by Dorien Grey
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.”
Aha, I thought.
“Do you have any idea how close he was to finishing? Do you have any part of the manuscript?”
“I know he was close to the end, but he never gave me any part of the manuscript.”
“But you do know who it was about, then?”
There was a pause, then a cautious, “It wasn’t about anyone,” he said defensively. “The book was a work of fiction.”
“Like Dirty Little Minds?”
“Exactly. Some people may have seen some vague similarity to certain well-known individuals, but that would only be a testament to Mr. Tunderew’s ability to create lifelike characters.”
Uh huh.
“And you can’t tell me which actual person the ‘lifelike character’ this book might resemble?”
“No. I don’t engage in speculation. As I say,
it’s a work of fiction.”
“Well, thank you very much for your time, Mr. Armata. I’m sorry that you lost a client—especially one with such great potential for you.”
“Win some, lose some. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“Certainly. Thanks again.”
I heard the click of his hanging up.
*
I assumed Armata must have been in the business quite a while to be able to take the loss of his potential share of the profits from an all-but-guaranteed blockbuster in stride. From what I’d gathered from the Bernadines, I assumed Tunderew had only taken Armata on as an agent for the second book, and he got nothing from Dirty Little Minds. But I also suspected he probably knew more about the second book and how close to completion it was than he let on. Still, he seemed a little more casual about the whole thing than I’d have thought.
I’d just called downstairs to the diner in the lobby for a turkey club, a small salad (hey, I was trying to eat healthier), and a chocolate shake (okay, so I wasn’t totally succeeding), and had just headed for the door to go down to get it when the phone rang.
I leaned across the desk to pick it up.
“Hardesty Investigations.”
“Mr. Hardesty, it’s Catherine Tunderew. You wanted to talk to me?”
I walked back around my desk to sit down.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I did. First, I’d like to express my condolences on Mr. Tunderew’s death.”
I could almost hear a small smile in her voice when she said, “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Hardesty, but as I think you know, condolences are hardly necessary.”
“I understand. But several questions have come up and…”
She interrupted. “Are you still working on this blackmail thing? I’d have thought that issue would have become moot with Tony’s death.”
“Well, that part of it, yes. But the passenger in the car with Mr. Tunderew was an acquaintance of mine, and…”
She interrupted again.
“Oh, my, this is all beginning to sound very complicated. Why don’t we talk in person over a cup of tea? Would you like to come by around two o’clock?”
“Uh, yes, that would be nice. If you’re sure I won’t be intruding.”
She gave a small laugh.
“On what? Certainly not my grief, and I’ve just finished work on my last commissioned book, so I have all the time in the world. Do come over and we’ll talk.”
“That’s fine. I’ll see you at two.”
As I hung up I wondered why Franz Lehar suddenly popped into my mind, and then the thought was immediately followed by the title music from his operetta, The Merry Widow.
Where do you come up with these things, Hardesty? my mind asked.
*
I went downstairs to pick up lunch, then returned to my office and ate it while pretty much staring off into space, thinking. I had no doubt that Tunderew had been killed, and I rather suspected that the people I knew about with good reason to want him dead were almost assuredly not the only ones. He had profited, in Dirty Little Minds, from a lot of influential people’s misery, and in large part contributed to and perpetuated it. The Governor Keene scandal, which might eventually have just faded away, was forever immortalized in print. The subject of the next book had every right—if they even knew they were the target—to be sufficiently unhappy to be willing to go to great lengths to prevent its publication.
I’d just about put Larry Fletcher out of my mind as far as any involvement with the blackmail was concerned, and I’d never so much as considered him as a factor in Tunderew’s death. But the more I thought about it…could he really be as naive as he came across? Never turn your back on the quiet ones. What if he had somehow found out that it was Tunderew who’d gotten him fired, and realized that Tunderew had been using him as a doormat and made a ton of money off what Fletcher had done for him because he thought Tunderew liked him? I know I might have been more than a tad miffed if it had happened to me.
And then there was Bernadine Press…
I pulled myself out of my reverie and looked at my watch. Time to head out for tea with Catherine Tunderew.
*
The work area of her living room was, I noticed when I entered, a lot less cluttered than the last time I’d been there. Well, she said she’d just finished a commission. She greeted me wearing a tent-like Hawaiian muumuu with a pleasantly muted floral pattern. Her greying hair was in a rubber-banded ponytail. Again, she wore no makeup. She might not have been awaiting the photographers from Vogue, but she did look comfortable.
She showed me to a seat, then went into the kitchen for the tea.
