Cellar Full of Cole: A Cole Sage Mystery #2 Read online

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  The drive to the suburbs was like a breath of fresh air. Rows of broad limbed trees and ranch-style houses lined the road as Cole made his way to the Kosciuszko’s. The house was set back off the road and a large security light washed the driveway, and another on the garage covered most of the front yard.

  Sophie Kosciuszko greeted Cole at the front door with a hug and a soft “thank you for coming” whispered in his ear. Jeff’s greeting was hale and hearty from the kitchen where he was wiping the table where one of the kids spilled milk. The house was clean except for the hurricane of toys left across the floors and couches leading to the family room. Cole considered it a “good” mess, a lived-in, family kind of clutter that made him think of his granddaughter Jenny and her way of distributing toys throughout the house.

  “Come on in.” Jeff waved toward the kitchen. “The last mess of the day.”

  “Mommy, who’s here?” came from the top of the stairs.

  “You know its Cole, and you know its bedtime. So, go to sleep.”

  “Mind if I say hello and goodnight?” Cole offered.

  “It may be the only way.” Sophie sighed.

  “Hey, rug rat, why aren’t you asleep?” Cole growled like a big ogre at the doorway to Melanie’s room.

  The five-year-old gave a giggle and said, “Cause I was waiting to say ‘hi’.”

  “Okay, so say ‘hi.’”

  “Hi, Uncle Cole,” Melanie said cheerfully.

  “Now, go to sleep!” Cole growled again in an ogre voice as he crossed the room and tickled Melanie through the covers.

  He was surprised she remembered their little game. It was almost a year since his last visit. Cole bent down and gave Melanie a peck on the top of the head and she magically pretended to fall sound asleep. At that, Cole crossed the hall to Aaron’s room, where the eight-year-old awaited a more grownup greeting, and a chance to tell Cole of his latest soccer triumphs. Having gone through all the right steps of the bedtime game, Cole returned to Sophie and Jeff waiting in the kitchen.

  As promised, sitting in the center of the kitchen table was a blue willow pattern plate with a tall, gooey, tear-apart baked delight Sophie called ‘Monkey Bread’. There were three plates, three tall glasses, a stack of napkins, and a plastic gallon jug of milk also waiting at the table.

  The three sat down and after a few minutes of the latest news on the kids, school, and the refurnishing business, Sophie reached for the jug of milk.

  “Cole, we have a problem,” she said, breaking the pink plastic seal on the lid of the milk jug.

  “It’s not so much a problem as a dilemma,” Jeff interrupted.

  “Call it what you will, but we need some advice, help, assistance, manpower or whatever it’s going to take to solve it.”

  “Sophie’s being a bit dramatic about this,” Jeff said as Cole shot Sophie a “let him talk” look.

  “All right, she told me a little bit of what’s going on. Why don’t you fill me in on the rest?” Cole reached over and tore a chunk off the gooey, chocolate-swirled, caramel, pull-apart bread from the center of the table.

  “Look, I’m not sure you want to get involved in this,” Jeff said apologetically.

  “I’ve got a whole lot of Monkey Bread to finish off while I decide. Let ‘er rip.” Cole took a bite of bread.

  “You kind of know my brother, Terry. He is, well, kind of different. Not what you would call a real social guy. He’s taken the stuff that happened in our lives differently than I did—harder, maybe. So, I’ve always kind of looked out for him. Now he has made some demands that are more difficult than we’re used to.” Jeff paused. “He needs some counseling or something, but there’s no way he’ll go to get help. So, I’m at a loss as to what to do.”

  “Tell him what Terry is really all about. Everything. Cole is a friend, and he’s not going to print the story or go out and tell the world. He needs to know what kind of person we’re dealing with.” There was a definiteness of intent to Sophie’s words.

  “It’s hard, Cole. I respect you a lot, but this is very personal and hard for me to talk about. But that’s not the—” Jeff paused and took a deep breath. “You see, my brother has some real issues.”

