The Dirt Peddler (15 page)

My thoughts were interrupted when Jonathan, still looking out the window, asked, “What happens if nobody claims Randy? He doesn't have any family.”

“I'm going to call Tim when we get home to ask him.”

Jonathan just nodded and lapsed again into silence. I didn't even bring up the subject of drugs. Randy had been clean; there wasn't any point.

*

After a quiet—in more ways than one—dinner, I helped Jonathan with the dishes and then went into the living room to call Tim. Jonathan got out his textbook and sat down on the floor in his customary cross-legged pose, the book open on the carpet between his knees.

“Tell Tim ‘hi,'” he said without looking up.

It was Phil who answered the phone, and we talked for a few minutes, mostly about Sunday's brunch and Jared's friend Jake, who had made quite an impression on us all.

“It'd be nice if Jared finally settled down,” he said, and I laughed, then felt a little guilty for Jonathan's sake.

“Yeah, it would. But don't count on it. Jared's not the settling down kind.”

“Well, stranger things have happened. How's Jonathan doing?”

I glanced down at him as he turned a page in his textbook, apparently fully absorbed in it.

“He'll be fine. Oh, and is Tim around?”

“Sure. Just a sec.”

When Tim came on, I asked him what the procedures were for dealing with someone like Randy, who apparently had no family at all.

Tim sighed. “I was afraid that might be the case. When no one steps in to claim a body, tracking down relatives is usually up to the police. I'm sure they'll do everything they can to find
somebody
. He had some sort of I.D. card from New Eden, so they'll start there. And he had a bank book with his name on it, I understand. When no one can be found to claim a body, we keep it for ten days, and if no one has claimed it by then, it's cremated at the county's expense and buried in Rosevine Cemetery. That's where the county has its Potter's Field.” He paused for a moment, then said, “I never knew the kid, but I'd sure feel bad to think that he'd end up there.”

I couldn't agree more. But I'd found the reference to the bank book both surprising and interesting.

“Did you see the bankbook?”

“No, but it was in the bag with his personal effects. I just noticed it listed on the inventory form they keep with the bag.”

“Is there some way you could get a look at it?”

Not many hustlers have bankbooks, and I remembered Randy's boasts about some expected windfall.

“I suppose I could. Totally against policy, of course, but I'll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Tim. Jonathan sends you both his best. Talk with you later.”

When we hung up, I told Jonathan what Tim had said.

“I'll bury him,” Jonathan said softly, outwardly concentrating on his textbook.

“Uh…” I said, watching him closely, “that's really sweet of you, but…”

“I'll use my car money. I'm not going to have Randy buried in some Potter's Field like some throwaway nobody cared about.”

I was really touched by his naturally generous nature, but hardly surprised.

“Well, let's wait and see what happens first, okay? They might be able to find a relative somewhere.”

“Okay.”

*

And just how do you ever expect to make a living if you spend all your time working on cases you're not being paid to solve?
one of my mind-voices—the one responsible for my finances, and which I'd always pictured decked out in a green eyeshade and a celluloid collar—demanded huffily.

It was right, of course, but I just couldn't turn my back on Randy and finding out why he'd died—which, in order to do, I had to find out why, specifically, Tunderew had died.

I was sitting at my desk, drinking my umpteenth cup of coffee, lost in my thoughts, when the phone rang.

“Hardesty Investigations.”

“Dick, it's Glen. Sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday. I was out of town until this morning. Quite a surprise about Tunderew, eh?”

“I don't know if ‘surprise' is quite the right word. I'm sorry you lost a client, though.”

“Not to worry. I've got a couple others to keep me busy. But do I detect a note of skepticism in that reference to a surprise?”

Sharp guy, O'Banyon,
I thought. But of course he was sharp or he wouldn't be one of the richest lawyers in the city.

“If you mean do I suspect the accident may not have been an accident, the answer's yes. It's not absolutely certain, but my money's on murder.”

“Well, that
is
interesting, especially in light of…” he trailed off.

I waited all of three seconds for him to continue, and when he didn't, I prompted, “In light of…?”

“In addition to representing him in this breach of contract matter, I was also drawing up a new will for him. He was supposed to be in tomorrow to sign it.”

“Can I assume somebody was being cut out of the old will?”

“You can assume it, if you wish, but I can't give you any details, of course.”

“Catherine Tunderew?”

I took the pointed silence that followed as confirmation.

“Well, as
you
said, ‘interesting!'”

“You're not thinking of getting involved in all this, are you? As I recall, you weren't planning on starting a Tony T. Tunderew fan club.”

“I don't give a shit about Tunderew, but I knew the kid who was in the car with him.”

“Ah?” he said, obviously curious.

“Randy Jacobs, a friend of Jonathan's. A hustler, by the way, which brings us back to the blackmail issue that got me into this whole thing. I owe it to Randy and Jonathan to find out who was responsible, and I can't do that without finding out who killed Tunderew.
If
it wasn't an accident,” I hastened to add.

There was another moment of silence, then O'Banyon's voice, “Well, keep me posted, will you? And if there's anything you need from me…”

“I'll let you know for sure. Thanks, Glen. I'll talk to you soon.”

We hung up and I heard myself sigh.

How
do
you manage to get yourself into these things?
one of my mind-voices asked innocently.

It's a gift,
another replied, with just the slightest hint of sarcasm.

I ignored them both and got to work.

Chapter 7

Okay. Catherine Tunderew. Did she know she was being cut out of her ex-husband's will? Did she even know she'd ever been
in
it? If the answer to both those questions was “yes,” that would move her ahead of the Bernadines on the suspects list. I'd call her.

The second book. Had it been finished? If so, where was it? If not, who was its subject, and where was it? Check with Tunderew's agent…uh…Sal Armata.

