Victoria Houston - Loon Lake 14 - Dead Lil' Hustler Read Online Free PDF Page B

night, just say so.”
    Tears in her eyes, Erin squeezed his hand.
    Osborne headed for the emergency room waiting area. As he rounded the corner, he realized there would be no way he could avoid talking to Bud Jarvison now. With an internal sigh of exasperation, he prepared himself to deal with the man who had been a pain in the neck since they were kids.
    During their teens, when Osborne was home from Jesuit boarding school, he found himself competing with Bud for the same girls. Bud, the six-foot-four football hero with the teasing blue eyes. Bud, the lucky kid whose sixteenth birthday gift was a zippy blue Pontiac convertible. Rare was the girl who could resist.
    After college and two years into running one of his family’s twelve banks, the
Milwaukee Sentinel
newspaper declared Bud Jarvison “Wisconsin’s Bachelor of The Year.” The advent of branch banking had turned the sleepy small-town Jarvison family banking operation into a multimillion-dollar corporation.
    After his father died, Bud sold the company for $30 million, keeping only the position of chairman of the board and a hefty salary. Bud Jarvison had it all: prestige, charisma, and cash.
    But although he might be one of the most prominent people in the Loon Lake region, Osborne knew him as a man who lingered too long when a wounded deer needed another bullet, a man legendary for his prowess at cheating on his wife. The year he told the fellas at the deer shack that he had “bagged” over a thousand women
since his marriage
was the last year Osborne hunted with that crowd.
    Nor did it help that Bud and his wife, Nancy, found paying their dental bills beneath them. At the time Osborne sold his practice, the Jarvisons owed him thousands of dollars. He wrote it off.
    And now he had to share the waiting room with the jerk? Jeez Louise. How bad can one day get?
    But Bud was nowhere in sight when Osborne entered the waiting room. Relieved, he picked up an issue of
Consumer Reports
hoping reviews of electric hand drills would take his mind off his grandson and the menace of meningitis. He hadn’t turned two pages when a bear paw grabbed his shoulder.
    “Chrissstopher,” said Bud Jarvison, his voice whistling through the empty waiting room as he exaggerated the first syllable of his late son’s name.
    Concerned over what was coming next, Osborne braced himself.
    “I have been there, Doc. I know just how you must be feeling.”
    No, you don’t
, thought Osborne, flinching as Bud plunked himself down beside him and, propping his elbows on his knees, shoved his florid face so close Osborne could not avoid looking into his eyes.
    “Worried to death you gotta be. I was down in Nancy’s room and overheard the nurses talking. My God, I want you to know if there is
anything
—”
    “Why is Nancy here?” asked Osborne, desperate to change the subject.
    “Orthopedic surgery. She fell walking the dogs and they’ve had to rebuild her left shoulder—too much golf didn’t help either. She’ll be fine,” said Bud with a dismissive wave. “Fifteen years since we lost Christopher—do you believe it’s been that long?”
    Helpless, Osborne shook his head.
    “Christopher…” Bud repeated the name, his tone softer. “You know, his mother insisted I call him ‘Christopher.’ No ‘Chris.’ No ‘Topher,’ no ‘Bud, Jr.’ No sirree—had to be ‘Christopher.’ She hasn’t forgiven me, you know. Every time she has more than one martini, she starts.” Bud raised his voice to a whine as he mimicked his wife. “‘All your fault, Bud. You’re the idiot who
had
to buy him that goddamn stupid—etcetera, etcetera.’ But what the hell, Doc, you know how she is.”
    Did Osborne ever. The mere thought of Nancy jarred another childhood memory: Bud’s parents. His father had been a genial man who wore an expression of perpetual surprise on his face as if astounded at being the beneficiary of three generations of bankers and inheriting millions without lifting so