Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) Page 14

  “I don’t see anyone here,” the officer reported. “Tell the chief this ain’t much of a lead for that guy. Tell him I’ll come by later on and talk to Loretta. Neither one, her nor Riley, ain’t come in yet.” Mike could hear the static of the radio as the policeman signed off. In a few minutes, the police car left, slowly pulling out of the parking lot, then squealing its tires to pick up speed as it went on to the blacktop.

  “Riley must be Loretta’s new husband,” whispered Mike.

  Another hour went by. The sun was up and the day grew hot.

  Coming down the highway, they heard the coughing of an engine with a broken muffler.

  Mike had started to doze again. Robin pulled at his arm.

  Far down the road, was a rusty and dented pickup truck, the door on the left held closed by wire, with two large and leafy bushes set in its bed. The truck slowed and turned carefully into the nursery. The driver, a woman, looked around the yard and then stopped near the back door.

  As she got out, Mike could see that she was an older woman, gray haired, short, in tee shirt and jeans. She walked around to the back of the truck and pulled out one of the bushes, a boxwood plant. She managed to put her arms around it and carried it towards the door of the store, talking to the plant. The bush with all its tiny leaves made her bend backward to handle the weight and size.

  “You’re going to be just fine. You’ll see if I get you out of that hot sun for a few days. I’m not going to sell you either, you’ll see. You just get well,” she said.

  “That’s got to be her. She’s just like Jesse described her,” said Mike. He stood up and called out, “Mrs. Spencer?”

  The woman stopped, put down the plant and slowly turned around. She squinted her eyes first at Mike then at Robin.

  “You’ll have to come closer. I can’t see too well,” she said.

  “We need to ask you about something,” said Robin.

  “Well, come on in the store, then.”

  Inside she turned to them and said, “All right, what kind of plants you looking for this early in the morning?”

  “Jesse said you’d talk to me,” said Mike.

  She moved her head, and then, as if she suddenly understood who they were, nodded slightly. She looked at both of them carefully and said, “I see.” She motioned to a back office.

  “The police were here just a few minutes ago,” said Robin. “They’re looking for us. We just need to talk to you and then we’ll go.”

  “Don’t worry,” she smiled. “I can stand the risk of dealing with these cops around here.”

  As they moved into the smaller room, she said, “You must be the fellow Jesse is working with about his grandfather.”

  Mike nodded.

  “I hear all this news talk on the television.” She winked at Robin. “You look better than the picture of you in the news.” She crossed the room, talking over her shoulder. “Jesse says the whole thing is bunk, that you’re not guilty of anything except trying to help him.”

  “That’s right, Mrs. Spencer,” said Mike.

  “Everybody calls me Loretta,” she said as she lifted two grass seed bags off the cane chairs in the room.

  “Watch you don’t get the fertilizer dust all over you,” she said, speaking to Robin.

  “Thanks,” said Robin.

  Mike breathed in the comforting smell of the garden shop. It was pleasant, and he could understand why this woman had come here, why she had traveled away from the anger of River Sunday.

  “You’re in big trouble,” she said. “People at Aviatrice will never let you go.”

  Mike nodded.

  “I know all about them,” she said as she sat back in her swivel chair. A green and red quilt hung off the back of it. To her side was a roll top desk, the top open like it had always been that way, and the flat writing area messy with oddly stacked magazines and vendor manuals.

  The glass panes on the front door of the store rattled.

  “Police,” said Loretta. “He always shakes that door so you think he’s tough. You two stay in here.”

  Mike heard her go out into the shop, the floor boards creaking as she moved across the room to the front area. He listened as a tinkling bell announced the door was opening.

  “Morning, Miz. Spenser.” Mike recognized the voice of the policeman who had been in the lot early.

  “Hello, Sargeant.”

  “Sheriff wants everybody to be looking out for them killers that have been on the news.”

  “I didn’t get straight what all the fuss was about. What did they do?”

  “Best I know the man was a trained boxer, and he beat two people, a man and a woman to death up in Philadelphia. Wrecked their place pretty good too.”

  Mike could hear the policeman shuffle his feet. “We think he might come over here and try to talk to you.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “We know he talked to your son, Jesse Lawson, over on the Eastern Shore. I’m going to be stopping by here every once in a while today to look out for your place, kind of watch it. I thought I might just inform you, us being friends and all. I don’t want you to worry none.”

  She answered, “Well, we’ll call you right away if Riley or me sees anything.”

  “I got to ask you,” said the policeman. “Have you been contacted by a Mr. Howard, says he’s from a museum in Wilmington, Delaware? He might be traveling with a female.”

  “No,” she said, quickly.

  “Like I say, I just carry out my orders. You let us know, will you?”

  “I certainly will,” she said.

  “I’ll be around,” said the officer, slowly, “Maybe sitting across the road looking out just in case. He’s supposed to be a pretty dangerous man.”

  “I’ll tell Riley soon’s he comes in.”

  “Yes Ma’am.” The officer chuckled. “Of course, he wouldn’t be nothing for me. I got some ring time myself. By the way, my wife wanted me to tell you she is real pleased with the box bushes. We got them going pretty good.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “That’s getting to be kind of our specialty.”

