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

The late August sun created an orange glow in the western sky far over the Bay. The tops of the pines growing along the opposite side glinted with late light, while shadows below competed with sparks on the spars and cabins of the many anchored yachts of cruising tourists. Tench loved these evenings, free from the high winds and water of the later storms coming in from the Chesapeake. Years before, he had often brought Julie with him and she loved the Captain too.

  “There’s more beer, Jimmy,” said Smote, returning to the yard and setting down the ice chest.

  Tench turned toward the smaller and darker Smote, grinned and said, “Here you go.” He expertly threw his empty bottle laterally to his shorter mustached friend. Smote pretended a catcher’s stance and then almost dropped the soft pitch.

  “You’re losing your touch,” Tench kidded. “You used to be good back when we were playing teenage ball in the city.”

  “Maybe, amigo, I still catch your fast ball,” said Smote. He said the words with traces of an accent, from many childhood years in Ecuador living with his drunken father after his mother, the Captain’s daughter, died in Baltimore.

  Tench signaled a fast ball and pretended a throw. Smote moved his arms and hands to catch, cupping back to his chest the feigned impact. “You boys ought to have signed with the Orioles,” said Captain Bob, from his chair on the porch.

  “No, they do not pay enough,” said Smote, with a serious tone, his smirk giving him away, as he lifted a new beer and tossed it to Tench.

  Smote burped, after gulping his own beer, “Good in this heat.”

  Tench asked Smote, “You going out tomorrow with the Captain?”

  “In a day or two,” Smote had declared that evening. “Right now, got plenty work onshore. Me and my boss, we’ll be finishing up on a roof tomorrow.”

  “Make money while you can,” said the Captain.

  “Where you heading tomorrow, Captain Bob?” Tench asked.

  “Maybe I’ll go up to the Island,” said the Captain. His statement illustrated to his younger listeners his lack of fear and compromise with Strake’s rules.

  “Plenty of other areas to set your trot line,” said Smote. The bottles inside the cooler clattered as he procured another longneck beer.

  “Strake’s people are serious,” Smote said.

  “Maybe you should, Captain Bob,” said Tench.

  “You know they’ve shot at people, Jimmy,” said Smote.

  “People say they put a machine gun in that little building by the shoreline. Have you seen that?” Tench asked the old man.

  The Captain smiled, his mouth showing two gold teeth.

  “I remember when you and the girl sat there.” He grinned. “You boys don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answered, taking one of Smote’s beers and slugging it, his draught as strong as either of the younger men. At that moment, the Chesapeake retriever came up next to the old man’s chair and shook himself, spraying harbor water all over the men.

  “I know they fired at those kids and Strake’s lawyer had to pay off their parents to keep quiet about suing him.” Tench ventured, trying to keep the conversation alive.

  “You told me yourself, old man, that they drove Strake’s whaler out to your boat, showed guns, and warned you,” said Smote.

  “They don’t have no right to tell me where I put my lines,” said the Captain. He continued, pointing at Tench with the neck end of his half empty beer bottle, “You have to fight, protect what you got. Otherwise, they’ll own your soul, you’ll never have anything left, no place you can still call home.”

  He stood, “You watch the land, boys, and I’ll take care of the water. I’m going to check my hard crabs.” Inside in a large black enameled pot, they had boiled two dozen crabs, fresh caught by the Captain.

  Tench and Smote followed him inside.

  “You want some help?” asked Tench.

  “You’re the guest. You’re so busy at the garage, we don’t see you much anymore. You sit down,” replied Smote, helping his grandfather.

  Tench went back to the porch and sat in a wooden upright chair at the end of the table. Already this late in the summer the sun left more quickly, the light faded out on the harbor. Some of the tourists in yachts from Baltimore had turned on their deck lights. He could see a man and his wife or girlfriend in the closest boat, having a drink while sitting in the cockpit. The woman, in a two piece swimsuit, held her drink and walked around on the boat’s deck several times. The man, for his part, sat back and watched her, his right arm and hand lazy over the tiller, his left bringing up his own glass from time to time.

