Down River

by Karen Harper

  Lisa saw Mitch had to hold Spike back from racing down the dock. "Give them some time," he told his friend. "I'm sure they'll let you have a minute with her."

  "I don't want them cutting her up later, and I'm going to tell them that right now."

  "Spike, listen to me," Mitch said, grabbing his friend's arms and facing him. "They have legal authority to order an autopsy. It's standard for something like this. And you want to know what happened."

  "She's dead, that's what happened!"

  Sheriff Moran stood and turned away from where the men knelt around Ginger's body on the tarp that Mitch realized was probably a body bag. "You just hold on there now, Mr. Jackson," the sheriff called out. He turned back to the huddled men. Like the others, Lisa strained to hear.

  "Yes, concave trauma of the back of the skull," the doctor said. "But no clotted blood means she probably went in quickly after the injury. But that's all I can tell you without more time. Drowning deaths are complicated to assess. It's hard to tell whether the victim was dead or alive at the time of water entry. The lungs are going to fill with water even if drowning wasn't the cause, and with her floating faceup like that..." Finally, mercifully, his voice trailed off.

  "If you can make it quick for the family and friends and for me, I'll owe you, Doc," the sheriff said. "I'll be watchdogging the festival this weekend, but this will have to take priority if it's suspicious in any way. Okay, Mr. Jackson," he called to Spike. "If you want to come out here a minute--but not touch the victim--that will be fine, an official ID by next of kin. Then I need to have a few words individually with you ladies who discovered the body while we tape off the cabin and check things out there."

  Spike walked out onto the dock, quickly at first, then slowed. Mitch stood on the shore, watching. Lisa's heart went out to Spike. She knew how this felt, though she'd never had a body--bodies--to grieve over in her family tragedy. Sometimes that fact, even after all the years, made her think that somewhere, in her wildest dreams, her mother and sister were still alive.

  The sheriff spoke to Lisa first, since she'd actually found the body. He sat on a rock facing her while Vanessa paced the shoreline waiting her turn for interrogation.

  "Quite a vacation, huh, Ms. Vaughn?"

  "It's been challenging."

  "I like your attitude after all you been through. Things are tougher in Alaska, like that TV show title says, but that makes people tougher, too. Seems you're holding up well."

  "Yes and no, Sheriff. I saw my mother and sister drown when I was a child, so that makes this--and my river ride--even worse for me." She had decided to explain that up front, because she figured Vanessa might tell him she'd screamed for her mother--if she actually had. But if she hadn't, that meant Vanessa was working on her somehow and had researched her past--that is, unless the Bonners or Mitch had told Vanessa about her childhood tragedy when she'd trusted them not to.

  Worse, Lisa was starting to wonder if Vanessa could have somehow known Ginger's body was in the water and had set her up to discover the drowning. Vanessa was probably the last person to visit, so maybe she had seen Ginger was dead and realized seeing her drowned would freak Lisa out, and she could use that against her in the senior partner competition. No, that was too farfetched. She was getting paranoid again. Yet Vanessa had told her to check if Ginger's boat had pulled away from the dock. And if she suspected Vanessa of setting her up to find the body, did that mean she also thought Vanessa could have actually harmed Ginger?

  "I said, you sure you're okay?" the sheriff asked, touching her arm. "Real sorry to hear about your own tragedy, Ms. Vaughn."

  "Lisa. Lisa is fine."

  "Are you fine? That is, considering you just discovered a drowned woman, which obviously reminded you of your own tragedy?"

  "My lawyer training kicks in when necessary. At least, I hope so. Go ahead with your questions. I can be objective."

  "Real interesting, dealing with a lot of lawyers. Not my cup of tea."

  "I can understand that. Dealing with some officers of the law isn't a lawyer's favorite cup of tea either."

  "I think we understand each other, so let's get down to brass tacks."

