The Dirt Peddler

by Dorien Grey

  “His body wasn’t discovered until just recently, on the banks of the Chattahoochee about halfway between Atlanta and New Eden.”

  I think “lost” best sums up the look on Dinsmore’s face.

  “No,” he said, as if saying it would bring James Temple back to life. “No. He…”

  Watching someone in total control of himself lose that control is not a pleasant sight. In order to prevent him from swirling more quickly into total confusion, I tried to arrest it with another question.

  “Do you have any idea why Temple left?”

  He shook his head. “None. I thought he really liked it at New Eden, and he seemed to be doing well. Then we—my wife and I—returned from a religious conference, and he was gone. It’s not at all unusual for a resident to simply leave without notice, but that Jim would do it was a real surprise.”

  “And you never heard from him again?”

  He looked quickly away and said, “No.”

  “I’m sorry?” I said, staring at him. He looked at me and again I saw a lightning-quick flush.

  “I mean, yes, I did. About six weeks after he left I got a small package from him.”

  “May I ask what was in it?”

  And again the flush, longer this time. “It was…it was a small Bible I’d given him…in gratitude for his being such a good worker,” he hastily added. He paused, and I knew there was something else.

  “And?” I prompted.

  “And it was torn into shreds.” He shook his head. “I have no idea why he would have done such a thing. There was no note of explanation, nothing. It’s a total mystery.”

  Why didn’t I think so? But rather than pursue it further at the moment, I decided to move on.

  “Temple worked in the residence office, is that right?”

  He gathered himself together and looked at me. “Yes, that’s right. All our residents have specific work assignments.”

  “And did Barber by any chance also work in the residence office?”

  “We have several offices at each facility.” I could sense both a realization on his part and an effort to evade it. “There’s the administration office, the farm office, and the residence office.”

  “But like Randy, they all worked in the residence office, didn’t they?”

  I could swear I saw him pale.

  “Well, yes,” he said finally.

  “And what about a Denny Rechter. Did he work in the residence office, too?”

  “Denny?” he asked, then his eyes widened noticeably. “Are you saying Denny’s dead, too? That’s impossible! Totally impossible!”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said. “So far, Denny Rechter has only officially been reported as missing. But did he work in the residence office?”

  “For a brief while, yes. But one morning he didn’t show up for work and Mel Hooper, our Residents’ Administrator, said the police had contacted him in regards to Denny’s parents being in town looking for him. Apparently he’d been a runaway, and he ran again when he somehow heard his folks were coming to take him home.” He shrugged. I could clearly sense there was a lot going on inside that he didn’t want to let out.

  I did want to know more about exactly how New Eden operated, but not right now. I had more pressing matters on my mind.

  “May I ask if you were…involved…with all four at some point?”

  “Involved? What are you implying?”

  He tried to sound shocked, but I could see he knew it wouldn’t work.

  “No! Of course not!” he said adamantly—but as far as I was concerned, certainly not convincingly. “I love my wife…”

  I held up my hand to forestall the anticipated outpouring of denial.

  “I’m sure you do. But that really isn’t relevant to whether or not you were…if ‘involved’ isn’t accurate, let’s substitute ‘sexually active’…with James Temple, Michael Barber, and Denny Rechter as well as with Randy Jacobs.”

  I think if he thought anger might do him any good, he’d have registered it more visibly. I could see it was there, but he also knew there wasn’t much point in displaying it. And while there was also little point in denying he’d had sex with Randy—and I questioned as to whether it may not have been more than once—he wasn’t about to admit to any more than he had to.

  “No! Absolutely not! Randy was…well…he pretty much seduced me, that’s what he did. I’m only human, and my wife was traveling much of the time, and…”

  I held up my hand again. “Please, Reverend, your sexual orientation would be none of my business except for the fact that as a one-hundred-percent gay man, I tend to get extremely defensive when other gay men end up dead for whatever reason.”

  He simply stared at me.

  “What does your wife think about your being…only human?”

  He dropped his glance to the floor. “I assume Randy told you she…she…”

  “Caught you in the act?”

  “Exactly. It was terrible. You have no idea how shocked and horrified she was. But my wife is about as close to being a saint as it is possible for a human being to be. I explained exactly what had happened and why, and she forgave me. I swore to her that it would never happen again.”

  I’m sure you did, I thought. And I’m sure she believed you.

  I decided to get back to who might have killed Tony Tunderew.

  “Well, you’re right that a one-time experience with a single male hustler wouldn’t be enough on which to build a best-selling exposé. But the disappearance of one and the verifiable deaths of two”—I wasn’t counting Randy’s peripheral death—“male hustlers who all worked in the residence office of a respected and well-known religious conservative would understandably run up red flags. Especially for someone like Tunderew. I wouldn’t even rule out the possibility that Tunderew used Randy to set you up. But if that was the case, he just set the trap—you took the bait. And the fact of the matter is that there’s nothing like a juicy sex scandal—with hints of murder—to sell a very large number of books.”

  Dinsmore was looking more and more distressed.

