Dead Rapunzel Read online

  The smirk on the teenager’s face, paired with an overdose of eye shadow and lipstick, made it obvious she was her mother’s daughter. Osborne doubted athletic activity of any kind would be high on this girl’s list.

  At first Caroline had refused to leave the room during Osborne’s exam. “Mrs. Tomlinson,” he had said while turning on his stool to face Caroline, “you have a choice. Either you leave this room while I examine your daughter or the two of you can leave and find another dentist. I do not allow parents in my room when I have a patient in the chair. It is too distracting. Have I made myself clear?”

  He had kept his voice low and authoritative as he told his lie: He didn’t allow parents in the room for a reason that had nothing to do with distraction—too many adults had an unreasonable fear of the dentist and could be very effective at communicating that to their offspring. Take the parent out of the equation and most kids, whether aged five or fifteen, would listen to Osborne and relax. The few who had been so indoctrinated by fearful parents that they continued to quiver and cry would hear Osborne repeat the option of going to another dentist. That usually shut them up.

  Caroline had acquiesced only after demanding that she be allowed to sit within hearing distance “in case Sloanie needs me.” A small-boned woman with cramped features, hair too blonde, and a powdered face, Caroline had hit Osborne wrong the minute she had barged into his office that day. Nor did it help that she had been rude to his receptionist. But after a pause, while debating Osborne’s directive, she had agreed to take a chair in the waiting room.

  Osborne was relieved when he saw that Sloane’s loosened tooth—so long as she didn’t chew caramels or crunch down on peanut brittle—would heal itself. Meanwhile, it was August and chances were excellent that if she did have a problem it wouldn’t happen until the family was back home in Lake Forest.

  “Be careful, young lady,” he had cautioned her. “You don’t want me to have to pull that tooth and leave you with a gaping hole when you smile. Right?” Sloane’s eyes had widened at the thought of an extraction: She would be very careful.

  After parking his car in the driveway, Osborne let Mike, the black lab, out for a brief run in the snow. It was so cold that the poor dog hopped along on his paws until he had taken care of business.

  His owner then trudged along the narrow path he had managed to shovel to the side entrance of his heated garage. Turning on the lights, he opened the door to the small room tucked behind the porch where he cleaned fish, the room where he kept the two tall oak file cabinets he had inherited when he took over his father’s practice.

  Once again, he was pleased that he had saved all the patient files from his thirty years of practicing dentistry in Loon Lake. The young dentist who had purchased his practice had scanned in the files of current patients before handing those records over to Osborne as well. The files were filled with the memories of people whose lives he had observed over years—some well lived, some disastrous. Little did a patient realize the secrets on display in their mouth: Dental hygiene is a map to one’s habits elsewhere in life.

  Oh yes—I’m sure at least one Tomlinson is in here, thought Osborne as his fingers moved quickly through the Ts in the file drawer marked “Summer Patients.” The files were grouped into three clusters, each containing a decade’s worth of summer emergencies.

  Opening Sloane’s file, he was surprised by how vivid was his memory of Caroline and a remark she had made that afternoon so long ago: “Yes, Paul,” she had said with an air of deigning to speak to him on a personal level, “our place is quite lovely, but I am sorry to say that it’s on Thunder Lake. All we have on our lake are muskie fishermen—I have to spend my whole summer around people I do not need to know.”

  That was when she had sighed and said, “If only Philip’s grandfather had bought property over in Minocqua. You know, Elizabeth Taylor’s brother, the art dealer, had a mansion there. Much classier summer crowd in that area . . . if you know what I mean.”

  And that reminded him of Mary Lee.

  Over the years of their marriage, his wife had grown more rigid in her attitude toward their fellow residents in Loon Lake, expecting Osborne to spend his free time with the couples in her social clique, activities centered around dinner parties, golf, and bridge. When he would dare to excuse himself to spend time on the water, she was not happy.

