Dead Madonna Read online

  “Yes, she’s a friend of my son’s,” said Bert. “DeeDee Kurlander.”

  Osborne couldn’t take his eyes off the girl’s head. Battered and swollen, her face was colored a very bad blue. As if she’d been the target of a scavenging eagle, the life had been dug from her eyes. But it was the trauma to the rest of her face and head that was, thanks to the cleansing water, startling in its detail: lacerating puncture wounds, bruises, even incisions. Her mouth hung open wide enough for Osborne to see that two teeth were missing—and not the work of a dentist.

  Yet the body appeared to have been brutalized only from the shoulders up. With the exception of several yellow, translucent abrasions along her legs that may have been caused by the boat, the girl’s torso bore no apparent signs of assault. Nor, aside from the deathly blue of her face, was there any postmortem lividity, the pooling of blood after death, which he found odd.

  But it wasn’t until Lew’s fingers tightened around his elbow and her eyes caught his that it dawned on him what they were looking at: wounds inflicted by a cane-like weapon that could tear flesh; a weapon much too similar to that used on Nora Loomis.

  It seemed an hour but it was only minutes before Lew stood to say, “Pete, would you please send the ambulance crew back to town. I’ll need the Wausau boys here before we move the victim or that pontoon. Please—Bert, Robbie—don’t anyone go on board that boat for any reason until the crime lab has finished its work.

  “And, Bert, this is no accident. You’ll need to cancel your flight.”

  The man nodded. Gone was any air of condescension. Bert Moriarty looked scared.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Man, that is a body built for sin.” “Carrie! Shut up! Why do you say that?”

  “You shut up, Juliana. Chief Ferris asked about DeeDee and guys—and I’m repeating exactly what I heard ‘em say every time she showed up in her bikini. And you know darn well DeeDee didn’t mind—she took it as a compliment.”

  Legs crossed, her right foot pumping with vigor, Carrie added, “They meant it in a nice way.”

  DeeDee’s two roommates, their mascara smeared from tears, were answering Lew’s questions from where they sat, one on each side of Marcy Kurlander, mother of their late friend. To Osborne’s eye, the tableau of the three women offered quite a contrast in female décor and demeanor.

  Both girls were tall, exceedingly slender and dressed in long tight jeans, spike heels and sleeveless tops so short they barely covered their midriffs. Aside from the soft smudges of mascara along their lower lashes, they were so well made up and their hair so carefully coiffed—one blond, the other a blond/brunette hybrid—that they looked more like models in a magazine than flesh and blood young women. Osborne wondered if DeeDee had worn life with the same gloss.

  Unlike the polished twenty-somethings who sat with their arms around her, Marcy was a woman whose face had fallen, leaving her with skin the texture of tissue paper and minuscule lines fanning down from the corners of her eyes. As if an afterthought, her short, flat brown hair was shoved behind her ears; and for make-up she wore only a swipe of rose-pink lipstick that did more to showcase the vertical lines above her top lip than she might have intended.

  Since Marcy, on hearing from the chief of the Loon Lake Police, had rushed from her office to the rental house DeeDee shared with her two best friends, she was still in the boxy green scrubs required for the head nurse of Loon Lake’s assisted living facility. The uniform did nothing to compliment her squared off figure, which was likely the result of too many hours spent in a chair filling out insurance forms.

  But however disheveled she may have seemed at first, her faded-but-honest prettiness coupled with the quiver of despair in her voice evoked, for Osborne, a grace lacking in the two girls.

  “So like I saw DeeDee right around eleven o’clock last night and she seemed perfectly fine,” said Carrie.

  “And where was this exactly?” said Lew, jotting down the details.

  “The parking lot for the public landing at Moccasin Lake. But like I said, she was fine.”

  “No one else around? No one she was with?” “No … not right then …” “How about you, Juliana?”

  “I saw her last as she left the pontoon to go with Carrie.”

  “And that was the Moriarty’s pontoon, correct?”

  “Yes,” said both girls simultaneously.

