Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) Read online

  He said, “You should not be blinded too, I mean because of Julie. She does not speak for her father.”

  Tench said, “I’ll call Julie and talk to her about this.” Julie was Strake’s daughter and an old girlfriend. They still kept in touch by phone. She lived in Texas where she worked in the Strake family oil business. His heart thumped at the thought of talking to her again. “I’ll call her,” he repeated.

  Smote said, “Stagmatter. He would kill anybody.” Smote referred to the manager of the farm. This man had been hired by Strake to run the farm and to take care of the antique automobiles. Stagmatter came from Argentina, a large man, short fused and not liked by anyone who met him. Sometimes old World War Two veterans would swear they heard him talking German. Tench had only met him a few times when he came to the garage for auto parts and had found him to be a good mechanic and knowledgeable about cars.

  “That’s the way you figure it?” asked Tench.

  “I do,” said Smote.

  Tench said, “First we’d have to prove your grandfather was even up at the Island. We’d have to come up with something solid to convince the Sheriff.”

  Smote chewed on his wad of gum. Tench smelled its sweet aroma. Smote said, “The Captain, he kept talking about Strake’s place. You remember we both told him to stay away from there, you know that.”

  Smote added, “One thing for sure.”

  “What’s that?” asked Tench.

  “Captain Bob was right about one thing. He say, ‘Your pal from Baltimore. He will not let you down.’” The old man knew Tench owed Smote. Smote risked his life to rescue Tench from a Baltimore street fight, one where he got his scar.

  Eighteen-wheeler air brakes shrieked not far away in downtown River Sunday. Tench spotted the bright gold lion head symbol on the side of the box. He heard the truck, an older model International, jerk forward into gear, its engine loud. Its headlights sent dim and then strong white glare on the walls of the town buildings as the engine built power. Black exhaust smoke rose over the street toward where he stood, and Tench smelled the sickening stink of those diesel fumes, as the vehicle strained and lurched with its heavy load. The truck, with the clunking sounds of its gears shifting, gained acceleration and moved away with its valuable cargo, disappearing into the night.

  Chapter Two

  9AM, Sunday, August 15

  He arrived at his garage and tried again to call Julie. She didn’t answer. He tried both her apartment in Dallas and her cell. She had always answered with a happy voice when she saw him as the caller. That is, except last year when he contacted her about the sudden death of her sister and family on vacation. Her not answering made him feel the distance between even more. He would always have the desire to see her and to hold her, even after all the years they had been apart.

  In the portrait behind his desk Briggs Cunningham stood beside his 1949 “Le Monstre,” with its five carburetor Cadillac engine and its boxy streamlined blue and white body. The pioneer American car racer became known for these blue and white Cunningham racing stripes. He took this experimental car and finished tenth against a field of over thirty-five specially designed foreign racers at the 1950 Le Mans Twenty Four Hours race in France. His respect for Cunningham for his going up against such odds meant as much to Tench as heroic baseball players had meant to other childhood street friends. He was the saint of a young boy who dreamed of cars as a way beyond the hopelessness of the Baltimore streets where he grew up. Tench purchased the picture when he was fourteen, working part time at a local gas station in Baltimore pumping gas for an elderly black mechanic. That man, in turn, helped him through the violence of those days. Since then, the Cunningham portrait had been his most prized possession.

  The garage door opened to the sound of its lifting chains running through gears. Sunlight poured in followed by a familiar rumble of tuned automobile exhaust. Then Katy pulled into the workspace in her tuner, a modified Ford mini coupe. Smiley was beside her in the passenger seat, blue sport shirt open to his chest, his arm stretched out over the back of her seat.

  Katy spotted Tench, waved and got out of the machine, leaving Smiley still sitting in her car. She put her head in his office doorway. She was dressed in blue overalls with her name embroidered in white on her right chest pocket.

  “Figured we could use Sunday morning to change my spark plugs,” she said.

  Tench nodded. “That new exhaust sounds good,” he said.

