Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) Page 6

  He kneeled beside the dog and rubbed his hands on the dog’s head. Abraham still had his childhood in his eyes and worked his eyes over Tench, looking for more rough play and perhaps a stick to be thrown. Tench checked Abraham’s water bowl and his food dish to make sure they were full.

  He stood up and returned to the side of his racing car. He’d modified a 1966 coupe model Mustang by essentially lightening the front end and polishing ports in the basic Ford small block, but in every way keeping it a street driver. Inside the body he inspected the tubular framework and the steel protective plates behind the transmission and the Ford engine. Looking out through the Lexan windshield, he saw the new fiberglass hood with its thin blue racing stripes centered over the white paint. Underneath the hood he knew intake was a Holley carburetor on a special manifold and exhaust went into lightweight headers he had designed. To the side of the engine long chrome pipes fed back to the racing cutouts on the three inch pipes.

  “You want to try the new mixture settings?” a voice behind him said. Katy had come in.

  “Let’s do it,” Tench said. He bent down and lifted Abraham to the back side of the room, away from the vibration and fumes of the car. He knew the dog wouldn’t move for any other reason once he had assumed his daytime position.

  Katy hooked up the exhaust pipes to the outside venting tubes. She shut the back door. “No need to scare half the people in town with all the noise,” she said, smiling.

  Tench lifted back the seat harness and sat in the carefully framed racing driver’s seat. He started the engine. After a couple of cranks the machine tore into life, the exhausts popping loud against the walls of the room. The rear wheels had already been raised and set into his dyno to measure output of the engine. This lift allowed the wheels to turn furiously without sending the car forward crashing into the shop wall as the revolutions climbed.

  The noise became louder as Tench increased the fuel flow to the engine. The revolutions surged well over five thousand revs per minute.

  When he finally had the car silenced with the engine turned off and the wild vibrations of the chassis finished, Tench leaned back in the driver’s seat. He grinned, knowing his goal of building a winning car was close. With the engine off his mind still took several minutes to forget the roaring of the exhausts and his body the same to calm from the pounding of the horsepower.

  “I think she’s ready,” Katy said, checking the dyno printouts. “As close as we’ll get to ten seconds in the quarter.”

  “I agree. A few things left to do, but we’ll be in time for the races.”

  “Smiley wants to drive,” she said, looking at him solemnly.

  “I figured you were going to say that. You’re scared what might happen, though.”

  “Smiley has his rights. I really got no say with him,” she said.

  “Smiley would have to pass the driver license inspectors.”

  She nodded and opened the door to go back into the main garage. She left him alone with the blue and white car.

  This car had the go fast stripes of the Cunningham Le Mans racers. They were the same blue Cunningham racing stripes that were later used by Shelby on his Ford cars.

  Strake’s Cunningham C2R roadster had no racing stripes. It was painted purple, made to order long ago for some African prince. He saw it the first time Julie showed him her father’s collection. That day, Julie had held up her hands. “See the oil in my fingernails,” she said, proudly. “I help Marengo work on the cars.”

  Marengo had chuckled as he pushed that car out for Julie and Tench to drive around the farm. “Miss Julie can take apart any car in here. She has been working on them since she was a child. Finest woman mechanic she’ll be, I wager, Mister Tench.”

  In those days, they took trips together with her father. He thought of that long ago night, the Baltimore Thruway was wet with scattered thunderstorms as the engine of the big Mercedes sedan roared in front of them. He leaned over and touched Julie’s hand. They were in the back seat. Strake and his assistant, Marengo, were in the front, with Marengo holding the oversize German steering wheel, keeping the heavy vehicle on the road in the gusts of wind and rain. Marengo was heavily built but short, so his face was directly behind the flash of headlights of oncoming cars. Sometimes his facial scar would reflect as the lights beamed into the car.

  That time Strake took them to an antique car sale, a special one for privileged and wealthy buyers. Tench said he had been to car auctions in Baltimore, some of them for expensive collector machines. Strake smiled and said, “At this particular auction it is different. The cars and parts have no origins and nothing can be traced. You don’t ask questions about pedigree here, boy.”

  Stolen. Stolen and sold only to the big players, the ones who kept their mouths shut. He’d heard about stolen art and jewels being traded this way. But cars. Theft was not something new to a street kid. This was new in the sense that it was big time. Tench was intrigued at the professionalism. First of all, the place was secure. The display of products for sale, attendance by invitation only, was at a farm far past the city, out in Baltimore County.

  At the gate, men came up on both sides of the car and looked inside with flashlights. The flashlights worked through the car. Strake held up his hand with a slight wave and the light went by him to rest on Tench.

  “My daughter and her friend,” Strake said, tough but jovial without any fear, as Strake was in those days.

  The biggest of them, dressed in a dark raincoat with a felt hat pulled down over his face, said, “All right, Mister Strake. They’re expecting you up at the big house. Go in.”

