The Dirt Peddler (22 page)

Now, if something showed up from Dallas…

*

Thursday night being Jonathan's class night, I thought I might take the opportunity to run out to Ramón's and talk to Bob Allen. It was kind of a weak excuse not to stay home alone, and while Bob probably couldn't provide any information on the case, he did know an awful lot about what was going on in the community. If there were any rumors floating around out there about New Eden or the Dinsmores, Bob would be the one to know it. I called to make sure he'd be there, and was told he would.

I drove Jonathan to class, then headed to Ramón's.

It was only about seven fifteen when I got there, and the place was pretty quiet—just a few leftovers from Happy Hour, most of them I recognized as regulars. We exchanged nods and waves of greeting, and I sat down near the office end of the bar. Jimmy, who had merely nodded when I came in, walked over.

“Hi,” he said, extending his hand. “I'm Jimmy. This your first time here?”

I took his hand. “Go ahead, rub it in.”

“Ah, well I remember the days when we were thinking of putting a ‘reserved' sign on that stool for you. But then you got married and moved on, and forgot all us little people…”

“I'll have an Old Fashioned, if you don't mind,” I interrupted pointedly.

“Yes,” he continued, his face a mask of martyrdom, “many's the time I offered you my shoulder to console you in your hour of need…” He popped quickly back into his regular-Jimmy mode long enough to grin and say, “How come we never did make it, by the way?”

“Maybe because you never brought it up.”

“Maybe it was,” he said, then lapsed back into his melodrama. “Well, too late now, I suppose. My loss is Jonathan's gain.”

“May I have an Old Fashioned, please?” I asked again, and he looked at me sharply.

“Hey, I'm on a roll, here,” he said brightly.

Luckily, I knew he was kidding.

“And you'll have my vote at Oscar time. Now, about that Old Fashioned…”

He shook his head, then the grin returned. “Comin' up.” He turned toward the back bar for a bottle of bourbon.

We exchanged drink for money, and Jimmy nodded toward the office.

“Bob's expecting you.”

“Thanks, Jimmy,” I said, picking up my drink and napkin and heading for the office door.

*

Probably not surprisingly, Bob didn't really know much at all about New Eden. Ramón's didn't get many hustlers in—they mainly hung out downtown, along Arnwood, and on a two-block stretch of Ash just off Beech, the main artery of The Central. Bob didn't know anything about the Dinsmores aside from what he read in
Time
and various newspaper articles. Other than the fact that gays and lesbians were welcome at New Eden, they were very much in the minority, and there were no direct or official links with the gay community at all.

Still, I always enjoyed just shooting the breeze with Bob, and we seldom had a chance for just the two of us to get together. As always, he asked what I'd heard from Chris, and I told him about his and Max's pending excursion into the world of the theater, and that Jonathan and I were planning a visit for the opening of their first production. Bob thought it was a great idea all around.

As also happens when we get to talking, I nearly forgot about the time, and Bob had to remind me that I had to pick up Jonathan at school.

*

At ten thirty Friday morning, the phone rang. It was Marty Gresham.

“Very interesting report from Dallas,” he said, getting right to the point. “Actually, Dallas County referred me to Kaufman County, which is where New Eden is located. They did have an incident there—one of the New Eden residents was found murdered near a little town called Scurry. A guy named Mike Barber, twenty-two. The Dallas police have a record on him for hustling. Apparently he was busted so often some of the cops got to know him personally. One of them was the one to get him into New Eden, as a matter of fact.” He stopped to take a breath.

“Anyway, Barber was found beaten to death on a dirt road just outside Scurry—obviously, he'd been dumped there. It's about fifteen to twenty miles from New Eden, but he was last seen at the bus station in Kaufman the night before his body was found. He'd gotten into a fight with two other residents—two straight buddies who claimed Barber came on to them. Fighting is strictly forbidden by New Eden rules, and they were all three kicked out that same night.”

