Treasure Uncovered (Bellingwood #3)

by Diane Greenwood Muir

  Jeff looked up. "Thanks, Polly. It's moments like this that I remember why I got excited about working with you that first day I met you."

  "Is he here now?"

  "No, I talked to him yesterday afternoon while you were over at Beryl's. He's going to be here about eleven thirty. Will that work for you?"

  "That will be great. I'm not going to be around much this afternoon. The hospital is releasing Beryl and she's going to stay with Andy. I want to be there in case they need any extra help getting her inside the house and settled."

  "I'm glad she's going to be back in town. How are you coming on her studio?"

  "We'll get it cleaned out and stripped down by the end of the weekend. Henry is going to be here in a little bit and we're going to go over some plans for re-building it. I want to have them almost ready to go so I can show her what we're thinking and he can get started."

  "How's the plan coming for the garage and apartment?"

  "The concrete is being poured today. After that, it's a matter of building the frame and getting started."

  "You love this part of it, don't you, Polly."

  "I do. And you know, you're going to have to keep this place busy so I can keep doing it."

  He laughed. "I'm trying! I'm really trying! As a matter of fact, there's a woman who wants to start teaching some adult computer classes here during the week. We're working that all out right now. I'm still trying to think outside the box for the classroom space, but I'm sure something will come up one of these days."

  He waved at Sylvie through the window as she came in the main front door. Polly turned and saw her and beckoned for her to join them.

  "You didn't have anything more, did you, Jeff?"

  "No, that's great. I'll leave you two." He stood up and opened the door, greeting Sylvie as she came in to Polly's office.

  "I didn't interrupt anything, did I?" Sylvie asked.

  "No, you're fine. Are you ready for another big weekend?"

  "I sure am. Tonight will be easy. It's a small group and they're going through a serving line. The bride wanted to save money, so they'll do the cleanup afterwards, too. All I have to do is cook and serve. Tomorrow's wedding is going to be huge, though. Hannah is coming over and I've got two of the girls from school coming up to help as well."

  "Sylvie, I'm so glad you and Hannah are working well together. That makes me happy!"

  "She said that it's good for her. She makes enough money on weekends with me that she doesn't have to try to find a waitressing job. That way she can be home with her kids during the week. Bruce's mom takes them if he's too busy on Saturdays, but everything is working out."

  "How is Bruce doing with his dad?" Polly asked.

  Last Christmas, Bruce McKenzie and his new wife, Hannah, had returned to Iowa. He had run from his strong-willed father who insisted that Bruce work on the farm rather than live his own life. When things got tough, though, the best place to land was with a family who loved you even though it was difficult for Bruce’s father to express that love. The old grouch had been taken to task by his wife who finally had enough of his tyrannical ways and he was learning to accept both of his sons for who they were.

  Sylvie gave a slight shake of her head. "I don't think it's easy, but they're both trying. Bruce works for him in the shop and has also gotten a job as a mechanic in the shop where he worked when he was in high school. During planting and harvest, he'll work in the fields. I think that was all the extra help his dad needed, so everyone feels like it is fair."

  Polly sighed, "So much has happened since I moved back here and so much has changed. Sometimes I don't know what to think."

  "You don't spend much time over in Story City where you grew up, do you, Polly?"

  "I've only been there a couple of times since I moved back."

  "I suppose it feels different with your dad gone."

  "When I finally sold Dad's house and moved his things into storage, I think I closed a little piece of my heart and then when Mary died, it felt like she took my home with her. That last time I left town, it was as if my entire history collapsed into a single moment in time. Everything was a memory and my future was somewhere else."

  "Don't you have friends from high school that you want to spend time with?"

  "My best girlfriends all moved away, so it feels different. All of the homes I spent time in while I was growing up no longer feel like home. We aren't the same people any longer, and sometimes I think the town and I have gone two separate ways. Like meeting up with an old boyfriend and realizing he is nothing like the boy you knew so well. All of the changes that happened after you knew him make him a very different person."

