Heads You Lose (24 page)

Interesting chapter, by the way. I wouldn’t have pegged you as a telenovela fan, but clearly that’s the plotting school you attended.

I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with Harry Lakes.

Lisa

CHAPTER 23

The sharp ringing of the telephone woke Lacey from a restless sleep. She stumbled through the house, searching for the cordless. She yelled at Paul for not putting it back in the cradle until she realized that he wasn’t home. He was with Brandy, of course, which left Lacey with a queasy feeling in her gut.

The phone rang until the answering machine picked up.

Paul’s voice said, “You know what to do.”

Lacey shook her head. It would be her turn to record the message in another week.

“Hi, Paul. It’s Ilsa. We met yesterday. I thought of something. It might be connected to their deaths. Or . . . murders. Give me a call when you get a chance. My number is . . .”

Lacey raced around the house for a pen. She found one just in time. She stared at the scrap of paper with Ilsa’s number on it and tried to connect all the dots that had formed in the last few days. Paul’s suspicious behavior was reaching epic proportions. Secret meetings with the Babalatos, buddying up with Sook, and now a mysterious woman named Ilsa calling him. Was Paul investigating Hart’s murder and not telling her about it? Lacey didn’t wait around to confront Paul herself. She called Ilsa right back.

“Hello?”

“Ilsa?”

“Yes.”

“This is Lacey Hansen. I’m Paul’s sister.”

“Oh, hello.”

“Paul’s gone for the day. He asked me to call you. Is there any chance we could meet in person? I really need to talk to you.”

“I guess so. Where?”

“Diner in Emery work for you?” Lacey asked.

Two hours later, Ilsa and Lacey were sitting in a back booth with a basket of fries and two chocolate shakes in front of them.

Lacey treaded carefully, since she had no idea what Paul and Ilsa had discussed.

“How did my brother find you, by the way?”

“He got in touch with someone from WINO.”

Hearing the name again sent a shiver through Lacey. It also threw her off her game. She thought she was meeting Ilsa to discuss the Hart and Terry murders. How was WINO, her parent’s timeshare, connected to that? Lacey sucked down half her shake to buy some time.

“You must be thirsty.”

“Haven’t had one of these in a while,” Lacey replied. “So, Paul was kind of busy yesterday. He got in a fight with his stripper girlfriend—don’t get me started—and didn’t fill me in on what you discussed. Do you mind giving me the brushstrokes?”

“As you know, while investigating your parents’ death, he discovered that the week they were at the cabin, my parents were supposed to be there. They swapped for some reason. He wondered if there was a connection and came to speak to me. I told him that my parents had died in a car accident two months later. Some old guy was with him. He has a funny name.”

“Sook?”

“Yeah, that was it. Sook said that maybe someone set out to kill my parents, and your parents just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I always thought the car crash was an accident, but now I’m not so sure. It’s quite a coincidence. . . . You okay?”

Lacey’s eyes were watering. She clasped her hands under the table so Ilsa couldn’t see her shaking.

“I drank that too fast. I don’t feel so good.”

“Have some fries. They’ll warm you up. Maybe a cup of coffee?”

“Sorry,” Lacey said. “It still gets to me.”

“Me, too,” Ilsa replied.

Lacey took a few deep breaths and it sank in that Paul had been looking into their parents’ death, not Hart’s or Terry’s.

“So,” Lacey said, still shaping her vague thoughts, “if our parents were both, in fact, murdered by the same person, that takes some conviction. Do you remember anything about that time? Were your folks having trouble with anyone?”

“They had just filed a lawsuit. After I saw Paul the other day, I remembered that. I couldn’t recall the details, but then I went hunting through their old files and I found it. It seems unlikely that it’s connected, but I thought I should mention it.”

Ilsa pulled an aged manila folder from her bag.

“My folks found an attorney. He drafted a complaint, but as far as I can tell it was never filed with the court. I don’t know why. When they died, no one thought to follow up on the case.”

Lacey opened the file and read the caption page:
Malvina and Melton Sundstrom v. Herman Holland, M.D.

