Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) (10 page)

“Yes, Tench.” Stagmatter’s face came up from his writing.

“Blond hair,” he said. “You might have been a good German.”

Tench reached up and smoothed his mop of hair. “I got my blond hair from my mother. Her grandmother was Norwegian. I don’t think she liked Germans.”

Stagmatter’s face contorted in his twisted smile. Tench noticed the picture of a man about Tench’s own age in a dark blue military uniform with a tiny cross of metal on his chest and a white peaked hat. Stagmatter followed Tench’s gaze and said, “My father. He was a captain in the German submarines.”

“I thought you were from Argentina.”

“My father migrated after the war.” Then he said with pride in his voice, “My grandfather was a Mercedes mechanic, and was chosen to take care of the cars of Adolph Hitler himself. My father, in turn, took care of the cars of important government officials in Argentina.”

Also on the wall an aerial photo of a cityscape had a date written in fancy lettering across its bottom edge. The lettering resembled German print he remembered from his history lessons in school. The date on the picture was August 21, 1944.

“Where was this city?” asked Tench, pointing to the picture.

“It used to be the town of Stork.”

“Used to be?”

“Your bombers dropped incendiary bombs before returning to bases in England. The town was burned in an inferno and all the people turned to cinders. It is no more.”

“What happened to your grandfather?” asked Tench.

“My grandfather and grandmother burned to an unrecognizable black crust with only their location in the ruins of the house lot to identify them.” His face contorted in the smile again and he said, “These things we must forget is it not so?”

“I guess so.”

“Some of my German countrymen still call them murderers.”

“Doctor Owerri talked about murder in her country too.”

“Yes. Interesting.” He observed the picture, almost reverently it seemed to Tench, for more than a few moments.

Beneath the photo of the German town hung a small framed picture of an American, a military cap on his head.

Stagmatter pointed to it. “The pilot of the B24 Liberator bomber which flew over my grandfather’s section of Stork and killed my family.” Stagmatter’s eyes suddenly shone hard like knives.

“You found his name?”

Stagmatter said, “I suspect you would have done the same. You Americans were never bombed. I don’t know for sure what you would have done. I suspect you would have been interested to find out the name of the warrior who brought such sadness to your family. I wanted to meet him. I even travelled to his town, a small place near New York City, where he had retired. Unfortunately he was dead.”

“He must have been an old man.”

Stagmatter said, “He and his family were killed a few months before I arrived. They were in an automobile accident.” The way he said this was exactly in the same tone as he had been discussing the whole matter. His face now took on a bemusement. Tench, for a moment, imagined that Stagmatter might have caused the pilot’s car to crash.

In the moments following, Tench tried to relax. After all, all he wanted was his check for the towing job. Stagmatter was not a pleasant man but Tench had no proof he was a killer. He decided to ask about Julie. “Have you heard from Julie Strake?” he asked.

Stagmatter said, almost in a murmur, “No, but I don’t get involved with Mister Strake’s children.” He moved some papers on his desk, and then said, “Speaking of wrecked things, I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Tench.”

“What?”

“The racing machine you build. I’d like to help you in your growing business. The engines they are expensive, lose crank bearings, no? I am thinking if you burn one up, it will be hard to replace. I mean you might have trouble affording a second one, for such a small garage.”

His eyes ran up and down Tench’s face. “We know about your future plans. Mister Strake told me he admired how you are a racer like his friend Cunningham. He knew him, you know. He visited Cunningham at his factory in Florida.”

“I didn’t know,” said Tench.

“Oh yes. Mister Strake met with him.”

Stagmatter stood up, handed the check to Tench, and said, “Come with me, Tench.”

Stagmatter led Tench down an inside metal stairway. The stairwell was completely enclosed with unfinished plasterboard. At the bottom of the well was a door leading outside to a concrete patio. When Tench walked outside, following Stagmatter, he turned to his left. The purple Cunningham C2R, its top down, basked in the bright sunlight.

Stagmatter went over to the car, got in, and shook the shifter to make sure the car was in neutral. He set the choke, turned the ignition key and pressed the starter. The V8 engine barked and idled rough, its rumble taking Tench back to memories of driving this car around the farm with Julie at his side.