  “Such as?” Cole forgot how Jeff could never get to the point.

  “First of all, you need to understand that my family has some real problems. Even as a kid, I sensed something was wrong. My parents slept in separate bedrooms, which I guess some people do, but in all my life, I never saw them touch each other. I don’t mean mushy stuff or kissing or things like that but actually touching. They never did, ever. Not at Christmas, birthdays, ever. We were never hugged as children. I really believe my mother didn’t want kids.

  “My aunt would babysit us after school until my mother would get off work, then half the time, she wouldn’t pick us up. Sometimes it would be 10 o’clock at night, and my aunt would have to call and tell her to come get us. I know it was hard for my aunt and her family, but I think that she knew we were better off with her. Even a person with good intentions, though, can only take so much.” Jeff paused before going on.

  “Things really changed when I was 12. My father killed himself. Hanged himself, actually, and Terry was the one who found him. My mom sent him to the garage to get a package of hamburger out of the freezer. He found my father naked and hanging from a big orange extension cord he’d thrown over the rafters. All around his feet were porno magazines. When my mother came looking for Terry, he was looking at the magazines.”

  “I think I might have a few issues, too,” Cole said.

  “Yeah, well, after that he exhibited some pretty strange behavior. Exposing himself, drawing sexually explicit pictures, stuff like that. The school was always calling the house. The bad stuff really started when he hit high school. There was this girl. She was kind of slow.”

  “She was retarded, special class,” Sophie interrupted. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

  “Yes, she was mentally handicapped. Terry and the girl were caught in the light booth in the theatre. The girl told the principal that she would let Terry—well; he could do what he wanted because he gave her chocolate chip cookies. She said she didn’t care, and he seemed to like getting ‘all naked’ with her. Who knows how long it had been going on. The parents pressed the matter, and he ended up in juvenile hall for six months for sexual assault. After that, it was all downhill for a while. When he was seventeen—” Jeff cleared his throat.

  “Tell him. Tell him what you think happened next,” Sophie pressed.

  “I believe he raped my mother. It was like child molesting in reverse. I used to hear him leave her room in the middle of the night.” Jeff put his hand over his eyes and paused for a long moment. “I didn’t know what to do. She never said anything, but she never wanted to be left alone with him. She would ask me to stay up and watch TV with her half the night. Finally, she asked me to help her put a barrel bolt lock on the inside of her bedroom door. Not long after that, she married my stepfather, Max. She barely knew the man. She left us in the old house and moved into his. That fall I went away to school. I never went back to that house.

  “When I would come home for holidays, I stayed with my mother and Max. Then when my mom got sick, Terry seemed to change. He met a nice girl named Martine, and they dated for quite a while. There was talk of them getting engaged. That ended, too.”

  “Tell him why,” Sophie said firmly.

  “She was cleaning the house and found some pictures and videos.”

  “What kind, Jeff?” Sophie was pushing, and Cole was getting very uncomfortable.

  “They were of children doing unspeakable things. Okay, happy?” Jeff glared at Sophie. “Martine broke up with him, and he hasn’t had a girlfriend since.”

  “Whew, he’s one sick puppy. But do you think he’s violent? I mean, do you think he’s capable of hurting you or Sophie?” Cole stopped short of mentioning the kids.

  “I’d like to think he wouldn’t
hurt us. He has never been allowed to see or be near Aaron and Melly. I don’t know what he’s into besides—” Jeff couldn’t bring himself to finish his sentence. “Drugs could have brought on this demand for money, change in personality, right?”

  “Certainly could,” Cole answered. “So, what is the deal exactly with his demand of the farm? From what Sophie said, it sounds that your mother’s wishes were pretty clear.”

  “Before this got so ugly, we met with our attorneys. He feels that since I got money from the estate, I should forfeit my half of the farm. I said that was silly because he gets free rent. If he wants to sell, we’ll split the proceeds and that will be that. He’s made it real clear he no longer wants anything thing to do with me or my family. The meeting broke up when he and his lawyer walked out.