  She recounted why she and Vanessa had come across the lake and said Christine would back all that up. She led him step by step through their search for Ginger, giving him time to take notes on a pad he'd pulled from his shirt pocket. When he asked, she told him who had visited Ginger earlier in the day and why. She included her firsthand information about Ginger and Gus Majors because that had to come out anyway.

  "Big guy, isn't he? I know who he is," he said, frowning, and underlined something back and forth on his notepad.

  "I found him to be very congenial and honest. He clearly told Mitch, Vanessa and me that he'd seen Ginger and had words with her earlier today. I could tell he was expecting her to show up at the lodge this evening. Those aren't the sort of words or actions of a man who had hurt her earlier."

  "Gotcha on that, attorney Vaughn, but I'll draw my own conclusions. Passions can flare just as hot in Alaska as anywhere else. So, the other lodge visitor besides you and Ms. Guerena was Mrs. Ellen--called Ellie--Bonner, and she's back at the lodge. I'll need to talk to her there."

  "Look, I've been here for a couple of hours, and I'm exhausted. Do you mind if I ask Mitch to take me back to the lodge now?" She had to talk to Mitch, had to tell him how Vanessa might have staged some of this.

  "Sure. Both of you can go, and I'll drop Ms. Guerena back there after I talk to her and come to interview Mrs. Bonner. Needless to say, I might have to ask Mitch's guests to extend their vacation if there's any need."

  "I understand. By the way, in the cabin are a lot of freshly baked goods Ginger was evidently going to sell at the festival tomorrow. Rather than just let them go to waste--if it's all right with Spike--could some of us sell them in town tomorrow for her estate? We were going in anyway, and Christine said Spike will need the money to bury Ginger."

  "I'll go take a look-see at them, and if Spike says so, fine by me. You want to go ask him?"

  She went to Christine first and explained her idea. Christine wiped her eyes and nodded. "It would be a way to help Spike and honor Ginger's wishes," she said with a decisive nod. "Baking and helping with the ziplining--Ginger loved to do both. Does he--Does the sheriff, the coroner, too, think she slipped?"

  "That would be their first assumption, but they have to look at all the possibilities."

  "And that means murder?"

  "Other than suicide--and that's a real long shot here--that's the last option. If they find someone caused this, depending on what they can prove about intent, the authorities could bring charges."

  "If they can figure out who did it," Christine interrupted with a visible shudder and a stifled sob. "Don't I know how all that goes? Mitch says you looked up my past, but you've been kind anyway."

  Lisa wasn't sure what to say. She had expected Christine to be more upset.

  "Well," Christine went on, "after you were rescued, he told me about yours, too, your family loss, even before you shared that with me. So we understand each other on grief and regret at least."

  "Yes," Lisa whispered as tears blurred her vision so that this woman's face, like Ginger's in the water, her mother's in her dreams, seemed to waver and shimmer. They embraced quickly, then stepped back. In years of closing remarks and court summation, Lisa had never heard something so terrible and complicated put so concisely and so right.

  Lisa sat facing Mitch as he took her back to the lodge in the motorboat. The wind raked his hair with invisible fingers and ballooned his unzipped jacket. The bottom of the boat pounded from wave to wave. The roar of the motor made them shout at each other as she told him her new suspicions about Vanessa.

  He listened carefully, nodding. "Are you sure you didn't actually cry out something about your mother?" he finally asked.

  "I had a flashback to my nightmare and screamed, but I swear she made that up. Mitch, she's been looking in
to my past to see how she can psychologically rattle me and might have let me find Ginger to set me off."

  "I'm sorry that had to be you. I guess Vanessa could have set that up, but we can't prove anything from what you said."

  "I never really exchanged one word with Ginger, but I intended to. She could well have been in the area when someone shoved me in."

  "Yeah. I saw her boat but not her when I ran down to the lake to get the kayak to come after you. Move here on this seat with me, so we don't have to shout. We're both getting hoarse."

