Dead Jitterbug by Victoria Houston Read Free Book Online

while she was at one of her golf luncheons, he had enlisted Ray’s help in moving the big oak cabinets, fading paper files and all, into a walled-off storage area at the back of his garage. He entered through a door off the small screened-in porch that he used for cleaning fish. Mary Lee never went there.
    Over time he had added the leather-seated swivel chair from his office, a braided rug black with Mike’s dog hair, a plug-in percolator he had owned since dental school, and a set of chipped and stained coffee mugs with the Marquette University logo.
    Also, a floor lamp with a ripped shade that he had salvaged from his father’s apartment after his death. The room was cozy with memories. He had only to pull open a drawer in one of those old cabinets, and a whiff of his office would take him back in time.
    Unfold a record, and it was as if a former patient was in the dental chair beside him: their face, their smell, any dental problems they were having—and whether or not they paid their bill on time. After Mary Lee’s death, he had spent an unconscionable amount of money heating the little room. He could have moved the cabinets indoors, but he loved having a door that opened into the past.
    If he had ever seen Carla before—her dental records should not take too long to find.
    “Shore lunch, ladies,” said Ray, steering the pontoon towards an island slightly off the center of the fifth lake on the Loon chain. He docked the boat along a fallen log, which could serve as a makeshift dock. The women, ready for a bathroom break, hopped off the pontoon and scrambled up a hilly path to the picnic site.
    Osborne followed. At the top of the hill, he was surprised to find Ray’s camp stove set up in the fire pit, and a small cooler with a dozen bluegills on ice shaded by a stand of balsam. “Just in case we struck out,” said Ray, walking up from behind, his arms full of supplies. “A friend of mine with a cabin across the way was nice enough to buzz that cooler and camp stove over for me earlier this morning.”
    “Well, we sure didn’t strike out,” said Osborne. “What happens next?”
    “Gotta show these ladies how to clean their catch,” said Ray. “I need you to unload the rest of our lunch while I set up. So if you’d go down to the pontoon and get that Loon Lake Market sack that’s right by the driver’s seat and my big green cooler … Kitsy? Carla? How ‘bout you two giving Doc a hand, please?”
    “Sure thing,” said Kitsy, leading the way as the two women skipped down the path and across the log ahead of Osborne.
    “I’ll grab the sack,” said Kitsy. Carla and Osborne bent their knees to grasp the handles of the large green cooler. It was heavy.
    “Carla, can you manage okay?” asked Osborne. He glanced towards her only to find the woman staring at him, a sly, cruel smile in her eyes. And that’s when he knew how he knew her.
    The details of those drunken days after Mary Lee’s death were lost to memory. All he could recall—though he didn’t try hard—was the outline of a black, despairing year when he wasted too many nights crawling the underbelly of Loon Lake. For all its wild beauty on sunny days, under cover of darkness the northwoods can turn evil, a lair for lost souls. Somewhere, sometime, during those dark hours he must have known Carla.
    An awful feeling churned his gut as he searched for something to say. But before he could utter a word, Carla had looked away—and smack into Kitsy’s cleavage.
    “What the hell?” asked Carla, eyes riveted. Kitsy was bent over, struggling to hoist the sack, which held three six-packs of soda. As she straightened up, she yanked her blouse back into place.
    “Wait,” said Carla, setting down her side of the cooler and stepping in front of Kitsy, “what is that creepy thing?” She pushed the top of the paper sack down to get a better look at the brooch, the only thing holding Kitsy’s shirt closed at its critical juncture. “Is that a