Lake Death: A Murder Mystery

By Frank Scotello

A U.S. Army veteran of the war in Afghanistan moves to a small city in east-central Wisconsin to take a job as a reporter. While practicing journalism, he must deal with love and murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Apr 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781489728586

Frank Scotello

Frank Scotello is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. He was an infantry officer and was parachute and Ranger qualified. He has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English. He has taught writing and literature at West Point and at private colleges. He has been a newspaper reporter and editor. He lives in Wisconsin and has published essays, articles, and poems. This is his second novel.

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Copyright © 2020 Frank Scotello.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-2856-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-2857-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-2858-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020907021

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 04/21/2020

To my son, Frank,

who served his country honorably

in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 The Cop Shop

Chapter 2 The Bar

Chapter 3 The Detective

Chapter 4 The Supper Club

Chapter 5 Telephone Tag

Chapter 6 The Grand Opening

Chapter 7 The Rendezvous

Chapter 8 The Cheese Factory

Chapter 9 The Bakery

Chapter 10 Rolling Thunder

Chapter 11 The Supper Club Revisited

Chapter 12 At Home On The Range

Chapter 13 The Obituary

Chapter 14 More Brilliant Ideas

Chapter 15 A Bad Night

Chapter 16 The First Stone

Chapter 17 A Good Diversion

Chapter 18 The Day Of The Funeral

Chapter 19 Foiled Again

Chapter 20 Saturday Workday

Chapter 21 Sunday Dinner

Chapter 22 Monday, Monday

Chapter 23 Speaking of Flowers

Chapter 24 Her Honor the Mayor

Chapter 25 A Long Afternoon

Chapter 26 A Worse Evening

Chapter 27 The Greenhouse

Chapter 28 Thank God It’s Friday

Chapter 29 Holy Saturday

Chapter 30 Easter Sunday Morning

Chapter 31 Easter At Kate’s

Chapter 32 sunday Evening

Chapter 33 A Couple Of Weeks Later

Steve’s Short Story

About The Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WOULD LIKE to give special thanks to my daughter, Annette, who put so much time and effort into helping me proofread and edit this book. Her opinion was greatly appreciated. She made this mystery a better story.

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CHAPTER I

THE COP SHOP

STEVE MARTORANA PUNCHED in the combination to the door at the police station—362. He entered the confines of the inner sanctum of Lac du Mort’s finest, but Steve wasn’t a police officer.

Steve was a reporter at the city’s daily newspaper, the Tribune Examiner. He had the police beat—the cop shop—as he called it. It was the job of the police reporter to call the police department Public Affairs Officer every morning at 6:30 to see if there was any hot police item that should be included in the daily news.

Like most mornings, Captain Lou Luzinski (his real first name was Stanislaus) had told Steve it had been a quiet Sunday and that nothing of any interest had occurred during the night that was worthy of publication in Monday afternoon’s paper.

Steve walked down the corridor to Capt. Lou’s office. He said good morning or how ya doing to everyone he saw. He got along pretty well with the police. Perhaps, he fit well into their old boy network because he had served as a military police officer with the 18th Airborne Corps in Afghanistan. Often, they spoke the same language.

The women reporters were always complaining about the way the police withheld information from them or made it difficult to obtain. Steve hadn’t encountered that problem so far.

Good morning, Lou, anything interesting in the police reports?

It was a real quiet night.

Martorana sat down at the small desk that the police captain had set up in his office for the newspaper and the radio reporters to come in and read the police reports. It was a tiny thing, almost like a school desk.

He started reading the reports left in the gray metal inbox. Not another domestic disturbance, he thought to himself as he read the first report. He hated reading those things. Two people living together would get drunk, accuse each other of cheating, and then start beating the shit out of each other. He never wrote those up for the paper unless someone was hospitalized. You never knew who was at fault, but the guy was normally arrested. The next one was a runaway, never reported on those either. Juveniles ran away all the time. By law, you couldn’t use their name, and they probably would come home after they cooled down and stopped being angry at their parents.

Another domestic disturbance, there were always a number of those on the weekend, especially after the couple had been out bar hopping. A suspicious person, a broken windshield, a found bicycle—Lou had been right; nothing really happened that early spring Sunday. Then down at the bottom of the pile, the very last police report was something interesting.

Geez, why didn’t you tell me about this when I called this morning? You found a body in the lake? That’s big news!

I hadn’t seen the reports yet, Steve, the police captain replied.

This was big, and he had missed his deadline. There was going to be hell to pay with his editor. The radio would run with the story before it would get in tomorrow’s paper, shit!

Have the guys from the radio seen this yet?

