Dead Angler (12 page)

Back
at the entrance to The Willows, Lew lifted the brass pine cone again. This time she let it fall. It hit with a loud thud. She waited, raised it again, dropped it. Still no one answered. The matching brass door knob was unlocked. She pushed the heavy wooden door wide open. Osborne stepped in behind her.

The hallway they entered was dank and musty-smelling, reminding Osborne of the root cellars of his youth. Straight ahead, he could barely see the outlines of a lodge-like room with a vaulted ceiling. Bulky shapes, probably furniture, were shrouded in gloom.

“Dark enough for you?” whispered Lew over her shoulder.

As they got closer to the main room, they could see that heavy curtains closed off any light that might filter through the fifteen-foot windows. Still no sight or sound of anyone. “Place is a tomb,” muttered Osborne.

Lew veered to the right towards a set of doors closing off the back wing of the house. Osborne followed.

Suddenly, from over Osborne’s left shoulder, a huge black bat came flying at him. “Duck!” he shouted running forward and pushing Lew ahead of him. Together they stumbled down the hall. Lew grabbed at the parlor doors, which refused to open. Osborne, heart pounding, suddenly realized he heard nothing behind them. Whatever was coming had stopped. Silence.

Lew turned around first. She chuckled. “It’s okay, Doc. I think we’ll survive.”

Once his eyes adjusted to the blackness in a far corner, Osborne could see it wasn’t a bat at all. They had passed a darkened anteroom that lead up into the turret. The huge shape that had startled him was, in fact, a full suit of thirteenth-century armor guarding the darkened stairwell. Looming, yes, flying, no.

“Jeez, Lew, I’m sorry. Scared the living daylights out of me. I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.”

Just as he spoke, he heard a key turn. One of the parlor doors swung open and Alicia Roderick stepped out.

“Oh, Paul! Chief Ferris. I didn’t realize it was three already. Come in, come in. I hope you weren’t waiting long. I wasn’t expecting you to come in that way.”

She backed into a brightly-lit, brand-new and fully-equipped all-white kitchen, drawing them forwards. The only color contradicting the brilliant whiteness of the high-gloss walls and ceramic tiled floor was the stainless steel surface of the five-foot wide commercial stove anchoring the opposite wall of the spacious room. Osborne recognized it as a Viking, the stove Mary Lee had coveted for the lake house kitchen but that they could never afford.

The contrast between the light-filled state-of-the-art kitchen and the musty aura of dankness and decay on the other side of the door was startling. It was as if Meredith had planted her heart in this room with a long-term plan to rebuild The Willows starting from this radiant source of warmth and energy.

An exuberance of overhead lighting flooded the room, washing the color out of Alicia’s face and emphasized a pale redness around her eyes. Dressed in trim-fitting Levi’s and a pale blue cotton blouse with short Peter Pan sleeves exposing her long arms, Alicia had pulled her hair straight back into a silver clasp at the back of her neck. She looked tired, she looked feminine, but more than anything, she looked all business.

“Did you knock? I didn’t hear you.” Her tone was forthright and her dark eyes concerned. It was clear she had been interrupted: her right hand was raised with a ball-point pen pointing to the ceiling, the other held vinyl-sleeved checkbooks. “This place is so darn big—we all use the kitchen entrance. That door has a bell ringer you can hear anywhere in the house.”

Alicia paused, her eyes darting back and forth between them. “What? Chief Ferris?” The alarm grew in her eyes. “Paul? You both look … is something wrong?”

“Yes,” said Lew briskly as she marched past Alicia to a long pine baker’s table in the center of the large kitchen. She set her briefcase down at the end of the table with a flourish that asserted her command of the room and everyone in it. She turned to face Alicia.

Osborne watched Lew as she stood there, authoritative in her crisp, long-sleeved khaki shirt and pants, the official summer police uniform. Even though she was shorter and stockier than Alicia, as she stepped forward with her shoulders back and her head high, she gave the impression of taking up just as much space. Her full breasts pushed politely against the front of the man-tailored shirt. The khaki color of the uniform highlighted the warm ruddiness of her fisherman’s tan and her close-curling mop of dark brown hair gleamed under the lights. She looked arrestingly healthy.

Sexy, thought Osborne with surprise. Sexier, oddly enough, than the willowy, wheat-haired society matron confronting her anxiously.

