Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) (2 page)

Terment was sitting at the speaker’s table. In front of the man next to Terment was a rectangular sign that simply stated “mayor” printed by hand in large letters. Terment had no sign in front of him. The mayor, a balding and somewhat overweight man, was dressed in a poorly fitting blue and white cotton suit. He stood, tapped his water glass and as the room quieted, began to speak, his words buzzing like the occasional summer flies worrying the sticky table tops.

“On behalf of all of us in River Sunday I want to welcome all you Terment Company investors. Don’t worry about the cannon you’ve been hearing. It hasn’t fired at any people since 1865.”

Some of the audience laughed amid the noise of dishes being cleared. The mayor continued. “You’re all here to learn about the greatest condominium and estate home development ever planned in the Chesapeake region. I’m right in saying that when it is finished nothing will compare with it anywhere along the tidewater coast from Florida to Maine.” He paused. “Today, Jake Terment, the man whose vision has made this possible, one of our nation’s greatest real estate developers, has come here today from New York to tell us about it.” He looked at Jake. “Jake, as you all know, grew up right here in River Sunday. That makes him one of us.” The mayor paused again, then said, “Only he’s got a lot more money.”

A few laughed at this remark as the mayor went on, “I remember as a child going up to visit at Peachblossom Manor, the Terment family plantation home, Registered Landmark, out on Allingham Island. I remember seeing Jake sittin’ in the lap of his father Richard Terment. His father would tell how he was named after his great uncle Admiral Richard Terment who was killed running his outnumbered ironclad into a whole fleet of Yankee gunboats. The Admiral’s dying order to his sailors was to bring him home to Maryland so he could be buried at Peachblossom. At his request, they put two loaded Navy Colt revolvers in the coffin so the Admiral could keep on shooting Yankees in Hell.” The mayor put his hands over his ears. “Jake’s aunts would be sitting there listenin,’ and I remember, they would cover their ears and say to little Jake that the Admiral had been a religious man and that he was certainly in Heaven and not in Hell where those people were.”

The mayor then rubbed his hands nervously, immediately realizing from the creaking chairs and coughing from the audience that his story about Yankees in Hell was the wrong story to tell. This was a different group, made up of many outsiders, and not his usual River Sunday audience.

Frank leaned over to the pharmacist. “I wonder if those Navy Colt handguns have been dug up yet.”

The man turned to him and scowled. Frank put his hands up in defense. “I’m just thinking like an archaeologist. I didn’t mean any offense to the traditions here. We dig up things like that to study them.” The pharmacist, his face still angry, turned back to listen to the speaker.

The mayor finished quickly. “So, Jake, you’re the man of the hour. Tell us all about it.”

Jake stood up behind his chair and quieted the applause. The mayor arranged the microphone. It squawked two times before Jake’s voice flowed out on the silent and expectant crowd.

“Thank you for such a pleasant introduction. My father would thank you too if he were alive today. Let me start out by answering some questions that I have been asked since I arrived today on my yacht.” He looked at the mayor. “First of all it is not true that when we were kids my friend, the mayor here, gave me this little scar over my eye.”

The crowd laughed. Jake continued, “It was Billy, who’s your chief of police.” Towards the back of the room, the chief of police scraped back his chair and stood up, giving a short bow and waving to several friends in the audience. There was more laughing.

“Any of you newspaper people here today, don’t report on my old friend, Billy. He’ll be up for police brutality. Seriously, let me say a few words about the development out on the island and especially the progress on the new bridge. Yes,” he raised his voice to emphasize the words and said them slowly, “we will finish the bridge on time. We will complete the foundations for the new bridge this summer and build the bridge this winter. The houses can start on schedule next summer.”

Jake turned his head and looked directly at Spyder. Then he repeated, “I want to make sure that my partners in New York get the message. We will finish on time.” There was heavy applause.

Frank studied Spyder’s face but there was no change from the steady grin. Jake went on. “First of all, the butterflies and their trees.” Jake paused and looked down at his feet for a moment. “I guess you all know that my wife, Serena, is a movie star.” There was an outburst of cheers, whistles, stamping of feet.

