Dead Boogie (8 page)

“I would give it serious thought after seeing all this medication,” said Osborne.

The first of the two closed doors in the living room opened to a light, airy room, which seemed smaller than it was due to its occupant: a large brass bed. The bed was covered with a cheery yellow, white, red, and spring green patterned quilt that, along with a tumble of colorful pillows, lit up the space. The quilt matched the curtains, which were pulled to let in the western light.

Alongside the bed was a lamp table laden with magazines and a paperback novel. Nearby was an antique dressing table and matching mirror. Bottles of perfume and makeup were set in a row across the top of the dressing table. A handsome cherry dresser stood against one wall.

“Compulsively neat,” said Lew.

“Wait ‘til you see the kitchen,” said Osborne. He took a long, slow look around the room. “Lew, I can’t put my finger on it—but I feel like something is missing. I felt it in the living room, I feel it here …”

“Really?” Lew gave him a thoughtful look.

The door to the second bedroom opened to darkness. The room smelled of mothballs with a hint of what Osborne imagined to be stale sex. Lew flicked the light switch. Brown and tan striped curtains were pulled closed. The curtains matched the bedspread on the queen-sized bed, which had a simple oak headboard. Cabinet-style tables on each side of the bed held lamps with light brown shades. Otherwise, the tables were empty. No books, no magazines, no ashtrays, no coasters.

A tall wooden wardrobe stood against one wall, one door ajar. Except for half a dozen suit hangers, it was empty. Directly across from the bed, resting on a wooden trestle table, was a flat-screen TV with a built-in VCR and DVD player. A chest of drawers was angled into the remaining corner of the room.

“I wonder if she gets to write this off as her home office,” said Lew in a wry tone. She reached for the cell phone that hung from her belt and checked it.

“Do you have service here?” said Osborne.

“Yes, funny they haven’t called yet.” She looked around the room, “I’m hesitant to open drawers until I have that search warrant …”

Osborne walked around the queen-size bed and out of instinct bent to close a half-open door to the cabinet under one of the lamps, only to have a stack of magazines slide onto the floor. The kind of magazines that were masked on the highest racks and sold bagged at the convenience store.

“Doc, wait—let me pick those up,” said Lew, holding out her gloved hands, “In case I need them checked for prints.”

“Wait,” said Osborne as she came around the bed. He put a hand on her arm to stop her as he pointed to the floor. Where the magazines had slid near the bed was a long white box, its length visible just below the bedspread. “Does that qualify as being ‘in plain sight'?”

Lew didn’t answer. She knelt to pull the box forward. It was an unusual size. Osborne guessed it to be about sixteen inches by twelve inches and three inches deep—and made of a heavy-weight cardboard. Across the top of the box, scrawled in black marker and printed in capital letters was the phrase: pictures of people who hurt people.

eleven

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

—Henry David Thoreau

“Pictures.”
Osborne snapped his fingers. Lew looked up from where she was leaning over the unopened box.

“That’s it,” he said. “I
knew
something was bothering me as I walked through these rooms. The woman has nothing on her walls. No pictures, no photos, no paintings—nothing.”

“Are you sure?” said Lew, her eyes questioning. She moved past him into the living room. He followed, watching as she scanned the walls in that room, the front bedroom, and the kitchen. “That
is
odd, Doc. You and I have family photos sitting out all over the place. Too many in my case, that’s for sure.

“Even here,” said Lew, pointing in amazement from where she stood in the middle of the kitchen. “Now when was the last time you saw a refrigerator door that didn’t have something stuck on it with a magnet? Reminders, postcards, the little things that bring back memories …”

“Memories—that’s a good way to put it,” said Osborne.

He had to admit that he was extreme himself when it came to personal photos. Framed pictures of his daughters at every age could be found throughout his house. Heck, he had one whole photo album devoted to pictures of his buddies from the deer shack. Thirty years of overserved men in long underwear and crummy beards? Mary Lee had found that collection disgusting. But he loved to page through—it brought back all the fun.

“Doc, to me memories mean family,” said Lew. “And while this house feels lived in, I don’t get a sense of family.” She grimaced. “Makes me not want to open that box.”

