Dead Renegade Read online

  Books in the Loon Lake mystery series

  Dead Renegade

  Dead Hot Shot

  Dead Madonna

  Dead Boogie

  Dead Jitterbug

  Dead Hot Mama

  Dead Frenzy

  Dead Water

  Dead Creek

  Dead Angler

  Dead Renegade

  victoria houston

  For that man in the boat: Mike

  Those to whom evil is done,

  Do evil in return.

  ____W. H. AUDEN

  CHAPTER 1

  Osborne paused, surprised to see a fan of tail feathers sticking out from one end of an old rug that had been rolled up and crammed into a dank corner of the storeroom. Not that it wasn’t a welcome sight—a brief respite from the frustrations of the morning. If he checked that out, he could feel satisfied that he had indeed searched every inch of the space assigned to him.

  Anxious to get a closer look at the feathers, he squeezed sideways between two beat-up desks festooned with enough rusted metal strips to cause him to consider the timing of his last tetanus shot. Lockjaw was the least of his worries, however. He was not going to get himself and the ladies safely out of here unless he could find some way to smooth over what had escalated into a touchy situation between two people, each accusing the other of lying, and, wouldn’t you know, one of them a lawyer. A lawyer who happened to be his own daughter.

  Avoiding the issue was not the answer and he knew it. He just wished it hadn’t come to this: minutes ticking away as they neared the end of what now appeared to have been a fruitless search. What if neither he, nor Erin, nor her client, were able to find what they came for? What does he say then?

  Does he flat out accuse Bart Nystrom of attempting to rob the elderly widow? Whether or not that is the case, Bart’s response would not be pleasant. Could involve accusations of slander, trespassing, ruining a reputation, indulging a crazy old lady, etc. And all sure to be expressed in profane language. Heck of a start to a sunny Thursday in late June. On the other hand, he could offer Bart an easy out.

  Not that he deserved it. Osborne wasn’t the only Loon Lake resident well aware that Bart, who had inherited the family business, was also heir to endearing (or is it enduring?) Nystrom traditions. Traditions such as selling reproductions of Scandinavian furniture as original antiques, exaggerating the size and weight of fish he caught, rolling back the odometer before selling his car—and taking advantage of little old ladies.

  This, in addition to Osborne’s personal experience with Bart’s parents who had taken over a year to pay the family dental bill—and even then only after he had been forced to hire a collection agency to badger them. No one had been more relieved than Osborne when the elder Mrs. Nystrom had called to tell him he was fired as their family dentist, harrumphing that they would take their business to “a much better dentist—that nice, young Roger Metternich.” Roger didn’t get paid either.

  But family tradition aside, there was no proof that Bart was attempting to swindle Catherine Higgins. So a better approach might be to suggest that an honest mistake may have been made: Bart’s recently deceased father, Ernie, must have neglected to inform his son that Ernie had promised to sell Dr. Higgins’ oak instrument cabinet on consignment. Simple as that.

  But he would have to launch that option with hand signals in hopes that the women—Dr. Higgins’ widow, Catherine, and Osborne’s daughter, Erin—would keep quiet even though he knew they would strongly disagree. Given that the value of antique oak cabinets had skyrocketed with the debut of Antiques Roadshow, both were convinced Bart had hidden the furniture thinking that eighty-six-year-old Catherine would forget about it, which she certainly had not.

  “I remember the day my husband brought it here in our old station wagon,” Catherine had said, “and I have never received any money from your shop so it can’t have been sold. Now you have already pushed me out of here once and called me a lunatic but I’m back, and I’m back with my lawyer here and her father, Dr. Paul Osborne, who was one of my husband’s friends and a dentist—so he knows exactly what that cabinet looks like!”

  “You should listen to Mrs. Higgins,” Erin had said, “or I could slap a lien on your store until the matter is resolved.”

  Osborne had said nothing, well aware that his presence as a tall male, a Loon Lake professional, was enough.

