All Roads Lead Home (Bellingwood)

by Diane Greenwood Muir

  Everyone looked at her.

  "Oh. Me? I should help her out? What am I supposed to do?"

  Andy muttered, "Shutting up would be a great place to start."

  "Hey!" Beryl laughed, then thought about it and said, “You're probably right. I think I will."

  "Yeah," Andy retorted, "I’ll believe that when I hear the silence."

  Beryl dramatically went through the motion of zipping her lips shut and sat back in her seat. Polly watched Aaron to see his response. He hadn't paid one bit of attention to Beryl’s antics. While Beryl was chatting it up with the world, he had leaned into his wife and was talking quietly with her. Polly saw tears threatening Lydia's eyes and she leaned on her husband's shoulder as he pulled her chair closer to his and put his arm around her.

  Then, Beryl unzipped her mouth.

  "See, Polly. That's why our girl has so much energy to take care of everyone else," and she zipped her lips shut again.

  Another waiter brought the soup out and passed it around the table. As he left, Amber brought Beryl's drink to her. She set it down on the table and then wandered to the other side to watch Beryl. The entire table focused on her first sip.

  Beryl picked the glass up and bumped it against her closed lips. She grinned, then unzipped her lips. "Oh, I forgot," she said and took a drink. She swirled it around in her mouth, raised her eyes as if contemplating the ceiling. She swallowed and emphasized it with a gulp. "Hmmm," she said. "Let me try another sip."

  She went through the same motions again. She set the glass down and got up out of her seat. Andy grabbed Polly's arm, "Come on, you don't want to miss this."

  They followed Beryl to the bar which was back through the front entry. There was an absolutely adorable young man behind the bar, who looked up at them as they entered.

  Beryl sat down on a stool in front of him and said, "Alright, who told you?"

  His head pulled back and his eyes got big, "I'm sorry, ma'am. What?"

  "Who told you?"

  "Who told me what?"

  By this time, several more people had gathered around. Andy poked Polly and pointed at a man in his fifties. "That's Davey." Polly nodded and turned back to the bar.

  "Where did you learn how to make a Red-Headed Slut?" Beryl asked the boy. "No one in this town has ever made one of those before."

  His shoulders went back and he got a little cocky. "That's because I'm not from around here." he said.

  "It was perfect and I want to know how you knew what to do," she asked.

  "Maybe a bartender needs to keep his secrets," he retorted.

  Beryl turned on Davey. "Did you tell him about me?"

  "I did not," Davey said. "I did tell him to be ready for anything, though."

  "So you're ready for anything," she said, flipping back to the bartender.

  "I guess I am! If we have the liquor in stock to make what you want, I can make anything. I guarantee it."

  "Well!" Beryl huffed and spun around on her stool. She walked out of the bar and back into the restaurant.

  Polly walked up to the bar and said, "Okay, how did you do that?"

  "Don't tell her," he said, "But I'm not stupid. I actually had heard about her from some other patrons. They've been asking me all week if Beryl had come in yet. I brought insurance." He reached under the bar and pulled out a computer tablet. I have the whole internet here. I can make any drink she asks for and I can make it perfectly."

  He laughed out loud as he put the tablet back under the bar. Polly and Andy chuckled as they joined the others at the table.

  "Well, what's so funny," Beryl asked, continuing her huff.

  "You are, my dear." Andy said. "You've been trumped by a very young, very smart man. I never thought I'd live to see the day."

  "Whatever." Beryl pushed the drink away. "Well, that's no fun now. Here Polly, you drink it."

  Polly looked at the women, then picked the drink up and took a sip. "Whoa! That's good!" she said. "What's in it?"

  "Peach schnapps, Jagermeister and cranberry juice." Beryl responded. "The little runt got the recipe exactly right, too."

  Amber came back and took their orders. The weird chicken stuff was Chicken Marsala and Polly gladly ordered it. As expected, Sheriff Merritt had a steak, while Lydia ordered a salad. Beryl and Andy both had pasta dishes and ordered wine.

