Dead Tease

by Victoria Houston

  “Yep. Ray gave me directions to where he wants us to put in. I haven’t been there before. You?”

  “Nope. Doc, I’ve only kayaked once in my life. Don’t let me do anything stupid like tip over.”

  “That makes two of us. Can’t be that difficult—my grandchildren kayak all the time. They prefer kayaks over canoes.”

  Twenty minutes later and north of town, Osborne drove down a rock-strewn country road, made two left turns, and pulled into a clearing behind Ray’s pickup. Bruce and Ray had already unloaded the four kayaks, which were red, yellow, blue, and green.

  “These are twelve-foot recreational kayaks,” said Ray, “nice and stable. See the bungees on the sides? They’re rigged to hold your rods and plenty of space in the interior for tackle.”

  “Will I need this?” asked Lew, holding up a long, black MIL-TEC bag with a roll top designed to keep gear and belongings from getting soaked in the event of a swamping.

  “Chief, this isn’t Niagara Falls. You can throw everything you need onto the floor of your kayak. Do not worry about tipping over. I put our shore lunch in a plastic bag but that’s all.”

  Bruce ran up from the landing where he had left two of the kayaks ready to go: half in the water, half on shore. He watched as Lew assembled her fly rod and slipped on the reel. “That’s an interesting reel,” he said. “Don’t think I’ve seen one of those before. That isn’t a Bogdan trout reel by chance?”

  “It is,” said Lew with a proud grin. “Gift from my friend, here.” She yanked a thumb toward Osborne.

  “Doc?” Bruce looked astonished. “Those can cost two thousand bucks or more!”

  “I found it at an estate sale of an old friend of mine who collected fly rods and reels,” said Osborne. “Didn’t pay that much.” He didn’t disclose that he had paid $500: a cheap price to pay for the wonder on Lew’s face when she had unwrapped her birthday gift.

  “May I see?” asked Bruce. Lew handed over her fly rod and Bruce ran admiring eyes over the reel. “I hear they only make a hundred of these a year. Is it worth the money?”

  “It is in my book,” said Lew. “You pay for the engineering—the drag is exquisite. Smooth, strong. Since I’ve been using this reel, I’ve never had my fly line break. I don’t know that I catch more fish with this reel but I sure as heck land more.”

  “Can I try it later?” asked Bruce.

  “Sure.”

  “So, Chief, you nymph fishing today?” Bruce turned a critical eye on the water. “I don’t see a hatch of any kind.”

  “Dry flies for me,” said Lew, patting the box of trout flies she had tucked into her shirt pocket.

  “Oh, really. What do you see?”

  “Nothing, Bruce. I just like dry fly fishing—it’s prettier.”

  “That’s not very scientific,” said Bruce, taken aback.

  “No, it’s not,” said Lew with a shrug. “But it’s what I feel like today.”

  While they spoke, Osborne had been perusing the water. The river was narrow near the landing with a slight current: more placid than he had been expecting, which was a relief. He knew this river was popular among kayakers but he wasn’t familiar with it.

  Osborne rarely fished rivers. Their depths varied too much, and he detested the dead timbers submerged since the logging era and lurking just deep enough to sabotage the prop on your outboard. Rivers gave him the creeps.

  “Ready, everyone? Man your boats.” Ray’s excitement was so infectious even Lew slipped into her kayak with enthusiasm, the worry that had been badgering her over the last few days gone for the moment.

  “Doc? Need a hand?” Ray waded into the water to hold Osborne’s kayak steady as he got seated. “Everyone, listen up—I got your fishing rods right where you can reach ’em easy.”

  “How far do we go before we stop to cast a few?” asked Lew.

  “Not sure. I haven’t been here before,” said Ray. “A buddy told me about this river—said it’s got northern pike, steelhead trout—nice big fish. I figure we go down twenty minutes or so and see where we’re at. Sound good?”

  Nothing about it sounded good to Osborne: What if he hooked a huge northern? How the hell do you land a fish that big from a one-man kayak that puts you nose to nose with a rack of evil teeth? He threw a questioning look at Lew but she was busy using her paddle to push away from the shoreline.

