“It’s a man’s voice.” Osborne could see the uncertainty in Tim’s face. He wasn’t sure yet that Osborne was not the perpetrator. Osborne could understand that. One of his best friends in college had turned out to be a peeping torn, had terrified neighborhoods for months before he was found out. Who was to say a dentist couldn’t be off-kilter.
“Any call this morning?” asked Osborne.
“No, we waited until just before I walked over here—nothing today.”
“Tim, let me go upstairs and think about this. Maybe I’m forgetting something—”
“I’d like to go up with you and look around if I may.”
Osborne balked at that. What would his patients think?
“I know, I know.” Tim raised a hand. “I’ll just say we’ve got a line out of whack. But I would like to check this out. I’m afraid it’s either me or someone from the police department—”
“Fine,” said Osborne, giving up.
They were nearing the top of the dark, narrow stairway that opened into a hall at the end of which were Osborne’s offices, when the door at the bottom of the stairs opened. The light, lovely eyes of seventeen-year-old Catherine Plyer looked up at them.
“Sorry I’m late, Dr. Osborne,” she said, bounding cheerfully up the stairs. Osborne decided not to say anything yet; he didn’t want to frighten her.
While Tim walked through the examining rooms and the hallway that made up Osborne’s dental office, Osborne hung up his sport coat, pulled on his light blue gown, then stepped into the bathroom to scrub.
He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like he always did: wavy jet-black hair, black-brown eyes, and a deep tan from the sun reflecting off the waters he fished at least four to five times a week. He might be forty but he prided himself on looking much younger thanks to the high forehead and strong cheekbones that he owed to his Meteis grandmother. He knew he was a tall, good-looking man. What he didn’t know was if he was losing his marbles. How could someone be making obscene phone calls from his sacred space without his knowing?
Just then it dawned on him. “Tim!”
He stepped into the hall and motioned to Tim to follow him into the back room. Once there, he closed the door and indicated with his hand that they should keep their voices low. The room where they were standing was a combination study-supply room. Quite small, all it held was an easy chair that faced two windows four feet away, a coat rack to the right of the chair where Osborne hung his sport coat, winter coat, and an extra dental gown. The rest of the space was given over to shelving on which he kept a selection of dental supplies.
“I forgot about this,” said Osborne, pointing to a door at the back of the room. He opened it and flipped a light switch. This was a storeroom. Very tidy with more supplies neatly stacked on shelving in front and to the right of them as they peered in. To the left was another door.
“I keep this locked,” said Osborne. “It opens into the McKenzie law firm’s front office. When I moved in here, their offices and mine had been used by a title company. They were split to make room for us.”
“So someone from the law firm could enter through here?” said Tim.
“If they had a key.”
“Doc, do you have a key?”
“Yes, right here.” Osborne reached into his pocket for the ring with his three office keys. “Downstairs front door, my office door, this door.” Osborne noticed Tim’s use of the more familiar “Doc.” He felt a glimmer of relief.
“Does that young woman at the front desk have copies of all three?”
“No, not the key for this door. No reason for her to.”
“Okay—let’s go next door,” said Tim.
Fifteen minutes later, after a brief talk with a shocked Harry McKenzie, Tim and Osborne left his office. Harry, who was just back from a two-week fishing trip to Canada, had an alibi so his involvement was out of the question. But he was quite shaken at the thought that one of his two partners—or their paralegal—might be up to no good. Osborne felt sorry for him but he was enormously relieved to see the suspicion shifted.
Still, someone was invading his office and, worse, terrorizing his patients.
Between the three of them, they decided on a plan. Now it was Harry’s wish to avoid any more police involvement than was absolutely necessary. Assuming the perpetrator was someone in his firm, he would hope to negotiate a warning rather than an arrest. After a quick call from Tim to the police officer handling the complaints, they had an approval to proceed.
At six-thirty the next morning, Tim and Osborne arrived at Harry’s office. He was waiting. No one else had arrived yet. A quick glance down the hall showed that Osborne’s office was dark, too.
