Dead Jitterbug Read online

  As usual, the forecast appeared to be for another country, if not another continent. Sunshine was predicted in spite of the evidence outside the window: legions of surly clouds pressed in from the west, darkening the lake.

  Osborne turned away from the window. This would be one of those northwoods days with rain moderating from heavy to pounding and back to heavy. The kind of day tourists cursed: twelve hours indoors face-to-face with your kids? God help us.

  That made it Osborne’s turn to curse. The families would head for town, swarming Main Street and the Loon Lake Market and letting their little stinkers scamper from the market over to Ralph’s Sporting Goods and back again. Parents would lose patience and back their SUVs into one another in the parking lots: more work for the already stressed Loon Lake Police Department.

  Osborne checked the time. Was seven-fifteen too soon to call someone you don’t know? Hell, if they weren’t up by now, they should be. He punched in the number for Molly’s aunt.

  A woman’s voice answered immediately. “Hello, this is Georgia.”

  “Georgia Balczer? This is Dr. Paul Osborne from Loon Lake, Wisconsin. I’m calling on a matter that concerns your niece, Molly. Have I caught you at a bad time?”

  A sudden intake of breath—“Molly! Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine—but we have a situation here. The head of our police department, Lewellyn Ferris, has asked me to check on a few details from the past.”

  “You’re the police?” He hated the sound of worry crowding into her voice.

  “Personally, I’m part-time. I retired from my dental practice up here several years ago and help out on occasion as a deputized officer—that’s what I’m doing this morning, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not in the least. You caught me as I was walking out the door for work, but take your time. Anything to do with Molly comes first. Tell you the truth, I’ve been worried ever since she told me she was returning to Loon Lake.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You know her family was murdered years ago.”

  “That’s one reason I’m calling.”

  “So much about that crime was unresolved. For me, anyway. I’m not sure Loon Lake is the place for Molly. You know my husband and I raised her.”

  “Yes. And you folks are familiar with the man she married?”

  “Ohhh, yes. Jerry O’Brien. We’re not happy about it either. Such an extreme age difference. Not to mention his connection to … well, to circumstances I’d always hoped Molly could put behind her.”

  “How well do you know Mr. O’Brien?”

  “He was Molly’s dad, Patrick’s, best friend. And he’s the one who found the bodies. Over the years, he’s stayed in touch and has gone out of his way to look after Molly….” She paused, then asked, “May I speak in confidence, Dr. Osborne? What I mean is, can I tell you some things that Molly doesn’t know—and can you promise me this won’t get back to her unless there is a very good reason for it?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Osborne.

  “She doesn’t know that Jerry paid the bills for her college and graduate school. We didn’t ask—he volunteered—on the condition that she never be told.”

  “So the marriage surprised you?”

  “To put it mildly. Dr. Osborne, do you have daughters?”

  “Two.”

  “How would you feel if one married a man thirty years her senior—a man who had played such a role in her life, whether she knew about it or not? And she did this less than three months after being dumped by a young man her own age with whom she had been living with for two years?”

  “I would think she acted on the rebound and made a serious mistake. And you make O’Brien sound like a creep … frankly.”

  The line was silent, then Georgia said, “Well, nothing to do about it now.”

  “Georgia, does the name Lillie Wright ring a bell? The reason I’m asking is she has some strong opinions on Molly’s situation—”

  “Of course I know Lillie. The woman is a godsend. She got us through that terrible time, and she’s been handling Molly’s inheritance. She’s the one who encouraged us not to sell her parents’ house after it had stayed on the market so long that first time around. She told us the value of lakefront property would skyrocket and, boy, was she right. Molly has something now.

  “Whatever Lillie says, pay attention. I still get goose bumps when I think of what she told us back then.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. She knew from the beginning what was going to happen. It was eerie. You see, we got the news midmorning that terrible day and jumped right in our car. Within four hours, my husband and I were there to help with Molly.”

  “How was she when you got there?”

  “Pretty calm. Remember, she was only three years old. As far as I know, she has no memories of that weekend—although we never brought it up either.”

  “This may be a difficult question,” said Osborne. “We understand that Molly was sexually assaulted—”

  “That’s what they said at the time. But we had her examined when we got back here, and he found no indication of that. I’m an oncology nurse, Dr. Osborne. I know what to look for, and I saw no indication that Molly had been hurt. So that was strange. But there were other things that didn’t make sense.”

  “For example?”

  “As you know, Jerry and Patrick worked together. Jerry ran the newspaper and after meeting Patrick at a newspaper convention, hired him to be the managing editor. So when Patrick didn’t show up for work that Monday and no one answered the phone at their house, Jerry drove over there. That’s when he looked through a window, saw my sister’s body, and called the police.

  “Now what I’m going to tell you next is what I was told by a young police officer who was standing outside the house when the bodies were found. He said two officers went in. They found the bodies, and they found Molly alive. Since Jerry was a friend of the family’s, they decided to have him be the person to help with Molly. They asked him to wait outside the house, on the sidewalk leading up to the front porch.

