“Thank y’all for helping patrol,” Jack said as they dispersed out of the rec hall.
“Glad to help.” Thomas chuckled. “I’m glad that we haven’t been vandalized again, but I’m even more thankful that Lottie isn’t making us eat her cooking tomorrow morning.”
Eddie shook his fist at the starlit sky. “Let this be a lesson to all the smart-ass kids out there, and also to you party animals among us. There’s no way to get back into this place without being caught unless you want to park and swim across the lake.”
“My place or yours?” Knox asked when they were the only ones left in the rec hall.
“Neither,” she answered. “The mood is ruined. My heart is still on overdrive, and it’s not from hormones. Besides, we have to be up in a few hours, and I’m still not sure that alarm wasn’t an omen.”
Knox nodded and then chuckled. “Those lights flashing on reminded me of my first date. I walked the girl up to the door and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. My palms were sweaty, and my heart thumped in my chest like a bass drum. Then her mother turned on the porch light and scared the bejesus out of me.”
“Don’t tell me that you see that girl every time you look at me from now on,” Lottie snapped.
“No, ma’am, I will not. You don’t have braces, and you aren’t six inches taller than me,” he answered. “I’ll walk you to your door and be sure there aren’t any snakes or wild critters hanging around.”
“My hero,” Lottie said with a long, dramatic sigh.
* * *
“Is there any way to turn down that siren alarm? It about gave me a heart attack last night,” Jack asked Knox the next morning after everyone else had left the rec hall.
“I’m not sure, but I’ll check the specs on it,” Knox answered.
“Appreciate it,” Jack said. “I hear a vehicle. Could be the cops coming to cite us for noise.”
“Not way out here. I don’t think we woke up anyone across the lake, and that’s our nearest neighbors, but…” He nodded toward the door. “Those fellers don’t look like cops to me.”
Knox recognized one of the two men entering the building as the father of the gang leader who wrecked the building. “Hello, what can I do for y’all?” he called out when they were inside.
“I didn’t catch your name, or maybe I did and was so angry that I don’t remember. I’m Richard Adams, and I’m looking for the foreman or supervisor. This place looks even worse in the daylight.”
“I’m Jack Devlin, the owner and foreman of Swan Song Estates,” Jack said and extended a hand. “I didn’t see it in the dark, but you are right about it being a mess.”
Richard shook his hand and then dropped it. “This is my personal insurance adjuster, Ernest Whitmore. I want to be more than fair about the damage my son and his friends did to your property. Would you mind if he takes a good look at everything?”
“Not a bit,” Jack said.
A short, bald-headed guy with wire-rimmed glasses took out a notepad and made notes as he walked around the room.
“While he does that, I would like to apologize for my son,” Richard said. “Until he goes to military school in the fall, Devon will be doing community service, picking up garbage on Saturday and Sunday along a stretch of highway with other delinquents. He is on house arrest with an ankle device throughout the week and will have a tutor to homeschool him through the rest of his sophomore year. If any of his grades drop below a B, then he has to go to juvie. I thought you should know what punishment he is receiving.”
“And the other boys?” Knox asked.
“I don’t know about them, but Devon can’t see or talk to them anymore. He isn’t allowed to have a cell phone at all, and only a computer for schoolwork. Even then, his tutor has to be sitting right beside him. I should have come down harder on him a few years ago, but I’m hoping that later is better than not at all.”
Jack nodded. “I hope that this teaches him accountability.”
“Me too,” Richard said and turned to focus on the other guy. “Ernest, what have you come up with?”
“Primer and paint for the wall that got tagged,” he answered and nodded toward the other side. “That one will need a stud replaced and at least two sheets of drywall, and more primer and paint there. Then the entire floor will have to be replaced because there’s splotches of paint on some of the tiles that will never come out with cleansers. Plus, a table was cut in half, and a few chairs have paint on them. I’m not sure what your builders charge for labor, but you need to add that into the total.” He tallied up a number and handed the sheet to Richard.
“We have extra tile that was left over from when we had the rec hall built,” Jack said. “We can use it to replace what is ruined and won’t have to redo the whole floor.”
Richard set his tooled leather briefcase on one of the tables, opened it, and took out an ink pen. He wrote a number on the estimation page and handed it to Jack. “Thank you for offering to do that. Can we agree that this will cover all the labor and materials to make this right? I realize you will take some of your employees away from the jobs they are doing now, and I want to be fair. Plus, I’m going to make Devon work off every dime this summer through the week when he’s not on community service. When he’s not picking up trash on weekends, he will work for the gardener on my estate.”
“This should take care of it,” Jack agreed.
Richard wrote out a check and handed it to Jack. “Again, I’m sorry for all this.”
