Secrets and Revelations (Bellingwood #4) (10 page)

BOOK: Secrets and Revelations (Bellingwood #4)
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"Stop talking. Right now." Polly demanded.

"I want to know why this little whore is here. It is enough that I have to put up with the likes of her at the nursing home, but I will not have her destroying these pieces of art. She's worthless, just like her mother."

"Mrs. Rothenfuss, I have told you once before that this behavior in my home is unacceptable. There will be no more conversation with you after this."

"I will call the police about this," the woman yelled.

"Bring the tone of your voice down immediately," Polly said, as quietly as she could.
She glanced at Billy and Rachel and questioned them with her eyes. Billy's face was furious. Sweet, shy Rachel looked like a cat ready to pounce. There wouldn't be any answers coming from that side of the room.

"Jeff?" Polly asked and he stepped over to them. "What happened here?"

Mrs. Rothenfuss opened her mouth as if to speak and Polly put her palm up in front of the woman's face. "I want you to be absolutely still," Polly said, "until I’m ready to hear what you have to say. One more word and you will be removed from the premises and not allowed back in."

"I believe," Jeff said, "that she caught Rachel touching the corner of a quilt."

"That little whore's filthy hands could damage these pieces of art."

"That's it. I wasn't kidding," Polly said. "You either leave on your own right now or I will find another way.
Jeff, escort Mrs. Rothenfuss to the front door, please. We'll work the rest of this out later."

He looked surprised, but said, "This way, ma'am."

"You haven't heard the end of this!" she screamed back at Polly as she pulled her arm out of Jeff's hand. "I will destroy you!"

Polly took a few deep breaths and found that her eyes were watering. She brushed the tears away and stepped over to Billy and Rachel.
The girl dropped to the floor and began to sob. "I hate that woman. She won't leave us alone. Everywhere I go, she's there."

"What is up?" Polly asked.

"She's a horrible, horrible person. She hates my mother and has done everything she can to get me fired from the nursing home. Her father lives there and he likes me, but if I'm anywhere around when she comes, she starts yelling. I've learned to keep an eye out and escape back into the kitchen."

"Why in the world does she hate you so much?" Polly asked. "And what was up with the quilt?"

"I didn't know she was here or I would never have come inside," Rachel said. "I saw that quilt," she pointed to the wall, "and wondered what they had used on the back. All I did was lift a corner to look and she caught me and began screaming. When she started in on my mom, I almost lost it. If Billy hadn't stopped me, I think I might have jumped her!"

Billy hadn't said a word, but he did kneel down on the floor beside Rachel.
Polly took a seat on the closest bench, leaning into the girl. She looked up as Jeff came back around the corner.

"Well," he said. "I have no idea what's going to happen next. This is going to be entertaining."

"I'm sorry," Polly said. "But she pushed me over the edge and I wasn't going to threaten her and not follow through."

"Actually, I should apologize to you. I was so concerned with making this all work out, I was ready to put up with crap that no one should take. And there is no reason that any of our guests or family should ever have to take that abuse.
She's gone now. We'll see what happens next."

"How many of the quilts are actually up?" Polly asked him.

"I think we have thirty percent of them hung. The rest were going to be taken care of this weekend, with a few stragglers before the show next week." He took a deep breath and let it out, then knelt before Rachel.

"I'm sorry, honey, that you had to experience that. I should have stepped in earlier," he said to her. "That woman has some venom where you're concerned, though. If I were you, I'd watch my back."

Rachel looked up at him and her eyes grew hot again, "She'd better freakin' watch her back with me. I've about had it. Mom and I are tired of putting up with her crap."

"Is she this bad to Caleb?" Billy asked.

"No, she doesn't care about him. It's like he doesn't exist. Do you know that she tried to get her husband to buy the house we rent so she could evict us? We didn't know what was going on until Mom overheard her at the grocery store bragging about it. She called the landlord and he called Mr. Rothenfuss and it was all over.

"Wow, she really wants to hurt you guys." Billy was astounded. His face showed the shock everyone was feeling.

Rachel stood up, "Well, that does it. I'm done with her pushing me around. She can say whatever she wants from now on, I'm not going to put up with it. If I have to get up in her face, I'll do it. But, that old biddy is not going to bully me or my mom again. I don't care what mom says."

She took Polly's hand, "You showed me how to talk to her. That was really awesome."

"I don't think it helped. In fact, it might have cost us some business here. But I won't put up with people messing with my friends."