  His fishing buddies appalled her: “Paul, those men haven’t seen a shirt and tie in years—much less a decent shave.” To her mounting chagrin, Osborne chose his friends over hers, forgoing a shirt and tie to slouch into his well-worn khaki fishing clothes (which she made him hang on the back porch) and do his darnedest to avoid the razor.

  After all, his philosophy of life (had she bothered to ask during the year of their courtship) was uncomplicated: He chose to practice dentistry so he could afford to fish. But she had never asked and he had never volunteered the information, so it was both their faults that over time their life together did not improve.

  After glancing through the file on Sloane, Osborne checked through “Summer Patients” one more time, but she was the only Tomlinson in the drawer. So even though he had heard about the Tomlinsons, that must have been the only time he had met anyone in the family. He checked his watch: Oops—time to change and head back into town.

  When Osborne arrived at the Loon Lake Pub and Café, Lew and Judith were already seated at a table near the back of the dining room. Lew would have chosen to sit there for privacy: It was hazardous to discuss anything personal in public in Loon Lake without checking over your shoulder to be sure you wouldn’t be overheard by the wrong person.

  Tonight the restaurant was half-empty, as few folks were inclined to leave the warmth of their homes given that the temperature was predicted to hit thirty below zero and the sidewalks were treacherous. But for the few who did brave the cold, the dining room was warmly lit and cozy with a zoo of deer mounts, foxes, pheasants, otters, and even a mink grinning down at them.

  The two women, deep in conversation, greeted Osborne with smiles as he approached. He was pulling out the chair beside Lew when he saw a look of alarm cross Judith’s face. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the problem. Shuffling between nearby tables and knocking chairs aside as it aimed directly for them was a humongous alien hiding in a snowmobile suit.

  The creature was at least six feet tall, though a stuffed trout—head and tail extending out over the ears—added another six inches. The figure neared their table, boots clomping across the wood floor, until it reached the chair next to Judith’s, where it plunked itself down.

  As Judith reared back, Osborne raised a hand. “It’s okay—it’s just my neighbor. Contrary to appearances, he is not dangerous.”

  “Yo, Doc and Chief, ” said the alien as he slapped deerskin mitts on the table, reached up to remove the fish from the top of his head, and turned to Judith saying, “Aren’t you as lovely as a forget-me-not in spring.” Judith’s eyes widened.

  “Judith Fordham,” said Lew, “meet Ray Pradt—one of the deputies I’ve asked to help out with the investigation. You may have seen him photographing the site in front of the Grizzly Bear Café this morning.

  “Ray, you should know it was Judith’s very close friend, Rudd Tomlinson, who was killed by that logging truck.” Lew spoke in a tone intended to alert Ray to the fact that this was not the time to be cute.

  “That’s quite the hat,” said Judith, slightly more relaxed now that it had been confirmed that the interloper was familiar to her hosts.

  “Thank you,” said Ray. “This hat . . . ” he paused as he always did in the presence of a female he hoped to impress, “is my motif . . . so to speak.” Lew rolled her eyes at Osborne. They both knew what was coming next and were helpless to put a lid on it.

  Ray had a habit of speaking in sentences sprinkled with pregnant pauses that Osborne swore were designed to hold listeners hostage. Apparently, not even the knowledge that someone in his audience might be grieving could get him to
hurry words along.

  “Motif? Not sure if that’s the word you want to use,” said Judith. “But then, I’m a college professor and way too critical when I hear someone abuse the English language. Maybe what you want to say is that the hat is your trademark, your signature accessory, maybe—”

  “Signature accessory? I like that,” said Ray interrupting her. “Adds weight to the image . . . accessory does. You see . . . the minute people see me and my hat . . . ” Ray raised his index finger to emphasize his point, “ . . . they know exactly my field of expertise.”

  “And I am afraid to ask what that is,” said Judith, taking a sip of her wine. “But I’m going to guess it has something to do with fishing.”

  “Ah . . . indeed it does. And in the event that you . . . are a connoisseur of hats, you might like to know . . . I have a summer trout hat and this . . . is my winter trout hat,” said Ray, tipping the hat over so she could see the snaps attaching furred earflaps that were nearly hidden by the brim of the worn leather cap holding the fish.

