The Dirt Peddler

by Dorien Grey

  “Do you have any idea where the manuscript for the second book might be? Or how far along he might have gotten?” I asked, changing the subject yet again.

  She shook her head.

  “I haven’t a clue. I would imagine it’s up at the cabin somewhere, but I wouldn’t know. He got the cabin in the divorce and insisted I give him my key. I’m sure he’d have had me prosecuted for trespassing if I’d tried to go up there after the divorce.”

  I finished my tea and decided it was time to leave. I thanked her for her time and wished her the best.

  *

  Nope. Something’s not right. I debated on whether or not to return to the office—it was close to time to go home, and I could drive out and pick up Jonathan. I decided to make a quick stop at the office for a phone call. For some reason, I wanted to talk to Peter Bernadine.

  *

  “Bernadine Press.”

  “Is Peter Bernadine in?”

  “May I tell him who’s calling?”

  “Dick Hardesty.”

  “One moment, please.”

  I was pretty sure Bernadine would remember my name, and I was right.

  “Mr. Hardesty. What can I do for you?”

  “I understand Bernadine Press is paying Mr. Tunderew’s funeral expenses. That’s extremely generous of you.”

  “Well, he did bring quite a bit of money into the company. We figured we owed him.”

  “I was just talking with Mrs. Tunderew, and she told me of your agreement.”

  I could almost hear the smile in his voice. “To be brutally honest with you, Mr. Hardesty, we would never in a million years have even considered paying a cent toward his funeral had she not contacted us to suggest it and point out its benefits. It made good sense.”

  “She contacted you?”

  “Yes. She pointed out that by paying half of the expense ourselves and taking her half out of future royalties, we could recoup our half in increased sales. We were still hesitant, but when she agreed not to contest our rights to the new book as part of the deal, we leapt at it. If the manuscript is as far along as she indicates it is, a ghost writer should be able to finish it off in no time.”

  !!! I knew it!!!

  “So everybody comes out ahead.”

  “Exactly. All we were interested in from the start was having the two-book contract honored. So we’re happy.”

  “Well, I wish you all the success in the world.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Hardesty. It may be immodest of me to say so, but we’ve earned it.”

  *

  “If the manuscript is as far along as she indicates it is, a ghost writer should be able to finish it off in no time!” How did she know how far along the manuscript was? She told me she knew nothing at all about it. Just what kind of games was Catherine Tunderew playing?

  I’d had the feeling all along that she was just a little too casual about her entire relationship with her ex-husband. He’d used her all the years he’d been struggling to make it, dumped her the minute he did, cheated on her for thirteen years, and was about to cut her out of his will so she couldn’t get anything even after he was dead. And she just sits there and accepts it all? Not likely.

  Well, she didn’t have to worry about the will part now, anyway. Which led to several other questions. Did she know Tunderew was planning to change his will? Was she just stringing Bernadine along by implying she knew more about the second book than she did—and that she’d have legal control of both books? And why tell me she didn’t care if they left Tunderew’s body out on the curb and then con Bernadine into footing the bill for an expensive funeral? And from what Bernadine had said, she had called them with the funeral idea, they hadn’t called her.

  Was it possible she still loved Tunderew after all the crap he’d pulled on her? She’d stayed in the marriage for thirteen years, after all, and it was Tunderew who had walked out on it. What a piece of work! (Well, “work” wasn’t exactly the first word that came into my head, but…)

  To my great dismay and growing frustration I realized that I was, as I have an almost magical knack for doing, getting into something way over my head. If somebody had killed Tunderew, they had also killed Randy, and if I wanted to know who killed Randy I had to find out who killed Tunderew. And it still might have been an accident!

  *

  Mark Richman called to tell me that he’d looked at the accident scene photos and that Randy’s bankbook had been among the materials around Tunderew’s open briefcase. Randy’s dopp kit was, as he’d said, found still zipped shut. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together.

