Treasure Uncovered (Bellingwood #3)

by Diane Greenwood Muir

  Polly looked pointedly at the boys, who were both too busy opening their packages to pay any attention. She grabbed some napkins and joined them at the table.

  Handing off Henry's cone to him, she said, "We appreciate you picking these up for us, don't we boys."

  "Thank you!" Andrew said, brandishing his frozen treat on a stick. "This is great. Mom never buys these."

  "Thank you," Jason responded and took a bite of his sandwich, giggling as the ice cream pushed out on the sides. "I hope I can eat this fast enough so that it doesn't melt."

  Polly gathered up the paper wrappings and napkins when they finished, and said, "Wash your hands and then follow Henry in to the bedroom. Do what he says and stay where he tells you to stay so no one gets hurt, alright?"

  "Cool!" Andrew said. He ran to the kitchen sink and turned on the water. "What do you think we'll find in the wall, Jason?"

  "Stairs?" Jason said.

  "I mean other than stairs. You know there were bodies in the bathroom ceiling. Do you think there will be anything like that in there?"

  "Maybe ghosts will pour out when Henry opens the wall," Jason said, then wobbled his fingers at his brother, "Oooooh, and they're gonna haunt you and follow you home and scare you every night when you try to sleep."

  Andrew looked up at him and said sarcastically, "Dude. There are no such things as ghosts." Then he got excited, "but there might be zombies."

  Jason rolled his eyes at Polly and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "What can you do?"

  Polly nearly swallowed her tongue as she attempted to hold back her laughter. She couldn't believe the little boy's attitude, but it was perfect.

  The boys went into the bedroom and displaced Luke and Leia who were snuggled up at the end of the bed.

  Henry shook out a tarp and said. "Can you help me throw this over Polly's bed so the dust doesn't make too much of a mess?"

  He pulled the closet door closed and nodded to the bathroom door, which Polly closed. He tossed another tarp over the cat tree and said. "Are you ready?"

  Both boys nodded and Henry lifted the saw and began cutting through the plaster. After a few cuts, he pushed and pulled and the section fell to the floor of Polly's bedroom.

  "Oops, maybe I should have put something down," he laughed.

  "I'll bring you a broom," she said.

  He looked down into the hole and said, "Hmmm, it's awfully dark down there. Do you boys want to come look?"

  Polly watched the boys approach the hole with more than a little trepidation and she tiptoed up behind them. Just as they peered in the hole, she jumped at them and yelled, "Boo!"

  Andrew yelped and Jason looked at her in shock, then both crumbled into laughter.

  "That was funny, Polly!" Andrew said. "You scared me. Did she scare you, Jason?"

  "Yes. A lot." Jason said, trying to regain his composure. "I didn't see anything. How can we make it lighter in there?"

  "I have a flashlight," Polly said and pulled it out from under her bedside table. "See if this helps."

  Henry shone the light in the hole and said, "Yep, stairs. But, I don't see anything else. What about you boys?"

  "Do you think they're safe? Can you open this up so we can go down?" Jason asked.

  "No, we aren't going down these tonight. I don't want anyone on them until I open up the lower level and can figure out why they closed this stairway off."

  "Look!" Andrew said, "There is something down there on the floor."

  Henry pointed the flashlight toward the lowest step. "You're right, there is. But, it looks like boxes, not a body."

  "Shoot. Boxes are boring," Andrew replied.

  "Those boxes might tell the story about the portal to other planets, Andrew. You never know what's in them."

  His eyes lit back up and then he slumped. "It's probably kids' school work. Nothing exciting."

  "What's going on in here?" Everyone spun around at Sylvie's voice. She was standing in the bedroom door.

  "I thought I heard something weird up here. I was in the storage room and nearly wet my pants when you broke through that wall, Henry," she laughed. "At least now I see what was making all that noise. I didn't know what to think!"

  "We thought there might be zombies in there, mom," Andrew said. "But, it's only some stairs and boxes."

