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Joy in the Journey

Page 25

by Diane Greenwood Muir


  "Come see what we made in the foyer," Elijah said, pulling at Andrew's hand. "You have to see it before we take it down. Hayden even took pictures so we can put it back up just like this again."

  The boys all followed Andrew and Elijah out of the kitchen and Hayden lifted Cassidy to her own seat. "I am sorry that I got so angry, Polly."

  She laughed. "Yeah. Because none of us ever freak out on these kids. From what I understand, it was quite the mess."

  "I was so afraid we were going to have to call a plumber."

  "You're fine." She rubbed his shoulder. "You're both fine. Letting the kids know you have a limit isn't the worst thing they'll face. I love the way you take care of this family. I know the week has been a little intense with all that's been going on."

  "Is this the way it's been all the time this spring?" Cat asked.

  "Not all the time, but yeah."

  "We have to make sure our schedules are better next year," she said to Hayden. "No one should do this alone."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  "Just a second, that's Mrs. Hill," Polly said to Rebecca, pointing through the front window of the car. “I wonder what she’s doing in this neighborhood.”

  The tiny woman was walking toward them from the downtown area.

  "I see her out all the time," Rebecca replied. "You said she lives down where Mom and I did?"

  "In that neighborhood, yes."

  "I don't remember her from there, but she's always out walking. You've seen her too."

  "How do I miss these things?" Polly asked with a smile. "I'm going to offer her a ride." She pulled up beside Agnes Hill and rolled down her window. "Good morning."

  "Hello there, young ladies," Agnes said. "Imagine seeing you out and about. I was just thinking about you." She bent over and peered in to see Rebecca. "Well, not you. I don't know you yet, but Miss Polly here. She's been on my mind this week. Who are you?"

  "I'm Rebecca. It's nice to meet you. Polly's taking me to the coffee shop before I go to work. Would you like to join us?"

  "You're much too young to be working. What are you, twelve?"

  Polly chuckled, knowing that Rebecca would have no way to interpret that and no understanding of the woman's complete lack of filter. She was right. Rebecca just stared in disbelief.

  "Climb on in," Polly said. "My little girl and I would love to have you come with us."

  "Polly," Rebecca scolded under her breath.

  "I'll just do that," Agnes said. "It isn't like I'm desperately needed anywhere right now. My assassination teams are spread out around the world doing their jobs and won't be checking in until Sunday evening. Unless one of them has an emergency, they won't need me today."

  Polly rolled her window up as the woman walked around the front of the car to the door behind Rebecca.

  "She's crazy," Rebecca said.

  "You have no idea."

  Agnes climbed in and patted around for a seat belt. "I trust you won't kill me between here and the coffee shop. I can't find the stupid belt."

  "I'll do my best," Polly said, pulling back onto the street. "So why have you been thinking about me?"

  "I've decided to fall in love with you. Thought maybe I could move into that big old house of yours so we could be close."

  Rebecca let loose a snort. "That would raise eyebrows in Bellingwood. Polly Giller, her husband, her strange assortment of children, and her old lady lover."

  Polly looked at her in shock, but Agnes howled with laughter. "Oh, young lady, you got me back. That was perfect." She reached forward and patted Rebecca's shoulder. "I haven't been so properly handled in years. Miss Polly, you have a right-good daughter in this one. You should be proud."

  "I suppose so. She's usually much more respectful."

  Rebecca grimaced.

  "She read me and knew just what I was doing. Don't you give her any trouble for a well-placed smackdown. I asked for it, I deserved it, and I loved it."

  "I was just telling her how observant she was." Polly pulled into a parking space and took a deep breath. "Do you have time for a quick cup of coffee?"

  "Like I told you, I have no appointments today and it's good to see you."

  "Were you just out for a walk?"

  The woman opened her massive purse. "If you must know, I stopped at the pharmacy and then picked up a few necessary items at the general store."

  "That was nosy of me. I apologize."