  “It’s only catbacks. The little Ford won’t go real dual,” she said, with a shrug.

  “Lots of time you get the same power,” said Tench.

  She hesitated then blurted out, “I found an experienced driver for the drag runs of the Mustang dragster you are building,” she said. “He’s somebody who might get us in the lower teens.”

  “Fine, if he doesn’t wreck with him and my car spilling gasoline fire across that Delaware dragstrip up there.”

  Tench heard the sound of work boots coming across the garage concrete floor. Smote appeared at the doorway next to Katy. He looked at Tench expectantly.

  “I got to leave,” Tench said, looking up at Smote. He stood up and, turning to Katy, he said, “I’ll talk to you about it.”

  Smiley got out of the Ford and walked over to stand beside Katy, his shoulder close to but not touching Smote. Tench watched the body language of the two men. They had never liked each other, Smote because he considered Smiley a red neck racist, and Smiley, with his snake tattoos, because he did not like Latinos.

  Tench put the drawings of his race car back on top of a stack of automobile racing magazines.

  “Ready?” Smote asked.

  Tench reached up behind him and tapped the glass of the framed picture of Cunningham. He grinned at Katy. “When I get back, we’ll talk. I want to hear your ideas about the driver,” he said.

  “OK,” Katie said, and he could sense her disappointment as she headed back into the garage.

  “You going to be able to handle this, Smote?” he asked as he noticed his friend’s downcast face. They walked towards Captain Bob’s house and the Emmy anchorage. “I liked Captain Bob too. I can understand,” he added.

  “I was OK until I got to the boat this morning. You know, just cleaning up,” said Smote. “They threw his stuff all over the deck when the Coast Guard towed her in. Captain Bob would have been ashamed. You know the way he cleaned the Emmy. Besides, I wanted to find the other boot. He needs to be buried in them boots.”

  “I should have been with you. That’s a lot for you to have to face by yourself,” said Tench.

  “No, I had to do it by myself. Brought me closer to him.”

  “I miss him,” said Tench, his throat tightening for a moment, the picture of the old man moving through his mind.

  “They took the wine bottle. Couldn’t find the boot either. Funny, it should have been in the boat after it come off.”

  “Don’t know about the boot. I saw the wine bottle in the bilge,” said Tench.

  “It had some wine left in it. Someone want a drink,” said Smote.

  “Too bad it wasn’t checked for fingerprints,” said Tench.

  “No matter. The boys who did this to the Captain would have rubbed it clean and even if they didn’t their fingerprints would be African.” Tench knew he was referring to the African guards who patrolled the Strake compound.

  “Yeah,” said Tench, “They wouldn’t show up on anything in the USA.”

  “You know, the anchor is lost too,” said Smote.

  “That’s strange,” said Tench. He looked at Smote and said, “I never saw the Captain use it. He didn’t anchor her when he was fishing because he moved along, working the baits. He stowed it along the inside of the rail.”

  “I know. That’s why we look for the anchor today,” said Smote.

  “You think he did use it?”

  “Somebody did,” said Smote, nodding.

  Tench thought about the missing anchor and what it might mean. It could point to someone e
lse being on the boat. His mind drifted to the future of the Emmy.

  “You going to fish the Emmy, I mean after things settle down?” asked Tench.

  Smote didn’t answer for a while as they walked along. Then he said, “Yeah, I might. Or, I might sell her, like my wife want. I already got some offers. She say it’s too dangerous and I’ll get hurt like the Captain. Besides, fishing’s getting pretty poor around here.”

  “Yes, aren’t many good places to fish anymore,” said Tench. “When Strake closed the spot off his place, that didn’t help. I mean that was a prime fishing spot.”

  “No, that’s a fact, Jimmy.” They had reached Captain Bob’s house. Smote had already begun to move into the house from his rental outside town. Inside the house, Tench could hear Smote’s wife talking on the phone to her mother using fast Spanish Tench could not understand. He had known some Spanish growing up in Baltimore.

