Dead Hot Mama Read Online Free PDF

about their daughter. Mrs. Kobernot, if this were a member of your family, you would expect the same courtesy.”
    Patrice snorted. “You don’t understand, my husband is the head of neurology over at St. Mary’s—” Was the woman asserting that MDs and everyone connected with them never misbehaved? Osborne was enjoying this.
    “You
don’t understand,” said Lew, waving a finger at Patrice. “If you don’t do what I’ve asked, I’ll be happy to take your entire household into town, and we can continue our discussion at the police station. But I hardly think you want the appearance of your family members being suspects in the event that this is foul play. Now will you and the boys please follow me down to the dock and take a good look?”
    Patrice stepped down from the dock first, hoisted herself over the snowbank, and studied the still form. “No, Mrs.—”
    “Chief Ferris.”
    “No, Mrs. Chief, I have never seen this woman in my life.” Patrice threw a look at Lew. She was damned if she would acknowledge Lew’s authority over the situation.
    Lew ignored her and motioned the two boys over.
    “Your names, fellas?”
    “Craig Junior,” said the taller of the two boys. He looked like his father.
    “Patrick,” said the younger boy. He resembled his mother, though he had a friendlier face. Both boys looked so worried, Osborne wondered if they had ever seen the dead person before.
    As the boys stepped forward together, their mother’s eyes raked their faces. Boy oh boy, thought Osborne, she’s more terrifying than what they see in the snow. If she was
his
mother and if he did know the dead girl, he’d be damned if he’d tell the truth.
    Both boys shook their heads. “No,” said one after the other.
    “Okay, you folks are excused. Please do not use the rink or the entrance to the trail here—or your ATV—until we’ve completed our search of the area.”
    Once Patrice and her sons were out of hearing distance, Lew turned to Osborne. “Doc, it may take an hour or more for me to get everything under control here. Could we use your place as a command center for the next twenty-four hours? I doubt Dr. and Mrs. Kobernot—”
    “Please, Lew, whatever you need—and I’ll save you some pizza. I’m going to track down Ray and that fishing shack right now.”
    “Dammit,” she said, looking around, “this site is right on the trail, isn’t it.”
    “Is that a problem?” and Osborne, wondering why she sounded so frustrated.
    “Yeah,” said Lew, “it means any traces of vehicles or people have been wiped out with all the snowmobile traffic going by.” As if to underscore her point, the beam from a single headlight swept across their faces, coming at them from across the lake.

six
    My bones drank water; water fell through all my doors.
    —Maxine Kumin, “Morning Swim”
    “They removed the legs with a knife—quite carefully disarticulating the joints,” said Bruce Peters, hands clasped as he leaned forward on his elbows over Osborne’s kitchen table.
    Eyes snapping with energy in spite of the fact he’d left Wausau early in the morning and it was now well past eight, Bruce was obviously pleased to be at work on his first serious cases since joining the Wausau crime lab. Either that or he had drunk way too much coffee.
    “I’m the project manager assigned to the region, sir,” he had said, introducing himself as he stepped through Osborne’s back door thirty minutes earlier. He had then taken great care to knock the snow off his boots before setting them to the side in perfect alignment.
    “You make this sound like road construction,” said Osborne, helping Bruce out of his heavy jacket and giving it a shake before hanging it on the oak coat rack just inside the kitchen door.
    “Well, we do construction, that’s for sure,” said the young man with a grin. “We just build backwards is all.”
    Tall, big-boned, and as square-headed as Osborne’s black lab, Bruce Peters wore his dark