Jake looked at the moderator and smiled. Then he turned to the crowd and quieted them with a movement of his hands.” Serena advised me to go easy on the butterflies. You all know her interest in animals. I think she spends as much time on animal rights as she does on her acting. Anyway, my company spent a lot of time and money trying to find a way to solve the butterfly problem. We’re real sorry about the Monarch butterflies having to find different trees to land on during their future migrations. We all know, however, that folks buying houses out on the island are not going to like to see all those bugs on their lawns every fall.” He paused. “These houses will sell to wealthy people, people like yourselves, winners who have fought to accomplish their success. The fact is that the courts in Maryland are on our side, that we have been told that we can cut down the trees used by the butterflies, that the courts say we can go ahead and build our houses. We made the decision that we want to develop the island to benefit the owners and the people of River Sunday, not the insects.” Jake’s words brought out more laughter mixed with applause.

“I have heard, from time to time, that my old friend Jefferson over there at his Third Baptist Church tells stories about the marsh where we are building the bridge. He likes to say we can’t put the bridge there because that area was a burying ground for African-Americans back in the early days of River Sunday. He says it was a slave graveyard.”

Jake stopped and looked around the crowd. Then he looked at the moderator.

“Is Jefferson here today?” The mayor shook his head. “No? Jefferson never did know a good business deal,” said Jake, smiling as the crowd laughed. “Well, it’s all very fine for him to worry about his mythical graveyard. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that there are black families as well as white families who want to live on the island in the new houses. I’d like to say to him, ‘It’s a new world, Jefferson.’”

The crowd applauded politely.

“The Terment family has always owned the farm where that marsh is located. I’m sure no one was buried there.” Jake continued. “I will say, however, that a few old wheat schooners, maybe a hundred or so years old, are deserted and rotting up along the Nanticoke River towards the bridge. Mercy, we all played on them enough when we were kids. Seemed to me somebody even set one of them on fire one time. Got the whole River Sunday Fire Department out. You remember that?” Jake looked at the mayor, who grinned nervously.

“Well, as luck would have it, we seem to have another one of those old hulks sunk right in the middle of our construction. I’m not against history but I sure wish one of my workers had not got so excited and called in the government.”

He laughed, “I’m having trouble finding out the worker’s name. Anybody know?” There was a chuckle though the audience. He laughed, “If he’d just applied a little bit more power to the hydraulics of that bulldozer blade, there wouldn’t have been any wreck left to study and this would never have been a problem.”

“Jake’s right. Hell, push the wreck back under and get on with it,” muttered the pharmacist to Frank.

Jake looked out over the crowd until his eyes found Frank. “Stand up, Frank. Folks, this is Doctor Frank Light. He’s an archaeologist, the best in the country. I borrowed him from his university up north. He’s here to identify the wreck, find out all about it so the Maryland authorities will be satisfied, and then, most important, get us back working on the bridge. Right, Frank?”

Frank nodded and sat down.

“I’m sure you’ll make him feel real welcome here in River Sunday.”

As the applause went around the room, Frank nervously scratched the back of his neck.

Jake looked behind him at the white screen. Spyder turned switches on the wall and the room was night black. Then he started the slide projector and a spurt of white light cut across the blackness. Greens and blues, not bright but pastels of these hues, flowed over the screen. A color map of Allingham Island and the River Sunday region appeared. Some people in the audience gasped at the giant picture.

“I just wanted to take a few minutes to remind all of you what we are planning. Yes, I agree with you people who are overwhelmed by this. This is a beautiful island,” said Jake. “We’re going to make it more beautiful.” Jake then proceeded to point out the features of the map. At the bottom of the map, to the south, was the town of River Sunday, with its large harbor. To the west, the left of the map, was Chesapeake Bay. To the north, was the expanse of the Wilderness Swamp, and to the east, the highway going north and south. Further east was the farmland of the eastern counties of the Eastern Shore.