  “Okay,” said Lew, “let’s back up a bit. Dr. Osborne and I need you to give us some background on DeeDee—her other friends, her job, who she was dating, any problems she was having …”

  Getting the girls to talk was not difficult. Shocked at the news of their friend’s death, the roommates spilled over with details and kept interrupting each other as they outlined DeeDee’s eccentricities, her daily routines, the boys she knew, her attitude towards her boss and colleagues. The DeeDee they knew was a girl whose days, nights and weekends revolved around clothes, make-up, power bars, low-calorie shakes, flavored martinis, guys and parties—a life just like their own.

  As the young women spoke of their friend with eyes wide, backs straight and hands flashing to emphasize their words, Marcy sat silent, her back tense against the sofa cushions. As she listened, her face reflected mute incomprehension—part grief, part astonishment—at what she was learning about her daughter.

  “Was there anything DeeDee might have done to put her at risk?” said Lew, when the girls paused long enough for her to get a word in.

  “Well …” Carrie lingered, thinking, then shrugged as she said, “Y’know, when it came to calories, she wasn’t logical. Like, she worked out every day but then she would play beer pong. You know—in a couple hours drink over a thousand calories worth of beer? Go figure.”

  “Carrie! Not like you don’t do it, too,” said Juliana.

  “Yeah, well, we’re talking about DeeDee here, not me. Plus,” Carrie pouted, “I don’t work out every day. It’s not the same.”

  “Beer pong?” said Osborne. “I take it this is some kind of game?”

  “Oh, Doc—you haven’t heard about beer pong?” said Lew. “The bars hold tournaments sponsored by the distributors and it’s become quite a problem for law enforcement—way too much beer drunk in a short period of time. The players get hammered.

  “You girls correct me if I’m wrong but as I understand the game, one team stands at one end of a table in front of a triangle of Dixie cups half full of beer and pitches ping-pong balls across the table into the opposing team’s cups. When a player sinks a ball, the other team’s player has to chug the beer and remove the cup from the table. The side that runs out of cups loses—but who cares if you’re over-served when you’re having fun. Right?”

  “Yeah, that’s how we play it,” said Carrie with a sheepish half-grin.

  “So was DeeDee a contestant, or just an observer?” asked Osborne, hoping for Marcy’s sake that it be the latter.

  “Oh, she was great,” said Carrie. “In the coed contests—she was our team champ!”

  “Jeez, Carrie, put a lid on it, will you?” said Juliana. The mother hen of the three, she was, unlike Carrie, keeping a close eye on Marcy’s reactions to everything being said.

  It had been almost two-thirty before Lew and Osborne had been able to grab a bite of lunch, then stop back out at Osborne’s so he could pick up his car. Then back in a rush to the rental house where DeeDee had been living. When they arrived, Marcy Kurlander and Carrie Koronski, the receptionist for a Rhinelander dermatologist, were waiting for them. Juliana Stevenson, the third roommate, was on her way from the school where she taught kindergarten.

  Lew had been hesitant to interview the three women together but Marcy had argued persuasively that it would save time. Not only could she add to what the girls knew but she wanted answers to the same questions: who had last seen DeeDee and where? But as the girls talked, Osborne realized that Marcy had not been that close to her daughter. In fact, the more she heard, the more desperate the swoon in her eyes.

  “Oh �
�� what did I say wrong?” Carrie’s voice trembled with uncertainty. It seemed to be dawning on her that beer pong was sounding less fun and less hip by the moment.

  “Should we assume that DeeDee, like everyone else on a team, could get pretty hammered at times?” Lew kept her tone light, encouraging.

  “I hate that word,” said Marcy, muttering under her breath.

  Carrie clamped her lips shut and avoided looking at Juliana.

  “Carrie,” said Lew, “we’re not looking to blame DeeDee for playing beer pong. We need to know if and how she may have put herself at risk. I can see you know more …”

  “Okay, okay,” said Carrie with a wince. “DeeDee had this thing she liked to do before heading out. Have a couple beers to get a pre-game buzz going—get in the mood, y’know?”

