Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) (22 page)

“The bastards must have captured him, killed him,” he said.

He crossed himself and began to pray, his eyes closed. Mike watched him then looked carefully around the site. He was interested in a possible escape route for the three of them if the situation got any worse.

Jesse opened his eyes. “How did he get here?” he said, his fingers caressing the marble, tracing the letters. He looked back again at Mike, his face full of questions.

“Did you people kill him?” Jesse asked the man with the ponytail.

The villager did not meet Jesse’s eyes, and instead looked over Mike’s shoulder. Mike heard someone approaching, boots crunching in the dirt. As Mike turned, a strong voice said,

“We did not kill your grandfather. He died before my father and the other villagers could rescue him.” The voice had a deeper tone, one of authority.

The speaker, a slender man who was slightly bent at the waist, stood with two others. His eyes were sharp, precise, sizing up Mike and the others quickly. Mike felt apprehension, knowing that this man might at any minute order all of them killed.

The man had one feature to which Mike’s attention was immediately drawn. His skin was neither dark nor light. Instead he seemed to have a blotched complexion, with large marks of brown like giant freckles interspersed with a whiter background, as if the two colors were at war, with neither giving quarter. Mike had heard of persons with this rare skin disorder. The blotches extended down on the bare parts of his arms and neck. He looked like a man who had been horribly burned and miraculously saved, to live with this distortion. Yet, with this disfigurement, if that was a fair statement to describe it, he seemed almost kindly in his review of them, as if he perhaps was not here to kill them or to pass judgment, but rather for some other reason. In other words, Mike did not sense the tyranny of a dictator in this man but rather the atmosphere of a leader come to help his subjects.

“My name is Hobble,” he said, and his voice had become softer, more melodic, assuming the drawl of a local farmer, and Mike could not believe what he was sensing, as if this strange man was welcoming them.

Mike fixed his eyes on Hobble’s face, not wanting to show any reaction to the man’s disfigurement.

Hobble spoke directly to Jesse. His words were precise, as if he were being careful what he said. “Jesse Lawson. The Maryland police are searching for these people, Mike Howard and Robin Mackensie. I think you need our help.”

The wind rustled in the magnolia leaves. Otherwise, the air was hot and silent as all of them stood in the shade of the little graveyard. After a few moments, Hobble smiled and said, as he nodded to the man with the ponytail, “You were right, Jonathan. He does resemble his grandmother.”

“My grandmother?” asked Jesse, a look of astonishment coming over his face. Mike had never seen Jesse, one of the most in control men he had ever met, so completely taken by surprise.

“Few people know the Lawson family as well as I do,” said Hobble. He reached into his pocket. Mike tensed, not sure what was going to happen in this strange confrontation. However, all Hobble was doing was reaching for a photograph. Hobble handed the picture to Jesse.

Jesse glanced at the picture, then back at Hobble, “This is a recent photograph of me standing with my wife and children.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get this?” Jesse, his face angering, stood up.

“I was planning to send for you,” said Hobble.

“I still don’t get it. I don’t know you. How are you going to help my friends?”

Hobble went on. “That’s something we have to talk about. Now that your grandfather’s story is being discussed in the press, we need to ask you what to do.”

“How did you know my grandmother?” asked Jesse. Mike was still tense, not sure where all this dialogue was headed. He looked at Robin and he could see in her face that she also was on guard.

“She came here after your grandfather died,” said Hobble.

“She knew?” asked Jesse.

“Many times before he crashed, the two of them would fly here to visit.”

“They came here?” said Jesse. He had started to relax and his voice was more calm.

“All secret,” said Hobble, patiently. He was smiling at Jesse, the kind of smile that a father gives a son. “I’m asking you to believe something almost incredible. Forget all you have heard about our village, about us. We’re not what you think. You never knew this but your family is actually our benefactor and we owe you our lives. The Lawson family gave us the land for our Tabernacle, gave it to my father, but all in secret.”

Jesse clenched his fist, as if he were still not convinced. “I’m not sure whether to believe you.”

“Believe,” smiled Hobble.

