Powerboat Racer (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 3)

by Thomas Hollyday

  “Tell me again, how did the fire start?” Harry asked.

  She leaned forward and said in a low voice, looking once at the street, “Pastor say he spotted the man who set it off, said the man was Jake Terment. Nobody ever proved nothing. I didn’t see, myself. I was just there when suddenly my room filled up with smoke and flames were coming down from the ceiling.”

  “What did you do at the cannery?”

  “I had been trained to run the new computer,” she said, pride coming into her eyes. “We had all these records for the work we did and my job was to put them into the files. I went up to the IBM office in Baltimore and learned how to do it.” She looked up, “That government program, Office of Economic Opportunity. Pastor got money for me to learn the computer.”

  “Did you keep on with that kind of work after the fire?”

  “Oh, no,” she answered, with a sigh, “My job was with General Store. I didn’t have no experience that would count with much for the white companies around here. We were the only firm in those days with the new machines. Computers were new then. Maybe only one or two other companies had them.”

  “You had to load the data by punch cards?” Harry asked.

  “Yes. Typing in the cards, sorting, loading. It was good work, modern work. We had rebuilt the inside of the old building and down inside the back was a small room built just for me and the computer. I was surrounded with boxes of printout paper and my desk was covered with the invoices for the work we were doing. It was late at night and I was very involved, wanted to do good, you know. Then I thought someone was burning leaves. I remember saying to myself that it was right strange this late at night someone starting a fire. Then I heard Pastor yelling down from the other end of the building. I looked out my door and saw the flames coming across the ceiling of the cannery. The flames were working from the back wall out into the room, over the desks of the salespeople. No one was there except me. Fire was dropping down and catching on the papers on the desks. The fire was coming at me fast, I tell you, and so I did not hesitate to move toward the exit door. It was almost too late. I could feel the flames licking at me from behind as I opened the door to get outside. Just as I went into the front parking lot the flames reared up behind me and knocked me down. That was the last I remember until the ambulance.”

  Harry looked at her. “Do you think Walker later on set the big fire in River Sunday to get revenge?”

  “Like I say, he come out to see me when my bandages were off. He was angry at what had happened to me, the pain I was always in those days.”

  “What did he say?” asked Harry.

  “He just sat there his face showing like he was puzzled, a look you almost never saw on his face. I figured he was thinking how to get even for me.”

  “You talked about sin,” Harry said. “What did you mean?”

  “You won’t print none of this, Mr. Harry?”

  “No.” Harry noticed that Annie had looked up from her desk across the room.

  “See,” the old woman said, talking in a low voice again, “Walker and me we was young in those days, young and foolish.”

  “What did Walker do?” Harry asked.

  “Walker was just a man like any other. He didn’t do no wrong. He kept after me about being in love and I felt a great need for him too. As I say we were young and foolish.”

  She had her head down now, her eyes staring at the dusty floor of the office. “We went to a small motel outside of town which catered to people of color.”

  “Segregated?” asked Harry.

  “No. They’d take whites. Just no whites ever stopped there only blacks. So we had a room there we used each time. His mother never knew about it.”

  “You and Walker wanted to have a family?”

  “It was our sin ruined all that,” she said.

  “What sin?”

  She looked at the floor and said, “Pastor say them that tastes the flesh before Jesus says so, they’s going to burn in hell.”

  “So you and Walker were having an affair. That was your sin.”

  She shook her head, “We never should have given in to temptation.”

  “So you have never married?’

  “No,” she said, shaking her head again, “I tell you so, if I’d had a son by him, that boy would never have been grown around here.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Harry.

  “I’d give him up,” she said, staring at Harry. “I’d send him off to the North where you come from. I’d maybe send him to be brought up in Boston, keep Walker’s name, but grow up with love, without all this despising around here. Too much hate and the love gets bred right out of a person. I’d never let him, I mean it, never let him grow up in this town. That is,” and she looked out at the street for a moment, “if I had a son.”

  She stood up, rustling her dress. “I don’t know any more, Mister Harry. I gots to go now to my work.”

  Harry stood up too and shook her hand. “Your name is the same as Peggy Tolchester.”

  “Confusing, ain’t it?” she smiled. “Don’t mean nothing to Missus Tolchester. She ain’t no relative of mine. Wouldn’t know me on the street. Maybe way back my people took her name when they got free. We didn’t have no last names in those days. Just slave names, that’s all.”

  She walked away slowly, a slight twist to her hip with her muscle pain. About ten feet away, she stopped and looked back at Harry who had stood up out of respect for her, his left arm around the crumpled jacket.

  When she left the building and the door closed behind her, Annie came over to his desk.

  “You thinking what I am?” she said, her eyes bright.

  “What?” asked Harry.

  “Her mention of a son,” Annie said.

  “You think she really had a boy back then?” asked Harry.

  “You ever been in love, Harry?” Annie stood close to him.

  He suddenly did not know how to answer her question.

  “Maybe you just have to think like a woman,” she said, still looking at him. “Suppose she’d had a kid. What would have happened?”

