The Dirt Peddler

by Dorien Grey

  I picked up the phone, called Bil to give him the plate numbers I’d copied from the body shop lot, and asked him to check them for me. The next part was a little more tricky. I wanted to call Marty Gresham, my latest “close” contact at the police department. I’d first come into contact with Marty when he was a rookie working in Missing Persons Records. He’d been really helpful to me on the case I was working on at the time, and partly because of it, he’d caught the eye of Lieutenant Richman and some of the other higher-ranking officers on the force. He was quite obviously being fast-tracked toward his goal of becoming a detective, and he somehow gave me undue credit for helping him along. After his stint in Missing Persons, he’d done a short tour as a patrol officer and was currently, from what I’d heard, assigned to Administration under Lieutenant Richman’s watchful eye. Marty had also just gotten married, so I didn’t know how much of his off-hours free time he might be able to devote to helping me on this matter.

  I’d made it a definite rule not to ask favors of the police unless it was really necessary, and never in any case that they might not eventually become involved in at some point down the line. And while the police didn’t have any solid evidence upon which to base an investigation into Tunderew’s death, a lack of solid evidence never stood in my way. I was positive that Tunderew had been murdered, and once I could prove it, the police could step in and take it from there. I rationalized my asking for a couple of favors on the basis that I was in effect once again doing part of their job for them.

  There were two things I wanted from Marty: the color of Tunderew’s car, and a quick check for any problems New Eden, the Dinsmores, or the Eternal Light Foundation might have gotten themselves into locally.

  Even so, I didn’t want to bring him into it without asking Richman’s okay first (plus the fact that I didn’t know exactly how to reach Marty directly). I placed another phone call.

  “Lieutenant Richman.”

  “Lieutenant, Dick. Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if I could ask Marty Gresham to check on a couple little details for me? I understand he’s been assigned to Administration. So if you could spare a few minutes of his time…”

  “You’re still on the Tunderew thing, obviously.”

  “Yeah. And I’m more convinced than ever that it was no accident.”

  “Anything specific?”

  “Not yet, but I feel I’m getting there.”

  I was rather expecting a pause while he thought it over, but there was none. “Okay. I’ll ask Officer Gresham to call you.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  We hung up shortly after my usual promise to keep him posted if I found anything the police might need to know.

  It was getting pretty late in the day, and it was unlikely that Marty’d be calling. I’d not heard from Bil at the D.M.V. either, so I decided to wrap it up. I’d stop by the office in the morning to check for messages before going to the library.

  *

  I arrived home to find an excited Jonathan waiting for me in the kitchen. He usually got home shortly before I did, but since I’d left work a few minutes early, I was rather surprised to see him there already. I assumed he’d gotten a ride home from one of his coworkers.

  “Dick,” he called as soon as I opened the door, “Come look! Luke and John had babies!”

  I went into the kitchen to join him. After our usual greeting-hug, he turned quickly back to the fish tank and pointed to the clump of artificial grass in one corner. “Look!” he said. “See them?”

  It took me a moment before I could see, moving in and out among the leaves, several very tiny black fish. Since Jonathan had two of each kind of three varieties and only two (Luke and John) were black, the process of elimination fairly well established parenthood.

  “They weren’t there this morning. Isn’t it great? I’ll call Tim and Phil as soon as they get home to find out if baby fish need anything special.”

  “Like formula?” I asked, as usual, tickled by his enthusiasm.

  He looked at me quickly before realizing I was teasing him.

  “Yeah. And whether we should burp them when they get done eating.”

  “Well, you get to change the diapers. Don’t expect me to get up at three in the morning to do it.”

  We exchanged grins, and he put his arm around my waist.

  “You know,” he said, “if Luke and John can make babies, I can’t see any reason why we can’t, too. Ya wanna go try?”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  I took him by the hand and headed toward the bedroom.

  *

  We’d just come out of the bedroom when the phone rang.

  “You want to get that?” Jonathan said. “I’ll go get your Manhattan and think about starting dinner.”

  I moved to the phone as he headed for the kitchen.

  “Hello?” I had made a concerted effort, after umpteen years of answering the phone with “Dick Hardesty” to try to fit in with the rest of the world. It still seemed odd, but I did it.

  “Dick? It’s Marty. Lieutenant Richman told me you’d called. What can I do for you?”

  Considering that he’d just gotten married, I was a little surprised that he’d take time away from his new wife to call me. But what did I know?

  “Thanks for calling, Marty. And congratulations on your marriage. How do you like it so far?”

  He laughed. “Great! Cindy’s at a baby shower for her sister, so I thought I’d call.”

  I quickly filled him in on what I needed, and told him that I might well have a couple of other things for him to check after I’d done the library research.

  “No problem. I should be able to get the info on the car first thing in the morning. Checking on the other stuff might take a little bit longer, but I can hopefully have it all for you by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I really appreciate it, Marty.”

  “I owe you.”

  We small-talked for a minute or so more, then hung up just as Jonathan came back into the living room with my Manhattan and his Coke. I joined him on the sofa. He looked puzzled.