  As they drove further in the lane, the car headlights picked up the shapes of large trucks with containers scattered among the trees alongside the road. Emblems on the containers, flashing in the light, showed addresses from different places all over the world. He spotted for the first time the shipping company emblem of the lion on one of those containers. At the house, Marengo approached a young woman dressed in slacks and white blouse, who was standing near the front door with a clipboard. He gave her an envelope and said, “From Mister Strake.” She smiled and opened the envelope. She expertly thumbed the cash inside, counting the bills and then put the envelope in her pocket. She motioned to a door at the end of the hall.

  “Go out to the barn,” she directed, her voice mellow.

  They proceeded to a large barn behind the house. Strake confided to Tench as they walked, “You’ll see some of the best buyers here, Jimmy. We trade for parts we don’t have. Sometimes we come here to get cars. The important thing is these people deliver. That’s what makes the market.”

  Tench didn’t understand until he walked inside the barn. Spread out in front of him were tables of spare parts and in the large center space were several perfectly restored automobiles. The air smelled like gasoline mixed with the odor of animal feed. A few men were walking silently along what served for aisles.

  “The big item tonight is the Rolls Royce in the center,” Strake said as they stepped across the rough concrete floor of the barn.

  “Are you going to buy it?” asked Julie, looking at the shining chrome of the old vehicle.

  “No,” he said. “I own two just like it. I’m here for a part for one of my other cars.”

  Marengo said, “The parts sometimes are worth as much as the cars.”

  On a table along the wall was a fat man sitting with two younger men at his side. Wrapped partly in soft gauze covering was a downdraft carburetor. The metal in the piece was partly corroded. Tench stopped to look at it.

  As he reached to touch it, the fat man said, “No.” Tench looked at him. The young men beside the fat man had stood up and one of them, as if to accentuate the command of his apparent boss, had his hand on a revolver stuck in his belt.

  Strake said, pointing to Tench, “He doesn’t know. Leave him be.”

  “You better tell him,” said the fat man, his mouth turned down.

  Strake turned to Tench, “The piec
e of metal is original. It’s worth several hundred.”

  “Dollars?” asked Tench, his voice showing surprise.

  “Several hundred thousand. Only one in existence.”

  “Where did he get it?” asked Tench, as they moved on.

  Tench would always remember Strake’s answer. “I don’t ask,” said Strake, his head held perfectly straight ahead, as if he wanted to avoid seeing anything but what he had come for.

  “Mister Strake has a special invitation to be here,” said Marengo, scanning other tables where the products displayed included ancient chain drive transmissions, handmade spoked wheels and headlight lanterns. The table attendees appeared the same, like they were guards rather than antique conservators or auctioneers. Tench understood. This place was like a bank and the parts were money taken out of vaults.

  “You don’t touch unless you want to buy. You don’t buy unless the seller knows you, knows you can keep your mouth shut,” said Strake.

  Strake moved ahead to speak with a slender well-dressed man who looked much out of place in the barn. The man spoke for a few minutes, then smiled and shook Strake’s hand.

  Strake came back to them and said. “The fuel pump has been loaded in the back of the Mercedes. We can go now.”

  “Who was the man?” asked Julie as they left the barn and went back to the Mercedes.

  “An agent of a collector like me,” said Strake. Strake grinned at Marengo. “We got a good deal,” he said.

  “Always. I make sure,” replied Marengo.

  “We might want to find out who took the Rolls, in case we need some Rolls parts,” said Strake, winking at Marengo, as he herded his daughter and Tench back into the sedan.

  “It will be hard to do, but we will try,” said Marengo.

  “Your mother said you wouldn’t want to come, Julie,” said Strake, when everyone was back in their seats. “She doesn’t like my business. Maybe I was wrong bringing you here. However, all my cars will be yours someday. You and your sister, although she doesn’t like it either.”

  Strake looked at Tench. “If I ask you to join me again, Jimmy, you’ll come, I’d bet. You like the machines. You’ll never get close to them any other way.”

  Marengo added, “Of course we have to keep quiet where we take the parts we get here. They know how good our money is, but we make sure they don’t know where we keep our cars,” he said. He looked at Tench as he spoke, nodding his head to make sure Tench understood.

  “Why keep quiet? Why not tell people you have these great cars?” Tench had said and had regretted immediately his dumb remark.

  Strake sighed and looked at Tench with anger. “Boy, maybe I made a mistake letting you come along. I thought you were smart, you knew how to keep shut about things, growing up in the city and all,” he said. He bent his head back, talking slowly like a teacher. “The man we got to worry about is the man who sold it to us. He might come over to our place and try to get it back, maybe steal it, try to sell it again. We got to make sure he doesn’t have the opportunity.”

  Marengo said over his shoulder to Julie, as the big car lurched in a rut as it came on to the major highway, “These cars are just like a bank for your father.”

  “Yes,” said Strake. “The best bank in the world. Safe in a man’s own backyard. We’ll show some of them one day in a museum that is well guarded, but some will always be private, kept only for me to see.”

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” Julie had said a few weeks ago on their last telephone conversation. She had spoken almost in a whisper as though someone was listening, spying on her.

