Jill Churchill: The Accidental Florist

The next day, she was out early to see what was going on next and found that work had stopped and there was a calico cat with two kittens looking down into the hole. The mother was meowing loudly and there was a sound of mewing coming out of the hole. A workman got in the hole and after a bit of a chase, lifted the little orange kitten out.

The mother immediately started almost brutally washing the kitten, one paw holding it down. When the orange kitten was clean, she walked serenely out of the area of missing fence at the north end of the yard, three kittens running to catch up with her. Jane was smiling when the man who had rescued the kitten approached her.

"We need to go into your basement to drill through for hot water, cold water, and hook up to the sewer line."

"I'll have to get my own cats locked up or you'll be stepping on them. They're very curious."

"That's fine. My workers need to get their tools out of the truck."

Jane hauled the kitty litter bins, a bowl of water, and cat food up to her bathroom, then went back down to fetch Max and Meow.

By the time she returned there were horrible drilling noises coming from the basement again, and she went out to look down the hole.

There were four men in it now, one was helping thread the pipes through from the basement, and the others were building restraining walls to keep the concrete from flowing over the yard, she assumed. But the hole would take tons and tons of concrete. Wouldn't it be so heavy that the entire addition would gradually sink into the hole?

The general contractor had arrived and was watching the workmen. She approached him and asked him about her fears of the whole thing sinking. He laughed and said, "It won't be filled with concrete. It will be mostly gravel with a vapor barrier over it."

As he was explaining, a pipe appeared coming through the foundation closest to the far wall of the hole. "Which one is that?" Jane asked.

"Hot water," he said as somebody else in the hole was connecting a black pipe with a curve at the bottom and

coming up very high. "It has to be higher than usual and all of them will be capped off higher than necessary."

"Why are they coming out from the dining room foundation?"

"Because you don't want anything that holds water on an outside wall or it could freeze and burst."

Jane almost said "Duh" but John Beckman was used to people who hadn't added a room before asking silly questions.

By the time all the pipes were installed and capped off, she went to free the cats. When she got back downstairs, there were four men with heavily loaded bags of gravel in wheelbarrows. They were all sweating like pigs.

Others were building walls with big boards around the perimeter of the hole.

Jane was again sitting at the patio table under the umbrella. Todd and Shelley's son were also watching every step. Now and then, Jane would look up and see how the boards that would prevent the concrete from running all over the place were coming along. The workers were fast and efficient. They drove steel spikes into the ground every few feet to, presumably, keep the weight of the concrete from pushing the boards out of alignment.

By noon one and a half sections of wood were already in, and watching all the leveling, it looked as if it was going to be a good flat area to pour the concrete (or was the proper word cement?) nice and flat. She'd have to ask about the right word.

She went inside to make sandwiches for Todd andJohn and checked the kitty litter. One or the other of the cats had availed itself of one of the bins. Cats always seemed to her to have very short memories. But apparently they had some sort of early memory of kitty litter from kittenhood. She tried out the sieve. It worked like a charm. She scattered a half teaspoon of baking soda over the area of the bin that had been used and with the fine sieve mixed it in. Then she put the plastic bag with the solid lump into the trash bin behind the garage.

From now on, this could be a job for Todd. In fact, as old as the cats were, they might as well turn back into indoor cats, as they had been when they were kittens. On the other hand, climbing that fence kept them from clawing sofas and chairs. Maybe she'd just check the kitty litter after rainstorms when all this work was done.

She came upstairs, washed her hands, and went back outside to fondle her stash of new books.

By late Thursday, the wooden barrier was in place. The gravel was all in the hole with vapor barrier over it, and by Friday the concrete truck arrived. It backed halfway over her front lawn and a long sturdy hose was attached to the back and snaked around to the far corner of the wooden enclosure. With a horrific groan, the truck started to pump out thick gray stuff while a whole new crew of workers shoveled and troweled as more and more arrived. From the far corner to the corner closest, the house was complete in a mere few hours.

Jane had pictured a fleet of wheelbarrows carrying loads and loads of it and dropping nasty glops onto the

grass in her front yard. Times had certainly changed since she and Steve had watched the basement floor going in the big hole.

She called Mel and said, "Come over after work and see the beginning of your office. It's gorgeous. So smooth. And so quick to be poured through a big tube."

"I have some paperwork that I have to turn in by five-thirty. Why don't you call in an order for pick-up at our favorite Chinese restaurant at quarter of six and I'll get it on the way over?"

"Sounds good. What do you want?"

"The same thing I always get."

This meant spicy Mongolian beef with shrimp fried rice. Chapter

D,

NINE

J

ane had slept late on Tuesday. When Shelley phoned her, she almost fell out of bed trying to find out who was calling. "Jane, you were asleep, weren't you?" Shelley accused. "As a matter of fact, I was. I had a bad dream about

something I don't remember and couldn't get back to sleep

for hours. Must have been something I ate last night." "You've forgotten we have an appointment this

morning?"

"I guess I have."

"It's our next safety meeting. It's at ten. It's nine-thirty now. Want me to go without you?"

"I think you better. I'll come along as soon as I can." Jane dressed hastily, tried to get her hair under control,

slapped on makeup, and yelled at Todd that she was leaving for a meeting.

She had trouble finding her car keys, but located them under a chair in the kitchen and set out. She wasn't going to drive fast. She wished, in fact, that she'd just begged off, making up a stomach upset or head-banging migraine.

As she came around the last turn looking for a parking space, the street was full of emergency equipment. An ambulance, a fire truck, several police cars. She managed an illegal U-turn and parked around the corner.

Shelley must have seen her do it. She met Jane at the corner. "I'm sorry I made you come. I'm more sorry that I came."

"What's happened here? It looks as if everybody is going in and out of the meeting place for the class."

"A woman at the community meeting place is dead. Another woman in the class came in early and discovered that the door to the meeting was slightly open. She found her in the meeting room."

A few other members of the class were standing around or sitting on the front steps. Two police officers, one in uniform and Mel VanDyne, were questioning the woman. She was sitting with her feet in the gutter across the street, sobbing.

"Is that the woman called Doris?" Jane asked.

"I think that was her name, but I didn't take notes." Jane realized that Mel had noticed them. He turned

away from the sobbing woman and made a slight shooing gesture.

Neither of them wanted to look like bloodthirsty snoops, as did most of the other people looking from windows and doors along the street, so Jane and Shelley were quick to go back to their cars.