  “Odd. I checked on the babies, and there aren’t as many of them as I thought there were.”

  I knew why, but didn’t want to alarm him. I was sure he’d figure it out for himself, or Tim and Phil—from whom he’d gotten his first two fish, which he of course named “Tim” and “Phil,” in their honor—would clue him in. I could have told him, of course, but really didn’t want us to be as overrun with fish as we were with plants.

  In an effort to take his mind off the missing babies, I told him what I’d learned from Tim about Randy’s ashes, and how much it would cost. Again, I did not offer to pay part of it. I knew this was something he wanted and needed to do by himself. I knew, too, it would take a very large chunk out of his savings, but held out hope that the money in Randy’s bank account could somehow be used to reimburse him.

  After we’d finished our drinks, Jonathan went into the kitchen to check on dinner. A moment later, I heard a very loud “Damn it!” I got up quickly and went in to see what was wrong.

  “Phil just ate one of the babies! I saw him! How could he do that? It was a baby!” Then he looked at me and a quick look of embarrassment crossed his face. “Well, it was a baby fish, but it was still a baby.”

  “And Phil is a big fish and big fish eat little fish,” I said gently.

  Jonathan shook his head sadly and stared into the tank. “Yeah, you’re right, of course. But I should have realized that! Stupid, Jonathan! Stupid!”

  I put my arm around his shoulder. “Not stupid. Sweet.”

  He gave a very large sigh. “Yeah,” he said disgustedly. “Sweet.”

  He quickly reached into the silverware drawer and took out the tea strainer, then opened a cupboard under the sink to take out his original fish bowl—the one Phil and Tim had given him before we got the larger aquarium. He filled the bowl with water, then took the strainer and began attempting to catch whatever of the smaller fish rem
ained in the grass. It wasn’t easy, and he kept having to shoo the bigger fish out of the way.

  “Phil,” he muttered, staring threateningly at the offender, “if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement in the toilet tank, you’d better get the hell out of the way!”

  He managed to rescue four of the tiny fish and transport them to the other bowl. It took another five minutes of futilely searching the grass for survivors before he sighed and gave up. He made another quick check of dinner, turned down the flame under the pans, and said, “You want to set the table while I go call Phil and Tim? Dinner’s almost ready.”

  Chapter 9

  There were no messages waiting when I arrived at the office Tuesday morning. I was tempted to make a pot of coffee and do the crossword puzzle before leaving for the library, but decided against it. Instead, I didn’t even sit down, but left the office and headed for the main library.

  I’d always had a fascination for libraries. As a kid I was an avid reader, and as a result of my spending so much time at my local library, I got my very first job there, while still in high school, as what they called a “page”—I loved that title, considering. It mainly entailed putting books back on the shelves, going down to the archives for back issues of newspapers and magazines. The very first love of my life, a classmate in school, would meet me at work and I would sneak him down to the archives where we would spend an intense and testosterone-filled five minutes before rushing back upstairs. Looking back, I’m amazed we were never caught.

  The first thing I did was look up the issue of Time with the Dinsmores on the cover. I remembered it had been some time the preceding February, so that helped cut down the search time. As I said, I’d read it when it came out, but didn’t remember much about it.

  It was a pretty good article, actually, with more information than I’d expected. Jeffrey was heir to a Texas oil fortune. Barbara Dinsmore’s father was a circuit court judge. They’d met at the small religious college they’d both attended, married right after graduation and gone off to do missionary work in Peru. Shortly after they returned to the U.S., Jeffrey Dinsmore’s father died. Jeffrey sold his interest in his father’s company and started the Eternal Light Foundation, which began by doing outreach programs for disadvantaged teens. From that beginning, the first New Eden was opened outside Atlanta, followed shortly by another near Dallas, and then the one here. Both Dinsmores were very skilled and professional fundraisers. They didn’t resort to blubbering, teary-eyed Sunday morning TV show appeals to the lonely and naive, promising eternal salvation in exchange for a “love offering.” The bulk of their outside funding came from large companies and corporations, to whom they appealed on the basis of the social benefits of their projects rather than the religious. Undoubtedly, a lot of their success could be traced in part to their family connections, but they were very persuasive in their own right.

  The article, probably not surprisingly, gave no hint that there might be an apple tree or two in New Eden. It did mention in passing that the couple was childless by choice, which made me wonder momentarily, knowing Jeffrey Dinsmore’s apparent attraction to male hustlers, if the choice were mutual or one-sided.

  I was able to find any number of newspaper and magazine articles on the Dinsmores and their good works and awards, but again with no indication of things being less than idyllic at New Eden. No complaints, which I might have expected, from the residents at the various facilities alleging exploitation by the Dinsmores; no indication whatsoever of misappropriated funds or a lavish lifestyle. I did manage to find a couple of tabloid articles (our library had reference copies of even these birdcage liners, though I suspected they had to keep them submerged in vats of disinfectant to keep the stench away from the other archived materials) claiming satanic rituals were conducted at each New Eden, involving the sacrifice of virgins, small children, or illegal immigrants, depending on the tabloid in which the story appeared (they were all pretty much word-for-word copies of one another). One article hinted darkly of routine mysterious disappearances of residents and the existence of mass graves somewhere on each New Eden property. That last one I paid a little attention to, wondering if it might in any way be related to the “murder” Catherine Tunderew mentioned being referred to in the new book. But I made a note to check on any more-reliably-reported disappearances at any of the New Edens.

