Chapter 10

Yuryi still has the Narrative

The next several weeks were busy with a number of unrelated things and involved all of us. For me, it involved questions from the police and the need to visit their headquarters and the detectives working on the case. There was also the matter of the parking lot repairs. I tackled that first thing on Monday morning.

Going on the internet, I looked for local paving contractors. There were a number of companies listed, but not all of them were local or asphalt repair firms. Some were located out of the area, or did concrete paving. Others did landscaping or masonry work. One was even a roofer who advertised using asphalt shingles. Some of those listed did mainly top-surfacing of existing driveways or parking lots. There were several who did asphalt repairs for parking lots and even installing new parking lots and driveways. I called several of the latter.

Some were already backed up with existing work because of the snow, while others only did major new construction. I finally located a firm that did asphalt repair and replacement. They offered a free inspection and estimate. Fortunately, their offices weren’t located too far from the area of the building. They could come out to see the work needed that afternoon.

I met them at about 2:00 that afternoon in front of the building. The police had managed to remove nearly all of the vehicles from the Friday night’s occurrence. The inspector and his assistant had also seen much of the damage done to the asphalt of the lot on the way to greet me.

“What happened here?” the senior inspector asked after greetings and shaking hands.

“Some people arrived here on Friday night with the intention of breaking into the building and robbing a number of the stores. It appears that they brought cans of gasoline with them, and somehow, all of the cans blew up and caught fire. A number of them were burned, some seriously, and two of them died,” I told him.

“And the area nearest the building?” he asked, as it was much larger than the other areas.

“No one knows. Something melted the paving there, but the Fire Department personnel couldn’t determine what was used or why,” I told him before we went down to inspect the smaller burn areas.

“We’ll need to cut out the area that was affected by the fire on each of these locations. We’ll check the top course of rock under them and make any necessary repairs before replacing the paving. It will be a fairly straightforward operation,” the senior inspector, Joe, told me after looking at several of the minor locations.

“However,” he continued, as we moved back toward the building and the area where I had incinerated Knut, “this area is in much worse condition. Again, we’ll need to cut out all of the affected area. Following that, we’ll need to replace and compact the courses of rock above the base course. The rock was seriously affected by the heat. We’ll need to compact the rock with a small vibrating roller, and prime it before we can replace the asphalt,” he told me.

“Any idea of the time frame we are talking about?” I asked, and he laughed.

“Most people ask how much it will cost first, as they worry they can’t afford the work,” he told me with a grin, before turning serious.

“Four days starting tomorrow. Part of the crew can work on the small fire areas and prepare them. The rest will need to work on this larger area. We should be ready to do the paving of all of the areas on Friday of this week. Of course, you won’t be able to use the parking lot during that time. We’ll have trucks moving in and out while we work plus the work crew,” he told me, before making his sales pitch.

“We could also seal the entire parking lot after doing the repairs. It would be over the weekend, and you could open again on Monday of next week,” he told me before giving me the estimate for the repairs, and then for the sealing and re-striping of the entire lot. It wasn’t cheap, but it would ensure that the parking lot would be in good shape for five or six years, at least. After thinking about it for a short time, I told him to go ahead with both jobs. I wrote him a check for the down-payment.

Following that, I went in to tell Paul and the various store managers that we would be closed for the next week. Most of the managers weren’t happy about that, but they had little choice. I did remind them that it would provide them with time to go over their stores and update or rearrange them. Their employees would need to find a place somewhere else to park when coming to work while the repairs were underway. The buses were fortunately still running.

This wouldn’t seriously effect those who normally stayed here. They had been drifting back in since Saturday morning, and nearly all of them were back and safe.

The next chore was to call the largest local radio and television stations to place ads alerting the public that we would be closed until the following Monday. They would need to be aired hourly until this Saturday night. Again this wasn’t inexpensive, but it was necessary to maintain customer good will.

Yvonne still hadn’t heard from the dealer about her car, so the next day, we went to the dealer in my SUV to see what the problem was. The roads had been cleared enough by now that we didn’t need to take the pickup.

Arriving at the dealer’s a bit after mid-morning, we were confronted by a mass of broken-down vehicles. They had been dumped everywhere and were a sea of colors and models.

“Look for the color of your car,” I told her. “Was it a popular color?” I asked also.

“Probably, I needed to wait several weeks to get the color that I wanted in that model,” she told me. She had pointed out another vehicle in that exact color to me, as we continued to look for her car. I finally found the correct color and model of vehicle.

“Look over there,” I told her pointing and led the way.

“That couldn’t possibly be my car,” she insisted as we neared it, and she saw the condition it was in. We needed to go all of the way to the vehicle to be certain. As we came up behind it and could see the license plate, Yvonne let out a gasp.