  The girls were playing at a swing from a limb in the back yard. They ran over, but Smote made them go back. He followed Smote down the familiar dirt path. Two rusty automobile engines rested covered with weeds and wines on rotten railroad ties beside the house. These machines, worn out V8 power, once powered the Emmy. Ahead of them Tench could see the boat, tight against her lines, pulling in the morning tide current. Captain Bob had lived on the good side of the harbor, better for mooring and wind protection than the shore across the harbor where Hiram Jones and other fishermen kept boats. The bottom here had hard packed sand and oyster shells. Tench and Smote waded out to the Emmy and climbed aboard. Abraham sat already in the bow, his eyes toward the harbor, waiting for them to get going.

  “Where are we going first?” asked Tench, his voice raised over the rumble of the engine.

  Smote said, “Don’t see much sense in going out into the Bay where they found him. He had been drifting anyway from somewhere else. Let us go to the Island. I know he get in trouble there, Jimmy.”

  Tench felt cooler as they moved out into the breeze. The swells increased in height as they moved to the center of the harbor. To port they passed the famous slavery monument built in the harbor in the early years following the Civil War. It drew a great number of tourists, some of them from overseas, every year. Former slave owners built it from the stone walls of the slave market building once located in downtown River Sunday. That real estate had become covered with marinas and gift shops for tourists.

  At the far end of the harbor the water mixed with the edge of the Chesapeake Bay and the waves begin to kick up with the current. A flying boat, an old one with World War Two military markings, prepared to take off. Its pilot revved its overhead engines and the roar cascaded across the water. The plane began its run, the waves splashing against its antique fuselage and spray shooting upward over the pilot’s compartment.

  “She comes last night heading for that big antique airplane show across the Bay,” said Smote. “I see her land before dark.”

  The seaplane gained altitude. Smote watched it, his hand shading his eyes. “We don’t want to be under that thing. The way it drips the runoff water from its hull as it takes off, we’d sure be wet,” he said. He steered the workboat away from the plane’s path. By now it had climbed three hundred feet into the sky.

  In a few minutes, they had progressed around the point of land to the right of the town harbor. To get to the Island, Smote steered the Emmy north up the edge of the Chesapeake past the mouth of the Nanticoke River. Allingham Island, or the “Island” as it was known, started on the far shore of the Nanticoke.

  The Emmy moved out into the Bay. A large ocean going yacht came from the west and turned north to run a course along the Island shoreline in front of them. She measured at least a hundred feet in length. Mariners would call her a passage maker design because of size and shape to handle all types of weather and long ocean crossings. Tench and Smote looked her over and reckoned she came over from Baltimore or Washington. The big yacht, white with orange and green trim on her flowing topsides, cruised about a mile ahead. The Emmy, much smaller and with a shallower draft, slapped the curls of the big boat’s wake, sending fine spray over Smote and Tench.

  “We’re coming up on Strake’s property. His men might see us pretty soon,” said Smote. “Maybe keep us from looking around.”

  “Steer far out from land, out of the prohibited area. We don’t want any trouble,” said Tench. Smote moved the steering wheel and headed slightly west. The workboat stood out from the shoreline, keeping the land about a half mile to starboard.

  The yacht already headed off shore. Whether he knew about Strake’s cruising prohibitions or not, the yacht’s captain, Tench reasoned, had no interest in running aground. Tench noticed the big yacht’s wake crashing against the shore beach, the sunlit spray heading up into the air against the six foot hollowed out clay banks, well eroded from decades of tides and storms. Above the banks, fields of corn and rows of pines and small trees, bright from sunlight on their upper stalks and leaves, had dark shadows below. As Smote cut speed and engine noise, Tench heard the oak-a-lee call of a red winged blackbird.

  To their west stretched the Chesapeake Bay itself, with its blue deep water, purple in the distance and covered with a thin line of heat haze. Two huge tankers passed each other, far out in the channel about four miles away. One came from Baltimore heading out empty and the other ran deep in the water with a supply of petroleum. To the north Tench could see the towers of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge with long suspension spans.

