Dead Tease (4 page)

Osborne nodded and slipped into the back seat.

Early on, he and Lew had discovered they made a good team when it came to interrogating people. Whether it was gender differences or their varied experiences over the years of life in Loon Lake, each was capable of hearing the same words from the same person in different ways. Comparing notes later, they were often surprised at what the other had heard—or missed—or had a different interpretation of the same answer.

Osborne’s years of listening between the lines to better diagnose patients’ problems offered a counterbalance to Lew’s targeted questions, which, on more than one occasion, had led to an argument. Given the grim circumstances, Osborne was more than a little chagrined to admit he enjoyed these sometimes-heated exchanges. Loved how her eyes flashed when she was challenged.

“Bonnie, this is not to make any assumptions whatsoever but can you tell us who Jennifer has been dating?” Lew asked.

“No one that I know of. Not recently anyway.” Bonnie blew her nose and settled back against the car seat.

“Really?” Surprise flashed across Lew’s face. “How old was she?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Old boyfriends? A partner, maybe? She’s young but had she ever been married and divorced?”

“Jenny dated Bart Martin when she first moved back, but that’s been over for a long time. He married Candy Phelan last
Christmas—but he and Jen have stayed friendly.
Were
friendly.” Tears shimmered again.

“How long has she been living in the condos here?”

“She moved in right when they opened six months ago.” Bonnie took a deep breath and exhaled. “She loved this place … she has the nicest condo unit….”Lew tapped a pen on her notepad, thinking, then said, “Has she been upset with anyone lately? A neighbor? A friend? Anyone she worked with?”

“Umm, not really. Once in a while she talked about work stuff but that was more frustration not anger.”

“Doc?” Lew turned toward Osborne in the back seat.

“Has she mentioned if anyone has been bothering her?” said Osborne. “Anyone ask her out who might have made her feel uncomfortable? Obscene phone calls? E-mails or other intrusive behavior from people?”

Bonnie shook her head. “No … not that I’m aware of. When it comes to dating or people asking her out, we … well, I never asked about her relationships with men. We’ve never been the kind of mother-daughter to share every little thing…. I suppose that’s my fault—I should know more.”

“Heavens, no,” said Lew, “I understand. My daughter and I are the same. We keep our private lives off-limits, but maybe she would have a girl friend who might know?”

“Her closest friend is Kerry Schultz who works at the clinic, too. She’s a surgical nurse. I can get you her home phone number if that would help. I have it at home.”

“Yes, please,” said Lew. “Here’s my card with my cell phone number. Call me with that as soon as you can—or anything else you may think of. Anytime. I don’t mind.”

“What about the patients and staff at the hospital?” said Osborne. “Anyone there with whom she might have had some difficulty?”

“Well, she sure as heck doesn’t care for that goofy surgeon they got working the emergency room,” said Bonnie, her voice rising. “That’s the only person she had any problems with that I’m aware of. But, I think all the gals at the clinic have problems with her.”

“What kind of problems?” Lew gave her a sharp look.

“The usual—she’s bossy, blames the nurses for her mistakes. Brownnoses the bigwigs. The nurses all hate her. You can ask Kerry—she’ll tell you.” Bonnie lowered her voice as if sharing a confidence: “You should see the way she dresses … the cleavage…. Well, Jen had no use for her, I tell you.”

Ten minutes later, after walking Bonnie over to her sister’s car, Osborne joined Lew in the front seat of the cruiser. “Hold on, Doc,” she said, radio mike in her hand, “I’m being patched through to Harold at the crime lab.” She winked and waited.

The head of the Wausau Crime Lab answered right away.

“Wausau Crime Lab, Harold Eckes speaking.”

“Lew Ferris, Harold. How’re you doing?”

“Oh, you. What do you want now?” He sounded as if all Lew did was call and make his life difficult.

“Sorry to bother you so late in the day, Harold,” said Lew, keeping her voice deliberately upbeat, which she knew was guaranteed to drive him nuts. She described what had happened and her efforts to protect the crime scene.

“You got the budget for this?”

“We’ll find the money. We have to, don’t we,” said Lew. “I will have the victim transported down to Wausau first thing in the morning. I was hoping maybe your man, Bruce Peters, might be available?”

“Don’t know. Call him yourself.”