  I had to put everything on hold for a few days when I got a need-it-yesterday assignment from Glen O’Banyon. One of his paralegals had had a family emergency, and another was working on another urgent case, so I had to make two one-day out-of-town trips to file legal papers, pick up a brief from another lawyer, and do a preliminary interview of a couple of prospective witnesses. Fortunately, they weren’t over-nighters, and I made it home in time for dinner both days.

  Tunderew’s death was noted in both Time and Newsweek, though no mention was made of plans for a second book.

  Jared called Wednesday, saying he was coming into town Friday to spend the weekend with Jake—something of an eyebrow-raiser—and wanting to know if we’d like to join them for dinner Friday night.

  They had found no one to claim Randy’s body, and time was running out. When Tim called to tell me he’d had a look at Randy’s bankbook and found it contained twelve hundred dollars—which I’m sure Randy would have considered a small fortune—hell, I’d consider it a small fortune!—I found it significant that there had been twelve weekly deposits of a hundred dollars each.

  Randy had said everybody at New Eden got paid a hundred a week, but that seventy-five of it was taken off the top for room and board, and that he spent most of his remaining twenty-five on vending machines.

  Phil had told me that when he was hustling, he’d set aside half of everything he made, but I don’t think he kept it in a bank account, and even if Randy did—though he never struck me as a bank account kind of guy—exactly one hundred dollars every week? And that still didn’t explain why Tunderew would have had Randy’s bankbook. No, there was something else going on there, and I was increasingly sure I knew what it was.

  “Oh, one odd thing about the bankbook,” Tim said. “The name of the bank was taped over.”

  Well, that was indeed a little odd. Why would he tape over the bank’s name? I filed that question away for future reference, and forced myself back to the reason for my call.

  I asked Tim to find out, if he would, just how we might go about preventing Randy having to be buried in Potter’s Field—whether Jonathan could claim the body if no one else did. I was concerned about the cost that might be involved: Jonathan had been very good about saving every penny he could toward a car, but he really didn’t have all that much. He insisted on paying half of our groceries and some toward the rent and utilities, and that didn’t leave much of what those who have it call “discretionary income.”

  “I think I might know a way. Let me check with a guy I know, and I’ll get back to you.”

  It wasn’t an hour later that Tim called back.

  “It’ll take a little juggling, but here’s what we’ve worked out: if he’s not claimed by Monday, the body will be taken to the crematorium. They usually cremate on Friday—sometimes Thursday and Friday, depending on how busy they are. If you’ll reimburse the county for the cremation, they’ll be willing to turn the ashes over to you: it will save them the cost of interment.”

  “Thanks, Tim! I know Jonathan will be relieved, and I’m sure he can manage the cremation cost.”

  “He’s a good kid,” Tim, who was still this side of thirty himself, said.

  “Tell me.”

  There was a possibility that somehow the money in Randy’s account could be applied toward his funeral expense, and I’d check that out, but even so it would probably
take longer to arrange than we had time for at the moment.

  *

  We met Jared and Jake Friday night for dinner at Napoleon’s. Jake was there when we arrived. Dinner hour was just getting into full swing and the place was filling up fast. Like Jared, though, Jake was pretty hard to miss in any crowd. We made our way to him, exchanged greetings, and ordered our drinks. We’d no sooner paid for them than Jared appeared.

  I found it interesting and took a perverse little delight in noting that while Jonathan, Jared, and I exchanged hugs, Jared and Jake gripped shoulders. They acted—and looked—like two out-of-uniform NFL linebackers meeting at a Kiwanis Club dinner. But I wasn’t fooled for a minute: I could almost hear the bzzzzzzUPP! of electricity between them.

  Nice try, though, guys, I thought.

  It was as expected a pleasant, relaxing evening, and I was pretty proud of myself—I made it almost all the way through the salad before I said, “So tell me, Jake—you do a lot of work at New Eden?” Jonathan gave me a quick glance out of the corner of his eye.

  “Yeah, quite a bit. We did the house, and a couple of the utility sheds, framed out the new cow barn.”

  “How are the Dinsmores to work for?”

  Jake took a sip of his wine, then shook his head.

