Down River (15 page)

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.

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.

This was all too much, delayed reaction from her river ride, childhood flashbacks again. Paranoia that someone had tried to kill her. Exhaustion, physical and mental. Survivor’s guilt. Compassion fatigue. She knew all the terms, the psychobabble buzzwords, diagnoses and verdicts. She was what an attorney would call an unreliable witness. Had she been pushed into the river? Should she tell Mitch she was wavering on that and just back off on Vanessa and Jonas?

She heard the door open above and quickly righted the crate and chair. Her pulse still pounding, she moved toward the stairs as Mitch came down.

“I was hoping to get a good night’s sleep, but I guess none of us did,” he greeted her. He looked as if he’d tossed and turned all night. His hair was mussed like a boy’s and little wrinkle marks where he’d slept against a pillow or blanket marred his left cheek.

“I know I look like a wreck,” she admitted, wanting to stroke those lines from his cheek and brow, “but Ginger’s face haunted me.”

He pulled her to him in a strong hug. She held on to him hard, her chin clamping his shoulder to her throat, her arms tight around his waist. He felt so strong, so stable in her sliding, shifting world.

“So,” he whispered, his warm breath moving the hair by her ear, “I heard Graham and Ellie arguing last night.”

She raised her head to look at him as he set her back, then pushed her gently down into the single chair. He sat with one hip on the edge of the crate, leaning toward her. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard them raise their voices to each other before.”

“Me neither. Could you tell over what?”

“Her giving money to Ginger and promising more. Since I’m playing Sherlock Holmes lately, I actually listened at their door.”

“I didn’t think he ever objected to her charity projects, large or small. I used to think it was because the firm’s financial base—and his wealth—was really from her father, and that gave her a certain unspoken power over Graham.”

“Agreed, but he may be worried Ginger’s death will turn out to be more than an accident, and he doesn’t want his wife—or any of his lawyers—to be even slightly involved or tainted.”

“Why would he assume her death might be more than an accident? He should be thinking just the opposite.”

“Because he’s been a lawyer for years, and he’s seen the worst in humanity. He’s dealt with some really devious people who could swear up and down they were innocent when they weren’t and then—I’m sorry to say—he’d defend some of them anyway.”

She heaved a huge sigh. “I know you’ve always admired him.”

“Haven’t you?”

“Of course. But, if someone’s clever, apparent ac
cidents can actually be murder, which is what we could be up against here. On the other hand, I’m wondering if I should stop suspecting anyone of attempted murder for pushing me in the river.”

“Second thoughts on if that really happened?”

She looked up at him. Maybe she should stop suspecting people she thought she knew and respected and just go on. Be very careful and aware, but just go on. No one had murdered her mother and Jani—no one but life’s hardships and her mother’s sick soul. But the denial of her being deliberately shoved into the river wouldn’t come to her lips.

“I still think I was pushed,” she whispered.

“Then we go with that. So have you thought any more about Vanessa setting you up to find Ginger’s body?”

“As you said yesterday, it’s all circumstantial. It’s like, maybe Jonas cut his own towline on the sled, maybe Vanessa is out to cut me off from the competition…or from life…maybe, maybe…Mitch, it’s driving me nuts.”

“Though I don’t want you to go, I’d send you home, but no one’s going anywhere until the sheriff says so.”

“Except to the Mountain Mother Festival. I think we’d all agree to cancel that, but we can’t just sit around here and stare at each other while waiting for the coroner’s report. And it is a good idea to sell the baked goods Ginger left to help Spike out.”

“Ordinarily, he’d be taking festival visitors flight-
seeing on short jaunts today, but he’s not up for that. The sheriff told him he could have access to Ginger’s cabin, so he wants to spend the day there. I told him I’d go with him, but he wanted to be alone, and I had to honor that.”

“I’ll bet Christine would like to be with him, but she’s going with us, too. She said Ginger had a booth rented, so setup won’t be too hard.”

“I thought maybe you were learning more about what Christine’s really like, one strong woman to another, who has risen above a personal tragedy.”

“But it’s still pulling me under,” she muttered as she turned away. She started up the steps, careful not to look at the array of bottles lighted from behind again.

“What did you say?” he called after her.

“Onward and upward. See you at breakfast.” She hurried up out of the green-gray depths of the little room.

Maybe, Lisa thought, as they carried Ginger’s baked items into the Mountain Mother Festival grounds in Talkeetna, this would be good for all of them. She saw normal people everywhere—families, activities, laughter, noise. Reality that didn’t threaten and endanger or drown one’s rational thoughts.

