Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) (19 page)

“You be quiet, fool.”

The men went outside again. Tench heard chains being pulled from latches.

“They’re getting ready to open the sliding doors,” said Smote.

“Whatever’s going to happen, it’s going to be soon,” said Tench. “You think your grandfather saw all this?”

“He saw something. They killed him because of that. I’m sure of it. The bastards,” said Smote. He looked at the plane.

“We have to get out of here before they spot us. I’ve got to find Julie. I want to know if she was involved in this,” said Tench.

“She had to know,” said Smote. “Can’t hide this plane that much, not from somebody living here.”

“I just can’t see her mixed up with these guys. “

“Too late. She is involved,” said Smote.

“I’m going to visit the house and find her.”

Smote said, “You’ll never get in there. We got to do something else and we got to do it now. No time to get help. We’ll have to do something ourselves.”

“You can’t fight those guys by yourself,” said Tench.

He looked at Tench. “You watch me.”

“I’ll help you,” said Tench.

“You go find your girl.”

“I’ll help you and then we’ll both go.”

“I’ll meet you outside in a few minutes,” Smote said firmly, as he climbed back into the bomber.

Tench hesitated for a moment, then realized that Smote had made up his mind and moved slowly away from the generator toward the door he had come in. In a few moments, he went out the back door and was in the night again. As he came around the building, he could hear the bulldozer start again, the diesel rumbling far off down the field. He watched the machine’s lights as it lumbered toward the house.

The garage doors were halfway open and Tench could see the nose of the big airplane in the light of the hanger. From his perspective the machine looked very large and very powerful.

Smote came up behind him so quietly he did not hear him. He only knew he was there when Smote touched his arm, making his hair rise.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah, as soon as I get my heart back under control. You scared the hell out of me,” Tench said.

“I give them a free present,” he said, nodding his head toward the plane.

Tench explained what he was going to do. “First we’ll find Julie and her father and see if they are on our side. Then we’ll get to Marengo and he’ll help us get away. He’s a good friend.”

“Maybe you not trust that old man, Tench,” said Smote.

“He can’t be with them. He just can’t be,” said Tench. “He’s just trying to get along with them and help the Strakes, that’s all. I know him too well.”

They managed to get to the cellar door without being noticed. The porch above was deserted. The mansion itself was dark except for some hall lights inside.

As they passed by the worn sofa in the middle of the cellar floor, Tench stopped and touched the dusty fabric. Warm thoughts came to him once more as he remembered Julie. Then he went forward again, feeling his way in the darkness until he and Smote reached the stairway to the first floor hallway.

He opened the tiny colonial door slowly, peeking around the slit of light that came on to the stairway from outside. No one was in the hall on the first floor. He motioned to Smote and they stepped out into the light. The hallway was lit by a single small bulb set into an alcove on the far side of the room. Around him in the dimness were oil paintings of the Terments, the former owners of the mansion. Strake had told him once that they were priceless portraits, a good investment for him, and that he liked looking at them as if he was the successor to such a group of distinguished patriarchs. One he particularly liked showing to Tench was the oil of the first owner, a member of the first Maryland government. The man was clad in a robe sitting in a wooden chair in the same corridor, the far garden door open to a summer scene, the man looking out on his garden which was full of color. To his left in the picture was a tall black woman holding a glass of wine, its ruby liquid stark against the small salver she held in her right hand, her face reserved. The artist had caught the fear in her eyes, while the man, Terment, seemed amused, his face showing blissful contentment, as he oversaw his property.

Tench knew where the servant stairway was located and moved to that section of the room. Behind a wing chair, he pried open another small door and stepped into the narrow twisting set of stairs heading to the corridor which held Julie’s bedroom.

At the top of the stairs, he looked out and saw a guard asleep at the far end of the passageway, his body tipped back on a small stool, on his lap a machinegun. He and Smote moved slowly ahead, their eyes constantly on the guard’s face. First to his right was Strake’s bedroom. The door was slightly ajar and as Tench moved by he glanced in.

