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

  “They are pretty ruthless people,” Jesse added. “They have been looking for this plane for a long time. It means a lot to them to get it back. Aviatrice has a lot at stake with what we know about their activities. Some of them will go to jail. The controversy has already hurt their stock prices. Remember, they’ve been living off my grandfather taking the blame for all this. When it comes out that they are guilty as hell, they are going to suffer. They will make a move soon, I’m sure of it.”

  Mike nodded.

  “I’ve been thinking of a plan,” said Hobble.

  “I figured that you might have some kind of defense plan,” said Mike.

  “We can take care of ourselves. Don’t forget, we have been taking care of nasty folk for many years.”

  “These so-called people are different,” said Mike. “They’re going to be well armed and very deadly.”

  “We’ll have to plan for that.” Hobble smiled.

  Jonathan grinned. “Reckon we can handle them.”

  “What to do seems pretty clear to me,” said Robin. “One, we take this plane up to Lake Success where she was supposed to go. Two, we get the fellow Vallery to come out and get his buddies at the United Nations to accept the plane. Three, we let the whole country know what has been going on by letting the press have the diary.”

  “Problem as I see it,” she continued, “Is getting to Lake Success. Once we’re in the air, we’re fair game for the police and for Aviatrice. We’ll be an unidentified aircraft if we’re picked up on radar. That will bring in the military. Aviatrice will report the plane has bombs loaded on it. They would be just as happy if Magnolia Whispers is blown to bits and the papers and us with it. Jessica and Bullard might convince the Navy to shoot the plane down claiming we’re a threat to New York. Remember, we’re still considered killers.”

  “If Vallery helps,” said Mike, “He would become a very important ally.”

  “If he doesn’t, what then?” asked Robin.

  “When we’re in the air, we’ll broadcast our story and ask for help,” said Mike.

  “That is, if anyone picks up the old radio frequencies,” said Jesse.

  “What about landing? This place we’re going, does it have landing lights?” asked Mike.

  “No. I’ve flown over it,” said Robin. “It’s a suburban area with some of the old United Nations buildings, the ones they used before they moved to New York City. The lake itself is small and is surrounded by a country club and a school.”

  “You wanted excitement,” said Mike.

  “OK, so I land in a little lake without lights,” she replied.

  “There,” said Jeremy. The door of the safe opened with a squeaking noise. “I knew if I worked long enough it would open for me.” When the door was fully out, Jeremy bent down and looked inside.

  “We’ve got some documents and file folders in here,” he said and pulled out a stack of papers. He glanced through them as the others watched. Then, he took one and read it carefully. He gave it to Mike.

  “Look at that one, Mike. It’s a little faded but you can read it easy. Personal correspondence, hand delivered, I suppose, to Hiram from Wall in New York. It has the Aviatrice letterhead. Wall was so sure of himself, he was careless. No wonder he sent Hiram looking for this stuff all these years.”

  “Sent men to terrorize my family,” said Jesse.

  Mike looked at the yellowed paper.

  “The initials of the originator are B.W. and it’s addressed to Lieutenant Hiram Jones at the Naval Research Labs, dated July 1, 1946,” he said and began to read aloud.

  “You’re doing well. We’ll call it an accident that you hit the ship. When the smoke clears, the Soviets will be furious and the United Nations will be disrupted for a long time, maybe forever. With the peace lovers out of business, we’ll sell a lot of new warplanes including this powerful seaplane that just happened to cause the accident. Lawson will be forced to come with us. He will build another seaplane. The Navy will demand that he does. You’ll get your share of our profits, and, believe me, you’ll be a hero in many parts of the United States.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  12 Noon, July 4

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Mike rang the doorbell. A middle aged woman in a blue dress and white apron opened the large wooden door of the stone house. The interior smelled like furniture oil.

  “Mr. Vallery,” said Mike.

  “The Ambassador is not seeing anyone,” she said, her face showing a forced smile. He realized that the clothes he was wearing and his unshaven appearance were probably scaring her. She started to close the door.

  “Just say to the Ambassador, the two words ‘Magnolia Whispers’.”

  “All right,” she said, slightly irritated, and finished closing the door.

  Mike remained on the front step, looking around while he waited. To his left was a high hedge, ivy covered, beyond which he heard the sounds of tennis balls being hit hard and at least two men calling out their scores. After about twenty minutes, the woman returned.

  “He’ll see you.” She came out the door and escorted Mike through a rusty iron door in the hedge. Beyond, Mike entered a secluded tennis court and watched as an elderly man hammered his middle-aged and well tanned male opponent with a fast well placed ace serve.

  “That’s game,” the older man said as his opponent wiped his forehead. The two started to change courts and as they did, the older man came over to Mike at the sideline.

  “Let me rest a moment,” called the younger player, wiping his neck with a towel.

  “You want to see me?” The man had a smile that was all encompassing. Mike could readily understand why Vallery had chosen diplomacy for his career. He was good at it.

  “Are you Ambassador Vallery?”

  “Yes,” said Vallery. He had a voice that could translate as friendly in any language.

