Wolf Hollow Read online

  WOLF HOLLOW

  A Lew Ferris Mystery

  VICTORIA HOUSTON

  For Mike

  Tell me the landscape in which you live and I will tell you who you are.

  —Ortega y Gassett, Spanish philosopher

  Acknowledgments

  A warm thank-you to everyone who has helped make Wolf Hollow read well and look good. This includes Ben LeRoy, my good friend and editor, who got the ball rolling; Sara Henry with her excellent editing; and Nicole Lecht, who designed the stunning cover. But none of this could have happened without meticulous guidance from Melissa Rechter, assistance from Madeline Rathle, and the efforts of everyone on the Crooked Lane team—production and marketing—who have helped make Wolf Hollow possible.

  You make me look good. Thank you!

  Chapter One

  It was a sunny May afternoon in Loon Lake, Wisconsin, and middle-school kids from Curran School were crowding into Sweo’s Gas & Groceries for after-school treats. Down in the DVD aisle three boys and a girl lurked, eyes on the entrance to the convenience store. The tallest of the seventh-graders checked his watch and whispered, “Three thirty, guys. Get ready.…”

  Two minutes later the door opened and a man in his twenties, dressed in crisply ironed khaki slacks and a light-blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, walked in. After a quick glance around the buzzing shop, he headed straight for the DVD aisle. Spotting the dark-haired girl, he smiled and held out his phone, matching the Instagram photo he’d received the day before from the young girl looking at him. As he moved toward her, she raised her right hand. Two boys emerged from where they had been hiding at the end of the aisle. The third boy ran for the door.

  “Stop, right there, Mister. This is a citizens’ arrest,” said the boy named Larry.

  The man, confusion on his face, hesitated, then turned and ran out the door. Jumping into his car, he didn’t notice the boy standing behind the black Range Rover, his phone at the ready to shoot a photo of the car’s license plate.

  * * *

  Over in the Loon Lake police department, Chief Lewellyn Ferris studied the bumper sticker that had been laid across her desk. In bright-blue letters against a white background outlined in red it read Lew for Sheriff. The word “for” was also highlighted in red. As soft breezes blew through her office’s tall, open windows, Lew mulled over the message, thinking less about the bumper sticker than about how being elected sheriff of the county could change her life. Did she really want to go there?

  Before she could take the leap to nod her approval to the campaign manager seated in front of her, the phone on her desk rang.

  “Chief,” said Marlaine on Dispatch, “we got an emergency call from Bud Tillman, the manager at Sweo’s. Some kids just ambushed a guy they insist is a sexual predator. Bud says you know one of the kids—Doc Osborne’s granddaughter, Mason. Want me to send Officer Adamczak?”

  Lew looked up from her phone. Mason’s mother was standing in front of her: Erin Amundson, her campaign manager.

  “Thanks, Marlaine, but I’ll handle it,” said Lew, rising to her feet. “Did Bud say if the kids are still there?”

  “Yes, he won’t let them leave. The guy they tried to stop drove off though.”

  “Tell Bud I’m on my way.”

  “Meeting over?” asked Erin, watching Lew.

  “Yes and no,” said Lew. “You better come with me. You may have a new client—your daughter.”

  Chapter Two

  The four kids sat squeezed together on a bench in the store manager’s office. Standing in front of the manager’s desk, her arms folded, Lew studied the four faces that kept sneaking looks at each other. Nervous grins flashed and disappeared. As she had encouraged Erin not to say anything to her daughter until after Lew had talked with them, Mason’s mom stood quietly in a corner off to one side of the desk.

  Larry Fortran, tallest of the four, sat with his shoulders hunched as one bony knee jiggled with impatience. Lew sensed that he was ready to argue they hadn’t done anything wrong. Next to him was short, round-faced Denny Wayne, whose piercing black eyes reminded Lew of an enterprising chipmunk. The minute his mother walked in, his expression changed from wise guy to stricken. So stricken that if he’d been fifty years older she would have been worried he was on the verge of a heart attack. No doubt he was panicked over what was going to happen when he got home.

