Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5)

by Thomas Hollyday

  “You lie.”

  “Believe what you want. It makes no difference now. We turned the cars against him. I do know about the cars and I am using them to pay for far more than he ever knew.”

  “You dare to sell my father’s cars,” she said, her eyes flashing.

  “Let us say I use the money he stole which is inside the value of those cars, in his little bank here on this farm, so to speak, to finance better projects than his desire to live in luxury.”

  “You have drugged him, made him unable to stop you.”

  “Only enough to keep him alive and helpful in signing papers for us.”

  “I despise you.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I had some good times being your servant. Before I met your father I was young like you. My friends and I would meet in our village and talk about the money we got from the white visitors to the town, how these white men were friends of our families, how our fathers and uncles knew someone who knew someone who could get money from the whites. Like most Americans you still think like the colonials. You think that we will wait all these centuries until you think we are ready. We are ready now. What amazes me about you Americans is that you truly think that black Africans love to work for you, to take your orders and that you can’t conceive of your taking orders from us.”

  “My father helped you and now you deceive him.”

  “Your father gave me wages that were a tiny fraction of what he made from the oil concessions. He cheated me and my countrymen.”

  “How can you say that? You were so much better off.”

  “Spoken like a true American. If I had tried to live here on those wages I would not have survived. Yet he felt free to take home enough money to pay himself wages to live not there but here. Tell me that with all the riches he took from my country and the little that he paid us, that he could see any justice. He is a smart man. He knew that he was, how do you say, “taking us for a ride.”

  Marengo went on. “He did not understand our language. Many times your father would smile in approval as I relayed messages from the guerillas to the chiefs, passed information preparing for the revolutionary fighting and the various civil wars, battles that eventually forced you father to flee the country. All the time he never knew what I was doing, just stood beside me and thanked me as I gave him money and prepared for his downfall in the future. That time has come.”

  “All this time you have been with us in the United States, you have felt this way?”

  “All this time I have aided my friend, the Snake, and others, to come into the country to use your father’s ill-gotten money to help our cause.”

  Marengo prepared to leave.

  “Where are you going?”

  “We will repay your father the same way he repaid others. He never gave anyone a chance so he will not have a chance either.”

  “You are going to kill him?”

  “You and he will have a chance to serve my country.”

  She shook her head. “He said you were the only man he ever trusted.”

  “I make no such mistakes. I trust no one.”

  “Not even your rotten companions?”

  “No. Nor do they trust me. We live because we are an advantage to each other, that’s all. When we are no longer an advantage to each other, we will dispose of each other. I will do so first, that’s all.”

  “I hope they kill you.”

  Marengo smiled and opened the door to the hallway. As he left he switched off the bedroom light. When the door closed, the room was in blackness again. Tench waited as he listened to Marengo’s footsteps move away done the corridor.

  Tench said, opening the closet door, “We have to get outside. Then Smote and I have to create a diversion so we can get to the police. Then we’ll come back and get your father. We’ll go out thru the tunnel and get back to my boat.”

  “What tunnel?”

  “Something that you and I could have used many years ago,” he said with a grin. “Come on, you’ll love it.”

  She threw on her shorts and a top, screen printed with a large face of Minnie Mouse, and followed him outside, past the sleeping guard, walking on her toes. When they reached her father’s bedroom door, she stopped and looked at him for a moment, then she went on, her face firm.

  Smote stepped out from the room at the end of the hall. They all turned to look at the guard one last time. He was still sleeping.

  Dogs began barking outdoors.

  “They’ve put out the dogs,” said Smote. “I’m sure the guards will use them to be safe. I doubt they know about us. We have to go quick.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  3AM, Saturday August 21

  Getting back to the basement had been treacherous. They had reached the first floor and were about to o pen the door into the hallway when Tench heard Marengo calling one of the men. He was giving instructions about some of the items to be put into the yacht. Heavy footsteps ran by the door and Tench motioned his friends to wait. He opened the door slightly and could heard voices far off in another room, probably the porch. Tench took a deep breath and went into the hall. The other followed. They moved across the hall one by one like a patrol of soldiers, slipping down the cellar stairway without incident.

  Outside the cellar door to the garden, Tench listened. The dogs were quiet. Tench held Julie close in his arms as they squatted with Smote out in the garden behind the branches of the old boxwood. The leaves smelled bitter in the humid night. Above them on the porch Tench could hear the rocking noises of the chairs, the footsteps of men coming and leaving with more muffled instructions from Marengo, the words in a language he did not understand.

  “This is a nightmare,” Tench whispered to her. He could feel her trembling.

  “You’re right. We’ve got to get help from town,” she said.

  Then from the porch, Marengo spoke in English, about the intruder Stagmatter had mentioned before. ”The guards found a boat. It’s the one the old man had brought up here before. I said at the time we should have sunk it. Someone has come into the farm and we’re all looking for him. We sank the boat this time so he can’t get away.”

  “I am counting on you to make sure we don’t have any more problems,” said Stagmatter.

  “Yes, we’ve waited too long,” Doctor Owerri said.