  Harry thought for a moment, then said, “I guess that kid would have had a lot of trouble growing up here with the memory of a father who was a criminal. I can see why she said the child wouldn’t be kept in River Sunday.”

  Annie said, “I think she had a child. I bet that Walker John didn’t even know he was a father and the town fire came before she could talk to him about it. Then, when he was declared dead, that didn’t matter. If for some reason he was still alive, the baby could be a cause of the man trying to come home to see her, to see the child, to try to help her out and then getting caught and hanged. Maybe the baby was hidden for that reason, to save Walker’s life. I’m assuming that if the child was born, that she must have really loved Walker John to do that, to give up a baby.”

  “Why would she tell me?” asked Harry.

  Annie smiled and replied, “The weight of carrying that secret around all these years. She told you because you’re a good guy, Harry.”

  A smile came slowly over Harry’s face. “You know, you really got a nose for pulling out the guts of a story, the tragedy, Annie.”

  Harry thought quickly and said, “Let’s check out your hunch on the internet in Boston. See if we find a young black man registered as born there with the name Walker John Douglas, maybe still living there, and about thirty years old.”

  The glass in one of the muntin windows at the front of the office shattered with a crash. Shards of glass landed around them and a stone with a note attached to it skidded across the floor and stopped in a patch of sunlight.

  “What’s going on out there?” Chauncy called from the back room.

  “Somebody threw a rock,” said Harry. “Are you all right,” he asked Annie. She nodded.

  He rushed over to pick up the missile. He and Annie untied the note and read the scrawled words.

  “We’ll get you next time”

  “Freedom of the press,”
said Annie, starting for the broom stored behind the front door.

  Harry looked at the note, and out of the corner of his eye saw Chauncy move back into his office scowling.

  When Harry went outside, still holding the note, Captain Stiles was standing by the front door, looking up at the broken window.

  “You want to report this vandalism?” he said. The chief of police had a patient voice as if he had seen every crime possible at least once during his long career.

  Harry showed him the note. The Captain took it and said, “I’ll look into it.”

  “This is feedback on the article about Walker that we published,” said Harry, with a grim smile.

  “Maybe so, but you got a right to print what you want.”

  Harry looked at the man and made a sudden decision to trust him. “Captain, can I walk back to your office with you? I’d like to talk to you about something else.”

  The captain looked at him with surprise for a moment, then nodded and said, “Sure come along.”

  Inside the police station Harry first saw a counter with a glass window and an officer sitting behind it running a radio. Voices crackled on the transceiver.

  He followed Captain Stiles through two other side rooms filled with tables and chairs, fingerprinting machines and other police equipment and went into a small office at the back. He sat down and the captain went around his desk and also sat down. They looked at each other. Harry noticed a blue flag with the seal of Maryland up on the wall behind the captain.

  “I’ve never seen that flag before,” said Harry.

  “Not many have,” said the captain, smiling.” It’s our reenactor flag. We use it for parades of the local club. We represent the company from River Sunday of Confederate rangers who fought with Stonewall in the Valley.”

  “We’ll have to do an article on you guys,” said Harry, hiding his astonishment.

  “I’ll mention it to our adjutant. I’m the captain.”

  “That’s why they call you captain. I wondered about that,” said Harry.

  “Yessir. Town police usually have a chief. People like to call me Captain so I guess I don’t mind.”

  “You know the town pretty good, don’t you?” asked Harry.

  “Look, Mister Jacobsen. I know you been researching that Walker case. Believe me I don’t know any more than anyone else. Far as I know, what the sheriff saw with Homer was the facts of it. The man ran away so that made him guilty in my book. I’d like to have seen him have his time in court. I’m not disagreeing with you on that.”

  “Something else, Captain. I came across a rumor the other day. I wonder if you could tell me if it is true.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Did Lulu’s husband die in a hit and run accident?”

  “My land. You working on another story already. I don’t know. Sheriff Good investigated that one because it was outside my jurisdiction, out on one of the county roads.”

  “Do you know what he was claiming was wrong in the town finances?”

  The Captain smiled. “That’s an easy one. He found out about the gift money that the town got and wanted some of it spent on his pet projects, that’s all. Hell, all of us been around here for a while learn about that money and we want it for our own projects. Trouble is, he went about it the wrong way, calling everyone a thief.”

  “Yes. I don’t think anyone was going to kill him over it, if that’s what you are after for a story.”

  “Thanks Captain. You’ve been a big help.”

  “I hope I can find out who threw that rock,” the Captain said.

  “Yes. Let me know when you Confederate boys have your next parade,” Harry said, keeping his smile steady.

