Jewels in the Juniper - Dale Mayer Page 0,2

don’t seem to be laughing, nor do I see anything funny to be laughing about.” She glared around her, looking for other green wood.

“The green means it’s treated,” he said.

“Treated how?” she asked, and a phrase popped out of her mouth. “With respect?”

At that, he started off again with great big guffaws of laughter. “No. Treated so it won’t rot.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice lowered to a sigh. Of course they didn’t want the wood to rot. But then why weren’t the two-by-fours treated too?

“Besides,” he said, “once it’s all in place, those stringers will be hard to see because they’ll have steps on top of them.”

She studied the boards and nodded, though in complete confusion. “Good.” Then she strengthened the tone of her voice. “As long as you know what you’re doing. Will it be a green deck?”

“We can get treated boards in brown too,” he said. “It all depends on what you want to do. We can put decking boards on top, and they’ll look like natural wood. You’ll have to stain it with Varathane or put some other preservative coating on it. Or we can get boards already treated that look more natural.”

“More natural would be nice,” she said.

“We’re not there yet.”

“No, but we’re getting a lot of lumber,” she said in surprise. “Arnold brought four of those stringer boards.”

“That’s great,” Mack said, “because that will do two complete sets of steps or a heck of a long one.”

“You need two for a set of steps?”

“Imagine that we’ll notch out triangles on each of the boards and rest steps on them,” he explained. “So you need two per set. But, if we’ll do one all down the long side of the deck, we’ll have to space those stringers every three feet across, or maybe four, and then you can put long boards all the way across the steps.”

She nodded, but she didn’t have a clue what he meant about notching triangles. Still, she figured she’d given him enough to laugh at for the day. “So what else do we need?”

“Decking boards,” he said, “and railings, then the hardware to put it all together.”

“Right,” she said, “and the railings are pretty expensive, aren’t they?”

“They are,” he said, “which is another reason to consider just doing steps all the way around.”

She walked around where the deck would be built. “Particularly if we already have four stringers.”

“Not sure that’ll be enough yet,” he warned.

“Okay,” she said. “Whenever you get a chance, you can always come by, take a look, and see what else we might need.”

“I was talking to one of the guys here. He’s got a bunch of anchors and some of the hardware. He finished his deck, and he’s still got a lot of screws, so I was hoping to snag leftovers from him too.”

She smiled in delight. “Wow, this is quite a process you’ve got going here.”

“Everybody has leftovers after these projects,” he said. “The trick is making sure you get enough of what you need and don’t end up taking too much of the stuff you won’t need.”

“Right, but, if the decking boards are all different kinds and colors, chances are we won’t get enough of one kind to do the whole deck, will we?”

“Not likely,” he said cheerfully. “It’s a matter of seeing if we can find any, and, if we can’t, that becomes the cost you’ll bear.”

“Right,” she said, wincing at the loud cha-ching in her mind.

“But, after we gather up all these leftovers, I’m pretty sure we can get a quote for close to one thousand to top off what you need.”

At that, she brightened. “Seriously?”

“Yep,” he said. “I’ll stop by and have a look but not today.” His words came on a heavy sigh. “We’re a little busy with paperwork and interviewing various people.”

“Sorry about all the extra work,” she said in a cheery voice. “I get to walk away now, whereas you don’t.”

“Isn’t that the truth.” His words were a half growl. “On the other hand, we can hardly be too upset when you’re helping us close all these cases.”

“You know that it does make me wonder just what you guys have been doing for the last decade or two.” Her words were delivered in a bland tone. “Considering I just arrived and the number of cases we’ve closed …”

“Hardly sitting on our butts,” he said. “Believe me. Plenty of jokes have come our way about the lack of police effort on some of these cases. And it’s hardly fair, with