  Strake’s waterfront came abreast of the Emmy’s starboard. Far back over an expanse of lawn stretching up from the shoreline Tench saw the Strake mansion and the barns, including the two story silver colored car barn where the millionaire stored his precious antique cars. Behind the barn Tench noticed a new structure with a corrugated steel roof, wider but not as tall as the museum. This building Tench had not seen before. The bottom below the boat shoaled fast in some places. This shallow area with its seaweed and muddy bottom hid the best local breeding ground for the blue crabs and the oysters.

  The shoreline arced inward into small bays, returning each time to its long line along the surf. Tench spotted ragged patterns of crusted seaweed and the remains of fish cast up on the beach, left behind with the tides. The trees alongside the lawn area had been cut back making the expanse much wider. A bulldozer sat parked in the center. It appeared Strake had been preparing an expansive lawn on what had once been a long field of knee high grass and mud ruts. Tench noticed with a smile the tiny white garden structure at the edge of the lawn. He and Julie had their talks in this little building with its wooden railings and cake work roof. In those days they talked of designing great racing cars together. Her little ditty, often said to him, went through his mind, reminding him of those old days,

  “I’ll design them and you build them,”

  The yacht began to slow down and the Emmy came up on her port side, far west of her towards the deeper water of the Bay. Tench picked up the binoculars and scanned the deck of the yacht. He could see several black men, one at the wheel and the others working lines. He could also read the name on the stern. “Oilman” and the port of registry of Washington.

  “With a name like that, she must belong to Strake or his company in Texas,” said Tench. “I’ve never seen her before.”

  Smote nodded and moved the wheel. He had to steer out into the Bay to avoid the stern of the bigger craft. The bow of the workboat rose high on the crests of the former boat’s wake.

  Tench said, “You know, I think he’s following the deep water channel that Strake dredged into his place.” They watched as the yacht turned toward the shoreline and began a direct plot to the pier where Strake had several small boats tied up.

  Tench pointed to the yacht. “I guess Mister Strake‘s got visitors.”

  Smote had his own binoculars up to his eyes and he raked the beach.

  “You see anything?” asked Tench.

  Smote shook his head. “I look at the land for a clue as to what my grandfath
er did here that morning.”

  Tench began to look also, to search the water for anything that might resemble an anchor line.

  “You think he would have anchored, I mean, lost that anchor, this far out?” asked Tench. They had moved past the pier area where the yacht was landing.

  “I don’t know. We got another puzzle too.”

  “What?” asked Tench?

  “He must have gone in the water close to shore, someplace shallow, and then tried to wade ashore. I think that’s the way he lost one of his boots. They fit him tight, but getting in this mud might have pulled one off. Say he was running away and his feet got stuck, what do you think, Jimmy?”

  For the next ten minutes, Smote continued well offshore. He reached a spot opposite the far end of the cleared beach, an area where fallen trees and brush obscured the shoreline.

  “Where are we heading?” asked Tench.

  “A hunch,” said Smote.

  “See anything?” asked Tench, panning the water and the brush with his binoculars.

  “Nothing yet,” said Smote as he turned the wheel to starboard to steer closer to shore. “The guards I think they do not see us up the beach this far.”

  “Remember, the water is too shallow for your grandfather to have run the Emmy to the beach along here,” said Tench.

  “Not too shallow for standing and seeing things from further out,” Smote answered.

  After a few minutes, Tench managed to spot something white barely cresting in the water, and caught in some of the weed close to the beach. He pointed to the object.

  Smote gunned the boat closer, Tench up on the bow, watching the depth as the prow moved through the weed. He could see the seaweed running below the bow. Then, with the basket of a crab net, Tench reached forward over the water and snagged the white thing. As he pulled it in he could see that it was the end of a white line, dirtied by the water but still white. Tench pulled it to him and then aboard. Smote grinned as he recognized the line.