Harry looked at her expression of concern and nodded.
In early evening, they again drove out of town. Harry had decided to look at the ruins of the cannery where General Store had been located. Annie agreed to take him. He thought about where he had been in 1968 when the General Store burned. He would have been about WeeJay’s age. He would have been little different than the children growing up here in Maryland. In Massachusetts he would have had the same priorities maybe not boats like the passion of these Maryland children, but certainly bicycles and skiing and skating. Of course he had friends his own age, and he had mentors, older men and women of his town who had helped him learn to be a man. Those were the days too of civil rights even in Boston. He remembered times when his parents made comments, when he suspected they did not like the minorities, the blacks or Hispanics who sometimes came to work around his mother’s house or her garden.
Night bugs, launching their short doomed voyages up into the van headlights from the deep black ditches alongside the narrow road, slapped and crashed into the windshield. Across the road were a few houses far from the road, their lights faint in the distance, surrounded by cornfields. Mailboxes on crooked posts strutted out on the edge of the highway, flashing by as he recognized some of the names he and Annie had mentioned in articles in the paper. On both sides were fields, some planted with soybeans, some with vegetables. but almost always the ever-present corn leading back into the dark horizons.
He stopped where Annie directed. He pulled to the side and turned off the van as he looked back into the dark woods. This was the site of the General Store. He had driven by the charred timbers many times without thinking about them. They got out of the vehicle and up close and on foot, in the light of Annie’s flashlight, walked into the weed covered roadside and examined sections of the old cannery where the walls had collapsed into vine covered piles of tangled lumber.
Flashing the light around, Harry could see that except for part of the second floor at one end of the building, all that remained upright were the thick crossbeams, some of them with sheets of tar paper still hanging. Everywhere were thick and healthy vines as though those tubes of green sap could somehow give life to the ruin or at least through their meshed roping give it enough strength to survive a few more years.
He pushed back brush at the side of the road for Annie and followed a ragged trail that led among the ruins and entered what was left of the building. His feet kept hitting into trash of all types, cardboard boxes, old bottles, even part of a stove, as though this was not only the repository for the old General Store but also a random dump for trash from River Sunday.
He passed under a ruined door frame, the door itself hanging off one hinge and, taking Annie’s arm, pushed inward into the dark interior of the building. Above the doorway, Annie’s light picked out a once carefully lettered sign in white paint.
She read the words, “General Store Incorporated.” Under these words someone had written in black spray paint, several words. Harry read them in turn, “This is the home of fools.”
Then, walking across fallen sheets of broken plaster board, he stepped out on what remained of a wooden floor. Scattered around him, and reflecting off the flashlight beam, were some office desks, their drawers pulled out, their surfaces melted into grotesque rusty shapes.
He heard a rustling noise and he and Annie stopped, as she flashed her light around at the walls. Nothing appeared. Then he saw the eyes of a raccoon that stared back then ambled off. Annie and he laughed at the same time, their human noise strange in the quiet mustiness.
At that moment, a timber broke loose above them and sent a cloud of dust into their faces. The charred timber narrowly missed the two of them, its weight enough to have killed or seriously hurt them. The wood broke through the floor with its weight and headed below into the cavern of the basement. Annie, coughing, dropped the light and it rolled across the remains of the flooring. They both moved their hands against the dust, trying to see above them and worried that more timbers would collapse.
Whether it was caused by the darkness or by the suddenness of the falling timber, he did not know, but he knew the two of them were not alone, that someone was nearby and watching them. His hunches had saved his life many times before while reporting stories. He grasped her hand tightly and whispered for her to be still. He listened. The flash had rolled across the room from him, its beam sending light out into a part of the woods through an opening in the back wall of the room.
He heard the laugh of a man answered by that of another companion, and he knew that the crash of the timber that had almost killed them, had been no accident. He reached toward Annie and put his hand on her shoulder. He felt her trembling.
He heard a third laugh. It was coming from behind them. He turned his head but could see little, only the shadows of trees. In the distance beyond the trees, was the two lane highway and the front grille of the newspaper delivery van.
For moments leading to minutes nothing moved and all he heard were the bugs attacking the flashlight. He and Annie watched two large flying beetles as they tried to take over the surface of the small lens.
Suddenly, another voice came forth.
“You scared, newspaperman, you and your woman?” Harry did not recognize the voice. He and Annie heard laughter. She reached up and squeezed his hand on her shoulder.
He heard steps outside the building, the cracking of a glass bottle as it was stepped on by someone heavy enough to break it, then noises of one or more persons crashing against brush.
He made his move. Motioning to Annie to stoop down, he darted toward the flashlight, retrieved it and rolled his body across the floor toward the location of the voices. He shone around the room, then over Annie’s face. Her eyes were wide open. The light made a shadow of her form against the rear wall of the room and picked up a trap door in the ceiling with a ladder extended down from it.
They crawled toward the ladder, Annie right behind him, his left hand ready to defend against whatever might be above. He climbed and at the top he moved his head slowly upward until he could aim the light in all directions. No one was there.
