The Dirt Peddler (30 page)

I had to admit I was impressed. The look of sadness on her face as she talked really got through to me.

We lapsed again into silence until she said, “Have you any proof of a direct link between any of these three terrible deaths and New Eden? There seems little connection. James Temple was at our Atlanta location, Mike Barber from our Dallas facility, Denny Rechter from here. But only one—Mike Barber—has a direct link that I can see. And that is only because he was tragically murdered within hours of leaving New Eden. And each of them was…well…lost even before they came to us. While we don't like to think of it, I'm afraid it is a fact that too many of our residents return to the world from which they'd come. That Mr. Tunderew might try to profit from this fact and from these sad deaths is beyond comprehension and beneath contempt. What other evidence do you have?”

I could see thin ice ahead and had to think a minute before proceeding. I really didn't want to directly address the sex issue on the chance that she really didn't know about her husband's dalliances other than the one she caught him at, with Randy. Destroying lives and marriages isn't something I do willingly. I decided I couldn't avoid the thin ice, but would try to step as carefully as possible.

“All three…four, if you include Randy…of the dead men worked in the residence office, isn't that correct?”

A brief look of…what?…shock?…realization?…crossed her face.

“Yes,” she said, almost to herself. “Yes, they did.”

“And they all had access to certain of New Eden's books and records, true?”

“Well, yes, but on a very limited basis. And we certainly have absolutely nothing to hide in any event. What are you saying?”

Good point, what
was
I saying? Ah, yes. “I have reason to suspect that perhaps Randy, at least, might have been trying to gather some sort of information on New Eden's operations to pass on to Mr. Tunderew for the purposes of his book.”

I waited while her look of shock faded, and I took the opportunity to prepare to step out onto the thinnest of the ice. “How, may I ask, did Randy come to work in the residence office to begin with?” I watched her face carefully for her reaction.

“He volunteered, as I recall. When each new resident comes to us, either my husband or I meet with them to determine how best New Eden can be of benefit to them. We turn away very few applicants, but there have been a few cases in which we have had to refer them to other agencies that might offer more than we can provide. One of the things we try to determine is where they would best fit into our work structure. Randy apparently…” here I noticed a distinct flash of discomfort “…impressed my husband when he mentioned his office skills.”

Office skills? Randy?
If he had had any before he came to New Eden, it was news to me. But then, I really didn't know very much about him or his past.

“Our residence office worker at the time,” Mrs. Dinsmore was saying when I yanked myself back to the moment, “had been with us for several months…since Denny left, as a matter of fact…and had just accepted a job at an office in the city through our job referral program.”

Though I'd asked the same question of Jeffrey Dinsmore, I wanted to raise the issue of Tunderew's Dallas visit to see if there might be any difference at all in the answer I got.

“From what I understand, Mr. Tunderew made a trip to Dallas in August of last year as part of his job with Craylaw and Collier to meet with you and your husband on some project.”

She looked puzzled. “I'm sure you're mistaken. As I've told you, neither I nor my husband had ever met Mr. Tunderew. I had no idea he might have worked for Craylaw and Collier.”

“But you were at the Dallas New Eden in August, I believe?”

She thought a moment. “Yes, we try to spend two weeks at every location several times a year. We were in Dallas until the tenth, as I recall, then went on to Atlanta. My mother-in-law's birthday is the twelfth and the entire family gets together in Atlanta on that date to celebrate with her. We left Atlanta around the twenty-fourth and returned here. I can assure you we had no contact whatsoever with Mr. Tunderew, either then, before, or after.”

I heard a clock somewhere striking, and decided it was about time to leave. There were a couple of other questions I would have liked to have asked, but didn't want to press my luck. We had completely skirted the sex issue, and I figured it was best to leave it at that.

“I've taken up enough of your time, Mrs. Dinsmore,” I said, edging forward in my chair. “I very much appreciate your cooperation.” We both got up and began to walk toward the front door.

