Heads You Lose (5 page)

Paul suspected that Lacey’s barista (maker of coffee beverages)
⁶
gig was more about her self-image than actual cover. She couldn’t even admit to herself that she was a pot grower, Paul thought. Facing facts had never been her strong suit. Even as a little girl, she seemed to have fun only when she was playing dress-up. But he was her big brother, and he’d help her out as long as she needed him. Maybe she’d go back to school after she saved a little money.

With Irving at his side, Paul started where they’d found the body, then proceeded in an outward spiral until he reached the property’s perimeter. Irving trotted alongside him, more doglike than most dogs. Covering the property took almost four hours and yielded only an old badminton (a lawn sport resembling tennis)
⁷
set and some faded orange Hot Wheels tracks covered in pine muck.

He was back inside watching
Volcano Chasers
by the time Lacey stormed in.

“No head,” Paul said.

“That’s nice. I have a slightly larger piece of news,” said Lacey. “I just saw Darryl Cleveland at Olmstead’s Hardware. Head firmly attached.”

“Are you sure?”

“Let me think about it. Yes.”

“Did you ask him anything?”

“Like what? ‘How do explain your incredible comeback?’” Lacey said, imitating a sportscaster interviewing an athlete.

“No. I mean like, ‘Did you lose your watch?’”

“Of course not.”

“Good. So we’re done,” Paul said.

“Jesus,” Lacey said after a pause. “Could you be a little bit happy it’s not Darryl?”

“I
am
a little bit happy about that. I’m a
lot
happy that the head isn’t on our property. Now we can just sit back and watch what happens.”

“How perfect for you,” said Lacey. “‘This week on
CSI: Mercer
, two pot-growing orphans stumble onto a body, changing their lives forever.’”

“Yeah, yeah,” Paul said. “I gotta run. Senior Circuit today. You’ll be okay around here, right?” It was a rhetorical question, and Lacey had stopped answering those.

“Oh yeah,” Paul added. “Feed Irving. It’s been like a week since he’s killed anything. Maybe he’s depressed or something.”

First stop on the Senior Circuit was Mapleshade, a nursing home/retirement tower that housed most of Mercer’s hidden elderly population, the size of which helped to explain the success of Jenkee’s Diner and two separate pharmacies. Sook Felton’s room was on the top floor, overlooking the forest.

“Brought you some peaches from Lacey,” Paul said in Sook’s room, producing a little bag. Sook’s biggest complaint about Mapleshade was the food.

“Great. They got a pint of vanilla stashed for me in the kitchen freezer.”

“So how was the movie?” Paul asked. Paul always came on a Friday, and movie night was Thursday—most of the sentient residents would gather around the big widescreen in the community room.

“Lousy,” said Sook. “Where is it written that old people in movies have to be cranky, adorable, or adorably cranky?”

Paul wasn’t touching that one, though he had to admit Sook didn’t fit into any of those categories. It was probably more weird than adorable that the thing Sook seemed to enjoy most in life, other than a bowl of high-quality pot, was chick lit. One of the nurses had hooked Sook on the genre soon after he’d arrived at Mapleshade a few years ago, bored out of his mind. Now it was an obsession. Hearing about Sook’s literary preferences, Lacey had taken him to the movies to see, in her words, “
Divine Secrets of Your Sister’s Pants
or whatever.” (Not exactly her type of movie, but she adored Sook.) He’d hated it, and now avoided all film adaptations of books he liked.

For as long as Paul could remember, Lacey had been drawn to the elderly. “Because they don’t give a shit,” she explained. That was fortunate, since Mercer’s demographics were heavily skewed toward high school kids, retirees, and a whole lot of not much in between. Her friends from high school were off in San Francisco or New York, working the jobs they got with their college degrees.

“So I’ll take an ounce,” Sook said, getting down to business. “We lost Bernice but gained a nurse.”

“‘Lost her she quit smoking’ or ‘lost her she died’?” Paul asked.

“The latter. She had a good run,” Sook said, doing a little shrug. It was his usual response to a death at Mapleshade, and it was a safe bet that he felt that way about himself. Like most twice-widowed, Korea-vet, natureloving, gun-enthusiast, bilingual, weed-connoisseur great-grandfathers of five, he’d lived a full life.

