Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) (11 page)

The plane was tied down again as the wind howled even more strongly. Then his father came up beside him and passed by, his face straight ahead, walking into the radio room without a word to him. The mechanics and fliers yelled to Mike as they followed his dad inside. Mike would have heard them even if they had whispered in the howl of the wind. Even now, all these years later, Mike could still hear those words, sharp and stark, clear and free of any storm noise.

“He got the job done, Mike, as he always does. You got to be proud of the old guy. Life ain’t worth living, as your father likes to say, unless you be willing to give it up for something.”

Chapter Six

2 PM, July 1

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 Robin decided to come along when he went to find Lawson’s secretary and Hiram Jones. Mike looked at her riding beside him. This was like old times, the two of them together.

Mike’s mind kept going back to persistent questions about the Lawson case. What was the real story about the death of Jesse’s Vietnam veteran father? Something didn’t add up about the death and the handling of that murder. What was the truth about why Aviatrice, a world renowned corporation, had chief executives who were still angry about what happened to a project so long ago? What did Lawson have to do with the development of this nuclear bomber project that Veal had mentioned? Perhaps Lawson had made a discovery in propulsion of aircraft that was so innovative and so different that Aviatrice still wanted it. He found hard to believe the notion that Aviatrice investigators would try to kill Jesse’s father to find the papers on that discovery. On the other hand, according to Jenni’s report, they, meaning Jessica Veal, Bullock, and likely Wall himself, had certainly been willing to use their financial power to get their way, to crush Jesse Lawson’s attempt to find the truth about his grandfather.

Jeremy had never heard of an atomic bomber program. Mike remembered reading about a huge building constructed in the 1960’s, out west, for testing atomic aircraft engines. He’d heard about a B36 bomber being fitted out decades ago to test a nuclear engine but that the project had been cancelled because the radioactivity was too great for the safety of the air crew. Jeremy promised he’d start right in this morning researching the state of that technology.

Mike smiled. He was supposed to be a careful museum director who worked with facts to find answers. The problem was that Mike did not know enough facts. In one ear, Mike heard the old saying “let a sleeping dog lie.” In the other, though, was the crinkle of Jesse Lawson’s line of credit being torn up to put Lawson Harvesting out of business, and what was going to be a concerted effort by Aviatrice to punish the Museum by taking away its money and its museum standing.

“These witnesses, they are pretty old,” said Robin.

Mike nodded. “Still it’s worth the time to see them. If they can’t help us, though, I’m telling Jesse we’re out of this. Then we’ll have to see how we can placate Aviatrice.”

“Yeah,” said Robin, her voice softer than the normal brash tone.

“You don’t think I should quit?”

“It’s your call. I agree that without a real break, a good discovery, you don’t know which way to turn.”

“Jeremy will be pissed,” said Mike. “He gets really involved in these projects. After all, without his perseverance we probably would have given up on the P47 several times.”

“Yeah, but he’s worried about his friend, Jenni. He might be relieved if we quit,” she said, as she tuned the radio through several rock stations.

Mike drove on, thinking of his father, how the old man would handle this situation if he was still alive and here beside Mike right now. The museum world was tougher than in his father’s day. Today, decisions had to be made for practical cash reasons. Staff had to be paid. He smiled, thinking of how his father would always ask whether the results were worth the trouble. He remembered one of his father’s favorite stories about when he was a navigator in a torpedo bomber. His dad would sit at the company lunch table at break time, his hair cut to a precise military length, still ruddy brown, his strong hands motioning accents to the storytelling. Around him would be the aircraft mechanics and some of the old fliers who hung around the Museum, each sipping on a bottle of Coke or a cup of coffee. Mike, only fourteen years old then, would listen, sitting there on the edge of a folding chair, usually with a wrench or other tool almost as big as he was still held in his hand from his apprentice job out in the workshop.

“We’d be coming at this Jap destroyer and the skipper would call back, ‘Good attack this time, Buddy.’ The rounds would start zipping by our plane. Once in a while the hot anti-aircraft fragments ripped away some of the wing fabric, the tears of metal flapping in the screaming wind, and I would yell forward over the noise,

“ ‘Skipper, worth the trouble?’

