Unexpected Riches (Bellingwood Book 13) (6 page)

"Thank you, Joss," Skylar said, with only a hint of petulance.

"Haha. There you go," she said and followed the penny with two dollar bills. "Stick. Carrot."

"I'll bring your coffee to you," he said, laughing.

"What's going on with the house?" Polly asked as they walked to their table.

"Just more decisions about things that Nate refuses to participate in. If Henry weren't helping us, I'm pretty sure I'd have drop-kicked my husband clear back to Indiana."

"You know he probably doesn’t care what you choose."

"I just want him to have an opinion," Joss protested.

Polly laughed. "But what if it's the wrong opinion? He's been married to you long enough to know how to handle you."

"Apparently not," Joss said with a snarl. "Even if it's wrong, at least it's something and it can give me a clue as to what we are doing."

"Do you really need him?"

"I guess not. Henry helped me this morning when I was having a fit about doors. We got through it. He's patient. You're lucky."

"Yes I am. And next year, this will all be nothing more than a memory and you will be happy in a beautiful new home."

"With just me and the kids."

"Because you'll have drop-kicked him to another state?"

Joss laughed. "Exactly." She looked up at Sky when he put her drink down in front of her and smiled. "Thank you."

"Any time, Mrs. Mikkels." He gave her a wry grin as he walked away.

"That kid is wonderful," Joss said.

Polly nodded. "I like him. He gets along with everyone." She took a drink of coffee and waited while Joss got through the initial moment of bliss with her own coffee. "Better?"

"Much." Joss put the cup back on the table and tapped the top. "Without this, there would be scores of crying children who would refuse to ever return to the library. What are you up to this afternoon?"

"Going to the library," Polly said. "I'll stand between you and the children."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No." Polly sat back in her chair. "I want to look through some of the Bellingwood history. Sal and I found something yesterday while we were cleaning out the kitchen over at the Springer House." She stopped and thought. "I have to quit calling it that. I'm not sure what to call it, but it's our place now."

Joss sat silent for a few moments and then drummed her fingers on the table. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, what did you find yesterday?"

"Oh," Polly said with a laugh. "I'm sorry. Sal was clearing out one of the kitchen cabinets and found a big envelope in it with old newspapers and a title. The son of one of the founders of Bellingwood built that place as an exclusive inn. It wasn't always a residence."

"And this is the first you've heard of it?"

"We haven't gotten the full abstract yet, so yes. I want to look for old pictures of the inn. Nobody's ever talked about it, so I don't think it was in existence very long."

"The Bellingwood history section has been active lately."

"The sesquicentennial committee?"

"Mostly them."

"If I'm right, that inn was built in nineteen sixteen. That would make the building a hundred years old."

"Then you should do an open house this summer," Joss said.

"Oh no," Polly said. "Henry would absolutely kill me if I brought that up. He'd kill me." She thought a moment. "Dead. I'd be wholly and completely dead." Then a grin crept across her face. "But it would be really cool. We wouldn't have to be finished with the place. Just enough so that people could go through it and set aside all of the memories of it being a haunted house. If we cleaned up the yard, we could put tables out and the town could come over for a picnic."

"Henry wouldn't have to be involved in fixing up the yard, would he?"

Polly shook her head. "No. I could ask Eliseo to help me figure out what to do and then hire Andrew and Rebecca and their friends to help me do the work. And if Henry told me what needed to be done to clean up the..." She stopped. "No. That won't work either."

"What?"

"I was thinking about fixing up the outside of the house, but Henry has to rip that solarium off and re-build the porches. He'd kill me."

"You really should talk to him before you decide that he's going to kill you," Joss said.

"You know that's funny coming from you, don't you?"

"Because of the whole Nate not helping thing?"

"Uh huh."

"You and Henry are different. You work on projects together all the time. I don't work on cars and apparently Nate doesn't work on the house." Joss checked the time. "I should get moving. The doors need to be open for my early-birds."

"Here's your coffee to go," Skylar said, coming up behind Polly. He handed the cup to Joss. "Just made it fresh."

"You're my hero even if you don't know what to call me." Joss pressed money into his hand. "Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Coming?" she asked Polly.

"I'm right behind you."

CHAPTER SIX

"Oh my, what's all this?" Henry asked when he walked into the dining room.

"Research," Polly said. "Dinner's in there." She nodded at the kitchen.

Henry bent over and kissed her cheek. "Sorry we're late."

"I told you earlier not to worry about it." Polly sat back, stretched her arms up, and pulled him down for another kiss.

"This is the difference between being a kid with parents who've been married for fifteen years and a kid who has to put up with practically newlyweds," Rebecca said with mock disdain. "Will you two quit it? We're not supposed to see that stuff. We're still innocent."

Henry reached over and ruffled her hair. "Uh huh. What did we miss for dinner?"

