Diane Greenwood Muir - Bellingwood 05 - Life Between the Lines (16 page)

“We should start at the beginning,” Henry said.

“Was there only one ice cream sandwich?” Polly asked him, sticking her lower lip out in a pout.

“I hope not!” He winked and kissed her lip. “That pout seems sad and pathetic.”
As he walked away, he said, “It seems odd that Thomas put all of this work into creating a puzzle of this information. Surely he didn’t do it just for you. How would he know that he needed to do that?”

“I don’t think he did do it for me.” She put her laptop on the table in front of her and followed him out into the kitchen. He pulled another ice cream sandwich out for each of them and handed one to her.

“He didn’t say much, but there were some things that bothered him. A lot. He was scared of something, but no …” Polly bit her lower lip while she thought. “It wasn’t that he was scared, it was more like he knew there was something out there that he was going to have to deal with someday and it was going to be difficult. It was like he wanted to avoid it as long as he could.”

“What makes you say that?”

“One day we were talking about kids. He got this real faraway look and said he needed to fix things before he ever found his kid. I asked him if he really thought he might have a child out there and he changed the subject.” She hitched herself up onto the counter and looked at Henry. “He knew something.”

“Did he ever find Nelly again?”

“He didn’t tell me that, but I don’t think he ever quit looking for her. I was telling Lydia earlier that the main character in his mysteries is defined by a broken relationship in the past. The detective spends his life looking for something that was lost. In the books, the girl’s name was Annie and the detective was Eddie.”

Henry nodded, waiting for her to go on.

“You know - Edgar and Annabel?”

“But, Edgar wasn’t ever married to an Annabel.”

“No, but Thomas loved that poem. And everyone is certain that Annabel Lee is written for Poe’s wife who died. It’s a little weird that the narrator of the poem sleeps in her sepulcher every night, but Thomas said that losing someone you love that much makes you live in that loss for a long time. He said he drank because he hated going to sleep at night since he dreamed of Nelly and wondered where she’d gone.” Polly dropped her head. “You know. That makes sense to me. I dreamt about my mom a lot. In my dreams she was happy and healthy, doing all of the things we’d always done.”

“Do you dream about your dad too?”

“I do. Most of the time we’re all together. It gets kind of jumbled up with Sylvester and Mary, but sometimes my dreams remind me about how much I miss them.”

Henry moved in closer to her, standing between her legs. He hugged her tight, then backed up.

Polly giggled. “The funny thing is that I still dream about my old boyfriends, too. There was one bad breakup that I had in high school. We just quit talking to each other and after I graduated I never saw him again, but sometimes in my dreams, he shows up out of the blue so we can patch things up and be okay again. Maybe it’s just my brain trying to make everyone happy.”

“So, Poe wanted to sleep in his dead wife’s sepulcher?”

“No, I think he realized that he was spending so much time thinking about her it was like he was already there. Rather than deal with her death, he focused on it until it overtook him. That’s what Thomas did too. He focused so much on losing Nelly that the only way to get through it was to make himself totally numb.”

Polly reached her right leg out and hooked it around Henry, pulling him back in. She kissed him.

“You taste like chocolate and ice cream,” he laughed.

“Good thing you do too. At least I don’t taste like garlic.” She’d eaten her fair share of garlic mashed potatoes at dinner.

“If you did, so would I.” He reached in and kissed her again. She leaned into the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Whoa woman,” he said. “Now you’re making
me
swoon.”

“About time!” she exclaimed. “You’ve spent this last year making me weak in the knees. It’s my turn.”

She pulled away and laughed, “So do you ever feel like I make you too girly?”

“Where in the world did this come from?” Henry backed up and took the ice cream wrapper from her, depositing both in the trash can.

“Oh, I was just thinking about you cooking for me and telling me you swoon and you were helping me with my project and you’re always doing stuff for me. Should I be out tinkering on cars with you or taking you hunting or something?”

Henry laughed until his face got red. “Polly, you come up with the craziest thoughts,” he sputtered.

“What?” she asked, jumping down from the counter.

“I love you, Polly, but you have got to quit worrying about what other people think.”

“I’m wondering about what you think!” She swatted his arm.

“No, you are worrying about what other people might think of me or you. We’re in our thirties. We get to do what we want without input from other people.”

“So that’s a ‘no’ to my question?”

“Do I think you make me too girly?”

“Yes. That question.”

“No. I’m still as macho and masculine as I ever was.

“Even when you tell me you swoon from my kiss?”

“Polly, when we are here in your apartment, we can do or say whatever we please. You have got to get past this.”

“I probably won’t.”

“Get past this?”

“Yep. I haven’t changed much since you met me, have I?”

“Well, no, but …”

“No buts about it. I’m probably going to make you nuts forever.”

He had begun to walk back to the living room, but spun around on her. “Forever?”

She shrugged. “Unless you decide that I’m too crazy to be around.”

“Forever is a long time, pretty girl.”

“Okay, then I’m going to make you nuts. Period.”