  “Whoopee!” shouted Bruce as he shoved off.

  Lew and Osborne followed with Ray bringing up the rear.

  The August morning was lovely, warm and clear. As the kayaks moved soundlessly with the current, Osborne began to rethink his prejudice against rivers: Oh, man, this silence is music. An eagle circled overhead and a kingfisher darted from bush to bush. A Great Blue Heron launched from the riverbank with a swoop of its magnificent wings.

  As Lew glided by, she said, “Hard to find fault with the world on a day like this.”

  “I knew you’d like it, kiddo,” said Osborne. “Aren’t you happy I twisted your arm?” She smiled and nodded.

  They rounded a bend and heard a soft rumbling in the distance. The sound grew louder and Osborne wondered if they were hearing a sawmill or some other machinery used by loggers.

  Even as he speculated, he felt the current grab the kayak, pulling it faster, faster. Twenty yards in front of him, he saw the bow of Lew’s kayak go up, up, and up. Suddenly she was over and out of the boat. Before he could register that they had hit rapids, his kayak was tipped sideways and out he flew into the river.

  The water could not have been more than a foot and a half deep, but the bottom was rocky and the current pounding. Osborne grabbed for the back end of his kayak, trying to keep his shoulders and head out of the water. His legs were useless as the current battered them against the rocks. Fear rose: was he going to break his legs?

  Lew was still ahead of him, clutching her kayak and, somehow, managing to drift off to the left toward the riverbank. Osborne knew if he could get there, too, he could at least get his feet under him. Fighting to see, he got his head above the frothing water long enough to see Ray looking down from his kayak with worry as he was swept by, “Are you okay, Doc?”

  “How the hell should I know?” said Osborne, adding a string of words that he rarely used but that fit the occasion. As he cleared the rapids, he was able to kick and paddle off toward the shoreline just beyond where Lew had managed to get her footing.

  “Oh, no, Doc—grab my rod,” she cried as her fly rod floated by him. A sweatshirt followed, but Osborne opted to scramble for the fly rod. As he did so, his glasses case went floating by. By some stroke of luck, he was able to grab that, too.

  Crawling on his hands and knees, Osborne managed to get out of the water, hauling his kayak behind him. He threw himself on the sand near Lew who was sitting, knees akimbo, breathing hard. “I am so bruised,” she said, “I’ll bet you my legs will be purple tonight.”

  “I’m glad we’re alive,” said Osborne. “You can drown out there.”

  “Tell me,” said Lew. “Ray should have told us about the rapids. Hey, here comes the guilty party.”

  “You two did everything all wrong,” said Ray walking up river and pulling his kayak behind him. “When you fall out of a boat like that, don’t fight the rapids. Rely on your life vest and float feet out in front—use your feet to push off the rocks.”

  “Use your head and shut up,” said Osborne. “You almost killed us. Why didn’t you tell us about the rapids?”

  “Ray Pradt, I bet you anything those are Class Four rapids,” said Lew. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I didn’t know. Believe me, I didn’t know.”

  Ray was so stricken, Osborne took a deep breath and did his best to calm down.

  “Do we have any idea where we are?” asked Lew. “My cell phone drowned. Can’t use that to call for help.”

  “Ray, I think we’ve had our excitement. I’m ready to call it a day,” said Osborne.

  “Me, too,” said Lew. “I need ba
ndages.” She offered up her left leg with a scrape along the shin.

  Ray heaved his kayak onto the shore, reached into it for a small hand pump, and started to pump the water from Osborne’s kayak. “If I can get us all going again, I know that George Stocker’s got a place on the river. Down a ways still but we can beach there, borrow a vehicle, and I’ll go get the truck so we can load up the kayaks. Or did you want to fish?”

  The glares from Osborne and Lew answered his question.

  “I’m soaked and I’m cold and I want dry clothes,” said Lew. “Where’s Bruce?”

  “Oh, he’s okay. After we saw you two go over, we hugged the far right side of the falls and made it fine. He’s waiting for us down around the bend.”

  “Not fair,” said Lew.

