“Arnold knows Rosie,” he said, “so he wanted to do it.”
“Interesting,” she said. “I guess everybody here knows Rosie. Everybody’s related to everybody, aren’t they?”
“To a certain extent, yes,” he said. “But you know that it doesn’t always work out quite that way.”
“I see,” she said. But she didn’t really see anything. “So much for the deck, huh?”
“Well, originally,” he said, “we weren’t expecting it to be done this weekend anyway. We got a lot done yesterday.” As he looked at her, he smiled. “It’s all the stuff that you probably didn’t realize would take so much time.”
She nodded. “I really didn’t.”
“We’re almost to the point of doing the decking boards,” he said. He stepped down out the back, holding a cup of coffee carefully in his hand. “I can do a little bit more today, but I’ll probably end up going back into the office and working on this case.”
“This case is very important,” she said immediately. “Outside of an inconvenience for me, the deck here isn’t much of a problem.”
Just then a shout came from the side of the house and in walked Wilbur.
Mack looked over and the two slapped hands.
“It’s just you here today?” Wilbur asked.
“We got a DB this morning,” Mack said.
“Ah,” he said. “I wasn’t on dispatch over the weekend, so I didn’t hear about it. That’s too bad. You guys could have had this done.”
“Well, a few people could be showing up,” Mack said. “But, if it’s just me, I won’t get anywhere today.”
“Well, the two of us are here,” he said. “I could probably call a couple of the guys and see if they can come in. It’s just the decking boards now?”
“Steps,” he said. “We were all set to start cutting stringers this morning.”
“Right,” he said. “Steps would be very important. You know what? A buddy of mine does stairs all the time. Let me give him a shout and see if he’s got an hour. If we can get them cut and placed, I can start slinging in decking boards or at least that’s a simple-enough job to do yourself.”
“Right.”
And then Wilbur turned to look around and asked, “Wasn’t Tony supposed to come with his concrete mixer?”
“I was hoping so,” Mack said, “but not everybody has time to spare.”
“I hear you,” he said. “Well, let me make a call.” He walked toward his truck, talking on his phone. When he returned a few minutes later, he said, “Tony is on his way, and so is this buddy of mine, Warren. He’s got a couple stencils that he uses for simple jobs with two steps. He said he’ll bring those and a circular saw. We can get them cut and put in place, then it’s literally laying decking boards.”
“I know,” Mack said. “And railings of course.”
While Doreen sat here in the open doorway, her feet hanging over the open edge and staring at the wood that looked like it should be almost done but wasn’t, of course, she smiled to hear other vehicles arriving. “Somebody’s coming,” she said, looking at Mack. As one man came around, and Wilbur introduced her to Warren. She smiled at Warren and said, “I think I know you. Don’t I?”
He nodded. “I was one of the scuba divers who helped bring out that little boy, Paul,” he said, shaking her hands. “And I’m more than happy to come and spend a few hours getting you a deck.”
“Well, we certainly appreciated you doing the scuba diving,” she said.
“Not a problem,” he said. “I’m related to the family of the handyman who went into the river with Paul, and that was a mystery we wanted solved for a long time. A lot of totally undeserved hard feelings remained over that, so we were more than happy to see it resolved.”
“Right. In that case, are you the stair guy?”
He chuckled. “I am, indeed, and I brought a couple stencils.”
With that, they heard a couple shouts, and more men appeared, who had been here previously working on her house, plus a couple new guys came.
Mack looked at her and smiled. “You better make sure more cold beer is in the fridge.”
“Can you stay?” she asked in a hurried whispered.
“Not for long,” he said with a shrug. “But I can come back too.”
She nodded and got up, then put on another pot of coffee and loaded the fridge with the last of the beer, hoping it was enough and realizing she would need to order more pizza. When she went back out, Mack was rousting up the work and setting up a quick and simple organizational strategy. She didn’t know all the men, but she recognized quite a few of them. She talked with a couple as Mack disappeared, and the stairs started. Some of the men started framing up something, and she wasn’t exactly sure what that was. She walked over to Tony and said, “I hate to be nosy, but what are you doing?”
He sat back on his haunches and grinned up at her. “Somebody said you wanted a patio.”
She clapped her hands together. “I really want a patio,” she said.
And he said, “You don’t have anything alongside the house here, and it would be good to have it where you could also hose it off and sweep it.” And he showed her how he was framing in a sidewalk from the front driveway all along the back and then to where the garden shed was. The sidewalk swerved into the patio area. Instead of a square patio, it was more of an oval, or at least it looked curved. She wasn’t sure what it would end up being. And then a pathway went down to the creek.
She smiled. “I don’t know how much you can do today, but this looks phenomenal.”
“Well, I had quite an experience yesterday when I went to check out the concrete I had,” Tony said, standing up. “I had about eight bags that I was willing to donate but needed more, so I went
