Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) Page 3

  “I told you we get somewhere. That’s the Captain’s anchor line.”

  Tench pulled on the wet line that still went out in front of them. The line moved inward then stopped and pulled hard caught on something. Tench yanked and it broke free. As it came up from the mud bottom, Tench saw, attached to its end, a triangular shaped piece of steel with sharp prongs, fouled with weeds.

  Smote nodded. “His anchor, Jimmy,” he said. When Tench had it aboard, Smote touched the metal tenderly with his fingers.

  “You’re sure?” asked Tench.

  “I have seen that damn thing so many times out with the Captain. I even remember when he bought it,” said Smote, studying the anchor. He looked at the beach, at the many old and gnarled fallen trees touching the water. “He must have put it overboard and waded ashore here.”

  Tench examined the end of the line. He held the line up for Smote to examine.

  “See the knife cuts in the end?” Tench said.

  “Captain Bob would not cut his lines,” said Smote.

  “What do you think?” Tench asked.

  “That anchor cost a lot of money. Too much to leave here. If he did lose it, he would have gone back to find it,” said Smote.

  Tench saw the bushes move at the top of the bank. Then he saw the barrel of a rifle pointing at him. He crouched down on the bow. The muzzle moved with him, not more than twenty feet away.

  “I guess I was wrong. We have company,” said Smote, watching the weapon.

  A deep voice drawled, “The land here is posted. You all might just push off.” Tench recognized the accent as one used by the Africans who guarded the compound, a kind of British tone.

  Tench could not see the man talking to him. The rifle barrel was pointed directly at his chest.

  “Yes sir, we’re going,” Tench said.

  “I wouldn’t give them no pleasure,” said Smote, in a whisper.

  “You don’t see that rifle pointed at you. I do. Let’s get out of here,” said Tench.

  Smote shifted the boat into reverse. The mud and weed swirled by the sides of the boat as the engine backed them into deeper water. In a few moments, they stood well out from the shore, Smote turning gradually to head back down the Bay toward River Sunday. Crossing back in front of the mansion, Tench watched through his binoculars the shoreline and the yacht which was fully secured to Strake’s pier.

  “You got to tell the Sheriff about that anchor,” said Smote above the noise of the engine.

  “Soon as I get a chance.”

  “People in town, they take their time, because they think this is an accident.” Smote added, “I just know we’re gonna have to do this ourselves. We’ll have to sneak into Strake’s farm, Jimmy, ‘cause I know he went in there looking for something. We got to find out what my grandfather saw,” he said, his eyes narrowed, watching the water ahead of the boat.

  “The guards will be there,” said Tench.

  “Yeah, but we beat them. We have to do this because the sheriff, he won’t help us,” said Smote. “You’ll see. We have to work alone.”

  “Satter might be interested in us finding that anchor.”

  “You tell him. I guess he will say, it have to be more than that before he’ll go up against Strake. You know that, Jimmy.”

  Tench didn’t want to agree with his friend about the town authorities, not yet. He continued to watch the yacht. He could see a tall black woman, a stranger, stepping on to the pier from the yacht. She was dressed in draped bright clothes and colorful sandals. Two black men wearing dark suits stood beside her. He recognized them as two of Strake’s African mechanics, men who had come into the garage with Stagmatter in the past. Stagmatter had introduced them as workmen brought here to take care of his cars.

  The woman waved toward the mansion. Tench recognized the bulky form of Stagmatter coming down the lawn. The man, even in the distance, could not be mistaken for anyone else.

  Smote had been watching too. He asked, “You ever see that woman?”

  Tench shook his head as he watched and said, “I know a couple of those African men. One of them seemed to be very interested in Cunningham’s picture. Listened while I told him and I remember he said to me, “We have these men in our country too.”

  “What did he mean by that?” asked Smote. “He have a racing car?”

  Tench said, “I guess he wanted to say something good about his homeland. I can understand that.”