  Of course the built-in problem with alleged disappearances was that by the very nature of a New Eden, the turnover rate of residents must be relatively high. Compound that by the fact that New Eden served “throwaway kids”—those who either had no families, or none who knew or cared where they were. It would be pretty hard to tell who had just left and who might have gone unwillingly. In short, if there were “disappearances,” who would have reported them? Who would even know?

  Having read everything I could find on the Dinsmores and the Eternal Light Foundation and the local New Eden—I’d have to go to Dallas and Atlanta if I wanted to check the papers there for any other information—I decided to just head back to the office. It hadn’t been a wild goose chase, but it hadn’t exactly pointed the way to where any skeletons were kept, either. In fact, I came away with the impression that for all intents and purposes, the Dinsmores were pretty admirable people.

  I had two messages waiting at the office and I hit the Play button as I circled my desk to sit down. The first call was Bil Dunham, identifying the owners of the plate numbers I’d given him—as I’d suspected, the Renault was Catherine Tunderew’s; so much for the red-paint-smeared Jag. The second was from Marty Gresham who left his City Annex extension and asked me to call, which I did immediately.

  “Administration, Officer Gresham.”

  I didn’t want to keep him away from his work any longer than I had to, so I got right to the point. “Marty, it’s Dick. Did you find out anything?”

  “Not much. Tunderew’s car was gunmetal grey, by the way. An El Dorado. But as far as any run-ins with the law involving New Eden or the Dinsmores, nothing. They’re squeaky clean.”

  “Have there been any reports of missing residents?”

  There was a long pause, then, “I was going to say ‘no,’ but I seem to recall when I was in Missing Persons Records something about a teenage boy…filed by his parents…from someplace out of town, I think, but…” Another long pause. “Are you going to be around for a while? Let me make a quick check to get the facts straight, then I’ll call you right back. I remember New Eden came into it somewhere along the line, but it was quite a while ago.”

  “Sure. I’ll be here. But it’s almost time for your shift to end, isn’t it? I don’t want to incur your wife’s wrath by keeping you after work.”

  He laughed. “She’ll live. I just have to run downstairs, and it will only take me a minute. I’ll call you right back.”

  “Thanks, Marty; I appreciate it.”

  I hung up and reached for the newspaper and a pen.

  I was just putting in the “d” in “brigand” (“Freebooter,” seven letters) when the phone rang.

  “Hardesty Investigations.”

  “Dick, Marty. The kid’s name is Denny Rechter, seventeen years old. Reported missing last July sixth by his parents. They’d come into town from Bayonne, New Jersey, looking for him. Someone had tipped them that he was at New Eden, but when they got there, he was gone. Whether he got wind they were coming and just took off, or why else he might have left no one seemed to know. His folks filed the report in hopes he was still in the area and someone might spot him. They made three long-distance phone call inquiries after that over the next couple of months, then nothing. No idea if they ever found him or not. They never got back to us.”

  Now it was my turn for a long pause.

  “Marty, I know this is a stretch, but would it be possible to check with the Dallas and Atlanta police and sheriff’s departments to see if they have anything on any problems at the New Edens in their jurisdictions?”

  “I’ll have t
o okay it with Lieutenant Richman, but I’m pretty sure he’ll go along. But can I ask what all this has to do with that writer’s death? I assume that’s what you’re following up on, right?”

  “Yeah. And I hope it’s got nothing to do with it. But something tells me it might have everything to do with it.”

  “Hmmm. Okay, I’ll check it out, if the Lieutenant okays it. I’ll get back to you either way.”

  “Thanks, Marty.” I looked at my watch.

  “Now you’d better get home to your ball and chain.”

  “And you to yours,” he said lightly.

  *

  Okay, my mind-voice mused as I drove home: one missing kid report in two years does not exactly a blockbusting, best-selling exposé make. And this was probably a kid who’d run away from home in the first place. Most likely, he just ran again.

  But it was also quite possible that as a runaway, if he’d gone to New Eden, it was because he was living on the streets. And he wouldn’t have been the first runaway kid living on the streets to turn to hustling to survive. And Jeffrey Dinsmore has an eye for hustlers. And…

  And a square peg will fit into a round hole if you hit it hard enough with a hammer, another mind-voice chimed in.

  They both had valid points, but the missing kid and everything else aside, I’d bet my bottom dollar that the Dinsmores and New Eden were, for whatever reason, the subject of Tunderew’s next book. I mean, No Door to Heaven? Come on! There are a lot of other religious organizations and preachers and ministers and cults out there. But only one close enough for Tunderew to have direct access. No, I’d have to go with the Dinsmores. And I suspected, too, that it had something more lurid than just Jeffrey Dinsmore’s sexual ambiguity. As to whether Tunderew had died as a direct result of it remained to be seen.