Heads You Lose - Lisa Lutz [10]
Darryl’s house was just a quick loop outside of her route to work. She decided to drive by, just to see if anything was amiss. She slowed in front of his rambler. He had repainted recently. She noted other improvements as well. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t been seen around much. Maybe he was trying to make a break from the water business, keeping clear of his usual contacts. Lacey liked the idea—she could relate. Too bad he died. She couldn’t relate to that. Darryl’s truck was still parked out front, but there was no sign of anyone in the house. Why should there be? Darryl lived with his stepmom, but she worked full-time, and now most of him was lying alongside a hiking path twelve miles away.
Suddenly, Lacey felt tears streaming down her face. Last night she’d seen just a body, and not even a whole one. Today she realized Darryl was gone for good. It’s not like they were close or anything; in fact, when he was around they hardly said a word to each other. But still, she had gotten used to him and now she’d have to get unused to him. Lacey wiped the tears away with her sleeve and kept driving until she reached the Tarpit. She’d never minded the name before, but today it reminded her that she was stuck and that it was time she got out of Mercer.
“I’d like a nonfat soy-mocha latte,” Bernard, one of the regulars, said.
“What size?” Lacey asked.
“Medium, no, large.”
Lacey poured a shot of espresso and mocha into the mug and steamed the soymilk, while starting another batch of espresso with her right hand. She looked at Bernard in his lumberjack shirt and work boots and wondered when it had happened—when he’d transformed from the guy who ordered black coffee and a bear claw to a man who buys city drinks that cost more than a full breakfast at the Jenkee’s down the street.
Lacey kept this job because she thought she should have one on paper and she needed time away from Paul, but some part of her wished this town had stayed as it had once been—a town where people didn’t need to use more than two words to order a cup of joe. The one benefit of the job was that the morning rush kept her mind so busy on the small tasks at hand that she didn’t have too much time to think about her life and the mess she had made of it. Some days she still thought of Hart, but every day she got better at forgetting about him.
Lacey was loading mugs into the dishwasher and trying to solve the mystery of the headless body in her backyard when she was interrupted by an unnecessarily booming voice.
“Coffee. Black,” said Sheriff Ed Wickfield, as if he were introducing himself.
Lacey turned around.
“Hi, Ed. How are you doing?”
“Surviving,” Ed replied, with the tone of a cop whose work might involve undercover narcotics operations in Central America. In truth, Ed mostly dealt with traffic violations and run-of-the mill drunk and disorderly calls.
“Glad to hear it,” Lacey said.
Then they did the dance of Ed trying to pay and Lacey waving him away. The owners of the café never let the sheriff or the fire marshal pay for coffee. Ed always put two bucks in the tip jar. Lacey wished that made her like him, but it didn’t. She always had this unnerving feeling that Ed was waiting for the perfect moment to pounce and seize his glory with a massive bust.
She could never decide if his small talk amounted to innocent questions or thinly veiled interrogations.
“How’s that brother of yours?” Ed asked.
“Okay, I guess,” Lacey replied. “You’d have to ask him if you want the full report.”
“Is he keeping busy?”
“It’s all relative.”
“How does he fill his days?” Ed asked.
While it did seem to be a pointed question, it was a question that a handful of locals asked. How Paul filled his days was a mystery to everyone except Paul. Since Paul didn’t want to get a cover job, they decided to tell people that he was slowly draining his inheritance and killing time the way so many young men kill time—computers, television, and video games. Sometimes when Lacey was feeling