  "You are much too nice. Young Rebecca, are you not raising her right?"

  "I do my best. She's a challenge."

  They were all laughing as they walked into the coffee shop. Rebecca was in a hurry to get to work, so once Josie handed her smoothie over, she said good-bye and left.

  "Sure is in a rush," Agnes observed.

  Polly nodded. "She is excited about this job. It's her first and Mr. Greene is a good person to work for."

  "I'll have to wander in there one day and see what he has hanging on those walls. Saw an ad for the place last week in the paper. Interesting developments in this little burg."

  Josie smiled at Polly as she gave her the two cups of coffee. "Gavin had a great day with you yesterday. Thank you for letting him help."

  "He spent time with my husband at the end of the day. Henry was impressed with him," Polly responded. "I'll call early next week for an interview."

  Josie frowned. "An interview? Henry called this morning and asked Gavin to meet him at the shop to look at some of the work sites after I get home."

  Polly laughed out loud. "He did. Huh. Left hand and right hand. Sometimes I never know. That's awesome. If Henry found someone he can work with, I'll be thrilled."

  "I'm going to sit down with Camille this morning and talk to her about my hours. You and your husband are really nice to even consider letting Gavin be flexible so that I don't have to quit. I really enjoy my job. We aren't ready to put the kids into daycare yet. Maybe this fall. I want CJ to turn three before I hand her off to someone else."

  "It will all work out," Polly said. She turned to Agnes. "Are you sure you don't want something sweet to eat?"

  Agnes rolled her eyes and clutched at her throat. "It's like she's threatening me. Fine, then. I'd enjoy a pecan roll."

  "Make it two," Polly said with a smile.

  "I can carry my own coffee," Agnes said. "Let me take it and hobble my old lady legs over to a table. You'll probably beat me, but at least I'll have given it my best effort." She took the coffee from Polly and headed off.

  "Thanks again for everything," Josie said. "Last night Gavin and I slept better than we have since moving to Bellingwood."

  "If nothing else, that's worth it," Polly said, accepting the two plates. "I'm glad you're here."

  She headed over to sit with Agnes at a small table in front of the side windows.

  As soon as she put the plate with the roll in front of the woman, Agnes said, "I was actually walking to your house today."

  "Really. It would have been lovely to have you in for coffee."

  "Oh, stop the pretty talk. You'd have been shocked to see me, but I wanted to speak with you about something."

  Polly gasped back a laugh. "I would have been glad to see you at the house. You're welcome any time. Things might have been a little chaotic. We're trying to clean for an event tomorrow afternoon, but you're always welcome. I should have invited you sooner."

  "It isn't like we've known each other that long. The invitation period has only just begun. You have plenty of time before it becomes awkward."

  "I see. What did you want to speak to me about?"

  "You found that poor man's body at the new salon out on the highway, right?"

  Polly nodded.

  Agnes dug around in her purse and produced a journal. "I knew that I recognized his name, so I had to dig through boxes of things until I found my memory."

  "You keep a journal?"

  "I certainly do. How else do you think I keep everything straight at this age? When you are solely in charge of a global, m
ulti-national, interagency contingent, you have to be able to remember everything. Lives are at stake, you know."

  "Global and multi-national?"

  "That's what I said and that’s what I meant."

  Polly grinned. The woman was a riot. "What is it that you remembered about Keenan Baxter?"

  "He was quite the playboy, but I remember the day that bitch of a wife of his up and left him."

  "I thought she was the wounded party. That she left because he'd been having multiple affairs."

  "That was the story he told. It wasn't the truth at all. He liked to flirt and the women certainly were interested in him, but the day he got married, he stopped messing around. And when those children of his arrived, he was the happiest man on earth. He wouldn't have done anything to screw that up."

  Polly frowned. "I'm confused. Everyone knows he was messing around on her. The rest of his life was spent with multiple women, never committing to one. That's common knowledge, too."

