The woman stared for a few moments. Then she said, “No, sit down.”
The three of them sat facing each other in the overstuffed chairs. As they did, the woman conducted another visual inspection of Robin, then of Mike, then spoke.
“You don’t have much time, I suppose,” she said. “You’re being sought everywhere.”
Robin nodded.
She said, “I thought all of this was finished.” She smiled as if she were laughing at a joke no one else could understand.
“I have an old car,” she said, “that was left here a long time ago by someone much in the same position as you two. You can take the car. As far as I’m concerned, you’re stealing it, but I won’t report the car gone unless the police come here. I don’t want to know any more and I’m not saying any more.”
She stood up. “Come with me quickly.”
As she guided them through the big house to the back door, she continued, “A lot of memories come back when I think about this old car.”
The woman spoke like she was really talking to someone else in the room. Even when she looked at either of them, her eyes were looking restlessly beyond or over them, at someone else, as if she couldn’t quite make him out in the shadows.
“The boy who left the car said to give it to someone who needed it,” she said. Robin watched as she loosened her hair and pulled it down, idly making it into a long ponytail, the hair flecked with white and gray among the original brown.
“He was shot crossing the border.” Then her face brightened. “I’m glad, as you say, your father made it safely. I never knew.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” said Robin.
“Vietnam,” she muttered, closing her eyes. She nodded to herself, slightly moving her body as if in time to an old beat. Then she reached the back door and opened it.
Outside, the night was black with a small amount of starlight. Snow turned on a small light which provided some illumination in the darkness. Around a small garden Mike could see a tall fence that was totally covered with vines. At the bottom of the garden was a small barn, built at one time probably just big enough to hold a carriage and two horses and decorated with Victorian woodwork, like cake icing, that descended from the eaves.
They reached the barn and Mike pulled at an entry door at the top of a wooden step. Rusty hinges creaked.
“That door hasn’t been opened for months,” Snow said, standing far behind them in the lighted doorway, her eyes looking around at the fence.
Mike pulled again and the door opened fully. Inside they saw tail lights pointed at them, glinting, glassy, round and familiar.
“It’s a Volkswagen,” said Mike. He pushed aside some cardboard boxes stored on the fenders and climbed along the wall behind the car, then opening the car door to enter the driver’s seat. Inside the car, the key was in the ignition. He turned the key but nothing happened.
“Let me look,” he said and climbed out. He pulled boxes away from the engine door and opened it to see the engine. Several boxes of books shifted to the floor with a crashing noise as they fell. In the light that trickled into the garage from where Snow kept the back door open, Mike could see that the carburetor was still intact.
He entered the car again and lifted the back seat cushion. He grinned as he saw that one of the battery cables had been disconnected, and, after scraping the contact surfaces with the edge of the ignition key, he reattached the cable.
“Maybe she’ll go now,” he said, climbing back into the driver’s seat.
He turned the key again. This time, the car coughed and rattled to life, then ran very rough. The room filled with white smoke.
“Valves are way out of adjustment,” said Mike. “Let’s get the alley door open.”
Robin managed to lift the sliding door of the small building and as she did the air began to clean.
She climbed into the passenger side of the car. “Let’s hope that battery keeps charging as we drive,” she said.
“Let’s hope the battery doesn’t fail completely,” Mike said as he turned on its headlights and eased the car forward out of the barn. More boxes tumbled off the roof of the car. Out in the light they could see the colorful flowers painted all over the hood in front of them. The car wobbled as it moved forward.
“Tires are full but they are in bad shape. So’s the steering,” said Mike.
Robin got out and closed the garage door. The back door of the woman’s house closed and except for the weak lights of the old car, they were in darkness. Entering the car again, she said, “We’ll look like flower children or some kind of modern rockers.”
“You think this car will fit your father’s getaway rules?” said Mike.
“No question about it.”
“We’re out of here,” said Mike, as he pulled out of the alley into the main thoroughfare and entered the line of traffic.
The car tended to pull first one way and then the other, but Mike found a way to compensate. He thought that he could maintain a speed of about fifty miles per hour. By now, they had pulled onto an expressway. As they went along, far over in the right lane, Mike began to relax for the first time since they left Becca’s hospital.
They had been driving without talking when Mike asked her, “Why did you go away?”
She looked at him with a smile and said, “I wrote a letter and explained to you when I left.”
“That letter was the shortest letter I’ve ever seen. I’d like to frame it for the record book. ‘Hi, I’m leaving, love to all, Robin.’”
“I thought I was leaving for good.”
“I was worried about you,” said Mike.
“I met up with a team out West and we went around to a few events. I couldn’t get with it, I guess. Pretty soon, I ended up in a little beach house on a California beach. I looked at the ocean all day and waited tables for rent. That’s when I finally began to figure it out.”
“What did you figure?”
“The problem was bigger than you or me. It had to do with belonging somewhere. All my life I haven’t belonged.” She pulled her bare feet up on the small Volkswagen seat.
“You belonged at the Museum.”