“The answer would come back in the static, ‘This run’s worth the trouble.’

Then his dad would pantomime dramatically that the torpedo was launched and the plane shuddered with loss of the heavy weight from underneath.

“We’d try to gain altitude, pushing the aircraft for all she had, straining the engine to get away, like a kid who hits the bully and then runs like hell.

“You could see them, Mike,” he’d say, talking like Mike was as important as the older men in the room, “shooting at us from down below. I remember one time we flew over a ship and I could see some Jap sailor had his rifle pointed right at my face. I could have reached out and touched him. Just before he pulled off his round, the ship exploded, a ball of flame came up around him and sucked him away. We got away from that too, and then it was over until the next time. Me and the skipper chattered on the intercom. He’d say pretty soon that the run was successful, that our attack was worth the trouble.”

Mike could not imagine his father ever having been afraid. Yet, his father had seen his son afraid, so afraid he could not move. This event had caused the gap of trust between father and son, and this had caused Mike to doubt himself. Since that event, Mike had the constant worry that the fear would come back. He had steeled himself with courage. In everything he tried, he felt fearless. Yet, he was not secure in one faculty, one strength that he had before the cowardice. Mike could not or would not trust himself to fly again.

If he kept investigating, he knew he’d meet Bullard again and he had no fear of the man. The play at Aviatrice had been only verbal, but the man had tried to push, to cower him, and Mike had pushed back successfully. Bullard was the kind who would stoop to breaking a man’s legs, to humiliating an opponent. Mike, on the other hand, was satisfied with winning, not maiming. Bullard, Mike knew, had to be watched even when he was down, even when he was beaten because Bullard would never stop. Bullard was driven only by hate. Mike knew that was the man’s weakness but also his strength. He wouldn’t forget that he hadn’t been able to scare Mike. Bullard would make sure they met again, as a matter of pride, of keeping track of adversaries, the way the old Western gunfighters did. It was the kind of tote that only men like Bullard bothered to keep. The tote was his weakness because sooner or later the tote would lead to Bullard’s undoing. Someone stronger than him would kill him.

Mike pressed the accelerator and the car jumped ahead. Jeremy had run Hiram Jones’ name on the Internet and the address fit with what Mike found in the old lawyer’s files. Hiram was in an apartment in Philadelphia, a poorer area of the city near the former Navy Yard where Lawson’s Research Laboratory had been.

As they drove into the neighborhood, the people standing on the street followed their progress. Mike’s car was not a new one and it was covered with dust from the dirt roads on the Eastern Shore, but it was better than the decrepit automobiles, some robbed of their wheels, that were parked at the curbs. Mike and Robin decided that she would stay with the car while he went to the address.

He had to walk two blocks before he found the right apartment number. It was in a building with some of the windows boarded and Hiram’s room was in the back down a hallway lit only by the daylight leaking through a single dirt and spider- web-covered window at the end. Mike walked the narrow hallway, barely wide enough for his large frame, trying to keep the worn linoleum from creaking with his weight. Near a radiator with flaking paint was the Jones apartment. In the dim light, Mike could barely see the number written on the door panel with a black marker. On the floor were piles of free circular newspapers and some stamped letters with a pathway through as if someone had pushed the mail to the side. Mike stooped down and lifted up a dust covered envelope from the bottom of the pile. The letter, a telephone bill, was addressed to Hiram Jones with a postmark more than a month old. Still holding the envelope, Mike started to knock.

Before his fist hit the door, it opened and in the narrow crack of light, Mike saw the bare shoulder and chest of a man.

“I heard you coming,” the man said, and in a weak voice that reminded Mike of the questioning tone of a young boy, “What do you want?”

Sour air came out of the room, the smell of sweat and rotted food. Mike put his hand on the door to hold it open and said, “I want to talk to Hiram Jones.”

The man started to push the door closed against the pressure of Mike’s hand but changed his mind. His voice wheedled, “He ain’t here. You got some delivery for him?”

