Dead Hot Shot (Loon Lake Fishing Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

the voice of the woman who made his day every time she turned her sparkling dark eyes his way.
    “Doc, where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling all over for you. Don’t you answer your cell phone?”
    Ouch, maybe the eyes weren’t sparkling. Snapping, perhaps? “Sorry, Lew. I was out for birds this morning so I didn’t think to take the phone.”
    • • •
    That wasn’t exactly the truth. Given that it had been less than a year since Osborne had been able to have his own landline — a standard home phone that didn’t have two elderly ladies listening in as he took his calls on their shared party line — the cell phone remained a novelty. And a novelty less than reliable: not only does Loon Lake exist in the peripheral vision of cell tower developers, but trees, hills and wooded shorelines conspire to block the few cell signals available.
    Just last month he and Lew had been heading west towards a trout stream only to pass a woman standing on the roof of her Toyota sedan. No need to stop and ask if she needed help — it was obvious she was trying to get a cell phone signal.
    But this was no time to make excuses.
    • • •
    “What’s up?” said Osborne, hoping the eagerness in his voice would atone for the frustration he’d caused.
    “I’m at the Reece place over on Lily Pond Road — ” “The estate?”
    “Right. We had an ambulance call that didn’t get to me until shortly after eight this morning — apparent drowning. Should have gotten the call by six-thirty but it went to the goddamn Vilas County Sheriff’s Department where they’ve got a new hire on their switchboard who dicked around assigning it to all the wrong people. Then I lost an hour trying to locate goddamn Pecore, who neglected to mention to anyone that he and his wife would be spending the holiday in Minneapolis with their daughter.”
    Lew’s voice had been rising as she spoke. Unflappable under most circumstances, right now she sounded as if every human being in the world on whom she depended had done their best to let her down. Later Osborne would learn that wasn’t the only problem. The glitches and delays had made it impossible for Lew — who had awakened under the impression that she had the day off — to get her turkey in the oven.
    “So you need a deputy coroner at the Reeces’?”
    “Yes, Doc. That is what I need.” And she didn’t have to say how fast.
    • • •
    In spite of the frustration in Lew’s voice, Osborne’s heart lifted. He loved it when she needed him. Of course that usually meant some poor soul had passed, so he had to temper the enthusiasm he felt whenever he got the call — a call that never failed to remind him that settled as your life may seem, things can always change.
    It certainly never occurred to him during a stint in the military thirty-five years ago when he was assigned to assist a forensic dental detail, that such grim work might someday enhance his love life. (Nor did he ever anticipate having a love life at the age of sixty-three!)
    But those six months of training were all the credentials he needed for Loon Lake Chief of Police Lewelleyn Ferris to deputize him. At first appointed deputy coroner in Pecore’s absence, Lew later found it handy — given his thirty years of dentistry in tiny Loon Lake meant he knew many residents from the inside out — to enlist him as a full deputy when she was shorthanded. And at the height of the hunting season in Loon Lake, a three-person law enforcement team was bound to be short-handed.
    That early training added zest to his daily life as well. He might be retired from the rigors of Loon Lake’s largest dental practice but he took care to maintain his membership in the Wisconsin Dental Society and attend their semi-annual workshop on forensic dentistry — a subject now formally recognized as the science of odontology.
    Staying abreast of advances in the field continued to pay off as not even the Wausau Crime Lab was able to afford