  He gave her a hand, and she moved beside him. Just behind them, water from the outboard motor plumed in a white rooster tail, just like water bursting over rocks in the river. She shuddered and put her arms around herself for warmth, then Mitch put an arm around her and steered one-handed, probably the way Ginger had always steered her boat. When they'd left, one of the policemen was going over the boat with a flashlight and tweezers, no less.

  "Lisa, it's a leap to think Ginger's death and your possible drowning are related. The two of you never really met and seem to have nothing in common."

  "So we're back to the big possibility that my would-be killer thought--or knew--Ginger had seen something. But with all the visitors she had today, how could someone else have sneaked over there and hurt her? As we agreed before, someone's desperate and devious."

  "Yeah. We have met the enemy and he is us."

  "Mitch, it has to be someone at the lodge, someone from the firm. We need to re-examine everything, everyone, even Graham and Ellie."

  "I know. I have been. Meet me about an hour before breakfast in the wine cellar tomorrow morning. The sheriff will be at the lodge soon to talk to Ellie, and there's going to be a lot of unrest tonight, when both of us--all of us--need some sleep. I swear, I've never caught up with sleep since our river run. I'm like a zombie, not sure if I'm thinking straight. Almost there, sweetheart. I see Graham waiting on the shore."

  She moved back to the other seat so Mitch could maneuver the boat in. Sweetheart? He'd called her sweetheart. Graham would have seen his arm around her, but so what? It had been one horrible, long day, and it was not even nearly over yet.

  "Was it an accident?" Graham shouted as Mitch edged the boat up to the dock.

  Now, that was the question, Lisa thought, looking down into the roiling water.

  Before the sheriff questioned Ellie, Graham insisted that a lawyer sit in with her, one that was not her husband. Lisa was touched and Vanessa annoyed when Graham asked Lisa to be that person. With cocoa Christine had fixed for everyone, the three of them sat before the cold hearth. It was nearly midnight. The sheriff had Ellie explain her visit to Ginger's--she had driven the spare car from the lodge around the lake--and listened patiently to her tell how impressed she was with Ginger's baking skills and quaint cabin.

  "So you ordered some baked goods to take back with you?" he asked, obviously surprising Ellie.

  "Why, yes, I did. I suppose Vanessa or Lisa told you that. She was to bake them later. The items she'd been working on for a couple of days were to sell at the Talkeetna festival."

  "Lisa," he said, turning to her, "I forgot to tell you, I got the baked goods in the trunk of the car. It's okay by Spike, it's okay by me, a nice way to honor Ginger's memory. But if word gets out you're selling a dead woman's items tomorrow, don't you or anyone else be telling your theories about what happened. Got that?"

  "Got that, Sheriff. And thanks for permission."

  "Now, you ladies recall if anyone paid her up front for the goods she was gonna bake for you?" he asked.

  "Actually, I did," Ellie said, her index finger hooked over her gold necklace, sliding back and forth. If Lisa had had any prep time with her, she'd have told her there was nothing to be nervous about. But she could understand. Ellen Carlisle Bonner was hardly used to being interrogated by the police.

  "I gave her fifty dollars," Ellie said.

  "Nice price for bakery items," the sheriff said, writing in his notebook again. "But then we're gonna have to figure out where she got this--whose hand-writing's on it, too, though we can sure lift prints." He turned around to pull a ziplocked plastic bag from a paper sack he'd placed behind his chair. "There's not fifty but two hundred dollars in cash in the envelope inside here, with the printed return address of The Duck Lake Lodge, Bear Bones, Alaska," he told them. "Besides Ginger's name, the envelope bears the words more to come." Lisa leaned forward far enough to see that was exactly what it said.

  "Found in a drawer in her bedroom," the sheriff added. "Of course, we'll fingerprint the envelope and money--we're kinda low-tech around here, since fancy DNA forensic work goes to Fairbanks or Anchorage. But we can also trace the handwriting on the envelope." When Ellie sat back farther in her chair as if it was beneath her to squint at the envelope, the sheriff dropped it back in his sack.

