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“Why not?”
“Because I’m ordering you to stay away from Cash and River Vista.”
This wasn’t the first time I’d been issued a boneheaded order that was obviously wrong. I’d served in the Army for eight years. NYPD had been even dumber in some ways, if that was possible.
“You’re the chief,” I said, and he bought it.
CHAPTER 26
When we got to the Red Box, Kitty welcomed Olivia to town and we gave her our orders—two specials, of course—and then Kitty went back to the kitchen, and Olivia leaned in and whispered, ecstasy in her voice, “This is areal diner!”
“Yep,” I said, and decided never to invite Olivia out to the Big Chef. Olivia wasn’t beautiful, but she was something better, alive in every cell, her eyes bright and always moving, her whole body poised for action. Definitely attractive. Hot, even.
And definitely Anemone’s daughter, step or not.
“So, here’s what I think,” she said and showed me her tablet.
She’d put in the dimensions and the tablet had drawn the floor plan for her and she’d sketched in everything she’d talked about before. “We get the hunky boyfriend to take out the living room ceiling. We get a pro to put skylights in the roof and the new bigger windows and doors, and take out that window in the front wall and replace it with a small-paned clerestory for security. That’ll give you a blank wall to put a TV on, too.”
“This is all ten thousand dollars?” I said.
“You figure about a thousand dollars a window and the back French doors. Some of these will be less, some more. Anemone has a contractor—”
“Jason Leotta.”
“That’s him. We’ve worked together before. He’ll do the windows because that’s skilled labor. We’ll get him to figure an estimate for all the glass, but this should cover it.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure, but starting to see the house from her drawing. She was right, she was better at planning than I was.
“We put in a big island that you can walk around and, even better, spread your stuff out on when you work. We can do that with a couple of big kitchen carts on wheels, bolt them together. You and Hunky can put them together yourselves and then we’ll get a big piece of quartz for the top. And we update the appliances because I think antique hot plates are just asking for it.”
I nodded, getting swept up in the plan. “I like the island, I like a big surface to spread out my notes on. Plus, there’re those two squishy armchairs that I can write in. This will work.”
Olivia nodded. “If the hunky boyfriend is good at demo, we can probably do a lot of this for the other ten K from your mortgage. We’ll go over on the bathroom since there’s a complete gut.”
“He’s good at demo,” I acknowledged. “Meticulous.”
“Meticulous is good.”
Not before dawn, I thought. But hewasmeticulous and that was good. I looked at her plan. It really was one big workspace with a tiny bedroom just big enough to sleep in and a tinier bathroom just big enough to get clean in. Everything I would ever need. And all my own.
“This is good,” I told her. “Can I have that soaking tub?”
“Yes. We’ll put your soaking tub at the back with a big window, since there’s nobody out there who can see in because of that big open space of whatever that is out there.”
“Ravine,” I said.
“This part’s a little trickier,” she said. “The bathroom’s only six by seven, so no shower, but there’ll be a spray attachment with the bathtub.”
“Okay.” If I wanted a real shower, I could go down to the Big Chef. Vince’s shower was huge, and we’d demonstrated many times that we could do damn near anything in there, so that option was covered.
“About the bedroom,” Olivia finished. “That mattress you bought was a twin but you want queen size, right?”
“The mattress was a gift,” I said, “I want a queen size in the bedroom. The twin is for maybe a daybed instead of a couch in the living room. I’m still not sure about that bedroom. It’s a little creepy.”
“Leave that to me.” Olivia looked around the diner. “Does this place have a bathroom?”
I pointed in the direction of the hallway that had the “Ladies” sign over it, and she went there.
