Dead Hot Mama

by Victoria Houston

  Osborne stopped. Three wolves were feeding. And the one that moved off to the side … that must be the male, the one with the topaz eyes.

  He circled around, anxious not to disturb them. When he had gotten to the far side of the pack and could look back, he swore he saw neon blue. Whether it was cloth or fiberglass, he couldn’t tell—only flashes of color as clouds skidded over the half moon.

  They never could tell who had been driving. Most likely it was Bud who decided to take a shortcut at high speed—doing eighty or more straight across the lake towards the streambed leading up to their cache.

  A three-foot high boulder wrapped in a snowdrift was the fatal surprise. The sled flew into the air. Even after the wolves had taken their share, the pathologist was able to determine that they died instantly: blue helmet of a broken neck, the big guy of a massive subdural hematoma caused by landing forehead first on the ice.

  The lock on Clyde’s door gave easily. And the phone, thanks to Ray’s reluctance to close down the old man’s place, still worked.

  Two EMTs went in on sleds, Osborne riding on the back of one. The shotgun was unfired, the snow light, and Lew was alert. Two of her ribs and her left shoulder were broken. Her collarbone had a nasty bruise, and her left wrist was sprained.

  “Other than that, I’m fine,” she said woozily as he kissed her on the forehead before leaving the hospital.

  Osborne started home, heart bruised from worry, the back of his head aching from his fall. Driving by St. Mary’s Church, he pulled over on impulse, left the engine running, and tried the front doors. One was open.

  No Act of Contrition this time. He knelt, collapsed forward to rest his forehead against the wooden pew, and gave thanks for Lew, for himself, and for topaz eyes.

  thirty-eight

  The last point of all the inward gifts that doth belong to an angler is memory.

  —The Art of Angling

  Mallory shook him awake. “Dad, Chief Ferris is on the phone.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven-thirty.”

  “Lew?” Osborne struggled up on one elbow, phone to his ear.

  “Doc, Dave Theurian is dead.”

  On the way to the hospital, he stopped to pick up a small bouquet of daisies. He selected a small vase in the shape of a frog. Lew wasn’t exactly the flower type but this might work.

  “Don’t you look fully recovered,” he said, walking around the hospital bed. She was sitting up, a sling holding her left arm and shoulder.

  “I would be out of here today,” said Lew, her voice strong, “but they want me to see the physical therapist. Were you able to reach Bruce?”

  “Saw him on my way over here. He’ll stop by with a full report later this morning. Said to tell you he’s still negotiating with Kopitzke, but he thinks he can get two- thirds of his bill picked up by the county.”

  “Terrific. Doc, help yourself to some coffee there. Now tell me everything he said.”

  “I hate to steal his thunder …”

  “Forget it, I can’t wait.”

  “Well, the best news is that even though they haven’t completed a full inventory of the lockers in the Theurians’ wild game room, the forensic team has enough evidence to say with confidence that all four victims died at the hands of Michalski and Hikennen.

  “They ran a postmortem urine screen on the victim from Tomahawk, and the initial results show traces of either valium or flunitrazepam—just like the first two victims. Bruce is willing to put money on the latter. That they’ll confirm by Friday.”

  “So that’s why Arne requested that autopsy report—he didn’t want it, Bud did. He wanted to know if we had an inkling of what really happened to the first two. I’ll bet Bruce is feeling a little foolish, huh,” said Lew, shifting carefully in the bed. “So much for his early take on why those gentlemen lost their legs.”

  “Yeah, but once he realized he was wrong, he kept an open mind—”

  “Which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for how that lab has treated me in the past,” said Lew. “Good for Bruce. Does he agree with our theory?”

  “You betcha. Bud lured the men into the woods with the promise of meeting up with him for a ride to a wild and crazy party with lots of girls. On the drive north, he would give them drinks spiked with roofie. By the time they reached Theurian’s ice house, they were out cold. With Karin’s help, Bud would strip the bodies and suspend them in water through the hole cut in the floor for fishing until they were dead—”

  “Which wouldn’t take much more than half an hour in this weather.”