Entering the storeroom through the door in Harry’s reception area, Tim and Osborne opened the door that led to Osborne’s study. The office was dark and silent. They decided to hide in the bathroom. Osborne checked his watch: six-fifty.
At seven thirty-five, they heard a key turn in a lock. It was the front door to Osborne’s office. The door opened, closed. Footsteps. Tim and Osborne looked at each other. What if Catherine was early? Would she need to use the bathroom? They would scare her to death. The two men waited anxiously but the footsteps stopped at the front desk.
Tim cracked the bathroom door slightly. Papers rustled, the wheels on the receptionist’s chair squeaked. Silence. Then the sound of a rotary phone dialing.
A man’s voice, low, insulting, obscene. Tim edged toward the bathroom door. They knew whoever it was could make that call and leave before Catherine arrived. Neither Tim nor Osborne intended for that to happen.
Just as they were ready to throw open the door, the man’s voice changed its low, intimate, insidious mutter. It took on a shrill, angry tone as it shouted, “Lady, this isn’t your husband! This is an obscene phone call.” And the phone was slammed down hard.
Tim bolted for the hallway, followed by Osborne.
The caller stood over the desk, hand still resting on the phone. Tall, angry, and dressed in a short white nurse’s uniform. It was Catherine. Or as Osborne would always remember it—the other Catherine.
Tim stepped back as Osborne moved forward. “Catherine … you—?”
She turned and stared. Her eyes were dark, burning. Then she started to walk toward him, her head high and thrust forward like the rabid raccoon that had stalked him in his yard that spring. Fear galvanized Osborne. He backed away.
“Out, get out,” he managed hoarsely. “Get the hell out of my office.”
Catherine laughed. A harsh, deep laugh. Without taking her eyes off Osborne, she reached down for her purse and swung it over her shoulder. Then, in a swift move, she grabbed the phone and threw it at them. Osborne ducked. By the time he looked up, she was gone.
Catherine Plyer was the daughter of a prominent professional man. No one wanted to make an issue of the situation, certainly not the police. As far as Osborne, Tim, and Harry McKenzie ever knew, she wasn’t even warned. But the phone calls stopped.
“Hmm,” was all Lew said when he’d finished. “Hmm.” She drove in silence for about a minute. “You must have run into her after that—what happened then?”
“I didn’t, actually. The few occasions that I might have seen her, like at the grocery store, I managed to avoid her. The family wasn’t Catholic so it’s not like I would have seen her at church. Anyway, she left town not too long after that.”
“That must be why I never knew her,” said Lew. “Because I knew those brothers. Dickie’s living back up here, y’know. He was arrested in Vilas County last year for dealing coke, and I had him overnight in the Loon Lake jail when Vilas County’s facility was undergoing some renovations. His lawyer got him out on a technicality of some sort. Bruce Johnson, the new sheriff up there, didn’t think old Dickie was the brightest bear in the woods. He was trying to figure out who was giving orders. I wonder if it’s the big sister?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her. I wouldn’t put anything past that
woman. If Parker Steadman shows up, you should ask him about her, Lew.”
“How long were they married?”
“Don’t know. And what I do know was told to me by Mary Lee so I’m sure the details were more than a little twisted. But keep in mind Catherine, as I said earlier, was a very pretty young woman in those days, very attractive.”
What Osborne didn’t say was that the girl was too attractive. There had been moments in the office when he had had to remind himself that she was seventeen and he was a married man, a father. He had never known, before or since, a woman who could ooze sex like the young Catherine Plyer.
“It was that same summer of my run-in with her that she started dating Parker Steadman and got pregnant. They were married pretty soon after that and moved to Minneapolis, if I remember right. Maybe it was Chicago … anyway, wherever it was, he had a job in the family business.
“The next thing we heard was the baby was born and the couple split. Only they didn’t just split—this is Mary Lee’s version now—Catherine assaulted Parker. His family was so horrified, they paid her off. They paid her to file for divorce. We heard it was a lot of money, which she took—and disappeared.”