  "Stairs? That's fabulous. Polly, you'll have another exit!"

  "I know! I can do laundry without bothering you in the kitchen and you can sneak up here when you're tired of all of your employees," Polly laughed.

  "Did you get your homework done so you can help Polly tomorrow?" she asked.

  Both boys nodded yes and she said, "Then we should go home. I'm all done here and I'm beat."

  Jason and Andrew slowly walked out of the bedroom, following their mom.

  "I wish we could stay and watch Henry open up that stairway," Andrew lamented.

  "I'm not going to do anything more tonight, boys. I wanted to make sure that was actually a stairway. You can rest easy. I'll let you know what's happening when we open the whole thing up."

  "Cool!" he responded.

  Polly laughed to herself. It was wonderful to watch a little boy's emotions jump all over the place as he learned to process his environment.

  "Tell Polly and Henry thank you," Sylvie commanded.

  "Thanks Polly. Thanks Henry." Andrew said.

  "Thank you," Jason echoed.

  "I'll pick them up tomorrow about ten ‘til one and then feed them pizza after we're done. I hope you get a lot of studying done."

  "Me too, otherwise, I'm going to be very stressed out and we don't want that, do we?"

  "No, because when she's stressed out, I have to hide in my room," Andrew said. "She's no fun."

  Sylvie giggled and shook her head. "Let's go."

  They left and Polly leaned back on Henry. "They're such good boys."

  "It's still early. What would you like to do?" he asked.

  "What I want to do is finish knocking that hole in the wall and see what's down on those steps."

  "We're not doing that. I'm not letting you head down those steps until I know they're safe and I'm not going to know they're safe from up here. Got it?"

  "Whatever,” she grumped. “We could watch a movie, I suppose."

  "We did that last night. Don't you have any games around here? Maybe some cards or something? Turn on some music and we can dance. Something. Anything."

  "No dancing. But, I have games." She opened one of the cabinets along the wall and pulled out a backgammon board. "Care to play, carpenter boy? I'll whip you."

  "Bet me," he laughed. "I was a backgammon master in college."

  "So was I. It's on."

  They set up on the dining room table and began to play.

  "So, Henry. If I told you I found something strange in the barn, what would you say?"

  He rolled his dice and said, "I don't know. What do you think is strange?"

  "I found a very old vase up in the haymow this afternoon. I haven't said anything to anyone because it scares me to death that Eliseo has something to do with it and I didn't want to lose another custodian before tonight's wedding reception."

  Henry laughed, "Of course that's the way you thought about it. You are a nut, Polly. What if he has nothing to do with it?"

  "He's the only person other than me who has been up there. And he was living up there."

  "It's not like you lock the barn. Anyone could have stowed it there, thinking it was safe."

  "But it wasn't safe. I found it today. And Henry, it was filled with cash!"

  He stopped and looked at her. "Cash? How much cash?"

  "A lot of cash. I didn't count it, but it was hundred dollar bills."

  "Alright, you probably should have told someone about this. When are you going to do that?"

  "I was thinking that I'd call Aaron on Monday. He's never surprised to hear from me anymore."

  "No, you're right, he's not. At least it's not a body," he chuckled. "What
if it's gone on Monday?"

  "Then, I screwed up and we’re the only ones who know."

  "This doesn't sound like you, Polly."

  "I know, I can't stand the thought of getting Eliseo into trouble. I like him and I want him to be a good guy."

  "Yes, you do and I love that about you, but avoiding the truth won’t help him."

  "Will you support me through Monday?"

  "Polly, I would support anything you did, you know that. I'm not going to tell anyone about this. It's your story."

  "You won't make me feel guilty?"

  "Nope, I won't even do that. I think you're feeling guilty enough already."

  "That's helpful," she sneered.

  "Oh," he chuckled. "Sorry. You'll be fine until Monday morning. Call Aaron and tell him that you found something in the barn and he'll show up and everything will work out."