  When Ray had got enough water pumped from each kayak so that they could tip the rest out, Osborne and Lew were able to climb back into their boats. When they reached Bruce, they found he had managed to grab Lew’s sweatshirt as it floated by: all was not lost.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “For the third time, I demand to see my child,” said Gladys Daniels, grinding out her words.

  “Mrs. Daniels, I really, really don’t think that is a good idea,” said the director of the funeral parlor. “Your daughter’s remains have been prepared with care for the crematorium. To view the departed now would only cause you more emotional distress. Please, let me help you plan the memorial—”

  “Damn you, I insist,” said Gladys, pounding her fist on his desk. “Let me be clear, young man, I am not leaving this building until I have seen my daughter.” Her voice rose in near hysteria.

  “All right, all right.” The funeral director raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll alert the staff.”

  Gladys drove straight home, marched into the big house and straight into the dining room, where she pulled open the top drawer in the dining room buffet. She reached under the linen place mats for the gun case. She loaded the revolver and tucked it into her purse.

  She would wait until dark. Just like that fat wife had waited in the shadows for Cynthia.

  “Don’t you try to tell me Cynthia had an ‘accident’ in the boathouse,” Gladys muttered out loud. “I know exactly what happened. Jim must have called just like he used to and invited her for an evening on his boat.”

  A sad smile crossed Gladys’s face as she recalled how happy Cynthia had been after the first time she had spent an evening with Jim McNeil on his boat. That was what had been so special between Gladys and Cynthia: mother and child told each other everything.

  When it came to Jim McNeil, Cynthia shared every detail. That’s when Gladys knew deep in her heart that those two were meant for each other. You don’t have a love affair as intense as theirs and not be meant to spend your lives together.

  That slimy little Jennifer had hit on him, clouding his judgment—as it would any healthy male. But not for long. Gladys had seen to that.

  Flashing the money had made it easy for her to convince young Alvin to take care of the little bitch. Maybe it was the drugs he was taking, but he was none too bright, that dummy. Now, with him long gone, who would ever know?

  And just as she had taken care of Alvin, she would see to the fat wife, too. My child is dead and it is all her fault, all her fault, all her fault….

  All she had to do now was get the bitch out of her house.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Doc and Lew scrambled up the riverbank behind Ray and Bruce, grabbing tag alder branches for support. At the crest of the steep bank, they found themselves staring down into a ravine someone was using as a dump. Discarded appliances, old doors, paint cans, bedsprings, broken-down farm equipment, rusted-out cars, and rolls of discarded chicken wire littered the pit below.

  “Where on earth are we?” asked Lew. “Whew! This place smells of dead animals.”

  “This is ol’ George Stocker’s place,” said Ray. “He cuts wood, hauls trash—whatever you’ll pay him for.”

  “He hauls trash, all right,” said Lew. “He’s in violation of county regs on this crap. Look, there’s a refrigerator with the door still on.” Lew pointed to a large, white upright appliance that had been dumped on its side near the edge of the pit. “That’s against the law. Some little kid could crawl in and die.”

  “Chief,” said Ray, “can we go easy on old George? He can’t afford fines. Old man has a hard enough time making ends meet to buy food. C’mon, let’s see if he’s home and has a vehicle I can borrow.”

  The four of them picked their way along the edge of the ravine. Beyond the pit was a sandy, weedy trail, which wound around a small bog green with algae and along two rows of stacked firewood.

  On the other side of the firewood, Osborne saw a patchwork hovel of boards and windows: someone’s excuse for living quarters. An ancient Ford pickup was parked near a dilapidated shed whose roof had caved in. A beat-up van that had once belonged to a plumber, his name painted over with a couple swipes of white paint, was parked in front of the house.

  Knocking at the front door, Ray hollered, “George? You home, you razzbonya?”

  Yes, George was home. “Ray Pradt? What the hell? What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

  The man who opened the door had a face like Santa Claus: round and sunburn red with bleary eyes visible above a dirty gray beard that ballooned onto his chest. Filthy overalls over a T-shirt with its sleeves ripped off completed the picture. Osborne figured George Stocker weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds and would have found a teeth cleaning to be a terrifying experience.