“Oh ... My ... God!” she screamed. “That is my car, but what did they do to it?” she demanded in shock.

“Vasilli did say that a snowplow had hit it, but from the looks of it, he was moving rather fast at the time,” I told her, as we looked at the crumpled right rear end of the vehicle.

“Are they even going to be able to fix that?” she asked in despair.

“I don’t know. It may be a good thing that the battery was frozen when it was hit. I’m not sure what would have happened if the battery had been active when the snowplow hit the vehicle. I don’t know a lot about that type of batteries. There will also be a problem if the frame was bent in the accident. Other than that, it’s a lot of sheet metal to replace. I don’t know if it can be economically repaired,” I told her.

“But my God, it’s not even a year old yet. How could this happen?” she demanded turning angry.

“Vasilli said there was a police report under the windshield wiper and that he put it in the glove box. Do you have your keys with you?” I asked her.

“Yes, I took them with me when we got out,” she told me and dug in her purse for the keys. I, in the meantime, was trying the passenger side front door. It opened.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “With the battery dead, there wasn’t any electricity to lock the doors,” I added, as I reached in and opened the glove box. There was an envelope in there with the police report.

“We need to take pictures, a lot of pictures, of the vehicle. Use your phone to take the pictures. I’ll use mine also. I can get one of Paul’s people to download and print them out at the office. We need to check with the dealer’s service people on when they will be able to look at it and determine whether it can be repaired or not,” I told her. Yvonne looked around at all of the other vehicles littering the dealer’s lot and just cried.

“It will take forever,” she wailed in misery. I had to agree with her. We proceeded to the service area anyway to speak to someone about her car after taking the pictures.

The service area was full of people just like us who were there to inquire about their vehicles. We took a number, and I found a place for Yvonne to sit while we waited for our number to be called. It would be a long wait, as the many people here were only very slowly having their questions answered. Fortunately, we had both brought something with us to read. I had been reading a book in Gaelic for some time when someone interrupted me.

“Excuse me,” a rather good-looking woman of about thirty or so said getting my attention some time after I had started reading. “Are you really reading that book?” she asked.

“Yes, why do you ask?” I replied.

“It’s in Gaelic. A rather old dialect of Gaelic from the title on the front. There are few around here who are able to read it,” she said.

“I’ve been able to read Gaelic in this and other dialects for quite some time,” I told her to a smile from her.

“I can read modern Gaelic but have trouble with the older dialects,” she told me but had a question. “What are you here for?” she asked following that.

“My friend Yvonne had her car’s battery die during the storm. Fortunately, she was near my building, and I took her and her daughters in during the storm. Later, the vehicle was hit by a snowplow before we could get it towed. We need to talk to someone to see if it is repairable,” I told her.

“Oh dear!” she said and paused. “How old is the vehicle?” she asked next. Yvonne was now paying attention to our conversation.

“It’s less than a year old,” she told the woman. We didn’t even know her name.

“I’m Kathleen O’Floinn, and I’m the assistant service manager, and you are?” she asked.

“I’m Yuryi Lawristan, and this is my friend Yvonne Strupinski,” I told her, a bit surprised.

“Would you have a picture of the vehicle?” she asked. I pulled out my cell phone and pulled up some pictures of the passenger’s side of the vehicle. Ms. O’Floinn took in a breath on seeing the damage to the vehicle.

“Oh dear!” she said and paused again. “Let me see if I can get one of the estimators to look at the vehicle. Depending on the damage, it could be quite expensive to repair,” she told us. “Wait here for a few minutes while I speak to someone. What number do you have?” she added.

“We have number 786,” I told her holding up the ticket.

“I’ll be a short time,” she told us before she hurried off.

About ten minutes later our number was called. We had stopped reading, and we were paying attention, so we easily heard it. There were a number of other people who were quite upset, as they had lower numbers that hadn’t been called yet. At the services desk, we found Ms. O’Floinn and another man waiting for us.

“This is Friedrich Muller, our chief estimator. He usually goes by Fred. He will go with you to check the vehicle,” she told us. Friedrich was an older man of about 45 or so. He was about 5’-10’’ tall, maybe 170 pounds with light brown hair going gray and blue eyes. He accompanied us back out to the car. He spent many minutes inspecting it before asking any questions.

“What was the vehicle’s initial problem?” he asked, looking at me.

“The battery died while driving it during the storm,” Yvonne told him.

“You were driving the car?” he asked in surprise.

“Yes, it’s my car,” she told him.

“And what happened to it then?” he asked.

“It was hit by a city snowplow,” she told him. He exhaled heavily.

“We have several vehicles with similar problems here, and I would imagine that the other dealers and repair shops have them also. It would appear that the one that hit your vehicle was moving rather fast. Do you have a police report on the accident?” he asked next.

“Yes,” she told him and showed him the paperwork.