  John Mayer sat beside Mason, pretending to be calm. Lew guessed him to be the mastermind behind their caper. She knew his father, a real-estate appraiser more than once suspected of taking bribes to inflate property values—and a man known to consider himself the smartest guy in the room. Maybe he is, thought Lew. He hasn’t been caught yet. John took after his mother, who had discovered her error early in her marriage and divorced the “real-estate expert.” John was a too-bright, serious kid.

  And then there was Mason, tall for her age and slender, with the high cheekbones and dusky complexion of her Metis grandfather, whose great-grandmother was an Ojibwa from Quebec married to a French-Canadian fur trader. Lew was surprised every time she saw Mason alongside her mother: Erin had a porcelain complexion and wore her honey-blonde hair in a long braid.

  Contemplating the fidgeting four young people, Lew was well aware that she was facing a complex situation, the immediate issue being that Mason’s mother was managing her campaign for county sheriff. And then there was Mason’s grandfather, who played more than a modest role in Lew’s life.

  * * *

  After retiring from his full-time dental practice, Dr. Paul—“Doc”—Osborne had pursued a long-time goal to become an odontologist, a forensic dental expert. Since he was the only forensic dental expert in the region, both the Loon Lake police and the Wausau crime lab relied on his expertise for identifying dead and decomposing bodies.

  Doc Osborne was also a student of Lew’s—in the trout stream. They had connected three years earlier when he signed up for fly-casting lessons only to discover that the male (he assumed) instructor named “Lou” was in fact “Lew”— Lewellyn Ferris, the Loon Lake chief of police, an expert fly fisherman who enjoyed teaching people how to cast a fly rod and other basics of fly fishing on the side.

  That first meeting had led from a teacher–student relationship to a friendship, a very close friendship. Or as Doc, a widower, liked to describe it, “she keeps refusing to marry me.” Then he grins.

  * * *

  Lew cast an inner sigh. Yes, she was looking at a complex situation. With a shrug, she decided not to worry about it. No law was being broken by letting four preteens know they were lucky to have avoided what might have been a dangerous confrontation. With that decision, she came up with a plan.

  She walked over to where Erin was standing. Lew shared her idea and Erin responded with enthusiasm. “This is needed,” she said, “I’m happy to find the right person and get this under way ASAP.” Erin herself was “the right person” to find an authority on the legal issues involved. A lawyer who specialized in wills and probate, she was married to Loon Lake’s district attorney. She also strove to parent three challenging children.

  “Thank you,” said Lew with a mild sense of relief. She walked back to the front of the desk. “All right,” she said, “which of you wants to tell me exactly what happened here this afternoon?”

  Three heads turned to John.

  “We were making a citizens’ arrest,” said John, his voice cracking with preadolescent stress.

  “And why would that be?” she asked the foursome.

  John checked the faces of his friends before answering, “Chief Ferris, that man we tried to stop—he’s a sexual predator. He saw Mason’s picture online and texted that he wants to date her. She told him she’s only twelve, but he said he was okay with that. Chief Ferris
,” the boy’s voice rose, cracking, “he’s twenty-four years old. Isn’t that criminal?”

  “We looked it up,” volunteered Larry, “that violates age of consent laws. And—and—” Larry’s voice shook with emotion, “he tried to bribe her to run away with him. Tell the chief, Mason. Tell her what he tried to do.”

  The kids were sitting up straight now, tense. “He said he’d buy me an iPhone if I went to SummerFest with him,” said Mason.

  “A-a-and …” Larry stuttered as he interrupted, “that would be an overnight trip. Right? All the way to Milwaukee!” Heads nodded, bodies squirmed, and Denny fell off the bench.

  “Take it easy, guys,” said Lew, raising both hands to calm them down. “Yes, I hear what you’re saying. I understand. What did you say to that, Mason?”

  “Well,” said Mason, “I didn’t really say anything. I texted him that we could talk about it. That’s why he said he wanted to meet me here today. We’d talk about it.”

