Secrets and Revelations (Bellingwood #4) (12 page)

Andy was seated to Polly's left and told her that she wanted a comfortable new recliner in her living room. She was tired of the chair with a broken spring. No one ever sat in it and it was just taking up room.
Polly laughed.

Joss looked at Polly expectantly and she knew she had to come up with something. Finally, she said, "A first edition copy of one of Louisa May Alcott's books."

Joss nodded and Lydia said, "Now, you have to tell the person on your right what the other person said he or she wanted."

Polly raised her eyes and hoped that she had it straight. Lydia's ice breakers were never boring and people always followed along even if they might moan and groan about it. Learning odd little tidbits was kind of fun.

She told Joss what Andy had said to her and then listened as Andy informed her that Doug's birthday wish was for a motorcycle. Now that he was no longer living with his mother, she could no longer tell him he couldn't have one.

Andy smiled and told Polly that if he was her son, he'd never get a motorcycle, no matter how far away he lived. Polly grinned and didn't say anything. Doug was a smart boy and if he got a motorcycle, she'd just make sure he had enough leather to protect his body and a cool helmet to protect his head. She'd grown up with too many friends who loved their bikes.

Sylvie stood to begin cleanup and Lydia chuckled, pushed her seat out and
stacked the plates around her.

"It looks like we clean before we play, huh, ladies
?" she said.

The boys helped for a bit, but Sylvie shooed them out of the kitchen and back up to Doug's apartment. Within a short period of time, the dishwasher was running and everything was put away.

"Shall we retire to the lounge?" Polly asked.

They sat around the table and she began shuffling cards. "Who doesn't know how to play poker?" she asked.

All around the table, hands went up.

"Are you kidding me?"

Lydia looked sheepishly at everyone else. "I played years ago maybe one time at summer camp."

"I've never played," Sylvie said. "I figured I was the only one."

"Well, you're learning tonight," Polly declared. "We're going to play my favorite - five card draw." She explained the rules to them and Lydia dug around in her purse for a piece of paper and a pencil.

"What are you doing?" Polly asked.

"I'm never going to remember what all of these hands are worth."

"Neither am I. Share," Andy said.

"Y'all are lame!" Beryl said. "How will we ever hang out with the menfolk if we have to use cheat sheets?"

She took a piece of chocolate out of one of the bowls and unwrapped it. Just as she popped
it in her mouth, Polly said, "Hey!"

"What? I can't eat chocolate now?"

"Not at a buck a pop."

Beryl held the candy out from her mouth. "This is worth a dollar? Where in the hell are you buying candy these days?"

"No, you nut. The candy is our money for betting. Milk chocolate is a dollar, mint chocolate is five dollars, dark chocolate is ten dollars and cookies and cream chocolate is twenty dollars."

Beryl ate the candy and said, "Sue me. I owe you a buck."

"I vote we play Crazy Eights and just eat the chocolate," Lydia smirked and unwrapped another candy.

Sylvie began to giggle as Polly looked helplessly around the table. "This is going badly, isn't it," Polly said to her.

"We should have known better." Sylvie responded.

"Fine, then. Do you want to play Go Fish, Old Maid or Crazy Eights? My god, you're a bunch of old ladies."

"No, no, no." Lydia soothed. "If you want to play poker tonight and corrupt me, I'll learn the game. Far be it from me to rise above peer pressure."

Beryl reached over and dumped the milk chocolate candies on the table, then began spreading them out among the women seated there. "Eat candy in protest. Trust me, it will make the night feel much more normal."

Polly scowled at them, then began dealing cards. When she reached seven cards, she put the rest in the center of the table.

"Crazy eights fits this group perfectly." She turned the first card up and placed a spade down. She looked at Joss who was sitting to her left. "It's your turn. Play a card."

"Are you pouting, Polly?" Beryl asked. "Pouting Polly. Pouting Polly. Pouting Polly. Who knew those two words worked so well together."

Polly looked at the glass of water sitting on the table beside her and then back at Beryl, a gleam in her eyes. Before the woman knew what had happened, she was soaking wet.
Not much of the water had hit the table, but everyone sat back, fully in shock.

"Nope. Not pouting. Just getting even. Go ahead, Joss," Polly said, grinning.

Joss' eyes flitted around the room, completely unsure as to her next move. Then Beryl burst out laughing. "I deserved that!" she howled. "But don't think for a minute this is over."

"I know," Polly laughed. "It's only just begun, but I fired the first salvo and that counts for something."

Joss put a card on the pile and they played a couple of rounds.

"So what's up with the quilt in the foyer?" Hannah asked.

"What quilt?" Lydia set her cards down on the table. "Is something wrong with one of the quilts?"

"I can't believe you didn't see it," Polly said. "Come on, I'll show you." Everyone followed her to the foyer and peered at the quilt block that had been defaced.

"Jeff talked to Marla Singer about fixing it. She knows whose quilt it is and was going to contact them before she did anything."

"Do you know who did this? Why didn't you call Aaron?" Lydia asked.

"Because until someone says they are going to press charges, we're not going to make a big deal out of it."

"What happened?" Andy asked.

"I'm sure it has something to do with Cindy Rothenfuss." When Polly said her name, a collective eye roll happened in the group and Beryl threw her hands up in the air.

"If there was going to be something wrong with this, it had her name written all over it. I should have known," she said.

"We don't know who could have done this."