  “Is there a second book? I mean, was this Tunderew fellow just in the process of writing it, or did he finish it? A book like that could destroy everything my wife and I have worked for all these years! Everything! We can’t let that happen.”

  Luckily for him, I don’t think he realized he’d just voiced a very probable motive for Tony T. Tunderew’s murder. But I figured he deserved to know what he was up against.

  “As far as I know, the book was close to completion, but I don’t think he’d actually finished it. But that doesn’t mean someone else won’t. You might be wise to talk to your lawyers.”

  I could tell that we’d gone just about as far in one conversation as I could logically expect to go. Dinsmore’s cage had been rattled thoroughly, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. As we got out of our chairs, I tried to think of a way to approach the possibility of our talking again after he—and I—had had a chance to digest everything we’d just covered. I was a little surprised when he mentioned it first.

  “I still can’t believe all this is happening,” he said as I walked him to the door. “But I do want to know anything you might find out about Denny’s whereabouts, or if you learn anything at all about Jim’s or Mike’s deaths.”

  He paused, as we shook hands and looked at me intently. “I have no reason to hope I might rely on you not to make things worse—if that were possible—but I have very little choice, and you have no idea what all is at stake here.”

  Actually, I did have a very good idea. I assured him again that it was not my intention to cause him any more trouble than was already looming over his head, and that I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in what rocks Tony T. Tunderew had been planning to turn over (except for those under which there were dead people). I did make it clear that I was interested in exactly what was going on and intended to find out with his help or without it.

  “Whate
ver I can do,” he said as we released our handshake and I opened the door.

  As the door closed behind him, I was already making plans to somehow speak to Barbara Dinsmore and probably to her brother, Residents’ Administrator Mel Hooper, as well.

  I called Evergreens to tell Jonathan I was on my way, turned out the lights, and left the office.

  *

  Jonathan was pretty quiet on the way to Rosevine, the cemetery where the city’s crematorium was located. When it was founded back in the late 1880s, Rosevine had been on the far outskirts of the city, which had slowly flowed around it and moved ever outward, leaving it an oasis of calm, green, and quiet in the midst of the city’s sprawl. It had some magnificent old trees, which had survived while its neighbors beyond the cemetery’s wrought iron gates were cut down to make room for houses and parking lots and mini-marts and pizza parlors.

  The crematorium sat in the middle of the cemetery—a large, solid, ornate fortress-like building of rough stone. Its Victorian exterior belied the fact that its interior had recently been totally renovated to make it state of the art for the prompt and efficient reduction of human bodies to a small pile of ashes.

  Adjacent to the crematorium was a much smaller building of the same materials, but in a less ornate style, which served as the cemetery’s and the crematorium’s office. We pulled up into the small parking area beside it and I turned off the engine.

  “Do you want me to go in with you?” I asked, and Jonathan gave me a small smile and a shake of his head. “No. I think Randy’d like for me to do it. You don’t mind, do you?”

  He had made no move to open the door, and I reached over and laid my hand on his leg.

  “I don’t mind. And I think you’re right. Randy’d want you to do it.”

  He took a deep breath, grabbed my hand and squeezed it quickly, then opened the door. “Be right back.”

  About ten minutes later, he emerged from the office carrying a small, plain wood box, only a little larger than a cigar box. He carried it in both hands, as though afraid he might drop it. He came over to the car, set the box carefully on the hood, opened the door, picked up the box, and got in, carefully putting the box on his lap before reaching over to close the door.

  “We can go home first before we go over to Tim and Phil’s, can’t we?”

  “Sure.”

  I backed out of the parking place and headed down the winding drive to the main gate.

  “Good. I thought we’d put him in the guest bedroom, since he’s stayed there before.”

  All the way home, he kept his eyes fixed on the box in his lap. Finally he said softly, more to himself than to me, “I can’t believe this is Randy.”

  “It’s not, babe,” I said gently.

  “Where do you suppose Randy is?” He had turned his head to look at me as if expecting me to have an answer.

  “I think Randy is exactly where he was before he was conceived.”

  “No heaven?”

  I shook my head.

  “No heaven. No hell. Just nothing at all—infinity.”

  He kept looking at me, studying my face.

  “I think I believe in heaven,” he said.

  I reached over to take his hand. “Then do.”

  “And Randy’s there.”

  “Then Randy’s there,” I replied.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence.

  *

  Dinner at Tim and Phil’s was exactly what Jonathan—and I—needed. We all studiously avoided talking about anything heavy or philosophical. Jonathan and Phil spent a great deal of time talking about fish. Jonathan related the trauma of realizing that bigger fish eat smaller fish, but he diplomatically did not mention that it was Phil’s namesake who was a main perpetrator.

  Phil and Tim had just gotten a couple of new fish for their large aquarium…gloriously iridescent creatures I don’t recall ever having seen before. Jonathan, of course, was enthralled, his enthusiasm for immediately running out and buying a couple for his own tank dampened only by being reluctantly told—at Jonathan’s insistent prodding—how much they had cost.

  We talked and laughed until nearly midnight, at which point we said our good-nights and headed for home. While Jonathan’s spirits had lifted considerably it did not escape me that, as we walked down the hall to our bedroom, Jonathan stopped at the guest bedroom to quietly close the door and say softly, “’Night, Randy.”

