by Dale Mayer
“No, of course not. But I trust you,” she said. “And you won’t make a mistake on purpose.”
“Can it be a mistake if it’s on purpose?” he asked curiously.
She hadn’t a clue. She shrugged. “You said we still needed more hardware, right?”
“Yeah, but I talked to Chester. He helped his dad build a deck, and they have a bunch of metal couplings and stuff leftover. They would take them back to the store for a refund, but his dad hadn’t bothered, and it’s well past the deadline now. So he was okay to give it to us.”
“That would be perfect,” she said. “How much more do we need before we can get started?”
He looked at her in surprise. “We don’t need tons more to start. We’ll need more before you can finish though. You said you wanted to clean off the ground underneath the deck and maybe lay some tarps and gravel down to stop any weeds from popping through.”
“Yes, but that wouldn’t require good tarps, would it?”
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. And those are pretty cheap. Princess Auto often has stuff like that around.”
She didn’t know what Princess Auto was, but she was willing to listen to him. “So, are we talking this weekend, this month, or next month?”
“Good question,” he said. “I would suggest we could do some of the rough work this weekend. If you want to grab some tarps,” he looked at the area and continued, “you’ll need a couple of ten-by-twenty, or at least ten-by-ten tarps to get in here. Probably more, depending on how much of the area on the side of the house you want to just put rock down on.”
“I wouldn’t mind having the whole side of the house done. I did hear about somebody that put mats down,” she muttered. “That would be nice too.”
“Yes,” he said, “but lots more money.”
“But rock on top of a tarp like this,” she said, “isn’t that slippery?”
“It can be.” He nodded. “We can put down crushed rock. Then we can take a packer and flatten it. That’s always good to do.”
“It depends which is the cheapest.”
“Right now we don’t have to worry about the side of the house,” he said, “and we can’t really do it until the deck is done anyway because we’ve got all the material sitting here.”
“Good point,” she said. “And we don’t need rocks on top of the tarps yet, if we put the cinder blocks in and around. We’re building a floating deck so we can just grab enough big rocks to keep the tarp in place for now.”
“Exactly,” he said. “So, if you want, my Sunday afternoon is free. I can come over and start placing some of these big concrete corners and get them leveled off. Depends on when we’ll get the hardware, which we’re waiting on Chester for.”
Frowning at that, he pulled out his phone and sent a text to Chester. When he got a response right away, he smiled. “Chester is heading out on a date right now, but he’ll bring stuff by the station in the morning.”
“Perfect,” she said. “So maybe what we should do is go out Sunday at noon, as soon as you are free, and get the rest of the stuff we need.”
“We’ll see,” he said. “I remember talking to Larry, one of my neighbors. He said he had a bunch of stuff sitting out in the backyard, just turning brown in the sun.”
“You can talk to him too. We don’t have to do it this weekend, if there’s any hope of getting more parts and pieces. I’d love a deck, but I really don’t have the money for it right now,” she admitted.
“Right,” he said. “Besides, there’s just something very satisfying about getting a job done for minimal money.”
“Oh, it’s not just me who feels that way, huh?”
He chuckled. “I think everybody likes a bargain. In a case like this, it’s an even bigger bargain.”
“Right.” She gave him a big smile. “So, the next thing to do is to see just what all the parts and pieces are. I’m getting impatient.”
“Let’s see what Chester brings tomorrow, then I can always look at my neighbor’s leftovers and see what he’s got. If need be, I can bring stuff over tomorrow too.”
“I feel really bad,” she said. “You’re doing so much for me.”
“Yep,” he said, “but that’s all right. We help each other in this world.”
She felt really sad over that because, in her world, so many people hadn’t been the kind to help. “I really appreciate it,” she said suddenly.
“Don’t worry about it. Remember? You shared your Chinese food with me, and I shared my dessert with you. So it goes both ways.”
She chuckled. “Good point, and it was really good, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “Now, I better head home. It’s been a very long day. Thanks for dinner. If you want, we can do lamb chops tomorrow.”
She beamed. “Or Sunday, if that’s better?” She followed him through the house and out onto the driveway.
He frowned, then nodded. “Maybe Sunday would be better. I’ll stop and pick some up. Then we’ll cook them Sunday.”
She smiled and nodded. As he was pulling away, she muttered, “Can you have lamb with pasta?” She knew if she could get him to cook another huge pot of pasta, she could eat all week without any problem.
Plus she knew that, given a chance, she would eat pasta every meal.
Mack gave a honk on his horn and drove away, with a hand waving out the window. She waved back, feeling a sense of loss and loneliness as he left. She had really gotten used to having him around daily when she fell through her little bridge again recently. But she’d see him again soon. Boy, it was good to have him in her life. She turned and walked back inside.
Chapter 5
Saturday Morning …
Saturday morning dawned bright and clear. Doreen hopped out of bed with an energy she wasn’t expecting. Just the thought of starting on the deck expansion tomorrow was huge and exciting. She was a little worried about the cost involved. And what if she got a little way into the job and then had to wait until she had more money? That would be tough, especially since she couldn’t collect any money yet on the sale of the antiques or even the sale of Nan’s clothes.