  “But that’s not all he said,” John pushed his way back into the conversation. “He wanted to show you his bed, right?”

  “His bed?” Lew asked, stunned.

  “His bed?” Erin stepped forward from the back of the room, her face pale with alarm.

  “Yes,” said John, looking toward Mason for confirmation. “He said he could make up a bed in the back of his big SUV so they could drive all night and get there in time to see Taylor Swift.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Erin. “Chief—”

  Lew raised her hand again, this time to quiet the frantic mother.

  “This is all I need to know right now, kids,” she said. “I’ll take it from here. Oh wait, one more thing. How did he happen to find you, Mason?”

  “My picture was on the TV news a couple weeks ago ’cause I caught that big northern ice fishing with Grandpa. Remember? It was the biggest one caught all winter. So the guy started texting me after that.…”

  “Mason told all of us about him, and that’s when we all thought maybe we should trap him before he hurts any one,” said John, a hint of pride in his voice.

  “I see,” said Lew. “All right, you four. No more citizens’ arrest attempts, understand? If you see or know of something wrong happening, you call the Loon Lake police. Understood? We are trained to handle situations like this. You’re not, and you could get hurt. Now I want you and your parents in my office at five thirty this afternoon to discuss this further. Are we clear?”

  “I have tennis practice,” said Denny.

  “You had tennis practice,” said Lew. “Be there with your folks.”

  The four exchanged anxious looks.

  “All right, you can leave now.” Lew watched four twelve-year-olds move faster than they probably had in a year. When they were gone, she turned to Erin.

  “That was a close call,” said Lew. “Are you okay?”

  “Not sure,” said Erin. “I just … it’s so hard to protect kids these days. Your idea to get a professional in to talk to these kids—all the middle-schoolers—is excellent. Who knows who the next target … ” A tear slid down her cheek but she wiped it away. “Is there anything more terrifying for a parent?”

  “We’re lucky these are pretty smart kids,” said Lew. “I don’t excuse what they did, but at least Mason wasn’t …” She didn’t finish her sentence. “Erin,” she said, “I will see that that man never sets foot in Loon Lake again. There are laws against what he did.”

  “I know that.” Erin sighed, “still …” She shrugged as she walked around the desk, a grim look on her face. She paused at the door leading out of the manager’s office.

  “Chief, you never said if that bumper sticker is okay. I think it’s well done, easy to read from a distance. We need to order it right away if that’s okay with you.” Lew could hear her trying to perk up her spirits.

  “Fine with me,” said Lew though she still wondered if she was making the right decision—on running for office, that is.

  * * *

  Stopping to thank Bud, the manager, for how he’d handled the situation with the kids, she asked, “Any idea who that fellow was?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s Noah McDonough, son of Grace McDonough. You know who she is—the one who refuses to let the county change the name of Toad Lake even though we’ve got sixty-seven property owners, including me, who have petitioned to change it to White Pine Lake. We’ve even offered to call it McDonough Lake for God’s sake, but that old—woman,” he caught himself before using an expletive, “won’t budge.”

  “I did hear something about that,” said Lew, remembering that a colleague on the county board had mentioned the local dispute. “But hasn’t it been Toad Lake since like the eighteen hundreds? Why change it now?”

  Bud snorted in disgust. “Who wants to stay at a resort on lovely Toad Lake? Hold a wedding reception on bee-u-ti-ful Toad Lake? But, hey, Grace owns eighty percent of the land around the lake, and she won’t budge. I guess when you’re worth millions you get to call the shots. But why on earth wouldn’t she want a change? It’s a lovely lake.”

  “C’mon, Bud,” said Lew managing a grin. “Toads aren’t all bad. They eat mosquitoes, don’t they?”