  As they waited for their food to arrive, Polly asked, "Aaron, how were you able to verify the remains were those of Jill and Kellie Stevens?"

  "Believe it or not, their purses were with them up there. Whoever killed them must have gathered everything they had and then put it up in the ceiling."

  "How in the world did someone have time to re-do the bathroom so no one noticed it was different?" asked Andy.

  "We don't know all of the details yet. We're going to have to go back through school records and talk to people who were in charge back then. I hope we're able to find everyone. Forty years is a long time to wait before returning to an investigation. But, we've got an awful lot of reports from those days. We'll start there. They talked to practically everyone in town, so there should be some good memories written down. I've already got Melanie pulling up the boxes from the basement and DCI is pulling out their documentation. I've talked to the State Patrol and we'll get it all coordinated. Everyone has something and I'm telling you that somewhere there is a clue we need in order to figure out what happened to those girls.

  "Did they talk to you girls that summer?" he asked.

  Lydia responded first, "Since I was in Wyoming, they didn't have much to ask me, except who the girls were friends with and if they'd ever talked about anyone strange hanging around. There wasn't much to tell. All of my friends were their friends."

  Beryl said, "Sure, they talked to me, but I didn't pay too much attention to those girls. I was a little caught up in my artsy-fartsy self and didn't engage with people if I could help it. If Lydia hadn't made sure I got out and around people every once in a while, I might have been a terribly boring human being!"

  "I was friends with Sarah, so I spent a lot of time with the family that summer," Andy reflected. "It was worse than you can even imagine. Her mom sat in the front room in a blue chair, staring off into space. When Linda or Sarah would try to get her to eat or drink something, she would do what they asked and then go back into the silence. Their dad wasn't much better. At least he could leave the house for a while to go to work. After the first week they'd been gone, he didn't know what else to do. His wife was broken and he couldn't help. The police seemed to spend a lot of time there for a while, but then, there was only one detective who continued to show up on a regular basis and then after a while, even he didn't know what else to do to help look for the girls. They'd done everything they could.

  "Neither of the older girls wanted to leave for college, but their Dad wouldn't let them stay home. He hired someone to come in to the house to keep it clean and make sure their mom got up in the morning. She finally snapped out of it around Thanksgiving. It was like a light bulb finally flicked back on.

  "She called me the week before Thanksgiving and told me Linda and Sarah were coming home and she'd like to have a party that Friday night for them at the house. Would I be able to round up some of their friends? I was so shocked to hear her voice, much less hear her planning a party, I simply said yes.

  "I made some calls and we had a pretty good turnout." Andy turned to Lydia. "You were there, weren't you?" she asked.

  "Yeah. You called me. I probably wouldn't have gone otherwise. Most of those girls were older than me. But, I dragged you to that one, too, didn't I, Beryl!"

  "I remember!" Beryl said. "I wasn't sure if I wanted to go, but you picked me up and I couldn't say no to you. That was actually a pretty fun evening. Linda brought her boyfriend home and that shocked her parents."

  Andy went on, "The girls were surprised to see their mother so alive again. She told them that one night, in the middle of the night as she lay in Kellie's bed, not sleeping, she figured
if they were ever coming home, the last thing they needed to see was a Mom who was nuts, so she was going to quit being nuts. And if the girls never came home, then her other two daughters didn't need a crazy person for a Mom either. She'd fallen apart and now she was going to stop it. It took her nearly six months, but she figured it out and decided to start making a life again.

  "I don't think either of them was ever really happy again though. You could see it in their eyes. But, they made an attempt to have a normal life. They were good grandparents to Linda's kids and tried to make both Linda and Sarah know they were loved."

  Andy stopped. The table had grown quiet.

  Amber brought the two pasta dishes to Beryl and Andy. She asked, "Is it true, Sheriff, they found bodies in the old schoolhouse?"

  She turned around and took two plates away from another server who had followed her over, placing the salad in front of Lydia and walking around to set Aaron’s steak in front of him.