Jeff cut in, "I don't think it will cost us that much. Let me worry about that. I'll take care of it. You did the right thing. I didn't."

"We'll see," Polly said, rolling her eyes.

"Come on, Billy.” Rachel took his hand.
“I need to go home and tell Mom what happened, just in case she decides to do something awful to us. Then, you're taking me out to dinner."

They cut through the kitchen, heading for his apartment and Jeff walked with Polly to the office.

"I have no idea what tripped that woman over the edge, but someone should speak with her husband about counseling or something for her. When I first met her, she was difficult, but this is over the top. I'd have to say that she is insane."

"Do you think it's the pressure of the quilt show?" Polly asked.

"I suppose that could be part of it, but there's something more. Oh well," he sighed. "There's nothing I can do about it."

He followed her into her office and sat down. "I'm going to call Marla Singer and see what she says. The quilters were very happy with this location and most of them tend to ignore her antics."

"I am sorry if I've screwed this up for you," Polly began and he held his hand up to stop her.

"You never know what people are going to do, especially when they're a bit off kilter. That poor woman slipped clear to the other side of kilter."

Jeff went to his office and Polly sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. It had been such a good day. As soon as she thought that, her mind raced off to think about Ruth Ann and the scrapbook in her apartment. She felt her palms get clammy and she tried to think of anything else, but her subconscious was having none of it.

She began seeing the pictures from the pages and the words from Ruth Ann's blog swirled through her mind. She pressed her eyes more tightly together and said out loud, "Nat, Nan, Demi, Daisy, Obiwan, Luke, Leia."

Polly sputtered as she felt something on her lips, opened her eyes and saw Henry grinning at her. He kissed her again and she let him.

"Well, that's better!" He kissed her one more time and she sat up. "What were you muttering about?"

"I was listing my warm-blooded lovelies to get my mind off of bad things."

"How could you have any bad things in your life? I'm here to make them all go away."

"Make Cindy Rothenfuss and Ruth Ann Marshall go away and I'm yours forever." Polly wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned on his belly.

"If you don't want to see Ruth Ann next week, give me her number and I'll make her go away. I can do that for you.
As for Cindy Rothenfuss, how did she upset you today?"

Polly told him about the encounter between the woman and Rachel Devins and he sat down across the desk and listened.

"Jeff tells me not to worry," she finished, "but I am afraid I screwed up."

"Let him worry about it then. You did the right thing and by the way, this is your house. You get to do what you want."

"Uh huh. So what are you doing tonight?"

"Roy and I are going down to the Drake Diner for dinner.
I promised him at least one trip down there. Do you want to join us?"

"No," she scowled. "You two can have your bonding time together. I'll find something to do around here all by myself."

"I was going to talk to you about tomorrow morning. Do you still want to head over to Story City and check out the things in your storage unit? I'm free after all."

"That would be awesome!" Polly perked up. "Thank you. I was tempted to head over by myself, but having you there would be much better. What time do you want to leave?"

"What if I pick you up about nine? Will you be done with the horses by then?"

"You can pick me up earlier than that. Rachel Devins is going to be here to help and I know that Jason will show up as soon as his mother lets him out of the house. Eliseo will have plenty of people to do the work."

"Then let's leave at seven and get breakfast somewhere. We'll figure out what it will take to get your things to Bellingwood and maybe I can talk you into a quick trip down to the new farm store in Ankeny."

"Great! I need to pick up a hat and some boots for Jason's birthday."

"You won’t find that stuff there,” he said. "But, I know a great place in Des Moines. Wear your comfortable shoes. We're going to make a day of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

It
was the first time since she'd gotten the horses that she didn't even go downstairs and out to the barn to check on them. Andrew and Jason had arrived early with their mother, so Andrew had taken Obiwan out for a walk and Jason had headed to the barn to meet up with Rachel and Eliseo.

When Henry pulled up in front of her garage, she dashed out, ready to go and excited to be free of all her responsibilities for the day. They ended up at a diner in Story City, one that Polly remembered her Dad taking her to a few times. After all that had been going on throughout the last week, she was nearly giddy to be out for a day. A breakfast buffet in a small hometown diner was the perfect way to celebrate.

After they ate, Polly directed Henry through town to the storage space where her Uncle Clyde had unloaded everything from her father’s home. He had hired a moving company to pack the contents of their house in order to sell it.

He pulled up in front of the garage door and waited while she unlocked
and opened the door.

They stood in front of her childhood memories and he
drew her close. "That's a lot of stuff, Polly."

