Dead Rapunzel (15 page)

Before Charlene could answer, Lew stepped in. “She's helping Dani with some agricultural information we need,” said Lew, anxious to quell Kenzie's curiosity. She wasn't sure that Charlene needed to have people know about her search for her birth mother.

“And Dani? I didn't know you worked here. I thought you were going to be a hairdresser.” Osborne could see that Kenzie was oblivious to the fact that none of this was any of her business.

“Hi, Kenzie,” said Dani. “I'm switching careers. I just started as an intern for Chief Ferris—”

“Dani is our data wizard,” said Lew, interrupting. “All right, you two, go right ahead and use the conference room. We'll talk later, Dani.” She shut the door before Kenzie could say another word.

“Are you and Dani friends on Facebook?” asked Lew as she walked back to her desk.

“I think so,” said Kenzie. “I'll have to check. I have over a thousand friends, y'know. Dani and I took a class on how to do gel nails at the tech college together. But that was over a year ago. Not sure if I friended her or not. But what the heck, let me show you the best picture ever of Rudd.

“So these are my photos on Facebook,” said Kenzie, focused again on her tablet. She had relaxed and her enthusiasm came bubbling back. “Back in October Greg and I had a fun Halloween party, and Rudd came. She had such a good time. See?”

The photos on the page showed a group of people gathered around a table topped with a punch bowl and glass cups, along with bowls of candies and plates of cookies.

“This was so fun,” said Kenzie as she scrolled along the photograph. “I made all those cookies. Took me two days, too.”

“Great decorations,” said Lew. “I see pumpkins and spiders and . . . what are the long ones supposed to be?”

“Severed fingers,” said Kenzie in a triumphant tone. “No one had ever seen
those
before.”

All of the guests appeared to be wearing costumes and masks except Rudd, who was wearing only black pants, a black sweater, and a happy expression. In the photo that Kenzie had zeroed in on, Rudd was standing with her arms draped across the shoulders of two people as she looked into the camera.

“Now wait . . . I edited that picture so I got just Rudd and not everyone else.” Kenzie pulled up another photo. It was a headshot of a cheerful woman, her hair in dark brown waves around her wide Irish face. She was looking into the camera with a generous smile that showcased her even, white teeth. She looked healthy, even radiant.

“She does look happy,” said Lew. “That must have been before her cancer came back. But go back to the group photo, would you please?”

“Sure.” The photo came up. Lew leaned forward to study the picture. She pointed to the person standing to Rudd's immediate right. It was an old man in wire-rimmed glasses with a receding hairline. What hair he had was wisps of white and grey pushed behind his ears. He was staring at the camera with intensity.

“Who is that man? Can you bring that figure in closer?”

“Oh, that's me,” said Kenzie with a chortle. She leaned in as she spread her fingers on the screen to enlarge the image. “Great mask, huh? I found it online. It's made of silicone—and it's the kind that you pull on over your head. Makeup artists use them and they are
so
realistic.

“And really expensive. That one cost me a hundred and fifty bucks, but I looked
so
real. That mask is amazing. I wore it to town on trick-or-treat night and sat on my friend Sarah's porch to help her give out candy. Scared a lot of little kids with that one.”

“Any chance I could get a copy of that photo?” asked Lew.

“Sure. Are you on Facebook? I'll friend you, then you can go to my page . . . ”

“I'm not and I prefer not to be on Facebook, Kenzie. Sorry.”

“That's okay. I'll download it and email it to you.”

“I would appreciate that,” said Lew. “Oh wait, maybe my intern, Dani, is on Facebook. If so, she can pull it up, right?”

“Hold on, I'll check right now . . . yep, there she is.” Kenzie glanced up at Lew with a pleased look on her face.

As she walked back around her desk, Lew said, “Thank you, Kenzie. This is enough for now. I'm sure I'll have questions for you later, but this has been very, very helpful.”

“Um,” said Kenzie, getting to her feet. “You won't say anything to Tim about my Halloween party, will you? He wasn't invited.”

“Was Sloane there?”