  “The last time I drove out to the farm, it was like a fortress. Razor wire and crazy keep out signs everywhere. All the out-buildings were leveled—the sheds and barn, the chicken coops, and corral for the cows. There were no animals anywhere. He even cut down the fruit trees in the garden. Everything has turned to decay.”

  “It was as though he wants to make it worthless,” Sophie interjected.

  “He has gotten a restraining order against me,” Jeff said softly.

  “What for, have you threatened him?”

  “No. He said I was stealing things off the farm. He even accused me of selling the tractor.”

  “Look, I really don’t understand. What can I do to help? You guys are in pretty good shape. Is the money really worth the torment? Either sign it over to Terry or you need the police to get involved.”

  “The police would only make things worse.” Jeff held his hands up in surrender. “I would sign the stupid thing over to him and be done with it but we need the money.”

  “What do you mean?” Cole was surprised by the shift in the conversation.

  “We have some things we could get done if we—”

  “Say what you mean,” Sophie snapped.

  “Okay, we’re broke. Happy?” Jeff shot a look at Sophie that said more than his words.

  “Finally! We’re broke. You said it. We need to sell that stupid farm. We need the money.” Sophie stood and walked to the sink, her back to the table. Her head was bowed, and her shoulders shook.

  “Look, this is a bad situation, and it can only get worse if you two start fighting each other.” Cole sighed. “Jeff, do you think Terry is the one making the calls in the middle of the night?”

  “Probably.”

  “Do you think he painted your fence?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Killed your dog?”

  There was a long pause. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Put the cat in the mailbox?”

  Jeff nodded his head.

  “Little by little, it’s getting worse. I’m no expert, but you can see he’s getting bolder and more cruel. You’ve spoken with your attorney. Can’t he force a sale?”

  “Not the way the will was written.”

  “Okay, then it’s either file a police report or have somebody go talk to him.” As the words passed his lips, Cole wished he hadn’t said them.

  Sophie returned to the table, her eyes red from tears. “That’s what we were hoping you would do.”

  TEN

  Cole called Chuck Waddell at the Chronicle before he even drank his mocha or showered the morning after meeting with Jeff and Sophie. He told Chuck his idea for a story on child abuse with the hook being the attacks on the three little girls in San Francisco. Cole suggested it be co-published by the Chronicle and Sentinel as his last and first works. Chuck agreed to look into the legal aspects but thought it could be done.

  Chris Ramos, Chuck’s life partner, spent days scouring the city for apartments for Cole to rent. He created a short list of possibilities, but the market was real hot at the moment, and good properties didn’t stay on the market long. Before he knew it, Cole agreed to fly out to San Francisco for a long “working” weekend. It was agreed Chris would show him what he found, Cole could get some background for the story, and Chuck could get all the paperwork signed so Cole could hit the ground running when he arrived in San Francisco for good. It was decided that Cole would fly on Thursday afternoon.

  The drive out to the Kosciuszko farm took nearly 90 minutes. The traffic in the city was snarled and stagnant. Cole used the gridlock to go over what he would say to Terry Kosciuszko. Plan after plan was scrapped, and it was clear that he really didn’t have a clue what to do or say. A lot of his role-playing was thinking about what he could have done to get out of this in the first place.

  Jeff and Sophie didn’t exaggerate their description of the farm. On a road of green row crops, pastureland, and dairy cows, the Kosciuszko place was as out of place as a skyscraper would’ve been. At first glance, it seemed scorched and barren. A closer look revealed three ditches to nowhere. Deep piles of soil ran along what must have been trenches three to four feet deep. The buildings that Jeff said were torn down, lay in rubble where they stood. A smaller out-building, that looked like some of the dairy buildings he passed, was totally demolished. The Caterpillar tractor was still parked with its front wheels on top of the ruins it had knocked down.