“Until today.”
“Until today.”
“What do you mean she assaulted him? Like what—beat him up?”
Osborne looked over at Lew. “She shot at him. With a deer rifle. Obviously missed, but the story was she tried to kill him. But see, this was all rumor. Who knows if that’s what really happened. I mean, there aren’t that many women who can handle a deer rifle.”
“Unless you grow up hunting with your brothers. And those two boys were pretty proficient with firearms, I can tell you that. They were a dangerous duo, Patty Boy and Dickie, people you don’t want to tangle with if you don’t have to.
“Hey—enough of that. Here we are.”
Lew slowed the truck. At a small sign reading birch lake, she turned right. As Nellie bounced along, Osborne stole glances at Lew’s face. He really enjoyed watching her demeanor change as they neared a fishing spot. It happened every time: The worry lines dropped away, her brow lightened, fatigue disappeared, and by the time she parked, she was grinning like a kid.
Osborne knew the feeling well—happened to him, too: sixty-something going on sixteen.
eight
“Modern fishing is as complicated as flying a B-58 … several years of preliminary library and desk work are essential just to be able to buy equipment without humiliation.”
—Russell Baker
Lew pulled the truck into a small clearing. Out his window, Osborne could see tire marks indicating other vehicles had been there recently, but no one was around.
Holding her door open, Lew paused for a moment to look over at Osborne. “Hey,” she said with a questioning lift of her eyebrows, “ready to go play with some fish?” She shook a finger at him. “Now just you remember Birch Lake is a secret—don’t you ever tell a soul about this place.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Hopping down and out of the truck, Lew gave a quick look in every direction, stuck both her arms straight out, and waited. She had rolled up the sleeves of her khaki fishing shirt, so plenty of bare skin was exposed. But no insects took the bait.
“So far so good,” she said after a moment. “Last time I was here, the mosquitoes dive-bombed us. Better bring your Deet just in case, Doc.”
Walking to the back of the truck, Lew yanked down the tailgate and reached inside. Osborne hurried back to help. “First we unload this stuff.” She pointed to his gear bag and the little cardboard box. “You don’t wear a fishing vest in a float tube so what you’ll need on the water, you want to pack into your tube.”
“Really?” That worried Osborne. It had taken him hours to pack the damn vest. Hours that had convinced him that fly-fishing vests were a diabolical plot orchestrated by the same miscreants who designed 3,000-piece jigsaw puzzles. The goal was the same: torture. The only difference was the weapon of choice: pockets. Pockets of all sizes—small, large, horizontal, vertical, square, oblong, tubular, zippered, Velcroed, buttoned, zippered and Velcroed.
Add to that the fact that each pocket was destined for some particular tool, line, or other mysterious fly-fishing gadget. Of course there were no directions; you had to figure that out yourself. You could go mad managing the pockets on your fishing vest. Not to mention the strange hunks of fake sheepskin stuck here and there.
Osborne had worked slowly, carefully, packing and repacking until his vest looked not only like he knew what he was doing but, more important, so he could remember where the damn stuff was.
Now he had to take it apart and do it all over again? Jeez Louise. Maybe Ray was right when he needled, “Listen, Doc, stick with bait fishing. All ya need is a rod in one hand, tackle box in the other, doncha know.” He had a point there. After all, when you open a tackle box, you can see every lure lined up neatly under clear plastic—they aren’t hidden behind zippers, flaps, and goddam Velero barricades for God’s sake.
While Osborne agonized, Lew bustled. Her anxiety over Roger’s ability to monitor the drugged-out girl had given way to cheery enthusiasm. “Take just what you need, Doc, and we’ll stick everything else back in the truck. Oh, and we have to pack in a mile—so keep it light.”
“Got it,” said Osborne, still without a clue. Following the first set of orders, he moved his gear bag, box, and rod case from the truck down onto the grass. Lew did the same, setting her stuff off to the other side of the truck. Then she pulled out the two float tubes and shoved a red one at Osborne.