He crawled up on the second floor and looked around. The platform he was kneeling on was made up of several sheets of plywood stacked on top of the blackened ceiling timbers. The roof was gone. All that served as a support space were these sheets of plywood.
He moved the light around. It hit against leafy trees on all sides. On one side was the glint of water from the Nanticoke River. Far off on the other he could see the highway with an occasional car, its headlights coming fast then disappearing. On top of the plywood flooring was the trash of past visitors. Annie poked her head up through the opening and pointed at a few used condoms. She grinned, “Maybe we interrupted something.”
“I don’t think these people were in any kind of loving mood,” said Harry. “We were followed out here.”
They got back into the van. Harry pulled into the highway. As he drove he noticed bright lights of a car coming up fast behind him. He adjusted his rear view mirror to dull the glare. The car seemed ready to pass him and he slowed down so it could get by on the narrow road.
The car did not pass. Instead it followed closer and closer. The headlights lit up the seats inside the old van. He decided to speed up. The other car matched his speed, remaining within a few feet of him. He thought about braking the van but he was afraid that the following driver might be drunk and would crash into him.
The two cars raced through the blackness, almost locked together. He could see the glint of chrome on the following car. Ahead, he remembered seeing a turnaround space on the side of the road fronting a lumber yard. He knew what he would do.
“Get ready, Annie,” he said. Then at the last moment, just as they reached the open lot, Harry cut the van to the right. The van, its suspension screaming, slid across the gravel and turned one hundred eighty degrees, its lights whipping around the tree line until they were facing back at the highway. The oth
er car, its driver taken by surprise, was unable to make the turn and roared ahead into the night. Harry looked after it, thinking for a moment that he saw a small white crucifix painted on its trunk lid.
He turned to Annie. Her trembling matched the beating of his heart.
“I wonder if Lloyd ever treated this old van like this?” she cracked, trying to stifle the fact that she was shaking.
He grinned in the darkness that was lit only by the dim dash lights and the van headlights piercing the highway. She put her head against his shoulder and held his arm. Her touch felt tender. He could smell her honeysuckle perfume.
Chapter 12
Tuesday, August 4, 10 am
Harry and Annie were sitting in the office opening the mail.
Annie said, “Lulu’s husband thought he was a lot more popular than he was. Bartenders get that idea sometimes about themselves. From what I heard he was just another friendly face that gave out last calls. He died about a year before I came to town. Hit and run. Cheeks and his boys never found who did it.”
Harry asked, “Was there anything more to it? Did you ever heard that he might have been killed on purpose because he knew too much?”
Annie said, “I guess the husband had accused some town officials of stealing money. Like I say, the guy was dead when I came to town and Lloyd never wrote anything, at least anything I could find in those files, about the man’s claims. He certainly wouldn’t talk about it, just like everything else controversial.”
“So we don’t know what the husband might have found out?”
“We have no way to find out,” she said. “That kind of financial information is very tightly kept with the commissioners and the sheriff’s office. We don’t even know how much the regatta brings in except that each year afterward some of the streets get paved and we get some new school buildings. We probably should investigate, that is, if we can get someone inside the administration who will talk.”
“Marty Sol?” Harry suggested.
Annie replied, “He’s not connected that well. Besides, I think Cheeks knows about him talking to you. I’m sure he’d be kept out of the loop.”
“What about Captain Stiles?”
Annie chuckled. “Good old Captain Stiles. He’s let me off on a traffic fine a few times. I don’t know about him. He’s probably close to retirement, won’t want to rock the boat.”
“Do you think he’s honest?” asked Harry.
“He’s an old time lawman. I’d start out trusting him, I guess.”
Harry nodded. “Maybe he’s got something to say.”
Harry heard the office door open. Honking horns of the regatta traffic flooded the room.
“Mr. Harry, I’m Stella Tolchester,” came a melodic voice.
He turned from his computer and saw the woman, a black woman. Her dress was a white and blue Chesapeake Hotel maid uniform with her name sewn neatly on the right chest pocket. Her right hand pulled a wire cart which held a stuffed paper bag. Her half smile indicated traces of the beauty she had when she was younger and thinner.
“Please sit down,” he said. He had wanted to talk to this woman, Walker’s so- called girlfriend of long ago. He stood up to open the wooden gate in the office railing that separated his desk area from the center of the room.
She sat down, leaning forward on the edge of the chair in front of his desk, her dress carefully pulled up over the seat cushion, as though she were afraid being accused of soiling the chair. She had lifted the bag into her lap, and her hands held each side of it.
“It’s very kind of you to come here,” Harry opened.
“Mister Charleston, he said you wanted to talk to me,” she said. Harry had indeed asked Charleston to help him set up a meeting with Stella.
“You’re having a tough time in this weather, aren’t you,” he said. Harry had noticed that she had difficulty walking. The climate around River Sunday with its high humidity was not the best for arthritis in older people.
“I got pains,” she said, agreeing with him, moving her head up and down slowly. Then she stared up at him and said, “You’re new to this place. It ain’t got you yet.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Her mouth quickly returned to a down turned and unhappy slant as though she had little practice in smiling. When she had greeted Harry, he had seen deep scars barely hidden by her hair and along the right side of her face as though a piece of iron had been used to brand her.
