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 ele
phant." 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."
They pulled up in front of the new farm store in Ankeny and he parked.
"Is this going to take a long time?" Polly asked.
"Maybe. It's a new store. There are a lot of things in here. Come on. You're up for this, aren't you?" He jumped out of the truck. "I'll take you someplace nice for lunch if you're good. Maybe even ice cream!"
"Fine. But I'm not going to like it."
They walked through the store and before she knew it, Polly had a cart and it was full. When she came out of the women's wear section, she snarled at him and he simply grinned.
She found two pairs of insulated bib overalls that would fit Andrew and Jason and couldn't stop giggling at the thought of those two boys enjoying them in the winter. He balked at the Farmall belt she found, but she snuck it in under the sweater for Sylvie.
"You don't get out and shop much, do you?" he asked.
"No! This is fun!"
He finally called it quits and guided her to check out. "Polly you are a danger in a store like that."
"That's why I shop online. I can talk myself out of being stupid when it's not right there in front of me. But all of these things are going to be great. And there were some excellent buys in there."
They ate barbecue for lunch and she moaned all the way through her meal. The burnt ends were as tender as anything she could remember and she soaked the bread with sauce and ate with her fingers.
When her phone buzzed in her back pocket, she looked at Henry and said, "Now what do I do?"
"What do you mean?"
"My phone's buzzing and my fingers are messy."
He chuckled. "Lick the fingers, let the phone go to voicemail. You're taking a day off. I think we should be able to eat barbecue once without a crisis happening at Sycamore House. Please?"
She nodded and picked up another bite from her basket. When they finished, she finally cleaned her fingers.
"Now what?" she asked.
"To the western store. You need boots and a hat for Jason's birthday, right?"
"Yes! Thank you."
Her phone buzzed again and she reached back and pulled it out, then shook her head. It was Jeff.
"Hey, Jeff," she answered. "Please tell me there's no crisis."
"Well. It's only a little one."
"Oh crap. I was having such a good day. And since my good days are generally being destroyed now by the queen bitch, what has happened this time?"
"One of the quilts has been damaged."
"Damaged? What do you mean?"
"Well, it's been defaced. I didn't even notice it. Jason did."
"What happened?"
"Someone took lipstick and wrote all over the panel on one of the quilts."
"They what? What was written?"
"Die, Bitch. And it was written in bright red."
"How did you not notice this? When did it happen? Can it be cleaned? Does she know? Whose quilt is it?"
"I don't know for sure when it happened. It could have been there all day. The quilt is hanging on the wall to the kitchen and I haven't been back there today. Jason didn't notice it all the times he was back and forth until just now, but he said he never looked. I don’t know how long since it happened."
"Have you called her?"
"I tried, but there was no answer. I called Marla Singer and she's coming over. We're going to talk about the quilt show anyway. The quilt belongs to someone in town. No one we know."
"Oh, for god's sake. Do I need to come back right now? I'm in Des Moines."
"No, I just thought you needed to share in my misery. Finish what you're doing and come back whenever. I'm sure it will all still be here and I'll be in that quiet place under my desk."
Laughter rumbled up from her stomach. "Oh, I recognize that quiet place," she said. "I'm going to finish shopping here then and we'll be back later. Let me know if you need me to do anything."
"I will." He sighed long and loudly. "I don't want to think about who might have done this."
"What do you mean?"
"Think about it, Polly. Bright, red lipstick. She was mad at Mrs. Rothenfuss yesterday."
"Don't even say that out loud, Jeff. That's not fair."
"How well do you know her, Polly? You don't know if she would react like this."
"I know she isn't capable of doing something horrible like this. I just know it. Don't you dare say this out loud to anyone else, do you hear me?"
"Of course I won't. But you and I can't be naive about this. She has every reason to lash out."
"Well, so do I. I'm sure there is red lipstick upstairs in my room somewhere and I didn't do it. Sylvie has lipstick. Maybe Jason or Andrew did it."
"I won't say anything, but we're going to have to ask."
"Not without me around. I won't let her be railroaded
by you or anyone."
Henry had stood by listening to her side of the conversation and his eyes were wide.
"I promise I won't question her and you should know me better than that. I don't railroad people."
"You're right. I'm sorry. It just bothers me that she's suspected of this."
"We'll work it out. Marla will be here in a few minutes and we'll go from there."
"Let me know," Polly said and jammed the phone in her back pocket.
"Who did what to what?" Henry asked.
"Someone used red lipstick to write 'Die Bitch' on a quilt panel. Jeff thought maybe Rachel Devins had done it. There's something ugly between her family and Cindy Rothenfuss."
"Can they fix it?"
"He can't reach the bitch, so he called Marla Singer, who used to run this thing. She's coming over and they'll figure it out. I certainly hope so, or I might own a quilt I don't need."
They headed for the western store and Polly picked up a hat and boots for Jason's birthday gift and without another thought, added a second hat for Rachel.
She was quiet on the trip back to Bellingwood and Henry didn't push it. He put his hand on the console and left it there, open palm up and Polly reached over to take it. She squeezed his hand and held on while they drove.
Eliseo was mowing the grass when they pulled in and waved at them. He made a pass close to the garage and she beckoned him over.
"Hey," he said. "How was your day?"
"I got the hat for Jason." She pulled it out of the box and he grinned, acknowledging it.
"That's perfect."
"How was Rachel this morning?" she asked, fiddling with the tissue paper the hat had been wrapped in.
"She was great. She dug right in and helped. She didn't even complain about scooping out stalls. I think Jason likes having someone else around, too. They talked the entire time."
"Did she act like anything was wrong or out of place?"
"I don't think so." He furrowed his brow. "Is something up?"
Polly told him about the encounter at Sycamore House the night before and then about the damage to the quilt.
"I know what quilt you're talking about," he said. "I didn't see any damage this morning, but I could have missed it. Rachel said she had to be at work by eleven to help out with lunch today. She left straight from the barn to her car to go home. I watched her drive away. Maybe she found time," he shrugged, "but she didn’t give any indication that anything was wrong while we were together."
Secrets and Revelations (Bellingwood #4) Page 11