  Smote came out carrying hot corn on the cob and placed it on the plastic white and red check covering of the table.

  “Stagmatter,” he said, his voice angry. “Ever since he came here, things have been different.”

  “Stagmatter doesn’t have many friends, for sure,” agreed Tench, with a smile, as he picked an ear of corn.

  “People used to be pleasant. You dated Strake’s daughter. You ought to remember the good times.”

  Tench did remember those times, she sixteen, he eighteen. He came fresh from Baltimore, a kid from a poor neighborhood in Baltimore. She was Mister Strake’s daughter, the child of a rich oil man who had made tons of money in African wells. From the moment they met, magic occurred. They both felt predestined for each other.

  Smote went on, “I think Strake’s personality change when his family die in Texas.”

  Tench nodded in agreement, “You remember when Missus Strake invited the whole baseball team up to the house for a cookout?”

  Smote nodded, stretching his arms as he remembered his playing days. “That was before the man came. Now she’s gone and he, Stagmatter, no one can tell what he’s thinking.”

  “The man hates this country,” observed the old man as he sat down with their crabs.

  “The night at Lulu’s?” asked Tench. The old man nodded. Lulu’s Motorboat Lounge served as the local watering hole, the bar of choice for everyone. The men could eat a good lunch and watch a woman stripper. Then town women met for cocktails in the afternoon so Lulu arranged male strippers for them. Reverend Blue’s born again New Jesus Temple’s rented the place and held its popular bingo each Sunday night. That church tapped extra money from the highway crowd coming back from the beaches south of River Sunday.

  Captain Bob said, “First month around here, he went to Lulu’s to look at her girls. Brought along those African mechanics he has working on the cars. They drank and he started in telling his African friends about how much he hated Americans. Some of the River Sunday war veterans heard him praising German soldiers in the last war. Got so a fight come on and, way I heard it, his mechanics got him out just in time.”

  The old man continued, “On the shoreline I see them standing around with guns. They don’t scare me,” said the old man, reaching for another crab. “Nazi navy didn’t scare me neither.”

  “Someone’s going to get hurt,” Smote had said. “I just don’t want that someone to be you.”

  “I go in at night. Ain't none of them can’t see me then,” the old man winked.

  “You can’t see to do any crabbing in the dark,” said Smote, forcing a laugh.

  “Can too.”

  Smote looked at Tench, his lips firm.

  “Yessir, I tell you boys, the best thing you can do is get yourself a boat like my Emmy. Maybe, Smote, you inherit her when I’m gone. Let me just say, don’t you start thinking that’s going to be too soon. Nossir, you take care of her and she’ll take care of you, keep you from any harm. You get a boat and she’ll be your anchor here in the harbor. She’ll wake you up in the morning and put you to bed at night just like a wife, and, while she’s afloat, she’ll make you stay around to take care of her. She’ll take care of you too, feed you and clothe you in the cold weather, and bring you home. When she’s wore out, then you cut off a piece of her that’s still good like they used to do with the old clipper ships, take that piece for the next one. That’
s what you start her replacement with, only make damn sure she’s really gone before you start that new boat, so she don’t get jealous.”

  The older man took a break from his eating. He sat back at the table, more thoughtful, his face turned away. Smote and Tench drank their beers. Tench, watching his old mentor from the corner of his eye, tried to converse with Smote about his race car for the Delaware drags.

  Suddenly Captain Bob reached toward Tench, his eyes alert, and said, “What do you think Strake is up to, Jimmy?”

  The old man waited for his answer, fingers picking by touch the remaining flecks of white meat from a crab’s shell on his plate.

  “Well, I’m not sure he’s up to anything, Captain. Those old cars are pretty valuable to him, I guess.”

  Captain Bob chuckled as if he had some insight to that neither Tench nor Smote had, as if he knew more, some secret. His eyes calmed as they watched the flickering lights around the harbor, identifying each yacht, each owner. He placed his left hand flat on the arm of his wooden rocker, while his right stroked the head of his dog. His hair set white against his black skin, and dark lined face. His clean afternoon overalls and white cotton stockings showed above what he called his shined brown town shoes. Otherwise he would wear his omnipresent rubber knee high boots he had for working in his boat. Tench saw the black night coming over the harbor.

