Reflecting Love's Charms (Bellingwood Book 14)

by Diane Greenwood Muir

  "I know better than to let you sit on a project for too long. It starts stressing you out. If I don't keep up with you, it worries me that you'll just move us over here before the house is ready and I'll be stuck with cold showers and no heat this winter."

  "You aren't going to make the boys take cold showers, are you?" she asked.

  "They won’t have air conditioning for a while, so they'll be thankful for cool showers, but no. We'll make sure there's a bathroom that works and electricity in part of the house for them."

  "I met one of our neighbors today," Polly said. "Pat Lynch?"

  He shook his head. "I know they live around here, but I don’t know them very well. Her husband is Al or something? Dad probably knows them. Their kids were older than me."

  "She's talkative. I'm supposed to go over someday so I can meet Albert." Polly grinned. "Her Albert. I don't know if she's always called him that or if she was just laying claim in front of the new woman in the neighborhood."

  Henry laughed. "You're a bit of a threat, you know."

  "Barry the radar guy was here. He's not talkative. And he left without telling me anything. Did he talk to you?"

  "He's odd," Henry agreed. "He likes to do his thing and get out. You probably freaked him out by being here. I suppose you tried to talk to him."

  "Like any normal person," Polly said. "It was difficult, though."

  "I don't know if I want to tell you what he found."

  "Why not? Is it bad?"

  Henry shook his head. "No, but I was kind of thinking I'd like it to be a surprise. Can you wait?"

  " That's mean." Polly swatted his arm. "Are we safe in the yard?"

  "Let's just stay in the front yard. Okay?"

  "He found another room, didn't he?”

  "I'm not telling. Just stay out front until I can investigate. Will you try that?"

  She scowled. "I'll try. But I don't like it."

  "You have plenty of work to do on the side of the house over there and we're going to be busy all week building this porch. And besides, I think they're bringing in students from ISU tomorrow to finish in that room. Real live archeology."

  "At my house," Polly said. "That's just weird." She nodded. "Okay. I'll be good. Now can I help you haul these windows somewhere so they're safe?"

  CHAPTER NINE

  "Resting your weary head?" Jeff asked when he walked into her office.

  Polly looked up. "No, just deep in thought. Did you hear anything more from Stephanie?"

  "Not yet, but I won't give up. What happened to you yesterday? I didn't see hide nor hair of you and there was some rumor floating around that you found another body."

  Polly sighed. "I did. A poor girl on the highway. She was alive, Jeff. And then she wasn't. That was one of the rougher ones I've dealt with. I'm telling ya, right now I feel like the world is all upside down and I don't know how to get it back to where it belongs. This bit with Stephanie and Kayla is a mess. Why won't she talk to us? She should know better than to run away. You and I are the best fixers around."

  "The same thoughts I've had for the last couple of days," he said. "And I go back and forth from worrying about them to being mad at her for making such a rash decision. Then I'm back to worrying again."

  She nodded. "How's Kristen doing today?"

  "We spent more time training and she's picking it up. You got me thinking yesterday and if Stephanie does come back and I give her more responsibility around here, training someone like Kristen is the right thing to do. She's a nice girl. Very pleasant on the phone and with people who come in the front door." He frowned. "If Stephanie doesn't come back, maybe we're training her replacement."

  "Let's not think about that yet. Are you going to be here for Rebecca's party Sunday afternoon? I know that’s a lot of extra time for you to spend in Bellingwood."

  He smiled at her. "Maybe I'll move in with you for the weekend."

  "Rebecca hasn't said anything to me yet about the party," Polly said. "She'd usually be asking a million questions and telling me what she wants to have happen, but it's like she doesn't want to think about it without Kayla here."

  Jeff reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "That's a great idea."

  "What?"

  He finished typing and looked at her. "I just laid a little guilt on Stephanie about Rebecca's party. They'd already bought her gift. I didn't see it at the trailer, so maybe they took it with them."

