Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  “Better just turn right around, mister,” said one of the men, sauntering toward the Jeep and speaking in a nonchalant voice.

  Jesse nodded. “Name’s Jesse Lawson. I want to see the boss up to the Tabernacle.”

  “Jesse Lawson?” the guard seemed to know the name. Then he said quickly, “Don’t know anything about no Tabernacle.”

  “Farm equipment. I’m a custom harvester.”

  “I don’t care who you are, Lawson. You come to the wrong place. Farmers around here don’t have no need for custom harvesters,” a young voice called from across the road. They turned and saw a man, about eighteen, his hair bleached yellow on top, his trousers baggy.

  Yellow Hair continued, clenching his fists, “If I was you, Lawson, If that’s who you really are, I’d get the hell out of here before you get hurt.” He grinned and added, “You can leave that pretty lady if you want.”

  “Hobble said he wants to know anybody comes this far,” the guard said to Yellow Hair. Then the guard looked at Jesse. Mike noticed that he was more respectful of them than he had been before. He guessed that Robin had done her magic once more. She had a way with men who were trying to push her around. She made them calm down. The guard said, his voice hesitant, “You folks best wait in the store.”

  The store had a worn unpainted wooden porch with one empty chair. A soda machine was at the back of the porch against the store wall and it was surrounded with signs for beer and bakery goods. One faded metal sign had once advertised Nehi beverages while another mentioned Quaker State Motor Oil.

  They entered the store, the wood framed screen door ringing an overhead bell with a pleasant chime, and Robin and Jesse sat at a table. Mike stood by the door, keeping his eye on the Jeep and the guard.

  Inside in the dim light shelves were filled with candy and household goods. To the back was a butcher’s counter and a table with two people seated. To the right a black man about thirty, stripped to his waist, sat on the end of a bench and was doing curls with a set of barbells. No one was behind the counter, but a radio in a back room was playing hip hop music with a lot of static.

  Even at this early hour, the man and woman at the table were drinking beer from long necked bottles. The table was covered with a checkered red and white shelf lining on which stood several already emptied bottles.

  Robin looked around the room. The woman, dressed in a tank top pulled up well over her navel and below it, a pair of stained short shorts, stared back at Robin. When she spoke, her voice was slurred from the beer.

  “What are you lookin’ at, missy?” the woman said.

  “Maybe we ought to wait outside,” Robin said to Mike, as she stood up to move toward the door.

  “I recognize you, Mr. Lawson,” said the man, slender in a tee shirt and jeans, his feet in boots.

  Jesse looked at him, as the man, a drunken smile on his reddish face, said again, “You’re sure the big Mr. Lawson.”

  “I know you too. You were one of my drivers last year,” said Jesse.

  “You fired me.”

  “You were drinking on the job,” said Jesse.

  “Mister Lawson, you should be nice to my friend,” said the woman in short shorts, giggling as the long neck she held to her mouth dribbled down the front of her clothes.

  The ex-employee stood up and walked toward Robin, while the weightlifter kept on with his exercises as if he was in another world.

  “You too good to sit down in here?” he said.

  “You can leave her alone,” said Jesse.

  The man grabbed at Robin. Robin, shifting her weight to her left foot, kicked with her right, throwing him backwards into one of the counters. Bakery goods fell to the floor and a bag of white flour broke and sent up a cloud of dust.

  “Bitch,” the ex-employee said as he clambered to stand up.

  His girl friend, screaming, “Fight, fight, fight,” ran forward. She teetered in the high heel cowboy boots she was wearing as she began to flail at Robin’s arms. Robin slapped the woman who fell back and then rose on her elbows, shaking her head.

  Yellow Hair rushed in from outside and shouted, “You leave my friends alone.” Then, without warning, he lunged at Jesse.

  Mike stepped in front of him and set him back with his right. Yellow Hair caught himself and came forward again. Mike dropped him with a left hook. The young man fell outside, through the doorway and lay flat on his back, breathing hard. He did not try to get up.

