by Dale Mayer
She wondered whether she should check in the local paper or online for any plant-swap groups. And she had to consider if she had anything to swap. A lot of Nan’s garden was overgrown, but some sections were seriously suffering.
She headed to the edge of the creek and transplanted the heather along the far left corner of the fence. It would give a really colorful edge to the bank there. With that done, she dumped the rest of the loose dirt around it, packed it in tight, walked to the creek with her shovel and scooped up some fresh water and poured it all around the newly transplanted heather. She repeated that a few times until the plants were nicely soaked. Finally she stood here and admired her work. “I know you’ll struggle for a bit,” she murmured to the plants, “but that’s okay. You’ll be fine soon.”
Then she pushed her wheelbarrow to the garage. When she came out the side door, she saw a vehicle pulling in. It was Mack, coming over to cook dinner. As soon as he hopped out, Mugs almost trampled over Goliath to get to Mack. Goliath meowed in anger and took off in the opposite direction. Doreen laughed. Maybe that had been Mugs’s plan all along.
She glanced around and found Thaddeus had walked with her into the garage and was even now at her feet, looking up at Mack. Although her bird was a good size, he was still low to the ground, and she had always worried about him getting trampled. It was one thing for Mugs to send Goliath tumbling into somersaults, but it was another thing entirely for poor Thaddeus. She scooped him up and put him on her shoulder.
He got all excited, ruffling his feathers and crying out, “Mack is here. Mack is here.”
Mack looked at him and said, “Looks like Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
Thaddeus opened his mouth and echoed him. “Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
Doreen shook her head. “Please don’t encourage him.”
Mack chuckled, gave Mugs a hug and a cuddle. “He’s great,” he said, slowly standing up to rub his hand along Thaddeus’s head. Then he looked around and said, “What happened to Goliath?”
“Mugs happened,” Doreen said. “He sent Goliath into a series of somersaults, and Goliath took off because he was offended.” Doreen looked around and called out, “Goliath! Come on over here, buddy.” But there was no answer. She glanced at the neighbor’s house and found the cat sitting right in the middle of the heather. Thankfully a different spot than the one she’d disturbed today. She winced. “Goliath, come on, buddy. Get off of there.”
“I guess that neighbor is not terribly friendly, is he?”
“He surprised me today,” she said. “I asked him if I could have a piece of heather from his garden for my back garden. He let me take out this huge section that was an odd color. He didn’t like that shade, as it turned out. He wanted the heathers in a uniform color, so I was allowed to take that one. But then I had to move and shuffle a bunch of the others in his bed, so it used up the newly created space. It looks pretty good now, but Goliath is sitting just off to the left of where I had been working.”
As she said that, she walked to the edge of the driveway and called him, but Goliath wasn’t having anything to do with her. Instead, he stretched out, full length, on the carpet of purple. “No, no, no,” she cried out. She ran up the driveway and reached down to snag him. Just before she got to him, he darted toward Mack.
But that was enough for her to see what he had disturbed. She frowned. She’d worked in this garden bed earlier for at least a half hour, but not in this section. This big solid clump Goliath had lain on had something else shiny in it. She carefully parted the heather and found a ring. She hooked it with another little twig and lifted it, carrying it to Mack. She held it up and said, “You can blame this one on Goliath, not me.”
He looked at it with raised eyebrows and said, “That’s a pretty fancy ring but doesn’t look valuable.”
She nodded. “And it’s just a bit away from where the handcuffs were.”
He glared at her, and she shrugged.
Just then, the neighbor’s door opened behind them, and the neighbor stepped out. “Now what did you find?” he growled.
Doreen gave him the sweetest smile. “A ring,” she said. “I figured it must go along with the handcuffs.”
His face turned beet red, and he stepped inside and slammed the door on her.
She chuckled. “He’s afraid I think the handcuffs were his. Thinking that he might have invited over an escort.”
Mack looked at her in all seriousness. “But we don’t know that he didn’t, do we?”
She shook her head. “Nope, we sure don’t. But any escort wouldn’t likely have been carrying these, if they came from the police station. So, do you want this, or am I giving it back to my neighbor?”
“Let me get a baggie for it,” Mack said, the fatigue heavy in his voice.
“I’m sorry. I guess I’ve dumped an awful lot of work onto your plate lately, haven’t I?”
“You have,” he admitted. “But also a huge sense of getting something accomplished, so I don’t mind. None of us do.”
“I went to watch the dogs sniffing at Steve’s place, but I wasn’t allowed on the property,” she complained.
“I was told you were there,” he said. “Nothing was allowed to distract the dogs. I didn’t think of that when you asked.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that either.”
“No, I’m sure you weren’t. The problem is, the dogs did find something, several somethings. But we have to dig very carefully.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I saw the markers on the lawn.”
He nodded. “That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily cadavers. No jumping to conclusions in that case.”
“When can you get in and dig?”
“They’re at it now. If we do locate any human remains, then, of course, we’ll have to investigate further, in a big way.”