  “Pride,” said Smote. “I say things good about Ecuador when I first came to the States.”

  Tench felt Stagmatter‘s eyes on him and Smote. For the first time, Abraham growled and stood from his perch, as if he wanted to swim to shore. Then, when Tench put his hand on the dog’s shoulder, Abraham quieted and patiently watched the shoreline as Smote powered the boat away.

  Chapter Three

  9AM Monday August 16

  “You got to spend more time here, Jimmy,” Katy said, impatiently, before he left in the morning to help his aunt, the Mayor, at the library.

  She continued, “I want to sit down with you and soon, Jimmy. You agreed when you bought into my Daddy’s place you’d listen to what I had to say.” He nodded agreement, knowing she was right. He heard in her voice he had to start looking after Katy’s business interests too. Like him, Katy owned minority shares in the shop. However, his aunt owned some of the shop too and she demanded a lot of his time.

  At the small library, Miss Peck, dressed in her blue librarian suit with a white collar, welcomed her audience. She spoke in a far more excited tone than Tench ever remembered coming from her thin lips and white face. On a folding wooden chair, perched her long haired brown cat she had named Hemingway. The cat came into the building with the librarian every day. A black woman, too tall for her leather chair, sat on the other side of the podium. Her dark hair glared partly visible under a bright green cloth, while her figure remained hidden in a cloth also green but with orange stripes. Tench smiled as he noticed her long legs stretched out searching for room like his. Then he realized this same woman had been standing with Stagmatter at the Island yesterday.

  “Sorry to be late,” he said to his aunt.

  She turned to him, her white blouse slightly open at the neck in the warm library air. People in town remarked on the similarities between the aunt and the nephew. Even under his deep weathered tan Tench’s face had the same resolute jut of facial features, the intelligent eyes, the strong cheeks and mouth. Mayor Betty Smart well understood her good looks gave her power. She showed off her middle-aged beauty to all the men in the town. The sweet and invasive perfume she wore hung about her in the damp air. She said, “I wanted you to meet this woman. She’s going to do a lot for my town.”

  “She arrived at Strake’s yesterday,” Tench said.

  “Yes, this woman is a friend of Strake’s. She’s staying at the mansion. I want to make sure she is welcome. Marengo called me about her.” Marengo had worked for Strake for many years. Also an African, Marengo was known around town for the three vertical scars on his forehead. He told Tench one time he received them from his village elders in a ceremony when he entered manhood.

  “You went to the Island?” she suddenly blurted, surprise in her face and tone.

  “Smote and I took the Emmy out there and cruised by the beach.”

  She frowned. “You keep away from that Latino’s claims about his grandfather’s death. Strake’s our most important citizen, our only millionaire.” Betty Smart knew money. After all she had financed most of the purchase price of Tench’s garage, carrying it along with her other small businesses. More than anyone else, Tench owed her for his success in River Sunday. Looking at the African writer, she spoke with a calm expectation in her eyes.

  “She’ll write about the town. I want her to be on our side.”

  He stayed on his subject. “So, Captain Bob, you think it’s not murder?” he asked.

  “Of course not, Jimmy.” Her attention was now on the African.

  “What about
Stagmatter? Do you think he could have done it?” He pushed his aunt’s patience. He owed Smote and the old man this attempt to ask his aunt about the situation. ”You know him pretty well. He is in your office from time to time. Actually, you’re one of the few people he talks to.”

  “I said it’s not murder, Jimmy. Don’t you worry yourself about Stagmatter either. He’s all business. We talk about money and the town. He’s very interested in River Sunday. All he says to me is he wants more police patrols to protect the car museum and better roads into the estate. He’s very nice to me and I can’t believe he or Mister Strake would raise a finger to hurt anyone.”