“No, no, I didn’t,” she said. “Although, when your father hired me, I thought I had come home. I thought I had finally found the perfect job.”
“What happened?”
“You happened. The trouble was, you were like one of those clouds my plane flies through at ten thousand feet. Just a wisp. Nothing solid. As I got to know you, I found out that you were fighting your past and trying to be something you weren’t. As hard as you worked, you never felt you had accomplished anything. I sometimes thought you were trying to win the same medal your father won, and you didn’t know how to go about that so you would succeed.”
“So you felt that being with me was a bad thing, not getting you anywhere,” said Mike.
“No. You are my friend. I just had a problem finding a way to be with you, to live with your disappointment.”
Mike didn’t speak.
“My father was a lot like you, Mike. I remembered not being part of the country where I was brought up, then not being part of the United States when my father decided we should return. Then, when I wanted to fly, my father couldn’t understand. At one time I guess I mentioned going for aviation training in the Air Force. He got the idea that my flying would become military. He could not face up to his own past, I guess.”
“You came back,” said Mike.
“I left my own family years ago. I couldn’t leave my second family,” she said.
She smiled, “I’m going to see it through this time, Mike. Don’t worry about me.”
Mike said, “I’m just glad you’re here, any way you want to be.”
She fiddled with the old radio. “Should we go back to River Sunday?”
“No,” Mike said, firmly. “I want to go see Jesse Lawson’s mother.”
“What can she tell us?”
Mike explained, “You remember what Rebe
cca said, that Jesse’s grandmother knew what was going on all the time. I’m hoping that the grandmother told Jesse’s mother something, anything, before she died.”
“OK.”
“She’s the last chance we have,” Mike said. “Jesse told me how to find her garden shop. I didn’t think I would need to go there. Now, with all that’s happened, I do.”
“We’ll have to be careful on the highway.”
“I figure we drive there tonight,” said Mike. “Then we’ll hide and wait for her. We’ll try to see her early in the morning.”
They both listened to the buzzing of the Volkswagen, its engine skipping a beat every minute or so, as the old valves struggled to keep in time.
Robin said, “Do you remember the time your father told us about his family flying to Brazil on the big German boat, the Dornier Do.X, the one with twelve 500 horsepower engines on top of the wing?”
Mike grinned. “A magnificent flying boat. The Germans only built three of them. Too expensive. More engines than even the B-36 bomber that the United States flew in the 1950’s. Those Dorniers were bolted together more with trust and luck than knowledge.”
She said, “The seaplane had engines up on metal struts above the great wing surface. The cabin hung below the wing, holding a few brave passengers in an Art Deco interior, cane seats and all. In the old pictures of her in flight, you can see the crew swarming over those engines like ants.”
He said, “Think of that monster coming in to the Amazon River, the pilot landing among the natives who would paddle around the machine with amazement on their faces, naked and sitting in primitive dugout canoes.”
Robin said, “I used to watch you and your father look at the old magazines together.”
Mike said, “Jeremy has indexed them for our library. The magazines were great for stories of adventures in experimental aircraft, and, of course, the scientific articles, or what the engineers of the time called science.”
“I would have loved to fly that Dornier,” said Robin, still moving the radio dial.
Mike said, “My father was fun to be with sometimes. I guess I could never decide whether to love him or fear him.”
She said, touching his arm, “That’s been your biggest problem, Mike. Deciding about having a life of your own, without him in the background of your mind, checking out everything you do.”
“You understand that, don’t you?” Mike said.
She nodded. “Part of the time I’d hate my father for what he put my mother and me through, all the trouble about his citizenship,” said Robin.
“You held his war record against him. Maybe I held my father’s war record against him too.”
“We both have our demons,” she said.
Halfway to Washington, their luck ran out. A Maryland State Police car pulled them over. Mike had planned a route north of Chesapeake Bay and then down through Washington to get to the rural area where the garden center was located. He had kept the speed down, so he knew the stop was not for speeding. He and Robin looked at each other.
Mike slowed the car. “He’ll have a picture of me, maybe of you too,” he said.
“We need a story to tell, Mike. Let’s get creative. Think vacations this time of year. Schools are out. Families going to Washington for the museums. The Fourth of July. We need a distraction.”
“You mean something besides this colorful car? The beaches are behind us that way,” Mike pointed to his left. He was slowing the car in the gravel strip to the side of the highway. The police car was three lengths behind, its headlights blinking fast and sending shivers of light through the little Volkswagen.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, as she sat up and stripped off her blouse.
“What are you doing?” said Mike as he braked the car. The police car was coming closer.
“My father told me that a girl helped a soldier get through Canadian customs by doing this.” She stripped off her yellow jeans and then her underwear.
“Put on your dark glasses, Mike.”
The Volkswagen was fully stopped. The state trooper got out of his sedan.
“Well, we got to look a real lot less than museum people. Mike, pull down your shorts too. We want this State Policeman to be embarrassed.”
“You’re hoping he’s a nice polite country boy,” Mike said as he glanced at her nude body.
She smiled. “Here, shift over. I should be driving.”