  “Bruce figures Bud did the harvesting. He’s looking to confirm that by comparing the cutting patterns with the knives found in the basement. He figures they stored the harvested parts until Dave Theurian was away on an overnight business trip. That’s when Bud would run the processing equipment—remember the lab tech saying he knew someone had been fooling with the microprocessor controls?”

  “How far did they get with all this, can Bruce tell?”

  “As of this morning, he’s ninety-nine percent sure they never made their first delivery.”

  “So Dave really wasn’t a part of this, was he?”

  “Apparently not. Gina got into Karin’s computer late yesterday. She found a database of middlemen brokering to the hospitals—probably stolen from that funeral home in Rice Lake. She and Bud were moonlighting. They were convinced they could hand off a few femurs here and there, pick up a nice fee and no questions asked. What with being the coroner and the connection to his uncle’s funeral home, Bud had all the right credentials. I wouldn’t be surprised if those two weren’t planning to steal processed tissue from Theurian Resources as well.”

  “I’ll bet ol’ Bud had plans to ‘flush it out’ to where he could make his full $272,00 on someone someday,” said Lew.

  “Yep,” said Osborne. “My guess is the only reason they didn’t do it this time is they knew they could get a quick turnaround and payment by working Theurian’s client list.”

  “Too bad Bud grew up in Milwaukee, Doc. If he’d been a local boy, he would have dropped those bodies elsewhere. Had they surfaced in the spring—no one would have been the wiser.”

  “He was lazy. He found some open water, shoved them under and figured they would sink.”

  “Take one that’s lazy and not all that bright—and add sheer arrogance,” said Lew. “Sure as hell runs in Karin’s family. That grandmother of hers was as nasty as they come. I was looking through the department records a few months ago. Back in the forties and fifites, when the old lady was alive, there were more drunks rolled and left to die out in the cold. Coincidentally in a neighborhood not far from the Cat House or one of her other joints. For Karin—this was family tradition.”

  “Don’t you wonder what possessed her to choose Bud Michalski of all people?” asked Osborne. “Wouldn’t you think she could find a smarter operator?”

  “Women like Karin know who they can con. She recognized Bud as a pup who would take orders—not to mention abuse. And she knew how to keep him happy: a little sex and commissions off the take from the skimmers. That was easy money until Eileen started to hear complaints.”

  “And confronted Karin?”

  “Or Bud. She probably thought it was Bud and went to Karin to blow the whistle. Poor kid.”

  “Poor Dave—he should have known better.”

  “Maybe,” said Lew. “On the other hand, we’ll never know the extent of the collusion between him and Karin when it comes to his wife’s death.” Lew took a sip of her coffee. “Maybe he deserved to go the way he did.”

  Sheriff Kopitzke had arrived at the Theurian home shortly before Bruce. When no one answered the front door, he went around to the back. Still no answer. He tried the warehouse and found that door open. Dave Theurian was at his desk, asleep. Or so Kopitzke thought until he got closer.

  Like Eileen, Dave Theurian had been surprised by death. A Phillips screwdriver shoved in from behind had pierc
ed his heart. “Bruce doubts he even knew what happened.”

  “Bud?”

  “Oh, no, he’s hoping to prove that was Karin’s work. Gina’s checking phone records later this morning. We won’t be surprised to find Dave calling his ‘Mitten’ after Lauren’s little bombshell—that encounter she witnessed in the ice house.

  “Who knows what was said. Dave Theurian put it all on the line for Karin Hikennen: his family, his business, everything. He may have threatened divorce, he may have threatened to expose the credit card scam, maybe he was in a position to finger her as his wife’s killer. Whatever—a call from him after we were there would have triggered Karin’s response.”

  There was a knock at the door of Lew’s room, and a nurse appeared with a food tray. “Mid-morning snack,” she chirped, as she placed the tray in front of Lew. Osborne reached into his pocket for a small box, which he set on the tray beside the cup of yogurt.

