“No,” Stella answered in a low voice.
Something about her, Cole thought. She’s hiding something. He saw her eyes dart to the fireplace, at the cases of money, and then she looked at him again.
“What?” he asked her. “If you saw something or heard something, you’d better spit it out.”
Stella hesitated, and then finally she said: “None of you noticed that the ax from the fireplace is gone?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They all stared at the fireplace.
Cole remembered now that there had been an ax leaning next to the small stack of firewood set on the hearth. He had thought it was odd that someone would have an ax inside the house, but it looked like Tom Gordon had used it to break up the logs into smaller pieces before placing them into the fireplace.
And now the ax was gone.
“What the hell?” Jose whispered.
Nobody answered Jose. They all stared at the fireplace.
“This just keeps getting weirder,” Trevor mumbled.
Cole looked at Stella and David for a moment, and then he looked at the others. “Okay, I’ll go check out her truck; see if it can be fixed.” He looked at Jose. “You come out there with me. Watch my back.”
Trevor jumped to his feet. “You don’t want me to come with you?”
“No. You stay here and watch these two.” Cole pointed at Stella and David.
Cole walked to the kitchen counter and above the end of the counter on the wall was a wooden key holder carved into the shape of a large key. But there were no keys on the key holder. Cole’s eyes scanned the counter where someone might throw a set of keys – but there were no keys on the counter. He opened the first drawer, a junk drawer, and rummaged through it.
“What are you looking for?” Jose asked as he shrugged into his winter coat.
“Probably the keys to Tom Gordon’s truck, genius,” Trevor said to Jose.
“What the hell’s your problem?” Jose said as he took a step towards Trevor.
“Nothing,” Trevor said with a smirk.
Cole found a set of keys, but they couldn’t be the keys to the pickup truck outside, but they did look familiar and he was pretty sure that he knew what these set of keys went to. He palmed the small set of keys inside his hand and continued his search through the drawers for the keys to the pickup truck.
Then a morbid thought occurred to Cole. What if the keys to the pickup were still in Tom Gordon’s pants pocket when he was murdered? What if they were in his pants right now, frozen in there? Cole could imagine pulling the semi-frozen corpse out of the freezer, prying the pockets open or cutting them away with a knife as frozen flesh peeled away with the cloth. He pushed the thoughts away, and moved to the next drawer, opened it and found the truck keys. He closed his hand around the truck keys, collecting them with the small set of keys already in his hand, and he pocketed them both. He turned and looked at Jose. “Found them. Let’s go.”
Cole and Jose walked around the cabin to the back where Stella’s Chevy Suburban was parked under a blanket of snow. Jose trudged through the snow right beside Cole, his gloved hands stuffed into his coat pockets. “I don’t know what your brother’s problem is,” he grumbled.
“He’s just nervous and trying not to show it,” Cole answered. “The more nervous he gets, the more sarcastic he gets.”
“He better stop fucking with me,” Jose said. “That’s all I’m saying.”
Cole opened the driver’s door and looked at Jose. “You two are going to cool it right now; we have enough to worry about without you two at each other’s throats.”
Jose looked away and exhaled a long breath that plumed up in front of his face in the freezing air. “Whatever,” he mumbled.
Cole still stared at Jose. “Maybe Trevor’s right. Something’s not right here in this cabin and Needles is halfway to La La land right now and pretty much useless. So the rest of us need to keep our cool and work together.”
Jose shrugged his shoulders and kept looking around.
“Jose, I’m serious. I need your help. And Trevor’s.”
Jose looked back at Cole. “Just get that fucking truck fixed so we can get the fuck out of here.”
Cole pulled the latch to pop the hood. He marched through the snow to the front of the truck. He lifted up the hood and stared down at the mess that used to be engine.
Jose saw the look on Cole’s face. He hurried over to the front of the truck and stared down at the destroyed engine. He didn’t know near as much about engines as Cole did, but he knew enough to know that this engine was ruined. Inoperable.
Cole stuck his hand down in the motor and picked up some loose parts, then he tossed them back down onto the engine, the clanking sound was loud out here in the silence. Cole picked up the cables that used to go to the battery. “Battery’s gone,” Cole mumbled.
“Holy shit, Cole,” Jose yelled right beside him as he stared in shock down at the engine. “Holy fuck, man. What the fuck?”
Cole studied the frayed end of the battery cable. It looked ripped, torn apart, like someone had torn the battery out of the truck with tremendous force, snapping the battery cables.
“What the fuck?” Jose said again as he backed away from the truck, pacing around in the snow in a small circle, still cussing. “What the fuck happened?”
“It looks like someone destroyed the engine with an ax,” Cole said, his voice even and controlled, like a scientist analyzing a piece of data. “See those chop marks there. Hell of a swing.”
Jose swung his fists at the air. “Fuck!” he screamed out into the freezing air. “FUCK!!” His voice echoed across the snowy field.
Cole lowered the hood of Stella’s truck, but he didn’t close it all the way. He turned to Jose. “Let’s go check the other truck.”
Inside the cabin, Stella stood at the sink and washed the leftover oatmeal out of the bowls.
Trevor watched her. He still sat at the dining room table, his coffee cup in front of him. He toyed with the cup, spinning it around slowly on the table as he glanced at David who sat on the couch. Needles was curled up in the recliner, comforting himself by rubbing his cross around his neck, his eyes half-closed, his lips moving in silent prayers. Trevor looked back at Stella, watching her rinse the dishes. “What’s wrong with your kid?” he asked. “Is he autistic?”
“No,” Stella answered, not bothering to look at him.
“Retarded?”
Stella gave Trevor a hard look with her blue eyes. “No,” she said.
“Seems like something’s wrong with him.”
“He just doesn’t talk much,” Stella said as she turned her attention back to the dishes, setting them in the strainer a little too hard.
Trevor smiled as he kept playing with his coffee cup. “Stella, could I get another cup of coffee? It was really good.”
“Get it yourself,” she told him without looking at him.
David got up from the couch and walked across the area rug in the middle of the living room; he gave Needles a wide berth as he hurried over to Stella.
Stella turned and smiled at David. “What is it, honey?”
He tugged on her sleeve. She bent down and he cupped a hand beside his mouth and whispered into her ear.
She nodded. “Sure,” she said. She went right to one of the drawers in the cabinets and rummaged through them.
Trevor watched the two of them with that same smirk on his face. “What’s the kid want?” he asked.
Stella found a spiral-bound book of notebook paper. She handed the notebook to David. His face lit up as he took it. She continued looking through the drawers for something else.
“Is he writing a book?” Trevor asked.