  “What was weird, said the young officer who was standing right beside Jerry, was that when they carried Molly out of the house, they set her down on her feet. She saw Jerry and ran towards him. He went down on one knee, held out his arms, and made an awful face at her.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Twisted his face, the way you do when you want to scare someone.”

  “And Molly’s reaction?”

  “No one noticed. I asked the same question but no one was watching her—they were all waiting to see what was in the house. It was that one young police officer who couldn’t believe what Jerry did.

  “Think about it, Dr. Osborne. Why would you do that to a child who has just been through a traumatic experience? Make a horrible face. I have never figured that out. By the way, that same police officer told me later that from where Jerry had said he was standing to look in the window—you couldn’t see Janet’s body.”

  “No one questioned that? Not the chief of police?”

  “No, only that young man. In fact, he and Lillie Wright were the only two who felt that the police arrested the wrong person when they put that boy in jail.”

  “Do you remember the police officer’s name?”

  “If I did, it wouldn’t help. He was shot and killed six months later. They found his body by his car out at a boat landing somewhere.”

  “Let’s go back to Lillie for a moment,” said Osborne.

  “Yes. We first met with her two days after the bodies were found. We needed someone locally to help us with the legalities of the estate and Molly’s guardianship.

  “That’s when she told us she was convinced it was a gay revenge murder. What she said next, I will never forget. Her exact words were: ‘Some kid from the wrong side of the tracks will be charged, he’ll die in jail before coming to trial, and the cops will clean off their desks.'”

  “'And the cops w
ill clean off their desks'?” Osborne repeated what she said. “I’m not sure what that means.”

  “Lillie said they would pin every outstanding assault-and-battery case on whoever it was. And that is exactly what happened.”

  “How do you think she knew?”

  “When I asked her that, she said she’d seen enough over her years practicing criminal law in Milwaukee and Madison. She also had no use for the man who was the chief of police at the time.”

  “Cynical old bird, isn’t she.”

  “She knows people—too well.”

  “How did you feel when she said it was a gay revenge murder? Did that seem likely to you?”

  Georgia sighed. “The ‘gay’ part did. My sister and I were close. She’d told me that Patrick wanted out of the marriage, and she told me why.”

  Georgia paused, “It was such a hard thing for Janet. You know they had only lived there seven months, so she knew no one, had no friends. She felt so angry, so humiliated. This was long before people understood bisexuality. I think if they were going through this today, she would have had a different attitude.”

  “So her husband was open about being in love with another man?”

  “Yes, quite. He was leaving her to live with his lover.”

  “And did she know who this was?”

  “No. He refused to tell her. Also, something else she told me—she was convinced he was having an affair with a woman, too.”

  “Any idea who that was?” asked Osborne.

  “No. But when the police checked the phone records of calls going to their home that weekend, the last one was from a pay phone near the bowling alley. It was made Saturday night around eleven o’clock. People leaving the bowling alley said they saw a woman in the phone booth that night. Now, I heard from other people at the newspaper where he worked that Patrick seemed to spend quite a bit of time with one young woman reporter in particular. But that’s as much as I know.

  “Dr. Osborne, looking back now I see how Patrick was a very confused soul. But to be perfectly honest, my sister didn’t help matters. She was not kind. It wasn’t in her nature, for one thing, and then you shatter her life? Molly is not like Janet. She is not like my sister. She is her father’s daughter—she looks like him, she even sounds like him at times.”

  “Georgia,” said Osborne, “Lillie is convinced it was Jerry who murdered your sister and her family. She is afraid for Molly. Molly herself told us yesterday that his behavior towards her changed right after the marriage—in ways she finds so disturbing that she has moved out and is staying with Lillie.”

  “I’m driving over,” said Georgia. “This sounds terrible.”

  “It’s not good,” said Osborne. “Chief Ferris is likely to reopen the murder case. We’re hoping to find the evidence still in storage—that it hasn’t been destroyed.”

  “Then two things that you should know,” said Georgia, her voice shaking. “When Molly was questioned by the police the day after she was found—actually they had a child psychologist talk to her—all she could remember from that night was ‘the nice man with the yellow hair.’ Nothing about his face or whether he was short, tall, fat, or skinny—just the yellow hair. Made me think whoever it was wore some kind of a mask or a scarf around his face that didn’t cover his head.”

  “'The nice man with the yellow hair,'” said Osborne, writing down what she said.

  “Yes, and the boy who was accused was Native American, dark-skinned with black hair. Jerry O’Brien, thirty years ago, was fair-skinned with reddish-blond hair.

  “So she wasn’t able to recognize a face or a voice?”

  “No. Something else—and Molly doesn’t know this—but on her fourth birthday she was sent a card that I felt was very threatening. It was sent by the killer, I’m sure.”

  “Do you remember what it said?”

  “Not exactly. I remember the words were cut out of a newspaper. But I did save it. It’s in our safe-deposit box with the rest of Molly’s documents. The card and the envelope it came in are in a manila folder I haven’t opened in years. Funny, I thought about it just recently, too, knowing all the advances with DNA.”

  “How easy is it for you to get to the bank and send that to us?” asked Osborne.