  *

  A dream. Dusk. Some little country town. I’m in a car, in the back seat. There are two men in the front seat. Jeffrey Dinsmore is driving. There’s a very attractive, obviously gay young blond in the passenger’s seat. I can’t make out many of the words, but they’re both obviously upset. The kid saying he doesn’t want to go. Dinsmore saying he has to. Then Dinsmore alone in the car, parked by some sort of building. There’s a bus in front with the door open. The young man appears from somewhere—the building?—and gets onto the bus. Suddenly, he gets back off and comes quickly over to the car. The young man is upset. Dinsmore opens the door…

  I know, I thought as I stood in front of the mirror and lathered shaving cream over my face, …a dream’s just a dream. I have them all the time; I just don’t remember most of them. And as far as the power of dreams to provide revelations of mysteries, I put them pretty much up there with examining the entrails of an owl or reading tea leaves. But this one stuck with me, though I didn’t know why.

  I’d not really had much time since Dinsmore left the office to think about him and try to figure out if I thought he was being sincere or trying to con me. I didn’t believe for one second that Randy had been the first guy Jeffrey Dinsmore had had sex with. And it struck me as a little more than coincidence that out of all the residents at New Eden, the office help all seemed to be male hustlers—until now, I realized, as I remembered that it had been a woman who had answered the phone when I’d called. I might be making a stretch here, but it occurred to me that Mrs. Dinsmore might have instigated the gender change in office staff after finding her husband in flagrante delicto—I love that phrase—with Randy.

  “Are you going to actually shave or just stand there all day?” I raised my eyes into the mirror and saw Jonathan standing behind me, toweling his hair dry.

  “Sorry. Just thinking.”

  He slung the towel over his shoulder and ran his hand over my butt and moved it across my hip and around toward my front.

  “So was I,” he said with a devilish grin.

  What the hell…it was Saturday!

  *

  But not for long. Before I knew it I was pouring water into the office coffee maker on Monday morning ready to start a new week without knowing where the last one had gone.

  I had been able, however, largely to keep my mind off the Tunderew case. I realized, as I sat at my desk going through the newspaper that it was beginning to tiptoe back into my consciousness.

  What did I make of Jeffrey Dinsmore? The fact that I was thinking of him was my way of telling myself that he’d moved to the top of the list, and that the others…Larry Fletcher, the Bernadines, and even Catherine Tunderew…had pretty much dropped off the radar screen. Everything was pretty much pointing at the good Reverend. He’d said it himself: Tunderew’s book would destroy just about everything he’d worked for.

  But that was if he’d known Tunderew was writing a book about him and New Eden. That’s if. Tunderew was pretty devious. Unless Randy had told him, how really would Dinsmore have known? He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him I thought he was the subject of the next book.

  Yeah, like you’ve never been conned before, my mind-voice observed.

  Well, yeah, I’d been conned. More times than I’d like to admit, but I’m a trusting guy.

  Uh huh, my mind-voice said.

  But why would Dinsmore bump off guys he’d been having sex with?

  Maybe because he’d been having sex with guys? And maybe because he didn’t want to risk them telling his wife?

  Which brings up the
subject of the Reverend Mrs. Dinsmore. Could she not have known her husband had an eye for the boys? Well, it’s possible she didn’t—people tend not to see things they don’t want to see. And Mrs. Dinsmore certainly did not strike me as being stupid. She did travel a lot. I didn’t know who made the work assignments at the various New Edens, but it would be relatively easy for Jeffrey to select who worked in the residence office. If Mrs. Dinsmore didn’t have a clue, she might even have preferred a guy working in the home with her husband when she was away, rather than risk his being tempted by some “other woman.”

  Hmm.

  *

  I like it when things start coming together. I realized that by quietly moving the other potential suspects out of the way, it was pretty much a process of elimination, and only Jeffrey Dinsmore—and perhaps Barbara Dinsmore; I hadn’t had a chance to look at that possibility yet, but I would—remained. But regardless of which Dinsmore it might be, I was increasingly positive that he or she (maybe they? Unlikely, but…) was responsible for Tony Tunderew’s murder, and Randy’s death.

  I was feeling pretty damned smug.

  And then the phone rang.

  Chapter 11

  “Hardesty Investigations.”

  “Dick,” the familiar voice said. “It’s Glen. Are you still working on the Tunderew case?”

  “Yeah.” I was a little curious as to why he’d be asking.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Pretty well, I think. I feel I’m getting close.”

  “Well, I’ve been wondering about how you were doing, and I just came across a piece of information you might find interesting, if you’re not already aware of it. Would you like to meet for lunch? We can talk about it.”

  “Sure. Etheridge’s?”

  “Twelve fifteen. Same time, same station.”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  Why wasn’t I feeling quite so smug?

  *

  I was early, as usual. Alex, the really hot waiter, was as usual on duty and, even though I hadn’t been there in quite a while, showed me to O’Banyon’s table without being asked. He poured my coffee, laid out two menus, and went about his business.