  * * *

  The sun was hot. Tench blinked at his tears. The funeral was over. The crowd moved slowly from the graveside and into the stifling sunlight. As they went back to work, their voices became louder, as if they wanted to be heard, as if they wanted to be recognized by all the imprisoned dead in this quiet place, heard as still alive and free.

  Tench caught up with Smote. “I’m sorry,” he said. Smote nodded, his hand in that of his wife.

  Stagmatter appeared suddenly beside Tench and interrupted, “Mister Strake conveys his sorrow.”

  Smote said, “Tell me, Mister Stagmatter, I wondered. I mean, with your guards and all, anyone up there on your farm that wanted to hurt my grandfather?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Stagmatter. His expression, a half smile, caught on his face. Tench recognized it as between sadness and clumsily disguised fear.

  Stagmatter recovered and said, “Of course not. The guards told me they hadn’t seen him for some time. A kind old man.” His words had returned to his flat tone, devoid of emotion.

  “We think it’s murder,” said Tench.

  “Who is we?” asked Stagmatter, his voice slightly higher.

  “Smote and myself.”

  “Why tell me? You should tell your sheriff,” said Stagmatter. A glint of anger appeared in Stagmatter’s eyes.

  Stagmatter turned with military precision. Without waiting for an answer from Smote or looking back, he marched, his boots resounding, to the Mercedes through the crowd. The quiet in the graveyard disappeared as the roadster started up, its huge pistons wheezing then seizing fuel vapors and building revolutions. Stagmatter crunched its worn gears into first and the car rumbled forward. The curator, true to his reputation for disregarding anything or anyone in his way, pulled directly into the narrow cemetery road, heading in the wrong direction and against cars already beginning to file out in order. He turned the vehicle, which had a wide turning radius like a farm truck, wheeling back and forth, each time with gears scraping and engine screeching. He blocked the other mourners in the departing line of cars as he maneuvered. Then he gunned the ancient convertible, its oversize wheels spitting stones and its engine leaving behind a cloud of drifting oil smoke among the trees.

  Tench spotted another visitor by those same trees. A lone red brown dog sat in the shadows. Abraham, the Captain’s Chesapeake dog, had followed his former master to this spot. Tench walked toward the dog, who stood up, panting in the heat. Tench kneeled and put his hand on the side of the dog’s head, then let Abraham lick his palm. He looked into the sad canine eyes and said in a firm but not loud voice that he thought the dog might understand,

  “I know, Abraham. I’m going to find out if anyone did this to your old friend on purpose. I won’t let you down,” he said. Then he realized that he had just broken the old street code he had always followed from the days in Baltimore. Never risk himself for someone else with no profit in sight. He grinned. Maybe the old man had left him a message after all, with all the talk of fighting for his home.

  Chapter Five

  Noon, Tuesday August 17

  An old newspaper article still sat at the top of Tench’s desk. He had glanced at it daily for a long time. On the front page to the left under the international news a picture blared of William Strake and the headline “Billionaire’s daughter and family lost in airplane accident.”

  The photo was one showing Strake as a younger man, his hair full and no eyeglasses. The caption said “William Strake, Chairman, Strake Oil Company.” The credit for the photo was Strake Oil, Dallas, Texas.

  “AP, Dallas. At 2:32 AM this morning the Cessna twin owned by Strake Oil and carrying Emily Strake, her husband Bob and two daughters Emily and Julie, disappeared from radar over the Gulf of Mexico on their way to vacation in Venezuela. Search boats and planes dispatched to the site found wreckage but no bodies and the search continues. The plane is resting upright on the bottom in one hundred feet of water and appears largely undamaged according to divers at the scene.

  “Emily Strake was vice president in charge of African wells for Strake Oil. She was listed in Women of Texas and considered one of the fastest rising women executives in the state. Her husband Robert Tirch was a partner in the Dallas law firm of Donovan and Tirch.