The resigned tone of his voice caused her to
laugh. "I know! Dad wasn't a hoarder, but if something was important, he saved it. I really don't know what I'm going to find in here, to be honest.

"Did your dad build this?" Henry pointed to a wooden toolchest that Polly didn't recognize.

"I'm sure he did. He said he had more fun building the tools for his shop than he did buying them new. If it looks like someone built it, that was him."

"This is really nice work. And how about this dresser?" Henry put his hand on the top of a small four-drawer dresser that had been in Polly’s room. "Polly, your Dad was a craftsman."

That made her feel wonderful and she smiled at him. "If there is anything here that you think you could use or would like to have at your shop, I want you to take it. These things probably need a nice home and I'm certainly not the person to give it to them."

"If nothing else, I will take them to the shop and store them for you. You might want them someday to share with someone else."

"Henry Sturtz, you are the person I want to share them with. What are you talking about?" Polly strode over to him and grabbed him around the waist, looking up into his eyes.

Those same eyes laughed at her. "Polly, I know that. I was really talking about a day when a kid in your life would grow up and want to work with wood."

"Are you telling me you want kids now?" She was laughing at him and he squeezed her tight.

"I'm not telling you a thing. But, I will keep this equipment for you ... for me ... for us ... for whomever, whenever. Is that good enough?"

"If you take some of that, it might make it possible for me to put the rest into the garage."

"You have an immense garage! For heaven's sake, I've never built anything as big as that monstrosity. I'm pretty sure you could put your truck and mine, plus all of this stuff in there."

"I should hire someone to bring it all over. Then I can look through boxes on my own time."

"You could," he agreed. "Did you want to dig through anything today? We can get to quite a few of the boxes and they look fairly well labeled."

Polly laid her head against Henry's chest. "This is a lot of work," she complained. "I don't want to."

He kissed the top of her head and pushed her away. "We have shopping to do today. We must get busy." He checked his watch. "We'll work until eleven thirty unless you find something that takes us longer than that. Then we'll head for Ankeny and Des Moines. How does that sound?"

"Fine," she grumped. He swatted her on her bottom and pushed her into the bowels of the storage unit. Polly found boxes of kitchen ware and china, books and clothes.

"They packed his clothes!" she said. "Who does that?"

"What else were they going to do with the stuff?"

"I don’t know, but it's still weird."

"They probably thought it was a little strange, too. Keep looking."

"Here's a box called 'Office Papers.' I wonder what's in it."

"Open the gate on the truck, set it there and look through it," Henry replied. "Here’s another interesting box."

They set both their boxes on the opened gate of the truck and Henry pulled a pocket knife out of his pants. "Always prepared," he chuckled and slit them open.

Polly's box contained file folders. Her father had been obsessive about organization and every bit of paper that he saved had been clearly marked. She remembered the filing cabinets in his office. They were in the back of the storage unit. Just after her father’s death, she had pulled out everything that looked as if it had to do with the farm and given it to her Uncle Clyde. Financial folders were turned over to her father's accountant and everything else put into a box to be dealt with later. Most of those files had simply been transferred from a cabinet to a box. She'd had little time to spend searching through things.

But now, she flipped through the tabs of the manila folders.

"It couldn't be easy, could it?" she muttered.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the man could have kept journals and labeled them 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983. He was so organized with everything else."

"There's this." Henry pulled out a three ring binder. The printed page that had been slipped into the front read, "Trip to South Dakota, 1996."

"I remember that trip! It was perfect! Just me and Dad. We went to Wall Drug and the Corn Palace. He said he wanted me to see everything. We went to a pow-wow and I saw a guy wrestle an alligator at Reptile Gardens and we were at Mount Rushmore. Oh, Henry. That was the best trip."

He opened the binder and inside were pictures in sleeves of the two of them and all of their adventures that year. Her father had typed a journal of the week, remembering Polly's excitement at each of the sites. Henry pulled a Reptile Gardens bumper sticker out and held it up.

"Oh, I remember!" she said. We got to the car just as a guy was about to put that on our bumper. Dad was furious that he would do that to us, so the guy just gave it to him."

They flipped through the pages. Interspersed with the photographs were stories of their two week vacation to the Black Hills.

"That was such a great vacation," Polly said. "I can't believe he did all of this work. But, I'm glad he did." She clutched the binder to her chest.

"Henry, I really miss him sometimes." Tears filled her eyes. "I don't miss him like this all the time, but I wish he was here." She pushed back the box she had been flipping through and hopped up onto the gate.

