Victoria Houston - Loon Lake 14 - Dead Lil' Hustler (21 page)

“Oh for chrissake come back in the goddamn morning.” Nancy moved to slam the front door but Lew stuck out one foot and the door bounced back.

“Here, Mrs. Jarvison, please read this so you know—” Before Lew could finish her sentence Nancy grabbed the warrant from her, blinked at the page, and shoved it back at her. “Go right ahead.”

It was obvious to Osborne she had no idea where Lew was headed. Nor did she seem concerned when Lew walked straight down the front hall and through the doorway to the kitchen. Still clutching her robe, Nancy weaved her way down the hall behind Osborne who was following Lew. Osborne began to suspect she wasn’t as drunk as she seemed: Her eyes were watchful.

Lew walked through the kitchen and turned left to go down the hallway toward the linen closet. Halfway down the hall, Nancy grabbed Osborne by the arm.

“Stop,” said Nancy. “Why do you want the utility room? Nothing down there—that’s the laundry. I mean all that’s there is my goddamn washer and dryer.”

Lew didn’t answer. She was standing in front of the doors lining the left side of the wall and leaning over to open the large middle drawer when Nancy pushed Osborne out of the way.

“Stop!” Head down, Nancy ran at Lew.

Head butt or tackle, Osborne didn’t wait to find out. Before she reached Lew, he grabbed Nancy by the waist and yanked her to her knees. Todd appeared behind them. The young officer pushed past Osborne to kneel on Nancy’s back as he forced her arms back and slipped handcuffs onto her wrists.

Nancy lay quiet as Lew pulled open the drawer. In the drawer were the neatly folded duvet covers, one on top of the other, just as Cynthia had described. Lew pulled the drawer out farther until she could see the slight bulge in the back. Reaching under the covers, she felt the outline of something long, flat, and hard. Stepping over Nancy, who remained face down on the floor, Lew walked back into the kitchen and set the wooden case on the kitchen table.

She reached for the Nitrile gloves that she had slipped into her pocket earlier and pulled them on. She opened the case. A .357 Smith & Wesson with a wood grip lay on the velvet cloth lining the box. Only two of the six rounds it had held remained.

She looked up at Osborne and said, “I wonder how Nancy looks in orange.”

“You know, Doc, if Nancy Jarvison had not insisted on having her sheets ironed, she might have gotten away with murder,” said Lew, leaning back against the captain’s chair on Ray’s pontoon. Legs braced on the railing with her ankles crossed, she closed her eyes and let the morning sun play across her face. It was a perfect July morning—late morning that is.

“Is the ballistics report in from Bruce yet?” asked Osborne.

He was on his knees searching through his tackle box for the sinkers and hooks he wanted. He had been disappointed earlier when he stopped by two different bait shops hoping to buy nightcrawlers only to find they were sold out. The first shop, his favorite and the one he hoped might do him a favor, was apologetic: “Doc, we’ve had a run on those and our supplier hasn’t been by yet.”

He had ended up buying a half-pint of worms instead.

“Yep. The report was in when I stopped by my office on my way out here. Took a couple days for the Wausau boys to hear back from their firearm and toolmark examiner. But Bruce said that using a comparison microscope, the examiner was able to prove that the bullets Bruce dug out of the wood paneling on the boat as well as the two found in Bud’s body during the autopsy came from the same firearm. There is no question that the rifling in the barrel, which is unique to Nancy Jarvison’s .357 Smith & Wesson, matches the impressions on the bullets.

“Nancy’s arrogance didn’t help either,” said Lew. “She never even took the trouble to wipe her prints off the gun. Hers are the only ones on it.”

“So if Cynthia hadn’t alerted us to that box in the linen drawer the FBI and the DEA would have assumed he was a victim of Miguel’s drug cartel cronies?” asked Osborne.

“Made sense. To me, to all of us. And that conclusion made everyone’s job easier so it was tempting. Of course, Nancy is convinced she’ll get away with this. She’s hired one of the top criminal defense attorney teams in Wisconsin.”

“I suppose the real question,” said Osborne looking up from his tackle box, “is can she bully a jury the way she’s bullied her way through life?”