Sook sold Paul and Lacey’s pot to a few residents, maybe half of the nurses, and at least one administrator. In return, the staff turned a blind eye when he ventured off the paved walking paths and into the woods, which provided plenty of shade despite a conspicuous lack of maples. They were also by far the best place around Mapleshade to be high.

“I gotta run,” said Paul. “I’m due at the Gardens.”

“All right. Thank Lace for the peaches. See you next month.” Then Sook’s face turned serious. “Hey, I hear Doc Holland split town,” he said. “Know why?”

“Nope. Why do you ask?”

“No big reason,” Sook said. “He owed me twenty bucks.”

Sook was a bad liar, but Paul let it go. He’d always thought bad liars were kind of like honest people—you always knew where you stood. Paul wasn’t big on judging people, as long as they didn’t try to take what belonged to him. And if they did, he’d care about getting it back, not about bringing them to justice. All he really wanted, he told himself, was his patch of land and the freedom to do his job. And maybe a bigger TV.

“Just in time for fight night,” said Lito, coming out to meet Paul’s truck.

When Paul shut off the engine, he could hear the Babalato brothers arguing somewhere inside We Care Gardens, the assisted-living facility they owned. Jay and his younger brother Marvello (Big Marv) Babalato had run the place since their mom died a decade back. Things had gotten so bad between them that the complex was now more or less divided into halves—two houses run by Jay and two by Marv. Paul was reminded yet again why Lito did such a thriving business around here: Anyone within earshot of the brothers would have a steady supply of negative energy to deal with. Listening to them, Lito just shook his head and got in the truck. He was Jay’s son, but he never took sides. No one did anymore.

We Care Gardens was just down the street from Mapleshade, and not by coincidence. It was perfectly positioned to receive people fresh off the Mapleshade tour and presentation, which concluded with a frank discussion of what Mapleshade would actually cost. In most cases, the sticker shock was still fresh as they pulled into the parking lot of the humbler, earthier alternative.

The Gardens’ four little houses might have been shambolic (disorderly), but they were surrounded by a well-maintained collection of tropical and native plants. Throughout the compound you could always smell home cooking—the one facet in which We Care towered over Mapleshade. Sook said he could sometimes smell the cooking from his room.

Paul assumed that Lito sold to some of his sisters, who made up most of the nursing staff, and maybe some of the residents, but his main customers were probably through his other job out at the airport, where Lito was the entire maintenance crew.

After some small talk, Lito bought two ounces, his usual.

“Hey, you mind dropping me out at the airport?” he asked. “My sister took my truck.”

“Sure, no problem,” Paul said.

“I just need to grab something from inside. Be right back,” Lito said.

Paul waited in the truck, listening to the rhythm of the brothers’ argument. After a while it stopped, and then took a violent turn, like someone had bumped the volume knob. One of them was shouting at the other now. Somewhere in there, Paul thought he heard the word “Darryl.” Then he thought he must have imagined it. No more daytime smoking, he told himself, recalling his morning with Rafael. He had no intention of playing private investigator, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how Darryl’s watch and the headless body got introduced to each other.

Lito came jogging out, still shaking his head but not smiling anymore. “Man, get me out of here,” he said as he climbed into the truck.

“So what was that all about?” Paul asked.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Paul couldn’t argue with that.

He was glad to give Lito the ride because it gave him a legitimate excuse to drive by the rest stop to see if there were any signs that the body had been found. He’d made Lacey swear she wouldn’t go anywhere near it, but hey, their top seller needed a ride—what could he do? As they passed the rest stop, Paul looked over casually, hoping for police tape and a couple of cruisers. Instead there was just an idling truck and a family at a park bench. Where was Sheriff Ed when you needed him? Probably intimidating some high school kids.

For a second as they drove past, Paul thought he caught a whiff of the body from all the way across the highway. Okay, he thought,
definitely
no more daytime smoking.