As he followed Lew back to the bedroom where the box was waiting on the bed, he thought of the Peg he had known in the days when she was a patient: the perfect porcelain skin, the coiffed and sprayed blond hair—and her eyes. Those eyes that always looked away so quickly, that refused to hold his gaze. Eyes that would stare down while he spoke. He always felt bad when she left the office: What he had done to frighten her?

“No sense of family.” Osborne repeated the phrase, thrusting his hands into his pockets as he followed her back through the house. “But maybe, given what we know about Peg—maybe that shouldn’t surprise us.”

“Well, let’s see what we have here, Doc,” said Lew, sounding resigned and not a little worried as she sat down on the bed, the box in her lap. “ ‘Pictures of people who hurt people,'” she read the message again. Before lifting the lid, she glanced up at Osborne. “Don’t let me forget to look through the mail on the desk before we leave—see if there’s anything with her handwriting on it. Be nice to know if she’s the one who wrote this.”

The box was packed with loose photos. Dozens and dozens, color, black and white, all different sizes—some were tiny, so old that their edges were pinked and curling. Lew gave the box a quick shake that exposed a .38-caliber revolver in a worn holster and a badge. “Thought it seemed a little heavy on one end.”

She set the gun and the badge on the table beside the bed. “That’s probably her husband’s gun and police badge,” said Lew. “I never met the man but I sure heard about him: Frank McNulty, ex-cop, convicted felon.”

“But a nice enough guy,” said Osborne. “Good fisherman. Muskie—he loved to fish muskie.”

Almost everyone in Osborne’s circle of friends knew Frank. And why Peg Garmin never took her husband’s name, though they had arrived in Loon Lake twenty years earlier as a married couple. Multiple versions had been told of the escapades that drove them north. But whatever story was heard, listeners would agree that it was a wise decision of Peg’s to remain Garmin, not McNulty.

He had been a street cop and she was a prostitute when they met in Chicago. Once Peg married Frank, she left the business, but that didn’t make Frank a hero. He was a bagman for the mob. And took the fall for his bosses. He did time in Marion, never ratted, and when he got out, he got paid. So he and Peg drove north to Loon Lake, where they put all that money down on a small resort on Scattering Rice Lake.

They had a knack for the resort business. They hired a chef who could grill a terrific New York strip while the couple shared the bartending. At first people came out of curiosity, only to find a husband and wife whose notoriety was hard to believe given their open, friendly demeanors. Frank was an encyclopedia when it came to fishing muskie. Peg had a natural sweetness that made her a good listener—not to mention being easy on the eyes.

Within two years, the bar and the supper club were thriving. Osborne and his fishing buddies were among many of the locals who got in the habit of stopping by Deer Haven for a “Leinie” or two or three after a good night’s fishing. And nearly every time he stopped in, Osborne would give a wave down the bar to another couple of regulars: Herb and Helen Pradt—Ray’s parents.

One day, Frank dropped dead. He was only forty-seven. Peg had to sell the resort, and soon after she was selling herself. The first few years after Frank’s death, she went kind of crazy. The town traded stories of angry wives storming into her apartment, of binge drinking, of local merchants’ bills going unpaid. Even Osborne had to turn her account over to a collection agency.

But then she settled down. She gave up the constant hustling and appeared to be happy with one well-to-do client. Well, everyone knew there might be another guy every now and then—but she seemed happy with Harold.

Osborne was only acquainted with the man. Harold Westbrook had retired from a medical practice in Milwaukee, where he had been an orthopedic surgeon. His wife of many years passed away shortly after they moved into a handsome brick home in Loon Lake, which was where she had grown up. To everyone’s surprise, Harold chose to stay in town. But they had no children and he loved to fly-fish.

He was a tall man, surprisingly agile for his years and quite good-looking with craggy features under a thatch of stark white hair. Mary Lee had often commented to Osborne that she hoped he would look as good as Harold as he aged. Whenever she said that, Osborne resisted giving her a dim eye. What would be the benefit? She hadn’t shared a bedroom with him for twenty years. Was she planning to start in their seventies?

