Free Dead Rapunzel by Victoria Houston Page A

four hands went up.

Chapter Ten
    â€œUmm, that was good,” said Judith, finishing off a slice of apple pie. “Before I head back to the inn I wonder if you folks would like a little background on how Rudd and Philip met, especially since his children never warmed to her. That may help explain their attitude toward me, anyway.”
    â€œI am very interested,” said Osborne, “since I think Philip was about twenty years older than Rudd, wasn’t he?”
    â€œTwenty-two to be exact,” said Judith. “He was sixty-nine when he died.”
    â€œWhy would that be important, Doc?” asked Lew. “I mean, you’re eleven years older than me and I don’t think your daughters are upset with that.”
    â€œIt’s not the age difference, Lew, so much as they strike me as such different people—”
    â€œYes and no,” said Judith. “Philip and Rudd had something unusual in common. Both were cancer survivors and that’s how they met—while getting chemo at the hospital over in Green Bay. That was five years ago. Their treatments were successful for a while and they had two terrific years together before Philip’s cancer returned.
    â€œOn the other hand, they could not have had more different lives before they met. Rudd grew up in Eagle River. She was an only child who lost her parents early, so she rarely went back to visit her hometown. Even after her husband and their little girl were killed in the car accident, which is when we became friends, she stayed close to the university and her research.
    â€œThe irony of her life is that just when she got a major grant to write a book on the artist Georgia O’Keeffe and the Wisconsin influences on her art, Rudd was diagnosed with lymphoma. That was when she decided to come home. The woods and the water and the little cottage that she had inherited from her parents suddenly seemed the most comforting place to be. At that point, my friend’s prognosis was not good, but she agreed to give chemotherapy a try. I have to hand it to her—Rudd was an optimist.
    â€œRight about that same time, Philip was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was told he needed aggressive chemotherapy if he was going to survive. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to go through all that. He hadn’t had an easy life.”
    â€œCome on, I find that hard to believe,” said Ray. “My father used to take me fishing up on Thunder Lake. He told me the Tomlinsons owned almost the entire lake. The great-grandfather was the ‘barbed wire baron’ of the North—there wasn’t a roll of fencing that didn’t come from one of the Tomlinson factories.”
    â€œYou’re right about that,” said Judith. “And Philip was the heir to that fortune. Like Rudd, he was an only child, and during his youth, his father diversified into paper mills and railroads, so when he died, Philip inherited over a hundred million dollars. But he had been a lonely child who grew up going to boarding school and summer camp. He rarely saw his parents.
    â€œSure, most people think he should have been happy, that he never had to work, but for Philip that extreme wealth was a curse. He told Rudd he hated never having the satisfaction of accomplishing something—just like he hated his wife. And two of his three children.”
    â€œWhoa, let’s stop right there,” said Lew, glancing over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being too loud. “He hated his wife? But they had children. You don’t have children with someone you hate.”
    Even as she spoke, Lew knew she was wrong. She remembered her own fury at the man who had fathered her two children: the cute, reckless teenager who had morphed into a shiftless drunk. A drunk she shed the minute she could earn a modest living as a secretary at the local paper mill before, eventually, putting herself through school so she could enter law