“Yeah,” said Kenzie with an apologetic shrug. “I had to have her. She lives right next door to us. She and mean old Vern—just 'cause they're family Greg makes me include them.
Every
Christmas,
every
Thanksgiving,
every
Easter, and
every
Halloween.” Kenzie rolled her eyes. “Greg's a lot nicer than I am. I hate it when his dad comes. Jeez, he's fifty years old and he hits on my girlfriends—but that's another story.”

“Yes, I imagine it is,” said Lew with a low chuckle. “You know, Kenzie, we all have a Vern in our families.”

“I s'pose. But if we can find out who killed Rudd, then Greg won't have to work for him anymore.
And maybe then I won't have to invite him ever again
.
Vern or Tim, the creeps.
” She turned off her iPad with vehemence.

Lew waited until Kenzie had closed the office door behind her. “Doc, did you see what I saw?”

“Kenzie's mask: the old man.”

“We should talk with Chip's mother,” said Osborne. “See if he said more about what he saw two days ago.”

At ten that morning the sun on the snow across the field was dazzling. And deceptive. Stepping out of the warm kitchen to follow Ray and Bruce off the back deck, Judith reeled back, her cheeks seared by an uncompromising wind out of the north.

Ohmygosh was Ray right about needing something to cover my face, she thought, pulling the fleece neck warmer she had borrowed from Mallory up and over her nose. She had resisted at first, anxious to keep her makeup unblemished. Earlier that morning she had fussed in front of the mirror even though she knew better: Fishing is not a girly sport.

Talk about wasted effort, she thought as she tromped through the snow behind the two men, but looking beautiful is not worth freezing to death.

“Hey, wait for me,” came a shout from the side of the house. Kenzie Steidl waved as she ran toward where everyone had gathered in the driveway of Rudd's house. “Sorry I'm late.”

“Not to worry,” said Ray, “but it's so cold I thought maybe you decided not to join us.”

Judith noticed Kenzie was well prepared for the cold: Black insulated boots came almost to her knees, where they met the edges of a heavy sheepskin coat. A red plaid hat with earflaps had been pulled so far down on her forehead that Judith could barely make out her eyes. Like Judith, she wore a neck warmer up to her nose, but hers was reinforced with a rainbow-colored wool knit scarf. Sheepskin-lined mitts covered both her hands.

Ray and Bruce had paused to wait, too. “C'mon, ladies, stand still too long and you'll freeze in place.” They were pulling long plastic sleds with blue tarps covering their contents.

“Why aren't we driving out?” asked Kenzie when she reached them. “Warmer that way.”

“Nah,” said Ray, “that's sissy fishing. We're tough—we can make it across the field easy and fish right off the shore in that little bay. Too many razzbonyas further out. I want quiet water where it's not too deep. Ready, everyone?”

Crossing the field was easy. Rudd had contracted with a neighbor to plow a trail wide enough for cross-country skiing. The trail started behind the house and ran down to the shoreline where it continued parallel to the shore. The good news was the trail made it easy to walk in their heavy boots; the bad news was no protection from the wind.

Turning her back whenever a gust hit so hard that her eyes watered, Judith began to wonder if she had been too eager to give ice fishing a try. “Honestly, Ray, this is brutal,” she shouted into the wind.

All she got was a thumbs-up from the well-padded, six-foot-six figure wearing a fish on his head. She shook her head and smiled to herself.
How on earth did I get here?
But she kept going.

At the shoreline, they plunged through snow over a foot deep to where they could walk along a snowmobile trail leading into the bay where Ray wanted to fish. To Judith's relief, they hadn't gone far when a stand of balsams crowding the shoreline sheltered them from the wind.

“This is good,” said Ray, pulling his sled to a stop. He had been right about too many fishermen. Peering out across the big lake, Judith saw what seemed like a city of wooden shacks and pickup trucks dotting the ice and clustered as if to keep one another warm. But there was no one in the bay.

“First, we need a fire,” said Ray. He yanked the tarp off one of the sleds to expose several lengths of firewood.

“That's not much wood,” said Bruce. He glanced back at the distance they had just trekked. “A lot of effort for twenty minutes of fishing.”

“No,” said Ray, “I'm sending you into the woods over there to see if you can find some more.” He looked chagrined after pulling the tarp off the second sled. “Actually, I thought I brought more. Guess I was in too much of a rush. Damn.”

