For Whom the Minivan Rolls

Baltimore, MD

Copyright 2002 by Jeffrey Cohen
All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or
by electronic means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a
reviewer, who may quote passages in a review.

The people and events depicted in “For Whom the
Minivan Rolls” are fictional. Any resemblance to people, living or
dead, or to events is unintentional and coincidental.

Published by Bancroft Press (“Books that
enlighten”)
P.O. Box 65360, Baltimore, MD 21209
800-637-7377
410-764-1967 (fax)
[email protected]
www.bancroftpress.com

Jacket Design: Stephen Parke/What? Design
[email protected]

Book design by Theresa Williams,
[email protected]

1-890862-18-5 (cloth)
1-890862-19-3 (paper)
Library of Congress Card Number: 2002109251

Smashwords Edition

To Jessica, who knows the only thing I haven’t
exaggerated is how much I love her.

Prologue

Part One: Searching

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Intermission

Part Two: Finding

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

Praise for
Minivan

Author’s Note

About the Author

Eeeeuuuuurrrppp!

The noise—wherever it was coming from—woke Madlyn
Beckwirth, and she nudged Gary, who was snoring beside her. Every
few seconds, eeeuuurrrp!

If she just lay there and listened, it was enough to
drive Madlyn crazy. That’s the way things are at two in the
morning. So she got out of bed and went downstairs to
investigate.

Madlyn carefully checked the living room and the
kitchen, but no one was there. She realized now the noise was
coming from somewhere outside the house.

Nothing else to do. Madlyn took the chain off the
front door, checking to make sure she had unlocked both the dead
bolt and the lock in the doorknob. The last thing she needed was to
be locked out of her own house. Especially with a man upstairs who
wouldn’t wake up if you bounced him out of bed and screamed at him
through a bullhorn.

Nothing on the doorstep, nothing on the lawn. Where
the hell was that sound coming from? A-ha! There at the curb.
Madlyn let the air out of her lungs, just now realizing she had
been holding her breath.

Somebody’s car had lost a hubcap while riding past
her house. When the stupid thing had stopped rolling, it had come
to rest on a sewer grate, and wedged itself there. Every time the
wind blew, it made a metallic scraping
sound—eeeeuuuuurrrppp!—trying to break free.

She’d never get back to sleep with that racket going
on. So, resigned to venturing even farther outside the house
dressed in her bedclothes, Madlyn headed toward the curb and
reached down. Even with both hands, she couldn’t pull the hubcap
out—it was stuck too tight.

Madlyn looked up the street. All the usual cars were
parked in front of their owners’ homes, though a blue minivan she
didn’t recognize was parked a couple of houses down, in front of
Diane and Bill’s.

Well, she couldn’t bear that noise anymore, so she
decided on a new strategy. She picked up a stick lying near the
curb, wedged it in under the hubcap, and pried. Sure enough, after
a few tries, the hubcap came loose, but the Herculean effort caused
her to stagger backward a few steps into the street.

It was at that moment that the blue minivan, its
headlights now on, started down the street with a squealing of
brakes and the smell of burning rubber. Madlyn didn’t realize at
first that it was headed directly at her, and by the time she did,
it was too late to even put up her hands or scream.

“Do you like mysteries?”

Milt Ladowski sat behind what must have been, for
him, his cheap desk. For me, the real-wood monster with five
drawers would have been an unaffordable luxury, but Milt is a
high-priced attorney, accustomed to private practice extravagance.
In his part-time position as borough counsel for Midland Heights,
New Jersey, however, he had to accept an office in nondescript
Borough Hall, and the government-issued desk that came with it. To
serve his community, in effect, he had to go slumming. Many are
called. Few are chosen. Or was it the other way around?

“Yeah,” I told him. “I love mysteries. I just got
done reading the latest Janet Evanovich. Why, do you want me to
write one?”

“No. I want you to solve one.”

Well, that was a mystery in itself. You want
somebody to solve a mystery, you generally don’t go to a freelance
writer. Nine times out of ten, you might want to consult, say, a
private detective. Or a cop. Freelancers are more likely to be
consulted when your goal is to publish a thousand-word feature
about the dangers of cholesterol in the newspaper’s Sunday health
section.

“That’s not really my line of work, Milt.”

He nodded. “I know. But Gary Beckwirth insisted. He
said to call you, and only you.”

“Beckwirth? Which one is Gary Beckwirth?”

“Beckwirth. You know. His wife is managing Rachel
Barlow’s campaign for mayor.”

I stared blankly at him. I follow municipal politics
with the same enthusiasm I muster for the cricket scores from
Bath.

“Their son Joel is a patrol kid at the middle
school,” he said, seeing if he could jog my memory.

“Oh, is he the one who busted Ethan for going to the
bathroom without a hall pass?”

I remember everything that anybody has ever done to
and for my children. The little Beckwirth son of a bitch hadn’t
even bothered to check with Ethan’s teacher, and he’d practically
forced my 11-year-old son to have an accident in the school
corridor. After that fiasco, Ethan had 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 both of us, it was a first-floor office. The
borough, thank goodness, couldn’t afford a view for Ladowski,
either.

“This is stupid, Milt. I’m not a detective. I don’t
solve mysteries. I read them. I write newspaper and magazine
features about electronics. You want to know about new DVD players,
I’m your guy. You want to find a missing woman, you go to the cops
or to private detectives, wherever they live. I can’t help Gary
Beckwirth.”

Ladowski did the last thing I’d have expected him to
do. He smiled.

“Fine.
You
go tell him that.”

I walked out of Ladowski’s office feeling a little
light-headed. I had stepped into an alternate universe, where the
word “investigative” was enough to get you invited to dig into
people’s private lives and unearth God knows what. Maybe Madlyn
Beckwirth had left her husband. Maybe she was sleeping with someone
else. Maybe she left because
he
was sleeping with someone
else. Maybe she had gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle
of the night and her Fascist kid had sent her to the street for
peeing without a hall pass. In any event, it was none of my
business, and I was happy to leave it that way.