Dead Hot Mama (14 page)

“Jeez Louise,” said Erin shaking her head. She glanced over at her husband. “Mark, let’s make sure the kids don’t hear any of this. Talk about nightmares …”

Everyone laughed a little nervously, then waited for Gina to say more. Looking around his living room, Osborne didn’t see a room full of young adults: He saw kids at a campfire bewitched by ghost stories. All except Lew. Her features, so soft and relaxed earlier, had tightened, gaining the flintiness that had a way of intimidating men twice her size.

“This new coroner who has been
appointed
to work with me,” she said, making it clear he was not her choice, “this guy said that the human body, deceased, can be worth as much as $272,000. He wants Loon Lake to approve his collecting—and selling—allograft tissue from any unclaimed or unidentified bodies. Since his grandfather runs the town, chances are good that may happen.”

“Whoa, hold on a minute,” said Ray. “Think about this … the holidays,” he waved his right index finger, “are
the
busiest time of the year for the cemetery. Bless their hearts, people hang on through Christmas, then … check out just in time to avoid the traffic jam on New Year’s.” Everyone groaned. “I’m not kidding. More people die over the holidays than any other time of the year.

“And …” again the finger waved, “it so happens Jeff Cornell left me a message yesterday that he needs at least five graves dug as soon as this cold weather eases up. Meanwhile, they’ve got that nice little mausoleum where the caskets … with our dearly departed … are stored until we can get the ground ready. Now … at five times $272,000, are you telling me that Duff has the equivalent of 1.4 million dollars stacked in that brick cooler of his?”

Gina shrugged. “You can look at it that way.”

“Then forget the grave gig—I should be a security guard!”

“Actually—aside from your mastery of bad taste, Ray,” said Gina, “you’re not that far off the mark.”

“Gina,” said Lew, “what’s your take on Bud’s proposal? I find it unsettling.”

“I am not surprised,” said Gina. “That funeral home he lists on his résumé—the one where he did his internship? They were players in the business—they were making serious money harvesting allograft tissue. He certainly got his training in the right place.”

“But it
is
legal,” said Osborne. “You said that. You said that federal law allows this.”

“Yes, but what the law allows and what actually happens are two different things,” said Gina. “And that’s where it gets interesting.

“For one thing, the window for healthy harvesting is brief—preferably within an hour or two of death. However, collectors are allowed twenty-four hours for recovery, packaging, and shipping to processors. But there is no monitoring of the time spent, no way to be sure the recovery didn’t occur eighteen hours after death, twenty- three hours. No way to be sure the tissue is handled safely after the recovery either.

“Nor are there any mandated controls over who can collect allograft tissue. It could be temporary help making less than minimum wage. Could be a funeral director’s kid, could be a nursing home aide, could be a country coroner, whose day job is auto repair.

“Here’s an example of what can happen. Our investigations turned up six cases of life-threatening bacterial infections in knee surgeries after patients were given donor knee tissue from a cadaver. Three of those people died, and each of those three had received their donor tissue
from the same donor.

“What went wrong? That tissue was harvested at a funeral home by a part-time worker for the owners. He collected it late, way later than two hours after death, and he did not handle the tissue in a way that would keep it germ-free.

“It goes without saying that this was also a person who was in no position to know if the deceased might have had an undiagnosed condition, such as cancer, TB, or some fungal or bacterial infection that might have infected that tissue.

“By the time we went to press with the last articles in our series, we had
fifty-four
reports of bacterial contamination leading to infections—and all from allograft tissue. And all from our region.” Gina leaned forward to emphasize what she was about to say. “Think about the rest of the country.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mark. “Isn’t there a consent form that must be signed by family members before any organs are donated? Or have the people you’re talking about found some loophole there, too?”

“Mark, to say those consent forms are obfuscatory is hardly an exaggeration. Families are grieving, they are not reading small print. When they see that consent form, they think
donation.
They see donating as a way to turn the loss of their loved one into something positive, a way of keeping their memory alive. Yet rarely are they told how much will be harvested and to what extent the donated tissue will be commercialized.”

“Commercialized
,” said Lew. “Now there’s a word our new coroner didn’t use—not that I could recognize anyway.”

“Commercialized is what it’s all about,” said Gina. “Families sign off on donating skin, thinking that it will be used for burn victims, right? But it’s much more profitable to sell skin for cosmetic surgery. And what did our reporters discover are the most popular uses for donor skin in today’s market? Lip jobs and penis enlargements.”