"Oh, she probably did it herself," Beryl muttered. "The old bitch would do that just to gain attention.
It's lipstick, right?" She scraped a little off with her fingernail and touched it to her tongue. "Yep. That's lipstick. It will clean up. I wouldn't put it past her to have done this just to get you or someone else in trouble."

"That doesn't make sense and I don't know when she would have been in here. We think it happened sometime Saturday morning. As far as I know, Jeff hasn't been able to reach her.

They wandered back in to the lounge and sat down again. Polly told them about the altercation on Friday.

Joss shuddered beside her.

"What's up?" Polly asked.

"When I first got
to town, she was on the library board. She made my life miserable. Everyone was so afraid of getting rid of her because they thought that her husband wouldn't support the library after she left the board. She might have tried to get him to stop, but he actually stepped up their support.

"One night I had to ask her to leave the building. She was hovering over some children who were reading at a table. They were being quiet, but she swore to me one of them had a candy bar and was going to smudge the pages. They were looking at one of our expensive atlases, but I saw no signs of chocolate.
I think she just came in looking for a reason to yell at someone.

"Whenever it came time to do a book drive or a used book selloff, she wanted to run everything. But, if she ran things, no one else participated, so I couldn't let her. That was an awful year."

She shuddered again.

"Do you have a pretty good board now?" Polly asked.

Joss smiled. "For the most part. We have a lot of work to do, though. This is the second year we've been involved with the literacy competition and that's done a lot to bring in the older kids. I have great people working with the children's programs and the board supports all of that. Most of the board members volunteer a lot. You should become a member, Polly."

"Maybe someday I will."

"Do you need more volunteers?" Andy asked.

"We always need more volunteers. I'd love to be able to staff the building from eight in the morning until ten or eleven every night so that more people could come in when they have time, but I can only do so much. Since I'm the only person they pay and they only pay me part time, we are limited in the hours we are open."

"I think I'd like to help."

"Oh, good heavens, she'd be perfect for you," Beryl said. "The woman is so stinking organized, she'd have everything filed and put away before you got out of bed in the morning."

"Can you come over tomorrow afternoon?" Joss asked.

Andy smiled. "I would love to.

"Why haven't you ever done this before, Andy?" Lydia asked, then said to Joss. "She was an English teacher."

Joss' eyes lit up. "Why haven't you ever asked before?" she repeated.

"It never occurred to me that you could use me. And then I got busy and probably a little lazy."

Beryl snorted out loud at that. "Lazy, hah. You're just busy with your new boyfriend and forgot that the rest of the world even existed."

"Hush," Lydia put her hand on Beryl's to stop her from teasing. Beryl shook the hand off hers and waggled it in front of Lydia. "I know you miss having Andy around all the time. You get stuck with me more often and I'm not nearly as nice as she is."

Andy looked at the two of them, "You don't think I'm spending enough time with you?"

"Nope. You're not. Because of that, Lydia drags me out of my studio so I will go to Boone with her and eat out for lunch and go shopping and see movies."

"And have a little bit of life so you have something to paint. You are a real pain in the butt, Beryl Watson." Lydia said. "If I had any more water in my glass, I’d toss it at you."

Polly looked around the table. Sylvie was grinning and Hannah simply looked confused. Joss' eyes were laughing as they took in the three best friends’ harassment of each other.

"Beryl, I don't think we have any of your paintings at the library. You should really put together a collection and let us display them," Joss interrupted.

Polly was impressed. The girl knew how to manage a room.

Beryl, however, wasn't quite as impressed, but laughed and said, “That was a nice try, Miss Librarian. I know when I've been
redirected."

"Interestingly,” Beryl continued, “I actually approached the Library about donating some paintings several years ago and I think it was Cindy Rothenfuss who told me that she didn't think they needed anything like my work."

Joss shook her head. "I'm not surprised. She didn't want us to build up the young adult library either. Thought it would bring in the wrong type of crowd."

"This woman has created havoc in Bellingwood. Why won't someone stop her?" Polly asked.

"Because it's easier to just ignore her."

"But they aren't ignoring her. Beryl's paintings aren't at the library because she was in control. She bullies anyone who comes in contact with her and when she bullied a young woman yesterday
, I was the only person who told her to stop it and get out. Has her husband ever refused to support something when she threatens to take away their money?"

The three older women looked at each other and thought about it.

"Honestly, not ever," Lydia said. "He's quite generous."

"Especially when she's been awful," Andy interjected. "Our church has handbells because he donated money for them. He was trying to apologize to the choir director, I guess. Cindy decided one fall to take it upon herself to organize all the special music for Sunday morning services. She didn’t like the choir director’s schedule. The poor man had to call her and tell her to stop making calls to the parishioners because it was confusing them as to when they were to perform.
Barry didn't want anyone to know that he'd given the money, but I was on the board at the time and we approved the purchase."

"Does anyone know why she is so mean-spirited?" Hannah quietly asked. "Has someone hurt her or something?"

Lydia paused. "She's been this way as long as I've known her. They moved into town about twenty years ago and she was pretty quiet and innocuous at the time. As she got more and more involved in things, though, she also became more strident. I guess we all just figured that was in her nature."

"Does she have children?" Polly asked. "Because those kids would be seriously messed up."

"No, I don't think so. Andy? Were there any kids in school?"

Andy shook her head in the negative, "No, there weren't any kids."

"That's the problem, then." Beryl said. "No sex. No happy. The poor woman is probably all shriveled up. You gotta have a little fun once in a while."

Lydia rolled her eyes and said to Joss, "She's not usually like this."