Dead Boogie Read online

  Dave took his time unloading his equipment, then climbed into the driver’s seat of the van. Lew had walked back to talk to Bruce but Osborne remained nearby, ready to buffer Ray if Dave changed his mind.

  Through the rolled-down window of the van, he heard the reporter call in to the station, “Bob, send Rory over to cover Shania Twain. I’m gonna stake out St. Mary’s—the morgue. Once the families ID the corpses, we got a story. How big? Not sure yet—but it’s weird out here.”

  Osborne waited to follow the ambulances into town. Lew had asked him to meet her at the morgue, where she would need help with the families once they had identified the victims. Teaming up to interrogate sources and suspects had worked so well in the past that she had come to depend on Osborne’s presence. It was yet another reason why she kept him on as a deputy.

  “Y’know, Doc, it’s not the two of us asking questions,” she had said one summer evening as they were wading the Prairie River, “it’s the two of us listening. I hear answers to my questions—but you hear between the lines. You pick up on answers to questions I haven’t asked yet.”

  Osborne gave silent thanks to this unexpected benefit of his profession. Years of practicing dentistry had taught him the source of a problem might not be in the actual symptom, but in a patient’s history or in nearly forgotten details.

  “And when you’re with me, people tend to open up more easily.”

  “Oh, come on—that’s because they’re afraid of dentists,” said Osborne, embarrassed by the compliment.

  “Hardly,” said Lew. “I doubt anyone’s afraid of you, Doc. You have such a quiet, reassuring way—you make people feel comfortable. Even a crook responds to kindness and patience.”

  Osborne was grateful for the darkening sky—she couldn’t see him blush. And who knew if it was the hatch two nights later or the lightness in his heart that prompted four brook trout to torpedo his Grizzly Kings.

  Ray drove off first, then the emergency vehicles. Osborne pulled onto the road behind them—toward the main highway and in the opposite direction of the clearing.

  For a third of a mile, the road continued to run straight, but then it made a sharp ninety-degree turn, following the property line of an old farmstead. Osborne slammed on his brakes and hit Reverse. He backed around the sharp corner for a good look: a windbreak of sturdy oaks. You hit those trees at fifty, sixty miles an hour …

  nine

  Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.

  —Tennessee Williams

  Twenty minutes after the EMTs had delivered the three corpses to the morgue at St. Mary’s Hospital, Pat Kuzynski’s mother arrived. Osborne hadn’t seen Pauline Leffterholz since fitting her with a bridge years ago. He had heard that she was widowed for the second time and running her late husband’s dog kennel in a hamlet west of Gleason.

  Unsteady on her feet, Pauline moved slowly down the narrow hallway, one hand clutching the arm of a man in navy blue shorts—shorts so short they could have been swimming trunks. They should have been swimming trunks. Unfortunately they weren’t.

  As Pauline and her escort neared, Osborne could see that under the brim of his black baseball cap, which was emblazoned with a gold Budweiser logo, were the eyes of a weasel—a weasel who appeared to a good deal younger than Pauline.

  Pauline did not look good. Her eyes were dull and sunken, her skin sallow. Where she had once been a pleasant-faced woman with prominent cheekbones, generous cheeks, and a pumpkin-wide smile, now her face was pouched and drooping—ravaged by hard drinking. Though Osborne was sure she had yet to turn fifty-five, she looked seventy.

  “Doc,” said Pauline, her voice deep and thick from cigarettes, “how long’s this gonna take?”

  “I’m not sure, Pauline,” said Osborne. “I’ll help you through the identification here, then Chief Ferris needs to meet with us over at the Court House.”

  “Fred …” said Pauline, letting go of the man in the short shorts, “I’ll meet you at the Elbow Tap later. No reason for you to be stuck here. You take the truck—I’ll call the bar when I’m finished.”

  That worked for the weasel. He gave her quick peck on the cheek and fled.

  “Doc?” said another voice, reedy and hesitant. Osborne spun around.

  “Ralph,” said Osborne, extending a hand to a thin, stooped man dressed in jeans and a faded pink flannel shirt. With the exception of the pink shirt, the rest of Ralph Federer was gray: his hair, his skin, even his worried eyes. “I am so sorry—”

  Before Osborne could finish, Ralph pointed at the swinging doors leading into the morgue: “How much you think all this is gonna cost?”

