Careful with That Corpse! Just Another Day in Loon Lake

Osborne woke to sunlight flooding his bedroom as birds gossiped outside his open window. A warm breeze signaled the June day was off to a good start. Before he could throw back his blanket, he heard the porch door bang open simultaneous with loud barking from Mike, his black lab, who had been poised at a porch window mesmerized by an industrious chipmunk.

“Coffee, hot coffee,” a familiar masculine voice teased from the porch.

Ah, thought Osborne, a fine way to start the day: sunshine, coffee and a good buddy.

His neighbor, thirty-some years younger but schooled in the ways of woods and water for reasons no Loon Lake resident ever understood: the son of a doctor and brother to a hand surgeon and one of Chicago’s top female litigators, Ray Pradt had eschewed college to learn the secrets of the grizzled trappers, fishermen and hunters who survived the wilds of northern Wisconsin.

“Hear the one about a dyslexic guy who walked into a bra?” asked Ray as he offered a cup of coffee to Osborne.

Osborne groaned. “Please, it’s too early for torture.”

Ray grinned, pleased as always with one of his tasteless jokes. “Doc, I just put Mason’s muskie rod and tackle box in your fish shack. You and Chief Ferris taking her out today?”

Osborne’s twelve-year-old granddaughter was as fanatic a fisherman as her grandfather. He might be a retired dentist and she might be about to enter her freshman year of high school but the love of fishing trumped Mason’s teenage angst and Osborne’s frustration with agility issues that come with age.

“Thanks for dropping off her muskie gear but last night Lew and I decided to take her to the Prairie River for a lesson in fly fishing with the fly rod she got for her birthday. She texted me that sounded okay with her so there we go,” said Osborne, sipping the hot coffee. “Coffee tastes great. Thanks, Ray.”

“You are as welcome as the flowers.”

After Ray had left and Osborne was gathering up his fly fishing vest and the trout flies he hoped to use that evening, his cell phone rang: “Doc,” said the voice he loved to hear, “hope this doesn’t ruin your morning but I have a body – a skeleton really – just unearthed by a guy on the crew excavating for the new storm sewers east of town. Don’t know if it’s bear or human. Can you meet me out here ASAP?”

“Not a job for your man, Pecore?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

It was standing joke between them that the local coroner, appointed to the position by his brother-in-law, the mayor — and whose qualifications ranged from former tavern owner to current tavern patron – was likely to be unreachable due to being a late sleeper (i.e. recovering from chronic “over-served” status).

“I doubt Pecore could tell the difference between the bones of a rhinoceros and a small child,” said Loon Lake Chief of Police Lewellyn Ferris, best known to Osborne as “Lew.” It was three years earlier when Osborne, recently widowed and hoping to fill time with a new sport, thought he would be meeting a guy named “Lou” for a lesson in casting a fly rod only to be met by a no-nonsense woman whose skill as a fly fisherman led to her dabbling as an instructor when she had time off from her full-time position as the local chief of police.

Lew was as no-nonsense in her personal life was she was in the trout stream though her willingness to listen, her love for the outdoors and her appreciation of Osborne’s expertise in dental forensics, led to a friendship that soon blossomed into a relationship that went beyond crime scenes and trout streams.

At the moment, however, much as Osborne wanted to help Lew out with the unexpected discovery, he hoped he wouldn’t have to disappoint his granddaughter. Cell phone in hand, he hurried to his car.

Twenty minutes later, when Osborne arrived at the site of the excavation, Lew introduced him to the construction crew, saying, “Meet Dr. Osborne who works with my department and the Wausau Crime Lab as an odontologist – an expert in dental forensics – because teeth are still the best way to identify a body.”

She turned to Osborne, “Doc, since I called you, the crew has unearthed another set of bones. So we’re thinking there’s no question if these are human. . .”

“A Native American burial site?” asked Osborne.

“Yes. We’ve notified the archeologist for the tribe who is on her way and she’ll confirm this, I’m sure.”

“Great,” said Osborne, “so we’re on for fishing with Mason after all?”

“Yes, we are,” said Lew with broad grin, “and this crew has to go back to the drawing board with the town planners as there will be no storm sewers constructed here.”

“That’s too bad,” said Osborne, not in the least unhappy. He grinned at Lew: a good night lay ahead — in the trout stream and, maybe, later. Life in Loon Lake doesn’t get much better.

You can read more about Doc Osborne in Dead Big Dawg, the 19th book in the “Loon Lake” traditional mystery series, released June 11, 2019.

Murder, She Wrote meets Fargo in the Northwoods of Wisconsin in the nineteenth “gripping, atmospheric, and smart” (T. Jefferson Parker, New York Times bestselling author) installment of the Loon Lake series.

When the bodies of a wealthy Chicago industrialist and his wife are discovered in their summer home at the same time that a local lawyer disappears, life becomes complicated for Loon Lake Chief of Police Lew Ferris.

Relying on the forensic dental expertise of her close friend and acting coroner, Doc Osborne, Lew soon finds the investigations are even more complicated than she thought when a rarely used computer belonging to a local sawmill operation is taken over by foreign hackers. Add to that the family issues facing both Lew and Doc, and this Northwoods summer becomes both hot and dangerous.

Engaging and fast-paced, Dead Big Dawg is a clever mystery perfect for fans of Lee Goldberg and Janet Evanovich.

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Meet the author
Victoria Houston is the author of the Loon Lake Mystery Series. Dead Big Dawg, the nineteenth book in the series, was released June 11th. She has also published seven non-fiction books on family issues and been featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and on National Public Radio. Houston lives, writes and fishes in northern Wisconsin.

To learn more about Victoria, visit her website at victoriahouston.com.

All comments are welcomed.