  “Belated Merry Christmas, Lewellyn Ferris. Do you know how long I’ve been carrying this around?”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” said Lew, surprised and pleased.

  “Do you need help unwrapping it?”

  “I can manage.” She worked the ribbon off carefully, then the paper and opened the tiny box. “O-o-h, gosh … a Megan Boyd trout fly.” She raised her eyes to his. “Doc, these are so expensive.”

  “And hard to find. Ralph scouted eBay for weeks. But we got a good one—”

  “Boy, you don’t have to tell me. This is the Atlantic Salmon pattern that’s named after her—the Megan Boyd. Oh, Doc, it’s lovely.” Lew held the delicate blue and black wet fly carefully between two fingers. She brought it closer to the light. “A size 18 treble?”

  “Um—hmm, and that’s blue cock hackle over blue seal fur. Did you know she never charged more than a buck fifty for one of her trout flies?”

  “You paid a lot more than that, I’m sure. She tied flies for the Prince of Wales. I never thought I’d see one of these, much less own one …” She set the trout fly back in its box, then looked at Osborne, a worried expression on her face.

  “I got you the wrong present, didn’t I. When Ralph told me you were asking all kinds of questions about famous trout fly patterns, we both thought you wanted to learn how to tie some.”

  “I was trying to figure out which Megan Boyd I wanted to get you.”

  “So you weren’t planning to tie flies?”

  “Not to worry, Lew, you gave me a wonderful gift.”

  “It was a choice between that vise and a pair of breathable waders. Would you rather have the waders?”

  “Tell you the truth …”

  “I wish you would.”

  And so he did. A new pair of waders beat a thousand Pink Squirrels any day.

  Late that afternoon, Osborne sat down at his kitchen table with his magnifying glass and three Ziploc bags containing wads of chewed gum.

  One he had retrieved from the snowbank the night they found Eileen, and Bruce had since returned it to the evidence room. Osborne hated to admit it, but the guy was as efficient as he was pushy. Another was pulled from the trash and dropped off at the police station by Laura, the Thunder Bay bartender. And the third one he had fished out of the wastebasket in the Theurians’ wild game room on Christmas Eve.

  Bruce might have the advantage when it came to hightech forensic science but some things never change: the uniqueness of bite marks. Osborne hitched his chair forward, eyes and hands eager. He just knew he was about to reel in a big one.

  Satisfaction reigned: The tooth marks were identical. He reached for the phone. “Craig, do you have a minute?”

  Craig Kobernot was alone. “The boys are down on the rink, and Patrice is in town finalizing the arrangements for her sister,” he said after opening the door to let Osborne in. “Someone had to do it. Patrice is the last of the Hikennens.

  “This way to the kitchen, Doc. Can I offer you a beer?”

  Osborne declined the beer but accepted the proffered chair.

  “Does Patrice know about your relationship with Karin?” asked Osborne.

  Craig looked whiter than snow. “That was over last year. How did you find out about that?”

  “I meant the arrangement she made to provide allograft tissue to the hospital through your medical group.”

  “Oh,” said Craig.

  “Sugar-coated sin, that woman,” was Lew’s comment when he shared the details of Craig’s long-running affair with his sister-in-law. “He’s lucky we caught up with her before they had any business transactions—or his career would be over.”

  “It may be,” said Osborne. “I hate to admit it but Bruce was right about Eileen’s severed tongue.”

  Their conversation had ended with Craig insisting he wanted to call a lawyer. That was fine with Osborne. What happened next had to be handled by the chief of the Loon Lake Police Department anyway.

  Craig was sure to deny any knowledge of his lover’s various business activities—until it could be proven otherwise. And the unpleasant message left in his snowbank that night implied he knew more than he should.

  He would, in fact, need two lawyers—another for the divorce. Patrice had long been willing to overlook his philandering for the amenities of being a doctor’s wife. But she drew the line at her own sister.

  thirty-nine

  I fish because I love to; because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful … and, finally not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant—and not nearly so much fun.