  "Common knowledge and the truth aren't always one and the same," Agnes said.

  "Why did he let her take those kids away, then?"

  "Because the boy wasn't his."

  Polly sat back and slowly lowered the pecan roll back to its plate. "I'm still confused. This doesn't make any sense. And he talked to you about everything?"

  "I might be a snarky old lady, but I listen when someone has something to say. That poor boy was devastated by what happened to him, but rather than drag his family through the gossip mills, he let her go and accepted the blame for everything."

  "He let his children go. Why would a father do that?"

  Agnes sighed. "At the time he was nothing more than an old football star who had nothing to his name. I think the poor guy believed that folks would give him a break because he'd been such a hero on the field. You know, make sure he had a good job, a nice place to live, whatever he needed. I know that’s what he expected. But once he graduated, his fame faded. The glory seekers were hot on the heels of whatever new, young talent showed up. Since he had no real skills, he couldn't get a decent job. He worked as a dishwasher at the restaurant I was managing. This was after we closed the buffet.

  "Keenan might have taken one too many bumps on the head, because he wasn't the brightest bulb in the box. He was good-looking, athletic and never really gave much thought to using his mind for anything other than memorizing plays. He was polite and decent and girls adored him. He had a couple of buddies, but they weren't much more than bumble-brains themselves. They loved tagging along on his coattails. He thought they liked him. He thought everyone liked him.

  "Then he got that girl pregnant and her daddy threw a fit. The next thing you know, he was married. He was so happy. I remember him telling me that his life was finally coming together. He adored his little girl. She was the light of his life. Then his wife had another baby and Keenan was ecstatic. A boy to carry on his name. Whenever he had a little extra money, he bought that little boy something with a football on it. Fortunately for the family, extra money wasn't in their budget very often or everything would have footballs on it."

  "But the boy wasn't his? How did he find out?"

  "One day Keenan came in and told me about how crazy it was that his little boy had blue eyes when both he and his wife had green eyes. The doctors had all told them that the baby's eye color might change as he grew older, but those eyes stayed blue. Now, I did a little research, and there was a slight probability that two green-eyed parents might give birth to a blue-eyed child. I asked more questions and found out that Keenan and Brenda’s parents all had green eyes. I didn't intend to raise suspicion, but it was already there. So, one night Keenan went home, bound and determined to get an answer. If he'd given up all of his girlfriends, how could his wife have done this to him?"

  "Wow," Polly said.

  "Her parents lived in Colorado or Utah or some state out west and had plenty of money. The next thing he knew, she left and moved home. He followed her and her daddy threatened him with some kind of lawsuit. I don't know what it was. If I were a betting woman, it had something to do with a business Keenan's father owned and lost. There was something a little odd there — embezzlement, stealing from customers. I wasn't close enough to get all the details on that. Lo and behold, Keenan came back and confessed to infidelity. No one was surprised. After the divorce, he went right out and started dating multiple women. By that point, he’d left the restaurant. Got a job working on road crews for a while. Then I kind of lost him. Hadn't thought about the boy until I heard he was killed. I don't know if any of this means anything to anyone, but I heard that his daughter showed up in town and the police hauled her out of that salon the other day. Do you really believe she killed her own father?"

  "I don't think she did," Polly said. It took everything in Polly not to glance at her phone. She couldn't believe that Tab hadn't communicated with her after taking Gia away from the salon yesterday, especially since it happened in front of her boys. "I don't know what the police think either. Did Keenan tell his story to anyone other than you?"

  Agnes contemplated the question longer than Polly would have expected. "My initial answer would be that I don't know. I can't imagine someone keeping a secret like that. But as I consider it, I would be hard-pressed to believe he spoke about it ever again. He knew who the father was."

  "He did?"