Strake sat there, his eyes open and staring ahead, his body seated at a desk where papers were stacked. His hands were on the desk but did not move. He did not see Tench, and while he was breathing and awake, seemed incapable of hearing or seeing anything.

For a few seconds Tench’s mind remembered the man, his presence when Tench first met him, the tough freewheeling person that greeted him and the other baseball players at the mansion. This man was no longer the old Strake.

“You fellows come in and make yourself at home,” he had said. “This is a baseball house, yessir. “He’d ordered Marengo who was there at the side of the room standing with Mrs. Strake, both of them bent forward with a desire to honor the winning team.

Strake had said “Get them what they want to drink. Boys, plenty of food too.” Strake swept his hand backward toward the tables resplendent with sandwiches and bottles of Nehi Cola and Coke.

Next and to the left facing the front of the mansion was Julie’s room. The guard, was a tough looking man with a mustache on his dark face, his shirt open at the throat revealing his large chest, which rose and fell with his sleep induced slow breathing. The gun moved slightly on his lap as he shifted his position slightly. Tench watched the man’s eyes as he crawled down the corridor to Julie’s door. He felt the small knife at his belt, next to his cell phone holster, and knew he would have to be ready to leap forward and kill the man if he woke up.

Tench motioned Smote to get out of sight in an adjoining room and to keep an eye on the guard. “Signal me if he moves,” Tench said and slowly opened her door.

Chapter Eighteen

2 AM Saturday August 21

“Go away,” came a voice from the darkness that he recognized as Julie, harsher though than he had ever heard her speak, as if she were exhausted and tense.

“It’s Jimmy,” he whispered.

Tench heard her hesitate, then a bed squeaked, and he heard bare feet padding toward him and he saw her come into the light. At the same time as he reached for her, he smelled her perfume, the same scent of honeysuckle that he remembered from so long ago. His hands found her, felt the warmth of her naked body as she came into his arms. He could feel her rapid heartbeat, her arms circling him tightly in response.

Then she pulled him away from the door into the darkness. He could see her eyes sparkle with tears in the light from the hallway. He shut the door behind them. Even in the darkness with the slight glint from the open window of the bedroom, Julie looked beautiful. She returned to his arms, the closeness of her anything but malevolent. Holding her, he remembered a day long ago.

They had been lying on their back in the outboard that they had run out from the Strake pier and anchored down the shoreline out of sight of the mansion. She was in her swimsuit, lying back against the gunwale, her feet out in front of her, a can of beer in her lap. He was in his shorts, sitting up in the driver’s chair, his arms over the back of the seat, looking down on her.

The sun was hot on them, with no shade or awnings protecting them in the open runabout. She moved the beer well to her side and put it in a shelf on the side of the boat. Then she sat up and unsnapped the top of her swimsuit and let it fall to her waist. She looked at him, a smile on her lips, her eyes slightly amused and stretched her arms up towards him.

Then his mind was back to the present. He felt the exhausted woman in front of him. She was speaking, sobbing,

“Oh God, Jimmy, I prayed that you would understand why I had not called you. I prayed that you’d know something was wrong and come looking for me. I knew we can read each other’s minds. I knew that I could reach you by thinking about you.” The words came in a rush as she clasped him tightly to her.

He asked, “How did you get here?”

“The Africans. They came and took me by force in Texas, right outside my apartment, one night, I didn’t have a chance to escape to call for help. They brought me here in a small airplane several weeks ago. I had no chance to call you. “

She sobbed then said, “Thank God you are here.”

“Smote and I are going to get you out.” He knew her next words would tell him if she was involved in the conspiracy, knew anything about what Stagmatter and Owerri were doing, or even give him a clue as to whether her father was involved.

“Jimmy, you don’t know how much trouble you are in.” He could feel her hand reaching out to him, finding his arm, stroking it.

