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

  3. That Captain Edward Lawson remains a prime suspect for traitorous activities with regard to the theft of the seaplane.

  4. That security should be improved at the seaplane facility at the Naval Aircraft Factory.

  5. That Mary Lawson can not be tied definitely to the theft of the seaplane or to any planning for its delivery to any destination which might endanger the national security of the United States.

  6. That Mary Lawson should be free to go to her home pending any further proof of her guilt.

  7. That until the investigation of the theft of the airplane and the destruction of the lab finally proves Mary Lawson innocent, that she is to have no survivors benefits from her deceased husband’s naval career.

  The record of proceedings was read and approved and the court finished the inquiry at 1:30 PM.

  A.F. Jinson

  Captain, US Navy

  President

  Charles Buck

  Lieutenant Commander, US Navy

  Judge Advocate”

  “Of course,” said Drexel, “The newspapers had a fit. I wasn’t too popular for getting her freed. Eventually, though, it all died down. Life went on. She went back to her farm.”

  “Those military judges still around?”

  “Dead and gone. They were pretty old at the time of the hearing.”

  “Nothing more came of it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “We couldn’t find any records of the hearing. This is the first official document I’ve seen,” said Mike.

  Drexel smiled. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “What did Wall do?”

  Drexel looked at Mike. “Bernard Wall was about as angry as anyone I have ever seen. He was swearing at her. He would have punched her if the security had not restrained him. He just kept talking about the millions he had lost. Yelling, all kinds of things. I remember he swore at her and asked where she and her rotten husband had put all the valve designs he had paid for.”

  “What about coworkers?”

  Drexel had one folder left. He handed it to Mike.

  “In this folder, you’ll read the testimony of the only witness the Navy could find to speak of what went on at the lab. You see, towards the end of the war, most of that lab had been reassigned. The ones who knew Lawson during the earlier years were shipped to the Pacific and killed, most of them, in Okinawa. The place had been almost shut down after the war contracts stopped. I gathered that Lawson was trying to keep the research going forward without much funding from the Navy.

  He laughed. “They tried another witness too. Lawson’s secretary. She didn’t testify.

  “What happened with the secretary?”

  “Rebecca Scott.” Drexel smiled, “She was crazy, that woman.”

  “What do you mean, crazy?”

  “She'd carry on screaming and cursing all of us. Not only me. The Navy too. Nobody could get a simple clear sentence out of her among all the swear words. After a day or so of trying to get her talk, she was committed to a hospital near Philadelphia.”

  He went on. “Then came the questioning of the other prospect, Hiram Jones, another Navy man, who had been assigned to the lab and who had just reported in a few weeks before the explosion.”

  “What about Hiram Jones?”

  “He didn’t say much.”

  Drexel reached into the folder and produced another piece of thin typewritten paper.

  “Hiram Jones,” he said as he handed the paper to Mike.

  Question: “When were you assigned to the Naval Research Laboratory, Lieutenant Jones?”

  Answer: “May 15, 1946.”

  Question: “What was your former post?”

  Answer: “Navy liaison to Aviatrice Corporation, New York City.”

  Question: “What were your duties at Philadelphia?”

  Answer: “I was in charge of catapult development.”

  Question: “Catapults are used on carriers to launch aircraft, is that right?”

  Answer: “The lab did very advanced work in steam. We were developing a steam system.”

  Question: “Did you work with Captain Edward Lawson?”

  Answer: “Yessir. He was my commanding officer.”

  Question: “Tell us how often you saw Captain Lawson.”

  Answer: “Everyday I would report to him, go over the catapult program. During the day he would come to my office to supervise me.”

  Question: “Did you see the Captain in any social context?”

  Answer: “No Sir. He was a tennis player and I don’t play. Sometimes he’d go to see his wife on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and I wasn’t invited.”

  Question: “Did you ever hear the Captain mention Communism?”

  Answer: “No Sir, (witness paused) except one time while I was there.”

  Question: “Go on.”

  Answer: “I was in his office in the beginning of the day. He had a pile of books in a drawer in his desk.”

  Question: “What were the names of the books?”

  Answer: “I don’t know all of them. Just this one he showed me.”

  Question: “What was the name of it?”

  Answer: “I only saw the author.”

  Question: “Who was the author?”

  Answer: “Karl Marx, Sir.”

  Question: “Karl Marx, the Communist?”

  Answer: “Yes Sir.”

  Question: “What did the Captain say when he showed you this book?”

  Answer: “He held it out to me and said I should read it.”

  Question: “What did you say?”

  Answer: “I told him that I appreciated his interest in me and would borrow it sometime.”

  Question: “Why did he want you to read this book?”

  Answer: “He said it would help me to think. He said, think in a global way.”

  Question: “What did he mean by that?”

  Answer: “I don’t know, Sir.”

  Question: “Did he ever mention the book again?”

  Answer: “No, Sir. That was six days before the lab was blown up.”

  Question: “What other papers were missing from the lab after the explosion?”

  Answer: “I only know about my own safe.”

  Question: “What was missing there?”