  “Can I talk to you privately, sir?”

  “Magnolia Whispers,” said Vallery softly, staring at Mike. Then his eyes closed for a moment as he said, “I never thought I would hear those words again.” He waved to his opponent and said, “I’ve got to take care of some family business, Bob. I’ll have to call you over later.”

  The other man waved back, looked at Mike for a moment, and then exited through another gate, this one cut into the wall of ivy in the back of the court.

  “We have a continuing game,” explained Vallery. “I’m not sure how many games he is ahead or behind. Things like that don’t make any difference at my age.”

  “I’ve seen his face somewhere,” said Mike.

  Vallery offered, “I’m sure you saw him in Business Week. He’s the new chairman of the board of Aviatrice.”

  Mike looked with apprehension at the man as he walked away.

  Vallery continued, “He moved in next door when he came east. Nice fellow. Ran a cereal company out west. Come with me, I’m sure you didn’t drive all the way here to spend your time talking about my tennis partner.”

  They sat down in a room with leather chairs and hung pictures of Vallery with different men and women, most of them taken in official settings like offices or what looked like palaces. Mike glanced around for a moment.

  “You know a lot of people.”

  “Knew a lot of people,” said Vallery, with a smile. “Most of them are dead. That’s what happens when you get old. You outlive people. Each time a friend dies, you age a little more.”

  “You outlived Edward Lawson.”

  He looked at him, his face suddenly tense, his eyes staring at Mike. “You know me but I don’t know you. Why don’t you start by telling me your name, sir.”

  “Mike Howard. I’m director of the Museum of Historic Aircraft in Wilmington, Delaware.”

  The ambassador sat back in his chair, a frown on his face. “You’re the man the police want. I recognize you from the television news”

  “Yes,” said Mike. “If you’re going to turn me in, at least hear what I have to say first.”<
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  Vallery nodded. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble and incurred several witnesses if your purpose is to harm me. I doubt that’s your purpose. So why did you come here?”

  Mike continued. “My investigation of the crash of the Magnolia Whispers is directly responsible for my trouble with the police.”

  “All right,” said the old man, assuming a diplomatic tone. “We’ll agree to that too, that you’re innocent, and that the murder charges are a mistake. Tell me though. How’d you get my name? I haven’t talked to anyone about Ed Lawson since the hearing fifty years ago.”

  He hesitated, mouthed his words silently then continued, “Sure, I don’t mind admitting that I knew Ed Lawson. We played tennis. I never knew much about his airplane or his work.”

  Mike knew Vallery was trying to figure out how much he, Mike, knew.

  “The Captain has a grandson, Jesse James Lawson, who is paying for my work.”

  “That’s a strange name for a child. A western gunslinger,” smiled Vallery.

  Mike leaned forward. “I’ll make it easy for you. Captain Lawson wrote in his diary that he was going to contact you to help him bring his seaplane to New York.”

  The old man sighed. “I didn’t realize he had a diary.” He paused and Mike could see him thinking hard, figuring what more he was going to say. After a few more moments, Vallery continued, “Those were strange days. The country had just won a great war, and some of us realized we were getting into a greater war. Captain Lawson was very concerned about that.”

  He went on, his eyes closed. “He was a brave man. Braver than I am.” His hands tightened, the fingers pushing into the leather arms of his chair as he spoke.

  “It doesn’t matter what I say.” He stopped as if making a decision. Then he began again. “We met playing tennis. I was just a young State Department flunkie in those days. Not much sense and not much input. They had me running errands to the United Nations team in New York. My assignment was to coordinate the installation of the offices of the new organization out on Long Island at Lake Success. I was to keep people who didn’t like each other from walking out of meetings, that kind of thing. In those days we didn’t even have a building. My tennis playing was more useful than my language training, if you know what I mean. Out on Long Island, we had many tennis courts. Lake Success. Good name for a place to start up an international organization, especially when you realize how much the United Nations had going against it, I mean, all the national rivalries.”

  He continued. “I would travel back and forth between Washington and New York and stop to see my family in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, that’s where I met the Captain. The Navy had a great set of tennis courts out at the Navy Yard.

  “Lawson had access to the courts. I met him at one of those Main Line Philadelphia country club parties we used to have in those days. His wife was kind of plain, but he was very engaging. Lawson knew everyone, was related to most of the Philadelphia families that had the parties, and had all the right social connections. I think his father had been an Admiral. We struck up a friendship, and we played a lot of tennis. I found I could always get on a court, using Lawson’s pull.

  “His wife liked to stay down on the Eastern Shore. She loved the Lawson family mansion in River Sunday.”

  He looked at Mike, “You see, Ed would tell me about the Eastern Shore. He had taught himself about the local Native American history, kind of like a hobby. He was very serious about one thing. He said he had made a study of all the harm his family had done when they had come from Europe to colonize the area. Lawsons were some kind of butchers in the early days, to hear him talk. Killed the natives and then used slaves to plow over the religious mounds and set up plantations to grow tobacco.