  “Whoa—now that is just enough! I am sorry, but I do not believe a word of what’s being said here,” said Marcy. “I know damn well my daughter was not a drunk, Chief Ferris. She had a hell of a lot more on the ball than—” She caught herself before she could say, “Carrie.” Instead, she said, “than … than … drinking games. I can swear …” She waved a finger to make a point but choked up.

  “Mrs. Kurlander’s right,” said Juliana, jumping in. “DeeDee was very hardworking. They loved her at her job—”

  Osborne could feel the interview spinning out of control. Lew must have, too, because she raised a finger to quiet Juliana, then said in a voice that was calm and measured, the low tone of the confessional, “Marcy, our children are never who we think they are.

  “I’ve been where you are right now. My son was knifed in a bar fight and it wasn’t until his funeral that I learned from his friends how much he had been drinking. To this day, as a parent, I wonder how it was that I didn’t know. But we don’t, we can’t—because we raise them to live their own lives, we have to let go, we have to let them make their own mistakes.”

  Osborne resisted the urge to speak. He wanted to curb Marcy’s despair from his own oblique angle. He wanted to add to Lew’s words: Nor are we who they think we are. Look at me—I’m in AA. I was such a good parent that my oldest child is in AA. We all live with dumb mistakes—the ones we make, the ones we cause, the ones committed by people we love. But he said nothing.

  “Well.” said Marcy with a tremor in her voice, “I know very little about what the girls have been saying here but I guess … I suppose some of what they say is true. DeeDee is always so upbeat that it makes sense she loves to party, and I know she tries really hard to keep her weight down. What girl her age doesn’t? I had no idea about the drinking but that’s her business. She’s twenty-two years old after all. I mean … she was … twenty-two.” Juliana rubbed Marcy’s shoulders as she spoke.

  With a surge of resolve, Marcy pushed herself up to lean forward on her elbows. She clasped her hands in a tight ball, dropped them between her parted knees and gave them a determined shake before looking hard at Lew and Osborne. “Okay, we know she partied, we know she drank, but that’s not the whole story. If you’re going to find the person who did this, you need to know more and let me tell you my DeeDee had plans …”

  Marcy couldn’t finish. She pressed the fingers of one hand against her eyelids as if she thought she could stop the tears running down her cheeks. Their own eyes brimming again, DeeDee’s friends folded their arms around her.

  “Carrie shouldn’t have said so much,” said Juliana with a heavy sigh.

  “But Chief Ferris said the smallest detail might be important,” said Carrie, glaring at her friend over Marcy’s collapsed shoulders. “I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

  Somber, patient, Lew and Osborne remained seated in worn armchairs across from the women. Osborne gazed around the living room of the rental house, which was small but tidy and decorated with used furniture. A vase of fresh daisies sat on a beat-up coffee table that also held fashion magazines, a scattering of CDs and DVDs, a bottle of silver-blue nail polish and an iPod plugged into its charger. Outside an open window, a honeybee buzzed.

  Once Osborne had secured the information needed for the death certificate—age, last birthday, legal residence, cause of death (TBD)—he had, at Lew’s request, taken the chair next to her. She introduced him as the acting coroner and a deputy who would be assisting in the investigation. Osborne was always surprised at how pleased he was when that happened, even though it had been nearly two years now that she had come to rely on his participation and perspective in difficult interrogations.

  Years in the dental office spent listening for the mundane detail that might clarify the source of a patient’s problem had given him an acute ear. Was that pattern of wear due to poor orthodontics? Or was the patient under severe emotional stress? Add to that the reality that men and women hear things differently—not to mention vary their responses when quizzed by a member of the opposite sex.

  And so it was that Lew and Osborne had learned to count on surprising each other when they compared notes. Marcy reached for the Kleenex box on the coffee table. As she leaned forward, Juliana shot a look at Carrie. Osborne caught the exchange and knew what it meant: Carrie had just been ordered to say nothing that could cause Marcy more distress.