  The librarian’s voice pushed through his consciousness as she introduced the speaker. “Doctor Madeline Owerri has been employed as a writer for the Economist since she finished university in England. She has specialized in African affairs. Her latest book, The Bell, is published by Samson and Sons of London and has already been nominated for the prestigious International Book Prize in Non-fiction. We’re so fortunate to have her visiting River Sunday this week as part of her book tour of the United States. I should mention,” she said, looking around timidly, “Mister Strake helped the library to steal her away from her busy schedule of bookstore readings.”

  The audience squeaked their chairs in the morning heat. The librarian opened a copy of the book, pushing back the cover sheet and holding the pages. She bent forward as she said,

  “First, by way of further introduction and before we have questions, I’d like to share with you an excerpt from The Bell. Doctor Owerri has asked me to read and I hope I can do it justice.” Miss Peck proceeded with the motherly voice she used in her children’s reading group.

  “An ancient mud brick fortress in my town has a heavy wall built from east to west to guard the harbor. In full view of ships anchored on the sheltered water are two tall and very thick wooden posts with a great brass bell suspended between them. This bell came many centuries ago from England from a foundry in Liverpool. The gift of this bell occasioned at the time a magnificent feast attended by chiefs from all the tribes of the neighboring villages.

  “For hundreds of years afterwards, a man would climb the wall and ring the bell three times when cargoes arrived from the countryside to be traded with visiting merchants from the ships. A local chief, held in high respect for his services to the traders, earned the privilege of maintaining the bell, a duty which passed down over centuries to his sons. Today’s keepers of the bell are descendants of the original tribe. Part of their continuing duty, carried on even today, is to clean the sides of the bell after each storm so it remains brilliant in the sunlight. The bell has been known for all these years as a symbol of my country’s prosperity for no other harbor on the coast has ever received such a magnificent token of the foreign traders’ respect.

  “The traders bought slaves and the bell rang when a cargo of slaves assembled in the harbor pens.

  “They came from the rural areas to the assembly fields near the shoreline. The traders from the local tribes made ready for the auctions. English and other European agents who lived in local houses would then come out to the auction to represent the ships and their employers in Europe and the Americas. When the auction was ready, the bell ringer repeated sets of three rings of the bell until longboats lowered and the merchants came ashore.”

  “At the side of the bell, after all the centuries, the original huge timbers still rise from the enclosure of the thick wall. These support the bell as well as a small side platform for the bell ringer to climb upon to do his task. Tourists ask about the sword cuts on the timbers. These are deep in the wood surface and even after many years of repairs and coats of paint, the caretakers of the bell have not been able to remove them.

  “The marks are the only remaining sign of a desperate battle held three hundred years ago at the foot of the wall and near the supports of the bell. A single tribal group, a small number of dedicated men from my country, attempted to destroy the bell against the multitude of forces quickly assembled to defend it. The small band came to the bell at night and its leader began to ring it without stopping even though no ships had arrived. He warned the people to beware the traitors who would sell their own people. These fighters died, their bodies hung on posts and burned. Over many months the blackened carcasses rotted away.

  “My ancestral great grandfather led the attack and his body burned the brightest. His descendants made a memorial to him. On the inside walls of the bell is the painting of a golden blossom with a black center and the English words: “One person with courage rang this bell to warn his village of the foreign slavers.”

  In the silence following the reading, Doctor Owerri proceeded forward to the podium, her sandals clapping on the tile floor.

  Tench recognized the African writer’s facial expression immediately. He’d seen it as a child growing up on the Baltimore streets. She had the same belligerent smile with steel beneath it, the edges of her mouth not bending with any warmth. She walked with a jauntiness of a person who feels sure she is in the right and deserves to be welcomed. Her face shone with the energy of a person who had much to say. However, at the same time as she reached the podium and began to speak, the cat did not want to hear her. It jumped away, its tail high in the air, and disappeared among the bookcases.

