Best Laid Plans (Garnet Run 2)

Charlie winced, fingers itching to put the car together properly—or, perhaps more practically, drive it to the junkyard and put it out of its misery.

Marie was bagging Bill Duff’s purchases when the door burst open. In stepped a man Charlie’d never seen before.

He certainly would have remembered.

Long, dark hair fell messily over his shoulders. He was slim and angular, with a slinky walk that made him look like he was made of hips and shoulders. The cuffs and collar of his long-sleeved T-shirt were worn rough and the knees of his jeans blown out. He looked like ten miles of dirt road.

Charlie raised a hand at the newcomer.

“Welcome to Matheson’s. I’m Charlie. Can I help you find anything?”

The man’s light, kohl-lined eyes darted around, as if Charlie might be talking to someone else, then, looking confused, said, “Uh. No.”

He hurried off down aisle one and Charlie let him alone. Some people didn’t want help or attention while they shopped, and Charlie was just glad of a new customer—and a young one at that. Business was okay, but with each passing year overnight shipping and Amazon ate further into his profit margin, particularly with customers under forty.

The stranger walked up and down the aisles, muttering inaudibly, swearing audibly, and consulting his phone every minute or so, as if the answers he wouldn’t accept from Charlie lay there.

After the better part of half an hour, he approached the register, arms full, though there were baskets and small carts available.

“Find everything okay?” Charlie asked as the man dumped his purchases on the counter.

“Uh, sure.”

He sounded distracted and was glaring at the items he’d chosen.

“You need any help with...” Charlie gestured at the hardware equivalent to marshmallows, cheese, and spaghetti before him.

The man raised a dramatic dark eyebrow but didn’t say anything. His eyes, Charlie could see now, were gray, and his skin was pale, as if he were a black-and-white image in a color world.

That pale glare lanced him, and he looked away, ringing and bagging things up.

The man swiped his credit card like he was ripping something in half and had to do it again when the machine didn’t get a read. He glared at it.

When Charlie handed him his bags he couldn’t help needling the man a little.

“Need any help getting things out to your car?” he asked, as he’d ask anyone.

The man glared down at the bags he was holding, then up at Charlie.

“No,” he said, like the word was his favorite one and, in his mouth, capable of expressing every feeling and thought he had.

“Okay, then,” Charlie said, purposefully cheery. “Have a good one.”

The man narrowed his eyes like there was a barb hidden in the words he simply hadn’t found yet.

“Uh-huh,” he said, and wrinkled his nose suspiciously, backing out the door.

“Who was that?” Marie asked. Charlie turned to see her lurking in the doorway from the back room.

“I don’t know,” Charlie said.

But he was damn sure gonna find out.

* * *

The glarer was back the next day, bursting through the door in a palpable huff. Marie elbowed Charlie subtly—as subtly as a pointy bone to the ribs can be administered, anyway.

“Welcome back,” Charlie said. “Help you find anything?”

The man shook his head, glaring, and walked to the back of the store. After that, Charlie didn’t see him for long enough that he got concerned and went to make sure he hadn’t impaled himself on an awl or stumbled into the band saw.

When he turned the corner on aisle six, though, Charlie didn’t see any carnage. What he saw was the man’s back, messy hair tumbling around his shoulders, and his phone screen as he watched a YouTube video that appeared to be about framing in a wall.

Charlie snuck back to the cash wrap without the man seeing him. He helped another customer, sent Marie to cut the wood for Ms. Mackenzie’s decking order, and organized an endcap of gardening tools, seeds from the local seed company Kiss Me Kale, fertilizer, and seed starting soil. He was adding hose nozzles to the display when the man walked to the front of the store with a pack of common nails, a hammer, an axe, sandpaper, and two flashlights, even though he’d bought one the day before.

“Do you sell wood?” he asked. “Like, cut wood?”

Charlie nodded. “Yup, any dimensions, cut to any length you want. We don’t have everything in stock, but I can get it for you. What do you need?”

“Um, I’m not sure yet.”

“Okay. Well, just let me know, and we’ll take care of you.”

The man nodded, eyes narrowed, and piled his purchases on the counter.

Everything in Charlie wanted to make sure the man had used an axe before and knew how to do so safely. Every year vacationers chopped off bits of themselves thinking that chopping wood meant whaling on a stump they found in the woods. But given how this guy had responded to a simple friendly greeting, Charlie doubted he’d take well to being questioned.