  The older woman blew her nose, then raised her head and said, “Do you know that when her dad died of a heart attack two years ago, DeeDee offered to help me pay the mortgage on my house? I mean, that is the kind of person she was. And did you notice her closet—how well organized she is … was …”

  Marcy was right. A quick survey of DeeDee’s bedroom while waiting for Juliana to arrive had shown she was orderly in her habits. The closet door—ajar as if DeeDee had left in haste—exposed a hanging rack with each item of clothing on its own hanger and hung with like items: slacks with slacks, blouses with blouses, jackets with jackets. Above the rack was a shelf loaded with shoeboxes. An inside wall of the closet held more shelving on which were arranged dozens of pairs of shoes. Organized against one wall of the small bedroom were more sandals, heels and tennis shoes—each shoe paired with its mate.

  “She had a passion for stilettos,” said Carrie at the expressions of amazement on the faces of Osborne and Lew. “She loved buying online and always found the best deals. She was a perfect size six so she could do that, y’know?”

  “Doc,” said Lew, turning to Osborne, “DeeDee wasn’t wearing shoes, was she?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think you could identify her shoes if we were to find them?” said Lew to Carrie.

  “Probably. Lately she’s been wearing Campers—the right foot is different from the left so they’re pretty distinctive. I’d recognize any of those for sure.”

  The top of an old oak dresser and a bedside table held gaily colored cardboard boxes brimming over with bracelets, earrings and other items of jewelry. On the floor beside the bed, which had been made with a lemon yellow coverlet and matching pillow, was one empty water bottle and a half-eaten power bar tucked neatly into its wrapper. The drawers to DeeDee’s dresser and the nearby desk were closed.

  “Don’t you want to see what’s in her desk?” said Marcy as Lew turned to leave the room.

  “Not yet,” said Lew. “Without a search warrant I can only examine what is in plain sight, which is why it is very important that no one touch anything in here until I examine all her belongings. I should have the search warrant by dinner time, I hope.”

  “But you don’t need a warrant,” said Marcy. “The girls and I don’t care. We want you to do everything you can.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Lew, “but it’s a legal issue that protects any evidence that’s found. A formality, but critical in a courtroom.”

  “Do you want us to close the door?” said Carrie.

  “Yes—oh, wait,” said Lew, pausing in front of the dresser on which was set a mirror framed in oak. Wedged along the bottom edge where the mirror met the frame were three trout flies—feathered lemon yellow and tipped with a spray of deer hair. “These trout flies,
” said Lew, pointing, “beautifully tied Conehead Madonnas. You don’t see those very often. Did DeeDee fly fish?”

  “Oh, heavens no,” said Marcy. “My dad made those. He was a fly fisherman and loved to tie trout flies. Dad adored DeeDee—he called her ‘my little Madonna’ and made those for her when she was just a little tyke. I think Dad was kidding when he said he needed strands of her blond hair to make them perfect—but DeeDee believed him.”

  Marcy loosened one trout fly from the mirror. “Maybe … I’d like to bury one with her. Dad would have liked that …” She took a deep breath, then paused, “Oh, dear, I’m disturbing things right after you said—”

  “No, please, take it,” said Lew, raising a hand to keep Marcy from putting the trout fly back in place. “I’ll make a note. So long as no one touches anything more in this room, that will be fine.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “So, Marcy, you were saying that DeeDee had plans,” said Lew when the woman had regained her composure.

  “What kind of plans?”

  “Her career,” said Marcy, taking a deep breath. “She’s been working at the Chamber of Commerce for almost a year now. Loved the job. Two weeks ago, they gave her a nice raise and a promotion. We had dinner together last Sunday and she told me she planned to go to school parttime for an associate degree in business and public relations. The Chamber sponsors a program that allows you to do that at the tech college over in Rhinelander.”

  “That’s what she told me, too,” said Juliana. “Her boss said she could have Fridays off for school.”

  “So … no problems at work?” said Lew.

  “Hardly,” said Juliana. “They had like eleven applicants for the new business liaison job and DeeDee got it. Her annual review was excellent—they told her she was a natural. Like these job fairs she’s been doing? She got so many people to come, it was like unreal.”

  “Juliana’s right,” said Marcy. “DeeDee felt so lucky when she got that job—it was fun, she made decent money and it came with an SUV even—used, but a nice car. I know she was putting in at least eight hours a day.”