  And so it was that the three of them, by refusing to move from the steps of the Nystrom Antiques Emporium, had forced Bart to surrender—though not with grace.

  All he did was yank open the door to the basement as he said: “If you’re so damn sure, go see for yourselves. And you be careful you don’t damage anything down there either.”

  Once on their way down the rickety basement steps, he had slammed the door shut, leaving them in the gloom of the crammed storage area with only a few hanging bulbs to light the way.

  That was two hours ago. So far no sign of the oak cabinet. Yet, in spite of the stumbling over boxes and the scraping of knees and elbows on ancient chiffoniers, Osborne knew the two women would not give up until they had inspected every inch of the place.

  Catherine Higgins was Erin’s first client in her new probate law practice and Erin was anxious to do everything she could to help the elderly woman settle her late husbands estate. The missing furniture was an emotional issue for the widow; her husband had insisted on consigning the cabinet to the antiques store in spite of her objections. He didn’t realize the sentimental value it had for his wife and their adult children.

  Erin had promised to get it back. Having passed the Bar just two months earlier, she might be faulted for lack of experience, but not determination.

  Nor was Catherine herself a pushover. Frail in body, the old woman was quite spry in mind and not willing to back away from a fight. It didn’t help that she had initially approached Bart on her own and had been rudely treated: “Kicked me right out his front door,” she’d said with the fervor of a woman half her age.

  What worried Osborne most at this moment was that if the cabinet didn’t surface soon, both women might dress Bart down—leaving them all in an untenable position.

  He had a brainstorm as he edged closer to the feathers. One that might ease the tension: what if he bought something from the shop? Osborne reached into his shirt pocket for his reading glasses to get a better view of what appeared to be a tail fan from a partridge or a pheasant. If it was in good condition and he offered to buy it—that might appease Bart and improve the décor of his screened-in porch. Everyone complained he didn’t have enough pictures up.

  Osborne nodded, pleased with that idea. And if Erin and Catherine did manage to find the cabinet, then a modest purchase on his part could go a long way towards making the morning a “win-win” for all parties. Funny how a day goes, he thought. The last thing on his mind earlier that morning had been shopping for antiques.

  It was Erin who had caught up with him during his morning coffee klatch with his buddies at McDonald’s. “Please, Dad,” she’d said after pulling him aside to explain Catherine’s dilemma, “you know you can intimidate that Bart Nystrom better than I ever could. And I have got to find a way to search that shop.”

  “Ah, the old ‘fear of the dentist’ trick, is that it?” asked Osborne, flattered that she had confidence in his patient management skills even though he was a good two years into retirement. Or maybe it was that he was a foot taller and had thirty years on the guy?

  “No, Dad, this has nothing to do with dentistry. You’re dating the chief of police. That counts.”

  “Oh,” said Osborne, hesitant to share a concern that had been bothering him all week: the police chief in question, Lewellyn Ferris, was getting ready for her high school reunion, and
she had not invited him to come along.

  “Doc, you know these things are boring as hell for people who weren’t there,” Lew had said. He wanted to disagree but the tone of her voice made it clear her mind was made up. Later, Lew had shared the fact that she was invited to the Friday night fish fry by an old high school boyfriend—a well-to-do homebuilder from outside Madison, apparently a millionaire, who was recently divorced. Osborne didn’t want to tell Erin that as of next Monday he might not be dating the chief of police.

  “Dad, is something wrong? You look so glum,” Erin had said as they drove to pick up Catherine Higgins.

  “Oh, heavens, no,” said Osborne. Erin shot him a quick look. She knew something was up.

  And so Osborne, Erin and Catherine had found themselves in the dust and gloom searching for the instrument cabinet that had graced the dental office of the late Dr. Walter Higgins. Walt had been a favorite of Osborne’s—a skilled practitioner and a man with whom he had spent many enjoyable hours fishing, not to mention carpooling together to attend Wisconsin State Dental Society meetings.