“Why didn’t you contact me in River Sunday and tell me about them?”

“They’ve been with me all the time and watched me every minute,” she said.

“How did your father ever let this happen? Is he in with them?”

“No. You don’t understand. They have captured me and my father, taken us hostages for whatever they are planning,” she said.

“Does this have anything to do with what happened to your sister?”

“I think so. I think her family’s death wasn’t’ an accident. They did it to scare my father and then they came after me. Hurt her to prove to me that they meant business. My mother too. They had to terrify my father in helping them. They threatened to kill me if he didn’t work for them.

“What about the bomber? What about Annapolis?”

“I don’t know about that. What bomber?” she said.

“You don’t know about the World War Two bomber parked in the car repair building? The thing is loaded with big flexible rubber tanks filled with extra gasoline. They plan to bomb Annapolis. They call it Black-eyed Susan. Have you ever heard that name?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t been out of this building except when they let me come down to the porch early in the m morning. I haven’t been allowed to see the cars or go in any of the buildings. My father can’t either. He doesn’t know anything.”

“I’m hoping that Marengo can help us get you and your father out of here,” Tench said. “He’s always been my friend.”

Her eyes grew big with fear.

“What is it?” he said.

Suddenly the door shook. Tench had made sure to lock the handle button when he came in and someone had expected the door to be open.

“Open for me.” He recognized the voice but somehow it was different. The voice was that of Marengo, but angry, a voice that Tench had never heard from the kindly old man before. He began to suspect that what Beets had overheard the other day was more of an insight into Marengo that Tench had thought. “You should not have locked the door,” Marengo said.

Julie motioned to him to hide and Tench moved into the closet. He watched, with the closet door open a small crack, his body ready to jump out if any harm was going to come to Julie.

“What is Stagmatter going to do with my father?” she said.

“He will be taken care of.” Marengo said.

Marengo looked around. “Why did you lock the door? What were you doing?”

“I didn’t want that guard coming in here.” Then she said, angrily, “You are my father’s friend. Make Stagmatter stop what he is doing.”

“It’s too late for that. You do not understand, my little girl.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“Stagmatter is my friend too, little girl. Doctor Owerri too. She is of my tribe, my blood.”

Julie didn’t answer right away. She paused, then said, “I can’t believe you are with those people yet your actions toward me and my father have been evil in the last weeks. You won’t talk to me like in the past. You leave me with them. I think you are a traitor too, a traitor to my father. I have been trusting you and all the time you were working for them.” She put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook.

“My goals are not those of your father, no.”

“You have taken advantage of my father,” she said.

“Let us say that your father may have been taken advantage of this time but he had done the same to others for most of his life.”

She looked up, anger in her face, and said, “My father is an honest man. He has always been good to you.”

“Honest?” he laughed. “That is not the word. In our culture we would call it forthright and clever and we would admire it except that his propensity to line his own pockets became so strong that none could say that any more. Honest, yes, but only to himself.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe as you would. This was a man who came to me with a proposition many years ago to serve him in making his profits. I joined your father then because it was only another step towards my goals. What did I care? He took from the same monsters that I had sworn to kill myself. To kill them or steal from them in this way was useful so I went along. “

“You were a thief?” Julie said, her voice soft as if she did not believe what she was saying.

“Let’s say I did only what your father did. He was a good teacher.” He sighed. “You are so American, little girl. Your father needed a group of men to carry out his foraging as he called it. I gave them to him. You do not know your father. This man was one of the greatest barterers, traders, that my country, indeed the west of Africa, had ever seen. He came to the area when he was young and made his fortune by being better at what the local men did than they could themselves.”

“He made you wealthy. I don’t understand what you have against him.”

“Your father managed money. He would have a client from outside the area who would want something, diamonds, oil, it mattered not. He would take this request to the proper source and arrange to deliver the goods using the client’s money. “