Henry waited for her to catch up, then wrapped an arm around her. “I like the sound of forever, though.”

“This first year hasn’t been too bad,” she said and melted into the kiss he used to stop her from talking anymore.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

Knitting her brows together in concentration, Polly found it difficult to break away when Jeff came in for the day.

“You’re in early,” he said, plopping down in the chair.

“Eliseo and I hurried this morning. It was chilly out there. The horses weren’t in any hurry to go outside, so we just did a quick cleanup. He’s going to make Rachel and Jason work extra hard tonight. I was fine with that,” she laughed.

“What’s up with your day?”

“I’m ordering a new mattress and then, unless you need me, I was going to huddle up with my laptop and keep working on the information I got from Thomas. Why?”

“No reason. Just keeping an eye on you. Nothing weird happened last night?”

She peered at him over her laptop. “What do you mean? Do you know something?”

“What? No! I was just asking. You still don’t have any idea who might be targeting Sycamore House?”

“Trust me, if I had any idea, I’d be all over it. So what’s up for you today?”

“Oh, you know.
Normal stuff. Meetings and classes and other assorted craziness. We have a wedding tomorrow, so there’s a rehearsal and dinner tonight.”

“A wedding? We never have weddings here.”

“They don’t want it in a church, so they’re doing it here. It should be interesting. It’s a theme wedding.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“They’re dressing in costume and decorating for it.”

“Okay? Why do you sound so tentative?”

“It has the potential for really cool or really weird. I’m betting on really weird and hoping on really cool.”

“What’s the theme?”

Jeff took a deep breath. “Legend of Zelda.”

“I’m sorry, what?” she laughed.

“Yep. It seems that Link has finally found Zelda and they’re getting married. The best part is that I think the guy performing the ceremony is the evil guy.”

“Ganon?” she asked.

“Yeah. Him,” Jeff glanced sideways at her. “How did you know that? You are such a nerd.”

“
Way too many video games in my life. You have to take lots of pictures. I want to see it,” Polly said.

“
I’ll make sure to drop some in your shared folder so you can be entertained. But I still think it’s weird.”

“You need more adventure in your life, my boy.”

“Maybe I do. When they decide to do a
Sound of Music
or
South Pacific
themed wedding, I’ll get really excited.”

“Uh huh … you’re a nut.”

Jeff stood up to leave her office.

“Jeff?”

“Yes, Polly.”

“Just remember: it’s dangerous to go alone.”

He turned around and rolled his eyes at her. “That’s from the video game, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.” She winked at him. “You aren’t very good at this geek stuff, but you’ll learn.”

“Uh huh.” He left her office. She thought about lucky she was to have him. He made the experiences great for their guests. She couldn’t imagine doing it without him.

Polly stood and walked over to his door, “Jeff?”

He looked up, “What do you need, Polly?”

“I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you. I don’t say it enough. Sycamore House would be nothing without you. I couldn’t put up with the people you put up with and I could never pull off a Legend of Zelda theme wedding.”

“We all have our own strengths. Mine happens to be parties.”

“No. Yours is people and parties and organizing and scheduling and everything else you do around here. I just wanted you to know that I should tell you that every day. So, thank you.”

He looked a little uncomfortable. “Thanks, Polly.”

She winked at him again, “And maybe I’ll try to talk Santa out of putting coal in your stocking.”

“I’d appreciate that,” he laughed.

She went back into her office and grabbed her coffee mug. She needed more caffeine.

Polly took a deep breath and opened the folder she had named ‘Annabel Lee.’ It was time to dig into the first stanza of the poem and see what Thomas had left for her. Now that there was an order, she hoped the files would begin to make more sense.

She clicked the first folder open. It seemed as if they were PDFs that had been scanned from documents. She opened an image of a Sunday school class attendance record from Springfield, Colorado. The teacher had kept excellent records. There were ten children in her classroom. Polly remembered these attendance charts. Why would Thomas have this?

The next file she opened was Sunday School roster from a year later. The same children, well … one little girl was gone and another had been added. A different teacher and parent’s names were listed. A boy named Auguste McCall had a mother, Camille. That was interesting. Both of those were characters created by Edgar Allan Poe. The other names were fairly mundane.

Another file from the same church was a bulletin. Apparently, little Auguste had gotten himself into a choir and was singing in a Christmas program. Camille was listed as a parent-helper that Sunday. Polly found a copy of a rental agreement from 1969 for an apartment in Springfield. It had been leased to Camille McCall for one year, with six month extensions to follow. A jpeg file made absolutely no sense, so she left it alone.

She opened the next folder. He continued to flesh out a picture of this young woman and her son. There were bills from a doctor … a pediatrician. She opened the bill from the hospital and found that it was from the child’s birth. There was another jpeg in this folder and it too, was odd. Another shot of the sky.

The third folder made her say, “Ah ha,” out loud when she opened the birth certificate for Auguste McCall. There was no father listed and
the mother was Camille. There was a scan of an invoice for an automobile purchase in the summer of nineteen seventy-three and another jpeg in the folder. It had a head of a woman in the same sky as the other two images.

