Dead Jitterbug Read online

  “Not just a letter, Lew, we found a column marked up differently from all the others….” He set the page on the desk in front of Lew with one beside it for comparison. “And there’s this letter.” He handed it over, then sat back to watch her face as she studied first the marked-up column, then the letter.

  “Kitsy wrote the columns on her mother’s behalf, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So she appeared to be taking quite a beating, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, indeed. Spoken or written, words hurt.”

  “And this letter—I have got to meet with that housekeeper as soon as possible. If anyone knows who was coming and going, who might have dropped this off—it has to be her. I’m driving out to Kitsy’s to question her right after we see Lillie.”

  “You haven’t forgotten Erin is picking you up at six to canvass an area this evening, Lew.”

  “Oh, damn. I can’t do that tonight. Well, maybe. I’ll see how the meeting goes with Lillie—if it’s short….

  As they walked down the hall toward the parking lot, Lew said, “Jeez Louise. What a day—I’m working way too hard. No time to fish, no time to fool around….” She poked him with her elbow. “Do I really want to be sheriff and have so much more to handle?”

  “Eh, you’ll have a larger staff, Lew. That will make a difference. This is unusual, you never have this much going on. And not only do I think you would love that job. I know people who want you to have it.”

  The moment he said it, he knew she was right. If Lew Ferris were elected sheriff, they would have very little time together. Good-bye fishing, good-bye….

  twenty-one

  The great fish eat the small.

  —Alexander Barclay

  Lillie Wright’s office was in her home, a small bungalow four blocks from the courthouse and one of the few stucco houses in Loon Lake. The mottled green-and-cream stucco was covered with ivy, which also hung heavy over the wide stairs leading up to the front door.

  Lew and Osborne let themselves through the gate in the picket fence surrounding the house. “Very Oriental, isn’t it?” asked Lew, admiring the grasses and shrubs lining both sides of the sidewalk leading up to the house.

  “Japanese. When she was younger, Lillie would travel to Japan every fall,” said Osborne. “She’s been working on this garden for years and told me she has planted every inch herself.” They walked up the steps and onto the porch. They paused, able to see through the screen door into the front hall. Voices could be heard from inside. One a soft murmur, the other strident. No question which was Lillie’s.

  “You cannot go back there,” she said. “You’re putting your life in danger, girl.”

  “Oh, no, it’s not that bad. I’m sure it’s not.” Osborne knew he’d heard that voice before, but he couldn’t place it.

  “Okay, then tell me this—what are you paying me for?” asked Lillie. Lew rang the doorbell.

  “Chief Ferris?” Lillie called from inside.

  “Yes, with Dr. Osborne. Here for our three-thirty. Want us to wait outside?”

  “No, come in here. I have someone who needs help.”

  Osborne opened the door for Lew, and they stepped into the foyer. A door to the right was open, and Lillie sat on a futon sofa at the far end of the room. She motioned them in. Sitting in a wooden chair to her right was a face familiar to Osborne: Molly O’Brien.

  “Chief Ferris, I want you to meet my client Molly McBride.”

  “O’Brien,” said Molly standing up to shake Lew’s hand. “I’m married, so it’s O’Brien.”

  “Not for long, if I can help it,” said Lillie, not moving from where she was sitting.

  “McBride,” said Lew. “The same as—”

  “Yes,” said Lillie, “the family that was murdered twenty-seven years ago. Molly was the only survivor.”

  “I don’t remember it at all,” said Molly. Osborne could see she’d been crying.

  “Of course you don’t—you were only two and a half years old,” said Lillie. “Sit down, you two, please. Molly’s run into a problem that is more serious than she knows.”

  “How’s that?” asked Lew.

  “Umm,” said Molly, taking a deep breath. “Well, I’m married to Jerry O’Brien and … umm … earlier today I opened a door in his house where I’m living. It’s a door to a room that he keeps locked. Whenever he goes somewhere, I try the knob to see if it’s open, but it’s locked. Until this morning. I guess he forgot to lock it. And when I went inside, I found another bedroom. And in the closet and the drawers, I found women’s clothing.”