  “All right,” said Marengo. Tench heard the squeak of a rocker as he stood and then his footsteps going across the porch. The screen door opened, with the sound of its springs stretching, and then a slam as it closed behind Marengo.

  “He didn’t mention my little aluminum boat. Maybe we can get to it before they find it,” whispered Tench. “We’ll have to go now.”

  Julie and Smote crawled after Tench as the three of them went back into the cellar. Once there, they stood up and moved as quietly as possible toward the chimney and the entry to the tunnel.

  Tench opened the tunnel door and then closed it again, quickly, as he turned to Julie. “I see lights. Some of the guards are coming up the tunnel path. They’re checking it. It’s too late to use it.”

  They sat in the cover of the large box bushes in the garden. Tench said, “We could go down the main road to the gate and climb it. “

  “That will take too long, Jimmy. They’d be watching it. We never make it,” said Smote.

  Tench said, “I’m thinking though that if we can get to the Island road, we can walk over the bridge. Then we’ll get a ride.”

  “We’ll never get by the main gate. Too many guards,” she said. She paused then said, “I know a shorter way, back by the barns. The farm has another entrance with a small lane going to it.”

  “Let’s do it,” said Smote, without hesitation.

  The lights went on upstairs where Julie’s room was located. “They’ve found out I’m not there,” she said.

  “That’s it,” said Tench. “We’re really out of time now.”

  The dogs started howling again.

  “They will tear us to pieces.”

 
The dogs suddenly quieted again. No one had come outside the mansion yet. Tench and the others moved quickly across the open space between the mansion and the museum building.

  In the middle of the space stood Abraham, his eyes on the pack of hounds about a hundred feet away. The hounds were quiet, milling about.

  “That’s the strangest thing I ever saw. Abraham scared them,” whispered Tench.

  They moved quickly behind the structure where they could not readily be seen from the house. They stopped to catch their breath. It was dark. Above them was the window of Stagmatter’s office which was still lit with several lights.

  Tench looked around then stopped and touched Julie’s shoulder. “Look,” he said.

  She turned around and saw him pointing to the Cunningham C2 R roadster.

  “What’s that doing out here?” she said, as she moved toward the low slung car.

  “He was showing it to me the other day when I was here,” said Tench, following her.

  She looked at it and then back at him with a grin. “Want to ride out of here in style? The key is in it.”

  “You got it,” he said. Smote was kneeling on the ground, and he looked up at Tench. “It will make the noise. Maybe it is not a good idea.”

  “Yeah but we can get there fast,” said Tench. “Maybe surprise the gate guards. If we get out we can drive this machine all the way to River Sunday.”

  “We have to try,” Julie said. “Otherwise they will kill us.”

  They stood on each side of the car and pulled back the canvas tarpaulin that had been stretched over the passenger seat and the space behind the seats. Working in the dark they managed to drop the cloth behind the car. Julie climbed over the passenger door and sat down inside the leather seat. Smote jumped in the small space behind the front bucket seats. Tench got behind the steering wheel and reached for the ignition key.

  Tench looked at his friends and said, “Once this engine goes, they’ll know where we are. Are you ready?”

  A light blinded Tench and a voice yelled, “Stop, stop or I kill you all.” The light was lowered. Tench could see one of the African guards in front of the car, his hands around a small machine gun. Two of his compatriots were running up behind him, the flashlights in their hands bobbing up and down.

  Smote jumped out from the car and attacked the man, taking him by surprise with fast kicks to the legs and stomach. The guard’s rifle fell to the ground and he fell backward, his feet flying as Smote continued to kick. Then Smote reached down and pulled the man into his arms giving him an elbow to his neck and a follow-up punch to his neck which stopped his air and killed him. The man fell, blood all over his face.

  Tench pulled the first buttons on the right of the steering wheel to set the choke. He pumped the accelerator twice and pressed the starter button on the left side of the wheel. The 1951 Chrysler V8 popped twice then began to run with an irregular beat, its four carburetors trying to find fuel. He kept his foot pressing to give more gas and the car finally ran smoothly, its dual exhausts rumbling. He reached for the floor shift and moved the gears into first. The car started forward.

  “Get back in, Smote,” Tench yelled. Smote complied, leaping over the side of the roadster and into the same place he had been before.

  Julie began to pray, a soft prayer, one which Tench remembered from long ago, sitting with his mother in church. “Give us this day,” she said and repeated, louder, “Give us this day.”

  “It’s either going to be our day or theirs, that’s for sure,” said Tench as he turned the car out into the lane between the barn and the house. The steering was heavy, unfamiliar, not like modern steering assisted cars, and he had to pull the wheel with both hands as the car responded, picking up speed.

  The house lights went on, sending rays of light across the grass field all the way to the airplane hangar. The huge airplane shone in the glare, its glass nose glinting.

  The back door opened and more men with guns came running out, flashlights in their hands, the beams searching among the buildings and reflecting off the lower branches of the trees.

  “My God, look at the airplane. What is it, Tench?” asked Julie, almost screaming over the roar of the Chrysler engine. Then without waiting for an answer she pointed to the right. “Turn there towards the gate.”