  In the center of the brown piles of soil and acres of dry golden grass sat the house. There were no shrubs or trees in the yard. There was no lawn or landscaping of any kind. It could have been dropped there from any late ‘60s subdivision in America—a wide ranch-style house with red brick trim, shingle roof, and a big white garage door. The difference was it looked dead.

  The fence across the front of the farm was part chain link and part hog wire. Looped across the top of the fencing was a single strand of razor wire. The image of hog wire topped with the vicious spikes of the razor wire was hard to process. Who was its intended target? The gate at the front of the property was closed and, oddly enough, a padlock dangled at the end of a chain that suggested it was locked most of the time. It didn’t take much effort to push the gate open. Cole left it open, just in case he needed to make a hasty exit, and drove up to the house.

  Chicago is full of abandoned buildings more welcoming than this place, Cole thought as he approached the front door. He took a deep breath and rapped on the door. Next to the door, the wires for a doorbell poked from the wall. Cole knocked a second time, only a bit harder. A minute passed. Cole breathed a sigh of relief and was about to return to the car when he heard the sound of a motor. Turning, he saw a dusty green Ford pickup approaching the house.

  “Who the hell are you?” shouted the morbidly obese, red-faced man that Cole barely recognized as Terry Kosciuszko.

  “How ya doin’, Terry? Cole Sage. Remember me? I’m a friend of Jeff’s.”

  It was hard to believe the man coming around to the front of the truck was the same man Cole met at Jeff and Sophie’s housewarming three years before. He looked like he weighed close to 300 pounds, and his face was the color of a tomato. The T-shirt he wore was stretched so tight, it was nearly see-through. He wore a pair of cargo shorts, so filthy their original color was hard to detect. Terry’s feet were a shade of deep burgundy and overran the flip-flops so badly that only the straps were visible. The skin on his legs was covered with psoriasis and swollen to the point it looked like they would split open.

  “I don’t want any,” Terry barked out.

  “I haven’t got any,” Cole said calmly.

  “What do you want?”

  “Have a little talk.”

  “Why?” Terry now stood just a few feet from Cole.

  “Jeff and Sophie are concerned about you.”

  “Like hell they are.”

  “You’d be surprised. Can we sit down or something?”

  “No,” Terry said emphatically. “My business is none of yours.”

  “That’s funny,” Cole countered.

  “What’s funny?”

  “That’s what I told Jeff and Sophie. What you do is none of my business. But they asked me to talk to you anywa
y. They thought a third party in the situation, who wasn’t a lawyer, might be able to straighten things out.”

  “Like I said, it’s none of your business.”

  “How long have you lived here?” Cole asked, ignoring Terry’s hostile tone.

  “All my life.”

  “Wish I could have seen it before. Maybe I could appreciate the changes you’ve made.”

  “What are you, some kind of smart-ass comedian?”

  Cole was momentarily distracted by the rattling caw of a crow.

  “It is just strange to me that someone who wants something bad enough to skin a cat wouldn’t take better care of it.”

  “You’re on my land, and I could shoot you for a trespasser,” Terry said as white foamy saliva gathered in the corners of his mouth.

  “Nope. Still murder. I’m here at the request of the 50% owner of this farm. Invited people aren’t trespassing. So, why don’t you drop the tough guy act and tell me what you think the problem is.”

  “There is no problem. My mother left the place to me,” Terry said.

  “Then why should Jeff sign over his share if it’s already yours?” Cole replied, surprised at Terry’s argument.

  “He tricked her.”

  “And her lawyer?”

  “They don’t like the way I live.”

  “I must admit it is a bit barren out here.”

  “What are you into, Mr. Sage?” Terry’s tone softened.

  “How do you mean?” Cole felt the conversation taking a turn he was not prepared for.

  “I like little kids.” Terry leered at Cole and then broke into a big grin.