  "You've changed, too, Polly."

  "Exactly! I'm very different than the girl everyone knew as Everett Giller's daughter. I don't fit in."

  "You haven't given them much of a chance to see if you fit in, have you?" Sylvie admonished quietly.

  "You're right. I don't feel as if I fit the same way I used to. It's a lot easier to show up here and get to know everyone without knowing everything about them."

  Sylvie giggled, "It's easier for us, too. Trust me." She looked at her watch, "I'd better get busy. I have two deliveries showing up and I need to make sure I'm ready for them. Talk to you later!"

  She was out the door before Polly could say anything more, so she took a deep breath and went back to opening envelopes and sorting paperwork.

  "Knock, knock." Polly looked up when she heard Henry's voice.

  "Hey there," she said.

  He walked over to her and hugged her while she was still in her chair.

  "Hey there, yourself." He pointed at the pile of paper on her desk. "That doesn't look fun."

  Polly snarled, "It's awful. But, it's necessary, so I do what I have to do."

  "Did you want to look at what I've got for Beryl's studio this morning?"

  She gathered the paper into a pile, stacked it as neatly as possible, tossed the empty envelopes into the recycling bin under her desk and shoved the rest to the side.

  "Yes. I do. Right now. Please!" she laughed. “I’d like to look at anything other than this mess.”

  Henry handed her a flash drive and said, "Would you mind?"

  She inserted it into the USB port and clicked to open it. Since the obvious file was "Beryl's Studio," she double clicked it and waited for it to open. Henry pulled his chair around to sit beside her.

  "You know," she said, "We could have done this in the conference room."

  "But, I wouldn't have been able to sit this close to you. You smell great this morning!"

  "I'm clean. That's all it is. Clean. And I'm clean every morning by the time you see me."

  He shrugged. "You still smell great."

  "Back away, you mad molester or I'll have to do something heinous to you."

  He laughed and backed his chair up an inch, leaving just enough room between them so he could prove a point.

  "I guess that will do," she said. She reached over and took his hand in hers.

  The file opened and Polly enlarged the image and began to move her mouse around the screen. Henry had taken her ideas and created a wonderful space. She pointed to a confusing space in the back storage room and asked, "What's this?"

  "Aaron and I were surprised at the amount of flammable chemicals that woman has. I understand that she needs them, but that explosion could have been much worse. She's going to buy a firesafe cabinet. I'll enclose it so that it matches everything else, but she isn't going to be allowed to leave them out any longer."

  "Yeah. You tell her she isn't allowed to do that and see what trouble you create," Polly said.

  "Oh, I'm not telling her. That's Aaron's job. He gets to deliver all of the bad news to her. She listens to him. He might be the only man in town that gets away with that, but at least there is one."

  Henry had taken her quickly sketched ideas for the studio and brought them alive in his CAD program. Polly wanted to open up the walls with more windows
. Between each set of windows, there were floor to ceiling cabinets to hold finished pieces and underneath each window were cabinets and drawers to hold Beryl's supplies.

  On the wall facing the garden between the studio and the house, he had designed a desk which wrapped around the front of the studio. The center of the room had a large work table as well as plenty of space for several easels and chairs. Polly had thought that a nice granite countertop on the other side of the room would double as a workspace, except that there wasn't room to put legs underneath. Oh well, that would have to do.

  The back storage room would have more floor to ceiling storage. Polly had sat down and thought through the number of different mediums Beryl used to paint and draw and then talked to Henry about designing drawers for each type. Rather than digging through a deep drawer to find the right color, Beryl could sort her paints by hue and the shallow drawers would make things readily accessible.

  She and Henry spent time talking through what type of wood to use and as long as Beryl approved, Polly was dying to use a knotty alder for the cabinets. She loved the look of the grain and the blemishes left by the knots in the wood. The last task was to collect options for cabinet hardware and then she could show Beryl the plans.