  Chapter Three

  While she waited to receive the warrant she needed before confronting the individual identified by the store manager, Lew stopped by her office to get a copy of the county plat book. A quick study showed the McDonough Trust property to be less than half an hour from where Lew had been parked in front of Sweo’s market. It also showed that the trust owned not only the largest percentage of shoreline bordering Toad Lake but significant shoreline to the east along the Pelican River, a prized waterway for walleye, musky, bass—and daredevil kayakers.

  Lew was impressed. Grace McDonough was sitting on the kind of land that had made descendants of the timber barons in the 1880s very wealthy people.

  * * *

  The entrance to the McDonough residence was marked by two crumbling stone pillars over which, sculpted in wrought iron, was the name McDonough. An elegant entrance, though the paved road beyond it—like the pillars—needed work.

  “Haven’t seen one of those in a while,” thought Lew as she drove by an old white frame house with broken windows and a sagging front porch. The abandoned house, likely considered a “mansion” in its day, surprised her, as most people inheriting classic wood-frame structures from the early 1900s tended to restore them, often having them declared “historic” and taking care to be sure any restoration was true to the era.

  Down the road, past an old barn and around a curve, was the answer to why the old place was abandoned: a red-cedar contemporary jutted out over a small inlet of what had to be Toad Lake. As the house was windowed from the ground up to its flat metal roof, Lew speculated that the owner must be a summer resident with an architect from the Deep South, both of whom were ignorant of life in a northern Wisconsin winter.

  She pulled into one of five parking spaces to the left of the house. The parking area fronted a garage large enough to hold at least four vehicles. A black Range Rover was parked there, its license plate matching the number that Larry Fortran had handed her.

  A short walkway from the garage ended in a ramp that ran up to a deck on the front of the main building. Lew walked across the deck to a screen door. A heavy oak door just inside it stood open. Hearing a mix of male and female voices inside but unable to make out what they were saying, Lew reached for the carved loon that passed for a doorbell and waited. Up close she noticed that the red-cedar exterior could use a good staining.

  A figure appeared on the other side of the screen door, a pudgy woman wearing a loose white shirt over tan capris, her streaked blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked surprised to see someone in a police uniform. “Yeah? What?” Her tone was defensive. “I paid the property tax yesterday. It’s taken care of, okay?” She moved to close the interior door.

  Lew stuck her foot out to hold the door open. “Mrs. McDonough? I’m not the county clerk. I
’m Chief Lewellyn Ferris of the Loon Lake Police Department.”

  “Ms. McDonough,” said the woman, interrupting her. “There is no Mister. Why?”

  Ignoring her belligerence, Lew said, “May I come in, please? I’m looking for Noah McDonough. I believe that’s his car parked outside. May I speak with him, please?”

  As her tone made it clear this wasn’t a request but an order, confusion spread across the woman’s face.

  “You mean my son?”

  “If he’s Noah McDonough,” said Lew, “yes, I’m looking for that individual. Is he here?”

  “Noah!” The woman kept her eyes on Lew as she bellowed in a voice sure to travel across Toad Lake and back.

  “Noah, what the hell is this about?”

  As she spoke a young man no taller than his mother but much slimmer came around the corner. He had short brown hair brushed straight up on his head so it stood in points. Lew recognized it as a style worn by the young musicians who played at local music events across the Northwoods. He was holding a sandwich in one hand.

  “Noah McDonough, you’re under arrest for violating Wisconsin Age of Consent Law and intent to kidnap or otherwise harm a minor.” Lew proceeded to read him his rights. “Please hand over your smartphone.”

  “Tell me that again?” asked Grace McDonough.

  Lew gave a short description of her son’s texting, the iPhone offer, and the potential use of the Range Rover for a trip south with an underage girl. Then repeated her request: “Hand over your smartphone and any other cell or smartphones belonging to you.”

  “An iPhone? You were going to buy her an iPhone? Where the hell did you get the money?” The woman turned on her son. “Told you this morning no more Amazon orders.”

  She was so unconcerned over the seriousness of her son’s attempting to entice an underage child that Lew wondered if this had happened before. And how many times? If so, why wasn’t Noah McDonough a registered sex offender?