  “I haven’t had all that much direct contact with them. They’re gone quite a bit of the time, Mrs. Dinsmore particularly. I deal mostly with Mel Hooper, their administrator.”

  “And he’s also Mrs. Dinsmore’s brother, I understand.”

  Jake gave a quick laugh. “Oh, yeah! He’s her big brother in more ways than one, and everyone there knows it. Have you ever seen her?”

  I nodded. “Once.”

  “Well, then, you know she’s really a good looking woman—if you’re into women,” he added with a grin. “A lot of the guys out there are, of course, but it’s really interesting. She could walk around the entire complex naked and there wouldn’t be so much as a wolf whistle when she walked by. They all know better. One guy did it one time, and Mel had him thrown off the property within five minutes.”

  “Have you ever spent any time with the Dinsmores themselves?” I asked casually (I hoped). “I was wondering how they get along together.”

  He speared the last tomato slice on his salad plate.

  “Usually I’ll just see one or the other, but whenever I’ve seen them together, they seem to be the perfect couple. Nice people, really devoted to each other. She worships the ground he walks on, from what I hear.”

  “And what about him?”

  Jake looked at me and gave me a small smile.

  “The rumors, you mean?”

  “Rumors?” Jared asked.

  The busboy came to remove our salad plates as the waiter arrived with our entrées. We were all quiet until everyone had everything and the waiter moved off.

  “As far as I know they’re just that—rumors. But I have heard about Jeff having a soft spot for the occasional male hustler. All the kids at New Eden—well, they range up to the early twenties—come from the streets. A lot of the girls were hookers, a lot of the guys hustlers. Story goes that Jeff may be partial to the hustlers—but apparently only hustlers. And he’s apparently very discreet about it.”

  “Does his wife know?” Jared asked.

  Jonathan and I looked at one another, but neither said anything.

  “No idea, but I’d sure hope not, for his sake. If she were ever to sic her brother on him, Jeffy-boy’d be a goner. I haven’t got a doubt in the world about that. Mel and Jeffrey aren’t exactly the best of buddies as it is, from what I understand.”

  Since I’d recently seen a photo in the paper of the Dinsmores at a fundraiser of some sort and Mr. Dinsmore didn’t look any the worse for wear, I’d assume Mrs. Dinsmore had kept her husband’s little dalliance with Randy strictly between the two of them.

  *

  The weekend flew by, as weekends have a nasty habit of doing. After dinner on Friday we’d dropped out to Ramón’s for a nightcap—it was obvious that Jake and Jared had other things on their agenda that they were eager to get to. Bob was working the bar, so we didn’t have too much time to talk with him. He seemed favorably impressed by Jake, though, and invited us all over to his and Mario’s place for a barbecue on Sunday afternoon. He said he’d be calling Tim and Phil to ask them, and I was once again struck by how nice it is to have friends.

  Saturday was Saturday. Jonathan didn’t say much about it, but I could tell, as we went about our usual Saturday morning around-the-house chores, that he was still thinking about Randy a lot. Around noon, while Jonathan was making what was becoming our traditional Saturday lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and cream of tomato soup, we did talk a little about what we would do with Randy’s ashes.

  “I don’t want to bury him. He’d hate to be put in some hole somewhere. He should be somewhere he can be free.”

  I told him I knew just the place, and I’d take him there when he thought it was time.

  “Okay,” he said, and opened the cupboard to get out the soup bowls.

  The phone bill arrived in Saturday’s mail and as usual I glanced over the long distance charges. There was a call to my ex, Chris, and his lover Max in New York, a couple of calls to Jonathan’s brother, Samuel, in Wisconsin, and two to a number I didn’t recognize. Randy had said he’d made a couple long-distance calls about his prospective new job. I did recognize the area code, though: Neeleyville, and I instinctively knew to whom the calls had been made—Tony T. Tunderew at his cabin.

  To verify, I went to the phone and dialed the number. I’m not exactly sure what I thought that would accomplish. If it was the number for Tunderew’s “cabin” he certainly wouldn’t be around to answer it. There might be a machine, though, and I knew I would recognize his voice.