  Kristen tapped on Polly's door. "Mr. Lindsay, there's a phone call for you on line one. Do you want me to transfer it in here or to your office?" She paused. "Or would you rather I take a message?"

  He stood up. "I'll get it in my office. Thank you, Kristen."

  She smiled and backed out as he walked out of the door.

  Polly leaned back and looked around, thinking back to the day that Doug and Billy helped unpack her knick-knacks and Star Wars memorabilia. She’d been so excited to have an office of her own in a business she was going to create. Things had changed so much in the last few years. Sometimes it was hard to remember all that had happened.

  It wouldn't take that much to pack it all back up. Maybe she could take over one of the rooms at Bell House when they were finally settled. The library there would be a great place to work. Maybe she’d take time to do some writing of her own, among the books that had filled her life with so much. That would be a wonderful room with her books on deep, dark wooden shelves interspersed with Star Wars characters and toys. She rolled back and put her hand on top of the R2D2 that she'd gotten as a shower gift. The Millennium Falcon could hang from the ceiling. Kessel Run - twelve parsecs.

  That would be the last room to come together, though. Bedrooms would come first. No, the kitchen had to come first. At least that way they'd have a place to gather as a family. Then the bedrooms and then a living room. She was going to miss the intimacy of the apartment. They were always passing each other as they moved from room to room, but that would end as everyone claimed their own place in that immense sprawling house.

  "Ms. Giller?" Kristen stood in her doorway again.

  Polly rolled back to her desk. "What is it, Kristen?"

  "Mr. Lindsay is busy and I have a woman on the phone who wants to rent the entire addition for a month. Do we do that?"

  "Absolutely. You can send the call in here if you don't want to take it."

  "She was asking about a discount since they're renting the whole place."

  "We can always be flexible," Jeff said from behind Kristen. "Put her on the speaker, and you and I will work through it together." He grinned at Polly and waited for Kristen to step back out.

  Polly leaned back. She'd signed checks and sorted through the mail. It felt good to sit still and she wasn't ready to head back over to the Bell House quite yet.

  They had worked until dusk settled in last night. She and Sylvie tore through the bushes, finishing that project. Andrew and Rebecca weren't quite as excited about working with them as they were about helping Henry and Heath on the front porch. But a lot of work had gotten done and Polly felt good about their progress.

  Eliseo had done his best to convince her to remove the arbor walkway. There was no good purpose for it. Last night, Polly finally got on board. It led from the hidden gate in old Mr. Bridger's yard to the back yard of the Bell House where he'd planted the marijuana crop, but unless Franklin Bell had originally owned the land that belonged to Jim Bridger, she couldn't understand why the arbor was ever built. If it had been in an area that regularly saw traffic, she'd have left it alone, but it was just taking up space.

  Sylvie had started pulling the vines off the arbor while Polly cleaned up the brush from beside the house, but they went home before she got too far on it. Polly had half a mind to ask Eliseo to bring the horses over again and pull the thing loose from the ground; roots, vines, posts and all.

  "Got a minute?" Jeff asked.

  "Sure. Who was that?"

  "It's pretty cool," he said. "A writer's workshop wants to re
nt the space for the entire month of June."

  "Okay. Just four rooms?"

  "That's for the organizers and leaders. They also want to rent the back classroom and the computer room."

  "It seems a little late to be planning something like this."

  He chuckled. "June of next year."

  "Oh!" she said with a laugh. "That makes more sense. I couldn't figure out how they'd line that all up."

  "It's already filled for this June."

  "With what?"

  "Everything we have is filling up for June and July, in anticipation of the Sesquicentennial."

  "That's weird. It's a month early."

  He shrugged. "A family is taking the top for both months."

  "Descendants of one of the founding families?" Polly asked.

  "Got me. Stephanie took the reservation." His face scrunched up in annoyance. "I'm angry right now. She'd better turn that car of hers around right now and come back to Bellingwood."

