Coldwater Revenge, James Ross [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

sports and everything else that had defined him until then, including his family. Joe grew closer, rapidly becoming their sheriff father’s heir apparent and, as between the brothers, the acknowledged muscle. Frankie Heller made no move to exact revenge, demonstrating a wily intelligence generally thought to be absent. The girl Tom had danced with at the dance that night was Susan Pearce.

Blinking his eyes as if emerging from a troubled sleep, Tom tried to banish the painful memory by turning to survey the rest of the assembled mourners. Two pale young men sat quietly on the center aisle nearest the exit, gripping the hands of a third who sat sobbing between them. A head shop’s inventory of cheap metal jewelry sprouted from the distraught youth’s ears, eyebrows and lips. The two young men on either side were less dramatically skewered, though clearly of the same urban tribe. That was the total attendance: six mourners, plus Joe and himself.

Toward the end of the service, Joe slipped quietly from the church. When a gust of wind blew open a side door, Tom could see him squatting behind a silver sedan copying license plate numbers into a leather covered notebook.

* * *

When Tom returned to Joe’s cabin, Mary told him that he’d just missed his old friend Father Gauss. “Came to visit the sick and stayed to finish a pitcher of gin and tonic. He said for you to stop by the rectory while you’re in town.”

Tom’s face lifted in surprise at his mother’s friendly tone. Growing up, he had the impression that she didn’t much care for the worldly, ultra-liberal Father Gauss.

“Go ahead,” said Mary. “Call him. Take him out to dinner. He might know something that could help your brother with this Billy Pearce business.”

The suggestion was even more surprising.

“How would Father Gauss have known Billy Pearce?”

“I didn’t say he did.” Her voice was firm. “He might know something, that’s all. Priests get to know all sorts, and they hear a lot.”

“You’re being mysterious, Mom.”

“Not intentionally. Just careful not to be spreading rumors.”

“Rumors?”

“Don’t cross-examine me, Tommy. Just have dinner with the man. The subject of Billy Pearce is bound to come up. How could it not?”

“Did it come up while Father Gauss was here?”

Mary smirked. “Why do you think I had him make a pitcher of gin and tonic? I hate gin. Priests seem to thrive on it.”

“And?”

“That’s all you’re going to get from me, young man. You and your brother find out the rest for yourselves.”

* * *

Joe came home before dark and announced that he and Tom were going to pay a nocturnal visit to Frankie Heller’s junkyard.

Tom groaned, and not in jest. Joe laughed. “I should have warned you to wear your Depends.” He led Tom to the garage behind the cabin where a black monster truck with wheels as high as a man’s chest took up an entire outsized bay.

“This must have burned a few paychecks,” said Tom.

“Makes up for all those hand-me-down bicycles.”

“We’re not going to sneak up on anybody in this.”

“That’s the point, brother. Black and white’s for handing out speeding tickets. This is for reminding assholes who’s in charge around here.”

Tom rested a hand on one of the chest high tires. “You planning on crashing this thing through the front door of everyone who came to Billy’s funeral? Maybe scare a confession out of one of them?”

“Got to start somewhere.”

Tom took a deep breath. “I’m asking, Joe, because I’ve got a job I have to get back to, and you’ve got a history of dragging me into things that are more trouble than I’ve got time for.”

Joe drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he gunned the truck down the steep, two lane road that wound around what he liked to refer to as ‘his mountain.’ “Your old girlfriend came into the station house this afternoon with a story about Frankie Heller and her brother Billy getting into some sort of dust-up down at the Pearce’s boathouse the week before Billy got killed. That’s why we’re paying Frankie a visit tonight.”

Tom felt his bowels stir. “Did Mom tell you Susan phoned yesterday, looking for you?” He watched his brother’s face and hands.

“Complained about it. I went to the Pearce house after the ambulance took Billy to the morgue and I left you off with Mom. Miss Pearce didn’t want to talk then. Guess she’s had time to pull herself together.”

“Does she think Frankie had something to do with Billy’s murder?”

“All she’s got is that they had some sort of shouting match down at the boathouse, loud enough for her to hear up at the main house. She thinks I should find out what they were arguing about.”

“She heard them all the way up at the main house, but didn’t hear what it was about?”

“She says not. But she claims to have heard Frankie screaming that Billy was too stupid to live.”

Tom felt his pulse jump and his stomach drop. “And on that load of nothing, we’re going to sneak into Frankie Heller’s junkyard in the dark?”

“I am. You’re coming to watch my back. Frankie can still be a handful if you come up on him wrong.”

Tom had no trouble conjuring the appropriate image.

Joe eased the truck to the side of the road along the ridge above Heller’s junkyard. From there they had a clear view of the garage, outbuildings and a couple of acres of weathering automobiles surrounded by a chain link fence. As they waited for darkness to fall, a gray four-door Taurus drove up to the garage, and a metal door rose to let it in. A few minutes later, two men exited the back of the building and walked toward the rows of junked cars.

Joe put the binoculars on the men and then handed the glasses to Tom.

“Frankie,” said Tom squinting through the lenses in the fading light, “and maybe that guy who was sitting across from Susan at the funeral.”

“Indian, do you think?” asked Joe. “Something like that?”

“Could