“Oh, one more thing,” I said as we passed through the living room. “Do you suppose I might speak with Mel Hooper? I understand he manages the day-to-day operations of the farm, and I'd like to ask him some questions about whether there may have been any problems between Denny Rechter and the other residents.”

We reached the door and she opened it for me.

“He's working in the fields today, and they usually don't come in until five or so, but I'll ask him when I see him. If you'll give me your card, I'll have him call you.”

I paused in the doorway long enough to extract a business card from my wallet and hand it to her. “Thank you. I'd appreciate it. And thank you again for your time.”

“You're quite welcome.” She closed the door behind me.

*

I thought of stopping by Evergreens to see if Jonathan might like to go to lunch (even though he took his lunch to work every day), but realized he was probably out on a job somewhere. I stopped anyway, just in case, and as I'd thought, he was with his boss delivering trees somewhere in Briarwood. I wondered idly if it might be to one of the four new mini-mansions where I'd helped deliver the dining room set.

There was a Cap'n Rooney's Fish Shack (one of about a hundred of the franchises scattered around town, but they were pretty good, considering) between Evergreens and the office, and I stopped for some fish and chips. Both Jonathan and I liked Cap'n Rooney's—I because their chips were crisp and thick and they came with lots of vinegar, and Jonathan because most of the franchises had large fish tanks he could stare at while we ate.

As I opened the office door, the phone rang. I hurried to pick it up before the machine did.

“Hardesty Investigations.”

“Dick Hardesty?”

“Yes.”

“This is Mel Hooper. I want to talk to you.”

Interesting how the same words can be said in several different ways, and each way conveys a very different message. I readily recognized this one as a command.

“I'm glad you called, though I didn't think it would be this soon. I…”

“There's a coffee shop next door to the SuperFoods warehouse on Fearn Drive,” he interrupted. “Meet me there at two thirty.”

And if I don't?
I wondered. But all I said was, “Okay.” Then I hastened to add, “How will I recognize you?”

“You won't have to. I've seen you before. Two thirty,” and I heard the click of his hanging up.

He's seen me before?
Then I remembered…the day Jonathan, Randy, and I had gone to the house to pick up Randy's sneakers—the guy I'd seen walking through the living room.

Well, this should be fun,
I thought.
I wonder what happened to “working in the fields until after five”?

*

Daisy's was to diners what Rockwell was to painters. It was so wholesomely American I was surprised it didn't have a flagpole out front. It sat there, all bright blue with bright white trim and shiny windows looking chipper as all hell, surrounded by featureless brown, grey, and dirty white nondescript commercial buildings, a very-used car lot, and an “Everything Must Go!” furniture store. The SuperFoods warehouse directly next door was a sprawling horizontal monolith whose surface was broken only by six large loading docks, four of which had tractor-less semitrailers backed up to them, and two smaller docks. At the one closest to the semis I noticed what I was sure was the same red pickup truck that had passed me on the road at New Eden.

I turned into Daisy's parking lot, which only had about five cars in it, and pulled into the closest spot near the front.

I don't have to describe the interior. Just close your eyes and remember…shiny plastic-padded booths under the windows on either side of the front door, long Formica counter with stainless steel trim and backless swivel chairs on poles, menu board on the wall behind the counter with the day's specials spelled out in removable letters. You've been there.

I took a seat at a booth against the outside wall closest to where I'd parked the car, and the waitress came out from behind the counter to bring me a menu. She was wearing a crisp blue one-piece uniform with a spotless white apron and—I'm not kidding, I swear!—one of those cloth tiara-like white starched caps! God, I hadn't seen one of those in years. But it sure fit the image.

I told her I was expecting someone, but would have coffee while I waited, and she smiled and moved off to get it.

At exactly two thirty I saw the red pickup move past the front of the diner and pull into the parking lot. A moment later, a very large man walked past the window and to the door. He entered, looked around briefly, spotted me, and came over. He reminded me of a Marine drill sergeant I'd had in the service—close-cropped hair, rugged, not-unhandsome face, somewhere in his mid-forties. He extended his hand without a word and I leaned forward to take it. He slid into the booth opposite me, and the waitress came over with two menus and a mug of coffee to match my own, setting it in front of him. They exchanged small smiles and a nod which clearly indicated to me he was a regular here.