Mack hadn’t left her any money for the gardening she’d done on his mom’s yard. She groaned. She knew it was because he was so busy with work. She wished she could help him out, but unfortunately she was a large part of the reason he had so much work to do.
In the kitchen she put on her morning coffee, disarmed the security system, and opened the kitchen window and the back door. The animals all barreled out. Thaddeus flew out the window, as if he couldn’t possibly make it fast enough out the door. She shook her head.
“What’s up with you guys?” she asked, stepping onto her little deck to look around. But there was nothing to see.
Except that the water was definitely higher. It was bobbing close to the top of the path now. She stared at it in surprise. Looking back at the coffeepot, she realized the first cup was almost half dripped and wondered if she could steal a cup because she wanted to go down to the creek herself, coffee cup in hand.
She had put away the jewels in her bedroom last night, wondering what to do with them. She needed to get the appraisal done, but she didn’t know how long that would take. She wasn’t comfortable leaving the jewels anywhere but at home with her. She also wasn’t happy at the idea of showing anyone else the jewels. Secrets had been buried with the jewels, and, if opened, all heck could break loose.
Finally, she managed to get a cup of coffee from the still dripping pot, and, with the animals crowding around her, she walked down to the creek. It had risen at least eight to ten inches overnight. Was more to come? If that was the case, her pathway was about to go under. It was still quite a bit lower than her backyard, but wow. Mugs kept going closer and closer to the edge.
“Mugs, stop,” she snapped placing her full cup on a big rock.
He looked at her and woofed, then, almost like a two-year-old, took one more step toward the water and darned if he didn’t start
to fall. Doreen raced to his side as he scrambled up the bank, trying to get back out of the heavy rush of water. She managed to snag him by the collar, just in time to pull him toward her. But, as a result, she ended up falling on her own butt, sliding down toward the water. It was all she could do to hold herself back from ending up in the fast current herself.
She could hardly see through the surface; the water was dirty, as if it had picked up dirt every inch of the way as it headed down her little creek to become a river. She remembered seeing aerial photographs of the lake, where the brown rush of water from the river flowed into the lake and left this big half circle of brown as it stirred out to the middle of the lake. And that was exactly how the pickup truck with those poor people had ended up in the lake in that big crush of high water some years back.
This was nothing compared to that, but it was enough for her to have a reality check. She looked around and noted that, if the water kept rising like it was, she couldn’t take the creek route to Nan’s anymore.
She shook her head. “Who knew?”
Mugs scooted back a couple feet and sat beside her on her property but on the little bit of a hill area, so she could watch the water. Thankfully he missed sitting on the newly transplanted heather.
“It’s so beautiful but so deadly.” Just then she heard a voice from over Richard’s fence.
“Like all water,” the voice snapped.
But whose voice? His? His wife’s? Doreen was never sure who she was talking to when she had no face to put to the androgynous voice. Richard had said he was married and that his wife’s name was Sicily. Yet Doreen had never seen her. The mystery of Richard’s partner remained unsolved to date. But Doreen’s curiosity hadn’t dampened.
She stared at the fence. “Can you see? The creek is so high.”
“It’s not that high,” he/she said. “It’s not coming under my fence yet.”
She stopped and stared, thinking about that. “Does it normally get that high?”
“Not normally,” the voice said, “but I’ve certainly seen it happen a half-dozen times in the years I’ve been here.”
“I understand better now,” Doreen murmured. But then her neighbor’s fence was a little lower too. So maybe that made sense. “Well, I no longer have a fence, so I can see it while I sit here on my property.”
“You can watch it all you want, but it can get dangerous as all heck.”
“Wow,” Doreen said. “I’m really amazed.” The early morning sun was shining on the water that danced and gushed all the way down to the lake. “It’s incredible.” Branches floated by and even occasionally a whole tree. “There has to be thousands of gallons of water plugging through here.”
“Yes,” the neighbor said.
After that, there was no more conversation, as Doreen just sat and enjoyed herself. Finally her coffee cup was empty, so she turned and headed back to the house to get more. The ground itself seemed a little wetter, as if the water had soaked in through the ground overnight, reaching back toward the house.
The water was coming out of the hoses she had hooked up to the sump pump with Nan’s help. She stared in surprise to see just a trickle coming out, but it meant the pumps were working. She headed over and lifted one of the round wooden disks above the pump to see water on the inside.
Even as she watched, the pump activated, sending a gush of water that was in the little cistern out to the creek. She smiled. “Wow,” she said, “there’s more to this than I expected. Does everybody have pumps along here?”
But the neighbor didn’t answer. She figured that either he/she was down at the creekside or had gone into the house.
After the handcuff case scenario, it wasn’t like the neighbor was any friendlier. It was almost as if he/she had decided to blame Doreen for all that attention. But, so far, the media hadn’t heard about the pink satin handcuffs found in Richard’s front garden. Too bad. They could haunt him for a change.