Doreen nodded. “But still, if it’s human remains, it’ll be very nice to know these people have been found and recovered.”
“We’re not to that point yet,” he said and asked, “Coffee?”
“Sure. Or you can have lemonade.”
At that, he looked at her and asked, “You made lemonade?”
Chapter 7
Saturday Afternoon …
Doreen sniffed at Mack’s shock and drew herself up to her full height, wrapping her mantle of disdain around her, and said, “It’s not hard to make. It’s just lemons and sugar water.”
His lips twitched, but he said meekly, “I’d love to try a glass of lemonade.”
So she pulled out the pitcher from the fridge and poured him a glass. And then she waited, hating the expectation that it would be awful to his taste buds.
But he looked surprised. “This is good.”
“Don’t sound quite so shocked,” she said drily.
He chuckled. “Pleasantly surprised. You’re getting better.”
“I’ve hardly cooked anything. You’re the one cooking.”
“Which is why we’ll eat spaghetti tonight,” he said, “but you’re making it, not me.”
She put the lemonade back into the fridge. “What do I need to get started?”
He stood beside her and said, “Pull out the ground meat, the celery, and the onions. The garlic is on the counter already. We’ll need fresh tomatoes too. Do you have any of that red wine left?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It would be vinegar by now if I did.”
“Good point,” he said. He got out the big pot, and, per his instructions, she learned to brown the ground beef, add in the onions, the celery, and all the spices. And then finally the chopped fresh tomato.
He grabbed two spoons, gave one to Doreen, and he dipped his in the sauce. “Mmm.”
She was hesitant but sampled her sauce. “It’s good,” she exclaimed.
“Of course. Now we’ll let that simmer,” he said.
She sniffed the top of the pot and said, “Wow. I really hope I can remember this.”
And then he pointed at his phone.
She looked at it and said with a big grin, “You videotaped this, didn’t you?”
He laughed. “I did, and I can send it to you. You can have it for the next time you’re making sauce.”
“I would make pots and pots of this and freeze it all, so I have food for weeks.”
“There’s no reason not to, except for the fact that you don’t have much freezer space.”
She looked back at the pot and sighed happily. “You’re right. And I certainly can’t afford to do this all the time …”
“It’s a very cheap meal,” he said in all seriousness. “You can afford to eat this at least once a week, if not three times.”
Just then her stomach growled. He glared at her. She raised her hands defensively and said, “I ate earlier, but then I’ve done several hours of gardening since.” She motioned outside, so she could show him how far she’d gotten.
He looked at it in surprise. “It’s starting to look really good.”
“I’m a long way from being done though. I’m still trying to make sense of what’s in the garden. Once I’ve done this side, I have to start on the other. And, if I want to make a complete change in design, I need to put that down on paper.”
“What kind of change?”
She motioned at the tiny deck and said, “I was hoping to bring that deck all the way out here, so it will be about twelve feet across. It’d be nice to have a little barbecue and a place to sit at a bigger table for a meal, not just that little tiny bistro set.”
He nodded and said, “That wouldn’t be hard. Especially if you kept it under two feet high. You wouldn’t need permits.”
At the sound of permits, her stomach sank. “Permits sound expensive.”
“They can be, and it also depends how far back the house is from the riparian zone.”
Her heart sank even more. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, you might not do anything without a permit too close to the creek. I think the rule is fifty feet, or maybe fifteen meters.” He frowned. “I’ll have to double-check.” He walked down to the creek by the property line and used his stride as a measure, then walked forward. He stopped about twenty feet from the house. “You know what? I think you could probably bring a deck addition almost up this far.”
She looked at the large space in surprise.
“Really. And there’s no reason not to if you want something that big. Although you don’t really need to have it this big. Still no basement windows are underneath that would be blocked, so we could make it a solid deck with a nice set of stairs coming down off to the side. You could have a patio down here too.”
She looked at how far he had walked. It was almost to where she had finished her weeding. “We don’t have to bring it out as far as the fence either,” she said, studying Richard’s fence.
“No, you need six-foot clearance for that without asking for a variance, and there’s really no need. We could put stairs down on that side too, so you could get to the flowers, if you wanted. As a matter of fact, it would take a nice chunk of the garden out of here that you wouldn’t have to worry about.” He turned around, looked, and said, “By the time you brought some topsoil in here and got this area sorted out, you could have a nice lawn garden on both sides and a big deck.”
“I’d love a big deck,” she said warmly. “Something with that lovely outdoor furniture—lounges, chairs, and a table.”
“If that’s the case, maybe twenty feet isn’t too far out. That is big though, and you have to count in the fact that the bigger you make it, the more money it will cost.”
She winced. “It’s the labor as much as anything.” Then she stopped and said hesitantly, “I was wondering if it was something I could do.”
He looked at her in surprise. “It’s not that it’s hard,” he said cautiously, “but you have to get things level, and you’ve got to dig in your patio blocks. You know? Those concrete anchors? You’ve got to put all the beams in, and that’s not hard, but it does take a bit of work, as they are heavy. I’d be more concerned you might not be able to lift the wood.”