  “And this . . . ” he said, laying a delicate finger on a shiny fishing lure hanging from the neck of the fish, “this . . . is a memento of a fifty-two-inch muskie I caught years ago.”

  “Fifty-two inches! I don’t know much about muskie fishing, but I do know that would be one large fish.” As Judith spoke, Osborne could see the sadness that had creased her face all afternoon lighten a bit.

  “Yes, it is. But much as I had hoped that fish was a record—it wasn’t. What happened was . . . ” said Ray, raising an instructive index finger, “I was casting when a family of ducklings swam near my boat and whomp! One disappeared . . . Sure sign of a monster lunker down below.”

  “Poor little duck,” said Judith, hooked. Osborne threw a glance at Lew, who gave a shrug of resignation and motioned for the two of them to keep quiet.

  “Well . . . yes and no,” said Ray. “But I knew what to do next . . . I reached into my tackle box for a lure that looked just like a duckling—one with treble hooks on it—and cast it in the direction of the lunker . . . Wham! That fish hit hard. Gotta tell ya . . . I was sure I had a record.”

  “My gosh, I’ll bet,” said Judith, her eyes wide with admiration.

  “But when I weighed that big girl . . . ” longer pause now, “she came in at . . . four pounds.”

  “What on earth?” asked Judith. “How could that be?”

  “She was full of feathers.”

  A moment of silence then Judith shook her head with a rueful laugh. “Okay, what else can you sell me?”

  With a smile of satisfaction at having bamboozled his new friend, Ray crossed his arms and, looking straight at Judith, wriggled his ears. She looked down at the stuffed trout sitting on the table, then back at Ray. He wriggled his ears again.

  “Give me a break—how do you do that?” she asked, sounding as delighted as a five-year-old at Christmas.

  Before he could answer, Lew, anxious to get down to business, interrupted saying, “Ray, you called to say that you have something for me?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Ray, slipping out of his snowmobile parka and reaching into the top pocket of the insulated overalls he wore under the heavy jacket. He pulled out a long white envelope.

  “Photos already?” said Lew. “Great, thank you.”

  As she opened the envelope, she said to Judith, “He may tell ridiculous jokes, but I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have Ray—and Doc—to help out when unpleasant things happen. Between a three-man police force and the Wausau boys, who run a dysfunctional crime lab, I would be stuck. I doubt I’d ever solve a crime.”

  “Now, Chief, I appreciate the compliment, but don’t forget our man Bruce” said Ray. “There’s one of the Wausau boys I think you’re going to need ASAP.”

  “Really?” asked Lew, sounding preoccupied as she slid the series of black-and-white photos from the envelope and leaned over to study the first.

  What Lew did not mention was that Ray, aside from being an excellent photographer and fishing guide, was also a skilled tracker whom she would deputize when a crime scene needed the eye of an eagle—deputize in spite of his active misdemeanor file. While Ray was faithful in joining Osborne at the weekly AA meetings behind the door with the coffee pot etched on the window, he refused to give up one remaining vice: He was unequalled in his ability to track down inexpensive sources of marijuana.

  But Lew had learned early on that there was a good reason to ignore that misdemeanor file: Ray’s history of bad behavior enhanced his standing among other bad actors in the region. Enough so to give him a pipeline into the activities of the questionable characters who lived down logging lanes with no fire numbers. Ray could harvest information from sources neither she nor Officers Adamczak nor Donovan could tap.

  As Lew continued to sort through the photos, Ray placed a zip-top bag onto the empty salad plate to her right. The zip-top held three cigarette butts. Lew raised her eyes to Ray’s. “Yes,” he said, “you can forget the rest of those Wausau boys, but you do need Bruce.”

  He looked over at Judith. “He’s the best forensic tech they have down there. Plus,” he grinned, “he loves to ice fish. You give him a call this evening and I guarantee he’ll turn on a dime and give you nine cents back—he’ll be here by morning.”