  "This is wonderful, Henry," she said. “Now we have to get Beryl’s approval.”

  “She will love it,” he responded.

  “I hope so. I’m emailing this to Lydia so Beryl can see it. Thanks for all your work.”

  "I didn't do anything but make your ideas real, Polly. Even though Beryl is a great artist and paints on canvas, you are an artist too. The only difference is that your medium is wood and structures."

  "Hmmm," she mused. "I did spend a lot of time designing my perfect house when I was young. It changed all the time, but at night I would fall asleep putting rooms in my house together. Thank you, though. That's such a nice thing to say. I would never have known this about myself if you weren’t here to make it real."

  "Then I'm glad you ended up in Bellingwood so we could find each other."

  He stood up and pulled his chair back to the front of the desk.

  "I'm glad we found each other, too," she replied. She copied the file to her desktop and ejected the flash drive, then reopened it. "I'm going to print out a couple of copies of this to take over to Andy's house later this afternoon."

  "They're coming home?" he asked.

  "Can you believe that Beryl is letting Andy take care of her? I only hope those two women don't kill each other before Beryl goes to her own house."

  "Would you do me a favor?" Henry asked.

  "Sure? What's up?"

  "I've been talking to people around town and Len Specek is supposed to be a pretty good carpenter. I can't believe I didn't know this about him. Would you ask Andy if it would be alright if I brought him in to help with Beryl's studio?"

  "Of course I will! Oh, I can't wait to have that conversation with her. She's been trying to hide him from us. I think we embarrass her. This is going to change all of that."

  "Maybe I shouldn't do it, then."

  "Oh no you don't! If he's who you want, then he's who you're going to get. Andy's world got toppled upside down the day she got caught having lunch with him. It's all out in the open now and she's going to have to live with it."

  "You girls are very scary."

  "Tell me about it. I've had to threaten those three with their lives so they don't have us married with children in the next six months."

  Henry looked stricken. "Children?"

  "Don't worry," Polly laughed. "I took care of it."

  "Good," he said. "I'd like to be married a little while before we have kids."

  Polly looked up at him in shock and he started to cackle. "That's the Polly I love. Do you want to do something tonight?"

  "If I don't get through these bills today, I'm still going to be working on them," she lamented. "And since there is a reception in the auditorium, I'll be doing them upstairs."

  Then she looked up at him, "But, if you wanted to come over, we could turn on a movie. I can work on my laptop."

  "Why don't I bring a pizza. What time?"

  "Can you give me until seven thirty? That way I'll have the animals bedded down for the night and maybe even have taken another shower."

  Henry winked at her. "I'll see you later."

  CHAPTER NINE

  Done for now. Stretching her shoulders and neck, Polly glanced at the time. It was eleven o'clock. She pushed the stack of papers away from her, knowing she could do the rest tonight in front of a movie. She had enough time to go upstairs for a few minutes and play with her animals. She could tell that they missed her. Luke was more aggressive than usual and Leia had started nipping at both her and Obiwan. Crawling into bed with them each night wasn't enough time to keep everyone happy. She ran upstairs and opened the front door of her apartment.

  Obiwan looked up at her in confusion and she saw that Luke and Leia were both stretching and yawning on her bed in the next room. "Hi guys," Polly said, "Have you missed having me around as much as I've missed being around?" Her dog sauntered over to greet her and followed as she went in to the bedroom. She patted the bed and he leaped up, surprising Luke, who was preparing to jump to the floor. Polly sat down and pulled Obiwan in for a hug. He gave her a large kiss on the cheek and she laughed. "Not too much of that," she said. "I still have to see people today and I don't need to be completely slobbered!"

  Leia sidled up and Polly scooped her into her arms. Within moments, the cat was purring and snuggling into the crook of Polly's arm. Luke jumped on to Polly's shoulder and nuzzled her ear.