When we were both settled in, she said, “Now tell me what you’re about, Mr. Hardesty.”
I explained to her that her ex and I had had a parting of the ways over the blackmail issue when I told him I thought the person he was positive was responsible was, in my opinion, in fact not.
“Someone gay, of course,” Mrs. Tunderew said, taking a sip of her tea. “How very like Tony—he always was rabidly homophobic. Some people see Jews behind everything that’s wrong with the world. Some see Republicans.” She gave a small smile. “For Tony, it was homosexuals. Which is why, when you originally mentioned he was being blackmailed for possibly being gay himself, it struck me as rather unlikely. And which, perversely enough, is probably why he hired you—to keep it all ‘in the family’ as it were.”
Odd. I didn’t think I’d ever mentioned to her that I was gay.
Like it matters? my mind-voice asked.
She looked at me with slightly knit brows. “Though I am curious as to why you would ever have consented to work for him.”
I shrugged. “Because he pushed the right buttons by implying that if I didn’t, I’d be as big a bigot as he was.”
She smiled again and took another sip of tea.
“Tony was a very good button-pusher. He’d have made a wonderful elevator operator.”
“Well, the fact that my acq…my friend…Randy was gay and was in the car with him lends a good deal of credence to the blackmail claim. I can’t imagine any other reason the two of them would have been together, or how they would ever have met.”
I was lying, of course, but she didn’t have to know that.
I reached for the small round tin of butter cookies she had brought in with the tea.
“It’s quite possible,” she said as I took a bite of cookie and washed it down with a sip of tea, “that they met while Tony was doing that article.”
“Which article was that?”
“Tony had a good-old-boy buddy on the staff of the Journal-Sentinal, our answer to the Washington Post.” She smiled again.
The Journal-Sentinal was to journalism what pond scum is to Albert Einstein.
“Several months ago they asked Tony to write a bottom-of-the-shoe report on local prostitution. It was a two-part series, one dealing with female prostitutes, and into which I’m sure he poured his heart among other things. The other was on male prostitutes, which he approached with complete revulsion.
“But of course Tony would never let revulsion get in the way of making money. He interviewed several men for the article. Was your friend by chance a prostitute? No offense to either you or your friend, of course.”
“None taken. And yes, he was a hustler. But again I don’t see the connection between his possibly having been interviewed for an article several months ago and his being in the car with your ex-husband when he was killed.”
I was hoping my apparent naivety might spark some sort of response or reaction. It didn’t.
She nodded, slowly. “Just a thought.”
I decided it was time to change the subject.
“Did your ex-husband have a drug problem?”
She raised an eyebrow slightly and accompanied it with a small smile.
“You might say that, though I understand that it was only after his finding fame and fortune that he was able to afford to indulge it to the fulle
st.”
Okay. Next question.
“Are you the beneficiary of your husband’s…your ex’s’…will?”
She looked at me over the rim of her tea cup, from which she had just taken another sip.
“I was. I very much doubt that I am now. I suppose I should check with the lawyer who drew up both our wills.”
“I strongly recommend you do that.” I was thinking of the fact that Glen O’Banyon had been in the process of drawing up a new will for Tunderew—and it was unlikely that Tunderew would have written one excluding his wife and then another one after that. I had another question.
“And if I may I ask—who is paying Mr. Tunderew’s funeral expenses?”
She shook her head and set her now empty cup on the tray with the plate of cookies.
“Bernadine Press.”
Bernadine Press?
“Bernadine Press?” I echoed.
She sat back in her chair.
“Yes, interestingly, I got a call from Peter Bernadine asking me the same thing as you did about whether I was beneficiary of the will. When I told them I wasn’t sure, he asked if I were planning on a service for him as his ex-wife. I told them that as far as I was concerned, they could put him in a cardboard box and leave him out by the curb on garbage day. And I certainly would never have had enough money to afford a funeral through McGinnis and Morbey. More tea?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“They offered to pay for the entire thing, if I would agree that if I discovered I am in the will, they could deduct half of the funeral cost from future royalties from Dirty Little Minds. I told them that if they were willing to take that gamble, it would be fine with me, but if I wasn’t in the will, it would be totally at their expense.
“I gather they’re planning to make a big media event of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a Ferris wheel and a tilt-a-whirl. And pony rides for the kiddies.”
On thinking it over, I realized that a big, lavish funeral probably would be to Bernadine Press’s ultimate advantage. The cost of the funeral could easily be offset by additional book sales. Still, something in that scenario didn’t ring quite true. It was all just a little bit too generous an offer.