  "Tell her that," Polly said, pointing to his pocket. "Rather than telling me, every time you get mad or worried, tell her. Annoy the heck out of her."

  "Rather than you?" he asked.

  She pushed a drawer shut in her desk and turned off her monitors, then stood up and walked toward him. "I didn't say that. But I’m leaving to go rip out an arbor. When I come back, I expect you to have found Stephanie and convinced her to return so I don't have to keep hearing about this."

  "What?" Jeff looked at her in shock.

  "I'm kidding. But it would certainly help if you could just take care of that for us."

  He backed up as she walked toward the door. "You're always entertaining, Polly."

  "It's my best thing." She walked out and turned back. "Have a good day, you two." Polly walked on upstairs to change into work clothes again. The animals begged to follow her, but she managed to get in and out again.

  Her first stop was at Sweet Beans. Camille looked up when she walked in. "You look like you're working hard," Camille said.

  "Heading over to the house to rip out an old arbor. One of these days I'm going to have control of that yard so I can think about something else."

  "Sylvie told me the other day about how much work you've put into all of the different places in town." Camille waved her hand around the shop. "Even this. You've taken on big projects."

  "This might be the one that does me in," Polly said. "I was too stupid to know it couldn't be done when I bought Sycamore House. Then Henry convinced me that the inn would be no problem, and I was only partly involved in the coffee shop. Now I'm fully aware and fully involved and I have no idea where to find the end of it."

  "You'll be working away and one day you'll realize it's all finished," Camille said. "If you need someone to paint walls, though, I can help with that. I finished up our dining room last week. That was the last room."

  "How’s it going?"

  Camille shrugged. "It's great living with Elise, but owning a home is hard work. There are so many things that I didn't know I needed to know." She grinned. "And now I know. Believe it or not, I replaced fixtures in the bathroom by myself. And, I put new guts in my toilet. By. Myself."

  "That's awesome."

  "I also discovered how easy it was to replace a toilet seat. Who knew?"

  "So you're the queen of bathroom repair now."

  Camille put Polly's coffee on the counter. "Don’t be getting all crazy on me. But I can install a new shower head, too." She chuckled. "Elise helped and we're going to do hers this weekend. You should come over sometime."

  "Whenever you're ready for me."

  "Maybe not yet. I'm replacing the carpet in the living room next month."

  "By yourself?"

  Camille shuddered. "No. I hope that when that’s done, I'll be finished with most of the major changes. I'd like to sit in the living room some evening without looking around and finding one more thing that needs to be cleaned up, fixed or changed. And it's my own problem. I didn't like the brown outlet covers, so I changed everything to ivory. I wanted a ceiling fan in the living room, so I had that installed a few weeks ago."

  "You'll like that this summer," Polly agreed. "I'm glad the two of you are enjoying the house."

  "Elise is so quiet. She works all the time, so she's never in the way. And she does sweet things like buying flowers and leaving them in a vase on the kitchen table. If I'm not around and she makes a meal, she'll put one together for me with instructions on how to re-heat it."

  "Wow, that's really thoughtful. I didn't know she was like that."

  "She says she isn't," Camille said with a laugh, "but she's trying to remember to do things. Elise told me that if a thought flits through her head, she puts it on a sticky note and looks at it until she does it. The first flowers took her three weeks to finally get done, but then she found a shop in Ames that she drives by on her way home, so it's easier for her to do it now."

  "You two are good for each other."

  Camille leaned over the counter. "Don’t tell my mother, but I'm going out on a date Thursday night with a professor friend of Elise's."

  "She set up a date for you? Who is this girl and what did you do with my Elise?"

  "I think she just needed someone in her life who treated her like a normal person. I also think she was ready to be more involved, too."

  "So is this a blind date? Or have you met him?"

  "Blind date," Camille said. "That's why I'm not telling Mama until it's long past."