  She reached beside her on a shelf near the door, picked up a small plastic tub containing white powder, and handed it to him. “You tell her to try some of this on the roots.”

  He reached into his hip pocket.

  She shook her head and said, “On the house.”

  “Why, that’s real kind of you.”

  Mike heard the officer’s boots crossing the gravel in front. The cruiser started up and its wheels spun up stones as it pulled away.

  Loretta came back and sat down. “He’s gone for a while. He’s a stupid man but he’s also smart, if you know what I mean. I don’t know whether I fooled him or not.”

  She started some coffee in a percolator near her desk on the floor.

  “Jesse’s like his father,” she said. “Either one of them get an idea in their head and right or wrong they go after it. His father was a nice looking man too. His eyes were always sharp, like Jesse. Sharp but loving.”

  She went on, “My husband wanted to go to Vietnam. He said a Lawson had been in every war since the beginning. Vietnam was his turn, he said. Nothing I could say would stop him either. Most of the other boys in River Sunday joined the National Guard. I told him, but he wouldn’t do that. Said that he couldn’t do that, not with his father’s accusation as a traitor. I guess he was right. People would just start on him about avoiding his duty, bringing up Captain Lawson again.

  “I remember the last time I saw Jesse’s father. He’d just come downstairs from seeing his mother. She wouldn’t come to the door she was so upset at him leaving. Mary Lawson told me later she knew he was going to die.

  “ ‘So you’re ready to leave?’ I asked my husband.”

  “He just stood there in his uniform, almost at attention like he was reporting to his company commander or something.”

  “ ‘My mother always said you were too good for me,’ h
e said. ‘So you can tell me. We're fighting the Red Communists over in South Vietnam, aren't we?’

  “ ‘I don't know why you come in here asking me that question,’ I said.

  “ ‘It’s because I want you to tell my boy, Jesse. If a man goes to South Vietnam and fights in the United States Army, he ain’t a Red Communist. You tell him that.’

  “ ‘I guess,’ I said.

  “ ‘If a man gets a medal over there fighting the enemy of the United States, then it's likely nobody would ever call him a Red Communist.’

  “ ‘I guess not.’

  “ ‘Well, then, that’s why I’m going.’

  “Then he hugged me real hard and said he’d miss me and Jesse, he turned on his heel, and he walked out.

  “When we heard he was coming home all covered with medals of bravery, I actually began to think it would get better around River Sunday for the family, for all of us. Not to be. A month later, the word came from the Baltimore police that he was dead, killed by that mob. That’s what they said but I never believed them. I think he was murdered by Wall.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Robin.

  She stared at Mike, then at Robin.

  “We’ve all been scared of that old man Wall too long. Maybe the time has come to put an end to Aviatrice,” Loretta said.

  “If we find the seaplane, Wall will have some explaining to do,” said Mike.

  The coffee was ready. “I don’t have any milk,” she said as she poured the black liquid into three unmatched china cups.

  “I talked to Captain Lawson’s secretary,” said Mike.

  “Rebecca. I heard enough about her. She’s crazy, that woman. My mother-in-law made sure I knew that Rebecca was a whore. I guessed she suspected something had been going on between Rebecca and my father-in-law, but I never found out anything for sure about that.”

  “Rebecca said that Jesse’s grandmother knew all about her husband’s plans.”

  Loretta reached out for Mike’s hands. “You can’t understand, but I‘ve always been afraid Jesse would get hurt, like his father did.”

  Mike nodded. “Do you know anything that can help us?”

  Loretta sipped her coffee, then closed her eyes as she remembered. “My mother-in-law was dying. She was in the big bed upstairs. I was standing next to the bed, one of my feet resting on the little step beside it. She had not moved for hours. Jesse was downstairs. I did not want him to come into the room. I thought it would be bad for him to see her die.”

  She looked at Robin “His father was overseas in Vietnam. It was just the two of us, Jesse and me, and her upstairs dying. Jesse was so young. He had seen so much. He’d seen those men coming to hurt his father.”

  Her tone became matter of fact. “My mother-in-law had declared when she was still able to do so that she would not die in the River Sunday hospital with all the townspeople walking by in the corridor and spitting at her door, her not being able to get and do anything about it. She said she’d die at home. So, we had come back a couple days before from the emergency room. The doctor said she was going, that nothing could be done except make her rest easy. He had some morphine but she was not awake enough to take it.”

  Loretta stood up from her chair, nervously. “As she slept I heard her begin to speak in a very low voice. I had to bend very close to her to hear what she was saying. It sounded like she was saying the name of a place.” She paused and looked at Mike.

  “Tabernacle. That’s what she said, several times. Tabernacle.”

  “Tabernacle,” said Mike. “What is that, some kind of church?” He looked at Robin, who shook her head.

  Loretta went on, “I know where it is. It’s on the Eastern Shore, back up in the country. Jesse knows about the Tabernacle. It’s dangerous, filled with evil, dirty people. That’s why I didn’t tell him. I didn’t want him to get killed going in there.”

