The Dirt Peddler (8 page)

“I can appreciate your caution,” I said, and on thinking it over, I certainly could.

“Would you like to come by at two? I assume you have my address.”

“Yes, I do. I'll see you at two, then. And thank you.”

*

Catherine Tunderew's address proved to be a small, well-maintained but unassuming apartment building probably built in the 1930s. A small, neat entry with a panel of eight brass-plated mailboxes was just to the left of the door. No locked security door, no buzzers.

I took the stairs—there was no elevator—to the second floor and walked down the hall to the back of the building, where I found Apartment #8. A small bracketed sign to the left of the door said “C. Tunderew.” I knocked.

“Who is it?” a voice said from just the other side of the door.

“Dick Hardesty, Mrs. Tunderew.”

I heard the security chain being slid aside and the door opened.

Catherine Tunderew was a pleasant-looking woman about forty, no makeup, greying hair pulled back into a ponytail, dressed in jeans and a man's sweatshirt, over which she wore a paint-smudged, dark blue smock.

“Come in,” she said with a smile.

I followed her into the living room, half of which was set up with a large drafting table, a couple of smaller easels, and a small work table upon which was a jumble of art supplies. Leaning against the legs of the drafting table were several varying-sized tablets of drawing paper.

She led me to one of two comfortable-looking chairs facing each other beside the large window and separated by a large coffee table. There was no couch. On one wall were about six framed, brightly colored illustrations, obviously from children's books.

“Would you like some tea?” Her voice had a rather pleasant, almost musical quality—the kind of voice I somehow associated with a storyteller reading to small children.

“No, thank you.”

She smiled as she took the seat opposite me. “So what has Tony gotten himself into this time?”

“He's being blackmailed,” I said, deciding to get right to the point.

She did not look surprised.

“
Poor
Tony,” she said with a Mona Lisa smile.

I waited for her to ask what he was being blackmailed for, but she didn't. I couldn't tell whether it was because she already knew, or she just didn't care.

“Would you have any idea who might want to blackmail him?”

The small smile became a broad one. “My darling Tony has the ability to attract enemies the way a dog attracts fleas. I can imagine very few people who have ever met him who
wouldn't
want to blackmail him if they had the chance. He's just ‘that kind of guy.'”

“I don't mean to be rude, but would that include you, by any chance?”

She looked pensive for a moment.

“Why, I suppose it might, if I wanted anything from him, which I don't. I make enough on my own to get by. I would far rather be rid of him and poor than still married to him and rich.”

“And you get alimony?”

“Oh, yes. Very generous. It almost covers my grocery bill each month. But I didn't and don't want anything from him. You'd have to have been married to him for thirteen years to fully understand.”

She certainly sounded convincing, but I really found it hard to believe she wouldn't be harboring at least some resentment, as her words clearly indicated.

“Could you tell me a little about your relationship with Mr. Tunderew?”

“Current or past?”

“Both, actually.”

A whistling sound from the kitchen caught her just as she'd opened her mouth to speak, and she got up quickly from her chair. “Are you sure you wouldn't like some tea?”

“I'm sure, but please don't let me stop you from having some.”

She smiled and moved toward the kitchen. “I'll only be a moment.”

While she was out of the room, I turned my attention to the framed illustrations. Mostly watercolors with a few pastels, they were really wonderful. A fine balance of not-quite-realism and pure whimsy, I could see why kids would love them.

She returned a minute or so later with a heavy white coffee mug of the type I automatically associated with just about every all-night diner I'd ever been in. The tab of a tea bag draped over the edge. She also had a piece of paper towel and a large spoon, which she placed in front of her on the coffee table as she sat back down.

“So.” She leaned back in her chair, ignoring the cup for the moment. “My life with the famous Tony T. Tunderew…an overview or a thirteen-year day-by-day account?”

I grinned. “The overview will be fine.”

She leaned forward, picked up the tab of the tea bag with one hand and the spoon with the other, and bobbed the bag up and down several times, finally removing it from the cup and placing it on the spoon.

She twisted the string several times around the bag to force the excess water out, then set the spoon and bag on the paper towel.

“We met,” she said, picking up the cup and again leaning back in her chair, “in Chicago. I was at the Art Institute, and Tony was working at an insurance company in the Loop, taking night classes at Roosevelt. He wanted to go to Northwestern, to the Journalism school, but he couldn't afford it.”

She sipped her tea and smiled. “Tony can be incredibly charming when he wants to be,” she said, then added “…as you may have noticed.”

I certainly had not, but was curious as to the implication. I chose not to ask.

“My parents had recently died,” she continued, gazing out the window in reflection, “and left me their small house on the South Side. Tony and I started dating, and then he moved in with me to save money. I got a job at an ad agency doing commercial art, and after a while, Tony quit his job at the insurance agency to go to school full time.”

“And you supported him?”

She returned her eyes to me and shrugged. “Basically, yes, but I didn't think of it that way. We were in love, he was going to be a great writer…you know the story.”

I nodded.

“We moved here so Tony could get a journalism degree from Goodlee. It's not really that good a school, as you know, but then Tony wasn't that good a writer, I'm afraid. I sold my house at a nice profit, and we lived on the proceeds. I got another ad agency job and began to do freelance illustrations for children's books. Tony did some freelance work, too, doing sleazy features for the tabloids. When it reached the point where the money ran out and I simply couldn't support us both, he got a job at Craylaw and Collier, and the rest is history. The week he signed the contract for
Dirty Little Minds
he filed for divorce.”

“I'm curious. How long did it take him to write
Dirty Little Minds
?”

She thought a moment. “Not all that long, really, once he got going on it. I must say in his defense, however, that he had already started the book even before the Governor Keene scandal started hitting the papers. It certainly was marvelous timing, though.”