She was still chuckling as she headed up to the deck and inside. She really should make a trip to the local jewelry store, get a receipt for all the jewels, and leave them for an appraiser, if it seemed okay with them. She grabbed the loose stones in the jewelry bag. She still wasn’t terribly comfortable with the whole appraisal thing. She also needed to go grocery shopping and might even come back with tarps, so Mack’s time off could be spent doing the stuff she didn’t know how to do.
It would take her a while to figure out the tarp thing and to pull the weeds. She wasn’t sure about getting rocks in just yet, as plenty of rocks were around her garden, and, of course, if she wanted to, she could always pick up a couple from her creek. There was probably some law or something against it, but, if she was careful and not too greedy, maybe the city wouldn’t mind if she removed a few of them.
Picking up her purse, she reset the alarm, and leaving all three of the animals inside, she stepped out. Mugs hopped up on the door, trying to tell her with his barking that he wanted to go with her. She called back through the door, “Sorry, buddy. I can’t take you in the grocery store, and I’m not leaving you in the car.”
She went to the hardware store first and found the cheapest tarps. Only at twelve dollars, they were not exactly cheap. She hesitatingly put them back on the shelf, wondering if there was a better option. She texted Mack.
Where’s that place you said is best to get tarps?
He responded, and she remembered the name, although who in their right mind would put “princess” in the business name for an auto shop? She found her way to what looked to be a military and outdoorsy all-in-one-guy type of store. She walked inside to find an older man with a bald head smiling at her.
She looked up at him and grinned. “Okay, I know I don’t look like I belong here,” she said, “but I’m looking for tarps to put under a new deck we’re trying to build.”
“Perfect,” he said with a nod, then led her to the tarps. “These are pretty cheap,” he said, “particularly for what you’ll be using them for.”
“I don’t want weeds to come through,” she said, “so I don’t want it to be too cheap.”
“Not a problem,” he said. “The material is really dense. You could also double up on them, if you wanted.”
“How much are they?” she asked.
“They happen to be on sale this weekend.” His smile was genuine. “It’s buy-one-get-one free, so it works out to be two for ten bucks.”
Delighted with that, Doreen picked up two, then she stopped and looked at the size and said, “They’re ten by ten.”
“Is that how big your deck is?” he asked. “Or bigger?”
“Bigger.” The trouble was, she didn’t know how big the end result would be, and she didn’t want to shortchange on the tarps.
“When you get the concrete blocks tucked in,” he said, “make sure you dig these down, otherwise you’ll get weeds around the blocks.”
She frowned at that and nodded.
He continued, “And you could grab a third one and cut up pieces to extend it.”
“Or do you have the bigger ones on sale too?” Doreen asked craftily.
He chuckled. “I do have some that are twelve-by-fifteen.”
“I’ll take two of those,” she said. “I can always fold under any surplus.”
They were fifteen dollars, but, hey, she would take that. With both tarps in her car, she headed to the grocery store. She didn’t have much money with her because she deliberately didn’t budget much for each week. But she needed a little bit more than she had planned for. Including coffee. As she wandered the aisles, filling her basket, she thought she heard her name spoken. She turned around to look, but nobody was there. Then she heard her name, not being called, more like someone mentioned it in a conversation. She moved closer and heard several older women having a discussion about Nan’s granddaughter, Doreen.
As she came around the corner, somebody nudged one of the others, and they all shut up. Doreen looked at them and smiled. “Did I hear you talking abo
ut me? I thought I heard my name mentioned. Doreen?” She’d always found the best way to deal with gossips was to nip it in the bud.
One of the women looked at her, then raised an eyebrow, her nose going up in the air. “Of course not,” she said. “Why would we talk about you?”
The arrogance and such a superior tone in her voice stopped Doreen, and she looked at her in surprise. “No reason, I guess,” she said, easily hiding behind her years of training with an equally arrogant husband. “Of course, if you’re gossiping about anyone,” she said, “it’s really not well looked upon, is it? My grandmother is a lovely person, so I know that, if you’re talking about her, it would be in the best regard.”
The whole time she spoke, the woman glared at her.
Doreen just gave her a sunny smile and walked to where the bananas were. She picked up one banana and put it in her basket.
“Is that all you can afford?” the woman asked.
Doreen could feel anger sparking inside her. She turned and slowly looked at the five women gathered together, and only one had the grace to look ashamed. The other three were backing up the older woman.
“Of course not, but waste not, want not,” she said with an airy wave of her hand. “You must be Aretha.”
Shock slammed into the woman. “How do you know who I am?” she demanded.
Doreen gave her the smallest of smiles. “It’s really not hard to figure out,” she said, and she moved to walk away, but that wasn’t enough for Aretha.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “Tell me!” Then she reached out with a birdlike hand that was all claws and gripped Doreen’s arm. “How dare you talk about me!”
“I haven’t talked about you.” Doreen could lie with the best of the snobbery club, if called upon. “But I did hear you were a little too arrogant for your own good and that you looked down on everybody else if they didn’t have as much money as you did,” she said with a laugh. “So it was immediately obvious who you were. And, of course, these are your sidekicks. I’ll be sure to find out who they are too.”