  "I can't wait to hear about it. I didn't do many blind dates." Polly didn't want to tell her that every blind date had been awful. Maybe Camille would have better luck. Those things had to work out for some people.

  "It should be fun." Camille looked up when the doorbell rang again. "That's a big bakery order for the bank. I need to take care of this."

  Polly nodded. "See you later." The first sip of her coffee brought an instant smile to her face. Sometimes it was the simplest things. She went back out to her truck and, feeling like the coffee had given her extra courage, dialed the sheriff's office in Boone and asked for Aaron.

  "You didn't dial my cell phone, so I have to assume that this isn't one of those calls," he said.

  "Nope. Just sitting in front of Sweet Beans and wondering if you know anything more about the girl from yesterday."

  He didn't say anything and Polly could almost see him take a deep breath before responding. She wasn't generally this forward, but that death had really shaken her up.

  "We don't have much more information yet," he said. "The autopsy isn't scheduled until later this afternoon. Even then, we won't have a full picture for about a week."

  "No ID or anything? Where she came from? Missing person reports? Anything?"

  "We're working on it, Polly. You know that."

  "What about the bones from the Bell House? Anything on those, yet?"

  Aaron sounded more relaxed at the change of subject. "Those are at a lab at Iowa State now. We don't have the resources to investigate something that old. I think you'll find that this is a perfect case for the forensics students there."

  She blew a breath out. "So I know nothing. About anything. I'm not a fan."

  "I understand that. As soon as I have any information that I am free to tell you, I will."

  "That means I have to go find it for myself. I'm sorry to be grumpy about this, but I'm ready for something to be solved."

  "It's been a rough week. But these mysteries always unravel."

  "I still don't know if there's hidden gold in Bellingwood somewhere," she grumbled, thinking back to earlier this year. She’d never really thought they would find the gold that Beryl’s ancestor had stolen, but a little part of her had hoped.

  Aaron laughed out loud. "What would you do if you found it?"

  "I'd fly to Hawaii until the house was completely redone and all of my things moved in."

  "I see."

  "But I'd probably find bodies washed up on the beach and their law enforcement wouldn't be nearl
y as nice to me as you are. Maybe I'd be safer if I just flew to the moon."

  "NASA would never understand how bodies fell out of space for you to find up there," he said.

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to stop feeling sorry for myself, but I seem to be failing. This is going to require more turned up ground, I can tell."

  "Turned up ground? Stay away from the cemetery, Polly Giller."

  She chuckled. "Got it. No, I'm tearing up the yard today. As soon as I can get all of the bad stuff out and Henry finishes the front porch, Eliseo will help me level the yard and make grass grow."

  "Then good luck with your day and I’ll call if I find out anything that I can tell you."

  "Thanks, Aaron." Polly took another drink from her coffee, dropped it into the cup holder, turned the truck on, backed out and headed for the Bell House. She was going to accomplish something today. Even if it was just ripping down that arbor.

  When she pulled into the driveway, she took another drink, then picked up her gloves and walked over to stand in front of the house. They'd put the floor joists in last night and she could see the shape of the porch. This was going to be wonderful when it was finally built. Henry was pretty good to her, jumping on it so quickly.

  While she stood there, she heard a strange sound coming from the street and turned to see Eliseo driving Nan and Nat from the wagon.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked, a huge smile on her face.

  "We've come to help. Remember?" he replied. "We're going to take that arbor down and then haul it away." Eliseo pointed at the porch. "Looks like they got a good start on it last night."

  "Really?" she asked weakly. "That’s wonderful. I’d forgotten."

  He jumped down and unhitched the horses from the wagon, then patted Nan's shoulder as he walked toward Polly. "These are your horses and they're hard workers. They hauled rock for me last summer. This will be much easier."

  "I hope so."

  Eliseo led the horses around to the side where the covered arbor stood and scratched his head. "When we pull this up, that brick is going to come with it, I think. Why don't you go look for the wheelbarrow?" He pointed toward the garage.