A cursory look at the complaint confirmed Lacey’s suspicion: It was a malpractice case.

“What happened?” Lacey asked.

“My mom had a spinal abscess that Holland diagnosed as a lumbar strain. He loaded her up on painkillers, but then a week later she got a really high fever and started stumbling around. My dad took her to the emergency room. She was diagnosed at the hospital. If they had waited another day or two, she could have been paralyzed. Still, she ended up with nerve damage.”

“This lawyer who drafted the complaint. You know anything about him?”

“No. He was just a small-time ambulance chaser. From what I gathered, my father did most of the investigating, ’cause we were hard up on cash. I think he and Holland were trying to work something out on their own.”

“Doc Holland and your father spoke after he consulted an attorney?” Lacey asked, knowing that any lawyer worth his salt would have discouraged such activity.

“I think so,” Ilsa replied. “I remember driving to Holland’s office one time while my mom was still in the hospital. I sat in the waiting room while he and my dad talked.”

“Where was the lawyer?”

“He wasn’t there.”

Lacey searched through the file, page after page. She found a photocopy of a medical license under the name of Herman Holland and then looked at the doctor’s date of birth: 1921. That would mean Doc Holland was pushing ninety. Despite his haggard appearance, the Doc Holland Lacey knew was no more than seventy.

“Your dad must have figured it out,” Lacey mumbled.

“Figured what out?”

“Doc Holland wasn’t a real doctor. In fact, he probably wasn’t even a Herman Holland, as far as I can tell.”

“He’s a phony? He’s been treating patients since I was a girl.”

“And he was willing to do whatever it took to maintain his front.”

“What are you saying?” Ilsa asked.

“I think he killed your parents to keep them quiet. My folks just got caught in the crossfire.”

“But my father was trying to settle with him,” Ilsa replied.

“I think that was your dad’s only mistake. He must have decided not to file the attorney’s complaint when he found out Holland wasn’t really a doctor. An attorney would have had to file a report with the AMA. Your dad probably thought Holland would offer a better settlement if he kept quiet.”

“Still. Was it worth killing over? Why didn’t Holland just move?”

“It would have torn down everything he’d built up. If he wanted to practice medicine somewhere else, he would have had to create a whole new persona, including references. He also would have had to co-opt another medical license somehow. It must have seemed easier to just make the problem go away.”
³⁴

“We have to turn him in,” Ilsa said.

“We have to find him first. He’s not here anymore. Doc Egan took over his practice last week.”

“So how did he con an entire town for twenty years?”

“He didn’t con everyone,” Lacey replied.

After Lacey’s meeting with Ilsa, she drove straight to Tulac to get to the bottom of another equally mysterious matter. She rang the bell.

“Who’s there?” Brandy shouted from the other side of the door.

“Lacey.”

“You alone?”

“I’m alone.”

Brandy opened the door and invited Lacey inside. She was wearing a pink bathrobe and the smell of bleach was in the air, which made sense since a strip of it was covering her upper lip. A shower cap covered her head, beneath which, Lacey could only assume, chemicals were performing their magic.

“Please excuse my appearance,” Brandy said. “I swear if it weren’t for bleach and silicone, I’d look like a twelve-year-old boy.”

Lacey refrained from comment.

“I take it Paul told you,” Brandy said.

“Uh . . . right,” Lacey replied.

“I don’t know why Hart made me keep it a secret.”

“That seems obvious to me,” Lacey said.

“Why? Was he ashamed of me?”

“Where I come from, a man doesn’t tell his fiancée that he’s dating a stripper on the side. That’s just common sense. Of course, not dating the stripper in the first place is even more common sense.”

“Dating?” Brandy said, raising a well-plucked eyebrow.

“Whatever you want to call it,” Lacey replied.

“Good lord, you’re just a blind pickle in a jar of information.”
³⁵

“Which Brandy am I talking to now? Dim-bulb-stripper or genius-too-smart-for-MIT?”

“Which one do you want to talk to?”

“The one that’s going to tell me the truth. How long were you and Hart . . .
seeing
each other?”

“Do you and Paul even talk anymore?” Brandy asked.

“Not so much.”