  —Robert Traver

  Mallory and Gina decided to drive down to Chicago in tandem—driving separate cars but stopping to have lunch together. They were leaving early Sunday. Nick and Lauren had late afternoon flights returning to school later that same day.

  So Ray scheduled his memorial service for Clyde on Saturday: ten-thirty at his place with brunch to follow. Due to space limitations, the number of guests had to be limited to Clyde’s friend and six of that friend’s friends, not including Ruff and Ready.

  “Time to leave,” said Osborne from the kitchen. Mallory was still in the bedroom, and it was already ten-fifteen. “Mallory?” No answer. He checked his watch, then knocked on the bedroom door. “Ready, hon?” A sound familiar to the father of daughters reached his ear. He opened the door.

  She sat in the chair at the vanity that had belonged to his mother. Elbows propped on the vanity, face in her hands, she was dripping tears onto the doily covering the cherry tabletop.

  Osborne sat down on the bed. He listened for a brief moment, then said, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  For the last two days, he had been aware that something was bothering her. At first, he wondered if it had to do with Ray. But he discounted that when he saw Mallory and Gina getting along like the best of friends during Friday night fish fry at the pub. How that happened, he had no idea. Ray had an uncanny ability to keep all the women who wanted him happy—with him and with each other. Not even Lew could figure that one out.

  He remembered that Mallory had mentioned meeting an attractive young surgeon in her AA group. Was he the source of her distress?

  “Whatever the problem is—you’ve not been drinking, Mallory. I hope you’re giving yourself credit for that.”

  He waited. She pulled two Kleenex from a box and held them tight against her eyes. “It’s all my fault…”

  Osborne heard a light knock at the kitchen door just as she spoke. That would be Lew.

  “What’s all your fault?” He could hear the kitchen door open and close followed by footsteps.

  “Clyde,” she sniffed. “He’s dead because I told my stupid story that night.” She pressed the Kleenex tighter as more tears squeezed through. Lew poked her head around the door and Osborne motioned for her to stay back. “I feel so bad, Dad, I feel … I feel haunted. If that woman hadn’t heard from me that he saw her, from me that he knew her
face. Oh God, it’s all my fault.”

  “No, no, sweetheart … come here now,” he pulled his daughter over to sit beside him, his arm around her shoulder. “You’re not being fair to yourself. For one thing—if you hadn’t told that story, I might have. It’s a good story.

  A funny story. Not your fault at all. Clyde … poor Clyde was doomed the moment he showed up to help those people. Story or no story—once they knew he could identify them—”

  “Excuse me,” said Lew from the doorway. “I couldn’t help overhearing. Mallory, telling that story may have had nothing to do with Clyde’s death. When Bud lured the rider from Tomahawk back to that area upstream, Clyde took a shot at him—just like he did your dad.

  “Now I’m not positive exactly when it happened, but I think they killed that old man because they knew he would find the money and the snowmobiles they were hiding not that far from his place.

  “And, believe you me, they never expected anyone to find his body so soon. They thought they were doing away with an old recluse nobody knew. Which was a good guess up to a point. They never bargained on Ray.”

  “Really, you think that’s the reason?” Mallory wiped at her face. “You don’t know how worthless I’ve been feeling. Just awful.”

  “Worthless,” said Lew. “Get over that, will you please? Aren’t you finishing up your MBA this spring?” Mallory nodded. “With a major in marketing? That’s what your dad told me.” Mallory took a deep breath as she nodded again.

  “The reason I’m asking is because I need a marketing plan if I’m going to run a successful campaign in the fall.”

  “What!” said Mallory and Osborne simultaneously.

  “Kopitzke told me this morning—he’s planning to retire. I want to run for sheriff. Then I don’t have to listen to bullshit from razzbonyas like Arne Steadman. Who, by the way,” said Lew turning to Osborne, “has already reinstalled his wife’s cousin.”