  "Wow, you have missed me. I love coming up here and getting all of this attention. I don't have a lot of time, but it's all yours," she laughed. She tugged Luke down so she could carry him and they went out to the couch in the living room.

  "If I stay in there on that bed, I'll lie down and fall asleep and I don't trust any of you to wake me in time for my appointment," she said to them.

  Obiwan had plopped himself where she intended to sit, so she moved to the other end and got comfortable with the cats. Leia hadn't moved, except to snuggle in more tightly and Luke climbed to the back of the sofa and perched there. She rubbed his head and watched his eyes glaze over in response. His purring wasn't quite as loud as Leia's, but if Polly placed her hand on his back, she could feel him vibrating. On the other hand, Leia sounded like a rumbling freight train and at the moment was rubbing her head against Polly, claiming her territory.

  "It's nice to be quiet for a few minutes with you," Polly said. She continued to rub Luke's head for a few more minutes and watched Leia's eyes close as she fell back to sleep in her arms.

  The cats had both gone to sleep and Obiwan was resting his head on her lap when Polly looked at the clock and realized it was time for her to go back downstairs. She stood up and put Leia back down on the sofa where she had been sitting.

  "Come on, Obiwan. You're with me. You're going to meet someone and then we'll take a short walk before I leave again for the afternoon." She picked up the leash and he stood patiently while she snapped it on his collar. They didn't use the leash much anymore. Since the fence had gone up around what was now the horse's pasture, he was pretty good about following her out to the barn. Once the gate was shut, he had all the space he needed to run. She loved watching him tear through the pasture at a full run, knowing that he finally had freedom without her worrying that he'd dash into the highway.

  He followed her down the steps and looked at the front door as they passed it and then when she turned into the office he was surprised they weren't going out the side door to the barn.

  "Not yet. I have a meeting. Can you hang here with me for a while?" She led him behind her desk and looked around for a place to hook his leash. She finally opened a drawer and shut it on her end of the leash, knowing that with a good tug, he'd be free in a moment. Hopefully if it were necessary, she would have enough time to grab it and stop him from lunging o
r leaping out of control. Obiwan was a great dog and very friendly with people, but she didn't want to take any chances. She began one last sort of the paperwork, choosing what needed to go upstairs and stuffed the rest in a drawer.

  At eleven thirty, she saw someone come in the front door. He nodded at her through the window and she knew this had to be the man Jeff wanted her to meet. He was wearing a knit cap pulled down over his ears. His hands were jammed in the pockets of a dark blue pea coat and his eyes were covered by a pair of dark sunglasses. He wore loose fitting work pants and black boots. She smiled at him as he came in the main door of the office. Jeff had heard him approach and met him, then looked at Polly as if asking a question. She stood up and motioned for them to come on in.

  Jeff entered her office first and said, "Polly, this is Eliseo Aquila."

  She stood up from her desk and he stepped forward to shake her hand, "Thank you for taking the time to meet me this morning, Miss Giller." She expected more of a Hispanic accent because of the name, but his was very subtle.

  She motioned for them to both take a seat. Jeff moved to the inside chair and as soon as Eliseo was seated, Obiwan pulled away and rushed to greet him. Before Polly could stop him, her dog had put his paws on the man's thigh and leaned in to lick his face. She knew he was comfortable around people, but this was a little unexpected.

  Eliseo leaned in to meet the dog and allowed Obiwan to lick him, then ruffled the scruff of his neck and said, "You're a good dog."

  "I'm sorry!" Polly exclaimed. "I hope you like animals."

  "I do and there is no reason to apologize. He's a happy, friendly dog."

  Obiwan had dropped back down to the floor, but set his head on Eliseo's leg as if waiting for more attention. The man put a scarred hand on top of the dog's head and began rubbing his ears.

  "Well, it looks as if you've made a friend," Polly said. "He likes you."

  Eliseo nodded and Jeff interrupted. "Eliseo, Miss Giller and I talked a little this morning and I'm sure she has a few more questions before we discuss employment."