Harold was off the line before Lew could mention she wouldn’t need Bruce’s cell phone number. She grinned at Osborne. “Mission accomplished.”

Osborne patted her on the shoulder. “Good work, Lewellyn. Harold thinks he’s making your life miserable and you got what you wanted.”

“I enjoy torturing the guy,” said Lew. “Doesn’t speak well of me but—”

“If it’s okay with you,” said Osborne as he opened the car door and moved to leave, “I will accompany the ambulance down to the morgue and finish my paperwork there. Too tired for my place tonight?”

“I don’t know. What do you have in the fridge?”

“Leigh, I like how you’ve set up the TV and the bar out here on the deck,” said Jim McNeil as he settled into a wicker armchair and swung his feet up onto a matching ottoman.

“Oh, honey, I thought you would,” said Leigh, sitting down across from him and picking up the afghan she was crocheting. “I thought this way we can relax together. You can watch the news, a little baseball—and enjoy the cool night air while I do my needlework. I get so tired of the air conditioning. Did you have a good day?”

She let her eyes rest on her handsome husband. He had changed into the green golf shorts and white polo shirt with a matching LaCoste crocodile that she had given him for his birthday.

“Who cares how the day went. Right now I got the remote in one hand and a G&T in the other, kiddo. Life is good.” He smiled at her then looked back at the screen.

“I thought you might enjoy this, sweetie,” said Leigh McNeil, hoping he would call her something other than “kiddo” one of these days. How long had it been since he had told her he loved her? Years? As always, she pushed that thought away.

Ice cubes clinking in their drinks, they were watching Channel 12’s evening broadcast when a reporter broke into the sports news: “This just in from the Loon Lake Police. The victim of a late afternoon stabbing at the new Lake Thompson Shores condos has been identified as Jennifer Williams, a twenty-six-year-old Loon Lake resident….”

“Jim, sweetie,” said Leigh, “Jennifer Williams. Doesn’t she work at your clinic?”

Chapter Six

The lake was tranquil, an amethyst basin studded with millions of stars. Osborne, legs extended with his ankles crossed, relaxed on the wooden bench at the end of his dock as he sipped from a glass of iced tea. It seemed the perfect choice for a nightcap to accompany the soft slurps of feeding fish while he waited to hear the grind of Lew’s tires in the driveway.

He smiled as peals of laughter and murmuring voices drifted his way from the far shore. They sounded so close they might have come from the cabin next door. Muted applause from a bonfire glowing at the south end of the lake testified to a late night for young campers. Overhead, bats swooped, threading their way through the branches of the hovering white pine.

Osborne savored the warm air, acknowledged his good fortune, and sipped again. The night was charmed—except for random thoughts of poor Jennifer Williams whom he had left tucked under a cold coverlet in the hospital morgue.

Before leaving the morgue he had arranged for an early morning transport to the Wausau Crime Lab for an autopsy.
Oh, Jennifer
, he thought,
so young, too young. So full of life less than twelve hours ago and now …
Osborne slapped at a mosquito missed by the bats.

A Harry Belafonte tune shrilled from his cell phone, shattering the peace like the shriek of a rabbit losing its head to a great horned owl. He answered.

“Dad? Sorry to call so late. Do you have a minute?”

“Erin—is everyone okay?” He sat straight up on the bench. Osborne dreaded late night phone calls: death, dismemberment in a car crash or a hockey puck in the mouth—good news never arrived late. And hockey pucks were the least of his worries.

“We’re fine, we’re fine, but—” He could hear the tension in his youngest daughter’s voice and held his breath over what she might say next.

“Honey, what is it?”

“Well, Dad, I hate to ask you this but, well, we have a problem with Beth. Mark and I have been planning all summer to take the kids to Chicago tomorrow to visit museums and Beth is refusing to go. She has basketball camp every day this week and insists she can’t play varsity if she misses a day. Could she—gosh, I hate to ask you this—but is there any chance she could stay with you?”

“You mean out here at my place? Sure, why not? Of course, she’ll have to do the cooking—just kidding. I’d love to have her.” He relaxed back on the bench.

“You don’t have to drive her to camp—she can bike in from the lake and …” Erin laid out the details of his eldest granddaughter’s schedule.

“Now, don’t worry,” said Osborne when she was finished. “Beth and I will have a good time together. What the heck—maybe Lew and I’ll take her fishing.”