“Oh. And, if I can’t do that, I can’t lift those big concrete blocks either?”
“The blocks aren’t bad. It’s the wood, and it depends if we’ll put like four-by-fours all the way from one end to the other,” he said. “I think the biggest length we can get away with is twelve feet, without paying delivery, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do doubles.”
“Right,” Doreen said, as if she understood. “I’ll have to look it up. But I really like the idea of a big deck.”
“I can see that. You spend a lot of time out here, so why not? It’s not like you’ll ever have a pool because of the creek, but you can certainly have a patio and a nice deck—even an outdoor kitchen, depending on how much money you want to spend.”
Her jaw dropped at that. “An outdoor kitchen?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “Barbecue, counter, sinks. They’re really nice.”
She nodded slowly. “Did you consider the fact I already have one kitchen which I don’t know how to use, so a second kitchen I don’t know how to use is kind of redundant?”
He spun on his heels to look at her, then burst out laughing.
She glared at him. “I’m really not happy you come here to get your daily dose of humor. I mean, I guess the internet’s pretty boring for you now.” Inside, she was tickled though because she had meant it as a joke. And he had taken it that way.
“Oh, you’re great,” he said, as he swung an arm around her shoulders and tucked her up close against his chest, giving her a hug. “Besides you are learning to cook. You’re the one who made that spaghetti sauce today.”
She thought about that, and a pleased smile crept to her lips. “You’re right there,” she said. “But a barbecue seems like it’s even more dangerous than that electric devil inside.”
He still chuckled as he shook his head and said, “Some people would say barbecues are easier. I love barbecuing.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he said. “I know you probably have some maintenance you need to do on the house, but, whenever you sort out the money from the antique sale, you might want to consider doing something like bringing in a gas line and putting in a natural gas stove or barbecue out here. It’s easy enough to add a couple counters on either side and some cover overhead. You don’t have to get too fancy, but I think that bathroom in the downstairs is right beside here, so it’d be nothing to bring out a sink. You’d have to redirect the wastewater into the sewer line.”
She kept nodding, as if she knew what he was talking about. In theory, she did, and the more she got caught up in his excitement, the more she could see the deck and how much potential it had. “How hard is it to pour concrete?” she asked.
That stopped him cold. He winced. “It’s not hard,” he said slowly.
She glared at him. “But we’re back to the same problem, where I might not be able to lift the bags?”
He considered that and said, “Honestly you probably could, and you could probably mix it yourself, but you couldn’t spread very much at one time, and concrete is kind of fussy that way. But there are molds you can buy or maybe even borrow, where you can fill one mold at a time, if that’s the speed you can work by yourself. You could even then have something like flagstones going all the way down to the creek and through the garden, depending on what you want.”
She nodded. “It would be a lot cheaper to do it myself. You know how much it’ll cost to pay somebody?”
“It will cost a lot,” he admitted. “But first you need a plan—and don’t cut your plans short just because you’re thinking you can’t do it all yourself. I might be able to come and help do some of the more physical lifting.” Then he paused and moved around, studying the space in question.
“We can also bring in a cement truck, if we have all the foundation work done and the patio framed out already. It’ll be a fairly clean and smooth p
atio and walkway. That won’t be quite the same look though, and we do have to pay the truck to come. But then they can pour from your driveway here.” At that, he motioned with his arms to the side of the garage. “You know what? You could pour a sidewalk all the way down to the front of the garage, so you don’t have all this nasty mess to deal with in here too.”
Doreen looked at the nasty mess where half gravel, half weeds existed, where things were growing and taking over.
“Potentially,” Mack continued, “we can somewhat pour it down near the creek as well. You can repair the pathway in the water areas. You can’t add new ones without permits though.”
“So … because a broken sidewalk is there, we can pour a new one?”
Mack nodded. “Exactly. You can’t add something new to a riparian zone, but you can fix what’s already there.”
She walked down a few feet, studying the broken pieces, and then said, “So what I should do is sit down with a piece of paper, draw something up that includes a large deck, the patio, and the pathways, then clean out this old mess because we can’t pour on top of all that. I’m not sure how we frame circle pathways.”
“It’s not so much circles as much as curves,” he corrected absentmindedly. “But you could have a path that meanders, or you could have a path that goes through the gardens and comes back to the center, or you could just have a nice path that goes right from here to the creek. That’s where you walk the most anyway, isn’t it?”
She nodded and said, “And then just keep the gardens on either side as they are. And have a nice grassy spot on either side of the sidewalk. That would be pretty and elegant.”
“It would be very simple. Adding the patio up here and a deck on top, I think you have a really nice space.”
“What about a patio down at the far end of the riparian zone by the creek?”
“If something’s there already,” he said, “we could pour concrete. Otherwise, you’d just get some of those concrete patio blocks and put them on top of some of that gravel. That’s not a problem.”