But it was the baby blue convertible parked for hours in front of his house that made Harold a legend. The early-morning coffee crowd at McDonald’s might snicker when Peg and Harold’s names were mentioned in tandem—but it was only out of envy. More than one guy mulling over his black coffee would look a little wistful, as if he wouldn’t mind having a reputation for bad behavior at the age of eighty.

Lew tipped the remaining contents of the box onto the bedspread. At first glance, the photos were typical of family albums: individuals posing for the camera, family gatherings, first communions, weddings. Innocent photos.

“Look at this,” said Lew, holding out a black-and-white print of a pudgy little girl in a pouf of a white tulle dress that was tied high on her chest with a silk bow.

The baby ballerina was smiling for the camera, her arms reaching up. One hand held a long stick with a tulle pompom trailing a silk ribbon on one end; the fingers of her other hand were spread wide in a happy wave. She had short, straight hair that was brushed back and secured to the top of her head with another white bow. The child was barefoot—caught on her tiptoes in an exuberant leap.

“Now that is one cute kid,” said Lew. She turned the photo over and read the back: “Margaret at age three.”

“That has to be Peg,” said Osborne. He handed the photo back to Lew, who was shuffling through the rest of the photos. She reached for a square, buff-colored envelope with four words scrawled across it:
Peg O’My Heart.

The envelope was unsealed. It contained one black-and-white photo. Lew groaned as she held it so Osborne could see it, too. He looked—then looked away. It was as if a spider, black and horrid, had crawled out from the envelope.

“Taken by a medical examiner or a coroner,” said Lew. “Documenting the assault.”

“Do you think it’s the same child?” Osborne knew the answer before he asked.

Lew read notations jotted on the back of the picture. “She’s identified as Mary Margaret Garmin. Age seven. Offender unknown. Found by her mother in the family pool house.”

“Age seven,” said Osborne, shaking his head. “Lew, the rage I have for people who do this—”

“Doc, it is the worst part of my job. Believe me.” She gave a deep sigh as she slipped the photo back into the envelope. “Could explain a few things, I suppose,” said Lew. “Not that this has anything to do with her death.”

“I’d like to know who gave her the picture—and who wrote those words. That’s nasty.”

“And
when
she got it,” said Lew. “That envelope was right on top when I opened the box—before I tipped everything out.”

“Something else, Lew,” said Osborne. “I spotted the box because it was so close to the edge of the bed—as if Peg might have been interrupted while shoving it back under so it wasn’t hidden all the way.”

“Or someone else was interrupted while trying to hide it.”

twelve

If a man is truly blessed, he returns home from fishing to be greeted by the best catch of his life.

—An unknown wife, somewhere

“Wait—I
recognize the name on that return address,” said Osborne, laying his hand over Lew’s as she fanned the assortment of envelopes across the top of the desk. Most of the letters that had been stuffed into the brass container appeared to be bills. “Dr. Gerald Rasmussen. He’s an oral surgeon. We’ve met.”

As he scanned the letter, Lew sorted through the remaining pieces of mail.

“Well, this is interesting,” said Osborne. “Looks like Gerry Rasmussen was giving her a second opinion on the results of some surgery … and he mentions his fee for appearing as an expert witness in a trial … apparently she was considering a lawsuit of some kind.”

“Against her plastic surgeon, perhaps?” said Lew.

“Could be. Rasmussen does more than oral surgery—he’s also a maxillofacial guy. Excellent reputation. If you’d like, I’ll give him a call in the morning, see what this is all about?”

“Thank you, Doc, that would be very helpful. I was hoping you would have the time to sit down with Dr. Westbrook, too. One on one. He might open up better if I’m not there. But do you have the time?”

“I do, but speaking of time, Lew—you have got to take some time off. I’ll be happy to do whatever you need so long as the minute this weather cools down, we can get in some time in the water. I know July fishing isn’t the best—but you need a break.”

“I wish,” said Lew, fatigue washing over her face. “I have to admit I’m feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. Oh, say … what’s this?” She pulled a piece of notebook paper, edges ripped, from a small white envelope. “This was tucked way in the back behind some credit card offers.” She gave it a quick read then handed it to Osborne.