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It felt vaguely wrong. His new life was beginning where another’s had been brutally cut short, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“What the hell is that?” Charley asked, dragging Martin’s attention back to the truck and its contents. “Or rather,whothe hell is that?”
Correction. Make that two issues. And the second was not a ghost. It was a red-blooded human man.
Reluctantly turning away from the back of the moving truck and his contemplation of the bridge, Martin peered in the direction Charley pointed. Martin knew exactlywhothat was. He’d just chosen to act as if the angry temporary resident of Cabin Five, the second fly in his otherwise perfect day, didn’t exist.
Standing on the rise adjacent to the parking lot, silhouetted by the dreary November afternoon light, was Nicholas Waugh, Martin’s short-term tenant. In his left hand, Waugh gripped a chainsaw. Martin could feel Waugh’s stare rake over him, icy and unforgiving. This was a standoff, like Wyatt Earp and his posse, except it was Nicholas Waugh and his chainsaw.
Waugh’s gaze was hidden behind safety glasses—to Martin, he looked like a disturbing beetle-like alien space invader—but those glasses were locked on Martin. Reaching down, Waugh jerked the power cord upward with a single powerful motion. The chainsaw started with a roar that echoed across Martin’s property, even drowning out the sound of the ocean for a few seconds. Then, lifting his chin in a sort of acknowledgment or, more likely, a challenge, Waugh turned his back on the three of them and began attacking a stump, or log, or stump-log—was this terminology Martin needed to learn now?—that stood, if logs stood, in front of his cabin.
Martin suspected the living issue was going to make his life more difficult than the dead. Which, if he was going to be honest with himself, was a little depressing.
“That’s the guy, huh?” Simon asked unnecessarily.
“Yep,” Martin confirmed. “That’s the guy.”
“You sure he’s stable?” Simon wondered. “He looks mighty handy with that saw.”
Martin wasn’t sure if Waugh was stable or not, but it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it. Tenant law meant, barring criminal activity, Nicholas Waugh stayed through his lease. Bad chainsaw art wasn’t considered criminal behavior, unfortunately. If that’s what Waugh was doing. Seriously, what was he doing to that poor stump-log-whatever?
“Stable or not, he’s got an agreement that runs through the end of August. My hands are tied. His residency was stipulated by the Davies estate as part of the sale.”
“Huh.” Simon moved to grab another box from the truck.
“Is that all you’ve got, Edward Scissorhands?” Charley yelled up at Waugh.
Martin chuckled. “He can’t hear you over the saw. Regardless, I’d appreciate it if you don’t antagonize him further. I do think he’s harmless. From what Xavier told me, he’s just a guy down on his luck.”
“Said about every serial killer ever,” Charley snarked as he grabbed a few more boxes that needed to go inside Martin’s new home. “I’m down on my luck, so I’m gonna off a few dozen people.”
“When you said they were fixer-uppers,” Simon said later, “I didn’t realize you meant rebuilding from the ground up.”
Wiping the sweat off his forehead, Martin glanced around his cabin—not for the first time that day—and took in the disheveled state of it. The structure needed fresh paint, inside and out. New windows were called for. A new roof before long. The kitchen appliances were throwbacks to the 1970s, but they all worked. When his parents had remodeled their kitchen decades ago, Martin remembered the first thing his mom had gotten rid of was the mustard-yellow stove. The one standing in his kitchen made Martin a tad nostalgic.
The previous owner’s children had left the owner’s cabin as clean as they could. The work could be done while he got settled. He’d stayed in worse setups during summer digs in the Yukon. At least here he had a working toiletanda shower.
Besides, the geologist in him liked the idea of being able to look back through time in his own kitchen. There was something very satisfying about it.
“Fuck off,” Martin replied without heat. “Theyarefixer-uppers. Quit channeling your inner Charley and take a closer look around you. These cabins were all built by hand, using local timber from the forest surrounding the town. Isn’t that incredible? The doors on the kitchen cabinets were crafted from a single piece of wood. The parquet flooring is gorgeous. A true artisan designed them. All they need is a little TLC.”
Maybe a lot of TLC, but who cared? This was his project now.
In addition to this larger structure, a cabin-slash-house, there were eleven smaller ones plus the “front office” where visitors would eventually be checking in. Once they were livable again, Martin planned on renting the cabins out to vacationers like the original owners had done. With the remodeling going on, he’d have to deal with Waugh at some point, probably sooner rather than later. The rest of the cabins weren’t in nearly as good shape as the one Martin was making his home though, and he suspected there was more work to do than he hoped, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
“TLC,” repeated Charley. “Is that TNT loaded with C4?”
“You can also fuck off.”
He would spend the winter fixing everything up and then he’d celebrate with a grand reopening of Cooper Springs Resort, hopefully before Memorial Day. Some people had affairs and bought fancy cars for their midlife crises. Martin had a heart attack, quit his job, and bought a run-down resort. And most people didn’t have someone like his Aunt Heidi, who’d passed away last summer. Her last wish for Martin had been life-changing.
“Martian,” she’d whispered, her voice close to giving out. He’d leaned in closer over her hospital bed in order to hear what she’d had to say. Martian had been her silly nickname for him all of his life. He’d always suspected she’d been disappointed he chose rocks instead of studying aliens at Area 51. “You need to live,really live.” Heidi had needed to stop for breath then, her lungs no longer able to do the work her body needed them to. “Don’t keep wasting your life following the rules that mean nothing when you’re dead. Don’t die wishing you’d grabbed the golden ring when it had swung past you on the carousel.”
Crying wasn’t something Martin did often, and not because he was some alpha guy who couldn’t lose control of emotions. When Heidi had passed only a few days later, he hadn’t cried then either. Instead, he’d vowed to fulfill her wish for him. He would really live.
A week later, he’d notified the department he was retiring, effective immediately.
“Have you heard anything about the murder?” Simon asked quietly—as if Lizzy Harlow’s murderer was lurking just around the corner, ready to pounce—bringing Martin back to the present.