  "Thanks," she said and rolled double sixes. "Hah. Take that."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Both boys were standing outside their apartment building when Polly arrived to pick them up on Sunday.

  "Hi," she said as they climbed in the truck. "Did your mom kick you out of the apartment?"

  "She was grouchy this morning," Andrew said. "I'm glad we're leaving.

  Jason nodded, "It was bad. She dropped her cup of coffee and cried. I tried to help her clean it up, but she yelled at me and told me to go do my homework. I thought she knew I finished it last night."

  "Your mom is tired," Polly assured them. "She's been working at Sycamore House and the grocery store and going to school. I'll bet she doesn't get much time to sleep."

  "We didn't go to church this morning either," Andrew said. "I hope I still get my attendance pin."

  Polly couldn't believe they still gave those out. She had an entire set from her elementary and junior high years. At some point in high school, it was no longer important, but when she was a kid, that ceremony every fall was pretty special.

  "I hope you do, too, bud."

  She pulled up in front of Harry Bern's house and smiled when she saw police tape across the bushes. Apparently, no one was in a hurry to clean up. Doug Randall's car was parked in the driveway and two other vehicles were parked in the street. When she began walking across the lawn, kids began flowing out of the vehicles. She counted nine people besides herself and the boys. When Andy and Henry showed up, there would be more people than the house could manage.

  "I brought some boxes, Polly," Doug said. "Mom saves these things in the garage. I brought packing tape, too."

  "That's great, Doug, thanks! I have some in the bed of my truck, but I don't know how many we'll need."

  Andy pulled in and parked. She got out of her car carrying a large tote bag. "Don't say anything," she commented. "We're going to need markers and maybe paper to make signs. Trust me."

  "Alright, then. You're the boss!" Polly laughed. "Where shall we start?"

  "It looks like you have a great crew. Let's go in and I'll take a look around to see what our plan of action should be. Maybe everyone here could unload boxes and bring them to the front stoop."

  Polly opened the front door and went inside. There was still a stain on the living room carpet where poor Harry had died.

  "Is that his blood," Andrew asked in a loud whisper.

  Polly swallowed and took a breath, then looked down at his face. Rather than having a look of concern, she could see excitement in his eyes. Oh, to be young and interested in everything again.

  "Yes, it's too bad that this had to happen, isn't it."

  "I can't believe you got to see a dead body. That's so cool."

  "Right. Cool," she responded.

  Jason had hung back and was watching the kids pull boxes from her truck. She watched for a moment as he paid close attention to two boys who were laughing together. Then, he shook his head and wandered over to where she and Andrew were standing together.

  Andy came back out onto the porch and announced, "Alright, it looks as if there isn't a lot of stuff, but it is all over the place. I need two of you to go into the kitchen. I've placed three trash bags in there. Empty the refrigerator and any opened food from the cupboards. If there are unopened dried goods, put those into a box."

  She pointed at one of the boys, "Would you mind pulling out the large stack of newspapers I have in the back seat of my car? We'll use those to wrap the dishes."

  "Two more of you can go into the back bedroom and begin packing up his clothes. I know it sounds nasty, but you will have to toss his dirty clothes into one box and label it, then anything that is still in the dresser or hanging in the closet should be neatly folded and placed in another box," she said.

  Kids came forward and grabbed boxes, then took markers from her tote as they passed her. Polly couldn't believe what she was seeing. A little good will from some gaming sessions was certainly paying off.

  "Polly, you and I and the boys will work in his office. We need to go through his desk and make sure there isn't anything that needs to be handled. If there is, you can work that out with the Sheriff on Monday."

  Andy assigned tasks to the rest of the crowd and set up stations for depositing bags of trash and boxes on the front lawn. Before much more time had passed, everyone had settled into their work.

  Polly sat down at Harry’s desk. All of the drawers had been emptied out onto the floor, creating chaos in paper. She bent over, shuffled a pile of paper together, set it down in the center of the desk, then reached for some more.