  Chapter Nine

  Osborne, realizing how hungry he was and seeing no sign that Ray was likely leave soon, said, “Would you join us for dinner?”

  “I would be as happy as the flowers in the field,” said Ray.

  “After you explain the cigarette butts,” said Lew.

  “Sure, but first the photos.” As he spoke, Ray tipped his head with a questioning look toward Judith.

  “It’s all right,” said Lew. “Not only is Judith a close friend of the victim’s, she was driving up from Madison for a meeting with Rudd when Doc reached her by phone with the bad news.

  “Now, Judith,” said Lew, her voice lifting in warning, “you have got to keep what you are about to hear in confidence, especially if you’re talking to any Tomlinson family members. Agreed?”

  “No question—you can count on me to do whatever I can to help out.” The intensity in Judith’s eyes convinced Osborne that she was as determined to find the person behind Rudd’s death as they were.

  Pushing his chair closer to the table, Ray leaned forward over the photos. The auburn curls released from under his hat glistened in the glow of the votive candle near his plate. He was wearing a cream-colored Irish fisherman’s sweater, which highlighted his ruddy cheeks above the curly beard that matched his hair, though streaks of grey were sneaking in. His eyes were so lively as he explained the photos to Lew that even Osborne had to admit his neighbor looked handsome.

  “Now, Chief,” said Ray, eyes on Lew, “remember you told me that young kid, the dishwasher, was looking out a window toward the driveway when he saw an old man go by?”

  “Right . . . ”

  “Well, after photographing the victim and the logging truck, I took a walk back along that side of the building. That area isn’t a driveway but a snow-covered patio that the café uses for summer dining, which means it isn’t used in the winter—but it was this morning.”

  “You found something,” said Lew, her arms folded as she listened.

  “Yes, I did. I found these footprints, which could only have been made this morning because they broke through the surface of the snowfall that we got last night.” Ray passed the photo around so everyone could see.

  “I followed the footprints through the snow all the way back to a snow bank along the street behind the parking lot. And there they stopped. Disappeared. The snow on the street is so packed down by the plows that boots don’t leave an impression unless you’re an elephant.”

  “Oh,” Lew slumped back in her chair. “Damn. For a minute there . . . ”

  “Hold on,” said Ray, raising his index finger. “The footprints stopped in a snow bank right in front of a house where a guy was out shoveli
ng his walk. I asked if he might have seen anyone parked there earlier and he said he had. A red Honda sedan was parked there from about seven-thirty to shortly after nine this morning.

  “He said he kept an eye on it, since the car didn’t belong to any of his neighbors and he couldn’t imagine why a visitor wouldn’t use the parking lot that’s right across the street instead of blocking the way for snowplows. Anyway, he said that watching from his living room window he could see that the person sitting in the car was some old guy ‘with a real craggy face’—those are his words—who sat there smoking a couple cigarettes before he got out of the car and was gone for a while.

  “So I walked over to where the guy said the car had been parked and found these three cigarette butts that might have been tossed out the window.” Ray pointed to the zip-top on the salad plate. “Could be nothing, of course.”

  “Or, smoked by the old guy who pushed Rudd Tomlinson,” said Lew. “Did you touch these yourself, I hope not?”

  “Chief, how well do you know me? Of course not—and I did not use my fish glove either. I keep that box of nitrile gloves you gave me in my glove compartment, so I went back and got those before I picked these up. I was very careful.”

  “Good work, Ray. Anything else show up in the photos?”

  “Not that I can see. You had a few bystanders come and go up until the truck was moved and the ambulance left. I did my best to get shots of everyone, but they looked to me like the people we know who work along Main Street: Jean from the gift store, Stan and Gert, who run the dry cleaner’s, the waitresses from the Grizzly, and the gals from the Chamber office. Oh, and our favorite blowhard, Vern Steidl, who said his firm is doing some renovations on Dan Kelly’s law office. He hung around for a while pontificating as usual, then talked up the kid who was washing dishes. Guess he fished with the kid’s dad. That’s all.”