"We made tacos," Rebecca said and jumped out of her seat. "Let me help you. I cut up all of the veggies. All you have to do is heat up the meat and warm up tortillas." She got close to Henry and made a face while holding her nose, then turned to Heath. "Do you smell as bad as he does?"

"What?" Henry asked. "Don't like the smell of paint and varnish?"

"You stink. You should take a shower."

"Rebecca," Polly scolded. "They've worked a long day."

Henry laughed. "A shower it is." He ruffled Rebecca's hair again and she brushed his hand away. "Will you warm up our supper?"

Rebecca lowered her head. "Sorry. Yeah. I'll do it." She glanced over at Heath, who was grinning. "Sorry."

"I wasn't stuck inside. I don't smell bad," he said.

Polly turned to look at him.

"But I'll take a shower anyway," he said. "And I'll hurry."

"That wasn't very nice," Polly said to Rebecca after they'd left the dining room.

"I know. I said I was sorry."

"Okay." Polly stood up and pushed the books and papers to the far end of the table. "Go ahead and heat up the meat in the pan. Do you remember how I warmed up the tortillas?"

Rebecca nodded and pulled paper towels off the roll. "Shouldn't I wait until they're back?"

"Sure. Hand plates and silverware to me," Polly said.

The two had dinner on the table when Henry and Heath came back into the dining room.

"We made a lot because Polly thought you would be really hungry," Rebecca said, putting the warmed tortillas between Henry and Heath. "And there's cake and ice cream, too. We waited for you on that."

"Thank you," Henry said. "This looks great." He pointed at the pile of books at the other end of the table. "You never told me what you're working on?"

"Look at this," Rebecca picked up her sketchbook, flipped through some pages and handed it to Henry.

"This looks like the Springer House without the solarium."

"We're not calling it that anymore," she said. "It's the Bell House."

He looked up at Polly, who nodded in agreement.

"I've learned so much in the last couple of days," Polly said. "It all started when Sal found this in the top of the corner kitchen cupboard while we were cleaning." She picked up the envelope, sat down beside him and pulled out the title and newspapers. "I couldn't figure out why they'd saved an old Chicago Tribune, but after spending time with it today, I discovered an ad in there for the Bell House in Bellingwood, Iowa." She flipped the Boone News-Republican over so he could see the article. "Did you know about this?"

He read and ate for a few minutes. Polly made another taco and put it on his plate. He picked it up and finished it while she made a third for him.

Henry chuckled. "What are you doing?"

"You were busy reading and eating. I was keeping the cycle going," she said.

"I'm not doing that for you," Rebecca said to Heath. "You're on your own."

With a mouth full of food, he nodded and tried to form a word, then looked guiltily at Polly and swallowed. "I got this. So what's that all about?"

"That old house used to be a fancy hotel," Rebecca said. "It was built by the son of Bellingwood's founder. You know, Bell? Bellingwood?"

"Who's the
ing
and the
wood
?" he asked and reached for the bowl of taco meat.

Polly picked it up and handed it to him. "I think the ‘wood’ is a man named Garwood. He was another one of the founding fathers." She tapped a black leather-bound book. "Beryl's ancestors were part of that group and then some other names that I don't recognize. I've been reading all about the early days, but nobody knew that the Springer House used to be a hotel."

She dug through the pile and pulled out a colorful booklet. "This was printed at the centennial and there's no mention of the place." Polly laughed. "Here's a picture of little Lydia at the centennial parade in her prairie bonnet. How cute is she?"

Henry flipped through some of the pages. "I've never seen this." He chuckled. "All of these people were just kids. Look," he said. "Here are the Gardner boys on a float for the bank."

"Will there be a parade this summer?" Rebecca asked.

"I'm sure there will," Polly said. "They're going to tie it all in with Bellingwood Days. Jeff says it's going to be a busy couple of weeks." She pointed at the date on the Boone newspaper. "Bell House was built in nineteen-sixteen. We're going to have to do something fun to celebrate its hundredth birthday."

Henry nodded.

"Maybe an open house so people can forget about it being haunted and think about it as part of the history of Bellingwood," she blurted out.

He nodded again as he filled another tortilla. Then he laughed and looked at her. "An open house? This summer?"

She giggled. "Maybe?"

He looked at Heath and Rebecca, then back to Polly. "You said that in front of them so I wouldn't react."

"Maybe?" Her eyes darted back and forth. "Am I dead?"

"No, not dead," he said with a laugh. "We'll talk about this later."

Rebecca said, "She's dead."

Henry pointed at the pile of books again. "What else did you find?"

"Well, I was looking for more pictures of the Bell House."

"And?"

"I didn't find anything other than what's in that newspaper. But I think the place was a huge failure. It was supposed to be a posh hotel for wealthy people who came out here for the railroad, but they were too far away from Boone. And then World War One started the next year and as far as I can tell, it just closed down."