  Answer: “Everything. Everything, Sir.” (witness seemed very nervous and even began to flail his arms in the air) “The loss has devastated me, Sir, the loss of all my notes that I had worked so hard to develop from the complicated designs.” (The witness was then excused.)

  Drexel smiled. “The papers loved the mention of Karl Marx. To them it proved Lawson was without any doubt a Communist and capable of the worst evil possible to the United States.”

  Mike nodded. “Maybe the Captain was just a little ahead of his time. Kids read Marx in high school nowadays. At least they used to.”

  He looked at Drexel. “My associate found out that the seaplane may have been armed with bombs when it took off. Did you ever hear or see anything like that?”

  Drexel laughed. “No, I didn’t. If that plane was armed, that’s probably why she blew up. It’s hard to figure out these criminals, what they have in mind. All I know is this Lawson was a real crackpot and might have been capable of anything.”

  “So you didn’t think much of him.”

  “I didn’t have to think. My job was to get his wife out of Navy custody. That didn’t mean I had to believe in his innocence. She weathered it well, stodgy farm woman that she was. I don’t think I saw her smile the whole time I was defending her, but she didn’t cry either, not a tear. My take on it was that the public expected her to break down, and that humiliation would be her penance because she was old family, aristocratic. They wanted her to beg, but she chose not to. Whether this decision was caused by her own pride or because of her respect for her husband’s innocence, I was never certain.”

  The drive back to Wilmington was long and tiring. As Mike drove, he tried to stop thinking about the Lawson mystery
. For a few miles, he wondered again if his P47 project would be completed in time to save the Museum. So much financial planning depended, he knew, on drawing more visitors through the front doors. His mind, however, kept coming back to the missing seaplane. Through the windshield, Mike kept seeing lights of aircraft in the evening sky, specks that disappeared just like the lights the fisherman had described on that Fourth of July so long ago.

  Chapter Five

  8 PM June 30

  Wilmington, Delaware.

  Mike drove directly to Jeremy’s condominium, a small townhouse in one of the new suburban developments outside Wilmington proper. Parked next to Jeremy’s Volkswagen was a surprise, Robin’s pink Ford pickup. In the back her parachute gear was piled on top of her luggage and bedroll.

  Robin answered the door.

  “Where’d you come from?” Mike said, reaching for her to give her a hug. Robin, still with her deep tan, had her long hair tied back and was barefoot, dressed in faded jeans and a white tee shirt with a blue parachute drawn on its front.

  “She called after you left,” said Jeremy from his chair across the room. “I told her the Museum was in trouble and she said she wanted to come and help.” He added, “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all. Damn, it’s good to see you, Robbie,” as he let her loose from his hug and looked at her.

  She closed her eyes momentarily as he called her that name. Then, she said, “It’s good to see you guys too.”

  “We got to talk, Mike. We got trouble,” said Jeremy.

  “I know. We lost the next payment of our money from Aviatrice,” said Mike.

  Jeremy looked stunned. “Shit. That’s bad enough.”

  “I’ll work for free,” Robin said. “As long as it takes.”

  Mike sat down on the only other seat in the small room, the edge of Jeremy’s bed, his hand still holding Robin’s waist. “OK, so tell me your bad news,” he said.

  “It’s Jenni,” said Jeremy.

  Mike’s face showed he did not know who she was.

  “The friend I called for us up at Aviatrice,” said Jeremy. Mike remembered and could tell by Jeremy’s tone that he was very worried.

  “I met Veal and the corporate bouncer, a guy named Bullock,” said Mike. “Tim acted differently than I have ever seen him.”

  “Yeah,” said Jeremy. “I should never have asked Jenni to check their files.”

  “I’ll get you a drink,” said Robin as she went towards the kitchen. Mike nodded and leaned toward Jeremy.

  “What happened?”

  “Like you suggested, I asked her to check out the Lawson case. I told her to call as soon as she could. She said she could easily look up the file. Anyway she called back this afternoon. I could sense she was afraid, her voice breaking.”

  He walked back and forth as he talked, from time to time looking at Mike.

  “I’m afraid for her, Mike.”

  “Maybe you’re mistaken. Maybe it’s all right,” Mike tried to calm him.

  “She told me how tough the security was there, so much so that Aviatrice has this room called “the traitor room,” set up just for security training. She had been through it a long time ago and had almost forgotten how scary it was. Your guy Bullard handles the training. The room’s supposed to make employees loyal, she said. They deal with classified material, like totally secret stuff, designs, that kind of thing. Aviatrice management wants to make sure that employees don’t leak information to the enemies of the United States, or more likely, to competitors. Bullard is absolutely fanatical about the security of that company.

  “She said he brings new employees into this room. All around them in the dim light are mementos of World War Two. Recruitment posters urging men to sign up for military duty. Photographs of company employees in uniform and flying fighter planes that Aviatrice helped engineer. The old ones like the Thunderbolts and the Lightnings, and other names I’ve never heard of. Signs tell which planes are which and about their history and design and engines, what battles they served in, how many kills they had. Every table and counter display tells the history of the early years and planes that Aviatrice helped build. One is a display about the company’s pioneer woman founder, Amanda Gibson, with her flight records. Bernard Wall, whom she appointed to run the company, is prominent in the pictures. Parts of the room have fire blackened typewriters taken from the old Navy lab in Philadelphia where the Lawson explosion occurred. One of the walls has been fitted with burned wooden slats that shows the force of the blast and one of the old safes with the door open.