As she saw him staring at the old wounds, he could see her body tense. Her hand moved up for a moment, trying in vain to cover the marks, then dropped as her shoulders slumped again in resignation.
Harry leaned forward, pencil in hand to make some notes, and asked again, “You’re Missus Tolchester?”
She chuckled without a smile, “Oh, I ain’t no Missus Tolchester. They just call me Stella.”
“Stella,” Harry repeated.
She took a tissue from her pocket and touched her eye. “Folks say you help Walker,” she said.
“How do people say I’m going to help Walker?”
“They say you’ll make it all right again,” she said.
“I can’t make it all right again, Stella,” said Harry. “I’m not a lawyer or a detective.”
“Newspaper, though, they tells the facts,” she said.
“Can you help me tell the facts about Walker?” said Harry.
She stopped dabbing her eye and said, her voice harsher, accusing, “People in this town never gave him a chance, not a chance at all. One minute he’s doing all right, taking care of all the white folk’s boats. Then, the next, he’s in trouble and no one comes forward to help him, not a hand.”
Harry stood up again and walked around the desk. He reached out to hold her hands in his. She had relaxed and made no attempt now to hide the deep scars. He could see the marks plainly. Along the right side of her head was a ridge of turned and mottled flesh as if she had been badly beaten or burned long ago and had healed poorly.
“Them scars you see are what Walker saw that night,” she said.
“The night of the fire, the night before the regatta and his big race?” Harry asked.
Stella nodded and bent her head down as though she were in prayer. “It was our sin caused us all the trouble, I know that now.”
“Tell me more about you and Walker,” said Harry.
Her words became more forceful, as though she had decided Harry was a friend. “Walker and I were planning to get married when he got further along in his racing career.”
She paused, searching for words, and said, “In those days, his mother was not much in favor of him having a girlfriend. She thought girlfriends would tie him down. She’s dead now, bless her, so I can say.”
Then after another pause, she added, “Walker was a lot older than I was. He was forty years old when the fire at my General Store job happened.”
She nodded and went on. “His mother wanted him to succeed. Hard in those days for any of us to get ahead. He had to be ready to take advantage of his opportunities, his mother said.
“I know that he had been offered special schooling at Ford Motor in Detroit for their racing engine department. After the River Sunday race that week, then he was going to write to Detroit about studying at their school. When he graduated and come back, we planned, him and I, to talk to his mother about us getting married.”
She handed him the bag. Harry accepted it. Inside was a package wrapped in newspaper.
“What is this?” asked Harry. Harry’s fingers carefully opened the newsprint to reveal a white leather jacket, somewhat faded. He held it up and turned it to the back where he could see the words “Black Duck” neatly stitched in the material. On one side a small hole had been burned into the fabric.
“Homer Kirby had it made for Walker, custom in Baltimore,” she said. She was smiling. “Cost a lot of money too.”
Harry looked at her. “When did you get this?”
“The old sheriff, not the present one, nothing from t
his new one and that’s the truth, but the other white officer, he gave it back to me after the investigation. It was found floating way out in the Chesapeake Bay where Walker got himself drowned.”
She touched the side of her face. “Last time I saw Walker I was sick, home at my house, taking care of these burns. They were all bandaged. Walker come in to my house so excited to show me his award.”
“The award he got from the motorboat association?” asked Harry
She nodded. “He had gone to this big dinner the day before, with all the motorboat racers. They come in to River Sunday for the regatta just like this week. A driver’s meeting was going on and that was where he was given the license to run his boat.”
“The Black Duck,” said Harry.
“Yes. They gave him this surprise award for being a good mechanic. The most improved, he said it was. Homer Kirby put him up for it, too.” She smiled. “Homer Kirby recommended Walker over his own employee, Cheeks. Fat man Cheeks was very angry. Then with the town fire, it was a shame Cheeks was the one caught Walker doing something wrong. He just didn’t like Walker in those days, no way.”
Harry nodded. “Cheeks still wants to find him.”
“Yeah, well, I told Walker that night he best watch out messin’ with that white man’s stuff or they’ll burn him bad as they burned me.”
“Tell me about the burns,” Harry asked.
“You know about the General Store fire?” she asked in return.
Harry nodded and said, “The building must have gone up pretty fast.”
“Real dry wood and an old building,” she said, nodding. “Fire chief, I heard he was just standing there. Mister Terment, the old man, he come out in his Cadillac and says to the firemen to let it burn. Even with the whole Nanticoke River right back of the place too, but they didn’t try to hook up the pumps to get that water. Pastor was standing there arguing with the two of them to get the hose into the river but it wasn’t no use.”
“Where were you?” Harry asked.
“Lord, Mister Harry, I was on my way to the hospital, all burned up. Pastor come in the building and got me out or I would have been killed for sure. For a long time, too, I wished I had been dead, the pain was so bad.”
Powerboat Racer (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 3) Page 16