Again the room groaned. Gina threw her hands out, saying, “I kid you not. The demand for skin is so high that we found one coroner who would get the consent form signed by the family, then rush to the phone and hold a bidding war between his two major processors.”

“Jeesh,” said Mark, shaking his head.

“Oh—and they hide behind the loveliest names, these processors,” said Gina. “The Ministry Tissue Bank, Central Wisconsin Tissue Center, Heart of America Tissue Bank. Don’t they sound like nonprofits? So you can see how families are fooled.”

“As I said, this is a billion-dollar industry. In less than two years, the number of companies collecting and processing allograft tissue went from 118 to over 400. And the number of people angling for jobs as coroners and medical examiners these days has skyrocketed.”

“Hence I get handed the beautiful Bud Michalski,” said Lew. “I should have known Arne would have an interest beyond sentiment.”

“Keep an eye on those two,” said Gina. “Kickbacks are rife in this business. Kickbacks, secret arrangements between hospital employees and tissue collectors—”

Mallory, who had been silent while Gina held center stage, spoke up from where she was sitting on the floor. “Has it occurred to you that your paper may have won the Pulitzer partly because this is such morbid and sensational material? She said. “Great for marketing, right?” Osborne didn’t like her tone.

“We certainly had people upset that we reported some very gruesome stuff in a family newspaper,” said Gina, her voice even, but her eyes sparking.

“I think it verges on a kind of pornography,” said Mallory.

Gina gazed over Mallory’s head for a second. Then she said, “I’d like to say we won the highest award in journalism because we were willing to show—and we needed those details you find so morbid in order to make the point—that right now is the time to demand changes in the National Organ Transplant Act. Someone has to act
in order to save lives.”

“But this is all about harvesting from the dead,” said Mallory.

“Sure,” said Gina, “but what happens when orders are up and you don’t have enough cadavers from which to fill those orders?”

Osborne’s phone rang. He reached for the handset on the lamp table in the corner. “Don’t worry, he’s right here—I’ll let you talk to him.”

Osborne handed the phone to Ray. “It’s Nick. He sounds upset.”

Ray listened, then sat up straight in the chair. “I’ll be there in five. Now settle down, I’m sure we’ll find her.

And Nick—dress warm.” He handed the phone back to Osborne.

“Nick just had a frantic call from Lauren’s father. She’s been missing since noon.”

“Where
do I turn?” asked Osborne. He glanced towards the backseat, where Nick sat crammed between Ray and Mallory. Even with Ray’s reassuring arm around his shoulders and Mallory patting his knee as if he was six instead of sixteen, the boy appeared close to tears.

Gina had insisted they drop her off at Ray’s first. She was exhausted. Erin and Mark had been more than happy to hustle the kids home and off to bed, especially with Santa under pressure to assemble a new bicycle before dawn. Osborne had tried to persuade Lew to go home as well. “Call in Roger or Terry to help us search,” he’d said. “You need a good night’s sleep.”

“Terry has today and tomorrow off, and I can’t call Roger out tonight,” said Lew. “He worked until two this morning—a bar fight. Plus, it’ll cost me overtime. I’m salaried, I’ll go.”

At the look on Osborne’s face, she said, “Doc, I’m not as tired as you think, so don’t argue with me. I’m down to the wire on the budget for this fiscal year, and any overruns now will just give Arne ammunition. The last thing I need is Bud assigned to the department.”

With Lew giving Osborne the go-ahead to do seventy down the county road, they were able to reach the driveway to Nick’s grandmother’s home in less than ten minutes. He was waiting on the curb.

“Take Chicken in the Basket Road up to XX, and your first right on Y,” said Ray.

“Man, is this forsaken territory,” said Mallory, peering out the car window into the dark. “I don’t know that I’ve ever been back in here.”

“Lots of big houses going up on these lakes,” said Osborne, keeping his voice matter-of-fact in an attempt to soothe Nick’s nerves.

“Tell you what I don’t understand,” said Lew. “If this girl has been missing since noon—why didn’t her parents report it earlier?”

The car swung onto a snowpacked Chicken in the Basket Road, and Osborne slowed. Nights like this with a dusting of new snow on the slick surface made the curves treacherous. He had noticed during the thirty-minute drive north that it was snowing more heavily now. At last the weatherman was accurate.

“Her dad said he just assumed she drove down to see me,” said Nick. “When she wasn’t home by seven thirty, they got worried. He said they’re having a big party tonight, so he and her stepmom were running around all day. When she wasn’t in her room, he checked to see what car she took—but all the cars were there.”

