Chapter 16

“Good morning, Randy,” I said.

“Offer you a cup of coffee?” Mike said.

“Thanks, but I’m on my way to a small job,” Randy said. “If you’ll give me a hand with the tape, I’ll take some measurements.”

“Just tell us what to do,” Mike said.

We left Thor on the deck and followed Randy down the steps. It took a while to get everything measured to Randy’s satisfaction, and we had a lengthy discussion as to how big the parking pad should be outside the garage entrance. His good-old-boy demeanor faded as he made notes in a little notebook and used a pocket calculator to crunch the numbers. The price he quoted per square foot was two thirds of the lowest estimate we had.

“That’s a pretty good price,” I said.

“I can do it for that because I don’t have no overhead,” Randy said.

“How long will the job take?” Mike said.

“Two or three weekends, if it don’t rain,” Randy said.

“We’re coming back the third week of June,” I said, “and we’ll be here for a whole week.”