  I heard two rings, then a click, and, “The number you have reached has been disconnected and is no longer in service.”

  Disconnected, eh? Tunderew had only been dead a little over a week—it wasn’t likely it was disconnected for not paying his bill. The only obvious explanation was that someone had had it disconnected, and I could think of only one person that might have been: Catherine Tunderew.

  Chapter 8

  Two things that attempted call had made crystal clear: First, that Catherine Tunderew was a lot more complex a character than she ever let on, and one who needed a lot closer looking into. Secondly, that Randy’s relationship with Tunderew went considerably beyond being a casual trick, as I had been increasingly suspecting. If Randy had the phone number to Tunderew’s cabin, given Tunderew’s notorious love of secrecy, there had to be a damned good reason. Randy said he expected to get a job—obviously from Tunderew, somehow. And then there was that bank account with the twelve regular hundred-dollar deposits. If they came from Tunderew, I was pretty sure I knew why.

  Obviously, Tunderew’s next book had something—well, I’d wager a lot more than “something”—to do with the Dinsmores, New Eden, and the Eternal Light Foundation! Randy had been a plant, Tunderew’s spy. He was using Randy to get dirt for his new book just as he’d used Larry Fletcher for Dirty Little Minds. Chances are that Tunderew had opened the account in Randy’s name and made the deposits—I’d be willing to bet in the form of money orders—into the account. He’d probably have sent the bankbook in with each deposit and had it returned to a P.O. Box—probably a separate one. And that answered the question of why the name of the bank had been taped over. That way he could show Randy that deposits were being made in his name but, not knowing which bank the account was in, he couldn’t access the money until Tunderew was through with him.

  I was more convinced than ever that Tunderew’s—and Randy’s—deaths had been no accident.

  The Dinsmores moved onto and toward the top of the suspects list. If they had found out that their little empire was the target of Tunderew’s next book, they would understandably do whatever they could to keep it from being published. Including murder? Anything is possible, of c
ourse, but “possible” and “likely” are far from being synonyms.

  One thing was for sure…I wouldn’t run out of leads to follow for quite a while.

  *

  Sunday’s barbecue at Bob and Mario’s went very well, and I did my subtle best to find out if there might be anything more Jake could tell me about New Eden in general and the Dinsmores in particular. There wasn’t. They were apparently everything that Mom, apple pie, and the American flag stood for. All of which, of course, meant that any juicy scandal that Tunderew might have dredged up couldn’t help but be a runaway best-seller.

  But first things first, and the first thing on my agenda when I got to the office Monday morning was Catherine Tunderew. Had she known she was being cut out of Tunderew’s will? How did she know how far along the new manuscript was? Or was she just trying to con the Bernadines into footing the bill for Tunderew’s funeral by saying she did?

  One way to find out. I picked up the phone.

  *

  Since I’d been to Catherine Tunderew’s twice, I decided to invite her to join me for lunch. She didn’t seem particularly surprised to hear from me again, and readily agreed to meet me at The Broken Drum, a pleasant little café (as opposed to “restaurant”) not too far from her apartment. It was the kind of small-town-charm, curtained-window, hanging-plants-everywhere eatery, with small, table-clothed tables and wooden, round-topped chairs, that for some reason simply does not exist in the gay community. Maybe a little too comfy-cosy for most gays.

  I could see by looking in the window—there were only about ten tables in the place, only six of which were occupied—that Catherine had not yet arrived, so I took a short walk to the end of the block and returned. As I did so, I saw Catherine Tunderew emerging from a cab in front of the café.

  We met at the door, which I opened for her, and took one of the vacant tables. A young woman, probably a college student, dressed in an attractive old-fashioned blouse with frills at the collar and wrists and a long granny skirt, came over and asked if we would like coffee. I said yes; Catherine opted for peppermint tea. The girl pointed out to us a large easel near the door on which a blackboard announced the day’s offerings in a variety of colored chalk.