Mike pushed harder and the door swung open. A white man, young, not more than twenty-five Mike guessed, his feet bare and gray with filth, with long tangled hair and dressed only in a pair of faded orange knee length shorts, stood there. The shorts were filthy with stains and spilled food and looked like the man had worn them for days. His right hand still rested on the doorknob while his mouth was open in a dull look.

Mike handed him the telephone bill. “Some of your mail.”

“OK, you can come in,” he said, taking the letter slowly, indecisively, putting up no resistance and stepping out of Mike’s way.

“Hiram Jones,” Mike reminded him.

The man, his eyes showing some fear now, stared at Mike’s blue blazer.

“No, that coat don’t look like police.”

Mike tried a different approach. He held out his hand. “Where does he live now? My name is Mike Howard. Hiram was a witness in a Navy hearing years ago. I wanted to talk to him about it.”

“You’re another one of them Aviatrice people.” The man drew back.

Mike handed him his museum card from his wallet. “No. Not from Aviatrice. I’m from a Museum that collects old airplanes.”

The man held the card looking at it then at Mike.

Mike asked firmly, “Where is he?”

“OK. He died from his cancer a month ago. I can take the delivery though. I’m his only relative left. I get all his property.”

The man stepped to the door. “Wait a minute.” He poked his head out into the hall carefully, looked both ways, then stepped well back inside.

“Aviatrice was here?” Mike asked.

“Ain’t none of your business. You ain’t got nothing to leave, you might as well be on your way.”

The room was stripped of any decoration and lit only by two bare windows. An open door lead to another unlighted chamber. In one corner was a cardboard box with brown paper bags crunched up and thrown around it like someone was practicing throwing baskets. The only other furniture were a sofa, a wicker chair and a glass ashtray on a wooden stand. The ashtray was filled with cigarette butts.

A young woman, not much out of her teen age years, her hair to her shoulders but matted and stringy, was sitting on the sofa, dressed only in purple panties. She started to put her hands up to cover her breasts then shrugged as if the effort was not worth her time.

“You better get your outfit on unless you want to go like that,” the man said to her. “It’s time for you to go to work.”

The woman stood and stretched, her eyes looking ahead, not paying any attention to Mike.

“Go to Hell, Winkee,” she said, coughing, her voice deep and rasping. She sleepily tried to smooth her tangled hair while her other hand moved her panties down one leg as she padded into the other room. Mike heard a toilet flush.

Winkee watched Mike quickly glance around the room and said, “We’ve had to sell most of the furniture to pay for Hiram’s burial, if it’s any of your business.” Then in a change of tone, almost friendly, “It’s always hard on the relatives when a person dies, ain’t it?”

Mike nodded. “Tell me about Hiram and Aviatrice.”

“We never knew nothing. It was all Hiram and them people. When he died they come and took his stuff, that’s all.”

He heard the sound of a box or carton falling off a shelf.

“You keep to yourself in there,” Winkee yelled.

“I’m showing him,” she yelled.

“It ain’t yours,” said Winkee, starting toward her. Just then the woman came back in the room. She was completely naked but was holding a black leather briefcase, very worn and scratched.

Winkee rushed at her, knocking her down. They grappled as he tried to get the case. They rolled against the sofa which fell back, one of its legs coming off with a cracking noise. Mike could see his business card go flying across the room. Then, Winkee stopped moving, holding his stomach and moaning.

The woman got to her feet and stood in front of Mike, holding the case, her eyes still glazed but trying to focus on his.

“You want to pay, it’s yours,” she said. For a moment Mike wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

She held up the case. “This,” she said.

“We agreed to keep it for protection,” whimpered Winkee, as he got to his knees.

“What am I buying?” Mike said, his eyes on hers. Winkee moved up behind her and tried to grab the case. She turned slightly, her bare foot kicking his knee. He fell back on the floor, his hand rubbing the knee, his face furious.

She turned back to Mike and said, over her shoulder to Winkee, “I took care of Hiram too. It’s part mine. We need the money. You’re always saying how they might come back and you want to get out of here. Here’s your chance. This ain’t no life.”