  “Jenni remembered that she had seen the old man Bernard Wall in the shadows of that room during her training. He was an old man, sitting in a wheelchair, incredibly thin, bald, his eyes bulging from his face, stained teeth flashing in the dim light. She said he smelled bad, like he had not had a bath in some time. All she wanted to do was get away from him.

  “‘During the training,’ she said, ‘Bullard lectured us how the company was taken advantage of by Captain Lawson. This room, he said, was built from the ruins of the Navy lab Lawson destroyed in order to show Aviatrice employees how Aviatrice was compromised by a communist, by a traitor.’”

  “She said, ‘After my training was finished, I came out of the traitor room into the brightly lit corridor and wanted to keep on walking right away from the job. Then I thought about the money I was getting paid and the prestige of working in such a famous company and I went to my job.”

  “She had to be careful, I can see that,” said Mike.

  “I had asked her,” Jeremy said, “to look around and call me back. Jenni is a beautiful babe. With her smile she can get into places we couldn’t even shoot our way into. She always had that talent, Mike, long as I have known her. Except that she had no smile in her voice when she called back. She was, like, so scared.

  “She told me that after I called, she went down to a section called the file room. She pretended that she was getting something for her boss. She does procurement of parts all over the world, and in the file room the company had all the vendor records, supply files, parts lists. From time to time she had to go there. The file room was classified secret so she needed a reason to be looking around down there. Fortunately her boss was out of town so she could be creative.

  “The guard on duty was new, somebody Bullard had just hired, and did not recognize her. She saw him and was just about ready to go back to her office to wait for another opportunity. Unfortunately he asked her why she was there and she was trapped. He was very efficient and so she had to sign in carefully, state her reason, all the things she normally did not even have to bother about with the other guard. This guard kept her standing there. Other employees could see her standing at the guard table. She was afraid that Bullard might come along and start getting nosy. This guard even checked her office. He rang and rang her phone. Naturally she wasn’t there to pick up and her boss was gone. The guard kept on until the secretary from across the hall came to Jenni’s phone, answered and clarified that Jenni’s boss was traveling. Jenni knew she was getting in deeper, and worried that her boss would be asking her about this, not to mention the secretary, who was a real busybody. Jenni is stubborn though, Mike, and she made up her mind to go ahead anyway. Finally the guard let her sign in and opened the door, probably because he was a man and could not resist that smile of hers.

  “Inside the file room she told me that she had to go to another section to find the history files. She was not familiar with the older safes in this area and took a long time to open them. Each one had a combination. She knew the codes but the locks were old and the tumblers rusty. She discovered that two of the safes were the wrong ones after she got them open. The last one was especially hard to open.

  “She had just opened it when she heard the guard talking to someone. She was behind the safes so the people coming in could not see her, but she knew she had to work fast. She opened the first file drawer and found nothing. Then sh
e tried the second drawer. All the file folders were marked Lawson with sequential dates. She pulled the first one out, closed the drawer and relocked the safe. Then she went to the other end of the room to the work tables where she could read without being disturbed. Fortunately she noticed an open safe nearby. She decided to hide the papers in this safe if someone came along. She smiled when she saw the open safe knowing that Bullard’s rules had been broken by someone else. So much for his security training. Someone had left it open against the regulations.

  “At the work table she sat down and opened the folder. Only one document was inside. It was Bernard Wall’s statement to the Navy concerning the last conversation he had with Captain Lawson:

  Classified Top Secret.

  Copy of the US Navy interrogation of Bernard Wall July 1946 at the hearing of Mary Lawson, July 30, 1946.

  Question: “Tell us in your own words your relationship with Captain Edward Lawson.”

  Answer: “We’d been friends for a long time, the Captain and me. I helped him get his research off dead center. With the war ending, he didn’t like the deal my company gave him so he up and ran off with the plane. It was our airplane. We loaned it to the Navy. Same with the turbines. We built it. We let him have it to test. Trouble was, we found out, he was a big shot who couldn’t take orders from anyone.

  “I remember it was hot when I went to see him. The conversation started off friendly. He liked to drink and I offered him one.

  “ ‘Drink?’ I said to him. I was fresh off a flight from London and I had brought him a bottle of Scotch.

  “ ‘Good stuff, Ed,’ I said, and I joked, ‘Fresh from the London office of Aviatrice.’

  “ ‘Thank you, Bernie,’ he said. ‘I see you’re back from selling your fighter planes,’ he said and I realized he was in one of his sarcastic moods. He smiled, putting down his clipboard and picking up the bottle. As he opened the Scotch, he nodded towards the shelving behind his desk where he had stored dozens of file folders and dusty books.

  “ ‘The glasses are in the center section,’ he said, ‘Second shelf down.’