Dead Hot Shot

by Victoria Houston

  “This will only take a moment, Paul. Fred and I are leaving.”

  That was such good news, Osborne decided he could spare a moment to be gracious. “Oh, is the house ready? Isn’t that a nice surprise.” He waited for her to let go but instead she tightened her grip.

  “No, Paul,” she said, “the house isn’t ready but Fred has a problem.”

  “He does?” Osborne turned back towards the den as if he might find Fred’s problem in the piles of tools and materials still scattered around the room. As he turned, he pulled away, forcing Kathleen to drop her hands.

  “He thinks we’re having an affair.”

  “What?!” Osborne was stunned. “That’s awful—how could he possibly think that? Oh, Kathleen—I am so sorry. You want me to talk to him?”

  She shook her head no, eyes half closed, then said, “I have a problem, too … Paul.” Her hesitation, her caress of his name. Osborne waited, disbelief and worry over what might happen next commingling in his gut. “I know you’re attracted to me and. Paul, dear heart, I feel the same for you.”

  Kathleen’s blue eyes, their lashes starched black with mascara, searched his. She took a step towards him. Osborne took two back, thinking hard. The woman was hallucinating. How could he save face for both of them?

  “Paul, when you talk to me, when you look at me—your emotions just pour through your eyes …” She held her hands out, palms open in surrender.

  For one frantic moment, he hoped this was all a joke. “Oh, golly, Kathleen,” he said as he backed into the rack of fly rods, all of which slid sideways and tumbled to the floor, “I am very flattered but I should have told you—I am very, very involved with another woman. Very involved.” He shook his head up and down to emphasize how incredibly involved he was.

  “Oh, her.” Kathleen waved a dismissive hand. “You mean that Lewellyn Ferris? She’s not right for you, Paul. She’s so. so rugged, so northwoods … and … and she doesn’t have a graduate degree. I’m a social historian—you and I have so much in common: we’re professionals. You’re probably attracted to her because maybe she looks like your mother.”

  “What’s wrong with ‘northwoods’? I’m ‘northwoods,’ Kathleen. As far as my mother goes—she died when I was six. I barely remember her. How could Lewellyn Ferris possibly look like my mother?”

  “I just said ‘maybe,’ Paul. But even her name is wrong—Lewellyn? That’s a man’s name. Now, Paul, it’ll take time for us to work this out, I know. But I’m willing to wait, I feel so deeply for you.” The pug face swung back and forth.

  “I’ve asked Lewellyn to marry me,” said Osborne in a blurt of desperation. What he didn’t say was that he had asked in jest and Lew had refused on the grounds that he had yet to set the hook in a twenty-two-inch brown. But the statement did the trick.

  Kathleen stepped back. Her eyes narrowed. Obviously this was his mistake, not hers. “I wish you had told me.”

  “I know, I know, I should have,” said Osborne, eyes sad and head shaking up and down as he did his best to take full responsibility for this horrible error. “But our plans are confidential—not even my daughters know. And I am so sorry if I have misled you.”

  “Well, you did. The way you listened to me with that deep, dark look in your eyes.”

  “You’re an educated, interesting woman, Kathleen. Perhaps at another time in our lives we might have—” He struggled for a kind way to say “no, no and NO.”

  The back door banged shut just then. “Have you told Fred?” whispered Osborne.

  Kathleen shook her head. “I was hoping we would do that together.” She moved sideways to let him pass.

  Osborne, medical bag in hand, ran through the kitchen past Fred, who gave him a quizzical smile as he said, “Paul, did Kathleen tell you we’ve rented a cabin? Heard it advertised on ‘Help Your Neighbor’ and it comes with a heated workshop where I can build my rods—”

  “She did—that’s terrific, Fred.” Osborne was out the back door. “I gotta rush—got an emergency down the road. Leave the dog in the yard—he’s fine. Bye!” The door slammed shut behind Osborne. Never had he been so glad to have somewhere to go.

  Minutes later, driving, he mulled over those painful moments with Kathleen. but Fred was so friendly—hardly the attitude of a man suspecting Osborne of having an affair with his wife. Kathleen must have made that up.

