.”

“I was thinking maybe I’d go myself,” I said.

Westbrook snorted.

“What was that, Gerry?” I said. “I couldn’t hear you
over your tie.”

Westbrook started to tell me what an ass I was
making of myself, sticking my nose in police business and all those
other clichés he was undoubtedly ready to trot out. But Dutton was
too fast for him.

“You really want to drive all the way out there to
see a man who made what could be construed as a threatening call to
your house? Without a police backup?” He seemed surprised when I
grinned at him.

“I don’t need the police,” I told Barry. “I’ve got a
rental-car mechanic.”

“I should get my head examined,” Mahoney said. We
were tooling down the highway in his rental car van—he calls it
“The Trouble-Mobile,” and refers to himself as “Chief
Troubleshooter” for the rent-a-car guys. Sorry, but I’m not allowed
to mention the name of the company. But remember the last time you
rented a car, and they couldn’t find the two-door sedan you had
reserved two months in advance? It’s them.

“Why a head examination now,” I asked. “You getting
that bad dandruff again?”

“No, because I let
you
talk me into driving
out to some hick town in Pennsylvania to get shot at by a guy who
likes to make phony phone calls to freelance writers.”

“Yeah, if he’d just stuck with ‘do you have Prince
Albert in a can’, we’d all be better off,” I said. “But nobody said
you had to come.”

“Abby did. She said if I didn’t protect you, she’d
never let me forget it when your body was discovered.”

I sighed. “Abby spent three years working in the
county prosecutor’s office,” I told him. “She’s seen too much
crime.”

“Well, she married you, didn’t she?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. I thought you’d let it go.”

We drove in silence for a while because we had
obviously hit a valley in the wit department. Mahoney stuck an
Electric Light Orchestra eight-track into the “Trouble-Mobile’s”
tape-deck. He insists that eight-track is a misunderstood
technological miracle, that having four program tracks makes it
easier to hear your favorite song fifty-seven times during a
four-hour drive, and that outweighs any acoustical inferiority. Of
course, he disputes the acoustical inferiority as well, saying that
“it’s just numbers the guys in
Hifi Magazine
make up. You
can’t
hear
it.” Maybe he should skip the rest of his head
and get just his ears examined.

What he laments is how hard it is to get eight-track
cassettes of recently recorded music. Since he doggedly sticks to
that ancient audio format, we are therefore stuck, when in his
vehicle, with music that at best was current when we were in high
school. A lot of the tapes, of course, have worn or broken, so
there are what Mahoney calls “flat spots,” where the music is
interrupted by scotch tape and 8-millimeter movie splices (Mahoney
doesn’t believe in videotape, either).

So Jeff Lynne and ELO sang most of “Sweet Talkin’
Woman” as we made our way west, over the “Trenton Makes—the World
Takes” Bridge into Pennsylvania. It could have been worse, I guess.
Mahoney could have gotten stuck on Quadraphonic sound.

By the time we passed a sign reading “Welcome to
Emmaus,” ELO had gotten through “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” four more
times, and they were currently halfway through the “Concerto for a
Rainy Day,” crooning out lyrics I actually claimed to understand
for a week in college after my sophomore year girlfriend dumped me.
Might have been the tequila, but I digress.

Being an up-to-the-minute 21st century technologist,
I consulted my MapQuest directions to the home of Arthur P.
MacKenzie, who all evidence suggested had called me a few nights
ago and said that Madlyn Beckwirth would be dead if I kept looking
for her. After a couple of wrong turns precipitated by Mahoney’s
refusal to turn down one of his favorite songs—“Mr. Blue Sky”—we
pulled into the driveway of a rather large, lonely ranch-style
house with a backyard that looked like it easily took up three
acres. By Midland Heights standards, this was (the Beckwirth estate
excepted) the largest piece of property in the world.