  A big man, balding, appeared around the corner of the meat counter, in a white stained apron, holding a shotgun.

  Jesse yelled, “Behind you, Mike.”

  “I ain’t going to shoot nobody,” said the man, gruffly. “You all hold it right there. You,” he called to Yellow Hair, “Your old man don’t like you fighting.”

  “You got to be invited to the Tabernacle. You ain’t going to be invited,” said the woman, pointing at Robin and then standing up.

  She laughed and said, “That shotgun has a hair trigger. I know ‘cause he shot it at me. Here, see,” she said to Robin. She pulled her shorts and underwear down to her knees and showed Robin, then moved sideways to show the weightlifter the small scar on the left cheek of her backside. He didn’t look and when she started to show Jesse her trophy, the man who had been drinking with her said, “You sit down, whore.” She pulled up her skirt and returned to her chair. Reaching for her beer, she took a long swallow, and then said, “Shit, I don’t care.”

  The man with the apron moved towards the front of the store where Jesse was standing. He pointed to Yellow Hair who was still on the floor, the wind knocked out of him.

  “Hobble ain’t going to like that. You hit his son.”

  The gate guard stepped over Yellow Hair and looked inside the store. He said to Jesse, “Hobble says for you people to come on into the village.”

  In a few minutes they were driving up the side road, over the chain which had been dropped by the guards. Mike sat in the back with Robin. Heavy brush lined the side of the road as they went along, but in the breaks in the tangled growth, Mike could see well-groomed fields.

  “I expect we’re being watched,” said Jesse.

  They came to a large white gate, the kind with heavy wooden crossbars, that stretched across the road. As the Jeep pulled up, the gate, by itself, opened back to one side. No guards were in sight. Mike looked hard at the brush on both sides of the road and near the gate posts, wondering if they were being watched, if guns were trained on them.

  Jesse drove more slowly after they passed through the gate. They approached a sharp turn to the left. Just after they made the turn, they had to stop. A man, with a beard long over the front of his red work shirt stood in front of the Jeep, slowing them down with his hands.

  Jesse stopped the car.

  “Now what?” said Mike.

  From the woods along the road several other men and women came out and, without speaking, surrounded the Jeep. Then they parted to let through a man with a long ponytail, wearing a blue and white checkered shirt and coveralls. He reached the side of the Jeep and said, “Which of you is Jesse Lawson?”

  Before Jesse could say anything, the man in the red shirt called out, “Hobble said not to bother with that. He doesn’t want to waste time. He said to take them all directly to the graveyard.”

  Mike grasped Robin’s hand. The two of them looked at each other, thinking the same thing, wondering if the graveyard destination meant they were going to be killed. Then all of them got out of the Jeep, and, surrounded by the men and women, with Jesse in front, they followed the man with the ponytail.

  Chapter Fourteen

  8:30 AM, July 3

  The Tabernacle, Maryland

  The escort led the three of them, single file, without saying a word. All around them were great magnolia trees and the air was filled with the scent of the fragile white blossoms. They moved into an open area, with buildings arranged on both sides of the central road or street and with a large grassy space to one side of th
e street like a common area. Mike thought this must be the cluster of small buildings along a road that they had seen from the air.

  In the middle of the cleared area was a grandstand, a small platform with a covering roof and railings, around which benches had been constructed to seat an audience of perhaps a hundred people.

  Along the road Mike studied the small houses, some of them only one story, but all neat and orderly. They lacked paint but the yards that surrounded each building had flower beds and vegetable gardens. He noticed the women and men who stood along the side of the road watching him and the others. All were alike, dressed in the shoulder strap coveralls, the women with shirts underneath, most of the men bare shouldered in the heat. They passed a small store or what would pass for a store because inside Mike could see shelves and a counter. In front of the store, sitting on a shady porch, a black woman with short white hair was reading to a group of very young children. The children, a mix of races, were bare above the waist and some of them, the smallest, were naked.