  CHAPTER 7

  Eight feet high and crowned with a brass “R,” a wrought iron gate bordered with stone pillars guarded the entrance to the Reece estate. A security box with a dial pad and blinking lights hung over the drive, a warning to anyone looking to enter—but the gate stood open. So Osborne drove through, twisting along a narrow road that passed a tennis court, a shooting range and a putting green before ending in a circle in front of the Reece mansion.

  The house—high, wide and rustic—had been restored in the style of the grand hunting lodges favored by the lumber barons of the late 1800s. But if the style was late 1800s, the materials were strictly post-2000.

  What appeared to be a slate roof was in fact concrete, which Osborne recognized immediately. Mary Lee had desperately wanted just such a roof as a bragging point for their home. It took months of arguments, pouts and tears before she agreed that concrete was, for them, too costly. Not for the Reece family. As if to emphasize that expense, the edges of the impressive roof gleamed with copper gutters that had seen few winters.

  He couldn’t identify the wood used for the home’s exterior. Whatever it was had been stained dove-grey—a dove-grey not natural to the trees of the north. Nor did the stones in the foundation, unusual in their patterns and colors, resemble any of the

  rock or boulders native to glaciated northern Wisconsin. No doubt imported—at significant cost.

  Though he was in a hurry, Osborne couldn’t help but notice the windows. The vertical lines echoed the height of the pines along the circle drive, glass panels meeting in seamless perpendiculars at each corner with not a post in sight: another architectural detail not offered at a discount.

  Just beyond the house was a six-car garage hosting what appeared to be a convention of Land Rovers, different models but all the same sleek grey to match the house. Seeing no place to park, nor any sign of Lew’s police cruiser, Osborne continued along the drive, which now ran beside a high stone wall. Even though he slowed as he rounded a sharp curve, he nearly rear-ended a parked pick-up truck. A battered blue pick-up with a shiny 14-inch walleye leaping from its hood. The very pick-up that shuddered into his own driveway at least once a day.

  Braking to a stop behind the truck, he spotted what his friend and neighbor would describe as “new and exciting additions” to the rusty bumper hanging cockeyed off the back of his vehicle: “Honk if anything falls off,” read one sticker. “If you can read this, I lost my trailer,” read the next. Any other time Osborne might have chuckled. Not today.

  Loon Lake Police Chief Lewellyn Ferris did not deputize Ray Pradt unless she had good reason to employ a man whose misdemeanor file was thick enough to merit its own drawer. Even as state and federal penalties for smoking dope were easing, Ray was still a guy who could fire up the blood pressure of certain City Council members. That, plus his habit of poaching private water, kept the game warden on his tail as well—and only enhanced his reputation among certain Loon Lake locals who lived down lanes with no fire numbers.

  Eventually the mayor and his cronies would calm down and approve the hiring of the man known to be the best tracker in the region. Keen-eyed, quick and as alert as a deer—the joke over coffee at McDonald’s was always “that Ray Pradt can go into a revolving door behind you and come out ahead.”

  But that wasn’t his only talent. You had only to drive down the street behind the blue pick-up and watch everyone wave at its driver: from the MDs who had practiced with his father to the lawyers who’d gone to school with his sister to the kids whose worms he judged during the annual Loon Lake Worm Race and the nuns he charmed with stringers of fr
esh-caught bluegills. Not least among his pals were the miscreants whom he had entertained with bad jokes while spending random nights in the Loon Lake jail.

  “You want to catch a crumb bum, you gotta think like a crumb bum,” Lew would say when arguing her case to hire the guy. “Ray can do that. I’m not saying he is a crumb bum—but he knows ‘em all. And if he doesn’t know the one we want—he’ll find someone who does. And that, gentlemen, is what we pay for: Ray Pradt flips pancakes for people you and I never even see.”

  And while Ray could try Osborne’s patience with the dumb jokes and stories that went on w-a-a-y too long, the older man endured the antics of his neighbor, thirty years his junior, with respect and affection. After all, Osborne owed him. It was Ray who had watched and waited for the right moment to talk Osborne—so deeply depressed after Mary Lee’s death that his cocktail hours had started at noon—into the meetings behind the door with the coffeepot on its frosted window.

