Dead Jitterbug (7 page)

“Speaking of cash, Ray,” Kitsy asked, “how much will you take for that hat? I have
got
to have it.”

“Not for sale.”

“A hundred dollars.”

“Nope.” “Five hundred … okay, okay, final offer—
one thousand dollars.”

“She spends that much on dead mice,” said Carla. “I’d take it.”

Ray just grinned. “You can buy my tackle, my boat, my house trailer even—but you cannot buy my hat.”

Kitsy gave him a teasing look. “We’ll see…. Say, Carla,” said Kitsy, bending over to pull a notebook out of her backpack, “before I forget—what’s your office number if I want to get in touch with you on that property situation?”

“Julia’s got it.”

“Julia’s
got your phone number?” asked Kitsy.

“Yes, I asked her for it a while ago—I knew you would want it,” said Julia with a half-smile on her face. As she spoke, Osborne saw Carla dart a look at Barb. No annoyance this time. Relief.

As the pontoon rounded the bend, Ray looked back at Osborne. “Hey, Doc,” he said, pointing at the shoreline, “Someone’s waving at us from your place. Hold on, ladies!” He gunned the engine.

“If it’s Lew, she’s early,” shouted Osborne. Ray bypassed his own dock and headed straight for Osborne’s. It was Lew, but she wasn’t dressed for fishing. She was still in uniform, and she wasn’t smiling.

eleven

I
am
not
a lady fly fisher; I am a fly fisherman.

—Lady Beaverkill (Mrs. Louise Miller)

“Something
wrong?” asked Osborne as Ray cut the engine to let the pontoon drift toward the dock.

Had something happened to Erin, or one of his grandchildren? Had there been a call from Chicago where Mallory was in Northwestern University’s MBA program? In grad school and in AA—at least he hoped she was still in AA. That was one struggle he knew too well. Osborne held his breath.

“I need your boat, Doc,” said Lew, keeping her voice low as he jumped off the pontoon. “Take me at least an hour to catch up with Roger and haul that department inboard of ours out of the garage. Hope you don’t mind.”

Hardly. That was good news. Osborne exhaled.

This was not the first time she had asked to use his boat. With three hundred lakes located within five miles of Loon Lake, it didn’t make sense for the police department to keep their boat moored anywhere except on land. Further complicating water access were the locations of public landings—not always easy to reach, not to mention deep enough to handle the propeller. Getting the police boat in water was not easy and never fast.

“Of course not. Need help?”

“If you’ve got time, I would appreciate it.” Osborne resisted the urge to say, “Are you kidding?” Instead, he segued into an emotional state of heightened awareness tempered with happiness. The sight of her never ceased to hijack his heart—a heart, he admitted only to himself, that was of a sixteen-year-old trapped in the body of a middle-aged man.

Though his crush on the Loon Lake Chief of Police was well into its second year, he had known her longer. During his years as one of only three dentists in their small town, its population recently skyrocketing to 3,412, she made appointments twice a year, along with her young son and daughter, for a checkup and a cleaning.

Her teeth were excellent: small and hard in a jaw square enough to hold four wisdom teeth easily. A near-perfect bite and only two fillings.

Those were difficult years for Lew. A single mother, she worked at the paper mill and paid her dental bill in small monthly increments. But she always paid it off before her next appointment, which was more than he could say of too many of his more well-to-do patients.

But he sold his practice right around the time that Lew Ferris had joined the Loon Lake Police Department. They might never have gotten together if he hadn’t decided to clean his garage one Saturday morning and stumbled onto a fly rod he had hidden away so well it was forgotten.

Years earlier, at the urging of a fellow dentist who had been an expert in the trout stream, he had wanted to try fly-fishing. He’d bought a couple books, even invested in basic equipment. But Mary Lee, a chronic complainer about the time he already spent in the boat pursuing muskie, walleye, and panfish, nixed the idea. The prospect of one more way for him to escape to water infuriated her. And so, bowing to the wifely harangue, he gave up after one try.

Two years after her death, he decided to reorganize the garage the way
he
would like it—and came upon the gear from that aborted attempt. The bamboo rod appeared to be in excellent condition, as did the reel and the trout flies.

