Heads You Lose - Lisa Lutz [67]
“I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything now,” Lila said, “but I think he loved you. I really do.”
“Yeah,” Lacey replied, not looking back. “Then why was he screwing anyone who’d have him?”
“It’s Mercer,” said Lila. “What else is there to do?”
Brandy was pulling out of her driveway in her canary-yellow VW Bug as Lacey pulled up. For lack of a better idea, Lacey followed her all the way back to Mercer and, oddly enough, to We Care Gardens. While Brandy pulled into the driveway, Lacey drifted past the entrance and parked her car in a shady turnaround by the side of the road. Then she threaded back through the dense woods that bordered the neglected facility.
A two-room bungalow that served as the administrative office was surrounded on three sides by woods. Lacey concealed herself behind a patch of pine trees that offered a direct view of the only entrance to the office. She assumed Brandy was inside and decided to wait her out. After twenty minutes, her cell phone rang. It was Paul. She pressed the mute button and then listened to the message as she continued her vigil. He was checking in, wondering what she was up to that day since she wasn’t scheduled to work. She could hear the suspicion in his voice.
What Lacey saw next genuinely took her by surprise, which is saying something for a person who’d found a headless body on her property twice in the past ten days. Brandy and Big Marv exited the office. As Brandy limped to her car, Marv lumbered right behind her.
“I’ll be in touch,” Marv said.
Brandy looked at her watch. “You better hurry. Verducci’s is at least a forty-minute drive.”
Lacey couldn’t fathom the connection between Big Marv and Brandy, but she decided that Big Marv’s appointment held a little more intrigue than the rest of Brandy’s day. Lacey waited until both cars were out of sight, ran to her Toyota, and headed after Big Marv, who was on his way to Birkton, home of Al’s gas station, the $1 to $5 store, and Verducci’s, the best Italian restaurant in a fifty-mile radius.
Exactly forty-two minutes later, Lacey was parked in the lot of the $1 to $5 store, which offered a decent view of Verducci’s parking lot. A few spots down from Big Marv’s Mercedes was her brother’s truck. Paul’s secret gimpy stripper girlfriend was one thing; a secret meeting with Big Marv was an entirely different monster. And now that the two were somehow linked, Lacey had to get to the bottom of it.
Lacey ducked into the store and purchased a ten-dollar lumberjack shirt, a two-dollar trucker’s cap, and a one-dollar pair of sunglasses. She tucked her hair inside the cap and donned the rest of the outfit. She looked like a wimpy serial killer. In Birkton, she’d blend right in.
Lacey crossed the road and circled the establishment. The windows were dark on the outside, so she had to get her face right up to one to see inside. She scanned the room and in a back booth saw her brother sitting across from the Babalato brothers. It clearly hadn’t been a table for three. Only Jay and Paul had plates of pasta in front of them.
A waitress taking a smoke break exited the building. She turned to Lacey and said, “Can I help you, sir?”
Startled, Lacey stepped back from the window.
“How’s the food here?” Lacey asked.
“It’s okay,” the waitress replied. “A hell of a lot better if you go inside.”
“Good to know,” Lacey said.
Lacey dialed Paul’s cell phone to see if he’d pick up.
“What’s up?” Paul said.
“It’s Lacey,” Lacey replied. She hadn’t expected Paul to pick up.
“Yeah, I know that.”
“What are you up to?” Lacey asked.
“Just . . . uh . . . running a few errands.”
“What kind of errands?”
“The kind that involve buying things in stores. What are you up to?”
“Nothing much.”
“You sure got out of the house early,” said Paul.
Lacey aimed for a better alibi than her brother.
“Just got my stitches out. Might run a few errands of my own and then head home.”
“See you later,” Paul said.
“Not if I see you first.”
The line was a standard part of their banter, but she noticed an edge in her voice as she said