  "Yes, it is true, Amber. We were just talking about it. I'm sure you'll hear all about it tomorrow when the news starts spreading around." he replied.

  Amber put Polly's dish in front of her. "I heard it was the twins who everyone thought ran away forty years ago."

  "We think that is true, Amber. Thank you for bringing our meals out."

  She looked a little confused, knowing she'd been dismissed. "Is there anything else you need right now?"

  Everyone shook their heads. "Okay," she said. “I'll be back in a bit to check on you."

  Lydia looked at Aaron, "It's a good thing you don't have to keep a lid on this."

  He chuckled. "There's absolutely no reason to do that. After the number of people who saw what happened at the school this morning and the speculation already pervading the community, it's best to tell the truth so stories don't start running rampant.

  "Do you remember when Stanley Borts hit a deer out by the lake? He mushed that thing up bad. There was blood all over the car. He parked it out in front of his house when he got home and by the next morning, everyone had him murdering his wife, running over her fifteen times."

  Lydia laughed. "Well, she is a terrible bitch and she treats him terribly! I remember listening to her scream at him in the post office because she hadn't picked the key up to their post office box. He ran out to get it for her, it was right there in the car, but she called him terrible names."

  Beryl said, "Stupid old biddy, she's mean to everyone. Maybe he should have run over her."

  "Well," said Aaron. "With something like this, it's important to keep the town calm. They can take care of Linda and Sarah and their families and we can do whatever it takes to get the investigation going. And, as long as everyone knows what is happening, maybe they will go back through their memories of that summer and click on something new. Especially now they know the girls were killed here in town and hadn't been taken away to serve as sex slaves in some foreign country." He winked at his wife as he said that and she poked him in the ribs.

  They finished dinner and Andy took Beryl home. Aaron followed them both to make sure they got safely home. Polly and Lydia were on a couch in the downstairs family room when he walked in the door. "Would you girls like some water or a soda?" he asked.

  "Not for me," said Polly. "This has been a day. I'm about to fall asleep."

  "Thanks, sweet-ums," Lydia grinned. "We're fine."

  "Alright. I'm going upstairs and watch some television. Turn it off if I've fallen asleep, would you?" he patted Polly's shoulder as he walked past her, then kissed his wife on the top of her head. He locked the doors and shut off the outside lights. Then, Polly heard him walk upstairs, check the doors there and make his way up the second flight of stairs.

  "He's pretty wonderful to you," she said to Lydia.

  "Yes, he is. He'll take good care of you and the school and I can promise we're going to figure out who hurt my friends." Lydia's voice was firm and strong. "I'm not going to let this go another year. Now that those girls have been found, we're going to find their killer, too."

  She stood up. "Well, let's go to bed." The two walked to the steps and Lydia flipped the lights off. She turned lights off on the main level and followed Polly on up to the second floor. Outside Polly's room, she reached out and hugged the girl.

  "I'm glad you're here tonight. Now, sleep well and we'll see you in the morning. Get up whenever you'd like. I'll be downstairs around six or so. But, please don't be in any hurry. We don't have much to do tomorrow."

  "Good night, Lydia. I'm sorry about your friends, but I'm glad you have these amazing women around you now."

  Lydia smiled. "They are pretty amazing. And look, now you're one of them! Goodnight."

  She went on to her room and Polly could hear her talking to Aaron as she shut the door. Polly walked into her own room, closed the door and turned on the lamp beside the bed. She walked back to turn off the overhead light and then sat down on her bed.

  All of a sudden she remembered the missed calls and checked her phone.

  "God damn it," she said. "God damn it. I can't believe it."

  She pulled the cord out of her bag and plugged her phone in, then set it on the table. After cleaning her face and pulling a night shirt on, she crawled in between the blankets.

  "I'm not thinking about anything except this comfortable bed. Nothing is going to make me not enjoy sleeping here tonight," she said to herself.

  Polly reached up, turned the light off, turned over and fell asleep.