He decided to take one lesson in casting before selling the equipment. Just to be sure that selling was the right idea. To his great surprise, the instructor referred to him by Ralph Steadman, who ran Ralph’s Sporting Goods, was a woman. And since their first hours in the trout stream, he had found himself angling for more time with her—in water, on water, near water. Anywhere.

It wasn’t easy. Unlike Mary Lee and her bridge partners, Lewellyn Ferris didn’t need a man to bait her hook or tie on her trout fly, carry her equipment or give her a hand in the current. She was quite capable of doing it all herself. She
wanted
to do it herself.

But the one thing he was pleased to discover that she didn’t have, following her promotion to Chief of the Loon Lake Police Department, was a reliable forensic odontologist. Budget restraints statewide hammered law enforcement staffing. Not even the Wausau Crime Lab, sixty miles away and Loon Lake’s primary resource in the event of a serious crime, had a full-time forensic dentist.

Osborne, who prided himself on eyes sharp enough to spot a muskie twenty feet away in dark water, saw opportunity: Every corpse needs a reliable ID, and no ID is more reliable than teeth. And so it was that he honed his forensic skills—tools to trade for time in the water with a woman who made him feel young again.

Ray’s pontoon lingered at the end of Osborne’s dock, his neighbor waiting to be sure help wasn’t needed. Lew waved him off. “Catch up with you later, Ray,” she said, her tone pleasant but brusque. He got the message and gunned the pontoon into a wide, sweeping arc back towards his place.

“Oh—you’ve got everything ready to go, I see,” said Osborne. A quick glance into his Alumacraft showed the heavy gas tank had been carried down from his garage and hooked up. Even the boat plug was in.

“You’ve been waiting long?” He gave her a hand into the boat before spinning the wheel to lower it from the shore station.

“Less than ten minutes. Long enough to see you weren’t around. If you hadn’t gotten back, I would’ve gone ahead, Doc. Didn’t think you would mind. Had a call on a possible break-in about twenty minutes ago—up on Secret Lake. And you know how long it takes to drive back in there.”

“Has to be the McDonald estate,” said Osborne, yanking the cord on his Mercury 9.9 outboard. The engine purred into action. “The old place or the new one?”

“I didn’t know there was a new one.”

“The owner’s daughter is one of the women on Ray’s pontoon over there,” said Osborne as they sped past Ray’s dock. He had to shout over the engine noise. “Maybe we should swing back? Ask Ray if we can borrow that pontoon—it’s faster.”

Lew looked back to where the women were just getting off the pontoon, each with an armful of gear.

“No, keep going, Doc. That pontoon might be too wide. I know we can get this boat up that channel. Very likely this is a false alarm, and why worry the family.”

“You’re right.”

When they reached the narrow channel, so well hidden behind a peninsula of tamarack that few, besides Loon Lake natives, knew it existed, he lowered the engine speed and hitched the little outboard up two notches, just deep enough to keep them moving forward. The channel was tricky—shallow in spots and studded with deadheads.

“It’ll take us six or seven minutes to reach Secret Lake,” said Osborne. “I haven’t been up here in a few years but Kitsy, the daughter I mentioned, brought her boat down here earlier today, so I’m sure it’s navigable. You think someone may have broken into the big house? That’s gated property, Lew.”

“All I know is the security system went off, and no one answers at the house,” said Lew. “And if there is a problem, I may have to scratch our plans for tonight. So let’s hope not.” She lifted her face to the north. “Feel that wind, Doc. The front is moving in. Doggone! Keep your fingers crossed all we’ve got is a pesky racoon.”

He watched her as she spoke, the fading sunset infusing her tanned, open face with a warm glow. She wore no makeup, and her dark brown curls crowded haphazardly around her face. If Lew had a flaw, it was lack of pretense. She was direct, honest, and blessed with a frank, funny laugh that could burst out when you least expected it. Some men he knew found her a little too tough, a little too bright. He found her fun.

And he loved the curves of her body, to feel her breasts against him. Not a slim woman, Lew was sturdy: muscled and fit. The opposite of his late wife who could never have carried the gas tank for the outboard, much less considered doing so. Lew had more in common with his fishing buddies: she was the first woman he had ever known to be as good a friend as she was a lover.

