Treasure Uncovered (Bellingwood #3) (28 page)

"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."

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?"

She picked up a small box and dropped the two books and other items into it, then began gathering the paperwork from Harry Bern's life into another box. When it was full, she flapped it shut and marked "Recycle - Paperwork" on the top. She'd kept the last copy of his statement and the latest bills out so that she could work with Ken Wallers to close the accounts. When that was finished, she gathered all of his unused office supplies into a box, filled it, labeled it and set it outside the office door. Finally, she pulled paintings off the wall and stacked them on the floor. There were a few knick knacks and candles around that she set on the desk.

"I'm going to wander around the rest of the house, boys. When Andy comes back in, tell her what's going on. You can set any other books you find like these two on the desk."

She walked into the main room and saw that boxes were beginning to fill the lawn outside. Henry's truck was parked on the lawn and several of the boys were filling the bed with junk. Polly moved around the room, lifting paintings down to the floor. She went into the bedroom and found several more and carried them into the living room, stacking them all together.

"How are we doing, Polly?" Henry asked as he entered the front door.

"I think we're doing great. We've had some good help today."

"My truck is full and I'm going to run this load to the dump. I should be back in about forty-five minutes. Will you still be here?"

"Thanks," she said. "Yeah. I think I'll still be here. Hopefully most everything will be done by then, though."

"See you in a bit," he said and left.

"Yeah," she muttered, "see you."

She turned back to the hallway, walking toward the kitchen. She was surprised to see that it had been cleared out completely and heard voices coming up from the basement. Polly followed the sound of the voices and found Andy down there with several young people.

"He collected weird junk, Polly," Andy said. "This looks like an old carburetor and I know that this is part of a flue from an old coal stove." She turned on the kids who were standing there. "Don't you dare ask me how I know that either. I'm not that old."

They laughed and one of them took it out of her hand.

"I think we'll box this up and take it out to the Homer Brothers junkyard. Brandon here says he goes out there all the time with his brother to get parts for his brother's truck. He'll take it for us."

"That sounds great. So, there's nothing interesting down here?"

"All of this stuff was tossed around, so if they found anything interesting, they took it," Andy responded.