For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,1

come home and locked himself in his room with Pokémon Stadium for three hours, which is a half-hour longer than usual.

“You’re going to take that to your grave, aren’t you, Aaron?” asked Ladowski. “The kid did what he thought was the right thing.”

“So did Lee Harvey Oswald. Okay, so that’s Beckwirth. The father looks like some rich guy off a daytime soap, right? And the mother. . .”

“Madlyn is the mystery. She’s been missing for three days, and Gary’s worried. She never goes anywhere without telling him, and then in the middle of the night, Monday, she vanishes right out of their bed.”

My eye was distracted by a flier on Ladowski’s desk that mentioned the start of the Recreation Department’s little league baseball season. Both Ethan and Leah would probably want to play. And they’d both want me to coach. That’s three nights a week, and Sundays, from early April until late June. I’d look like a member of the walking dead by the time the season was over. I don’t remember my parents coaching me in anything. They took me to the games and watched me strike out a lot, but coaching. . .

“Aaron?”

I was jolted out of my “Dad-of-the-Year” reverie. “I still don’t get why you’re telling me about this, Milt. Did Beckwirth go to Barry Dutton?”

Ladowski’s mouth straightened out, making a horizontal line that perfectly displayed his displeasure. His face doesn’t look so good when he’s smiling, so you can imagine. “Our esteemed chief of police has made some inquiries. Gary and Barry don’t get along very well.”

“That’s the title of a children’s book, isn’t it? Gary and Barry Don’t Get Along Very Well, by Dr. Seuss?”

“You’re very amusing.”

“I’m a goddam riot, to tell you the truth, but I’m still not a private detective. So Beckwirth thinks the cops aren’t doing enough to find his wife. So fine. So go out and hire yourself an investigator to, uh, investigate. And why are you dealing with this, anyway? Did the borough hire you to ask freelance writers why a woman gets out of bed in the middle of the night and doesn’t come back? Our first two questions almost always are going to be: ‘When’s the deadline? And how much per word?’”

Ladowski didn’t like the way this conversation was going, but he had expected it. He’d known me a long time. Hell, everybody in this town knew everybody else a long time. Half of them went to high school together. I’d been living here nine years, and they still considered me the “new guy.” Nobody ever left Midland Heights. Except, it seemed, Madlyn Beckwirth.

Milt stood up, to better emphasize the difference in our height. In other words, he has some. I’m 5'4", and pretend I’m 5'5" when I want to intimidate someone. Ladowski, on the other hand, is about 5'10". But it’s not like I notice height.

“Gary asked me to look into it because I’m his attorney, and his friend. I’m not handling this for the borough, I’m doing it for Gary. He’s too upset right now to deal with people much. And he doesn’t want a private detective. He wants someone who knows the people in this town and how it works. We don’t have any private investigators living and working in Midland Heights.”

“No, but we have more social workers, therapists, and shrinks per capita than any other square mile of property in the known universe. Come to think of it, a shrink would probably be a better fit for Beckwirth right now than a freelancer.”

Ladowski sighed. He knew this was stupid, but his client had insisted. “He wants someone who can be. . . discreet. And when he heard that you’ve been an investigative reporter. . .”

Now it was my turn to sigh. Loudly. “Oh, come on, Milt, that was 20 years ago, and I only did it for six months. I wasn’t even a good investigative reporter. I was rooting out bad cops for the Herald-News in Passaic, and I found exactly one. The rest of the cops were so impressed with my work that they refused ever to speak to me again, and I ended up losing my job because I got scooped by two other papers on a regular basis. I’d hardly call that a stellar investigative record.”

“Gary heard the word ‘investigative,’ and that’s all he needed,” Ladowski said. His voice was calm, but he was eyeing the window with the definite thought of throwing himself or me out of it. Luckily for