  Lewellyn Ferris’s final argument in favor of hiring Ray was always the same: “That guy’s got the ears of a wolf—he can hear a cloud pass by.” But she was only half right. Osborne knew that the

  driver of the battered blue pick-up with the walleye leaping off its hood could hear beyond the whispers in the sky. Tuned to the desperation than can cloud a heart, he was the person to whom Osborne owed his self-respect, if not his life.

  As Osborne walked quickly past the blue pick-up, a long arm in a rust and green plaid sleeve waved from the window. “Doc, tell Chief I’ll be right there,” said the driver, pointing to the cell phone glued to his right ear.

  “I’d hurry if I were you,” said Osborne, wondering for the umpteenth time how it was that a guy who lived in a house trailer and dug graves when money was tight managed to own the latest in electronic devices: a cell phone that rang with the sound of birds twittering, an iPod stuffed with vintage rock’n’roll—and satellite radio in his bassboat! All that expensive gear even as Ray jury-rigged his plumbing to fertilize the roses planted by Mary Lee—an act that had so infuriated Osborne’s late wife that if she hadn’t died of a severe bronchial infection, apoplexy might have done her in.

  Osborne shook his head. He knew the source of Ray’s electronic surplus: women. The ladies he charmed, bedded and somehow managed to convert to “just friends” loved to shower him with gifts.

  “Now how the hell does he do that?” was a familiar refrain among men who might fancy themselves wealthier and wiser—but were never so lucky.

  Osborne hurried down the drive, now steep and curving on its way to a large boathouse. Beyond the boathouse he could see a wide, dark green deck that narrowed to a dock that jutted out over the water. An ambulance was parked next to the boathouse, and leaning up against it, arms crossed as they chatted with Deputy Todd Martin, the younger of Lew’s two full-time officers, were two EMTs from St. Mary’s Hospital. Osborne gave a silent wave as he rushed by.

  Just beyond the deck and standing on the shoreline to one side of the dock was Lew Ferris, her back to him as he approached. She was engaged in conversation with two people—a tall, slim young woman with very short hair that stood stiffly on her head and a pudgy man of medium height who, in spite of the cold wind blowing off the lake, was wearing tan Bermuda shorts, a navy blue sweatshirt, black socks and sandals.

  A crumpled khaki fishing hat had been crammed onto his head and under the hat was a round face heavy with jowls. Thick-rimmed glasses magnified his eyes, making them appear larger and darker than normal. As he registered the man’s pudginess, the glasses, the shorts and the black socks—Osborne couldn’t help thinking he looked like a nerdy school kid out of a Far Side cartoon.

  The lanky girl standing beside the man, one arm tight across his shoulders and leaning forward as she listened to Lew, appeared to be in her early twenties. She was dressed for the weather in jeans, a black fleece jacket and hiking boots. It was the girl who spotted Osborne approaching and pointed his way.

  Only then, as all three turned towards him and Lew stepped back, did Osborne see the dark figure lying at their feet.

  CHAPTER 8

  Oh, good, it’s you, Doc,” said Lew as Osborne walked up. She glanced down at her watch. “Say, you didn’t happen to see—” “Yes, I did. He’s on his way down,” said Osborne. “Taking a phone call—I told him to hurry.”

  “Thank you. It’ll be dark in three hours and he needs to get started.”

  Osborne did not miss the grim resolve in her voice. Two years of assisting the Loon Lake Police Department on murder investigations had taught him Lew was convinced that “if you don’t find your best evidence within the first 48 hours, you may never find it.” Given that these late November days made for limited hours of good light, Ray better show up fast.

  “Dr. Osborne, this is Andrew Reece, the victim’s husband, and her daughter, Eleanor—”

  “Blue, I go by Blue,” said the girl, stepping forward to grab Osborne’s hand with a grip so strong his knees nearly buckled. She was at least six feet tall, broad-shouldered and, if her handshake was any indication, a very strong young woman.

  “Dr. Osborne,” said her father, shaking Osborne’s hand with a grip as limp as his daughter’s was fierce. “The name is Andy—only the IRS knows me as Andrew,” he gave a weak smile as if embarrassed to be attempting humor but unable to resist, “so, please, call

  me Andy.” His voice was one of those male baritones—fuzzy, deep and so low Osborne could barely hear him.