“That’s one heck of a big house,” said Ray. “I’ll bet you anything she’s tucked away in a corner somewhere reading a book.”

“Or on the Net. She loves games and eBay,” said Nick, hope brightening his face. “You could be right. She could be gaming and just lost track of time.”

“What’s eBay?” asked Lew.

“This big Internet auction site,” said Nick. “Lauren thinks that Ray should sell his Hot Mama on eBay. Could be she’s checking out the sites selling fishing lures …” His voice trailed off. Mallory patted his knee again.

The road twisted back past silhouettes of pine and hemlock so towering that Osborne knew this had to be an area of first-growth timber, one of those rare parcels of land to survive the logging boom of the late 1800s. Some lumber baron must have saved it for use as his private forest preserve, then passed it down to future generations.

If all this belonged to Lauren’s family, speculated Osborne, it would be extremely valuable property—and devoid of neighbors. He did not like the idea of a girl with limited outdoor skills wandering through a forest this deep and unpopulated.

“Does Lauren know how to use a compass?” he asked Nick.

“I have no idea. I doubt it.”

“Slow down, Doc,” said Ray, “I think the road to the house is right around the corner. Yep.”

Osborne turned onto a recently plowed lane. “Where the heck are we, Ray?”

“Firefly Lake. Private water. Remember Glen Schraufnagel? He used to fish bass up here. I snuck in a couple times to fish it with old Glen, got some good-sized crappies. I heard they got monster walleye, too. I’ll have to give it a try one of these days.”

Osborne was relieved to hear Ray was somewhat familiar with the area. Lew might complain, and the wardens might cite, but there were times when Ray’s penchant for poaching came in handy.

A soft glow in the distance morphed into strands of diamonds sparkling under pillows of snow, the strands lacing their way along a low wooden fence towards a portico outlined with millions more of the tiny jewels. Parked cars crowded both sides of the drive.

“How absolutely lovely,” said Mallory, her voice soft with amazement. “Now who would ever expect to find this stuck out in the boondocks?”

“Mr. Theurian said we should go around to the back,” said Nick as they neared the blazing lights. “He’s waiting for us.”

Osborne’s car pulled around to the back of the contemporary brick and glass structure and into a paved, circular area between the main house and a six-car garage. A slight figure in gray slacks and a black sweater stepped out onto a wide, well-lit deck. The man waved the car forward, then hurried towards them as everyone got out.

“You’re fine—just leave the car there,” he said.

Lauren’s father was fair-haired and balding with serious, slightly bulbous eyes set into a head as square as that of a purebred Labrador retriever. A pale brush of a moustache hid his upper lip. In coloring and stature, he bore no resemblance to his tall, lanky daughter.

Extending a hand as they hurried through introductions, he said, “Dave Theurian. Thank you so much for coming. My wife and I are worried sick.”

But if he seemed relieved at first, his eyes widened when Lew introduced herself as chief of the Loon Lake Police Department, and Osborne got the distinct impression he was suddenly less grateful than alarmed. Osborne shrugged it off. The seriousness of the situation had to be just dawning on the guy.

“Chief Ferris and Ray know—” said Nick.

Before he could continue, the door to the deck banged open and a diminutive figure whirled towards them, feet flying down the stairs. At first glance, she reminded Osborne of the Christmas angel. She wore a full-sleeved ivory blouse over a long, wine red skirt of some crinkly, rich-looking fabric. A gold buckle on a wide black belt cinched the small waist, and Osborne half expected to see a jeweled tiara nestled in the froth of white gold curls. He didn’t need Mallory to tell him those were diamonds in the chandeliers dangling from the woman’s ears.

She was a Scandinavian beauty: her features fair and fine-boned. But the face under the blond fluff was flushed at the moment, so ruddy it matched the burgundy of her skirt. And her eyes belied any delicacy in demeanor: They were large, dark, and demanding.

“I don’t need this right now,” she said, as if Lauren’s absence was their collective fault. “I’ve got sixty-two guests to entertain, and I know that … that …” she struggled to restrain herself, “I know my stepdaughter did this on purpose. She’s not lost, goddammit, she’s hiding.

“I’m sorry you came all this way, but it is absolutely not necessary. She’ll show up just fine once she’s sure she’s ruined the evening. Dave’s overreacting.”

Her voice was low-pitched and throaty, as sensuous as her face. No matter that the emotion driving her was anger, she was a stunning-looking woman. Though the anger did prompt Osborne to refine his first impression: Forget the Christmas angel, this was the Queen of Spades.