“He got this car because nobody like the purple body paint,” said Stagmatter. “Ugly color you must admit,” he added. “It was rebuilt from the wreck of one of Cunningham’s early C2R racers and sold to a rich African. The fellow was a chief. He saw it race at Le Mans. He wanted the car purple to show his royalty. The chief’s children assassinated the old chief and then sold the car to Mister Strake.”

Tench remembered Julie beside him as he drove this car around the estate, years ago before Stagmatter came. The car was as beautiful as Julie. He didn’t say anything.

“Maybe we provide some engines to help with the costs of your races,” said Stagmatter, scanning the instrument panel. “She’s got a Cadillac engine.”

“Chrysler.”

Stagmatter said, “Yes, but fitted with Cadillac pistons to raise the horsepower for racing.”

Tench smiled. “What do I have to do?” he said, as he touched the seat of the Cunningham.

“We might display this C2R at your paddock at the drag races. Sort of something to promote your team. You in turn give credit to Mister Strake’s oil firm by painting its name on your car.”

“He would be sponsoring my car?”

“Yes, and we would help with the cost of engines and other racing parts.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Tench. He remembered Julie’s comments a few weeks ago about how things had changed now that Stagmatter was here at the Island and how she was worried about her father. For a moment longer he stared at Stagmatter, at the strange smile of the big Argentinean. Besides the big man, sitting in the passenger seat, he imagined the figure of Captain Bob. He thought of a kindly old man, a black man who only cared about a small town in Maryland. Captain Bob was shaking his head.

Chapter Eight

4 PM Thursday August 19

Lamont Beets stood in front of Tench’s desk and wanted to know if he should tell the sheriff what he had overheard. He said, “I know everybody is looking out for trouble because of the meeting that African woman. Well, I saw her and maybe something is not right about her.”

Tench called to Katy, “Come on in here.” When she arrived at the door to his office, wiping the wrench in her hand, she said, “What’s wrong?”

Tench nodded to Lamont. “Tell both of us what you saw.”

Lamont stared back and forth between them as if he knew he was not going to be believed then spoke. “Yessir, well, I parked the Cadillac in back in the lot just like the hotel wanted. I went inside and left her keys at the main desk and came out to the back door. That’s when I saw the two Africans the woman doctor and Mister Marengo from up the Island. They were standing in the lot beside the green station wagon belonging to Mister Strake. Something about them was not right and I waited until they were going to drive away.”

“What?” asked Tench.

Lamont caught another breath and continued, “They were yelling at each other. If I tried to get by them, it seemed like they'd start on me too. She looked wild in the eyes, you know like a woman on fire, full of pain. He seemed to be trying to calm her down but he wasn’t having much luck.”

“So tell me what they argued about?” asked Tench. Many of his black friends had told him before that they did not trust Africans like Marengo, that they often seemed to look down on their American cousins.

Lamont said, “I moved closer so I could hear better. I could see the scars on his arms and face. I thought he meant trouble for that lady. She started talking about somebody called Snake and guns, about fires burning down houses. She yelled at Marengo about battles happening over in Africa and said they killed her family.”

“Snake? I always heard you black folks were so scared of snakes. Maybe you misheard.” Katy said, grinning. She put a hand on the mechanic's shoulder.

“No, ain’t that. I don’t think she was referring to them devil animals crawling on the ground. Ain’t like that, Miss Katy. She was meaning a human kind. She also said about Mister Stagmatter, how he wouldn’t listen to her and maybe she ought to go back to New York. Nossir, angry, like throwing things angry.

“All the time, Mister Marengo, he had his hand on her arm pulling her into the car. I heard him say real loud like screaming at her, ‘No, you can’t leave. Too much at stake. You leave and everything is ruined.’”

“Ruined? What did he mean?” asked Katy.

“I don’t know. It was just what he said.”

“She’s got this big speech to give to the United Nations, don’t you know?” said Tench, nodding. “She’s nervous I guess. I would be.”

Lamont went on, “Then she says, ‘I know. I don’t want to fail.’”

“Mister Marengo, he says, ‘Then don’t fail. Remember Snake and the days back in the jungle.’”