Mercer Airport looked more like a driving range, or an airstrip with a snack bar. A row of small, rusty hangars off to one side completed the picture. As the maintenance guy, Lito mostly had to keep weeds from overtaking the runway and replace burned-out runway lights. A large middle-aged woman named Wanda handled all the pilot communications and “air-traffic control” (a running joke, since there were at most only a few takeoffs and landings each day).

She was smoking a cigarette outside the radio booth.

“What’s up, Wanda?” Paul asked.

“Nothing, unless you count Doc Holland selling me his Cessna for two grand.” She sounded pleased but hardly excited. It wasn’t the first time she’d taken a plane off the hands of someone who was leaving the area in a hurry. She’d either resell them or keep them around for parts. Diabetes had forced her to quit flying, but she still liked to tinker.

A small plane buzzed toward them in the distance.

“Who’s that?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know yet,” said Wanda. “He wasn’t in the log, but I cleared him. I guess we’re about to find out.”

Paul watched the plane’s three blue lights teetering down against a blotchy sunset. The sky was clouding up. Tomorrow would be a burn day.

“Maybe it’s the new doctor?” Lito offered.

Then the plane blew apart like a firework, and burning pieces of it started raining down all over Mercer Airport.

NOTES:

Lisa,

How’s that for a bang?

Dave

Dave,

Wow. I wasn’t expecting such a literal interpretation, but I appreciate the intent. I’m assuming that you have a plan for explaining the explosion, so I’ll try not to step on that in my chapter.

At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about all this assisted-living stuff, but I’m warming to it. It could broaden our potential demographic, and you’ve certainly increased our suspect pool.

No offense, but I say no to the road trip. Let’s keep in mind, we’re writing a crime novel here. I think we’ve already got plenty of local color.

I’m surprised you’d even suggest a road trip after what happened on our last one.

Lisa

CHAPTER 5

News of the plane crash tore through Mercer. Exactly twenty minutes after the fire was extinguished, Wanda was on the phone disseminating the news throughout the town. A plane crash will cause a stir almost anywhere, but in a place like Mercer it drew residents to the site like zombies to fresh brains. The Tarpit emptied in the time it takes to microwave popcorn. The only person not following the smoke plume was Lacey. The Tarpit’s owners told her to close up shop as they hopped on their Harley and took off to join the town field trip.

As soon as it registered that virtually every inhabitant of Mercer would be otherwise occupied, Lacey formulated a plan. When she locked the front door, she took in the sight of Main Street, now a ghost town. She got into her ten-year-old Honda Civic and pulled out of the parking space without even checking her rearview mirror.

Ten minutes later, as she passed the dueling assisted-living facilities on her way out of town, a queasy sensation took hold. What if she never escaped Mercer? What if her final days were spent in Mapleshade, or worse, We Care Gardens? Lacey decided to shift her priorities. Solve a murder; get out of town. She wouldn’t wait for that big crop and that big payoff that might never come. She’d do one last thing for her hometown, then she’d start a life somewhere else. How hard could that be?

An empty station wagon loitered in the parking lot of the otherwise deserted rest stop. She parked a few spots over, grabbed her backpack and water bottle from the trunk of her car, and entered the foul-smelling ladies’room to check for signs of tourist life. Nothing. She exited, scanned the area, and peeked inside the men’s room, holding her breath the entire time. Also empty. She peered inside the station wagon and saw camping gear. They must be on the trail, she thought. Maybe they’ll find the body, report it to the police. That’s how it was supposed to happen, right?

Lacey returned to her car and had just started the engine when she caught a glimpse of hikers surfacing from the trail—a family of five, weary, but with the calm glow of nature and exertion. If they
had
seen a body, they must be in the mortuary business.

Shouldn’t they have noticed something? The smell had been overpowering only two nights ago. It could have only gotten worse.

Lacey killed the engine and got out of her car. She smiled at the family and they exchanged friendly hellos. She watched them fill their water bottles from the fountain and return to their car. Lacey set out on the trail. In twilight, without a headless body in tow, it took no time to reach her destination. Lacey glanced at her surroundings. She felt an edginess take over, like she was being watched. Her eyes told her differently, but then she didn’t trust her eyes.