  “The Cessna recently passed all inspections. It had been owned by Strake oil for ten years. Its pilot William Luke had been with Strake Oil for fifteen years and was familiar with the area.

  “The Coast Guard has called in a new cutter with special search equipment to help in finding survivors. Meanwhile a salvage barge has been sent to the location to attempt to lift the wreckage.”

  Tench shook his head. No bodies had ever been found. The police had given up looking.

  Julie had told him in that conversation, “The airplane doors were open. The police think the occupants swam out.”

  “The children and her husband?” he asked.

  “The sharks, Jimmy. I’m afraid the sharks might have got them.”

  Then too, she had been worried about her father’s health. “Is Marengo any help to you?” asked Tench.

  “He’s the only one there I trust. He goes in to see my father.”

  “Goes in?”

  She had said, “My father’s in his bedroom, Jimmy. All day and all night. He had been so different since my mother was killed. We still talked. Then, after my sister’s death, he became more distant. He began to forget things.”

  “What does Marengo say?”

  “He tells me he’s worried about Daddy. He also says Stagmatter handles everything and he can do nothing.”

  Tench asked her, “What is going on?”

  “Jimmy, I don’t know. Everything is confused.”

  “Yes, and Marengo says I should wait for a while, get to know Stagmatter, Stagmatter has been good to my father. Maybe he’s right.”

  “Marengo told me Stagmatter was originally only supposed to take care of the cars,” Tench had said. “Where did he come from anyway?”

  “Actually he came from Africa. He was working there and found out about my father’s collection of cars. My father had agents all over Africa and his collecting interests were well known. Stagmatter flew to Texas to meet with Daddy after Mother died. My father needed something then to get his mind off my mother’s death. At the time we were pleased Stagmatter had come, and thought the attention Stagmatter brought to Daddy’s cars would be good for him.”

  “Tell me about the death of your mother,” asked Tench. Her mother had died only months before the plane crash of her sister.

  “You probably know most of this. The details were
in the paper here and in Texas. A car hit her and killed her and the driver ran away. She was just walking near our house, in the morning. No one saw anything.”

  “You’d think someone would have seen the accident.”

  “The police found no witnesses,” she had said. “You asked about Stagmatter. My sister’s husband was against hiring him. Marengo checked with his African contacts and said the man was well known there and was knowledgeable about cars. So Daddy overruled my sister and her husband, saying getting a man with car credentials was hard and this man came with the best.”

  “Why did your brother in law not want to hire him?”

  “He wanted to keep the control of the farm money in our hands, not in Stagmatter’s. He was afraid the man would take over.”

  “So Stagmatter was hired to take over only the museum?”

  “That was the original plan. Right after he got to Maryland, he brought in his own men, those African mechanics, and he’s just taken over everything. My sister said my father at first handled the family affairs, our allowances, that kind of thing. Then my father stopped talking directly with my sister in the months before she died. Daddy just let Stagmatter do all his communicating with the Texas company.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “A lot more since my sister died. Stagmatter has come kind of power over my father. Something to do with the cars. I don’t understand.” She went on, “My father stays in his room. Marengo brings him food. He sits at his desk and goes over accounts Stagmatter brings him.”

  Her voice had been strained on the telephone. “New men have come since when you and I were there. Those mechanics. I don’t know any of them.”

  After all this time apart, Tench wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms, comfort her. He sighed, looked at the phone and computer incoming email once again, shook his head and stood up.

  He walked to the back of the garage. He stood beside the well-polished and almost finished gas class quarter mile race car. The charged air was filled with the intermingled smells of new thick slick type racing tires, gasoline, sweat and drying automotive lacquer on the blue and white car with his name, Tench, on the side. He had painted the car the blue and white Cunningham colors from the Le Mans race of 1950. He was alone except for Abraham, the Captain’s dog, who had become a regular visitor at the garage in the last few days. Abraham had found a place near the back of the race car where he felt comfortable and Tench had brought a blanket from his home for the dog to sit on during the day.