If the book was finished, Bernadine Press's claim on it, with the contract still in force and Tunderew dead, would probably be honored. A lot of money was involved, and money has been known to be a good motive for murder. And Catherine Tunderew, if she was indeed in the still-in-effect old will, would be a very wealthy woman. If it hadn't been finished, then the focus would shift to anyone who had an interest in keeping Tunderew from finishing it. Neither the Bernadines nor Catherine Tunderew would come out very far ahead if the book wasn't completed.

Randy's bank book. What was a hustler—who had to have Jonathan drop him off near Hughie's so he could make “some spending money”—be doing with a bank book? How much was in it, and where had the money come from?

Was
Tunderew secretly gay, or bi? If not, how would Randy ever even have met him in the first place?

My thoughts, fueled by the caffeine of countless cups of coffee, were moving faster and faster and getting me not one inch closer to any answers.

Uh, excuse me,
one of my mind-voices somehow not affected by the caffeine interrupted,
but before you leap on your horse and go galloping off in all directions, mightn't it be a good idea to see what the police found out first? It
might
have been an accident!

Well, it might. But I still doubted it.

After debating whether or not I should bother Lieutenant Richman, I decided it was worth a try. I picked up the phone and dialed City Annex.

“Lieutenant Richman.”

“Lieutenant,” I didn't feel the need to identify myself—we knew each other well enough by now to recognize each other's voice. “Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if they'd found out anything more about Tunderew's accident?”

“I'm just now looking over the report, and, aside from the fact that the toxicology report from the autopsy showed that Tunderew had high levels of cocaine in his body when he died, apparently the answer is ‘no.' The broken glass was from the passenger's side headlight and turn signal. Obviously, he hit something, but we haven't a clue what it might have been. If it had been another car, we might have expected there to be bits of its paint found on the passenger's side fender or bumper. But there wasn't. Of course, the car was so badly mangled, it would be hard to tell how much damage the initial impact caused.”

I suddenly recalled a case I'd had some time before, where another car had gone off a cliff in what the police ruled an accident until I went scrounging around the wreck in the junk yard to which it had been taken and found a spent bullet in the shredded passenger's side front tire—it had been shot out, causing the car to lose control. I reminded Richman of that case and wondered if, however unlikely it might be, perhaps something similar might have happened to Tunderew—the first shot breaking the headlight, the second causing the tire to blow.

“Yes, I remember that one, and we do try to learn from our mistakes. Blown tires are routinely checked on all fatal accidents now. In Tunderew's case, despite the damage to the rest of the car, the tires were all intact.”

“So will there be any further investigation into this, or will it just be ruled an accident?”

Richman sighed. “Dick,” he said patiently, “seventeen people died in one-car traffic accidents in this county alone last year. We just don't have the time or the manpower to treat every one as a potential homicide if there isn't more compelling evidence to indicate it than is the case here, especially since Tunderew was under the influence of drugs at the time of the accident. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is.”

“I understand,” I said, and I did. But…

“But that's not going to keep you from looking further into it, is it?”

As I said, he did know me pretty well by that time.

“I owe it to Randy.”

“Yeah, I can see where you'd think that. So just keep me posted
if
you dig up anything, okay?”

“You can count on it.”

An out-of-nowhere thought popped into my head.

“One more thing, Lieutenant…You mentioned Randy's having a bank book. Did you find it in his dopp kit?”

There was a slight pause, then, “No, now that you mention it; as I recall the report said the kit was zipped up when it was found, so they weren't allowed to open it. But there were a lot of papers scattered around, mostly from the open briefcase.”

My mind grabbed that one and ran with it. “A lot of papers? Like maybe enough for a book manuscript?”

Richman paused only a moment.

“No, I don't think so. Apparently just mostly receipts, a couple of past due bill notices, stuff like that. A date book that was almost totally illegible because he had used a pen and the ink had been pretty much blurred by the rain. There might have been more stuff, but it probably landed in the stream and floated away.”

A considerably longer pause while we both absorbed the implications of that bit of information. “I'll check the photos taken at the scene. An interesting point.”

Very
interesting, I'd say. “Thanks, Lieutenant. I'd appreciate that.”

Saying he'd get back to me, we exchanged our good-byes and hung up.

What would Randy's bank book be doing in Tunderew's briefcase?

I think I knew.

*

I'd read in the morning paper that Tunderew's funeral would be held on Thursday at the McGinnis and Morbey Funeral Home, with burial at—and I found this part both ironic and sad—Rosevine Cemetery, the same place where Randy may very well end up, but in a far different part of the grounds. McGinnis and Morbey was a pretty fancy place, and I wondered who had made the arrangements. Catherine Tunderew, no doubt, which was pretty nice of her, considering how she'd been treated by the dearly departed.

There were quite a few questions I had for her, and I took a chance on calling her number. I'd never have done it if I felt I might be intruding on her grief, but she'd made it pretty clear that any love she might have had for Tunderew had faded long ago.

The phone rang three times, and then her answering machine kicked in. “Hello, this is Catherine Tunderew. I'm obviously unavailable at the moment, but please leave a message.”

I did so.

I next looked up the number of Sal Armata. There was no listing in the white pages, but I found it under “Literary Agents” in the Yellow Pages. I dialed the number and heard the phone being picked up on the second ring.

“Sal Armata.”

I was a little surprised that he'd be answering the phone himself.

“Mr. Armata, my name is Dick Hardesty. I'm a private investigator, and I was doing some work for Mr. Tunderew. I wonder if, as Mr. Tunderew's agent, you could answer a few questions for me?”

“I'm afraid not. I ceased being his agent upon his death.”

“But aren't you handling the negotiations for his second book?”

“There
is
no second book. A book isn't a book until it's finished. He hadn't finished it at the time of his death.”