But they fought to save this downtown, this whole community, and the fight was more potent than the tornado.
Which brought her back to D.J. Maybe he thought they were meeting on-site instead of her office?
Libby picked up her phone and decided to just walk over.
The tornado had gutted the buildings under construction on the Green Street intersection. It had put their work months, if not years, behind. But the worst damage was to Shelly’s salon and the grocery store at both ends of the main drag.
Barton’s Grocery was wiped out completely. Old Ned Barton died in his store, and Dean had died saving J.J. and Shelly.
Dean was now one of her main motivations to keep going. He’d done amazing things here. She wasn’t going to quit until the whole state could see the legacy of his work.
Libby looked over at the grocery store.
It was one fine-looking building, and construction had been completed in record time.
Stone Stirling had hired the “best of the best,” he’d said. He’d even hired a lot of local contractors. She wanted to hate his guts, but he kept doing honorable things. Still…
Libby was wary when Stirling bought the place. She’d actually tried to punch the man. But since then, there’d been a truce. A grudging one.
Stone had been good for Irish Hills after the tornado hit. That didn’t mean she trusted the man—it just meant that his grocery store was good and needed; and had helped keep tourists booking cottages and homes for this summer’s season. Yet Libby feared there was another shoe to drop when it came to Stone’s encroachment.
Libby made her way across the street. The buildings, connected in some cases and separated by two little alleys at each end, were in various stages of development and construction.
In her mind’s eye, she could see the destruction of last summer. Even with all the work they’d tried to do since.
The tornado and winds had ripped off much of the roofs that Dean had installed. The vintage exterior brick, so painstakingly selected by Dean, had crumbled down in a heap on the front side of the stretch of buildings. The display windows had shattered as if a bomb had exploded inside the structures.
Every nail that Dean had pounded in had twisted out. Several downspouts he’d installed were found on the lakeshore at the end of downtown. They were mangled and twisted like pretzels. The rotation of the wind bent metal, tree limbs, and whatever else it scooped up and flung all over the county.
A tornado doesn’t go in a straight line. It darts and turns. Last summer’s twister danced like a dervish, leaving one side of the street intact and decimating the other just feet away.
D.J. Tucker supervised the initial cleanup. Libby saw him try to manage his shock and grief by diving headfirst into running his dad’s business.
They moved from cleanup to roofing, fixing brick, and replacing walls. It was a chaotic tumble forward, but they had gotten it done. And now the project focused on the interior of each space.
There was still so much to do before Libby could market the redeveloped block to tenants to sign leases. If she thought too much about it, she’d need a nap. Libby functioned best when she was busy and when chaos nipped at her heels, as it had done since the twister hit.
Libby arrived at the block’s far end to find the anchor building’s service door unlocked. That probably did mean that D.J. was already here. She stepped inside. Electrical wiring was on the to-do list. Luckily, the sun was already bright this morning.
“D.J.,” she called out, but no answer.
This stretch was similar to the one across the street in that there were several spaces to lease that could house any number of businesses. They had five across the street. Here, they had two more; seven potential spaces to fill.
If Libby could rent or even sell these to vibrant tenants, it would be mission accomplished. She had stretched the insurance payout as far as she could to make it happen. Money was running out. She needed to finish this and get income here this summer.
D.J.’s tool belt was on the floor in the center of the space. That was odd. Libby went up the stairs to the second-floor loft, where the mystery of the missing D.J. was solved.
An empty bottle of whiskey sat next to a very full D.J. Tucker. Libby’s heart lurched for a second, seeing him there. But then a snore that sounded more like a truck passing by than human respiration let her know that D.J. was breathing. He was sleeping that whiskey off on their job site.
He wasn’t dead. That was something.
D.J. Tucker was a man on the edge of an amazing life or total disaster. Right now, disaster was winning.
Libby kneeled next to the wayward contractor and nudged him on the shoulder.
“D.J., wake up.”
He made an indecipherable sound and rolled over. She heard a buzzing noise on the other side of the massive amount of man that was D.J. Tucker.