  For the second time, Osborne had to admit he didn’t know.

  What he did know, after a brief but close viewing of the bullet wounds in the heads of the three victims before the two parents arrived, was what had caused Ray to break down as he took that final set of photos: Peg Garmin’s face. Her eyes wide open, her teeth clenched. She had seen death coming.

  It was after six when the four of them gathered in Lew’s office, their chairs spread around the front of her desk with Osborne seated off to the right. Pauline sat slumped against the arms of her chair while Ralph hunched forward, elbows on his knees, arthritic fingers clutched in a tight ball. He had been the only one to speak up so far. Pauline seemed determined to remain silent, swinging her head like a turtle when someone spoke, her eyes heavy-lidded and sullen.

  “Don’t ask me,” said Ralph, repeating his ignorance of Donna’s comings and goings. “I jes dunno, Chief. Since my wife died, Donna’s always had her own place, so I don’t see too much of her. Alls I know is, she was working at Thunder Bay ‘til she could audition at the casino. Called me a couple months ago pretty excited ‘cause she got accepted to train to be a dealer up there—at the poker tables. Pays good money, y’know. Health benefits and better tips than she got dancing—”

  “From the winners,” said Lew. “Losers can get touchy. Think she might have had an opportunity to be around some unhappy losers? Maybe somebody who blamed her for their losses?”

  “Like I said—she was still in training,” said Ralph. “After that you gotta audition before they let you work the table. So, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Boyfriends? Did she dump anyone recently?”

  Ralph shrugged. Short of recognizing his daughter’s face, he seemed to know little about her life. From the sound of it, they rarely spoke. Osborne cautioned himself not make the same mistake, to stay in better touch with Mallory. Erin he chatted with daily—but Mallory… . Why did he always hang back when it came to his older daughter?

  “Anyone with a grudge against you who might want to hurt Donna?” said Lew.

  “Me! Hell, no,” said Ralph. “Ain’t got nobody I owe money to. Pay cash for everything. Ain’t even got a dog for the neighbors to shoot. What the hell makes you ask me that anyway?”

  Pauline’s heavy lids had flickered when Lew asked the question of Ralph. Now she propped herself up on one elbow to say, “Ain’t nobody mad at me neither. ‘Cept two stepkids who think I got all their old man’s money when he died two years ago, which I did, but only after nursing him through three years of cancer. Don’t think I don’t deserve it. But they sure wouldn’t take that out on my Patsy … would they?”

  “Who knows,” said Lew. “We have to explore all the possibilities. Pauline, what about Pat—had she been in any trouble recently?”

  “Now hold on right there,” said Pauline, her tone belligerent. “My Patsy was a good girl.” She shook a finger at Lew as she said, “Just ‘cause she danced at Thunder Bay is no reason for you to think she was a slut or she did drugs or she gambled—”

  “Did I say any of that?” said Lew, returning Pauline’s glare.

  “You don’t have to say it—I know what you’re thinking!” The accusation was fierce.

  Lew glanced down, aligned some papers on the desk in front of her, then looked up to meet the hostile eyes. “No, Pauline, you d
on’t know what I’m thinking. So let me tell you: I’m thinking that three women were shot to death by an individual who is still at large. How do I find that person? By doing my best to get some questions answered as soon as possible.

  “Why were these three women in that car together? Where had they been? Where were they going?”

  “I got a theory,” said Ralph, shaking his head with conviction. “I’ll bet we got ourselves a serial killer hangin’ out at that damn Country Fest. You wouldn’t believe the jabones they got there.”

  “That’s possible, Ralph,” said Lew with a respectful nod before turning back to Pauline. “You know my daughter worked her way through her first year of college dancing at Thunder Bay. About eight years ago.”

  Pauline stared at her, speechless for a second, then said, “Not when the Broomleys owned it?”

  “Yep,” said Lew. “And those were hard people to work for. Did you know them?”