  Chapter Eight

  It was only five thirty in the morning. Polly stretched, rolled over and looked at the clock. She had a little more time to sleep, so she opened the alarm clock on her phone, set it for 6:15 and curled back into the soft and wonderful smelling blankets. The next thing she knew, her phone was singing her awake. Daylight Savings Time hadn't yet ended, so it was still dark outside as Polly slipped off the bed and allowed her toes to curl up in the cushion of carpet. Padding across the room to the bathroom, she listened for any noises in the house. She couldn't hear anything, but trusted that Lydia and Aaron were up and moving.

  After a quick shower, she pulled on fresh jeans and a green blouse. Since there was no possibility of working at the school today, it wouldn't hurt her to look a little more feminine. She put her shoes on, pulled the covers back up on the bed and tucked things in. Then, she opened the door to her room and peeked out. Lights were on downstairs, so she walked down and found Lydia alone in the kitchen, where smells of bacon and something sweet greeted her as she got to the doorway.

  "Good morning," she said.

  "I heard you coming. Coffee is already on the table and I'll have muffins out in a moment,” Lydia said.

  "Has Aaron already left?"

  Lydia laughed. "No, that slug won't be down for another half hour. Don't be fooled, he's a terrible morning person. I've made him crazy for years, but he appreciated it when I was up with the kids. He could come down long after we'd all fought getting ready for school, then enjoy breakfast and kiss them all before he left. Dirty rat. Now he knows I'll have the house warmed up, coffee made and breakfast ready for him, so he can be a leisurely slug."

  Polly took a drink of her coffee. "Do you ever sleep?"

  "Oh, I sleep like a log. From the moment my head hits that pillow until 5:45, I'm out. Now, if you must know, I take a 20 minute nap every afternoon." Lydia looked around the room, then whispered, "I don't tell just anybody that. I like them to think I am cheerful from dawn ‘til dusk!"

  "Well, aren't you?" Polly asked.

  "I suppose I am," Lydia responded. "It's so much easier than being grumpy all the time. And people like you a lot more if they don't have to feel sorry for you. They generally have enough feeling sorry for themselves going on."

  Polly giggled. "I guess you have people pretty well figured out."

  "It is human nature to need attention turned on ourselves. Whether you are being whiny or filled with drama or a plain old bitch, people pay attention to you, which reinforces their b
ad behavior. My mama taught me that the world desires sunshine and I could choose to be sunshine for people or rain on their parades. I decided sunshine would be a lot more fun."

  Polly heard footsteps on the stairway and looked up as Aaron entered the kitchen. "I'm early, woman. Where's my breakfast? What have I told you about treating your lordship right?"

  He swatted Lydia on her backside, then leaped backward as she swung on him, spatula in hand. "My lordship needs a haircut. So there,” she said.

  He stood there and looked at his wife, then reached over, pulled her close and dipped her. Winking at Polly, he kissed her and said, "Good morning, snookums."

  Polly giggled and watched as Lydia dropped like deadweight in his arms. He scrambled to bring her back to an upright position and she wiggled away from him. "Good morning to you, you nut. Now, sit down and I'll feed you as soon as food comes out of the oven. What in the world are you doing up ..." she turned and looked at the clock on the wall, "at 6:40 in the morning?

  "I thought since we had company, it would be a good idea to impress her with my prompt arrival."

  "Honey, you're always prompt, we just had to figure out what time you would start your day."

  "Okay, I know," he replied. "I woke up and started thinking about the Stevens girls and couldn't go back to sleep after you vacated the bed. Your side got cold and my toes didn't like it much, so my brain clicked on. I couldn't turn it back off."

  Lydia pulled muffins out of the oven and set the pan on a rack to cool. She checked the timer on a second oven and, slicing a loaf of bread, dropped two pieces in a toaster. Then, she pulled a glass container of orange juice out of the refrigerator and asked Polly, "Would you like some?"

  Polly shook her head and said, "No thank you."

  Lydia poured juice into two of the glasses she had sitting beside the refrigerator and put one in front of Aaron and the second at the empty space.