  “That’s strange,” said Osborne. “You think maybe he has a girlfriend, or all that belonged to someone else he was seeing before you? Molly, you haven’t been married very long, right?”

  “Just about a month. The clothing … well, it’s all like … a very large size.”

  “It belongs to Jerry,” said Lillie. “No question.”

  “So you’re thinking your new husband has some psychological problems,” said Lew. “That’s a matter for a mental-health professional, Molly. Cross-dressing is not a crime.”

  “Murder is,” said Lillie.

  Osborne and Lew stared at her.

  “Jerry O’Brien murdered Molly’s parents and her brother and the family dog twenty-seven years ago. Molly was almost three years old, just a toddler, and the only one left alive. That little child was in the house for two days with the victims.”

  “I know that case,” said Lew. “But I thought the killer was a teenager off the reservation. Wasn’t there proof that he did it?”

  “The boy was my client. I felt the so-called evidence had been planted, his so-called confession was beaten out of him, and I knew that boy would never get out of jail. I was right. Within ten days of his arrest, he committed suicide. Or so they said—I doubt that, too.”

  “This goes back awhile, Lillie. Who was the chief of police at the time?” said Lew.

  “Bob Wenzel. Mean as they come and always had it in for the Native American kids, pinned every assault-and-battery case he had on the boy. Cleaned off his desk. By the way,” said Lillie to Osborne and Lew, “Molly knew none of this until half an hour ago.”

  “I—I don’t know what to say,” said Lew.

  “Lillie’s right about Wenzel,” said Osborne. “The man was evil. But, Jeez Louise, Lillian, Jerry O’Brien has been publisher of the Loon Lake Daily News for years. If I remember right, he was Pat McBride’s boss.”

  “Yes, he was. And he found the bodies. How convenient.”

  “I just can’t believe you’re right,” said Molly. “He was so nice until …”

  “Could we start at the beginning?” asked Lew. “I’m lost. How did Molly even end up here today?”

  “I—”

  “She—”

  Molly and Lillie started talking at the same time.

  “Let me go first, Molly,” said Lillie. “I think I know more of the history than you do. Is that okay?” Molly nodded. “After the tragedy, Molly was sent to live with her mother’s sister. That family asked me to handle the estate, and we tried to sell the family home. But, given the circumstances, that was futile. Too many rumors that it was haunted and so forth.

  “Molly’s aunt and I decided to close it up and keep the house and land in trust for her to inherit on her thirtieth birthday. It’s a nice little house on Lake Yellow Dog—worth a lot more today than it was then.”

  “So I came up here a couple months ago to see it and that’s when I met Jerry—”

  “Which she never told me, or this wouldn’t be happening,” said Lillie. The fierceness in the old woman’s face was terrifying even to Osborne. “I still don’t understand how you could possibly end up in bed with that man.”

  “That’s the thing,” said Molly. “I never have. He told me at first that he was recovering from prostate surgery—”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” said Lillie. “Let me rephrase my question. What possessed a lovely
young woman like yourself to even entertain being with a man like Jerry O’Brien? The sight of him makes my skin crawl.”

  “Now, hold on, Lillie,” said Lew. “That’s not fair. You have an emotional reaction to the man. In reality, he’s not a bad-looking fellow.”

  “Here’s the deal,” said Molly. “I was working in television in Chicago as a news producer, a very stressful job. I was depressed, I put on weight. And I was engaged to be married to a wonderful guy. We were living together. Then he dumped me. All this right before my birthday.

  “I came up here heartbroken. Mr. O’Brien—Jerry—was sweet. You know, he took me out to dinner, loved listening to me talk. We talked about the news business a lot. Before we got married, he promised to buy the station over in Rhinelander and make me news director. He just seemed so … so … comfortable. And me, I was stupid, I thought why not?—when he asked me to marry him. It felt so good to be loved, even though we barely touched.