“Something is very wrong.” Lew’s tone was even. “What is it?”

Osborne stepped back against the wall, thinking it wise to stay out of the line of fire.

“I told you to wait for me out front. Not to enter the house until I arrived.”

“Oh
that,”
said Alicia, emphasizing her second word as if it was a relief to find the problem was such a small thing.

“I’m so
sorry
about that, Chief. I had no idea Meredith had scheduled the cleaning woman today. She was here when I got here. So I came in to be sure nothing you needed would be disturbed. That’s why I’m in here, Chief,” she said waving her right hand with studied nonchalance as if to dismiss the issue. Osborne wondered if she had rehearsed the moment. It all seemed a little too pat.

Lew nodded in silence. She stood there, saying nothing, arms crossed, feet set slightly apart. Osborne watched the two women closely. Just how would Lew play out the line this time? And what would she use to tease, to draw in the crafty Alicia?

“You asked me not to disturb any of Meredith’s things,” said Alicia, nervously filling the silence in the room. “So that’s why I’m here. To be sure nothing is touched.”

“Mrs. Roderick—that’s no excuse. I specifically told you to wait in your car in the driveway. Instead, I hear from my deputy, you let yourself into the house early this morning before he arrived.”

The look in Alicia’s eyes was worried but insistent. “I—he’s wrong. Like I said, the cleaning woman was here already, and I thought this would be the better way to—but you’re right,” she raised her hands in surrender, “I should have waited. I didn’t think. I’m a little upset with all I have to do right now, Chief. The arrangements for Meredith. And I have a business to run—”

Lew looked down at the papers organized in a series of small stacks across the table, papers that Alicia had obviously sorted through.

“Not until I say so, Mrs. Roderick,” said Lew firmly. “May I see those checkbooks you have in your hand?”

It lasted but an instant: a flash of fury across Alicia’s face. Then it was gone, replaced with fatigue and grief. She handed the checkbooks to Lew.

“The top one is for the restaurant,” she said calmly. “I am a co-signer. I needed to see if we had any bills due. That’s what all this is on the table. We were due to open in four weeks, you know. As we speak, ads are running in the Chicago and Milwaukee newspapers. I have to decide if I’ll go ahead with the business.

“The other one is Meredith’s personal checkbook. You’ll find something quite interesting in that one, Chief …” She waited while Lew studied the first checkbook.

“I see a check for fifteen thousand dollars … to George Zolonsky?” Lew asked.

“Yes,” said Alicia, nodding as if there was no question about that check nor the amount, “he’s been tiling the new bathrooms and the restaurant kitchen in the boathouse.”

“I see a check to you for thirty-five thousand …?”

“Last week, yes. I have been purchasing all the supplies, the food and equipment.”

Osborne thought Alicia was talking a little too fast. Perhaps to make up for her major mistake?

“But, Chief, forget the restaurant—take a look at the checks written in her
personal
checkbook. Last page of the register.”

Lew flipped the second checkbook open.

She whistled. “Fifty thousand dollars to Clint Chesnais?”

“Yes!” said Alicia. “Look at that handwriting. I don’t believe my sister wrote that check.”

Just as she spoke, a phone rang in the distance. It had the party line sound to it: a distinctive series of long and short rings. Osborne found himself listening to hear if it was for him. It wasn’t, of course.

“Excuse me,” Alicia disappeared into a small office off the kitchen. They heard her answer, then she called out, “This’ll take a few minutes, Chief. Father Vodicka from St. Mary’s needs to talk to me about the funeral Mass and the burial arrangements. Do you mind?”

“Take your time,” Lew tossed the second checkbook at Osborne.

He looked at the check register. The Chesnais check had been entered in a handwriting quite different from all the others, no doubt about it.

Just then another door to the kitchen swung open. A petite female figure backed towards them. She wore a pair of beige bermudas and a short-sleeved black T-shirt. A vacuum cleaner hose hung around her neck, her left hand carried a sweeper unit and her right hoisted an Electrolux canister. Once through the door, she swung around.

“Cynthia!” said Osborne, surprised.

“Hey, Doc!” the pixie face with its scattering of freckles under the short spiked black hair looked at him in equal surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m … just helping out,” said Osborne, unsure exactly how Lew would want him to describe his role to someone like Cynthia.