"That's probably why it's not in the published history of the town," Henry said. "But still, it would have been interesting. Weird. Whatever happened to the young man who built it?"

"I haven't found that either. He was the last Bell to live in Bellingwood. The hotel closed and there's nothing about him leaving town or dying. He just disappeared."

Henry glanced over at Heath. "Oh no," he said. "It's a mystery. A hundred-year-old mystery, but if Polly finds old bones in the house, she'll find a way to solve it."

She swatted at him. "Stop it."

"He's not in the cemetery?" Henry asked. "There's a whole Bell plot there."

Polly took out another booklet. "Joss told me I could have all of this stuff for two days, so I'm desperately trying to absorb it all." She flipped through pages of photographs of gravestones. "Here they are. Hiram and Susanna. Then there is a Leona who lived for three years and a William who died in nineteen eighteen. Do you suppose he was killed in the war?"

Henry nodded. "Probably. What was the name of the son who built the house?"

"Franklin," she said. "And he's not in here anywhere."

"Have you found lists of Bellingwood residents who fought in the war?" Henry asked.

Polly slumped back in her chair. "Seriously? No. I didn't think it was that important."

He shrugged and laughed. "I just wondered. You were doing all of this work."

"Leave me alone." She sat forward and pointed at the article about Evaline Watson. "That was Beryl's aunt or something. She died in the sixties. Beryl remembers her."

"That makes sense," Henry said. "There would be a lot of people in town who knew folks that had lived during the early part of the century."

"It's weird to think of how much history has been lost," Polly said. "Someone knew what happened to Franklin Bell, but we don't even know who to ask or how to find out the information. He's just lost to us now."

"My great-grandfather fought in that war," Heath said quietly. "I never knew him, but Mom said he and his brother went together, and he was the only one who came back." He shook his head. "I'm glad I don't have to go fight in a war. It seems so stupid to get sent to a foreign country just so you can die."

"There were a lot of men and women who were proud to serve," Henry replied. "Their country called and they responded."

"That’s not what I meant," he said. "In the history books, it just didn't feel like they had a choice. They were drafted and had to go."

"There are still a lot of men around today who were drafted to serve in the Viet Nam war," Henry said. "They're proud, too. They did what they were called to do even when it cost them everything. And those men didn't get very much respect when they came back to the United States."

"I didn't mean anything," Heath said.

Henry patted his arm. "I know you didn't. Just be careful what you say in public." He smiled. "We all know that Eliseo sacrificed a lot in a war because his scars are all over his body. But there are other men and women in town with scars that are on the inside because of sacrifices they made. They're very proud of their service and we should always honor them."

"Yes sir," Heath replied. "I'm sorry."

Henry took Heath's arm and made him look up. "It's okay. This is a safe place. It's your home." He looked at Rebecca. "This is where you should learn about these things. I'm not upset with you. Okay?"

Rebecca nodded. "So..." She drew the word out. "Cake and ice cream?"

"That sounds perfect," Polly said, laughing. She got up, walked around the table and hugged Heath's shoulders. "Do you want another taco before I put things away?"

"I'm done," he said and handed her his plate.

Polly looked at Henry and he responded with a small nod.

"Rebecca," she said. "We're taking the dogs out for one last walk before we have ice cream. We'll let the boys have a few minutes for their dinners to settle."

"But," Rebecca started to protest, but looked at Polly's stern face. "Fine. I'll get my coat."

The dogs were more than ready for a trip outside and ran for the tree line as soon as Polly opened the door.

"Is Henry yelling at Heath?" Rebecca asked.

Polly drew Rebecca in for a hug. The cold and wind forced them to stay inside the garage. "Not at all. He's just going to try to fix it. Heath hasn't had anyone around to help him learn how to respond properly to the world. His aunt and uncle just let him exist and now that there are course corrections for his life, it's difficult. He's embarrassed and feels bad that he might have upset Henry. They need to work it out on their own."

"How did you guys get so smart about raising kids?"

"That's funny," Polly said. "We just want to treat you like we want to be treated. A lot of love, a whole lot of respect and then some more love."

The door opening behind her made both of them jump. Two dogs went hurtling past them and into the back yard.

"Hi Polly," Doug Randall said. He grinned when he saw Rebecca in front of her. "Hi there."

"Dog duty tonight?" Polly asked.

"Billy and Rachel are at some family thing of Rachel's in Boone." He laughed. "They had to get all dressed up and everything." Doug rubbed his hands together. "It's cold out here."

Rebecca pointed at the dogs. "And they love it. Look at them running in the snow."

"They're dogs," Polly said, pulling Rebecca in tighter to hold onto the girl’s extra body heat. "Where are you working now?" she asked Doug.

"Jerry has us on an apartment job in Ames. I can't believe how many are going up over there. Where do all these people come from?"

"I don't know," Polly said. "But Henry likes those jobs, too. They're good money and the work is straightforward."