Neither of us had spoken a word until the waitress went back behind the counter in response to the ding of a small bell indicating an order was ready. Then he looked at me and said, “So exactly what's your game?”

Jake had been right, Mel Hooper obviously didn't believe in wasting much time in chit-chat.

“I'm not sure I follow.”

He was staring at me. Not particularly a hostile stare, just intense.

“What do you want from the Dinsmores?”

I deliberately took a sip of my coffee before answering.

“Information. I'm trying to find out who killed Tony Tunderew.”

He also took a swig of coffee and set the mug carefully back on the table.

“The author? What does he have to do with the Dinsmores?”

Now, I didn't know exactly how much of a little game we were supposed to be playing here. I had no idea what he knew or what he didn't know. Obviously, Mrs. Dinsmore had to have spoken to him very shortly after my meeting with her. What she'd said I couldn't imagine, but it was fairly obvious his big brother instincts had been strongly triggered.

“Your sister didn't tell you? I hate to go over the same ground if she did.”

He was still looking at me, but there was a subtle downgrading from a stare to a look. “Reverend Dinsmore mentioned some rumor about a book, last week, I think it was, and that they'd alerted the lawyers. But she said something about there maybe being a link between some supposed murders and New Eden. I didn't see the connection, and still don't.”

“Did you ever meet Tunderew?” Apparently the question caught him by surprise.

“No. I never even heard of him other than to know he'd done a hatchet job on Governor Keene.”

“You didn't read
Dirty Little Minds
?”

He almost smiled, but not quite. “Do I look like the kind of man who would?”

He had a point.

“So you weren't aware he'd been writing a new book centered on New Eden?”

“Bar…Mrs. Dinsmore said that's what you'd told her, and that really upset her. And when she gets upset,
I
get upset, if you know what I mean.”

I think I knew.

“Look. I'm not out to cause any trouble for New Eden, the Dinsmores, you, or anyone else. All I'm trying to do, as I said, is to try to find out who killed Tony Tunderew.”

“And why should you care?”

“Because Tunderew wasn't the only one killed in that crash. He was a rotten excuse for a human being, but Randy Jacobs didn't deserve to die with him. You knew he was with Tunderew, I assume.”

He shrugged. “Yeah. The police called trying to locate his family. I couldn't help them. Every resident fills out a form when they first come to us. A lot of them leave the ‘Family Information' part blank. Jacobs had just written in ‘None.'”

“Did you tell your sister or brother-in-law that Randy was dead?”

He shrugged. “I told Jeffrey.”

“But not your sister?”

“No reason she had to know. She's got enough to worry about. I didn't want to upset her. Nothing she could do about it anyway. Part of my job is to act as a buffer between the Dinsmores and what goes on on the farm and with the residents. I try not to bother them with all the details.”

“A former resident's death is a ‘detail'?”

He shrugged again. “You know what I mean. But given everything else they have to deal with every day, yeah, it's a detail.”

The waitress came over to refresh our coffee and ask if we'd decided what we'd like. Hooper asked what kind of pie they had, and she ran through the list: Apple, Cherry, Banana Cream, and Rhubarb.

“Rhubarb.”

“Make it two,” I said.

She filled our cups and returned to the counter for the pie.

“So you had no idea Tunderew was writing a book about New Eden?”

He shook his head. “Not a clue.”

“But the news about the murders didn't surprise you?”

He gave a deep sigh and shrugged.

“The only murder I know about is Mike Barber in Dallas. She mentioned there being two more…one from Atlanta and one from here. But look, New Eden isn't exactly a finishing school for the children of the wealthy. The kids who come to us are already pretty damaged goods. They lived on the edge before they got to us, and too many go back to it when they leave. We do what we can, but that's all we can do. We can't save everybody.”