  "We can do that, Polly," Jason said. He and Andrew began collecting stuff off the floor. Jason straightened the paper into stacks and they sorted out office supplies.

  "Should we give you blank paper and stuff?" Jason asked.

  "No, that's cool. Make another pile for notebooks that have nothing written in them," she replied.

  Andy was picking up books and looking at them as she placed them into a box. Andrew sidled over to her and pulled out one of the books she had dropped in. He opened it up and flipped through a few pages.

  "This is cool," he said.

  "What do you have there?" Polly asked as she separated bank statements from utility receipts.

  "It's a book about Alaska. And look, here's another one about California." Andrew sat down with his back up against a wall and got lost in the pages of the travel guides he was holding.

  Jason muttered, "He'll read anything. Mom says he will read the back of the cereal box over and over just because there are words on it."

  "I was that way too, Jason," Polly said. "It's good for him. Don't you like to read?"

  "I like to read good books. He'll read anything, though."

  She giggled. It was fun being around these two boys.

  Andy found a couple of other travel books and set them down beside Andrew and continued to gather up the rest of the books from around the room. They'd spent nearly forty-five minutes working when one of the kids stepped in.

  "Mrs. Saner?"

  "Yes"

  "I think we're done in the kitchen. Would you come check it out?"

  "I'll be right there." She turned to Polly, "Good kids! I'll be back in a minute."

  Polly heard Jason make a huffing sound.

  "What's up, Jason?" she asked.

  "Up? Oh, nothing."

  "Did you disagree with Andy?"

  "No, it's nothing."

  He went back to sorting out the different receipts and stacking them in piles on the desk.

  "Jason, you've had something going on in your head since Friday and you won't tell me about it. Why not?"

  "Really, Polly. It's not that big of a deal."

  "Polly, look at this," Andrew said. "And this! And look at this!"

  He held a couple of pieces of paper in his hand and then fluttered the pages of the book he was holding. A few one hundred dollar bills fluttered out along with some other currency.

  She stood up from the desk and walked over to him. "What in the world do you have there, Andrew?"

  "I was
looking at this travel book of ..." he turned to the cover and continued, "Utah, and I found this stuff. There's a lot of money here. Is it real? And what is this money?"

  He held up the odd currency and she didn’t recognize it. "I have no idea, Andrew. What else do you have there?"

  He picked up a newspaper article that had fallen out and handed it up to her. There was an advertisement for a furniture store on one side, but the article on the other side was about a soldier who had been arrested for theft.

  "That's odd," she said.

  "Do you suppose there is money in any of these other books?"

  "I can't believe that they didn't find this when they were tearing the house apart," she said.

  "That's because the pages were glued together. Not like really glued, but just a little bit on there so they wouldn't fly open," Andrew said.

  "Do you two want to look through the rest of the books, even the ones Andy has packed up to make sure we don't miss anything?" she asked.

  "Like a treasure hunt," Andrew said.

  Polly sat down at the desk again and began rapidly going through the rest of the piles of paper. She didn't care about receipts and if she needed to worry about the man's bank statements, she'd have the sheriff ask the bank to reprint them. He didn't have that much money in the bank anyway. Just enough to maintain what she assumed was a debit card. She'd take all of this to the recycler on Monday so no one could get their hands on it and be done. She found some personal letters and emails he had printed off and slid those into a manila folder. She'd look at them later to see if there was anyone that she could contact about his life and death.

  He had collected a lot of information about Mesopotamian artwork. She began sorting those into another manila folder.

  "We found another one, Polly," Jason said. He brought the book over to her, thumbing the pages free as he walked.

  Polly turned it upside down on the desk in front of her and riffled the pages. A few more bills and foreign currency fluttered out, but nothing else.

  "Keep looking. Though someone at the thrift store might think it was cool to get this, I'd rather hand it all over to the Sheriff, just in case. Something about this doesn't feel right. And we'll keep the books that you find this stuff in separate, too, alright?"