  “Are you all right?” Tench asked, softly, so only she heard.

  “Be careful,” she had whispered.

  “Why?”

  She had not answered.

  Tench had said, trying to say something pleasant, something to would take the edge off her voice, “Do you remember the Cunningham roadster?”

  “The car’s still there,” she said. Then she had added, “At least I think it is.” She started to cry. “I think some of them are gone. I asked Stagmatter and he wouldn’t tell me.”

  “He’s selling them?” asked Tench.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I see the trucks coming in,” said Tench.

  “Well, maybe it’s my imagination. I just worry for my father.” She had paused then said, “I think a lot about you. I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Jimmy.”

  “You didn’t do anything,” Tench had said. He heard her sob.

  “I left you alone. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “All past,” he said softly.

  “I wanted so many times to call you, to explain,” she said.

  “You didn’t have to explain.”

  “You remember that I told you of my fear. When I was a little girl, an old woman who took care of told me that I could go up the mountain and touch either good or evil. I was afraid of that.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “That is why I had to leave. Someday you will understand.”

  He tried her phone in Dallas again and this time he let it ring and ring until he trembled hearing the empty buzzing. He stood up from his desk. Outside his office he heard the clanking of wrenches as the men worked on the day’s repairs. He walked outside into the sun. Smote was right. Too much had happened to just be coincidence. He knew he had to talk with the sheriff again.

  Chapter Six

  4PM, Tuesday August 17

  The Sheriff, in his gray uniform, was sitting back in his desk chair talking on the phone when Tench poked his head in. Satter waved to him. As he entered, Tench noticed the secretary setting materials in front of each chair at his conference table.

  “He’s got a meeting, Tench,” she said.

  Tench nodded and sat down.

  Satter hung up and said “What's on your mind, Jimmy? We got lots of work today.”

  “What’s up?” Tench asked.

  “Getting ready for this talk by the professor. We got to have the police in the street to make sure there isn't any trouble with all the television coverage this lady and her managers have stirred up.”

  “Complicated, eh?”

  “Some radical types might be coming here to get their pictures taken. Some like the United Nations and some don’t. Some think the UN is building an army to invade the USA. Some fanatic might not like this professor’s book. Everybody hates something.”

  “Those people are wasting their time. The United Nations committee people are making an excuse for a weekend vacation.”

  The Sheriff shook his head. “You got that right, Jimmy. I also know that if anything happens we’ll get a bunch of Federal investigators in here. I tried to tell your aunt.”

  “Something else has been bothering me,” Tench said.

  “Shoot.”

  “It’s about the way Captain Bob died.”

  “That again?” Satter leaned back in his chair and said, “I told Smote I can’t find anything looks like he was killed. It just isn’t there no matter how much he wants to believe it.”

  “I went up to Strake’s with him and we found the old man’s anchor.”

  Satter sat up. “That's something. Where was it?”

  “Right up near the shoreline by the Strake property.”

  “You’re sure it was Peake's anchor?”

  “Yes sir. Smote says Captain Bob would have gone after it, got it back if he lost it himself.”

  Satter looked thoughtful. “You'd think so.”

  The sheriff slapped the desk. “Might be something, Jimmy. Point is, how can I prove it?” He stood up and put his hands on the desk. “Not long ago those guards shot at a kid climbing the front iron gate at the entrance. Just kids. By the time I got through investigating I was apologizing to Stagmatter. He had all the cards in his favor. The kids were trespassing.”

  “Something else has come up, Sheriff,” Tench said.

  “I hope it’s better than what you got about Peake.”


  “It’s Julie Strake. She doesn’t answer my calls.”

  The Sheriff smiled. “You want me to call the Dallas chief of police? Have him send one of his men over to check out Julie's apartment just because she doesn't answer her boyfriend’s phone? I’m not sure he could to do that for me, Jimmy. You can understand we don’t like to get involved in romance affairs.”

  “It’s more, Sheriff Satter. Julie and I, we talk every month like clockwork. She’s never missed a call even when she's been traveling. She’s always called me.”

  “Look, Jimmy, the only way I been able to police here in River Sunday is to be fair to everybody, take no sides.”

  “I know.”

  “All I can say, is you let me know if you don’t hear from Julie pretty soon. Keep your eyes open for anything unusual about Strake’s place. I got no special love for those men up there with guns. It doesn't sit right with me and, truth be told, it doesn't please a lot of people. Most folks, though, respect Strake or at least work in his companies and they keep their mouths shut.”

  Tench nodded.

  “Let me get through this speech by the African this Friday and then we’ll talk again.”

  “What are you doing here, Jimmy?” came his aunt’s voice loud behind him.

  “Hi,” Tench replied.

  “Anyway, I need to talk to you too.” She looked at Satter. “Sheriff, we ready for the meeting?”

  “They’ll be coming in,” Satter said. “State police, town police, Coast Guard, everybody we think we’ll need.”

  She looked at her watch, then back at Tench and said, “You’ve seen these United Nations folks before, haven’t you?”