The Tools That Came Home Early

He was standing beside the red chest on the gravel with his hands on his hips. Rex was ten feet away, leaning on a fender with his arms folded. Jeremy had run the envelope out from the shop at one-thirty, and Rex had been carrying it inside his coat for fifteen minutes, waiting on me. He had not touched a thing. That is how Rex is.

“Kenny Wiebe,” said Gil. “You here about this?”

“I am.”

“I paid fair.” He said it at once, the way a man says it who isn’t sure. “He had a bill of sale. He had his wife’s name on it.”

“Gil, what’s that box worth?”

He looked at me.

“A Snap-on double bank, roll cab and top chest, eleven drawers, with the whole set still in it?” I said. “Every Snap-on wrench from the 6 millimeter to the 32, ratchets in all three drives, a Mac impact gun, a Fluke meter, a Lisle puller set, the half-inch torque wrench. My brother paid $7,800 for the box alone. There’s another three thousand in what’s inside it.”

“I know what it’s worth,” said Gil quietly.

“And you paid $1,900.”

“He named his price.”

“He did,” I said. “Rudy would have named $190 if you’d offered it. He wasn’t selling a toolbox. He was selling a bar tab.”

Rex put his hand on my arm. A little pressure. Easy.

Gil Fogle looked at the red chest. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at the yellow strap he’d put across the top drawer himself, to keep it from sliding open on the road, and something went through the man’s face that I did not expect.

“Whose was it?” he said.

“My brother’s. Heath Wiebe. He worked at Tri-County for 22 years. He died the winter before last.”

“Heath Wiebe,” Gil said. “That fella from the implement place? Fixed my cousin’s Case combine over in Hartwell?”

“Probably.”

“He’s got a boy.”

“Landon. He’s 15, turns 16 in December. Heath left him the box and the truck. Rudy Pate is the boy’s stepfather.”

Gil took off his cap and turned it around in his hands.

“I didn’t know that,” he said. “He said it was his and his wife’s. He didn’t say any of that.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“He had that cash in his hand before I got my trailer turned around. Said his kid didn’t care about it.” Gil put the cap back on, harder than he had to. “I’d have asked more questions. I should have.”

“You can ask them now.”

He took a breath. “Nineteen hundred is what I paid. I’ll take nineteen hundred.”

Rex reached inside his coat for the envelope.

Gil counted it standing up, and it was right. Then he did something I put down here because it belongs in this account. He backed his own trailer up to the chest, set the ramp, and walked it up with a winch and a pallet jack, with Rex steering and nobody talking. He ratcheted it down himself with two straps this time. “Gas is on me,” he said.

He wiped his hands on his jeans.

“There’s one more thing. A fella came by around eleven and bought two pieces out of the lot before I’d even priced them. The half-inch torque wrench and the three-quarter drive set. Cash, a hundred and forty. Local. Farmer. I didn’t write down the name.”

“You know him?”

“Drives a green Chevy. Seed cap.”

I had a good idea who drove a green Chevy and wore a seed cap in the north half of our county, and I could not afford to be wrong.