Mike let her slide under him and he moved to her seat. As he did so, he grinned, “You’re doing pretty well if you want to get me excited.”
“This is one time I’m glad you have a one track mind.”
Mike was undressed including his own underwear. The policeman shone his light on the driver window of the Volkswagen.
Robin put down the dust covered window and leaned her head out. With her right hand she began to stroke Mike’s groin. The State Policeman was young, his uniform carefully fitted, his hat set at a jaunt.
“You got a real collector’s car here,” the officer smiled. He leaned down to look in at the two of them and his light flashed over their bare bodies.
“Yessir,” she said.
The trooper realized they had no clothes on. He stood up quickly, did not say anything for a moment, his eyes staring dully. He turned off his flashlight.
“Just married, Officer,” said Mike, from the other side of the car, fighting back an expression of pleasure as Robin rubbed him in a sensitive spot.
“Where are you two coming from?” the policeman said, trying not to look at Robin’s large breasts.
“Ocean City. We’ve been on our honeymoon,” said Mike, gasping the words.
“I see,” the officer said, staring directly at a point on Robin’s nose.
“Where are you going?” he finally asked.
“Returning to Washington, Officer.” said Robin, with a grin. Mike found himself barely able to speak.
The policeman rubbed his chin. “OK, you two can go. Drive carefully, you hear. We all want your new marriage to last for a while.”
Robin eased up on Mike’s groin and shifted the car into forward gear. Mike stole a glance in the rear view mirror as they left the officer. The man was holding his neck and shaking his head.
When they had traveled about five miles, Mike asked, “I wouldn’t mind finishing what we started back there.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” she grinned.
“We could pull off up ahead somewhere,” Mike said.
“You always were good at reading my mind,” she answered, slowing the car.
Chapter Ten
5:30 AM, July 2
Lower Marlboro, Maryland
Jesse’s mother ran a hardware and garden store on Route 132, located in the rural section of Maryland, south of Washington, DC. The sign for this side road, half covered in hedge and vines, was hard to see in the early daylight and Mike drove by the turn twice before he saw it. After he pulled off on the dirt single lane road, he had to keep to the center crown to avoid the corduroy ripples. He was worried that the Volkswagen, which continued to shudder, would fall apart on the ruts.
Robin was half asleep beside him. She had driven until they got through Washington and had just returned the car to him. Both of them were tired. The sun was coming up and the darkness would not protect them much longer. They wanted to get to the woman’s store, talk to her and then stay under cover until nightfall. If another policeman stopped them, Robin said she’d try the same trick again. Mike smiled, but he was afraid they would not be as lucky next time.
Mike said, talking to himself to keep alert, “Jesse said that she owned a garden supply store somewhere along this road.”
Robin stirred next to him. Her left hand, which rested on his knee, stroked his leg slightly. The car went onto a stretch of potholes and the wheels began to clatter badly. Mike slowed again, afraid the axle bearings would overheat and seize.
Ahead he saw a railroad water reservoir up on tall rusty girders. Around it several
small houses peeked from the leafy trees along the road.
“Robin, you better wake up,” he said, gently.
“I’m awake,” she answered, opening her eyes.
“Jesse told me about this water tower near his mother’s shop,” Mike said. He saw a smaller road heading off to the right and turned. After a few hundred yards he came to an area without houses. Mike parked in a small woodland of loblolly pines. He had enough room to pull the little car under the trees so that it could not easily be seen.
“We’ll leave the car here,” he said. “This way if we get surprised again, we might be able to get back to it.”
Robin said, “We can walk the rest of the way.”
They climbed out of the car. In the daylight the car and its tires appeared decrepit, practically ready to collapse right there. Mike said he was surprised they had got this far.
He hugged Robin. “Awake?”
She nodded. “OK, let’s go.”
They walked for just over two miles, passing several gas stations. The road was wider here and had been covered with black top. They tried to keep away from the road, moving along the edge through thickets and brush. Finally Mike saw a small garden shop and pointed to it.
“This is the only garden place we’ve come across. It’s got to be the place,” he said.
Robin suggested they approach from the back of the store. Several piles of fertilizer bags and lumber provided a place where they could hide. The store was closed and they circled along the edge of the lot watching for cars going by.
“We’ll wait here and watch,” whispered Mike.
Robin found a spot big enough for both of them behind large wooden storage racks piled with bags of peat moss and fertilizer. They could see the parking lot clearly while remaining out of sight themselves.
An hour passed. A few cars and several farm trucks went by. Mike started to doze. Then Robin pressed on Mike’s arm to wake him up.
A car marked Lower Marlboro Police Department pulled into the parking lot behind the garden center and stopped only a few yards from where Mike and Robin were hiding. Mike and Robin moved further down behind the stacks of peat moss. The policeman got out of his car and walked to the back door of the shop. He shook the door and then stared inside. For a moment he scanned the yard. He looked intently in the direction of the storage area where Mike and Robin were hiding. Then the policeman reached inside his car for his microphone.
Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) Page 13