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talk? She tells you more stuff*than she ever tells me or her dad …”
    Til do my best, Erin,” said Osborne, “but it’ll have to be after I help Lew with the situation at Bart Nystrom’s place. I’ll stop back around four or so—take her for ice cream.”
    “Doc,” said Ray, “aren’t you going to the class reunion with Chief Ferris tonight? I heard they’re having pizza and beer out at Smokey’s for the early arrivals. Can’t believe you’re not going.”
    “I wasn’t invited.”
    “Oh. Sorry I mentioned it.” A look of chagrin crossed Ray’s face.
    “So that’s why you’ve been so glum,” said Erin, “I could tell something was wrong.”
    “I’m not glum,” said Osborne. “Reunions are of interest only to the people who went to school together. You know that.”
    Ray and Erin stared at him.
    “Believe me, it’s not an issue,” said Osborne with a wave of his hand. “Lew has lots of old friends to catch up with and she doesn’t need to be bothered with me.”
    “Right, okay,” said Ray, sounding less than convinced.
    “Hey, I have an idea,” said C.J. from where she stood in the doorway, not quite having left yet. “Dr. Osborne, why don’t you bring Mason out to our lake house this afternoon? I’ll take her tubing and we’ll have some fun. Maybe that’ll change her mood a little—who knows?
    “How ‘bout you, Ray? Would you like to join us? I’d love you to meet my husband—he’s been looking to hire a good fishing guide …”

CHAPTER 8
    P ulling onto the street, foot heavy on the gas, Osborne headed south. He was determined to get back to the Nystrom Antiques Emporium by two, if not earlier. If he was lucky, Lew might have a few extra minutes to chat. With that in mind, he decided to think positive: what if she changed her mind and decided it would be nice to have him tag along this evening?
    The thought was not out of order. After all, how many afternoons had she surprised him with an unexpected phone call: “Doc, I’ve got two deputies on duty right now and the day is too glorious to work. Let’s go fishing!”
    His mood brightening, Osborne was four blocks down from Erin’s house and slowing for the stoplight when he happened to glance off to his right at a squalid matchbox of a house. A shambles of peeling paint, warped shingles, crumbling eaves caved in over a back porch and a rusted out, once-white pickup in the driveway, it was a house and a truck he had seen a million times. But today another vehicle was parked behind the pickup. A vehicle he knew too well.

    The house was typical of others in Loon Lake that had been built in the early nineteen hundreds for workers employed at the once-thriving paper mill: each a squared-off single story home with an average of five rooms. The largest room would be a kitchen, opening to a small living room that had doors leading to a couple bedrooms and one bath.
    Though the exterior of the little house was in desperate need of a paint job, a narrow border of grass nestled between the house and a crumbling rock wall bordering the sidewalk meant something to someone: pristine clay pots of pink petunias spilled their blooms like offered prayers at the feet of two stone figurines.
    The cracked concrete walkway leading up to the front door was blessed with the presence of a three-foot high statue of the Virgin Mary, head bowed and hands folded in prayer, the blue of her mantle long faded from the sun. At the far end of the border and facing the street was a brown-robed St. Francis of Assisi, a tiny sparrow poised on the fingertips of his left hand, a birdbath cradled in his right. Two religious icons that many residents of Loon Lake, Osborne included, found ironic; neither had been able to buttress the house from the evils occurring within.
    Osborne knew the homeowner as a fellow parishioner at St. Marys Catholic Church. Edna Shradtke might be in her seventies but she never missed Mass on Sundays, six-thirty a.m. rain or snow,