Read Online Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) by Thomas Hollyday - Free Book Online

death. At the time we were pleased Stagmatter had come, and thought the attention Stagmatter brought to Daddy’s cars would be good for him.”
    “Tell me about the death of your mother,” asked Tench. Her mother had died only months before the plane crash of her sister.
    “You probably know most of this. The details were in the paper here and in Texas. A car hit her and killed her and the driver ran away. She was just walking near our house, in the morning. No one saw anything.”
    “You’d think someone would have seen the accident.”
    “The police found no witnesses,” she had said. “You asked about Stagmatter. My sister’s husband was against hiring him. Marengo checked with his African contacts and said the man was well known there and was knowledgeable about cars. So Daddy overruled my sister and her husband, saying getting a man with car credentials was hard and this man came with the best.”
    “Why did your brother in law not want to hire him?”
    “He wanted to keep the control of the farm money in our hands, not in Stagmatter’s. He was afraid the man would take over.”
    “So Stagmatter was hired to take over only the museum?”
    “That was the original plan. Right after he got to Maryland, he brought in his own men, those African mechanics, and he’s just taken over everything. My sister said my father at first handled the family affairs, our allowances, that kind of thing. Then my father stopped talking directly with my sister in the months before she died. Daddy just let Stagmatter do all his communicating with the Texas company.”
    “How long has this been going on?”
    “A lot more since my sister died. Stagmatter has come kind of power over my father. Something to do with the cars. I don’t understand.” She went on, “My father stays in his room. Marengo brings him food. He sits at his desk and goes over accounts Stagmatter brings him.”
    Her voice had been strained on the telephone. “New men have come since when you and I were there. Those mechanics. I don’t know any of them.”
    After all this time apart, Tench wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms, comfort her. He sighed, looked at the phone and computer incoming email once again, shook his head and stood up.
    He walked to the back of the garage. He stood beside the well-polished and almost finished gas class quarter mile race car. The charged air was filled with the intermingled smells of new thick slick type racing tires, gasoline, sweat and drying automotive lacquer on the blue and white car with his name, Tench, on the side. He had painted the car the blue and white Cunningham colors from the Le Mans race of 1950. He was alone except for Abraham, the Captain’s dog, who had become a regular visitor at the garage in the last few days. Abraham had found a place near the back of the race car where he felt comfortable and Tench had brought a blanket from his home for the dog to sit on during the day.
    He kneeled beside the dog and rubbed his hands on the dog’s head. Abraham still had his childhood in his eyes and worked his eyes over Tench, looking for more rough play and perhaps a stick to be thrown. Tench checked Abraham’s water bowl and his food dish to make sure they were full.
    He stood up and returned to the side of his racing car. He’d modified a 1966 coupe model Mustang by essentially lightening the front end and polishing ports in the basic Ford small block, but in every way keeping it a street driver. Inside the body he inspected the tubular framework and the steel protective plates behind the transmission and the Ford engine. Looking out through the Lexan windshield, he saw the new fiberglass hood with its thin blue racing stripes centered over the white paint. Underneath the hood he knew intake was a Holley carburetor on a special manifold and exhaust went into lightweight headers he had designed. To the side of the engine long chrome pipes fed back to the racing cutouts on the three inch