Jonathan, the guard, touched Jesse’s arm and smiled. “It’s the truth, Jesse. We all feel this way about you. We want to help.”

Jesse said, hoarsely, finding his voice. He looked at Mike as he explained. “That was the Admiral, my great grandfather. From what Hobble says, the old man must have made special gifts of the family land to these people.”

“A great gift for which we are always to be grateful,” said Hobble. “This is our trust.”

“She said the word Tabernacle on her deathbed,” said Jesse.

“Yet, she told my father she would never to reveal this place,” said Hobble. “She must have been under great duress.”

“You’re right,” said Jesse. “She didn’t break her word, Hobble. I don’t think she was capable of breaking her word. She was in pain and didn’t know what she was saying.”

“No matter,” said Hobble. He put his arm around Jesse’s shoulder. “This is a lot for you to understand.” He looked at Mike and Robin. “A lot for all of you. God has blessed us and you are here and safe.”

Hobble spoke again, “My father said words on this site when your grandfather was buried. He said, ‘This man came to us for help. It was his father, Admiral Lawson, who gave us help so we must be ready to help his children and his children’s children whenever they come to us.’”

“What happened that night?” asked Mike.

Hobble spoke slowly. “It wasn’t the first time he had flown up Magnolia Creek doing touch landings. He would fly here sometimes at night, sometimes during the day. The plane was quiet, almost silent. I was much younger then. I remember he would arrive before we knew it and then be gone. Afterwards the folks working the fields near the river would report to my father that the great blue airplane had landed on the water and then as quickly flown away.

“Then came the Fourth of July. It was in the middle of the night when he flew in. There was no advance knowledge that he was coming. The airplane was so quiet that we could not hear it coming over the trees. All we heard that night was the noise of metal tearing against the trees when he crashed.

“When the Captain made his approach, he did not see a small fishing boat left anchored in the middle of his path. When he hit the boat, his aircraft turned sideways and one of the wings hit the trees at the shore line.

“Of course we rushed to the riverbank. He was pulled out of the water immediately, but, sadly, he was already dead.”

Hobble looked at Jesse. “The airplane’s only been ours to keep until a Lawson, the rightful owner, came for it.”

“The plane, what happened?” asked Mike.

Hobble went on. “We pulled the aircraft from the water and hid it.”

“You have the plane?” asked Mike.

“You see, we realized right away that his flight was not a normal one. He was escaping from something, that was evident. His uniform was stuffed with papers and he had a suitcase packed with clothes. We knew that others would come looking for the airplane. When we turned on the radio, we found out that the police were looking for him.

“Yes, we helped him disappear,” said Hobble. “To make sure the outsiders did not come here, the raft from the seaplane was placed on the beach at Ocean City. My father thought that was the best way to keep the searchers from looking too hard around here. The Captain’s uniform with all the papers in its pockets was left in the raft. What my father did not realize when he put the raft on the beach was that people would think the Captain was a spy, would invent this fantasy of him going to a Soviet ship in the area. By the time my father realized his mistake, it was too late. However, the lie did keep anyone from searching for the plane all these years. Your grandmother agreed we had done the right thing.

“She wanted him to be called a spy?”

“She said that was best for the time being. She was very afraid of the people at Aviatrice who owned the seaplane and what they would do to recover it. She wanted it kept away from them, as she said her husband had wanted. We, in turn, were afraid of outsiders. When she asked my father to keep it hidden, she found him more than willing. Years later, after she died, we just kept on the way it was, keeping the plane hidden here. As I said, we knew of you, but you did not know of us.”

“It was God’s will that you finally came here,” said Jonathan.

“Amen,” said Hobble.

Jesse spoke slowly, staring at the magnolia tree blossoms around him, “My grandmother put a United States flag on my bedroom wall when I was a little boy. I still have the flag. She told me always to be proud of that piece of cloth. My grandfather won it racing seaplanes against the best European teams. He brought home the honors for his country.”

“Like the Olympics,” said Mike.

Hobble stood up. “Come with me, Jesse Lawson. You and your friends. I want to show you your grandfather’s seaplane.”