  He noticed a fair amount of regulation among the inhabitants. All the people seemed to favor the same hair arrangement, a short cut for both male and female of all ages, with the men and grown male adolescents also sporting beards. Most of the people looked up from their gardening or housecleaning projects as his group passed; their faces were upturned and curious but not particularly violent. None waved their hands in any kind of defiance. As a matter of fact, Mike had a strange feeling that Jesse, who walked first, was actually being inspected more than he or Robin, and was being given a look more of reverence than hatred, as if he were some type of god figure.

  Ahead, surrounded by a close growth of the magnolia trees, was the cemetery, a small affair, with not more than twenty simple stone markers. The perfume of the magnolia blossoms was everywhere and heaviest near the center of the place. The stones were arranged in order around a larger piece of white marble. Small bouquets of fresh flowers had been placed in water jugs on all four sides of the white marble.

  Mike and the others were allowed to enter. The man with the ponytail pointed to the large panel and Mike and Jesse kneeled to read the inscription chiseled deeply into its face.

  “Edward Lawson, Aviator, died July 4 1946”

  Jesse turned to Mike and read the words out loud. His face was tortured, unbelieving.

  “The bastards must have captured him, killed him,” he said.

  He crossed himself and began to pray, his eyes closed. Mike watched him then looked carefully around the site. He was interested in a possible escape route for the three of them if the situation got any worse.

  Jesse opened his eyes. “How did he get here?” he said, his fingers caressing the marble, tracing the letters. He looked back again at Mike, his face full of questions.

  “Did you people kill him?” Jesse asked the man with the ponytail.

  The villager did not meet Jesse’s eyes, and instead looked over Mike’s shoulder. Mike heard someone approaching, boots crunching in the dirt. As Mike turned, a strong voice said,

  “We did not kill your grandfather. He died before my father and the other villagers could rescue him.” The voice had a deeper tone, one of authority.

  The speaker, a slender man who was slightly bent at the waist, stood with two others. His eyes were sharp, precise, sizing up Mike and the others quickly. Mike felt apprehension, knowing that this man might at any minute order all of them killed.

  The man had one feature to which Mike’s attention was immediately drawn. His skin was neither dark nor light. Instead he seemed to have a blotched complexion, with large marks of brown like giant freckles interspersed with a whiter background, as if the two colors were at war, with neither giving quarter. Mike had heard of persons with this rare skin disorder. The blotches extended down on the bare parts of his arms and neck. He looked like a man who had been horribly burned and miraculously saved, to live with this distortion. Yet, with this disfigurement, if that was a fair statement to describe it, he seemed almost kindly in his review of them, as if he perhaps was not here to kill them or to pass judgment, but rather for some other reason. In other words, Mike did not sense the tyranny of a dictator in this man but rather the atmosphere of a leader come to help his subjects.

  “My name is Hobble,” he said, and his voice had become softer, more melodic, assuming the drawl of a local farmer, and Mike could not believe what he was sensing, as if this strange man was welcoming them.

  Mike fixed his eyes on Hobble’s face, not wanting to show any reaction to the man’s disfigurement.

  Hobble spoke directly to Jesse. His words were precise, as if he were being careful what he said. “Jesse Lawson. The Maryland police are searching for these people, Mike Howard and Robin Mackensie. I think you need our help.”

  The wind rustled in the magnolia leaves. Otherwise, the air was hot and silent as all of them stood in the shade of the little graveyard. After a few moments, Hobble smiled and said, as he nodded to the man with the ponytail, “You were right, Jonathan. He does resemble his grandmother.”

  “My grandmother?” asked Jesse, a look of astonishment coming over his face. Mike had never seen Jesse, one of the most in control men he had ever met, so completely taken by surprise.

  “Few people know the Lawson family as well as I do,” said Hobble. He reached into his pocket. Mike tensed, not sure what was going to happen in this strange confrontation. However, all Hobble was doing was reaching for a photograph. Hobble handed the picture to Jesse.