  “Oh yeah, b-a-a-d news that pair. Do you know that old lady would steal the girls’ tips right off the table before they had a chance to pick ‘em up? Used to stop by there once in a while with my first husband, and I tell you I saw her do it. Couldn’t believe my own eyes. So you had a kid who worked there, huh. You a cop then?”

  “No, I was a secretary over at the mill.”

  “Oh, I had a lot of friends at the mill up until a few years ago.” As Pauline spoke, her face lightened up and ten years dropped away. “Surprised we haven’t met—'course I do live way the hell down Highway 17. Can I smoke?”

  Lew got up and walked over to open two windows. “Sure.”

  “Where’s your daughter now?” said Pauline, reaching into her purse for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

  “In the Milwaukee area. She’s in the accounting business. I’ve got two grandchildren.” Lew smiled.

  “That’s nice,” said Pauline. “I like hearing that. Patsy was on her way, y’know.” She lit her cigarette, sat back, and inhaled deeply. “Yep, she got rid of the creep husband and was planning to enroll at Nicolet College up in Rhinelander—she wanted to do the culinary arts thing.”

  Pauline paused, turned her head to one side, and covered her eyes with the back of the hand holding the cigarette. She gave a short sob, then sat rigid in her chair. Lew stood to walk around the desk and set a box of Kleenex in her lap. Pauline plucked one and held it to her face.

  As Lew returned to her chair, she walked behind Osborne. She tapped him lightly on the shoulder: his turn next.

  “It’s my fault,” said Pauline, her voice muffled by tears and smoke. “I got the money for her to go to school. Why the hell didn’t I just give it to her? If she hadn’t been working at that damn club, she wouldn’t be dead.”

  “How’s that?” said Lew, her voice soft.

  “That’s how she got in with those two.” The bitterness in her tone made it sound like Donna and Peg were up to no good.

  “You wait a minute,” said Ralph, thrusting his face at Pauline, “my Donna was a good woman. You watch what you say, lady.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” said Pauline, wiping at her cheeks. “I just meant they wouldn’t have all been out together if they hadn’t met, and they kinda met because of Thunder Bay.”

  Lew signaled Osborne with a quick glance.

  “Pauline,” he said, “what’s this about Pat’s ex-husband? Was he abusive? Could he be a suspect?” Osborne kept his voice low-key and professional—it was a tone he knew to be effective with patients who were frightened or near hysteria. Once calmed, people were likely to tell him everything he needed to know.

  “Well, Butch hated Patsy—that’s for sure. She turned him in, y’know. They were living in Point when she found out he was cooking crystal meth in the trunk of his car. Scared her to death. She knew if she didn’t turn him in that she’d end up in prison herself—as an accomplice, y’know. That guy was crazy high most of the time.”

  “Crazy and abusive?” said Osborne. “He hit her a couple times and, yeah, once he threatened to kill her.”

  “Last name Kuzynski—what’s the first name?” said Lew, pen poised over her notepad.

  “I’ll get you all the information—he’s doing time. Ten years. Patsy was staying at my place so the records ought to be around somewhere.”

  “Oh,” said Lew, setting the pen down. “More likely he would have hired someone to do it for him if that’s the case.”

  “I don’t know with what,” said Pauline. “He ain’t got no money.”

  “Let’s go back to the women for a minute,” said Osborne. “Peg Garmin was quite a bit older than both your daughters—by at least twenty, twenty-five years.”

  “You’d never know it,” said Pauline, her voice offering a hint of affection. “That girl was young at heart. I know she … well, what she did was her business. The fact is she was a very nice person and helped my Patsy out a lot last year.”

  “Helped her financially?” said Osborne.

  “Oh no, nothing like that. Once they found out they were both going to the same plastic surgeon—way the hell down in Milwaukee—Peg would let Patsy ride down with her. Save on gas, y’know. A coupla times, Peg drove all that way just to pick her up. Well, maybe she had some shopping to do, too. But that’s where Patsy first met Peg—in the doc’s waiting room.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Oh, maybe a year and a half ago.”

  “And how did Pat know Donna?”

  “Oh, they’ve known each other a long time—they worked together at Thunder Bay?”