“Do you think?” she asked herself. She quickly opened the other folders in this stanza and sure enough there was a single jpeg in each of them. She copied them all out into their own folder and looked at them as large icons, then extra large icons. If she took the time to arrange them, they were another puzzle. Soon, she had an image of a young woman and a little boy standing in front of the sign for Springfield, Colorado.

“Oh, Thomas. Was this your Nelly? Is this your son? When did you get this picture?

“Jeff?” Polly called out.

In a moment, he was standing in her door. “Yes, Polly?”

“I’m sorry. I should have gotten up myself. Do you have Photoshop or something on your computer?”

“No, but unless you are doing something intensive, you can probably use a free online tool. What are you trying to do?”

“I need to stitch some jpegs together into one photograph.”

“Yeah. You should be able to do that online.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

He grinned at her. “It’s no problem, I needed coffee anyway. Have you even looked up in the last hour?”

“It’s been an hour?” she asked.

“Is your mug empty?”

Polly looked down at her coffee mug. “Yes, I guess it is.”

“Here, give it to me. Let me get you stimulated.”

“Why Jeff, you naughty boy.”

“Don’t tell my mama. She warned me about girls like you.”

“I’ll bet she did.” Polly handed him the mug, then stood up and stretched. There were people coming into Sycamore House from the parking lot. “What class do we have this morning?”

“Some Halloween crafty thing in the classroom. I don’t know what they’re making.”

“Cool,” she said, taking the mug from him. She blew on it and felt the warm steam blow back in her face.

“What are you finding in there?” Jeff asked her.

“I’m not sure yet. Right now there is information on a young woman and her son. It’s all from the late sixties into the early seventies. Thomas did a lot of research on them.”

“Then don’t mind me. You go back to work. I’ll just be in my office until the next time you bellow at me.”

“Okay, thanks,” she said distractedly, then realized what had just happened. He was halfway out the door when she said, “I’m sorry, Jeff. I’d forgotten what it was like to be so focused.”

“No problem.” He waved at her as he turned the corner into his own office.

“Dork,” she muttered to herself and began working on the photograph. She made a few mistakes as she learned her way around the site, but when she had the finished piece, she had to admit it didn’t look half bad. She entitled the picture, “Springfield, Colorado” and dropped it into the Stanza One folder.

She’d ignored the other folders once the photograph caught her attention and now she skipped ahead to the last one. There was only one other document in this folder. It was the manuscript for one of Thomas’s early novels. It had been years since she read it.

Polly opened the file and began reading to refresh her memory. That was interesting. It was set in a little town in southeast Colorado. Eddie Powers had been called in by an old friend to investigate the murder of a young woman. The local police had
ruled it a suicide, but Powers discovered that a doctor’s son had gotten the girl pregnant. The doctor had subsequently poisoned her so that his son would take the football scholarship at Colorado State. The boy devastation at losing her and the discovery of what his father had done, caused him to kill himself. The story didn’t have a happy ending and Polly had only read it once, long ago.

She did a quick search for the book and discovered that it had been published in nineteen seventy-six. She continued
reading until she looked up in response to a quiet knock on her door.

Jeff was standing there, looking a little sheepish. “Do you know what time it is?”

“No, what?” she asked, then looked at the time on her laptop. “Where did it go?”

“Where did what go.”

“The time! It’s eleven forty-five! Have I been sitting here for two and a half hours?” She moved her shoulders and her back. They were a little sore.

“Do you want lunch?” he asked. “I was going to call the diner.”

“I have food upstairs. Do you want to eat with me? Henry made meatloaf and mashed potatoes last night. I have plenty of leftovers.”

“That actually sounds better than what I was going to eat. Sure. Can you take a break now?”

“I’d better,” she said, “or I might find myself stuck to that chair.”

“What did you find?”

“It took me a while to figure out the photo editing software, and then I found one of Thomas’s old manuscripts. I’d only read it once before and I must have gotten caught up in it again.”

“Why do you suppose that’s on there?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

They started out of the office, but then Polly stopped. She turned around and went back in and sat down at her desk.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t feel good about this. There is something on here he didn’t want people to know abo
ut.” She shut her computer down and then snapped the lid closed on her laptop and carried it with her. “I’m just going to be safe.”

“Seems a little paranoid,” he said.
             

“Wait until you have a man die at your front door and see if you aren’t a little paranoid,” she mocked back at him.

“You’ve got a point.”

They went upstairs to her apartment.

“Do you think you’ll be able to figure out who murdered Thomas from those files?” he asked as she fumbled for her phone to unlock the apartment door. They both looked up as Grey Linder walked out of one of the spa bathrooms. He was in a robe, his eyes were red. He nodded at the two of them and went on to his room. Polly unlocked her door and gestured for Jeff to go in first. She was about to follow him, when she realized that she hadn’t heard Grey’s door close. She glanced across the hallway and the door pushed shut.