“I have some,” she said. She led the way through the kitchen to the garage, then flipped on the light switch and watched as he walked to her big workbench.
“Wow,” he said, turning in a circle. “I’m seriously impressed. I don’t even have this nice a workshop at home.”
“I got it from a friend of mine who was moving,” she said. “Her husband had passed away, so I recreated exactly the same workshop here. I have a lot of work to do on my home, but I really don’t know what I’m doing yet.”
He nodded, then picked up two small sanders. At least, she assumed they were. He checked them out, and then he looked at her. “Any chance you have sandpaper?”
She motioned to the set of drawers beside him. “Top drawer.”
He opened it up, nodded, and quickly exchanged the old sandpaper for new ones. “Now, how about extension cords?” He looked around on the walls and snagged up two. “Have you ever used one of these sanders?”
“No,” she said. “I haven’t. But then I’ve never held a paintbrush in my hand either.”
Harry laughed. “Well, it sounds like today’s your lucky day.” He headed back out to the deck, where he quickly plugged in the sanders and then showed her how to use them. “We’re just doing a light pass on the top,” he said. “See this board? We haven’t done it.” And then he turned on the sander and ran it lightly across the top and back again. Then he shut it off and said, “Now feel how smooth it is.”
She was amazed. “Wow.”
“That’s why we do it. It takes off the roughness and allows it to accept a second coat much better,” he said. “I’ll work on this side. If you’ve got time right now to give me a hand, maybe we can get it all sanded and a second coat on.”
“I’m all for it,” she said. And, with her working on the left side—closest to her neighbor, Richard—she kept checking to make sure she was doing it right, swiping her palm over each surface afterward. Next she went to the shorter set of steps here and did the bottom riser first, then the second tier. It didn’t take very long. It amazed her how much difference the power sander made for the job. By the time she got one-third of the way through with her side of the deck, Harry was almost done with the rest, meeting up with her. She turned off her sander and asked, “What do we do next?”
“We’ll do the railings,” he said. “And we still have to do the big steps in the front of the deck.”
She went over and did the big steps on the front, while he did the railings. And, before long, they stood, admiring a job well done. He grinned. “And two makes it a much faster job than one,” he said.
She nodded and took the sanders back to garage, after banging them lightly to shake off the dust. When she returned, he had the rollers but was looking at her. “I need a cloth,” he said. “We have to wipe all the deck down to make sure none of this sawdust from the sanding gets into the next coat.”
She raced inside to the kitchen and came back out with two damp cloths. “Will these work?”
“Particularly if they are clean,” he said.
She nodded and said, “Clean with warm water.”
“Perfect,” he said. “We’ll rinse them as soon as they get clogged to give it all a nice quick dusting. A shop vac would work too, but I’m not sure that, in this case, it’s a good idea.”
“I’ve got a small blower,” she said. “Would that work?” And she came out with it.
He quickly took one look at it, smiled, and said, “This is the reverse of one of those little shop vacuums.” He quickly blew off most of the dust, then grabbed the cloth and wiped it down. “This is perfect.”
It took them about half an hour, with her running the blower and him wiping. And then, just like that, they were done. “We’ll get that second coat on in no time,” he said. He took out the can and filled one of the rollers. “I’ll use the roller. I want you to take the paintbrush.” He demonstrated doing the spindles on the railings. “You take care of all this,” he said. “I’ll quickly get the base done on the steps and then on the top, so that, by the time you’re done, we’re on these last few boards up against the kitchen. Okay?” She nodded and went to the far side, then started painting slowly and methodically. She wasn’t very good at it, and she wasn’t very fast, but she felt a certain pride in doing something herself for her deck. So far, everybody else had done all the work.
“I heard Mack caught another wild case,” Harry said.
“Yes. Another dead little old lady,” she said sadly. “And this one’ll be very much missed.”
“Hopefully they all are,” he said quietly. “The last thing you want to think about is going to your grave and nobody crying.”
“Right,” she said. “How sad would that be?”
“I think that would be very terrible,” Harry said. “But it’s amazing, you know, how many seniors do pass away on a regular basis, and we never hear about them. I’m not even sure what connected these ones in the first place. Except kiwis were tied to each one.”
“Probably just the fact that they were found out in a public place,” she said.
“Most of the seniors I know passed away in their own beds or in their nursing homes or something like that.”
“That makes sense,” she said. She straightened up, wincing as she kept trying to get to the spindles underneath the railing. “What about this?” she asked him.
Harry walked over, took a good look, and said, “Good job on the spindles. Now you