  As Pauline was speaking, Ralph had edged his chair forward, anxious to interrupt. “Hey, y’know something? I think Donna was seeing that same doctor. She told me that’s why she took the job at the club in the first place—so she could pay some medical bills.”

  “Yeah,” said Pauline. “Patsy and Donna both got the same package—breast implants and some Botox. Oh—and their teeth whitened. But Peg had something different done. Went wrong, too. That’s why she was driving down there so often.”

  “Teeth whitened by a plastic surgeon?” said Osborne, making a mental note to check into that. “So what you’re telling me is that all three of these women have been seeing the same doctor?” said Osborne. Pauline nodded. “Isn’t that rather unusual?”

  “Not really,” said Pauline. “Everyone at Thunder Bay knows Dr. Forsyth. I think he sends brochures to all the clubs where they got strippers. That’s what he does—breast implants, and anything else a girl might need to keep her job. A few of those gals have some years on ‘em, doncha know.”

  The phone on Lew’s desk rang. She raised a hand to quiet everyone as she answered, then said she would take the call in a nearby room. “Keep going, Doc, I’ll be right back.” She hurried out the door.

  “So we know how they met. Do you have any idea why they were all three together?” said Osborne.

  Ralph shrugged but Pauline gave an eager nod. “Sure—it was karaoke night. Every other Wednesday for the last six months those three been driving down to Wausau to have dinner and go to this bar where they do karaoke.”

  “Every other Wednesday? Never any other night of the week?”

  “Wednesday was Patsy and Donna’s night off.”

  Lew came back into the room and took her seat at the desk. “What did I miss?” At the mention of Wausau and karaoke, she said, “Do we know which club?”

  “Oh, they had their favorite—Chucky D’s,” said Pauline. “And doncha know they had the best time every time. Patsy would tell me… .”

  Sadness crept across Pauline’s rough features as she said, “I hope to hell it wasn’t someone from there that killed them. I don’t think I could stand knowing that someone who saw my Patsy so happy would—”

  “Pauline,” said Lew, “from what you’ve just told us, can we assume that as of Wednesday night, they were alive and on their way to Wausau?”

  “On their way back,” said Pauline. “Patsy always called me as they left so I would u
nlock the door for her. When you run a business like mine, you don’t leave no doors unlocked y’know.”

  “So what time would that have been?”

  “Same as always—one in the morning.”

  “And then they would drive straight back.”

  “Yep, one pit stop for gas, have one last drink together—then home.”

  Osborne looked over at Lew as he said, “And where was that last stop?”

  “Oh …” Pauline paused and grimaced, “That I don’t know. Never asked.”

  “Jeez,” said Ralph. “Must be a hundred places ‘tween here and Wausau where you can get gas and a beer at one-thirty in the morning.”

  “Not if we’re lucky,” said Lew, standing up.

  ten

  Within you there is afire / Within the fire / An expanse of water.

  —DoDo Jin Ming, contemporary artist

  The wooden sign at the top of the driveway off Wolf Lake Road made Peg Garmin’s cottage easy to find. Hung from a wrought-iron pole, it was painted with a lavender and lemon yellow iris whose green tendrils twisted around four words etched in a delicate script: babe in the woods.

  Osborne pulled his car in behind Lew’s cruiser and walked down the asphalt drive. The cottage was situated on the kind of real estate difficult to come by in northern Wisconsin: a level site with a western exposure blessed with sunsets. Tonight the view was spectacular—the lake sparkling with diamonds and promising one of those long, clear summer evenings when the sun refuses to go down.

  He paused for a moment to appreciate the quiet loveliness of water and sky. No neighboring homes or cabins invaded the view, which meant that Peg’s property had to include a good five hundred feet of shoreline. Five hundred feet on Wolf Lake would sell for thousands of dollars per foot. Osborne gave a silent whistle. Whatever else Peg Garmin may have left behind, this land alone had to be worth close to a million.

  He found Lew on the porch, about to push open the front door. “Ray was right,” she said as she pressed down on the handle and the door swung open. “The place is unlocked.” After remembering that Peg rarely locked her doors, Ray had called Lew’s office and offered to drive over and secure the cottage—but she had thanked him and said she preferred to do it herself.