Mike put his hand on Robin’s shoulder. Robin smiled.

Hobble noticed this and said, “You had figured out our secret?”

Mike nodded. “We had the clue that the grandmother came here. I must admit, though, I couldn’t really buy the idea that the seaplane was here. It was just too unbelievable.”

Hobble said, “That’s the very thing that has kept the plane hidden and unsuspected. That and the fear we instill in the outside world. The ones who fly over consider our buildings just like other farm and village buildings along the Eastern Shore, like other barns and churches.”

Mike could understand why the old man’s name was Hobble. He had a malformed left ankle which caused him to lurch slightly as he moved. As if reading Mike’s thoughts, Hobble said, “We’ve all got something wrong with us here.”

Hobble told them more about the night the seaplane crashed.

“My father called in the others. Already the news of the lab explosion and theft of the seaplane was on the radio. They knew the danger to the village if they tried to hide the plane to keep it from the authorities, but they all voted to face it. They had some castaways from a German submarine that went down during the war. Their boat had been sunk by a plane like this one. These men were especially in favor of hiding the plane. To their way of thinking, if it was hidden or grounded, it could never hit another submarine again.

“The greatest danger, though, that everyone faced was being invaded by the outside world to retrieve this aircraft. An investigation would destroy the village. Many of the members were former convicts who had escaped from captivity and would be returned to prison if discovered.

“We agreed that the village had always needed a special place of worship. That night at midnight on the Fourth of July, we decided to build the Tabernacle. We reasoned that a place of worship would be an unlikely place for outsiders to search for the plane. This building would be big enough to hide the seaplane as well as conduct services. We built it to the east of the village, in a low place, a swamp near an old Nanticoke burial mound.

“For the moment, until the Tabernacle could be constructed and made ready, we figured that the plane could be hidden under trees from Navy search planes looking for it. First, before dawn came, we had to get the plane up from the river. We did this with two ideas in mind. One, we wanted to get it up from the river. Two, we wanted to be able to get it back down there again when the time came to return it to its owners, any descendants of the Captain, like you, who came here looking for it.

“There wasn’t any light that night, maybe a little starlight, but no moon. Just the fireflies and the mosquitoes. She was nose into the shore. Fortunately this model had wheels. Problem was there was no ramp so we had to get her over the bank. Without a lot of time to spare, the men and women built up a ramp of old tree posts cut down and cleaned up. To make sure we could put the plane back in the water some day in the future, we left the timbers of that ramp in place and planted the area to reeds and small brush so it would grow over and not be noticed.

“We literally hauled her up there. Got the old traction engines and all our horses harnessed to pull it up through the fields. Fortunately we didn’t have to take out any trees in the fields, but a lot of brush was in the way. One wing of the seaplane was pretty torn up which did not make the traversing of the crippled plane any easier. We had to be careful to keep the plane from breaking up even more.

“When we finally reached this place with a great growth of magnolias, we managed to get the plane in among the trees and covered up with canvas. We painted the cloth to look like grass and cornstalks so the plane could not be distinguished from the air.”

“A small pond and swamp was at the location we had chosen. We drained all that and the resulting low place gave the plane a low place to sit. The high tail was essentially low enough so it wouldn’t stick up too high above the ground level. Then we could put a fairly low tent canvas over it. The building never was much, just canvas walls and roof, but it has served us all these years to fool the outsiders who fly over here. So far nobody has ever figured there was an airplane under all that roof.”

Hobble turned to Jesse and smiled, “That is, until you came along, Jesse.”

Jesse asked Hobble, “Do you have any suggestions on what we should do?”

“Your grandmother said that someday you would be the strong man that you have become. She had great expectations for you. In turn, she wanted us to help you if you ever showed interest in clearing your grandfather’s name. If not, we were to wait until another generation came along. Until you made your choice, as you appear to have done, we were to hide the plane so that your safety and the safety of your family would be secure. During the years that she was alive, she worried that any release of the plane and the document what was hidden inside the fuselage would force Aviatrice to harm family members.”