  Chapter 13

  Wednesday August 4, 9 am

  Many of the houses in the Mulberry section of River Sunday were close to the water. As Harry walked by the Pastor’s church and further into this section of town, he could see that some of the houses were bright with new paint. Several apartments or condominium settlements with water views were owned by newcomers, wealthy white tenants who were rebuilding the area. Some of the older houses had been homes of famous letter of marque privateer captains sailing during the War of 1812. The more decrepit homes that had not been repaired, were slanted, leaning away from the vertical, because of the strong winds of the Bay. As these buildings had rotted, poorer families moved into them, mostly blacks who were freed after the Civil War. The small savings they accumulated were used to purchase these tenements as homesteads. They were able to afford them because in those days the properties were almost worthless. Now, ironically, descendants of those original black settlers were able to cash in the properties at great gain for their inheriting children. The children, unfortunately, in turn were disinherited, most of them not able to afford to live in River Sunday in the expensive waterfront condominiums being constructed on the lots.

  He had walked down the street from the newspaper office because he wanted to see the barn that Walker had used for a boat shop. WeeJay, the small black boy he had seen at the swamp, the one who had known so much about the engine on Walker’s race boat, came up beside him and strode along, adjusting his steps from time to time to match Harry’s stride.

  “Where you going, Mister Jacobsen?” he asked, his voice booming with youth and excitement.

  “I was going to take a look at your Uncle Walker’s boat yard,” said Harry, pleased at seeing the boy again.

  “I’ll go with you,” said WeeJay.

  “How come you know so much about Walker John’s boat?” asked Harry.

  “Everybody knows,” he said, walking alongside but not toning down his strong voice.

  “You want to show me the shop?” said Harry, after they had walked past a few more houses.

  “I can do that,” WeeJay asserted.

  They reached the house where Walker had grown up, a small wooden two story with gingerbread carving in need of paint fretting the sides of the front porch. On the porch, which was almost as big as the house, was a rocking chair covered with flowered cloth.

  “My grandmother, Miss Dorothy, that’s her old rocker,” WeeJay said.

  To the left of the house a path led to the backyard through pine trees and several pieces of colorful religious statuary, one of them a Madonna and child with faces that were retouched with glossy brown paint and with morning glory vines overflowing it. As they got around the house, Harry walked through piles of lumber and various broken items including a door less refrigerator filled with potted plants that were dried out and dead.

  “My dad collected stuff,” WeeJay said.

  “Where’s your dad?” Harry asked, quickly.

  “He dead too. Just like Walker,” said WeeJay, walking toward the shop.

  The shop was actually more of a shed or small barn. It was about twenty by forty feet wide with a pointed roof that probably housed a tiny loft. The far side led down to the waterfront on the harbor where he could see several moored watercraft. Harry immediately thought of the runabout which Senator had built and which would have been moored where these boats were presently. He found himself searching for the overhanging tree that Senator had described but it had long since been cut down or died. Now the shoreline was covered with low brush and small pines.

  “That’s my boat,” WeeJay said as he pointed to a glossy white craft with an outboard that was tied to a pole close to shore.

  “Pretty,” said Harry.

  “Ain’t much. I bought her from a farmer used her for hunting. I fixed her up,” he said, with a matter of fact deadpan facial expression.

  “What kind of engine?” Harry asked, knowing that the boy wanted to tell him.

  “He had an old Johnson TD15 so I kept it. Works good,” said WeeJay, showing his teeth in a grin as he looked out at his boat.

  “What do you call her?” asked Harry.

  “I call her Black Duck Two.”

  “You going to race someday, too?” Harry asked.

  “I’m thinking next y
ear. I can get a sponsor for Junior Class racing.”

  “I hope so,” said Harry.

  Vines covered the shed but the boy showed him a way to get by the foliage and enter the workshop through a set of loose boards beside the old padlocked doorway. As the boards were pushed inward, their soft waterlogged edges with rusty nails scared a variety of flying and crawling insects which had been living in the rotting sill and the bugs soared or scattered.

  “Come on,” WeeJay said, as he disappeared inside.

  In the dimness Harry could almost touch the stink of mold mixed with stale gasoline. Ahead of Harry the door on the end of the building near the waterfront was ringed with lines of light where its insulation had broken its original weather tight fit. Through double paned side windows more sunlight tried to enter against a film over the glass of years of dirt and neglect.

  WeeJay snapped a switch in the darkness. Three bulbs hanging from the ceiling lighted. One of them immediately hissed out. In front he could see a cluttered room with an empty boat cradle in the center. Under it were steel wheels that sat in a railroad track running to the far end of the room and the doors to the mooring outside. Puddles of dank water and grease stood on the floor showing multicolor patterns in the light. Overhead on cross beams were stored planks of boat lumber and plywood. To his left were benches with various tools including a small metal lathe. To the right was the long dusty hull of an ancient motorboat.

  Harry noticed scuff marks of larger feet than the boy’s in the dust of the floor. “Has anyone been in here beside you?”

  “Momma say that she saw light in here late some nights, but that was a long time ago. I ain’t never seen anyone myself.”

  “Who was it?” Harry asked.

  “She say it was Walker’s ghost come back to keep me away. I don’t believe that. She just trying to scare me out of here, that’s all,” he said.

  WeeJay stopped in front of the lathe, its grease covered metal legs flecked with old sawdust. Vines met Harry’s feet as he moved along. They’d found small openings in old boards, their leaves slight and not very green as they survived in this dim habitat like roots that enter the rot of a long buried wooden coffin.