"I'm going to cry through every box out here, aren't I," she laughed through her tears.

"Probably," he agreed. "But, it won't be awful, will it?
They’re good memories, right?"

She patted the binder. "Good memories. Are there any more in there? We took a few more trips together before I got too busy for him."

"Here's one of a trip you took to the zoo in Omaha. It looks like you were with a couple of girlfriends."

"That was so much fun! He took us out to dinner and treated us like young ladies instead of little girls. I can't believe he kept all of this!"

There were pictures and short descriptions of the different things the girls did while they were at the zoo - their laughter and which animals they loved. Polly had stopped in front of the lemurs and couldn't keep her eyes off them. She had thought it would be great fun to have one of those tails wrapped around her arm.

When they saw the sloth, they'd laughed and pointed at their friend Nic, who didn't disagree with them. She was a sloth and knew it.

"Can we take this box with us today, Henry?"

"Of course! We'll take anything you can fit into the truck. We can come back tomorrow for more if that's what you want to do."

She turned around and flipped through the tabs of the folders one more time. "There's some interesting stuff here, but nothing that gives me a clue about Ruth Ann or Dad's travels."

"Come down from there and let's keep looking."

"I feel like I'm on a treasure hunt. You know," she jumped down and walked back into the unit, "Dad didn't like people messing around in his desk. He was really private about all that stuff. It's like I'm being naughty, digging into his life."

"Do I have to say it, Polly?"

"No, I know. He's dead. He doesn't care anymore."

They spent the next hour digging through boxes until she'd retrieved three more and shoved them into the truck. Two more boxes that had been labeled "Polly's room" revealed high school mementos and stuffed animals. Polly pulled out a well-worn grey elephant and hugged it tight.

"This is Tigger," she announced.

"But it's an elephant." Henry took the animal from her and turned it around and around, tugged on its trunk and flipped its tail. "It's not a Tigger."

"No kidding. I wanted it to be Tigger, but Dad gave me this for Christmas instead. I was in seventh grade and I cried and threw a tantrum about it. He took the elephant away and scooped up all the rest of the presents under the tree. Everything went into his office. When Mary showed up that afternoon to make dinner, she found a sulky girl in her bedroom and a father who was angry enough to wreck Christmas, sitting in front of the television.

"That was the only time I ever saw her get mad. She stalked into my bedroom, threw clothes at me from the dresser and ordered me to get dressed. I had five minutes. Then I heard her go out and tell my father to get all of the presents and put them back under the tree. When she sounded like that, neither of us dared argue. I got dressed, Dad got the presents.

"She came back and got me and I was too scared to do anything but follow her. She told me to apologize to him for being an unappreciative brat."

Henry gasped.

"I know!" Polly laughed. "I started to cry and she wouldn't let me get away with it. She lifted my chin and told me to look straight at my father and apologize. I think I got the words out and then the tears really flowed. He grabbed me and hugged me. Mary didn't have to do anything else. She went into the kitchen and made dinner while Dad and I opened our gifts. I named the elephant Tigger."

"Oh Polly
, you have the best stories. Your family had to have been a riot."

"That's why I need to know what was going on when I was born. Dad and I were best friends, even when I was awful. Why wouldn't he have told me everything?"

"We'll figure it out. I promise. Now, do you want to take anything more?"

She looked back into the storage unit and shook her head. "I think this is enough for now. I'll call around next week and find someone to move everything to Bellingwood."

They closed the door, locked the place up, and headed south. Polly took Tigger into the cab with her and set him on the console between them.

"I like remembering what it was to be a little kid," she said. "Do you have things like this in your house?"

"I'm still living among my memories," Henry laughed. "Mom and Dad bought everything new when they moved to Arizona and left me with their old stuff. I haven't had the energy to replace any of it."

He took her hand. "I still sleep in my old bedroom. I bought a new bed, but the idea of moving into their room is too weird. Especially with all of their furniture still in there."

"You should build your own bedroom set and replace it. You could do that!"

"Polly, the way you keep me busy, I'll never have time to build something like that."

"Oh, come on. Sure you will. We should start looking at plans. All you need is something to make you get started. It can't be that difficult."

"Fine. You look for plans. I'll keep doing what I'm doing."

"You can't blow me off like that, you know. I don't go away easily."

"Boy, that's the truth. But, really. You look for plans and someday when I have time, I'll think about it. That still doesn't mean I'll move into my parent's room, though. That seems," he shuddered, "weird."

BOOK: Secrets and Revelations (Bellingwood #4)
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