by Dale Mayer
“It’s hardly the most nutritious dinner,” Doreen joked.
Nan waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. We’re here to live, not just to live badly.”
“It’s hardly badly,” Doreen said in protest.
“Sure, but come on. Let’s be reasonable. If you can eat cake for dinner, eat cake and enjoy it and don’t feel guilty about it.”
Laughing at how incorrigible her grandmother was, Doreen polished off the honey-topped slice of zucchini bread, picked up the tinfoil-wrapped package, and grabbed her ledgers. She smiled and said, “Now I’ll head home. I need to walk to wear off all those extra calories.”
“If you do that,” Nan said, “you’ll need more for dinner just to add calories back onto your skinny frame.”
“I’m not skinny,” Doreen said. “I’m eating lots more.”
“And that’s a good thing,” Nan said. “I can’t stand to see you so scrawny.”
“I’m fine.” Doreen gave Nan a big kiss and said, “Particularly with you feeding me like this.”
“How did you do with those veggies?” Nan asked.
“Mack cooked pork chops for me last night,” Doreen said, “so the zucchini are all gone.”
Nan hopped up yet once more and said, “Well then, hang on,” and she raced inside. She came back out with a wicker basket full of vegetables. “This was delivered to me this morning. I can’t even begin to eat it all.” She quickly rummaged through it, split it into two piles, and then went back inside to get a plastic bag. She packed up baby carrots, a couple more tomatoes, a big bell pepper, some lettuce, and green beans, and she handed it to Doreen. “Most of that you can even eat raw. No cooking required.”
At that, Doreen grinned. “What would I do without you?”
“I don’t know,” Nan said, “but hopefully you’d still eat.”
Chapter 14
Friday Late Afternoon …
Still chuckling at her grandmother, Doreen walked toward the creek with her goodies. “Good thing Nan is feeding us,” she said. “Once I realized it could be months and months before I get any of that auction money from Nan’s antiques, I hesitated to shop for groceries anymore.”
As she walked back toward the property near the river’s mouth—where the ice-fishing pick had been unearthed—she looked around and smiled. She could see the ivy on the other side of the privacy fence where she’d found the ice pick. She guessed that probably at least a ten-year growth took place to completely fill the fence. She stopped and wondered just who lived on the other side of the fence. She frowned as she tried to count the number of houses down from the lake itself so she could look on Google Maps and then potentially search BC Assessment and get a house address, but ultimately it would take Mack to figure out who lived here now, or back a decade or so ago. And, of course, just because somebody lived there at any time didn’t mean they had anything to do with the ice pick found nearby.
As she walked back to her house and put her precious food cargo on the kitchen table, her phone rang. She pulled it out and smiled. “Hi, Mack. I was just thinking about calling you.”
“So, either you want something or you’re in trouble,” he said.
She frowned at her phone. “Or maybe I just wanted to offer you some more fresh veggies,” she snapped.
“Maybe,” he said, “but not likely. You need to be eating them yourself.”
“I just came back from Nan’s, and she sent me home with a pepper and a couple tomatoes, fresh green beans and more lettuce, so I can make a big salad for dinner if I’m hungry. I just finished some excellent zucchini bread,” she said with a happy sigh.
“Darn,” Mack said in an envious voice. “Now you’ve got my mouth salivating.”
“Ha,” she said, “then I won’t tell you that Nan sent me home with the bulk of a whole loaf too.”
“Now that’s just cruel,” he whined.
“Did you have a reason for calling me?” she said cheekily. “Maybe I’ll put on the teakettle and sit down and have yet another slice.”
“You’re really being mean now,” he said.
She laughed. “Maybe, but I did figure out who owned the ice pick.”
First came silence on the other end, then Mack said, “You did?”
“I did,” she said proudly. She proceeded to explain everything she’d found out so far.
“That’s not bad for an afternoon’s work,” Mack said.
“Right now, of course, I’d like to figure out who lives in the house next to where I found the ice pick, which is something you could look up for me. And potentially I need to find Ed Burns’s heir and see how that ice pick went from Ed’s private collection to outside the fence of this particular property at the river’s mouth.”
“So, do you have a number on that second tin piece?” Mack asked. An odd note was in his voice.
“What do you mean? The metal piece I don’t have a tool for?”
“Yes,” he said. “What’s the number on it?”
She ran it off for him.
“Interesting,” he said. “It’s mentioned in one of my cases.”
“This actual tool?”
“No, somebody said something—but never mind. I might just stop by and have a slice of that zucchini bread,” he said, “and take a picture of your ledgers.”
Immediately her antennae went up. “So you do think I’m onto something?”
“Well, you’re onto something,” he said in a dismissive manner. “But, of course, it’s probably nothing important.”
“Now that’s cruel,” she complained. “I could be onto something really good.”
He chuckled.
“Did you ever find out what happened to the parents?”
“The Darbunkles?” he said. “They were declared dead seven years after they were filed as missing persons.”
“So they went missing after they moved back east?”