  “I’ll pick it up and drive it over myself. I’ll need to make arrangements at the medical center, but I’ll be in Loon Lake first thing tomorrow morning. You’ve got me worried.”

  twenty-five

  The fishing was so good, I thought I was there yesterday.

  —Dave Engerbretson

  Osborne stood in front of his refrigerator, peering into the freezer section and feeling sorry for himself. After alerting Lew to expect Georgia the next morning, he had spent the day catching up with housekeeping and bills, then two hours at the vet, who’d had an emergency arrive minutes before Osborne was scheduled to have Mike vaccinated for Lyme disease.

  They didn’t get out of the animal hospital until after six o’clock. As Mike leaped into the back of the car, Osborne scanned the sky overhead. The air seemed thicker, if that was possible, the morning dark as dusk and the clouds overhead ready to burst—but no rain yet. It was now nearly seven, he was starving and he’d forgotten to think about food until just a few minutes ago.

  He reached for a package wrapped in white butcher paper. Ground venison. Nope, take too long to thaw. A Lean Cuisine tuna casserole that Mallory had left behind. Not much of a meal for someone who’d skipped lunch. Two walleye he was saving for the highly unlikely evening when Lew might be free for dinner. And a Ziploc of frozen chili probably six months old, if not a year. He reached for the chili.

  As he filled a saucepan with water for boiling, he could hear the wind bellow through the pines. He had just turned around to set the pan of water on the stove, when a voice out of nowhere shouted his name. Startled, he jerked the pan, spilling enough water to douse the gas flame.

  “Lewelleyn, you scared me to death. When did you get here?”

  “Just now,” said Lew, bounding into the kitchen with a wide grin on her face. “Didn’t you hear me drive up?”

  “Not over that wind.”

  “Wind from west—west is best. I’m ready to go.”

  And she was—in khaki shorts, her favorite fishing shirt, a rain poncho tied around her waist, and her curls clamped down under her fishing hat. “You coming or not? Got sandwiches packed. Gotta get out there before the storm hits. Could not ask for better conditions … what’s wrong?”

  “I’m just a little taken aback is all. I assumed you’d be up to your ears in paperwork tonight. Any break in the McDonald murder?”

  “Couple new developments that I’m thinking over. Tell you about it when we’re in the boat—need your opinion. And you’re right, a mountain of paperwork to be tackled … so what better time to duck out of the office?”

  A rueful expression crossed her face. “I know I’m playing hooky but, Doc, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: No matter how busy I am, grabbing an hour or two to fish doesn’t hurt. The job always gets done. Whereas you and I both know we don’t get perfect muskie conditions like tonight more than twice in a summer.”

  She was right. The hot days, the heavy overcast, the wind out of the west—no better time to fish the big “girls” than that first half hour of rain.

  “You say you’ve got sandwiches?” Osborne threw the chili back in the freezer.

  “Peanut butter and lettuce, some chips, couple sodas—we’re set.”

  Ten minutes later, with the spray forcing them to put on their ponchos in spite of the heat, they were nearing the entrance to a stream emptying into Loon Lake that they had fished before. A short way up, the stream widened.

  “Want to try this pothole?” asked Osborne, shouting over the wind. Lew nodded happily. He swung the boat towards a section he knew was like a nursery for the big fish. The water was only twenty-four to thirty-six inches deep and loaded with bullrush and sandweed, ideal for a predator lurking in ambush.<
br />
  “Stay out a ways,” said Lew. “I borrowed this fly rod from Ralph—need room to backcast.”

  “Okay,” said Osborne, waiting to drop anchor until he saw her nod with approval.

  “Casting into the wind?” asked Osborne, dubious. He sure hoped she wasn’t expecting him to do the same. He had a tough time getting a fly out forty feet in perfect conditions.

  “Oh yeah, I’ll just double haul. You watch, Doc, it’ll work fine.”

  He was happy to watch, hunger forgotten, as Lew uncased the rod. He knew from previous discussions that if she liked it—the first rod ever designed exclusively for fishing the freshwater “shark of the north”—she was planning to buy one, even if it did cost six hundred bucks.

  What she didn’t know was that he might beat her to it. He hoped to surprise her with the 9-foot 9-weight St. Croix Legend Elite along with a lightweight Ross Evolution reel—upon winning the election for sheriff. Assuming she would change her mind and not drop out of the race.

  As she was threading her fly line up through the guides, Lew said, “Guess what Ralph told me today….”

  “I’m afraid to ask,” said Osborne, waiting patiently for direction and sitting quite still. Since there was only one fly rod in the boat, he assumed he would be bait casting with his muskie rod.

  “He said that fly fishermen are catching three times as many muskies as the guys bait casting. Do you believe that?”

  “I believe he wants to sell expensive fly rods,” said Osborne. He also believed that Ralph paid way too much attention to Lew. That the man was married made no difference. Osborne didn’t like it, and he didn’t like Ralph.

  “Be kind, Doc,” said Lew, with a teasing glance. “I think it’s because you get better line control with a fly rod—you can get to the fish easier.”

  “I suppose he’s got some custom fly line on there, too,” said Osborne. “Wonder how much that costs?”