  If doing his best to intimidate Bart into letting Erin and Walt’s widow into the storeroom was one way to memorialize his friend, Osborne was happy to oblige. Maybe playing the heavy would take his mind off Lewellyn, her reunion party to which he was not invited, and the millionaire homebuilder. No such luck.

  Reading glasses perched on his nose, Osborne shouldered his way past a towering pine armoire that was the last antique preventing his getting a good look at the feathers protruding from the rug. As he got closer, he could see the fan was an odd mix of black and grey feathers, some streaked umber. Definitely not from a partridge. Goose? Bald eagle? If the latter, Bart was in trouble: unless you are Native American, it is illegal to possess feathers from a bald eagle.

  On the other hand, this could be the remains of a bird who flew in the wrong window. Wouldn’t surprise Osborne. The musty cavern through which they had been picking their way had already proven to be the final resting place for numerous mice and one desiccated squirrel whose corpse was stained onto the cushions of an old sofa.

  Osborne knelt to get a good look at the fan. He tugged at the edge of the rug, which fell away in his hand. Empty eyes stared up at him with teeth bared. Osborne stared back speechless. Those weren’t feathers—that was hair.

  “Hey, Dad, we found it!” cried Erin from across the room. “The cabinet is here and it’s not too heavy. C’mon. You and I can move it easily.”

  Osborne tried to answer but no words came out as the skull rolled out of the rug and onto the wooden floor.

  CHAPTER 2

  Breath held, Mason arched back, heels digging into the sand along the edge of the pond. She had managed to set the hook and now she resisted the urge to yank on the reel as the fish bent the spinning rod down, down. Waiting for the right moment she tensed, then, fingers strong, she reeled her prize into the shallow water hoping, hoping …

  Darn.

  The last fish she wanted to catch was another big, fat bullhead. Not even her grandpa was willing to struggle with knives and pliers to clean one of those. Darn, darn, and darn! She dropped to her knees to wriggle the hook out of the fish’s mouth.

  All morning she had been hoping to catch a stringer of perch or sunfish or crappie. Now it was almost lunchtime and she’d had no luck. Mason eased the hook out and guided the bullhead back into the pond. Sitting back on her heels, she gave a sigh as she watched the fish swim off to scarf someone else’s worms.

  Not ready to give up, she turned to reach for the cottage cheese container holding her night crawlers. Her eye caught movement in the distance: across the river on the island. Something pale and pink in the sunlight like a giant sausage standing on end. Bouncing, kind of What on earth?

  Mason set her worms down and peered across the road, one hand shielding her eyes from the high morning sun as she strained to get a better look. Standing at the far end of the pond made it hard to see past the bushes along the river.

  The Jaycee Kiddie Fish Pond was a kidney-shaped, manmade water hole situated east of the dirt road that ran along the Wisconsin River. It ended at a railroad trestle that fed boxcars into the paper mill. Every spring the Jaycees stocked the pond with panfish, hoping more youngsters might learn to enjoy the sport that fueled state revenues. But bullheads had crashed the party, so interest was limited. That sunny summer morning, eight-year-old Mason was the only kid fishing. And no adults were allowed.

  Beyond the road was a narrow strip of grass that ended at the river’s edge. The river ran deep with a strong current that swirled around a small island about thirty yards straight across from the road. An outpost of straggly jack pine, clumps of tag alders and flotsam left after the spring floods, the island was uninhabited. The only access was by the train tracks running across the trestle.

  The railway, which was suspended over rapids visible between the ties, had no guardrail. Though Loon Lake teenagers were known to dare one another to cross, no one Mason’s age was brave enough to even consider getting close. The Jaycees had put up a barbed wire fence to close it off, but people or animals had bent it forward—it could be crossed if one were determined.

  Mason took a few steps along the edge of the pond, hoping for a better look at whatever that was out on the island. Fishing here almost every day since school got out, she had seen some of the big boys out there fooling around but nothing that color, and such a weird shape. Again she raised one hand over her brow and squinted into the sun.