“That, dear heart,
is
the question,” said Lew with a slight smile, her eyes still closed. “She’s got the money to pay the lawyers. That life insurance check arrived right on schedule so she’s got twenty million in the bank—or what’s left after she pays off all Bud’s debts.”

“Yes and one other interesting note is this—remember how Cynthia thought that she may have heard fireworks that night and then she was under the impression that Nancy had called in to complain to the sheriff’s department? Well, I checked yesterday and there is no record of her calling in a complaint that night. For what that’s worth.

• • •

“Hey, Doc… do you have the cooler with sodas down there?”

The voice was Ray’s, hollering down from the picnic table where he and Cody were attempting to organize Ray’s fishing gear. At least Ray was trying to organize things. Cody, eyes barely visible under his “magic fish hat” was so excited that when he wasn’t running in circles around Ray and the table, he was jumping up and down, elbows pumping.

“Cody… buddy,” warned Ray, his tone gruff but friendly. “You have to settle down and help me carry these rods… please?”

Listening, Osborne couldn’t help but think that Ray’s parents, long deceased, would relish seeing their son put through the rigors he had wreaked on them. What goes around comes around.

“Yes, we have the cooler with sodas and sandwiches here on the boat,” Osborne shouted back. He turned to Lew. “Can you believe that one week ago we weren’t sure if that little guy would make it?”

Indeed, more information had come out in the press in recent days as there had been outbreaks of spinal meningitis on the east and west coasts with some cases resulting in loss of hearing, brain damage, and amputations. The more news Osborne saw, the more grateful he was.

“He certainly has an appetite,” said Lew. “I could not believe what he ate for breakfast. Ray is an excellent cook but even so—eleven sausages, two eggs, and five pancakes! Don’t let the kid fall out of the boat, Doc. He’ll sink.”

Twenty minutes later, as the pontoon slowed for anchoring on the edge of Ray’s secret spot for big muskies, Osborne reached into his tackle box for the Styrofoam cup of worms and held it open for Cody to take one. The boy’s face fell. “Baby worms, Grandpa? I thought we were going to use nightcrawlers.”

“They aren’t babies,” said Osborne. “These are grown-up worms and they’re all the bait shop had today.”

“Hold on,” Ray interrupted. “I’ve got nightcrawlers.”

“You do? Where did you get ’em?” asked Osborne. “I called around to every bait shop in the county—couldn’t find a single crawler.”

“Ah ha,” said Ray. “If you and Chief Ferris didn’t retire so early…” His wink was so broad that Lew punched him in the shoulder. “I…” said Ray with a triumphant wave of his index finger “went out… with my flashlight… at midnight… and… voilà!” He reached down under the pontoon’s steering wheel for a paper sack from which he pulled a large Styrofoam container. He uncapped it to expose a wriggling mass of big, fat nightcrawlers packed in dirt.

With a loud squeal, Cody bounced up and down, rocking the pontoon so severely that all three adults shouted in unison: “Settle down!” Cody giggled and did his best to sit still on one of the boat cushions.

“All right, Cody… watch me do this now,” said Ray. “Then you can try. First, I hook the worm through the nose… push the barb out the bottom like this… and rebury the hook dead center in the nightcrawler—see? Try not to have the hook point exposed… when you feel a bite… you want to make sure you strike hard enough to move the hook into the fish’s mouth.”

“Let me do it,” said Cody, jumping to his feet. “Please?”

“Sure, little man, your turn,” said Ray, handing Cody his spinning rod with a bare hook and a sinker tied to the end of the fishing line.

After pushing back the stuffed fish hat on his head so he could see better, the little boy’s face was dead serious as he knelt to work with the fishhook and the nightcrawler. When he had finished, Ray examined the result.

Cody held his breath until he heard Ray say, “Good job.”

Osborne, who had been watching over his grandson’s shoulder, said, “Cody, you have excellent small motor control. You work so well with your fingers—maybe you’ll grow up to be a dentist.”

“Oh no, Grandpa, I want to be just like Uncle Ray.”

If ever a kid looked blissful as he cast his spinning rod with its big, fat nightcrawler it was Cody. He never saw the horror on his grandfather’s face.