  "He never told me. For all that poor boy wasn't book smart, he thought about people's feelings. He knew that one life was already destroyed. He wasn't about to destroy someone else's. If his wife didn't want the father to know that he had a son and ran away to Colorado, Keenan wasn't about to set someone up. He might have been wrong about that, but he didn't feel it was his place to say anything." She gave a sad sigh. "He was so young and things had come unraveled all around him in a short period of time. I suspect that over the years he realized he should have made very different decisions, but you know how rumor mills are in small towns. He was already the subject of everyone's gossip; that was enough. He wasn’t dragging anyone else down with him."

  "I can't believe he stayed in the area."

  "Where else was he going to go? This was all he knew."

  "I find it interesting that he confided in you."

  "Because I'm such a crusty old crab?"

  Polly chuckled. "No, because you weren't a girlfriend. You weren't from Ogden. You had your own things to deal with."

  "You're right. We spent a lot of time working together. When things weren't busy, we'd clean and that boy needed someone to talk to. Since I wasn't any of those things you pointed out, he trusted me. He made me promise to never tell anyone. I kept that promise, lot of good it did him. Now that he's gone, it seems like it might be important to tell some folks. Don't know if it means anything, though."

  "Why me?"

  "Because, little missy, I know about you."

  "What do you mean?" Polly knew what she meant. Why did she even ask?

  "Not only do you end up finding those poor folk who die before their time, but you manage to stumble across the whys and wherefores before anyone else does."

  "You're the one who stumbled," Polly said. "I picked you right up out of a hedge."

  "Doesn't that just take the cake? What if I'm the linchpin in this whole case? What if the information I've told you today is what triggers something up in that little brain of yours to solve the murder? You stumbled across me. Well, you and your little sweetheart. Where is she, by the way?"

  Polly's eyes grew big as she realized how long this had taken. Cat didn’t need her to be hanging around the coffee shop today. She'd planned to be gone no longer than a half hour, at the most.

  "Did you forget about her? Leave her in a ditch somewhere?"

  "No," Polly said with a laugh. "She had a few issues this morning and I didn't intend to be away this long. The poor young woman who helps me is going to either worry about me or be freaked out because she has to take care of the kids and clean that big old house."

  "I'm sorr
y."

  "It's my own fault. The least I could have done was let her know where I was. Just a second." Polly took out her phone and composed a quick text to let Cat know that she'd be home soon. "I don't know what I'm going to do with this story you've told me, but it has to mean something."

  "I'm certain that it does. It's been preying on my mind enough that I turned my storage room upside down looking for this journal. Now, I have a proposition for you."

  "What's that?"

  "Take me home with you."

  Polly laughed until she snorted. "Rebecca already predicted that the town would talk."

  "That's one smart little girl you have there. She's the one whose mother died of cancer, right? They used to live down in my neighborhood? She's grown up into a beautiful person. But is she really old enough to hold down a job?"

  "She'll be sixteen in May."

  "Ahhhh, no," Agnes said. "How does time pass so quickly? But let me explain my proposition. I've distracted you from your work this morning. I would love to meet the rest of your family and I feel badly that I've taken so much of your time."

  Polly frowned. "It's not a problem. You don't need to take responsibility for that."

  "Let me. I'd be a great babysitter for little Cassidy while you work. Let's say that I stay until lunch. You can take me home and that will make up for the time that I've stolen from you."

  "How about you stay for lunch. I'll give you a quick tour of the house and Cassidy would love to see you."

  "But you can't treat me like a guest. I am coming in as part of your crew. I'll babysit the little one and then, if you're a very good girl, I'll let you serve me lunch."

  "Agnes Hill," Polly said, shaking her head. "I don't know how I got so lucky as to meet you, but you are incredible."

  "Not too many people invite themselves to your house?"

  "No, not too many do. Not in this day and age. I would love to have you join us this morning."

  Agnes took Polly's arm as they walked out of the coffee shop. "I've spent more time in there this last week than I have since it opened. You might have created a monster."

  "I always feel like it's a vice I can live with."

 

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