  “Is the place still there?”

  She nodded. “Jesse got you two into this mess. He’s going to have to help. I can’t protect him from any of this.”

  “Why would the seaplane be there?”

  “I don’t know if it is. All I’m saying is that was the name of a place and it’s what the old woman said before she died.”

  “What do you know about the Tabernacle?”

  “It’s a big farm,” said Jesse’s mother. “I know that much. I been told that the leader has half white and half black skin. You understand, most anything people say is what they repeat from people telling them who have escaped. The ones that get out of there, why, after a week or two, they disappeared again, like they never came back. No one knows anything about the Tabernacle because no one survives to talk.”

  Robin pulled on Mike’s arm.

  “What?” said Mike.

  “If you were going to hide an airplane, what better place than a farm nobody dares to visit?”

  “So you think we have a good chance the seaplane might be there?” asked Mike.

  Robin nodded. “If the wife knew in advance about the theft of the plane, it’s likely she would know where it was going, and where it was hidden.”

  Mike asked, “Loretta, can you show me on a map about where it is?”

  Jesse’s mother reached into a cubbyhole of her desk and pulled out a well used map.

  “You’re here,” she said. She ran her finger to the east, across the expanse of the Chesapeake Bay and back along the lines of roads into the Eastern Shore.

  “About here.” she pointed to an area with a small waterway named Magnolia Creek. The creek ended in a dotted line as if the surveyor had never finished his measurements. The spot on the map, a jagged rectangle of land in a lighter color than the surrounding green, looked like an area that Mike would have seen on an ancient map, an area marked, “unknown.”

  “Here’s a county road.” She indicated a tiny black line. “Jesse might know something about the area.”

  “We could get a plane to fly over it, Robin,” said Mike

  “I know a small airfield south of Wilmington where I touched down once,” she replied. “We might be able to rent a plane there without being spotted by the police.”

  “Or Aviatrice,” added Mike.

  “Since my husband’s death they haven’t bothered me,” Loretta said. “However, I’m sure they know I’m down here in Southern Maryland. That’s probably how the police traced you people here. Riley keeps a shotgun near the door for times like this.”

  She thought for a moment. “You find a small inn, a lodge, near River Sunday. The people who own it know how to keep their mouths shut. People go there on weekends to get away from their husbands and wives. I’ll show you where it is. Let me see that map again.”

  She showed Robin the inn’s location, several miles to the north of the Tabernacle.

  “I’ll be talking to Jesse later today. You get your investigating done. Then you go to the inn and call him. Let him know if he should take you to the Tabernacle. I’m sure he’ll come and help you.”

  Mike looked out the window at the police car. “We’re still going to have to get out of here.”

  At that moment, Riley pulled into the lot in his truck. He clumped into the store. He was a fat man, pleasant in manner, with a smile that looked like it would never stop.

  “What in hell is that patrol car doing across the road?” he bellowed.

  Then he saw the three of them in the office.

  “Oh,” he said, “we got company.”

  An hour later they were under a tarpaulin in the back of the pickup. Riley covered them up while his wife took coffee across the road to the policeman. They held tight as they could to the dirt covered steel bed of the truck as Riley bounced them down the street past the police to the old Volkswagen. As they went by the cruiser, they felt the truck stop.

  “Where you headed, Riley?” asked the policeman. His voice was rougher with Riley than it had been with his wife.

  “Going home for a while, Officer.”

  “Seen anybody hanging aro
und the store, Riley?”

  “Nossir,” Riley said as he started the truck forward. Mike watched through a hole in the tarp. Behind him, the policeman reached into his car and began to talk into his microphone. Then the officer signed off on his report, put the mike back and stood watching Riley drive away.

  Chapter Eleven

  3 PM, July 2

  Queenstown, Maryland

  Riley had told them about a route that would take them away from the police patrols. He had also climbed under the old car and adjusted the front suspension. As Riley listened to the air cooled engine he informed them that only three of the four cylinders were operating properly.

  “The valves on one of your cylinders are burned out.”

  He advised them to stop the engine to let it cool off from time to time so that it would go the distance. If they had to run it fast, he said the crankshaft bearings were so worn that they would overheat and seize, destroying the engine.

  Mike looked again at the rear view mirror. He had been driving for about an hour.

  “Anything?” Robin asked.

  He shook his head and tried the radio.

  “It’s broken. It won’t even light up,” said Robin.

  Mike tapped it on the dial. Nothing. He tapped again, harder. The light went on.

  “Hey, you got tunes,” she said.

  He turned the dial. Nothing but static. “The tuner or the antenna must be broken. Maybe we can get one good station. Here, I found something.” A murmur came out of the set, then a melody.

  “Turn it up,” she said.

  The sound of Moonlight Serenade came forth into the small car.

  “Just what I thought,” said Robin. “We can only get an oldies station.”

  “It’s Rebecca’s song, the one she told us she and the Captain played at the sand dunes,” said Mike.

  “I never heard it before,” said Robin. “I like it.”