The house itself was unremarkable except for a
greenhouse, attached to a back room, that jutted out from the house
at a 90-degree angle. Not the kind of thing you generally see in
suburban Pennsylvania, but not horribly unusual, either. MacKenzie
clearly liked his flowers. The greenhouse had no broken windows,
and the open skylights on either side of the structure indicated
that the owner kept it active. Perhaps this was where he hatched
his evil plots, cultivating orchids, while he planned to abduct
helpless housewives and thereby take over the world when husbands
were left to do the laundry. I dismissed this idea, since I already
do the laundry at my house.

We had decided that, on this visit, Mahoney would
stay back, out of the way, and observe. If I looked like I was
getting into trouble, he’d advance, but otherwise, we’d make it
look like I was here alone. Before I rang the doorbell, Mahoney
trudged off to one side of the gravel driveway. The crunch of the
gravel made me wince. I hoped MacKenzie’s hearing wasn’t acute.

As Mahoney ducked around the side of the house, I
pushed the doorbell button and started to open the storm door. It
was still too early to take out the glass and put in the screen.
Could get cold again any day now. In fact, this evening was getting
a bit chilly, and I was glad I had brought my jacket.

The front door took its sweet time opening, and
eventually revealed a tall, thin, elderly man with enough bearing
to be minor royalty. Forget Ian Wolfe or John Gielgud. If I ever
needed someone to play a butler, this gentleman would be exactly
the right choice. I couldn’t dismiss the possibility, though, that
MacKenzie could afford a butler. On the other hand, most people in
this neighborhood couldn’t afford a greenhouse, and I was willing
to bet that the majority of them didn’t threaten people’s lives on
the telephone. So who was I to judge?

“Hello,” he said, with a question in his voice. The
voice itself was a little rheumatic, but otherwise he appeared to
be in perfect shape. I should look so good when I’m 103 years
old.

“I’m looking for Arthur P. MacKenzie,” I said, in my
best gruff voice. When you’re 5’5” (I was doing my intimidating
stance, and my calf muscles were feeling it), a gruff voice,
however incongruous, is your first line of defense.

“Yes?” he said. Maybe the old guy wasn’t as healthy
as he seemed. The hearing was definitely going.

I spoke up a little more, but fell down on my heels.
I wasn’t intimidating him anyway. I was just pissing him off. “I’m
looking for Arthur P. MacKenzie,” I came close to shouting.

“Yes?” Ah. Not deafness. Alzheimer’s. A shame.

“Is Mr. MacKenzie home?” I just about screamed.

He looked at me with a mixture of pity and
aggravation. “Yes, he is,” the old man said. “I’m Arthur
MacKenzie.”

There was nothing else to do. I signaled for Mahoney
to come out from around the corner.

Arthur P. MacKenzie was as surprised by the reason
we were there as we were at finding out he was Arthur P. MacKenzie.
He offered us hot coffee, which Mahoney accepted, and served it in
the greenhouse, where MacKenzie had been working when we arrived.
Vivaldi played on a stereo system he had set up in the large
structure, with speakers situated strategically throughout the
room. The plants were getting very clear, very well amplified
musical nourishment. MacKenzie was, among other things, about six
decibels off of deaf. But the sound system, it had to be noted, was
quite a step up from “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” in Mahoney’s
“Trouble-Mobile.”

We spoke up and over “The Four Seasons” to be
heard.

“This
is
your phone number, isn’t it, Mr.
MacKenzie?” I showed him the police printout that Dutton had given
me. Verizon clearly showed the number of the call at exactly dinner
time on the evening in question. I hadn’t received a phone call for
an hour before or after, so there wasn’t any way to make a
mistake.

“It might be my cellular, but I’ll have to check,”
MacKenzie said. “My daughters gave me the silly thing for when I’m
working back here in the greenhouse, but I never use it. You know
they charge you even when someone calls
you?
” He shook his
head at the impudence of the phone companies—probably had a
nostalgic rush of warmth for the times when Ma Bell was the only
monopoly in town—and walked over to a small metal box on a table
near some hothouse roses.

MacKenzie opened the box and sorted through a number
of “3x5” index cards, each of which bore a phone number neatly
printed in dark marker. He found one marked “CELLULAR,” and
compared it to the paper I’d handed him.