  “Sounds strange, I know. I didn’t say anything to anyone—not even my aunt, because it just seemed so nice. I didn’t want any criticism that he was older than me or anything like that. So we got married a month after we met.

  “And that’s when things changed. The minute I had the ring on my finger, he became a different person.”

  “In what way?” asked Lew.

  “He stopped talking to me. At first, I thought he was having a hard time adjusting to me being in his house. But then he got strange. He would go out almost every night and not tell me where he was going. I would catch him just staring at me with this angry look. Then last night, I went down in the basement to get something out of one of my boxes. He turned the light out at the top of the stairs, so I was in total darkness.

  “He said things to me in the dark that were scary. Told me I was a bitch like my mother, that I was fat and ugly just like her—weird stuff. He kept me locked down there for over an hour. When he finally let me out, he laughed in this hideous way. I was so scared, I locked myself in my bedroom for the rest of the night. Then I called Lillie this morning.”

  “You can see why she cannot go back to that house,” said Lillie. “She stays here with me until her house is ready.”

  “Oh,” said Osborne, “you mean you’re not selling that property?”

  “I don’t want to,” said Molly. “I love it here in Loon Lake. Ever since Jerry got so weird, I’ve been thinking I could get a divorce and live there. So I’ve got people clearing the yard, which is terribly overgrown, and I’m going to have the interior painted, the floors done….” Then Molly smiled for the first time, the smile that had enchanted Ray, and said, “I hope the house is haunted. I would love those ghosts.”

  “Lillie, I’m not sure what you want me to do,” said Lew. “Reopen the case? You’ve got to give me a better reason than your feelings about Jerry O’Brien, you know.”

  “May I review the files and think this over?” asked Lillie.

  “I would like to see the files,” said Molly. “I would like to know more about what happened to my parents and my brother.”

  “Pecore lost or destroyed any evidence we might have had—that’s a given,” said Lillie. “That man is a miserable excuse for a coroner.”

  “Couldn’t agree with you more,” said Lew. “But while he’s disorganized as hell, he never throws anything out. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s not something somewhere. Let me poke around in his back room.”

  Molly stood up and walked towards the door. “Where are you going now?” asked Lillie.

  “Back to get my stuff.”

  “Not without me you’re not. You’re not going there alone.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Tell you what,” said Lew, getting to her feet. “I have a couple cell phones in the front office that the state has us testing. Why don’t I let you use one, Molly. That way you can call if you have any problems.”

  “I have my own cell phone.”

  “The ones we have are different. Hold on, and I’ll show you what I mean,” said Lew as she left the room. She was back in less than a minute with a small box that she handed to Molly. “Be sure to read the manual carefully,” she said. “This cell phone has a GPS locator on it—we can monitor where you are at any time using some new software in our computers. Also, it has a walkie-talkie feature, so all you need to do is press a button, and you’ll reach me directly.”

  “Cool,” said Molly. “That make you feel better, Lillie?”

  The old lawyer nodded. She watched as Molly left the room with Lew.

  “You think I’m a crazy old woman, don’t you?” asked Lillie with a humorless cackle.

  “I’ve known you too long not to trust your instincts,” said Osborne. “It’s a good thing, you’re getting Molly in here with you.”

  “And an emergency divorce. I’ll have her out of that man’s grip in thirty days.”

  twenty-two

  A rising fish. Sunset and scenery are at once forgotten. We must get that beggar!

  —George Aston

  “Hope was branded by her childhood,” said Lillie, her words running like tires on a gravel road. Shifting her weight on the sofa, she crossed her legs and reached one arm across the back. She was ready to talk. One thing Osborne knew from her office visits: Lillie loved to talk.

  Sitting across from her, he could not imagine what she had looked like in her youth, though he knew there had been an ex-husband some fifty years ago. Hard to believe. Lillie Wright was not the least bit feminine. Not in her appearance, certainly not her voice, which boomed and bellowed as if trained for the pulpit.

