A High-End Finish(67)
I found the putty knife and also grabbed my favorite pink work gloves. I decided to take a utility knife, too, just in case the old paint was so thick that it might take off some of the wood when I pried the ornamental pieces away from the post. I could slide the utility knife in between the post and the ornamental piece and cut the paint without damaging either.
I pushed the tailgate closed and turned. Joyce was still there, standing right in my path.
“I’m not finished with you, Pinkie,” she said, exaggerating the nickname.
Pinkie. Because of my gloves? What. Ever. I couldn’t work with a client who hated me, though, so I decided to nip her attitude in the bud here and now.
“Look, Joyce, if you’re angry at me because of Jerry Saxton, you should know that—”
“Aha. So you admit you were trying to steal him.”
Steal him? “Are you kidding? I didn’t even know him. I definitely didn’t like him. I was set up on a blind date and you probably heard what a success it was.”
“I heard you kicked him.”
“Yeah, because he attacked me.”
“No way.”
“Oh, guess you didn’t hear that part.” I looked at her quizzically. “I’m not even sure why you care about him. He was a creep and a womanizer, and while I’m sorry he’s dead, I’m not sorry he won’t be around to attack another woman.”
Her hands fisted in frustration. “He didn’t attack women.”
“If that’s what you think, you’re deluding yourself.”
“You didn’t understand him like I did.”
“Really? You understood him? So you knew that he was dating numerous women at the same time and making promises he had no intention of keeping? And despite your claims, he did hurt women. He threatened them. I guess you’re lucky you weren’t one of them. But you didn’t understand him quite as well as you think you did.”
“You don’t know anything. Jerry was fun. He was a good listener. And he was a wild animal in the sack.”
“Stop.” My stomach pitched and I held up my hand. “Too much information.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Trust me, I’m not. Besides, you’ve been telling everyone in town that you hated him, so why are you suddenly defending him to me?”
“Because he cheated on me, the jerk! I could’ve lived with it, but thanks to you, everybody in town found out.”
They found out because Joyce had blabbered it all over the place, but she wouldn’t appreciate my pointing out the obvious. Instead, I said, “I truly didn’t know you were involved with him and, besides, I had no intention of ever seeing him again after that night.” Since her brain didn’t seem to be functioning, I added slowly, “He would’ve been all yours.”
“Except somebody killed him,” she said sullenly. “It was probably you.”
“It wasn’t.” There was no reason to continue this conversation. Joyce was unhappy and confused and I couldn’t convince her of the truth. “I’ve got to get to work. Despite your personal feelings toward me—which are unfounded, by the way—I still want to do the best job possible on your house.”
“I should fire you.”
I stopped and stared at her. “Why?”
She scowled. “Because I’m mad at you.”
“Please don’t be. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I suppose not.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’m just so bummed.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “You’ve met Stan, right? Well, Jerry was a Greek god compared to Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Stan.”
“I’ve really got to get to work.” I rushed back to the house and ran inside before she could give me one more appalling fact about Jerry’s prowess or Stan’s lack thereof.
Inside, I shook off the vibes from the confrontation and concentrated on the job. Folding a couple of old towels on the floor to protect my knees, I went to work on removing the newel post ornamentation. I was left blessedly alone for two whole hours, plenty of time to pry away the twelve carved wood medallions that had graced the four sides of the thick post for as long as the house had been standing.
I stood and stretched for a long minute to ease the stiffness in my legs from kneeling for that much time. Stacking the medallions on a sturdy piece of discarded drywall, I carried them out to the front porch, where a large plywood table and a couple of folding chairs were set up to do any of the detail work we occasionally had.
The table also held the stack of blueprints Wade and I referred to whenever there was a question of taking down a wall or ripping up a floor. The architect I worked with always redrew an updated, clean version of the blueprints whenever I started a new job, but I kept the old sheets as well, for reference.
Laying out the medallions, I took a closer look with a magnifying glass and decided that, yes, I could save them all. They would have to be soaked in solvent and stripped completely so that no layer of paint remained. When they were cleaned up, I would use wood filler to patch any damaged areas and then sand them until smooth. After that, the newel post itself would get the same basic treatment and then the medallions would be reattached to the post. Once the entire staircase was stripped down, we would stain and varnish everything to a high-gloss finish.