His daughters had taken to looking at him with a question in their eyes. A question he couldn’t answer. Or maybe it was one he was afraid to ask. Maybe he was afraid to ask because he knew the answer. Maybe he knew that if he asked the question, the answer would be that like the wild trout she loved to catch and release, Lewellyn, too, needed to be free.

twelve

When you visit strange waters go alone…. Play the game out with the stream
…
then all you learn will be your very own.

—R. Sinclair Carr

“One
thing worries me, Doc,” said Lew as Osborne maneuvered the boat through the twisting waterway. “We haven’t had any false alarms from this place—so there could be a problem. Erin said you know the family?”

“Not well. Hope and Ed Kelly, her husband, were summer patients over the years,” said Osborne. “Hope was the senior McDonalds’ only child—her father inherited the land and built the big house. The family made their money in paper pulp years ago. Hope’s daughter, Kitsy, is one of the women who signed up for Ray’s fishing clinic today. She and a friend of hers from Madison—Julia Wendt.”

“Anyone else there I might know?”

“Carla Wolniewicz?”

“Carla Wolniewicz,” said Lew, cocking her head as if she hadn’t heard right. “You’re kidding. There’s a strange one to show up for a fishing clinic. I thought she spent her waking hours at the casino—or in the bars.” Osborne winced at that comment.

“To the contrary,” he said. “Sounds like she runs a successful real estate business. Although she ended the day pretty upset—got news she’s being audited by the IRS.”

“Now that fits the Carla I know,” said Lew. “Couldn’t walk a straight line drunk or sober. I’m sure the IRS has good reason—and if I sound prejudiced, Doc, I am. She was there the night my son was killed. It was her boyfriend at the time who knifed him.”

Lew stared off into the tamarack, now black against the night sky, her face drawn with sadness the way it always was when she remembered that night.

Osborne knew the story: how her son, who took after his father whom Lew divorced right after the boy was born, ran with a rough crowd, ended up in a bar fight, and was killed. He was only fifteen. The kid who knifed him got off with probation, thanks to an uncle who was a hunting buddy of the county judge.

The loss of her son galvanized Lew, prompting her to study law enforcement, complete a college degree, and join the Loon Lake Police Department as their first female patrol officer. Once on the force, she demonstrated a fierce sense of fair play, which may be why four years later she was named chief.

“Yep, I know Carla too well. Her father—she’s Darryl Wolniewicz’s kid, y’know. He’s a sad soul. Heavy drinker. Used to get beat up by his wife before she ran off. Left Carla with him. Doesn’t he help Ray out at the cemetery?”

“Not any longer. That Carla,” Osborne said, shaking his head as he thought back over the afternoon, “she’s one tough cookie. Ever strike you she’s a bully?”

Lew snorted. “That was her mother. Tell you something else about Carla—so happens she was working at the mill credit union a few years back. We heard rumors of some fancy footwork with the bookkeeping over there. No charges were ever filed, and I don’t know that they ever proved anything, but she left under a cloud.”

The channel widened as they were nearing the end. Osborne lowered the outboard back into the water. He revved the engine, letting the boat speed across the modest-sized lake toward the McDonald estate, which anchored the far end and was barely visible in the fading light.

“Hey, Doc, check out that quaint little twenty-thousand-square-foot retreat over to the right,” said Lew. “Must be the daughter’s place.”

Located midway between the mansion and the channel was a log home typical of the ones being built by people from the cities with too much to spend. Lights blazed from all the windows, making it easy to see the house was three stories high and windowed all around, top to bottom. Outdoor lighting illuminated a mammoth fake rock chimney—and three decks.

On one of the decks stood a figure in white busy over an outdoor grill.

“Hired help?” asked Lew.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” said Osborne.

“Jeez Louise,” said Lew, and they exchanged a look that said it all: life in the northwoods is supposed to be about simplicity. Leave the manicured lawn, the household help, the social calendar behind. Some folks just don’t have that talent—or perhaps they can’t bear to be alone.

“Now
that
is downright disappointing.” Lew waggled a finger towards the shoreline where tons of boulders had been dumped and wedged to form a wall the width of the lot: expensive décor for the lakeshore guaranteed to please the eye even as it destroyed natural habitat for fish and wildlife. The very habitat that would have seduced Great-Grandfather McDonald into buying the property in the first place.