Heads You Lose - Lisa Lutz [62]
“He asked me not to,” Yolanda said, still averting her gaze.
Lacey stormed into Sook’s room with Doc Egan right behind her. She found Sook in bed with one of those old-time sleep caps on. He not-sostealthily stuffed something under the covers and then hooded his eyes, trying to appear as if he’d just woken up. Lacey felt his forehead. It was baked-potato hot. She felt his neck. It was normal temperature.29 His complexion appeared pale, but she noted something chalky about it. She rubbed his cheek. Powder came off on her finger.
Lacey yanked the bedcovers back and found Sook in a pajama top and blue jeans with a heating pad and face powder in the shade of “Ivory Doll” tucked next to him.
“I actually thought you were dying,” Lacey said.
“Well, I am,” Sook indignantly replied. “I’m dying more than you are or he is or Yolanda. Maybe not more than Gladys next door. But still, my days are numbered. You gonna waste them being mad at me?”
“Why don’t I give you two a minute,” Egan said, closing the door behind him.
Sook and Lacey entered into an embarrassingly long stare-off. Sook eventually called a forfeit when Yolanda reminded him that it was time for his eye drops. Lacey sat down in Sook’s stolen chair and waited for him to beg for forgiveness. But Sook was more the rationalizing sort.
“You’re a drug pusher; I’m a blackmailer. You’re younger and prettier, but are we really all that different?”
Truth was, Lacey’s indignation had faded as soon as she’d seen her old friend on his sickbed. When she thought Sook might truly be ill, she realized how much she missed him. She also needed him—Sook was her only true ally in her galaxy of investigations.
“No more secrets, Sook. Are we clear on that?”
“Crystal.”
“Have you ever met Lila Wickfield?” Lacey asked.
“Lilac Lila?” Sook said.
“She always smells like that, right?”
“As far as I know.”
Lacey looked Sook dead in the eye. “Was she stepping out on the sheriff?”
Sook didn’t like where this conversation was heading, but he answered, “Yes.”
“With?”
“I think you already know,” Sook replied.
“Just say it.”
“Hart.”
“Was she the only one?”
“Probably not.”
“How many?”
“Couldn’t give you a number. Most of it was just rumor,” Sook replied.
“Wow,” Lacey said, feeling the room spinning. Then she recalled something. “Was that why you gave me the safe-sex talk that one time?”
“Why else?” Sook replied.
“That was awkward.”
“Agreed.”
“Aside from Lila, who else?”
“Hmm, I’d have to think about it,” Sook replied. He got out of bed and began making it in his precise military fashion.
“Who, Sook?”
“For a while he was spending time with this gimpy stripper from Tulac.”
NOTES:
Dave,
I’m remembering now that you are virtually incapable of taking any kind of instruction from me—case in point that haircut fourteen years ago. How hard is it to take half an inch off the bottom? I looked like a prison inmate after a lice scare.
If you ever want to finish this project, you’ll have to take at least one piece of advice: Please start tying up loose ends and figuring out who our murderer or murderers are.
One more thing: I would like to preempt any thoughts of bringing Los Chungos back to California. Como se dice “mass murder”? The first kill is always the hardest. It gets sooo much easier after that.
Lisa
P.S. If you want to quit I’ll understand. I’ll just continue the project with a different writer.
Lisa,
Who remembers a haircut from 1996? You hang on to resentments like a lint trap. If you wanted a real haircut, you should have gone to a salon, not to a grad student halfway through a twelve-pack. Likewise, if you wanted a standard mystery, you should have chosen a mystery writer.
As for your latest chapter, I enjoyed Sook’s shenanigans, but I wonder whether you’ve made him adorable enough. The old-timey sleeping cap is nice, but I feel like there might be more cuteness out there, just waiting to be harvested. “Waste not, want not” is what I say.
On a separate note, who would have suspected Doc Egan was an expert on architectural forensics?