“The snake again,” said Katy, not smiling. “Wonder what he meant?”

Lamont said, “Well, when he said that about the jungle, I perked up my ears. I mean them talking about a jungle. I heard one time he was from a jungle place where he got all them scars. I figured he might say something more about it.”

“Did they see you yet?” asked Tench.

“No. Spite of me being so close, they never noticed me. She started in about this brother she had. He was killed, she said. Then she yelled at Mister Marengo something like, ‘How do you know? My father sent you out with the others. You were gone. You didn’t see the government troops come in to the palace shooting and killing and setting fire to everything and everybody.’”

“‘No, I didn’t,’ Marengo answered her. He tried again to pull her towards the car. ‘You got to keep quiet,’ he said. ‘People will hear you. That will wreck all our plans.’

“‘So what if they do?’ she answers him. ‘That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Drawing attention.’

“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but not this way.’ Mister Marengo, he looked around but he still didn’t see me. I hid by the door of the hotel. I could see them but they couldn’t see me.”

Tench stood up and moved over to Lamont’s side. Lamont had begun to tremble. Tench put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “This really bothered you didn’t it?”

Lamont looked at Tench, his eyes saying yes. He spoke, “All that talk about guns. I didn’t know what to think, Tench.” His voice broke.

“Then the African doctor said, ‘You didn’t see the fire and the burning, the people around me all charred into black sticks.’

“Mister Marengo, he say, ‘Snake was a hero. People will understand that someday.’

“‘She said, ‘I’m not crazy like Stagmatter.’

“‘No,’ said Marengo, ‘You are a soldier. It is in the blood of your family. You honor them.’

“He said, ‘You must educate them with your speech.’

“Then she started mentioning flowers, maybe the words black-eyed Susan.”

“The flower like we painted on the old wrecker truck?” asked Katy.

Lamont said, “Yes. It didn’t make any sense to me.”

He went on, “She said to Marengo, ‘I was outside,’ she said, ‘fleeing into the jungle. They had my brother. They tied him alive to a tree and set brush on fire with gasoline beneath his feet. I heard him screaming, I still hear him even today.”

Lamont stood in the center of the garage, speaking quickly, as if he wouldn’t remember if he did not spill out all the words as fast as he could.

“It seemed to me that Mister Marengo got afraid then like he was remembering too.

“‘This night, though,’ she said, ‘all happened so fast we had no time to call the tribesmen, to assemble the guard. The government fighter-bombers came in and dropped the napalm and flames sprang everywhere. People burned to death. The enemy attacked the red house so fast. The attackers numbered about twenty men, some of them foreign special fighters, white men, working with the government forces. The attack came by stealth and they came in the house before any alarm could be sounded. They surrounded my father in his bedroom.

“‘My father had sent my mother to a cellar room and fought his way to the outside porch as the twenty men rushed through the house, breaking doors. His weapon, an antique flintlock rifle, broke after killing only one or two of the attackers. Having no gun he found two of the old spears and a hunting knife. With these weapons he then fell upon the enemy and after furious fighting managed to kill several more with the spear. Then other soldiers entered from another room and killed my father with their rifles. The men who died that night crawled some of them through the floors seeking to live and their blood left strange trails of waving lines.

“‘Paid by the oil merchants,’ Mister Marengo said to her, real low like this was a secret.

“She went on, ‘My mother died with a knife of a soldier stuck deep into her chest while in her hand was her own knife which she stabbed the soldier who killed her. The flames burned her.’”

“You shouldn’t say any more,” Marengo said to her, trying to pull her into the car again. She resisted him.

Katy said, “Sounds like that African doctor went through hell.”

Lamont looked out the window. “Seems like trouble. I had to tell someone what I heard.” He said, “I don’t want to get nobody in no trouble.”

“Tell Tench the rest,” said Kate.

Beets went on, “Marengo said to her, ‘You are going to die for Africa.’”

“Wonder what he meant by that?” asked Tench. He understood why Lamont was worried. What was meant by “die for Africa.”

Lamont said, his voice shaking, “The African woman looked at Marengo and nodded and got into the car. Just before she closed the door she said one more thing I could hear.”