“Don’t mind me,” I said, smiling. “Just grabbing a drink.”
He chuckled and set the large coffee cup from the local coffee shop on the table in the middle of the low-ceilinged basement. “Yeah? You keep a coffee pot down here, too?”
I held up a can of soda. “I move on to this kind of caffeine in the middle of the day,” I told him.
“Not me,” he said, shaking his head. “I drink the java juice all day long.”
I stifled a giggle. Java juice? Who in their right mind called coffee ‘java juice?’
“I’ve gotta run out to the van and grab a saw,” he said, heading for the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”
I was about to follow him upstairs when I spied a box piled up with a few others in the corner next to the washing machine. I’d thought they were all boxes of books but I stared at the writing on one of them and saw the word KITCHEN. All of the hundreds of missing things I swore we’d lost when we moved came rushing into my head. What was in that box? The bin of missing cookie cutters? The ice cream machine I was sure I hadn’t given away? The waffle maker?
I moved the two boxes stacked on top of it and grabbed it. It wasn’t terribly heavy and I could have carried it upstairs to see what was inside. But I was impatient. I brought it over to the table in the middle of the basement and set it down on top of it. The table was covered in Rex’s tools and I gently pushed them aside to make room for the box.
I glanced up at the ceiling. It looked like he’d already taped off several areas in the ceiling where the vents were going to be cut. Several long orange cords ran from his power tools, past the furnace and up and into the crawl space.
I stepped around to the other side of the table, trying to remember where Jake had put his own stash of tools. I needed a box cutter to get through the packing tape sealing the box shut. My eyes scanned the basement, trying to remember, and, for some reason, I locked in on Rex’s orange cords.
Because they went through the crawl space. I craned my neck to get a better look. Sure enough, a tiny sliver of light shot through the crawl space. Sunlight was streaming in to the basement.
Through the secret entry.
I walked toward the crawl space to get a closer look. Maybe he just had a work light up there, I told myself. Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me.
I stood on my tiptoes and looked.
No. The cords ran through an opening in the wall to the outside world.
My stomach knotted.
It had to have been someone who knew about the opening.
Like the guy who inspected the house and spent four hours exploring it when we bought it.
My heart hammered in my chest. What was Rex’s connection to Olaf? Did he have one? Or was it just a coincidence that he’d known about the opening and was using it to run cords out to his truck?
My mind was spinning as I heard him coming back down the stairs.
I tried to steady my nerves but was afraid I looked more like a deer in the headlights.
He gave me a funny look as I stood there and stared at him. He glanced at the cords, then back at me. “Oh, I’m running those outside to my portable generator. I was afraid we might trip the breakers in here if I was running too many different things.” He grinned. “Don’t know how much this old wiring in here can take.”
I looked again at the cords. “Right.”
“Did you, um, know you could reach the outside like that?” he asked. “Through the wall?”
“Not until yesterday,” I said. “And Jake and I sealed up the cinder blocks after…we found it.”
“Looks like you missed a few,” he said. He shuffled his boots against the ground. “I just pulled one out to run the cords through. The mortar should have set if you did it yesterday.”
“Yeah, we were going to do the rest today,” I mumbled.
He nodded. “I probably have some stuff out in the truck. I can do it for you when I’m done. No charge.”
“How did you know it was there? The opening?”
He blinked several times, the color rising in his cheeks. “Oh, I, um, saw it when I did the initial inspection, I guess.”
“You did?”
He picked up his coffee from the table and took a long drink. “Yeah. Kind of a weird spot. Probably something to do with your coal chute. I guess I should’ve known about the coal chute, then, right?”
“Mmhmm.”
He started to say something, then spun the cup in his hands and lifted it to his lips.
And that’s when I saw it.
FORTY FIVE
Sexy Rexy.
It was written in black Sharpie, a little heart on either side of the inscription.
Rex noticed me staring at the cup, so he turned it so he could look at himself. Then he laughed. “You like my nickname from Java Jolt?”
Java Jolt was a coffee shop located about five blocks from our house. It had been a huge perk of moving to this side of town, at least for the kids. They loved that they could walk to Java Jolt for smoothies and cookies and other snacks. When friends came over to play when we’d first moved in, one of the things they always asked was if they could walk to Java Jolt. When I said yes, they would start to brainstorm what names they were going to give to the barista.
Because Java Jolt had become somewhat famous in Moose River for the handwritten names on the bottom half of their cups.
You ordered your drink and after you ordered, you told them your name and they wrote in fancy cursive on the bottom so that you’d know it was yours. And sometimes they drew little pictures or wrote down little notes to personalize the experience. It was a very cute way to make their business seem a little personal and unique.
But you didn’t dare just give them your regular name because they’d mock you. They wanted something fun and goofy and if you didn’t give it them, they’d make one up for you. Will regularly went and announced that he was Will The Thrill…unless he chose to make up a name like Winkleburton Sasberger. The younger girls usually gave them Barbie names. And Emily being Emily and a teenager, would just announce herself as Emily, at which point the barista would frown and write something like Emilameteenager on her cup and Emily would then roll her eyes when they called her name. Jake usually got his coffee as Jake The Snake and after one-time being called out as Crazy Daisy, I generally gave them the name Not Lazy Daisy so as not to sound like some coffee-loving lunatic.
All in good fun.
“Sexy Rexy,” I said out loud, the words sticking in my throat.
“I couldn’t think of anything the first time I went in there. They threatened me with Tyrannosaurs Rex, so I had to come up with something,” he said, grinning.
The knot in my stomach grew tighter. Maybe it was just a coincidence. But I was so tired of coincidence supposedly having played a role in all this.
“When you did the initial inspection for us,” I asked, trying to stall for time and trying to figure out what I wanted to do. “You found the opening? Up in the crawl space?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure I noted it on the paperwork.”
That might’ve been true, but our inspection report had been so long that our eyes had sort of glazed over at about the halfway mark. Our real estate agent covered the highlights—or lowlights, as Jake had called them—and that was it. We didn’t do a line by line reading of the thing.
“And did you also not find the coal chute?” I asked.
He set the cup down on the table and licked his lips. He glanced into the crawl space and seemed unsure of himself. “Well, I, uh…”
“I mean, I can’t believe you could’ve found the opening, but not the chute,” I said. “I know you said you didn’t. But the door is pretty obvious. I noticed immediately when I got up there to look at the frozen—”
“I’m sure I saw it,” he said, cutting me off. “I’m sure I did. And I’m sure I noted it in the report.”
I looked at the crawl space. “So you knew. About both. But you told us the other day you didn’t know about the door to the chute.”