Yeah, they were here a bit earlier.

Both stations?

Yeah.

My editor’s going to kill me for this.

Gee, I’m sorry Steve. Is there anything I can do—call him or something?

No, I’ll just have to take the ass chewing. Has the body been identified yet?

There was no I.D., and the body was bloated and unrecognizable from being in the water. We’re waiting on the coroner.

Look, Lou, could you do me a favor? Could you call me as soon as you hear? And let me know the cause of death?

Sure, but the radio guys will be calling and asking for the same info.

Please, just call me as soon as you find out and before you talk to them.

Sure, Steve, you’ve always supported the police. I’ll let you know the minute I find out.

Thanks, Lou. Maybe I can salvage this disaster.

Martorana left the police station and walked toward the newspaper office, which was only a few blocks away. He knew this body couldn’t be a swimming accident; people fished in Lake Lac du Mort, but they didn’t swim in it—too rocky. Besides, it was spring in Wisconsin and too cold to swim. This had to be a boating accident or something. It could even be foul play.

He put his I.D. card in the door to get access and walked upstairs to the newsroom. He swallowed and walked up to the city editor’s work station. Mike Walker, the city editor, was banging away on his keyboard probably editing a story for the next day’s paper. Mike, I’ve got some news that didn’t make today’s paper and the radio will report it, if they haven’t already.

Yeah? What is it?

They found a body in the lake very early this morning, around 6 a.m.

Why didn’t Luzinski tell you about it when you called? That’s the PAO’s job!

He said he hadn’t seen it yet.

That’s BS; the cops are trying to hide something!

Martorana thought to himself that everyone at the paper always thought the cops were trying to hide something. Lou said he’d call me with the identity and cause of death of the deceased as soon as he heard from the coroner—before he talked to the radio guys.

Well that’s something; maybe we can print another front page and wrap it around the paper before it goes out around eleven. Where was the body found, exactly?

By the North Winds Supper Club in the rocks at the southeast side of the lake.

Will Luzinski call you here at the paper?

Yeah, and he always asks for my extension.

I’ll tell Linda at the switchboard to send any of your calls to my extension, and I’ll talk to him. You head out to the North Winds and do some reporting. We’ll see if we can make a story out of this by noon.

But Mike, the supper club isn’t open on Mondays. There probably won’t be anyone there until tomorrow.

Well, who found the body?

A guy named Dave Schultz; he was picking up the garbage at the back of the club.

Get his number and get him on the record. By golly, people will want to read about all the details. We’ll sell a lot of papers.

Okay boss, will do.

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Martorana knew locating this Dave Schultz could be a problem. After all, this was Wisconsin, the land of beer and brats (pronounced brots, from bratwursts, not naughty children); there could be 50 people named Schultz in the phonebook. Maybe there were only a few Daves, he hoped. He got to his workstation and pulled the phonebook out of his desk. There weren’t as many with the name Schultz in the book as he thought. People were going more and more toward smartphones and dropping their landlines, even in this small east-central Wisconsin city. However, there was no Schultz named Dave.

What to do, he thought. Then he got an idea: there couldn’t be too many scavenger services that worked around the city. A restaurant would surely use one of those. His hunch paid off. He had luck with the first one he called, A&S Environmental Services.

A and S services, the sweet-sounding, young voice on the phone said, how may I help you?

"This is Steve Martorana with the Tribune Examiner; may I speak with Dave Schultz?"

He’s on his route now. He’s running late because of finding the body, but he should be finishing up soon.

Would you tell him I’d like to interview him when he comes in? I’m on my way there now.

I’ll give him the message, but I can’t promise anything. Will he get his name in the paper?

Probably, if he talks to me.

This is exciting, isn’t it? I’ll be sure to tell him.

Thanks, thanks a lot. Bye. Geez, does everyone in the city already know about the body? Word sure travels quickly in these small towns, he thought to himself. Martorana grabbed his reporter’s note book and an extra pen and his jacket and headed out of the newsroom door toward his car.

Since he was the early reporter this week, his car was parked in a reserved spot near the paper’s loading dock. He didn’t have to walk to the municipal parking lot. He got into his five-year-old Jeep Cherokee and headed for the address he had gotten for A&S in the phonebook.

It took about 20 minutes to reach A&S; it was really outside the city limits in one of the townships. The site was out in the country not too far from a couple of dairy farms. There were large buildings and a huge gravel-covered yard surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The gate was opened, so Martorana pulled his jeep into the yard.

He saw a group of men talking and laughing near the door of what he took to be the truck garage. He parked the car and headed towards the group. A large man in the group spotted him and gave him the once-over.

You must be the guy from the paper, he said.