  At first it didn’t register. Then her breath caught. Now she saw. And the awful boy saw her. She whirled around, a scream catching in her throat as she scrambled for her things. Grabbing her rod, she threw the worms into the pail with her tackle box and clutching the pail to her chest, she ran. Feet pounding up the road she dared a glance across the river. The boy was gone.

  She ran and ran, unable to keep from sobbing. Along the road up to River Street, then five blocks to cross Wisconsin Avenue and down past the Masonic Temple. When she was three blocks from home, she was so out of breath she had to stop. She looked back: A bike two blocks away and heading towards her. She couldn’t see the rider. No time to make it home.

  The big house on the corner—their garage door was open. She ducked, scuttling along the fence, hoping it would hide her. Inside the garage she crouched behind a garbage can and waited, barely breathing. A clicking noise … then the patter of footsteps. She pressed back hard against the wall of the garage.

  Too late she realized she was hold the spinning rod upright.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Yeah, hey, Mr. Calvertson? You home? Curt—” Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Ron Shradtke shouted up at the deck of the log home. The late June morning had warmed the air so only a screen door separated the outside from the inside of the big house. Ron started up the stairs but Kenny tugged on his shirt, stopping him. “Look at your boots, man, they’re filthy.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Ron, backing down to where his friend stood. The screen door swung open.

  “Calverson—the name is Cal-VER-son for Chrissake—how many times do I have to tell you goombahs?” Curt Calverson walked over to the deck railing, coffee cup in hand, and looked down.

  He was dressed in the crisp khakis and open-necked white button-down shirt of a northwoods businessman prepped for casual Friday. Didn’t matter to Kenny how the guy was dressed—or the fact he was clean-shaven with his hair combed back so soft and smooth. None of that could disguise the small head with its pockmarked face and skin the color of liver: just add a tail and Kenny’d swear the guy was a lizard.

  Annoyance on his face, Curt returned the stares of the two men. “Whaddya want?”

  “Well … we’re here to get paid,” said Ron, glancing back towards Kenny to include him in the request. Kenny had sidled up to stand behind Ron but at an angle, as if looking over his shoulder and ready to run. No matter what Ron said, Kenny Reinka couldn’t help feeling skittish around Calverson. He wor
ried every time he had to deal with him. But then, Kenny was short and wiry while Ron, hell, he had muscle on him. Fact was that without Ron’s strength—and his equipment—they would never have been able to log that back forty for the guy.

  Curt reached into his left shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes, shook one out with one hand, set his coffee mug on the deck railing, and searched his pants pocket for a lighter. “That’s right, Ron, you left me a couple-a voice mails ‘bout this, didn’t you.”

  “Yep, we finished logging that whole section just like you asked. I don’t see them logs piled up back in there so I take it they got delivered and you got paid.”

  “That I did.” Curt pulled on his cigarette and exhaled slowly. He said nothing.

  “Well …”

  “The way I see it you boys were pulling down unemployment that whole time, right?”

  “Yeah … so? What’s that got to do with it?” asked Ron, a tremor of anger in his voice.

  Ron wasn’t just strong, he was big, with shoulders so broad he had to buy flannel shirts that hung to his knees. He was wearing a green and black checked one today along with baggy jeans that slopped over his beat-up work boots. A rough, black beard might hide most of his face but not the eyes, and Kenny knew his friend’s eyes would be burning now. Beard or no beard, anyone could see right away when Ron was mad.

  Kenny resisted the urge to scramble back to the safety of his pickup, hoping to hell things wouldn’t get worse. If they did, he wouldn’t be much help. He was only five-five and weighed less than a hundred and forty. Not built for bar fights.

  “It’s okay, Ron, we can take care of this later,” said Kenny, pulling on Ron’s sleeve for the second time. Ron shrugged him off

  “I said ‘what’s that got to do with it,’ Calvertson.” Kenny was sure Ron deliberately mispronounced the guy’s name. Like that helps. “We logged that back forty of yours and now we’re here to get paid.” Ron set his shoulders and returned Curt’s stare.