  The lane stretched from the mansion past the car barn and then to the right of the hanger. The airplane mechanics had rushed into the road and were waving at Tench to stop. To the right Tench could see the tassels of a corn field and far beyond the white of a small gate.

  The windshield cracked in front of him, spraying glass out over the hood, neatly spaced round holes in the glass telling him and the others that behind them men were shooting trying to stop them. He smelled gasoline and wondered if the tank in back of the car had been hit. He worried that the fuel was leaking out ready to explode and burn them to death. He tried to push Julie down in her seat but she resisted, keeping her head up to direct him.

  To his left the doors of the barn with the aircraft were wide open , the lights inside silhouetting the great bomber, the two pickups hooked up and preparing to pull the airplane into the night. More gasoline fumes hit him and he knew some of these came from the heavily loaded aircraft. The two men in front still stood directly ahead blocking the road.

  Smote yelled in his ear, “Faster, drive through them.”

  Julie held up a shotgun. “It was beneath the seat.”

  Tench recognized it as the old LC Smith that he and Strake had used to shoot skeet in back of the mansion. She stood in front of her seat, putting the gun over the windshield and aiming it at the two men ahead. Bullets came overhead missing her.

  She fired and one of the men went down. The other man dodged to the left of the car as they roared by.

  The steering wheel fought his hands as he tried to keep the wheels on the high crested farm road, the front tires equally attempting to run to the side, to hamper forward movement. This run for life on a farm road was not the race that this car had been built to drive.

  The road got narrow as it went into the fields behind the hanger. It was not more than a path between the cornfields. The plants were swiping at the car with their leaves and ears of ripening corn, the noise of the slapping competing with the bullets whining overhead and striking the back truck of the roadster.

  Julie suddenly fell back against the windshield glass, the shotgun flying up and out of her hands. It cart wheeled beside the car and then fell into the corn plants behind them.

  Smote yelled in Trench’s ear, “Julie’s hit.” With that Smote reached forward because Julie was starting to fall out of the car, her body pitching over the low side door. He grabbed at her waist pulling her back into the front seat. Julie was writhing in pain, holding her hand over the blood streaming from her right shoulder.

  The car bumped hard on the path. Tench yelled back, “How bad is she hurt?”

  “Hit her shoulder and went out, that’s all, but it’s bleeding a lot.”

  Julie screamed, “Keep going. We’ve got to make it. My father’s life is depending on us.”

  Smote grabbed the flashlight and held it ahead of them. Tench didn’t turn on the headlights. No reason, he thought, to help them target the car. He saw a drainage ditch fast approaching, with small wooden boards across it, enough for a slow moving small tractor, but probably not enough for the width of the car’s wheels. At that tiny crossing were guards who waved machine guns. He saw the flashes from the barrels as they fired at him.

  “Hold on tight,” he yelled to Julie and Smote as he cut the steering wheel to the right. The car left the path and tore through the corn plants, knocking them one side or the other as the Vignale designed body of the car sliced between the stalks. He twisted the wheel trying to find the best grip for his fast turning drive wheels which were kicking up mud and dirt behind. Then in front of him Smote’s flashlight picked up the same ditch only this time no boards were across it. He hit the brakes and the wheels rutted into
the muddy field pushing the soil ahead of them as Tench brought the car to a stop a few feet short of the ditch. The light showed the depth of the drainage ditch, four feet, and the trickle of water in the bottom of the channel. Tench heard the roughness of the engine idle and knew the machine was falling apart. He heard Julie sobbing with pain and, getting closer, the yells from the pursuing guards. Above them, the blackness of the sky drove down the heat of the summer night.

  “We’ll have to try to cross it,” Smote said.

  Julie said, “Go for it.”

  He put the car into first again and picked up forward speed. The car bent down in the back as it accelerated, the dual pipes spitting smoke into the dirt and mud, the corn plants scraping underneath the frame. The car trembled as it tried to find grip in the soil. The speed approached fifty then sixty and when Tench felt he was at the edge of the ditch he gunned it more, hoping for its last burst of speed to take all of them to safety.

  He felt the rear wheels spin as they lost the earth and were airborne. The engine raced and the steering loosened as the front wheels had no traction. Moments passed as the car sailed in the air across the ditch, the ten feet of open space until the front wheels tore into the plants and furrows at the other side. The steering wheel bucked and he tried to hold the wheels straight. He waited for the back wheels to find soil, to find traction and resume forward speed.

  In that moment Julie looked at him. Her eyes said what he knew. The car had not made the jump.

  The hood went up in front of him as the back of the car descended to the water. Then, as the wheels caught soil and began to drive, the car pushed against the front wheels which had bounced back into the air from the impact. Tench tried to find a direction by twisting the steering wheel but time had run out The car lurched forward for a moment and then to the right, turning on its side as it did and ending up upside down, with all of them falling underneath, the windshield holding the car from crushing them, their bodies slipping into the mud of the ditch. He touched Julie’s hand and their fingers clasped each other. Then he felt a thin stream of gasoline from the broken Chrysler fuel line pouring over him and as he struggled to get free to help her , he felt himself losing consciousness. The last thing he heard was the voice of the first African who reached the wreck.