  Then, as Lisa's clients had done to her many a time, Ellie blurted, "You won't have to look far, Sheriff. I did order only fifty dollars of baked goods, but I put the other one hundred and fifty in there as a gift. That's my writing. But I promised Ginger I wouldn't tell anyone, and now I have."

  Thank heavens, Lisa thought, the explanation was perfectly in line with the way Ellie and the Bonners operated--gifts for the needy, generosity on a grand scale. She wouldn't embarrass Ellie by extolling the Bonners' various kindnesses in front of her, but she'd make sure the sheriff realized that there was nothing suspicious or unusual in that gesture. To the Bonners, that sort of donation was like her leaving a dollar tip on the counter at a Starbucks.

  "And the more to come?" he prompted Ellie. "Why that?"

  "The woman was good-hearted, and I liked her. I have discretionary money for when I see someone in need."

  The sheriff nodded and said no more. He didn't seem upset, but Ellie was. After all, Ellie had been coddled and protected by strong men all her life. But after being around so many attorneys and her father's and husband's precious law firm, didn't Ellie know when she'd said enough? Lisa's lawyer sixth sense made her feel more was coming.

  "Sheriff," Ellie said, "I just thought she needed encouragement for standing up to Gus Majors when he tried to bully her. I wondered why he didn't want to be around her when he brought Lisa and Mitch back from their river adventure, so I asked Ginger why. It seems she was quite afraid of the man."

  "That right, Mrs. Bonner?"

  "That's right, Sheriff."

  Damn, Lisa thought, as he scribbled something, then flipped his small, spiral notebook closed. She hoped Mitch would take on Gus as a pro bono client if serious charges were filed against him, because she couldn't practice law in this state. And despite that Gus seemed an obvious suspect, she just didn't believe he would hurt Ginger. But then, in her deepest being, she still couldn't fathom that anyone had tried to kill her, either.

  16

  L

  isa tiptoed downstairs before anyone else was up and headed for the library and the wine cellar. She was hoping no one would be in her way as Christine had been last time. Noises from the kitchen and a half-set breakfast table told her Christine was up and busy. The more she got to know the woman, the more she became convinced that, despite Christine's past, she would not have pushed her into the river. Lisa's original theory about Christine protecting Mitch or even wanting him for herself could be valid, but the fact she'd reached out so emotionally to Spike made Lisa think Christine was just as close to both men who were part of her little family here. As Lisa opened the door to the cellar, she saw that the light was on. She closed the door behind her and started down the steps.

  "Mitch?"

  He didn't respond. Maybe he'd turned the light on for her, then gone for something he'd forgotten. Pulling her sweater tighter around her shoulders, she went down and sat in the single chair. The lighting behind the bottles bathed the area in a warm, greenish glow, but it was cool down here. She'd never forget how cold the river was. The slightest breath of chilly air made her remember the numbing feel of it. The hot tub that
first night back had helped, but she'd try the sauna soon, maybe tonight. She'd loved the sauna at the club where she used to work out. At least Mother and Jani hadn't died in cold water. They were lost in the Gulf Stream that the cruise ship's captain said might carry them far away.

  She hadn't slept well last night, but that was to be expected. No doubt, the others hadn't either. Her mind drifted, pulled away by the current...down, around rocks, trying to catch hold...hold of herself in the green shifting, rushing waters...tried to get hold of Mitch...

  Lisa jerked alert. Had she dozed off?

  Feeling groggy, she opened her eyes and saw her mother's face again, staring at her through green water, her eyes huge, wide, like Ginger's death stare. She leaped to her feet, knocking the chair and crate table over, slamming backward into the bottles behind her. They rattled and shuddered, making reflections jump and sway. She was in the dark depths of the sea with Mother watching her....

  Her heart nearly pounded out of her chest. No, this was reality, not even a dream. Wake up, wake up! The staring eyes were just strange lights through the bottom of two big bottles. She'd imagined she'd seen human eyes there, magnified, huge. Nothing there. Nothing. She was going crazy.