That’s right; the name’s Martorana.

"Is that Eyetalian?"

"Yes, but it’s pronounced Eeetalian. Actually, my grandparents were born in Sicily,"

Really? You know anybody in the Mafia?

When I lived in Chicago, I was told there’s no such thing anymore.

I bet. Well I’m the guy who found the body.

You’re David Schultz?

I go by Dave. The man stuck out his hand, and Martorana and he shook. Schultz had quite a grip. You gonna take my picture?

Sure. Martorana took out his smartphone and snapped a couple of head shots. Maybe the paper would use one of them. That’s something the radio can’t do, he thought. May I ask you a few questions?

Shoot.

Martorana took out his reporter’s notebook (It was like a steno pad but narrower so it could be held in the palm of one hand.) and pen. How did you find the body?

I empty the dumpsters at the North Winds every Monday morning at about five thirty. It’s the first stop on my route. When I backed up my truck to get the first dumpster, I saw a bunch of seagulls making a ruckus near the rocks at the edge of the water. I got curious, so I put the truck in neutral and walked over towards them. I thought they were probably fighting over some garbage, you know, so I wanted to see what made them so excited. I was just curious. As I got closer…

How far away were they?

Maybe 20 yards, like two first downs.

Watch a lot of football, do you?

Yeah, never miss the Packers on TV, or the Badgers; I even go to high school games when my nephew plays.

So, you know what 20 yards look like.

Yeah. As I was saying, as I got closer, the birds flew off squawking; and then I saw something big halfway on the rocks and halfway in the water.

What did you think it was?

I don’t know; it was bigger than any sturgeon I ever saw. I was curious, so I walked up to it, and then I could tell it was a person’s body.

What did it look like?

You know, it was all bloated like, but I could tell it was a guy.

How?

He had shorter hair and what looked like a dark sport jacket and nice pants, but they were ripped up, probably from the rocks.

What did you do then?

I called 911 on my cell phone and reported it to the cops. They said to wait because they’d send a squad to investigate and take my statement.

You acted like a good citizen.

Yeah, I did my citizen’s duty.

I’ll put that in the story I write. What happened next?

After I called the cops, I called into the garage and told them I’d be late with my route because I found a body and had to give a statement to the cops.

When did they arrive?

In about 10 or 15 minutes. When they got there, one took my statement, and the other went over to the body. They said I’d have to go to the station and sign it when I got off. When I was done telling them what happened, I finished my route; and when I got done, they told me you were coming to interview me. And here you are. Any other questions?

Just a few for background.

How old are you?

Twenty-six.

Do you live in Lac du Mort?

It’s my address, but I actually live in one of the townships, Flambeau.

How long have you worked for A and S?

"All my life. My dad is the S in A and S Environmental Services cause our last name is Schultz. Anything else?"

You married?

Single, but always looking.

Thanks. Martorana shook Dave’s hand and started back to his car.

Will the story be in today’s paper?

Probably tomorrow’s; today’s is already printed. Thanks again. He turned back to his car. Right as he started to open the door, his phone rang. It was Mike Walker.

Did you interview Schultz? Mike asked.

Yeah.

Good, get your ass back here. We’re going to do a wrapper.

Really?

Yeah, the body is the lady mayor’s son.

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Martorana hurried back to his car and to the newsroom. The fact that the body was the mayor’s son would be big news indeed. He’d have to write his story about the finding of the body by Schultz, but he didn’t know that the mayor even had a son. He really hadn’t lived in Lac du Mort that long. When he arrived at the newsroom, the place was in a frenzy. He went straight to the Walker’s work station.

Mike, what can you tell me about the mayor’s son for my story?

His name is Peter Deutch; he’s a 20-year-old junior at UW-Oshkosh.

But the mayor’s last name is Flynn.

She goes by her maiden name for political reasons.

What’s the father’s first name?

Fred, Fredrick.

How long have they been married?

You don’t have to worry about that stuff. Lynda is doing a background piece on the kid, and trying to get a statement from the mayor. You stick with the cop side of the story. Just write up the details about the discovery, and see if you can get in touch with the coroner.

Sure.

Martorana stewed as he went to his desk and computer. Of course, Mike would have Lynda interview the mayor and write a sob story about the son. She was Mike’s favorite and got all the best byline articles.

He put his coat behind his chair, sat down, and looked up the coroner’s number. When he called, all he got was a message saying to call the police for information about the coroner’s findings. He called the PAO.

This is Captain Luzinski.

Lou, this is Steve at the paper. Do we have a cause of death?

That can take a while.

How long?

"As long as it takes. There probably will have to be an autopsy,