I wondered if she knew—and was pretty sure she didn't—that Governor Keene had been a client of Craylaw and Collier. Tunderew had somehow gotten wind of the looming scandal and recognized its potential.

We were quiet for a moment while I tried to phrase my next question diplomatically. When I realized there wasn't a diplomatic way to do it, I just plunged in.

“Might I ask how you feel about the divorce?” I did not add “in light of his now having more money than he knows what to do with?”

She gave me that Mona Lisa smile again. “It was exactly what I could have expected from dear Tony. He has never been burdened by a sense of morality. He was always a firm believer in the philosophy that what was mine was his, and what was his was his. He didn't even bother to tell me he had
signed
a contract. I only found out about that part after the divorce papers were signed.”

I couldn't resist, “And you're not bitter for what he did?”

She shrugged, still smiling. “I've always defined ‘bitterness' as ‘surprised disappointment.' Absolutely nothing Tony did or does could surprise me; therefore, I couldn't be disappointed.”

Again, I couldn't help but wonder how honest she was being—either with me or with herself—but I decided to move on.

“You'd mentioned on the phone that you'd been contacted by a couple of other private investigators?”

She finished her tea and set the cup on the coffee table.

“So they claimed to be, but I wouldn't know. They mainly wanted me to provide details on Tony's notoriously roving eye. Nothing like a juicy scandal to sell tabloids…or books.”

“Might his roving eye have included men?”

For the first time, she looked surprised. It was a quick reaction, quickly contained. Then she laughed.

“Oh, my! What an interesting thought, though I can't see where he would have found the time from his bimbo collection. But then again, this is Tony T. Tunderew we're talking about. I wouldn't put anything past him. I'd heard that shortly before he left Craylaw and Collier, he'd been having yet another little affair with one of his coworkers. And you think it might have been a man?” She smiled. “I sincerely, sincerely doubt it. But why in the world would you ask that?”

“Just curious. Did you by any chance have access to his checkbook?”

“No. Has he been writing checks to young men?”

Now there's an interesting question,
I thought.

I didn't answer.

“Tony always had his own bank account,” she continued. “In the thirteen years we were married I never once knew how much money he made, or how much he spent, or on what, other than the rent on our apartment and the mortgage on the cabin. I paid all the other household expenses…food, utilities, insurance…from my own account.”

“The cabin?”

“Yes, our…excuse me,
his
since he paid the mortgage and therefore claimed it in the divorce…cabin on the Oak River, near Neeleyville. He used it as his ‘writer's getaway.' He spent every weekend there—supposedly writing, but usually with his conquest of the moment. Dear Tony is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. He thought I didn't know, but it wasn't that I didn't know so much as that I didn't care. Toward the end of the marriage, he was up there most of the time. He may well be living there now, but I'm not positive. We don't exactly keep in close touch.”

I sensed that it was about time to call our little meeting to an end.

“Well, I really do appreciate you talking with me, Mrs. Tunderew…”

“Catherine, please,” she corrected. “The only reason I'm keeping the last name is because that's the name I started out with in my illustrating, and it would be just too complicated to try to switch at this stage of the game.”

I smiled. “I understand. I wouldn't have bothered you except that Mr.…your ex…is really concerned about this blackmail thing, and I thought you might be able to give me some ideas. I'm sure you know that he now has the wherewithal to make life miserable for whoever is responsible, if he ever finds out for sure.”

We both got up from our chairs at the same time.

“Well,” she said as she walked me to the door, “I'm sure he'll be spending a great deal of money one way or the other, then, won't he?”

*

By the time I'd reached my car, I'd pretty much placed my bets on Catherine Tunderew as being the blackmailer, though short of beating a confession out of her with a rubber hose, I didn't know how I could actually prove it. But if she was the one, I hope she might have gotten the message. I'd also gotten the impression that if she was, she might be doing it more to bedevil her ex than to seriously expect him to pay up.

Fletcher ruled out, Catherine Tunderew ruled in. That was about it, right? Not quite. The publisher was still in the picture, though on the periphery. That he had every right to be pissed at Tunderew (as did, I'm sure, just about everyone who knew him other than Fletcher) was a given. Tunderew had said he'd left his briefcase, with checkbook, on the publisher's desk while he went to the bathroom. But again, people don't normally go rummaging through other people's briefcases just on a whim—and even if the publisher might have been looking for evidence that Tunderew was playing footsie with other publishers, how would he know that a check stub made out to a realty company might be potential blackmail material?

Unless…

I made a mental note to call Larry Fletcher when I got home.

Chapter 4

Though it was almost time to go home, I went back to the office and called Bernadine Press.

“Bernadine Press,” a pleasant female voice answered after the first ring.

“Is Mr.…Bernadine in, please?” I asked. I would normally have assumed Bernadine Press was just a generic name, but Tunderew had referred to the publisher as “Bernadine,” so…

“Senior or Junior?”

There are two of them?

“Senior, please.” I hoped I sounded as though I had known all along.

“May I tell him who's calling?”

“My name is Hardesty. Dick Hardesty.”

“And may I ask what company you are with?”

“Hardesty Investigations.”

“One moment, Mr. Hardesty.” There was a click and then the sounds of Vivaldi's “Four Seasons.”

Well, the place has class,
I decided.

A moment later, another click and a male voice, “Donald Bernadine.”

I introduced myself as a private investigator and explained that I would like to speak with him about one of his authors, Tony T. Tunderew. I didn't mention I was working for Tunderew. I could do that later.

“I do not discuss our professional associations,” he said, politely but firmly.

“I understand. But this is a matter of some importance which might affect Bernadine Press, and I would really appreciate it if we could talk in person for a few minutes.”