“Hold on,” said Kenzie, pointing behind them in the direction of the field they had just crossed. “I see a pile of logs over by the trees there—on the left. I'll run over and grab some.”

“Yeah,” said Ray, looking in that direction, “looks like someone clear-cut a small section. Sure, go see what you can get.”

“I'll help,” said Judith, anxious to keep moving.

“Wait,” said Ray as he bent over the second sled to unload six tip-ups, four folding chairs, a bucket full of minnows, a cooler, a thermos of hot chocolate, another thermos of coffee, five jig poles, and plastic containers of waxies and nightcrawlers.

“What's in the cooler?” asked Judith.

“Sandwiches—peanut butter and liver sausage. Now, you two take this sled with you. That'll make it easy.”

The snowmobile trail wound close to the shoreline so the going was easy. Even so, it appeared someone had run a plow up to the woodpile.

“I'm not sure about this,” said Kenzie, staring down at the logs. “These look so freshly cut, I'm not sure the wood will burn. But what the heck, let's give it a try.”

With that, she and Judith began stacking the split logs onto the sled. As Judith reached for one that was near the bottom of the pile, she was surprised to find what appeared to be a metal pipe right beneath it. She pushed several pieces of wood back, exposing bare ground and another pipe-like object.

“That's odd,” said Kenzie. “Looks like someone cut the wood to keep whatever this is covered. I wonder if someone is trying to put in a well? That shouldn't happen—this land belonged to my dad. Well, to Rudd's museum now. It's posted, so no hunting and stuff. Weird.”

Minutes later, as they unloaded the sled by the bonfire, which Ray had started, they mentioned what they had found. “Really?” asked Bruce. “That's an odd spot for a well. Maybe it's a sprinkler system.”

“That doesn't make sense,” said Kenzie. “I'll ask Greg if there's some building going on around here. I know Vern bought a back forty from my father years ago, but that's further down the road and there's already houses on it.”

“Hold on while I finish these holes,” said Ray, who was hard at work with a gas-powered ice auger. When water had splashed up through the fourth hole, he stepped back and turned to scan the field behind them. “Tell me again what you saw . . . ”

Judith repeated the description of what they had uncovered.

“That doesn't make sense,” said Ray. “That land isn't cultivated, so it can't be a sprinkler system.”

“I wonder if Rudd had the architects out to walk the site for the museum,” said Judith. “She didn't tell me she'd gone that far yet. I know the conceptual plans have been drawn but not site development. And in the middle of winter?”

“Ladies, let me get you set with tip-ups, then Bruce and I will take a look,” said Ray. “Judith, you ready?” asked Ray, demanding her full attention as he knelt in front of one of the holes in the ice. “This wooden platform here . . . is rigged with this fishing line here . . . and a spring with a red flag on it. Now, watch me . . . ” He slipped a shiny silver minnow onto the hook and dropped it through the hole in the ice. “When that red flag pops up—you've got a fish.”

“Ohmygod, then what do I do? Yikes.”

“You holler at me or Bruce. We'll take care of it.” With that, Ray rigged another tip-up for Judith and two for Kenzie. Then he and Bruce headed toward shore to see what it was that had been hidden beneath the woodpile.

After the two men had moved half a dozen more of the split logs, they uncovered yet another metal pipe stuck in the ground. Ray shook his head and glanced over at Bruce with a question in his eyes. “I have no idea what this could be. Maybe someone planning to build a deer stand?”

“Looks to me like a half-assed attempt at soil testing,” said Bruce, kicking at one of the pipes that had been sunk down into the ground. “Just recently my brother-in-law had a crew out to his place to bore down and check out the quality of the sand on his property. The mining team brought in a similar setup. This looks pretty do-it-yourself if you ask me, though I wouldn't blame 'em for trying.

“After all, if you're sitting on good silicone sand—and they recently learned that northern Wisconsin has the best in the country—then it could be worth a lot of money. The oil companies who are fracking for oil in North Dakota are desperate for quality sand.”

“So . . . if you had a
field
full of the right kind of sand,” said Ray, turning to gaze across the field and back toward the faint outline of Rudd's winged home, “what would that be worth?”