Cynthia Lewis was the wife of Bud Lewis, a surgeon at Sacred Heart Hospital and one of Osborne’s long-time deer shack partners. Cynthia and Bud were two of the oddest people in Loon Lake. Though they had lived there for years and raised three children, they were a couple that kept to themselves.

Bud did not fish, making deer season the only time that Osborne saw much of him. Even then, he was a quiet man who hunted only the one or two days necessary to get his buck. Unlike the other hunters, he didn’t linger at the shack to enjoy the camaraderie. Cynthia, Osborne rarely saw now that he was retired. Even when he was her dentist, he only saw her for her annual check-up. Saw her to talk, that was.

Cynthia might be the only woman in Loon Lake who never wanted to be in Mary Lee and Alicia’s clique. The two women had been astounded when she actually turned down their invitation to substitute at one of their bridge parties. They made sure never to invite her again—to bridge or any other social event.

Cynthia lived in her own world: an avid tennis player, a bicycle racer, and a dedicated kayaker, she had carved out a Loon Lake life quite unlike the wives of the other professional men. She was the only wife of a professional man who insisted on working.

“Doc, it is important to me to be self-sufficient,” she told Osborne when he had asked her, during a dental appointment years ago, why she did what she did. “You never know what’s going to happen in life, y’know.”

Further confusing her peers, Cynthia did not choose socially acceptable jobs. At one point, when her children were in high school, she waitressed at an Eagle River supper club. Loon Lake couples shook their heads in wonder: Bud made more than enough money.

One thing really bugged Osborne about Cynthia: her grin. The woman had a huge gap between her two front teeth that should have been corrected years ago. When she smiled, that was all you saw: not the perky black eyes and the quick charm of her smile but the gaping hole. One day Osborne couldn’t stand it any longer. “It’s very easy to fix, Cynthia. Maybe six months or less in braces with a retainer to wear at night. And not expensive.”

She had just shrugged, “Sorry, Doc, the only thing I hate worse than snakes is the dentist’s chair. I will get my teeth cleaned but that’s as far as I go. It doesn’t bother Bud so it doesn’t bother me.”

Otherwise, Cynthia was a striking woman in terrific physical shape. Small and wiry, dark and not a little pugnacious in her manner, she could be mistaken for sixteen rather than forty-six. On more than one occasion, Osborne had driven by her as she bicycled through Loon Lake, thinking he was passing a high school kid, only to look back and see Cynthia pedalling furiously with a driven look on her face.

“What are
you
doing here?” Osborne returned her question in kind.

“Cleaning,” she said brightly. “I started my own cleaning service a year ago.” Suddenly, she peered around the kitchen edgily. She dropped her voice, “Is she gone?”

“You mean Alicia Roderick?” asked Lew. She jerked her thumb toward the back room where Alicia was on the phone.

Cynthia nodded, keeping her voice low. “Yeah. Boy, you guys, bad news about Meredith, huh? That’s who I’ve been working for, y’know. Not that piece of work.” She rolled her eyes towards Alicia’s location.

“Cynthia,” Lew stepped forward to extend her hand, “I’m Lewellyn Ferris, Loon Lake Chief of Police. I just took over from John Sloan.”

“We’ve met,” said Cynthia, shaking her hand. “I waited on you up at the The Timbers a couple times. You and that English guy whatshisname.”

“Ralph,” said Lew.

Osborne didn’t like the sound of this.

“So you two are here about Meredith?” said Cynthia, “I have to say—I was really shocked to hear about it. I liked her. She’s very different from Mrs. Tight-Ass back there,” she
tipped
her head again towards the room where Alicia was still on the phone.

“How long have you been cleaning out here?” asked Lew.

“Several months. Since before she moved in,” said Cynthia. “We’ve been working the last two weeks getting the boathouse kitchen ready to pass the health inspection …”

Cynthia stopped suddenly and swallowed hard. She took a deep breath. “What a shame. This was going to be so neat and now—” Her voice caught and her eyes brimmed with tears.

“Here, Cynthia, let me help you,” Osborne walked over to lift the vacuum cleaner equipment from her shoulders.

“I keep everything in here,” Cynthia wiped her eyes and walked across the room to open a closet. Taking the equipment from Osborne, she put it away, then reached into her pocket for a Kleenex, and blew her nose. She looked at the two of them. Alicia was still on the phone. “Have you seen the house?” she asked.