“So the two guys he was fighting with killed him? How in hell could New Eden have been so stupid to kick all three off the property at the same time? That was all but setting up a killing!”

“Yeah, it seems that way, but according to the police investigation report, the New Eden administrator drove the two straight guys into the town of Kaufman and bought them each a bus ticket to Dallas. He waited with them until the bus came, then he left. Jeffrey Dinsmore himself drove Barber in a separate car to Kaufman about an hour later, where Barber said he was afraid the two guys would be waiting for him at the bus station in Dallas and said he wanted to go to San Antonio instead, so Dinsmore bought him a ticket for San Antonio. Dinsmore said he watched Barber get on the bus, then drove off. The bus driver remembers a guy fitting Barber's description getting on the bus, then getting right back off again. Apparently he got off the bus as soon as he saw Dinsmore leave and cashed in his ticket for the money. They theorize he decided to pocket the money and hitchhike, which is how he probably ended up in Scurry, which would have been on his way to San Antonio. They think he just got picked up by the wrong guy.”

I didn't buy it. “Did the administrator actually
see
the two guys get on the bus to Dallas?”

“No, he didn't. He was parked on the other side of the street. He sat in the car with them until the bus pulled up, the guys got out of the car and crossed the street and he lost sight of them on the other side of the bus. He naturally assumed they got on.”

Jeezus! They could just as easily have not gotten on and waited for Dinsmore to drop Barber off at the station, then killed him.

Yeah, but then how would they have gotten Barber's body to Scurry?
my mind asked.
They didn't have a car.

No,
said another voice,
but Dinsmore did.

Chapter 10

“So Dinsmore did wait to see Barber actually get on the bus?”

“Yeah, he said Barber waved at him just as he climbed on, and Dinsmore drove away. He assumed the other two were well on their way to Dallas, so he didn't think there would be a problem.”

“Even though he didn't know for sure that they might not still be in Kaufman waiting for Barber?”

Gresham sighed. “Apparently not.”

“And did the police subsequently try to track down the other two guys? To even see if they ever got on the bus?”

“Well, they checked with the bus driver. Six people got on in Kaufman, and two guys did get on, but the driver was having a problem with one of the other passengers and couldn't give an accurate description, so whether they were the same two, I don't know.” There was a pause, then, “But they couldn't have done it, anyway. How would they have gotten Barber's body from Kaufman to Scurry? They didn't have a car.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” He apparently didn't make the same Dinsmore connection as I had, and I didn't mention it. But I'd be sure to ask Dinsmore about that when he came in.

“
Did
the police ever try to track the guys down to question them?” I asked again.

“Yeah. The Dallas police managed to find them both—it took a while, since they'd gone their separate ways when they got back to Dallas—and both of them swore they'd gotten on the bus and never saw Barber after the fight.”

Interesting,
I thought.

“Interesting,” I said.

“You don't think there's anything funny going on at New Eden, do you? Two New Eden residents being murdered is a little suspicious, but I mean, Barber was in Dallas and Temple in Atlanta. That's quite a stretch.”

“I'm not sure yet,” I said, half-truthfully. “But I intend to find out.”

*

And here you go again!
my mind-voice said, scornfully.
Bring on those windmills!

I sat back in my chair, and listened to the conversation going on in my mind.

Just what
did
I think I was doing? I started out with Randy being in a car with Tony Tunderew and here I am trying to figure out what happened to some poor dead kid on a dirt road in Scurry, Texas. Or one beside the Chattahoochee River in Georgia.

What were they to me?

Well, I realized that last question was raised by my cynical side, which showed up from time to time in spite of myself. The answer to that question was that they were both Randys, and all three were real people with real lives cut far too short. And if I didn't care who they were or what had happened to them, who would?

Ah, Hardesty,
one of my mind-voices sighed softly.
Do you have any idea of how many Randys there are in this world? How many kids there are, dead and alive, who nobody knows, or misses, or cares about? What about them? You can't save the world, Dick, no matter how hard you try.