“Who told you that?”
“Wendy and Nan. Plus Millicent and the librarian. It’s the popular rumor that the parents moved back east, probably with Henrietta,” she said. “And did you also know Henrietta was adopted? And that her birth family lived in Kelowna too, and then they moved south into the Penticton area after they gave her up at a very young age?”
Again Mack went silent on the other end before swearing lightly.
“You probably shouldn’t swear,” she corrected.
He chuckled. “Hey, I’m comfortable with the cuss words I use. And I hope I’m not making you feel uncomfortable when I say them. But you’re the one figuring out if you could get these words out of your mouth,” he said. “Have you been practicing?”
“Well, … you know I really don’t like to even think about my former husband or my life with him. That’s my past, and it’s best for it to stay back there. But I did come to realize, about the time I was moving here, how my ex had me under such tight controls—as to what I wore, what I weighed, what I could eat, what I could say when allowed to speak. It’s another form of abuse—verbal abuse, an abuse of my personal rights and freedoms.
“So, once I broke away from him, physically at first and then mentally, later, I did feel a certain very grand freedom in finding out who I was in reality, in being the real me, even able to say what I thought, with a curse word or two thrown in for added emphasis if needed. Granted I have my own self-imposed limits on that. I got as far as fudge and fenster and fudgy winkles,” she said, “but I can’t get that F word out.”
At that, Mack laughed. “I really like fudgy winkles. The next time you get angry, upset, or under attack, I suggest you scream at the top of your lungs, ‘Fudgy winkles.’”
Doreen glared into her phone. “Here you are making fun of me again, even though I would share my zucchini bread with you.”
“I’ll be there in ten,” he said. “Don’t eat it all.” And he hung up on her.
Doreen smiled, looked down at the critter collection around her, and said, “Guess what, guys? Mack is coming.”
> Mugs woofed and woofed and turned around in circles at her feet. She smiled and walked into the garage, wondering if she could clean out some extra stuff before he got here. Just because she could park her vehicle in the garage didn’t mean a ton of room had been cleared for it. She had a few more things to take down to Wendy’s and some recycling that maybe should go directly to charity. She checked her watch but there wasn’t enough time now. “Later,” she promised herself. “I’ll take more stuff to the charity later.”
She had almost all the house cleaned up and clutter-free, except for the last bits in her bedroom, and that was such a good feeling. She’d cleaned up all this space on both floors of her house and had solved the latest cold case, creating a void in her life. How perfect that another mystery had dropped in to fill it right away. As far as she was concerned, that was perfect timing.
Then Mack called again. “Rain check,” was all he said.
Chapter 15
Saturday Morning …
Doreen woke up Saturday morning with a happy smile on her face and her phone buzzing beside her head. She rolled over, snagged it up, and hit Talk. “Mack, do you know what time it is?” she groaned.
Mack’s silence came first on the other end, then he said, “Yeah, it’s nine in the morning.”
Doreen stared at her phone in shock. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Are you still in bed?”
She rubbed her face and murmured, “I just woke up.”
“Interesting,” he said, his tone buoyantly cheerful.
“Why are you so happy?” she asked.
“I’ll be there in fifteen for coffee,” he said. “I’ll tell you then.” And he hung up.
She stared again at her phone, disgruntled. “And what if I didn’t want to get out of bed?” she snapped in response. “What if I didn’t want to get dressed today? What if I planned to have a pajama day and laze around the house just because I can?”
The trouble was, Mack wouldn’t have called without a reason. And, for that alone, her curiosity got the better of her. She hopped out of bed, quickly showered, shampooed her hair, and washed the rest of her. By the time she was out, dried, and dressed, she could hear a vehicle pulling up.
She groaned. “We don’t even have coffee on,” she muttered. But Mugs was already ahead of her, barking joyously as he raced to the front door. “You’re such a traitor,” she muttered, as she dashed past him to measure the coffee. When Mack didn’t knock right away, and she had time to put the coffee on and to feed her crew, she stopped and wondered if it was even him. She walked to the front door, opened it to find Mack’s truck in her driveway, where he was unloading cement blocks. She stared at him in shock and then delight. “Are those for my deck?”
He tossed her a grin. “About time you got your sorry butt out of bed.”
She snorted at that. “If you hadn’t called me,” she said, “I could have been in dreamland for at least another hour.”
“You’re a lazy slug,” he said with a smirk. “Come and give me a hand.”
She slipped on her sandals and walked down the porch steps. “How many are there?”
“This is all of them,” Mack said. “I loaded mine, then stopped by my buddy’s place this morning and picked them all up from him. And afterward went to my mom’s and grabbed those.”
Doreen grinned. “Wow, this is super.” As she watched, Mack picked up two, put them in her wheelbarrow, put a third one in, and then rolled the wheelbarrow across the front lawn around to the side of the house. She stared at the deep indentations in the grass and groaned, but it wasn’t the time to argue with his process. Free cement blocks for her new deck addition were free cement blocks. The grass would stand up again on another day.