It looked like a monster doughnut, only it had a seat instead of a hole in the middle. Shallow, zippered pockets ran up both arms. He was happy to see a deeper pocket running across the back. The mesh seat with its straps resembled a child’s high chair. Osborne shrugged. He couldn’t imagine how this was going to work, but plenty of men he knew did it so it couldn’t be rocket science. Behind him, Lew’s hands flew as she tucked what she needed quickly, expertly, into the zippered sections dotting her tube.
Feeling lost and late and knowing he was going to hold up the show yet again, Osborne decided to get at least one thing accomplished. Turning his back so Lew couldn’t see what he was doing, he opened the cardboard box. Thank God for Ziplocs and his own foresight. Quickly, he shoved the three bags, which included some cutlery and paper plates, into the large pocket across the back of the tube, then grabbed the tablecloth and napkins and pushed them in on top. He was just pulling the zipper shut when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“What are you doing? What’s that?”
“Oh, nothing.” Did she see the tail end of the tablecloth? “Extra shirt in case I get wet.”
“You won’t get wet,” she said in a tone that made him feel like a numbskull. “And who cares if you do? It’s sixty-five degrees—you’re not gonna freeze to death. And you don’t want to carry any more weight than you have to…. ”
“Okay.” Ignoring the criticism, Osborne reached into a pocket on his fishing vest to grab his box of trout flies. He studied the contents. Irv Metternich, a good friend and former patient who had fly-fished for years, had just given him two Deer Hair Hoppers, size twelves, that he had tied himself—and a larger Grizzly King. Osborne wanted to try those just for friendship’s sake. Earlier, he had also tucked in two size fourteen stone flies and his favorite, a size twelve Adams.
Lew snorted whenever she came across a fly fisherman with boxes and boxes of trout flies stashed in his vest pockets—”You never need more than five at a time if you have any idea what you’re doing.” Osborne was getting better at listening to what other fly fishermen were saying, which clued him into the current hatches at least. Today he thought he had good excuses for four of his six selections.
“Oh, gosh no,” said Lew, leaning over to peer into his box. “Those won’t work, Doc. We’re supposed to have a hex hatch—but I don’t know if they’ll be emergers, duns, or spinners. Listen, p
ut those away. I’m going to give you the right flies tonight after I see what the hatch is. We might have to nymph with sinking lines and I know you don’t have any. You just get your sunglasses, your rod, and your waders. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Oh, great, thought Osborne, a hex hatch. He struggled to remember what the hell kind of mayfly that was. He knew he should be able to conjure an instant image to which he could match a trout fly but it totally escaped him at the moment. Sometimes he wondered if he would ever master the basics of this sport.
“Look, Doc,” said Lew, her voice softening at the confusion on his face. “You haven’t float-fished before so take it easy. Here”—she shoved a pair of rubber flippers at him—”these are for you—boot fins.”
Ten long minutes later, Osborne had managed to locate and pack his polarized sunglasses, floatant, clippers, forceps, Ketchum release, two new leaders, some 4x and 3x tippet, an extra pair of reading glasses, a packet of Kleenex—everything except his water bottle, waders, boots, and fins. Not only that, he had a shot at remembering where everything was. And he had his reel safely on his rod with the fly line threaded through the guides. He relaxed ever so slightly.
Lew handed him one of two small backpacks that she had pulled out of the truck. “Put those boots and waders and that bottle of water in here, Doc, then we’ll hook the float tubes and the fins onto these packs.”
“Okey-doke.” Helping each other, they rigged up. Lew locked the truck, hid the keys behind a bumper, and they started down the path into the woods.
“I feel like a little kid getting ready for my first day of kindergarten,” said Osborne. The float tube was annoying, bouncing off the back of his legs as he walked. He decided not to let it bother him.
The hike took them into a light-filled forest of white birch and hard maple. Splashes of sun sprinkled down through the canopy of spiky maple and serrated birch leaves. It bounced off the baby maples, bright green and leafy, that blanketed the ground in every direction.
Dead Frenzy Page 6
