She stood and shook crumbs off her lap. “I had better get down to the nuts and bolts. I have to measure this place and figure out what I’m doing. Gogi Grace is going to give me a hand.”
“She’s great, isn’t she?” I said, standing and likewise scattering crumbs from my skirt.
“She is, honest to God, like the sister I never had.”
I walked to the door, my heels clunking on the board floors and echoing in the empty place; it was a bland space right now, plain-board floors, white walls, dusty from disuse. It needed a lot of work before it could be a design store, and I hoped she knew what she was up against. I turned before I got to the door. “By the way, do you know anyone who does yard work or anything like that? I can’t seem to find any listing for a landscaping company in Autumn Vale, and I need the Wynter property taken care of on a regular basis.”
“What, you’re not going to mow it on your own?” she said with a quick grin. “I say just put up a notice at the Vale Variety. Rusty used to find day workers that way, for when we needed site cleanup.” Her grin died, as she talked again about her missing boyfriend.
“I’ll do that. Thank you, Dinah. I hope this place does great guns!”
“Me, too, if I ever figure out what to make it!”
I left the pastries behind for her and Gogi. On the street, I looked up and down as a young woman with a stroller passed me, a determined frown on her face. I had a lot to think about and even more to figure out. The last few days had revealed that the odd little town of Autumn Vale had seen some swirling controversies and issues over the last few years, some of them to do with my late uncle.
Was it unusual in that respect? Probably not. Get enough quirky characters together in one small space, though, and you had a recipe for disaster. The economic downturn could not have helped. Small towns across the country had been hit in a frightening way, that much I knew from reading the news. Just looking at the main street in this town you could see it had once been a thriving downtown that was now largely vacant. And it wasn’t just that people were now taking their hard-earned bucks to Rochester or Buffalo, it was that anyone left in town probably didn’t have any bucks, hard-earned or otherwise.
I was slowly redefining my economic situation as measured against the townsfolk of Autumn Vale, New York. My small heap of savings seemed like a larger pot than I had once considered it. I suddenly realized that Jack McGill had not given himself the job of filling the holes in my yard just to be nice to a newbie, it was part of a financial-survival strategy. Real estate in a small town as depressed as Autumn Vale had to be tough.
My eyes were open. I walked down Abenaki feeling raw and vulnerable. The boarded-up stores now represented failed dreams, lost livelihoods. Where did anyone work in Autumn Vale? There was no industry, that I could tell. Turner Construction was probably once the beacon of prosperity by the town’s modest measure, but it was history now, with no one to run it. A group of teenagers hung out in front of Vale Variety, their faces wan, smoking cigarettes and muttering to each other. They were going to have to leave town to get jobs, probably; would they ever come back? Was the lifeblood of the town leaking out, one young drop at a time? Was I just tired and edgy and making a mountain out of a molehill that wasn’t even my molehill?
Gordy and Zeke were coming out of Binny’s as I approached. What did they do all day? They were both in their early thirties, I figured, because Gordy had been in high school at the same time as Tom Turner, but neither appeared to work. “Hey, guys,” I said. “How’s it going?”
Both nodded. “Not bad, I guess,” Gordy said.
“I have a problem, and I’m wondering if you guys know a solution.”
They eyed me warily.
“You know the castle property,” I said. They exchanged glances and nodded. “Well, it is a massive headache to me. I can’t take care of it all. The property looks like a field, and if I’m ever going to get it back in shape, I need to start with a good cleanup. Do you know, or know of, anyone who does that kind of thing? Landscaping, I mean? Just basic stuff like mowing down the tall grass, and pulling weeds. There’s a lot of work to do before winter.”
They exchanged glances again. It was Zeke who spoke up, eyeing me with doubt in his squinty eyes. “You mean, you’d pay?”
“Of course!”
“We could do it.” They spoke at the same moment; it was eerie.
“Could you? It wouldn’t take you away from . . . from other things?”
“Nah, stuff can wait,” Zeke said, shoving his hands in his saggy-jeans pocket.