True, I couldn't. But I could do my best for those I
did
know about. And it wasn't totally about me chasing windmills. All of these deaths were, however loosely, tied in with Tony T. Tunderew. I'll bet he had somehow found out about these kids—how I had no idea—and their links to New Eden, and by extension to the Dinsmores. What else he had found out I couldn't say, but I was more certain than ever that
No Door to Heaven
was going to lay it all out, and that he had died because of it.

I thought again of the irony of how Randy's incredibly bad luck to be in the car with Tunderew when he died had put me in the spot I was in. If Randy hadn't been there, I wouldn't have given a hoot in hell how Tunderew died or who might have been responsible for it. But I did now.

As lunchtime approached, I began looking far too frequently at my watch. Would Dinsmore even show up? What if he didn't? What could I do about it? Not much.

I wasn't particularly hungry, and tried to distract myself by typing up a couple reports and paying some bills. I gave some thought to trying to balance my checkbook but decided that that particular exercise in futility wouldn't do much to improve my mood.

At twelve fifteen the phone rang.

Dinsmore canceling, I'll bet,
one of my mind-voices volunteered.

“Hardesty Investigations,” I hoped the mind-voice was wrong.

“Hi, Dick. It's Jonathan.”

Like I didn't know?
I wondered. I resisted the temptation to ask, “Jonathan who?”

“Hi, Tiger. What's up?”

“I'm sorry to bother you at work, but I wanted to remind you that we have to go pick up Randy this afternoon.”

I knew, of course. But it was his way of dealing with something he dreaded, and of being reassured that I was there with him.

“I know, Tiger. We've got until four thirty, and I'll call you when I'm on my way to pick you up. I've got someone coming in around two thirty, but I'll make it over there as close to three thirty as I can. That'll still give us time.”

“Okay. I'll be waiting. I asked the boss if I could work in the yard today instead of going out on delivery and installation, so I'll be here.”

“Good. Did you have your lunch yet?”

“Sort of. I'm not really very hungry.”

“I know. I'll see you later, then.”

We exchanged good-byes and hung up.

*

At two fifteen there was a knock at the door, and I got up hastily from my desk and went to open it. It was my first look at the real-life Jeffrey Dinsmore, and I was duly impressed. Just about six feet tall, short dark brown hair with just a touch of grey at the temples, a very handsome, masculine face.

“Reverend Dinsmore. Please, come in.”

We waited for our handshake until I'd closed the door behind him. His grip, like everything else about him, all but exuded confidence and self-assurance. He was impeccably but not ostentatiously dressed and groomed. No jewelry other than the requisite wedding band.

I showed him to a seat and asked if he'd like some coffee, which he declined.

When we'd both been seated, he glanced around the office. “I've never been in a private investigator's office before,” he said with a small smile. “As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever met anyone in your line of work before, though I was a great fan of Mickey Spillane when I was in my teens.”

Then his eyes moved slowly but deliberately to mine and the smile faded.

Ingratiation period over
, my mind observed.

“Tell me about Randy Jacobs,” he said.

Well, since he wanted to get straight to the point, so did I.

“So you think Randy was hustling when Tunderew picked him up?” I watched him closely but, I hoped, not too obviously.

He looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression.

“Isn't that what you said?”

“Not exactly,” I replied, and his puzzled look remained. “How much do you know about Tony Tunderew?”

He gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “Almost nothing other than what I said when we talked on the phone.”

“You didn't read his book, then?” He'd already told me he hadn't, but I wanted to watch his reaction when he told me again.

“No. As I told you, it's not the type of reading I think I'd enjoy.”

He paused, his expression still fully controlled but reflecting a hint of puzzlement. “I'm still not sure what all this has to do with Randy's death.”

“I mentioned that Mr. Tunderew was writing another book?”