“Hart was my half brother, not my
boyfriend
. Yuck.”

“What?”

“We have the same father.”

“No.”

“I even have DNA documentation to prove we were related.”

“Huh,” was Lacey’s response. She supposed it was good news, but then realized that it was another case of the stars lining up to make Brandy Chester her sister-in-law, one way or another. The thought of it sent a wave of nausea through her.

“Is that all, Lacey? Because this bleach is starting to burn.”

“No. One more thing,” Lacey replied. “What business do you have with Big Marv? I saw him slip you some money outside of We Care Gardens.”

Brandy sighed and said, “Excuse me.” She walked back to the bathroom and washed off her mustache bleach. She returned to the living room with her upper lip shaded an irritated pink. Lacey desperately wanted to take a photo for Paul, but refrained.

“Paul told me about his meeting with Jay. Those brothers have been after Shady Acres for years, which means it’s worth something. There’s something special in that land.”

“Like what?” Lacey asked.

“It could be a number of things. For starters, there are these rare earth elements with high-tech applications, like magnets, batteries, and bombs. Dozens of them with names you probably haven’t heard of, like yttrium, tantalum, and niobium. They haven’t been mined in the U.S. since 1959, but there could be a resurgence. Hell, that land could even have uranium. There hasn’t been a boom since the fifties, but the value is coming back. Or it could be as simple as oil or gold. This was Gold Rush territory, after all. It’s not like they found it all.”

“So why did you tell Big Marv?”

“So he’d bid against his brother and drive up the price. Don’t you want out of this town, Lacey?”

“Until these murders started, it was all I ever thought about.”

“Between Hart’s insurance settlement and what you could get for that land, you could set up house in a new city, sock some money in longterm, tax-free investments, get a boob job, and still have money to spare,” Brandy said.

“So you’re looking out for me now?”

“No. I’m looking out for Paul. But the money gets split fifty-fifty.” Brandy looked at her watch. “Anything else? My hair is about to fry.”

“That’s all for now.”

Brandy walked Lacey to the door. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Don’t tell Paul.”

“About Big Marv?”

“
No
,” Brandy replied, rolling her eyes. “About the bleach.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Lacey replied.

Paul’s car was parked in the driveway when Lacey returned home. She found him in the basement sweeping up the last debris from the hermie plants.

“Where are they?” Lacey asked.

“Darryl helped me take them out to Tulac. We had a burn day.
³⁶
Then I checked on a few grow sites and harvested what I could.”

“Where’s Sook hiding?”

“Betty said she’d take him for a few days. Then Deena, then maybe Darryl, then maybe back to us for a few days. We’re hoping Yolanda cools off and lets him back in. We just got to give her some time. Maybe when the money turns up—”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Brandy?” Lacey asked.

“Tell you what?”

“That she’s Hart’s sister.”

“Half sister.”

“Still.”

“I would have gotten around to it eventually.”

“When?” Lacey pressed.

“We haven’t been in the same place at the same time.”

“They have these things now called telephones. It’s news, Paul. I deserved to know.”

“Communication isn’t our strong suit these days,” Paul replied.

“Was it ever?” Lacey asked.

Paul just shrugged.

On cue, the telephone rang. In unison both siblings said, “I’ll get it.” But Lacey beat him up the stairs and found the phone on the fireplace mantle.

“Hello?”

“This must be Miss Hansen,” said an eerily familiar male voice.

“Maybe. Who is this?”

“Harry Lakes, Esk.”

“Right. Terry’s cousin.”

“May he rest in peace,” said Harry.

“Funny how your names rhyme,” Lacey said, not actually thinking it was funny. “Terry Jakes. Harry Lakes. What are the odds of that?”

“I’m the older one. Terry was rhymed after me.”

“Good to know,” Lacey replied.

“Your brother around?” Lakes asked.

Lacey passed the phone to Paul.

“This is Paul.”

“Harry Lakes, Esk, at your service.”

“What can I do for you, Harry?”

“It’s what I can do for you. I’ve been looking through some of my cousin’s papers and there’s something here that you need to see. What are you doing right now?”