  Tench had no interest in her message. He tried to move his cramped legs again. He thought of schemes about how he could convince his aunt to let him out of this kind of event in the future. He looked at his aunt. As she listened, she scribbled what she referred to as her “daily orders” in the little leather covered notebook she carried in her huge purse.

  “Thank you for welcoming me with your famous Maryland hospitality,” the writer said, her voice deep and melodious, clipped with the same British accent as the African mechanics. Her words swept through the heat of the library room, its books, and the assemblage of senior citizens and schoolchildren in front of her. Tench noticed her rings. She had jeweled rings on every finger of each hand, including around her thumbs. As she spoke, she moved her hands for emphasis and the jewels sparkled.

  His aunt noted the rings too and said under her breath, “She must be African royalty to be wearing all that jewelry, Jimmy.”

  The African said, “Thank you, Miss Peck, for reading the excerpt from my book. As you will find out when you read the book, today that same bell is no longer rung for slave traders. Yet by its very presence and existence standing over the harbor of our greatest city, it symbolically still welcomes marauding outsiders and continues to cheer on the destruction of my country.”

  Chairs creaked again and arms were raised with questions.

  An older black woman called out, “Doctor Owerri, you describe parallels existing between your country, a country of the Third World and our country, the post-industrial United States.”

  Owerri spoke harshly, some of the words coming through without the subtle British accent. “It is true. In my country we have always had a ruling class, those who survive and participate in each historical stage of the country. Some of the families who run my country today are descendants of the same ones who traded its people to the Europeans during the slave trade. Today they trade in petroleum. These elites are here and are in every country in the world. This theory is simple and easy to prove as I say in my book.”

  She smiled, as if she knew more than the rest of the people in the room, held some insight her Third World birth had given her over this rural audience. “My book documents this ruling elite and its presence among countries, regardless of how small or poor the nations may be.”

  Another hand went up, this from a very fat man, his lap covered with loose papers. Tench knew him, the editor of the weekly newspaper in River Sunday.

  “Doctor,” he said, with a drawl, “You mentioned ‘black prophets,’ who came to your family’s village centuries ago and taught them to fight slavery.”

  She leaned forward. “These white visitors are referred to as black because they dress
ed in dark cloth. From the accounts in our legends, they did not embrace the culture of slavery which existed in most tribes in my country. My research so far indicates they may have been a sect of Quakers.”

  “Quakers?” the man asked.

  “Yes, but a unique sect. I’ve gained my description of them from the few written records, the legends memorized by village historians and told to Europeans. They ate only vegetables they grew by themselves from seeds they brought with them. They refused to own the land or to have slaves to help them with their crops. They left no children. All of them eventually died from river fevers which indicates to me they must have emigrated from far away and were never seasoned to the climate. When they died, they refused to have grave markers. My family put stones on the sites of their burial, but only after the last of them died, the man they called their leader. I might say also they insisted on being buried upright, their feet down and their faces toward the east.”

  A white girl about ten from the local elementary school raised her hand and, in her young voice, asked, “You mention your own family as a source of your dedication. Can you tell me about your brothers and sisters?”

  Doctor Owerri smiled and said, “Many centuries ago my family owned most of the land in the south of the country. They had many canoes and the men to handle the boats. Canoes, in our country of that period, were a sign of wealth. Each part of the family had its own canoe and team of men. They were a large tribe of interrelated traders each with their own relatives. My immediate family lived in a settlement where they built a fortified house. The house had three stories with towers with bright red painted turrets at each end. My family came to be known for its resistance to the slave traders who would take people north to the Arab lands to sell with their salt exports. When the merchant white Europeans came, these same traders began to sell slaves to the visiting ships. My family would not allow this practice in its own lands.”

  The girl persisted, “What was it like when you were a little girl?”

  “The trade in oil replaced the trade in slaves. My family would not allow the trade in the oil. So, the government killed my father, mother and brother. Afterwards the officials completely took over the land for oil prospecting leases.” The audience sighed.