  “My friends and I had a problem on those river rapids back a ways,” said Ray. He gestured toward Lew and Osborne who were so wet their clothes clung to them. “I need to get them back to their vehicles parked up at the public landing. Got time to give me a ride?”

  “Yep, I can do that,” said George, hawking a wad of tobacco off to one side. “Got a little something to cover my gas?”

  “Five bucks do it?” asked Ray.

  “Umm, you betcha.”

  “Mr. Stocker,” said Lew, stepping forward, “I’m Chief Ferris with the Loon Lake Police Department and I don’t like what I see on your back forty there. Looks to me like you got some toxic chemicals back there. You got a permit for all that dumping?”

  The look George gave her answered that question. “Nope. Never needed one. Been hauling for folks ’round here for years. Ain’t nobody said nothin’ to me never.”

  “Maybe so, but the county maintains a landfill for that specific purpose—and you are dumping too close to the river to boot.”

  “Landfill costs money. Some folks can’t pay.” He spat again. Osborne worried Ray’s ride was about to disappear. They were at least ten miles from where they had put in. He put an arm across Lew’s shoulders and whispered, “Take it easy.” She shrugged his arm off.

  “Mr. Stocker, are you married?” Lew asked.

  “Yep, but my wife passed last year.”

  “Do you have grandchildren?”

  “Yep. Got six of ’em.”

  “Do they visit you here?”

  “Sure. Most weekends, why? I watch ’em times my daughter works at Wal-Mart.”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” said Lew. “If you will take the door off that refrigerator you got sitting on the edge of the dump, I’ll not bug you about the rest of the trash right away. I’ll give you a year to get the hazards cleaned up.”

  “Great idea,” said Ray, “George, I’ll help. I got a buddy with a backhoe. Hell, we’ll just bury everything.”

  “Hold on, Ray,” said Lew. “Talk to me before you do that.”

  “Absolutely,” said Ray. “Me and George—we’ll do up a plan. Sound good to you, George?”

  George appeared to give a rat’s ass. “C’mon, Pradt,” he said, “I’ll give you a lift in my van. The rest of you wanna pile in the back?”

  “No thanks, we’ll wait here,” said Osborne. “Ray, why don’t you get my car? Key
s are behind the rear license plate. That way we can all drive back, then you and Bruce come back here for the kayaks. Does that work?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Lew. “George, you got tools close by? While you and Ray get the car, we’ll take care of getting the door off that appliance down there.”

  George shrugged and said, “Ain’t a refrigerator, it’s a freezer. Tools in the back of my truck over there. You might wanna take a hammer or somethin’—the old lady padlocked the damn thing. Don’t hurt yourselves.”

  After they drove off, Lew turned to Bruce and Osborne. “Give me a hand with that freezer. You know damn well that once we leave here, the old man won’t take care of it. Knowing he has little kids running around this place—I’ll have nightmares if we leave that door on.”

  Two blows of the hammer and Bruce had the padlock popped off the freezer door. What remained of Alvin Marski greeted them with a blast of bad air. The combination of an unplugged freezer and the hot August sun had done its damage. Only the blue jeans and the blue Oxford shirt were identifiable. Even Bruce had to back off, way off.

  On the shelf above Alvin was a plastic bag holding a decomposing critter nestled in red fur. The bag was labeled “P. Osborne” in black marker. It was the fox that Osborne had given to Marv Daniels for mounting shortly before Marv’s death years ago.

  “Too bad Dr. Cynthia Daniels isn’t around to answer a few questions,” said Lew later that afternoon. Bruce had stayed with the freezer and the body while she and Osborne had raced to town to change clothes, then hurried back to the site just as an ambulance arrived for the body along with a tow truck that could move the freezer.

  “I would like to know how and why Alvin Marski ended up in her mother’s freezer,” said Lew.

  “If I remember right,” said Osborne, “that’s the freezer Marv used for his taxidermy business. He used it to store carcasses until he had time to work on them. I remember him telling me how hard it was to find one large enough to hold a bear.”