  “I assume the victim is Mrs. Reece, and her first name is …?” asked Osborne as he knelt and reached into his black bag for a notebook and pen. He stood up, ready to listen.

  “Nolan Marsdon Reece,” said Reece with a quick shove at his horn-rimmed glasses. “I was just telling Chief Ferris I cannot count how many times I warned my wife not to go down near the dock when there was lightning—”

  “Andy thinks she was hit by a rogue lightning strike,” said Lew, maintaining a poker face familiar to Osborne: willing to listen, not likely to believe.

  “You know a guy out fishing on Lake Tomahawk last month was hit. Not a cloud in the sky,” said Reece. “Not a mark on him either until they opened him up—internal organs were …,” the big eyes behind the dark glasses misted and the voice cracked as Reece said, “just. cooked.”

  “Well,” Lew cut him off before he could say more, “no need to get all upset about things until we know exactly what we’re dealing with here.”

  Osborne glanced down at the body lying on the sandy shore. As if wrung by giant hands, the woman’s wet, black clothing was twisted tight along the length of her body, outlining sizable buttocks, a torso of significant diameter and broad shoulders. The legs, in contrast, were long and surprisingly slim: the classic apple shape that Osborne associated with people prone to heart attacks.

  The corpse lay on its side, head turned away so he couldn’t see the face. Stiff breezes had dried the shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, which was fluttering in the wind—the hair as active as the body was still.

  “She was found in the water by Mr. Reece early this morning and he pulled her in to shore. She hasn’t been moved since,” said Lew, explaining the body’s position.

  “You tried CPR?” said Osborne to Reece. “Ah, no. It was pretty clear to me that, ah, it was too late for that.”

  “I helped Dad pull her in,” said Blue, stepping forward. “No question my mom was …” Her voice faltered.

  Dead is a difficult word to use. Osborne knew that. At the hospital the night Mary Lee died, he had placed the call to each of his daughters but had to hand the phone to Ray when it came to delivering the unexpected news. Ray, who had awakened from a sound sleep to answer Osborne’s frantic call for help in the middle of a raging blizzard; who had staggered through knee-high drifts to attach his plow to the pick-up and drive the Osbornes over snow-bound roads to the emergency room. Ray, whom Mary Lee had done her best to drive off his property because his trailer obstructed the views from the north side o
f her new deck, had not hesitated to help save her life. And it was Ray, one arm grasping Osborne’s shoulders, whose gentle, calm voice had been able to pronounce that difficult word.

  “Doc, I have a sketch that indicates where Andy found the victim,” said Lew with a wave of her notebook.

  “Right there,” said Reece, turning to point towards the dock. “She was floating just this side of that shore station with the bassboat—and about four, maybe five feet out from the dock.” He looked at his daughter for confirmation.

  “Yes, that’s where we found her,” said Blue. “Our lake is so down that there’s less than three feet of water there. That’s why I don’t think Mom drowned—so maybe Dad’s right and it was lightning?”

  “You can tell us for sure, Dr. Osborne,” said Reece, “but I heard thunder off in the distance late last night. Lightning can strike

  without rain, you know. Like I said—my wife had a ridiculous habit of always coming down to the dock before she retired, no matter the weather—”

  “Thing is—this is November,” said Lew, interrupting. “We’re more likely to get snow than rain. I don’t recall any thunderstorms predicted for last night and weather is something I pay attention to. Our muskie season ends Saturday. With that plus opening deer season, I anticipate lots of traffic on the roads so I’ve been watching the forecasts.

  “But enough conjecture. We’ll know soon enough. Now, Dr. Osborne, will you please explain to Mr. Reece and his daughter what you will be needing from them.”

  “Certainly,” said Osborne, as anxious as Lew to get the process underway. “First, I am responsible for documenting that a death has occurred—not cause of death. That’s up to the pathologist and that could take some time, depending.” Catching a look of caution from Lew he decided to skip the usual patter on whether or not an autopsy would be required. Given she had made that decision in spite of the cost to her budget, he saw no need to open the issue for discussion. “. on their schedule,” he wound up instead.