Lew stepped forward. “Mrs. Theurian, just to be sure, we’ll take a look around. With this cold weather, we will all feel better once we know your stepdaughter is safe and warm. As the head of law enforcement for this region, I do need to follow procedure. My deputies and I cannot leave until we know the situation is under control.”

“The police?” The woman whirled on her husband. “You called
the police?”

Theurian raised both hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I called Lauren’s friend Nick. I thought maybe—”

“Look, folks, it’s late, it’s Christmas Eve, and we all have places we would rather be,” said Lew, her voice loud and firm. “We’ll double-check the interior of the house and canvass the perimeter—”

“No need. I already checked every goddam room. She is
not
in the house,” said the woman, spitting out her words.

“Mitten, will you please calm down,” said Theurian. “Look, if I can locate Lauren, the party will be much more enjoyable for all of us. So please, go back to our guests and let me handle this.”

“I told you I checked everywhere, and I don’t want strangers in my home.”

“Mitten …”

As quickly as she had arrived, the woman spun around and dashed back up the stairs. Theurian watched until she had slammed the door behind her.

He turned back to face them, his voice calm, almost gentle, as he spoke. “I disagree with my wife. Lauren’s not a spiteful kid. She’s just wandered off somewhere in this big place of ours and doesn’t realize we’ve been counting on her to help us entertain our friends.”

“And who are these people?” asked Lew, indicating the cars parked up and down the drive.

“Our church group—we’re hoping to go caroling at midnight. I was just made a deacon, so we’re celebrating with friends and the church choir. No one Lauren knows—at least not yet.”

“Well, we
should
check the house,” said Lew. “You have no idea how many missing people we find working in the basement or asleep in front of the TV—after the family insists they’re not home.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Theurian, leading them up the stairs. “You’ll find this house to be a little different. My late father-in-law was a bit of an eccentric. He designed it as a series of linked pavilions—each one is a suite with its own bath and sitting rooms. And each pavilion has its own interior and exterior entries, which we try to keep locked. I’ll get the master key to save time.”

He paused. “Do you think we might avoid the center hall and the main lodge where the party is?”

Poor guy, thought Osborne, what he really means is: “Can we avoid my wife?”

“I see no problem with that,” said Lew, letting him off the hook.

Once inside the back foyer, a utility room outfitted from floor to ceiling with handsome cherry cabinets, Theurian pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and used one to open the top drawer of a counter running along one wall. The drawer held a white plastic box divided into squares, each containing a key.

“Jeez,” said Ray, “that’s one heck of a lot of keys. Your father-in-law must have been paranoid.”

“He was detail oriented,” said Theurian, “and we do use these, but it’s a pain. We’re installing a computerized security system that will make life easier, but it requires some major rewiring. Until that’s up and running, we have to make do with these.”

He selected a key, then pointed to the door at the far end of the foyer. “We have five pavilions opening off that center hall. Two are bedroom suites, one for my wife and me, the other for Lauren. We use the other two for offices—my wife has her own business—and the fifth is our media room.”

“Basement?” asked Lew.

“Main basement is under the lodge. The others have insulated crawl spaces for heating and air-conditioning units. The suites are locked this evening. With so many people here, we thought that was a good idea. We can’t risk someone toying with the computers.” He looked chagrined, as if that might not have been his idea.

“Are you saying that Lauren is locked out of her room?” asked Lew.

“She should have a key.”

“And the outer buildings,” said Ray. “We’ll need keys for those?”

“I know she’s not in the warehouse,” said Theurian. “That’s been locked since yesterday. You’ll want to check the garage, of course.”

“What about your dock and the waterfront?” asked Lew. “Do you have a boathouse? Any cabins near the water?”

“No,” Theurian said, shaking his head. “Only my ice house—and I can’t imagine why she would go out there.” He reached into the drawer for two more keys, which he handed to Lew. “This opens the garage—and this is for the ice house.”

Lew handed them both to Ray. “You and Doc check the outer buildings, please—take Nick with you. Mallory and I will do the house. Mr. Theurian, do you mind coming with us?”

The man looked relieved to be included. “Not at all, but if you’ll excuse me one minute, I’ll let the caterer know where I am if someone needs me.” He walked through the door to the center hall, leaving it ajar behind him.

Ray opened the door to the outside. “First thing we need to do is check for any tracks leading away from the house—before this new snow makes it difficult.”