Heads You Lose Read Online Free PDF Page B

neither,” she replied.
    It suddenly occurred to Lacey that Darryl’s connection to the dead body might not be so innocent.
    “Well, it’s been really good running into you,” she said abruptly. Then she made a quick exit.
    “Yeah, nice seeing you too,” Darryl replied.
    But Lacey couldn’t hear him. She was already out the door.

NOTES:
     
    Dave,
    In case you think I was trying to throw you a curveball with the Darryl thing. Nah, it just came to me suddenly. But I think I like it. Hope you agree.
    A quick note for your next chapter: Sometimes your vocabulary feels a little high-end for this kind of book. It would be great if I didn’t have to Google as I read.
    Let’s try to keep the momentum going with your chapter. For example, maybe a little more plot development and a little less background. Okay? I just want to keep this thing zipping along for the reader’s sake. Another idea along those lines is to try to end each chapter with a bit of a bang (without overdoing it, of course).
Lisa
     
    Lisa,
    Looking good. That was a nicely handled moment with Darryl at the end.
    I’ll try to throw in a little more action to keep things rolling. Sorry about your Google problem. I can spell things out a bit more. I sometimes forget you were home-schooled. Ha ha.
    Before we get too far along, how about a road trip up north? I think it’d be helpful to get a sense of the real-life places and people. What if we spent a couple days near Shasta soaking up the local culture? Separate rooms, of course.
Dave
     

CHAPTER 4
     
    A little high, Paul went looking for the head, hoping not to find it. But he told himself he could handle it if he did. He was used to coming across various body parts of recently deceased creatures. Their cat, Irving, was an indiscriminate murderer of anything smaller than him: mice, squirrels, slow or overconfident birds. Lacey had once stepped out of bed onto the perfectly intact face of a vole. “Not the head, just the face ,” she kept saying. She had a point. It was almost like Irving was showing off. He was an outdoor cat after that. Maybe that suited him, anyway, given his rugged past. The girl at the animal shelter said Irving had been brought there after one too many run-ins with the area’s most notorious feral cat, Bad Sue. 5
    The job fell to Paul, as usual, because Lacey was at her cover job, which in his book was a waste of time. If they needed a cover, Paul thought, there was nothing wrong with claiming to be caretakers—it was the stated occupation of plenty of Mercer-area residents, many of whom did, in fact, merely take care of a property. But that would have sounded too redneck for Lacey. As Terry Jakes, not exactly upper-crust himself, used to say, “Caretakers are just carnies who got off the ride.”
    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