  She was wearing a boxy, green plaid, flannel shirt, worn khakis, and beat-up moccasins. Her thick gray hair was cropped close to her head. Old and rugged, yes—but vibrant. She moved with grace, she held your eyes as she spoke. He couldn’t help but wonder if Lew, who had that same tough charisma, would look this good in her old age. Be nice if he were around to see.

  While he knew Lillie to be friendly, even warm, she always had an edge. Osborne suspected she could maneuver a boat trailer, rototill a garden, and shoot a .357 Magnum as easily as any man—even in her eighties. Right now she was relaxed but all business as she answered Lew’s questions about her client.

  “Hope was cursed,” said Lillie, the light in her eyes fierce. “Cursed because she was the only child of two very wealthy and self-centered people who taught her to believe you could buy everything. Including a child.

  “They treated that little girl as if she had been purchased—always leaving her in the care of a nanny, a governess, a housekeeper—then boarding school, summer camp, or summer at the estate with the governess. Too busy with their travels and their social life to be bothered. When they were around, and if Hope was with them—it was as if she were part of the décor. Always beautifully dressed, never a hair out of place.

  “But the saddest little eyes. I used to feel so sorry for her, I would take her to the old root beer stand…. Remember that place, Doc? Buy her a frosty root beer float … oh, she loved that!”

  Lillie pointed a finger at Lew. “Now you, Chief Ferris. I see you laugh, I see you get upset with some of those razzbonyas you got working for you. I was watching you just last week over at Ralph’s Sporting Goods picking out a new fly rod. The look on your face,” she laughed her throaty laugh, “I had the urge to invite myself along.

  “But Hope—you never knew what she had on her mind. In all the years I’d known that woman, seldom was she spontaneous. Always calculating, never letting her guard down. Her face was perfect all right—a perfect mask. At least in public.”

  “Are you saying that before the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, she was having problems?” asked Lew.

  “Oh, yes. In spite of her money and her fame, Hope did not have an easy life. She disparaged her talent, for one thing. More than once she told me she felt that her father had bought her success: he owned the newspapers, and he made them run her column. What she refused to hear was that while that may have
been true in the beginning, you don’t last as long as she did in so many papers worldwide if you aren’t damned good.

  “On the other hand, she used her money to buy friends, to buy that idiot husband, to buy a beautiful lifestyle. But,” said Lillie, shaking her cheeks as she spoke, “there was one thing she could not buy … she could not escape tragedy.”

  “Her parents died when their private plane went down in Lake Superior,” said Osborne.

  “Yes. Hope was in her mid-thirties when that happened. She was devastated. Two months later she lost that dear sweet little boy. She never got over a terrible sense of guilt about that awful, awful day.”

  “Kitsy told us her parents blamed her for her brother’s death,” said Lew.

  “Really?” asked Lillie. “Hope never said any such thing to me. So far as I could see, she blamed herself. After Brian’s death, she changed. She had bouts of manic depression and started drinking, taking pills. She was deeply unhappy in her marriage, and I urged her to divorce Ed. But she refused. She let him talk her into the whole public image thing—I’m sure she could have worked her way around that. “Over the years I watched her turn into a public Hope and a private Hope. And on a bad day, let me tell you, the private Hope could be a hard woman to be around.”

  “That surprises me,” said Lew. “I only knew her through the columns. But she seemed so wise, so understanding. Her sense of humor was priceless—”

  “I never said Hope wasn’t brilliant and witty, she was. But, like I said, she never gave herself enough credit. In a way, that was the secret to her success. Readers loved her because she could empathize, because she understood pain.

  “But where she was an expert on telling others how to care for the people they love, she was not capable of that herself. I will bet you she never once said, ‘I love you,’ to that daughter of hers. What she could do in public, she couldn’t do within her own family. She was an emotional cripple.

  “I’m telling you this because I don’t know who killed her. But this may lead you somewhere. Hope had great difficulty loving herself. Did she deliberately put herself in danger? She has before, you know.”