  Jesse glanced at the picture, then back at Hobble, “This is a recent photograph of me standing with my wife and children.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get this?” Jesse, his face angering, stood up.

  “I was planning to send for you,” said Hobble.

  “I still don’t get it. I don’t know you. How are you going to help my friends?”

  Hobble went on. “That’s something we have to talk about. Now that your grandfather’s story is being discussed in the press, we need to ask you what to do.”

  “How did you know my grandmother?” asked Jesse. Mike was still tense, not sure where all this dialogue was headed. He looked at Robin and he could see in her face that she also was on guard.

  “She came here after your grandfather died,” said Hobble.

  “She knew?” asked Jesse.

  “Many times before he crashed, the two of them would fly here to visit.”

  “They came here?” said Jesse. He had started to relax and his voice was more calm.

  “All secret,” said Hobble, patiently. He was smiling at Jesse, the kind of smile that a father gives a son. “I’m asking you to believe something almost incredible. Forget all you have heard about our village, about us. We’re not what you think. You never knew this but your family is actually our benefactor and we owe you our lives. The Lawson family gave us the land for our Tabernacle, gave it to my father, but all in secret.”

  Jesse clenched his fist, as if he were still not convinced. “I’m not sure whether to believe you.”

  “Believe,” smiled Hobble.

  Jonathan, the guard, touched Jesse’s arm and smiled. “It’s the truth, Jesse. We all feel this way about you. We want to help.”

  Jesse said, hoarsely, finding his voice. He looked at Mike as he explained. “That was the Admiral, my great grandfather. From what Hobble says, the old man must have made special gifts of the family land to these people.”

  “A great gift for which we are always to be grateful,” said Hobble. “This is our trust.”

  “She said the word Tabernacle on her deathbed,” said Jesse.

  “Yet, she told my father she would never to reveal this place,” said Hobble. “She must have been under great duress.”

  “You’re right,” said Jesse. “She didn’t break her word, Hobble. I don’t think she was capable of breaking her word. She was in pain and didn’t know what she was saying.”

  “No matter,” said Hobble. He put his arm aro
und Jesse’s shoulder. “This is a lot for you to understand.” He looked at Mike and Robin. “A lot for all of you. God has blessed us and you are here and safe.”

  Hobble spoke again, “My father said words on this site when your grandfather was buried. He said, ‘This man came to us for help. It was his father, Admiral Lawson, who gave us help so we must be ready to help his children and his children’s children whenever they come to us.’”

  “What happened that night?” asked Mike.

  Hobble spoke slowly. “It wasn’t the first time he had flown up Magnolia Creek doing touch landings. He would fly here sometimes at night, sometimes during the day. The plane was quiet, almost silent. I was much younger then. I remember he would arrive before we knew it and then be gone. Afterwards the folks working the fields near the river would report to my father that the great blue airplane had landed on the water and then as quickly flown away.

  “Then came the Fourth of July. It was in the middle of the night when he flew in. There was no advance knowledge that he was coming. The airplane was so quiet that we could not hear it coming over the trees. All we heard that night was the noise of metal tearing against the trees when he crashed.

  “When the Captain made his approach, he did not see a small fishing boat left anchored in the middle of his path. When he hit the boat, his aircraft turned sideways and one of the wings hit the trees at the shore line.

  “Of course we rushed to the riverbank. He was pulled out of the water immediately, but, sadly, he was already dead.”

  Hobble looked at Jesse. “The airplane’s only been ours to keep until a Lawson, the rightful owner, came for it.”

  “The plane, what happened?” asked Mike.

  Hobble went on. “We pulled the aircraft from the water and hid it.”

  “You have the plane?” asked Mike.

  “You see, we realized right away that his flight was not a normal one. He was escaping from something, that was evident. His uniform was stuffed with papers and he had a suitcase packed with clothes. We knew that others would come looking for the airplane. When we turned on the radio, we found out that the police were looking for him.