By the time Mack had those unloaded, Doreen had carried a couple by herself, until he just laughed and took them from her hands. “Don’t even bother.” With them all lined up alongside her house where the new deck addition would be, Doreen felt mighty cheerful indeed. Then she followed Mack to his truck and saw something else in the bed. “What are those?” she asked, staring at the huge wooden beams traversing the back of the truck.
“The same buddy who had the leftover cement blocks had four of these posts. They’re exactly what we need for the deck expansion, although I don’t know if they’re long enough.”
He hefted one up, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and walked around to the side of her house. She raced behind him. “What did it cost you?”
“He was happy to get them hauled away,” Mack said. “So now we’ve got four posts toward your deck addition.”
“How many do we need?” She kept pestering him with more questions, not even waiting for him to answer. He was patient though, and finally he turned to her and said, “Remember your drawing? The list? Maybe go get it and take a look at your parts list.”
She shook her head and said, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”
“Lack of caffeine?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
She smiled and went inside the kitchen, where she grabbed her sketches and the parts list she’d typed up and printed off. “We still need at least six more of those, depending on what length they are.”
“Yep,” Mack said. “I did post a notice to the guys in the division to see if anybody had any spare parts we could use for the deck. A couple guys said they’d take a look this weekend and get back to me.”
“Do you think they’d give the parts to us?” Doreen asked. “Because, wow, that would be huge.”
“The beams are a big part of the remodeling cost, but decking boards and really the railing will kill you for most of the cost.”
She nodded, thinking about it. “Do we need railings?”
“Depends on how high we go. To meet the approval of the city, if it’s only two steps, nope, we don’t, which is something we were looking at.”
“And if we did steps all the way around?” she said. “Giving us all lots of places to sit …?”
“But that would up the cost too. Remember?”
Doreen looked back down at her papers and nodded. “It’s easy to forget just how much some of this adds up to.”
“Also, what will you do about weed control for under the deck? Have you got a way past that?”
“I’m not sure. I never really contemplated that. It seems a little foolish to think the landscape cloth would be enough.”
“It probably would be if you got the heavy-duty stuff, and you might also want to consider buying a couple cheap tarps and putting rocks down underneath the deck. It would take a long time without sun exposure for the tarps to break down enough for weeds to pop through.”
Doreen grinned. “I like that idea.” And then she stopped and asked, “How cheap?”
Mack’s booming laughter filled the backyard, and she could almost hear the neighbors closing doors and windows in disgust. Everybody here had no sense of appreciation for noise. But, then again, she’d caused more than a few disturbances since she’d arrived. In fact, Richard, that poor neighbor of hers—although he owed her a “thank you” for solving that pink-fuzzy-handcuffs problem that could have ended up backfiring on him—had so far stayed mum since that case. Those handcuffs weren’t hers and were found in his garden. She’d found them, sure, but they were on his property. So, as far as she was concerned, they were his. She chuckled at that thought and returned to the deck project. “I guess another big cost is all the hardware?”
“Yep. That’ll run you up quite a bit because you want it stable. So these beams are put into big brackets, and then we need the right decking screws to go on the top.” He looked at her. “I don’t suppose you want to pay for all-weather decking you never have to replace, do you?”
“I’d love to,” Doreen said cautiously, “but somehow I suspect that’s very expensive.”
“Yep, it is, but just think. You never have to do any maintenance on it and never have to replace it.”
“Is it slippery though?”
Mack looked at her in surprise. “That’s a good question. I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t want anything slippery. I do like to have Nan around—and of course the animals and myself.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “That’s something to check into. And railings? Maybe with Nan coming over, at least add railings on one side?”
“I don’t think she has any trouble with stairs.”
“Not at the moment anyway. Something to consider for the future.”
“Maybe even just a little railing somewhere.”
“Yep, we can look at that too.”
Doreen nodded, and then hesitatingly she said, “You keep saying we …”
He looked at her in surprise. “I said I’d give you a hand.”
“Yeah, but, so far, it sounds very much like you’ll be doing it all because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He flashed that teasing grin at her. “Yeah, I probably will be. And it could take a few weeks, depending on the cases I’m working on,” he cautioned.
“I guess I just need to ask.” And then she let her voice trail off.
He glared at her. “You better not be asking anything that’ll piss me right off.”
She gave him a wide-eyed innocent look. “How will I know what’ll piss you right off if I don’t ask?”
He lifted a finger and shook it at her. “Do not—do not ask me about payment.”
Her smile when it dawned was as warm and as heartwarming as she could possibly have made it, and yet it came from the heart. “Thank you for that,” she said sincerely.
“But you will be responsible for keeping the coffee flowing.”
She rolled her eyes. “Ugh, that’s probably more expensive than paying you wages.”
He grinned. “Hey, at least I didn’t ask for beer, and I didn’t ask for meals.”
“Which is probably something we should consider because you certainly deserve a few meals out of this, and I imagine sitting down after working on the deck is almost perfect with a beer.”