Allingham Island was directly north of River Sunday. The Nanticoke River ran in from the Chesapeake Bay to the east of the island. It passed a headland called Stokes Point where tourists visited the remains of an old War of 1812 fortification. The Nanticoke cut off most of the island from the mainland, continued north almost parallel with the highway and finally went inland. A few miles north of River Sunday a road went west from the highway to Allingham Island. This road crossed the Nanticoke at the old bridge. At the top of the island a waterway called North Creek cut from the Bay through the Wilderness to meet the Nanticoke and finished cutting off the mainland from the island.

Jake pointed to where he was building the new bridge, alongside the old one. The colorful glare from the screen illuminated the faces in the front tables, the ghostly pale faces uplifted to Jake. “You know,” said Jake, looking out over the crowd, “River Sunday is named for all the churches we have here. Well, I got to thinking one day when I was flying across the country. I got to thinking that maybe the Lord had brought me home to construct this new bridge, to build these new houses out on Allingham.”

Frank smiled at Jake’s use of the divine, but it went over well with the crowd. When the enthusiastic applause quieted, Jake again pointed to the screen. “On the west side of Allingham Island you can see this little rectangle we put on the map. That’s Peachblossom Manor, my family’s old home, with its view out to the Chesapeake Bay. I expect to keep Peachblossom in the family, with a few hundred acres as a homefarm. Terment Company owns all the land on both sides of the bridge site except for a small section on the north owned by my neighbor, Birdey Pond. The new bridge, as you can see, is being built on the south side of the old bridge. We’ll build our first houses on the south of the island where it faces the Nanticoke. We have selected the name of Terment Town. That’s to honor my father who always dreamed of building these houses.”

Jake let the applause build, then motioned for it to stop. “We’re going to have a reception, a chance for you to see the bridge under construction. I want to invite you to the site day after tomorrow. Come up in the early afternoon for a look-see and some refreshment courtesy of Terment Company.” He waited a moment while the crowd quieted. Then he said, “We have a special surprise. Serena is flying in from her movie set to say hello to you fine folks.”

“We’re with you, Jake,” a voice shouted from the darkness, and more applause burst out as Jake returned to his seat.

Frank retrieved his suitcase and joined Jake and Spyder. Jake was shaking hands with people leaving the room. In a few moments Frank walked out of the room beside Jake. A tawny cat with black spots on its face was sleeping on the red and white lobby rug.

“That’s the cat that was swimming up at the bridge,” said Spyder.

Jake looked at Spyder and said absently, “I never saw a cat swim before.”

Spyder nodded and walked toward the cat, his grin unabated. He kicked the animal with his highly polished alligator shoe. The cat landed on its feet and crawled underneath a lobby sofa, where it watched, alert, hissing deeply, almost growling.

“Spyder knows I don’t like cats, Frank. They bring bad luck,” said Jake.

Outside in the oppressive sunlight, they stepped down off the wide porch in front of the hotel, where the dark green rocking chairs overlooked the harbor and the tourist filled Strand Street. Strangely, in the heat, he heard a distant band playing the lively melody of a winter song, “Oh, Christmas Tree.” When he asked, Jake informed him that the music was the state song “Maryland, My Maryland.”

“When I was a kid,” he said, “first thing they taught you in school was the words to that song. It was one of the first songs written for the South.”

Coming toward them were ten or more people dressed as giant butterflies, the orange and black wings bobbing to the music, costumes weaving down the street, contrasting with the orderly colonial restoration storefronts. The costumes intrigued Frank, especially the colors. His eyes roved over their construction, the eight foot height of the wings, The costumes allowed the person inside to show his or her head about halfway up the furry black body of the apparatus, while the wings stretched fully extended about four feet to each side.

When he saw the butterflies, Jake stopped, his face suddenly stern. He waited with Spyder at his side and Frank behind as one of the butterflies stopped directly in front of them. A tall white haired woman was inside the costume.

“Hello, Birdey,” said Jake.

“We’ll keep on, Jake,” she informed him in a shrill voice. “We have another wildlife expert coming in, this time from Africa. We’ll stop you from building that bridge.”

“Suit yourself,” he replied and moved around her. The woman remained, slowly moving her wings. Jake walked down the street until he reached a green station wagon with the words Terment Company in white letters on the doors.