  He paused, “He had this one legend he would tell me about. The magnolia whispers story.”

  “I’ve become familiar with the legend,” said Mike.

  Vallery nodded and went on, “Lawson said he learned a lot from those natives. He said no one is ever safe, that depending on some great super weapon is foolish, as foolish as those ancient Nanticoke tribesmen believing in the magic of their trees. I can see the Captain, with his drink at the club, saying, ‘We got to make the world all right again, Vallery.’

  “I’d reply, ‘What you want me to do?’

  “He’d say, ‘I’ll think of something, honest I will. I’ve got to.’

  “Of course, I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. I figured he took himself a little too seriously, but other than that, we were just a couple of guys having a drink after a tennis game. In those days I was more concerned with my own work. We were building the United Nations offices at an old armaments plant near this lake I mentioned. The buildings had housed the Sperry Gyroscope Company, an old munitions factory. Still had the anti aircraft protection when we were there although the guns were no longer manned. Police security was everywhere, backup to military standards because of the coming United Nations. Of course, some things in the security were different. The people there used to tell me about the barrage balloons that were over their town during the war years. The United Nations didn’t have balloons. Anyway, I always thought it was ironic that peace was to be discussed in a former military factory, a place that built parts for bombers, but that was the way it was in 1946.

  “I do know that Ed was concerned about atomic power. A lot more than most of us, I guess, now that I look back on it. He talked about it all the time. He said nuclear bombs were just another example of the foolishness of what he called ‘magnolia whispers’ weapons.

  “He came to me that summer with a new line of talk. He thought that no one should have sole possession of this new kind of airplane he was working on. If everyone had it, he said, then no one could profit by it, no one could use it without fearing retribution in kind. He thought that sharing of this powerful weapon was the only way to avoid the magnolia whispers legend coming true again. I told him he better watch out because he was getting pretty close to giving away official secrets, talking about his work and all. He said that he would never do anything to hurt his country. Unfortunately, Ed was probably more idealistic than he should have been.”

  Mike interrupted, “I read more about you in the diary.” Mike waited to see what the old man would say.

  “I’m sure there is. Ed thought that I was as brave as he was. Maybe I led him to think this. All the talk about the founding of the United Nations, all the people I knew in those days, carried with it a facade that I was as important as the people I served. The luck of being selected to carry messages for famous people somehow made me one of them, but actually I was just the shallow tennis player who had a nice smile and a way of getting along with people. That was all I was, but Edward did not know this.”

  The Ambassador looked at Mike, his lips quivering in his old lined face. Mike could see Vallery had a face that could lie easily and be believed, had lied often, but sitting here, seemed to Mike to be too old to lie again.

  “I’m going to show you something, Mr. Howard. First, let me call you Mike.” Mike nodded. Vallery smiled quickly then sobered and moved over to his desk. Suddenly he was no longer the agile tennis player, but more the old man that he was, his steps halting as though he had lost his balance. His hand brushed back some framed photographs, propped on the desk top, of himself with several former world leaders. He picked up a small key hidden behind one of them and opened a drawer of the desk.

  “Here.”

  He handed Mike a folded typed page, brown with age and dusty.

  “Ed gave me this material the last time I saw him, a few days before they said he crashed at sea, and long before the military hearing for his wife.”

  Mike looked at the paper and unfolded it carefully. He held it as though he were touching Captain Lawson himself.

  “I’ve read it many times over,” said Vallery.

  Mike read out loud the faded words.

  “If I disappear, contact me at 1600 hours each day afterward f
or three days on the radio frequency I told you about until I contact you back. Use the codename Magnolia Whispers.”

  “It was to be on the frequency he had arranged to receive in his plane.”

  “You were his friend,” said Mike.

  “I know.” Vallery spoke slowly, looking downward, not able to meet Mike’s eyes.

  He went on. “I heard about the explosion at the lab. I waited. No one came to me about it. No one connected me to Lawson. No one came and asked me about anything. I found myself glad, almost pleased that Lawson had not implicated me. After all I was a young civil servant. My career was just beginning. The plane disappeared. I did not go to the code room to send a message. I could have gone but I did not.

  “On the second day after the explosion, the Navy announced that the seaplane had been destroyed in flight over the Atlantic. I knew there was no reason to send any message and I was glad again.”

  “He was dead,” Mike affirmed.

  “I assumed he was dead, but I had no way of knowing for sure. I could still rail at my cowardice. Even after the announcement, I thought that the Navy might be lying, that Edward might still be alive. I must admit I almost went to the radio room down at State just to try the transmission. My only consolation was that Edward was a great man and would have known what I was going through, would have understood. Then the charges began. I had no desire to be involved in treason, in espionage, in bombing a Soviet battleship. The whole thing was in the papers.

  “The lawyer contacted me to testify about the character of Ed’s wife. I said I didn’t know her well enough. I denied both of them, Mike.”

  Mike stood up, the diary in his hand.

  “You’ll read in this what he was trying to do. It proves that Wall, the leader of Aviatrice, was the evil player. We have other documents that offer more proof.”