“Oh, golly, Dad, I love you. I’ll drop her stuff off at your place in the morning and I’ll have the schedule written down. Oh, one more thing, Dad. She’s not allowed to text more than fifteen times a day.”

“What? How do you regulate that?” Osborne was puzzled.

“I’ll show you in the morning. There’s an 800 number where you can check on it. It’s easy.”

Pausing on the stone stairs leading down to Osborne’s dock, Lew let her eyes adjust to the darkness. No lanterns lit the way this evening, which surprised her, but the reflection on the water from the stars overhead made it easy to spot Osborne at the far end of the dock. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, a cell phone held tight to one ear. No wonder he hadn’t heard her drive up.

She watched him talking. Moonlight outlined the sturdy contours of his face: a face that had a way of lightening her heart. He was a very good-looking man, and she liked that he was not aware of that. Or if he was, it was an awareness that had come late in life—late enough that he was not one of those jerks who are so good-looking that they never make the effort to be interesting.

That was not Paul Osborne. Not only did he never cease to intrigue her but he had a knack for making her feel like she was the most fascinating person he knew. And that she did not mind. Nice to feel appreciated. Maybe treasured? Whatever. Just watching him talk on his cell phone eased the tensions of the day.

“Oh, Lew,” said Osborne, clicking his phone off as she strolled onto the dock, “sorry—I didn’t hear you drive up or I would have turned on the lights.” He reached toward a tall plastic glass and a pitcher sitting on a small table beside the bench. “A glass of iced tea sound good?”

“Certainly does,” she said in a determined tone as she slid onto the bench beside him. He laid his arm across her shoulders, and she snuggled into the curve of his long, lean frame. “What a day, Doc. What a sad day.”

“Any new developments since I left for the morgue?”

“Not much to work with. The only person anyone appears to have seen in the vicinity before Jennifer was attacked was an elderly woman walking her dog. Apparently she walks the dog every day near the condos. I’m hoping to question her tomorrow. She may have seen something.

“Oh, and a woman whose unit is next door to Jennifer’s said she thought she saw someone peeking in Jennifer’s windows last Saturday night, but it was late and she didn’t get a good look at the person. Couldn’t say if it was male or female. Problem is the sidewalk runs right along there so it could have been a perfectly innocent individual walking by at a time when Jennifer had her curtains open and they happened to look in. You know, like we all do when we’re night fishing and we go by a place all lit up.

“So, Doc, who was that you were talking to? No one looking for me, I hope.”

“That was Erin—Beth will be staying with me for a few days. She’s refusing to go with the family to Chicago. Basketball camp.”

“Hmm,” said Lew, tipping her head up with a teasing grin on her face. “Really? Basketball camp instead of a trip to the big city? And she’s fourteen, right? Sounds like a boy to me.”

“Erin didn’t say anything about boys.”

“Check with her. I’ve raised a daughter. Fourteen is a challenging age.”

“Lewellyn, is this a good thing or a bad thing we’re talking about here?”

Lew snorted. “It’s a human thing, Doc.” She gave him an affectionate poke with her elbow. “Speaking of humans, if you have the time, I can really use your help tomorrow. I want to talk with everyone who has been working with Jen Williams at the clinic. And as many friends as we can locate—men, women. Maybe she was in a pool league, played softball.

“Meanwhile, I’ve arranged to have Todd and Dani question the residents at the condos and nearby neighbors—except that old lady with the dog. She’s on my list.”

“Dani is so new to the force,” said Osborne. “Are you sure she can handle interrogations like this?”

“She and Todd will work as a team. And there is no one better than Dani on the computer when it comes to background checks. That girl can find where you buy your dog food!

“No, I’m not worried, Doc. When it comes to people—and it may be thanks to her training as a hairdresser—but that girl has excellent intuition. She sure got a read on Pecore right away.” Lew chuckled. “Who knew cosmetology prepared you for police work?”

Lew had met Dani when she was a student of cosmetology at the local tech college and because of her computer skills was drafted to help them with a case involving computers and identity theft. She proved to be a natural when it came to maneuvering the digital universe. Hairdressing aside, her computer skills, her willingness to plug away until she got answers, and her cheery manner had impressed Lew, who persuaded her to switch majors and study law enforcement. She was three months into an internship needed to graduate.