As they set up their money box and neatly arranged the variety of muffins, breads, cookies and cakes with their price labels, Lisa looked around. In the next booth, a woman hung small, quilted wall
hangings, now and then shouting at her two young boys to stop hitting each other. Across the way two women who looked like sisters put out painted tole wear in their booth; both had babies in carriers on their backs. Two men helped to tack up a sign reading Talkeetna Tole Wear Tells A Tale. What would it be like to live here, to raise a family here?

“Talkeetna certainly is the big city compared to Bear Bones,” Vanessa said, interrupting Lisa’s musings. Vanessa had been really cold to her on the way in, but everyone was uptight, so she’d tried to ignore that. No way was she going to let herself get all tied in knots every time Vanessa said something bitter or nasty. She had to accept that, once out of the office where camaraderie was expected, the woman’s snippy self came out. But mostly, Lisa was trying to cut Vanessa some slack because she’d scared herself lately, wavering on whether she’d really been pushed. One minute she was certain of it, the next, she realized her flashbacks could have made her memory untrustworthy, no matter what she’d vowed to Mitch in the cellar earlier this morning.

Also, Vanessa seemed to really be sucking up to Ellie today, much more so than usual. Perhaps she sensed or had been told how shaken Ellie was from her interview with the sheriff.

“You think this place is packed now,” Christine told them, “wait till you see it later. People around here go on what they call ‘Talkeetna time’—always running late—but they’ll all be here in time for the Moose Dropping part of the festivities.”

“The what?” Ellie asked. “Vanessa, you’ve done several cases concerning animal rights. Christine, exactly who is dropping a moose from where around here?”

Christine smiled—a rarity, Lisa thought. “No, Mrs. Bonner,” Christine told Ellie. “It’s the moose that make the droppings, and people find plenty of them each year when the snow melts. While they’re frozen, they get shellacked—the, you know, the droppings, not the moose—and made into either jewelry or something to throw at a target today. See here, these earrings I’m wearing today,” she said, pulling back her black hair and shaking her head so her dangling earrings bounced. “You haven’t been to Talkeetna if you don’t have some of this jewelry!”

“Oh, my word!” Ellie muttered with a roll of her eyes as Christine displayed her shiny gems.

Vanessa grinned, too. “I thought those were polished or shellacked Sitka spruce,” she said. “Mitch said it’s used to make Steinway pianos and other wooden instruments, because of its tight spiral grain, so I just thought…”

Despite their dire circumstances and Ginger’s lovely baked goods laid out before them like a memorial to her, they all had to laugh. It felt good, so good, Lisa thought. Poor Ginger had evidently loved life. In honor of that, suddenly, Lisa was determined to have a good time today. Maybe nothing else terrible would happen on this entire trip—that is, until she had to say goodbye to Mitch again.

When Lisa took her turn to walk around the festival for a while, Mitch quickly appeared at her side. “So what do you think?” he asked, with a sweep of his hand around the bustling, noisy scene.

“I think it’s great. A far cry from the Broward or Dade County Fairs.”

“Come on over here so you can see what a Mountain Mother is supposed to be able to do.”

“Swim a rushing river and come out alive?” she asked, as he took her hand and pulled her into a cheering crowd.

“Not even some of them could handle that—unless they had Mitchell Andrew Braxton at their beck and call, of course.”

She laughed for the second time today and punched his shoulder with her fist.

They wove their way through the thickening crowd to a central area with a lake and a culvert filled with water. With baby dolls in their backpacks, ten women took turns walking a log in hip waders while toting two buckets of water. Their audience whooped and hollered encouragement. One woman had a sign on her back under her doll baby: Attila the Mom!

Other parts of the round robin of tasks included chopping firewood, carrying bags of groceries, and running an obstacle course which included a simulated river crossing, using logs and stepping stones.

“That’s nothing!” Lisa told Mitch with an elbow to his ribs. “Where are the live bears and the cable car?”

Lisa was especially touched by the children cheering on their mothers, while the fathers clapped and hooted encouragement. She wondered again what it would be like to be a mountain mother here, not in this fun festival but in daily life.

She and Mitch wandered past stores with sidewalk sales, art galleries, museums and restaurants.

“The cultural side of the town reminds me some of Taos, New Mexico,” she told him. “I had no idea about the art galleries and museums. I just expected gift shops.”

“Some great restaurants, too, not just greasy spoons if that’s what you were thinking. By the way, the prize for winning that Mountain Mother contest is a trip to Europe. See, we’re not all heathens and savages here.”

She turned to smile at him. Again, despite the whirl of noise and movement, their gazes met and held.

“Except in bed,” he added with a grin and turned away before she could comment.

They wandered over to the Moose Dropping Festival near the VFW building. “Even this has a veneer of civility,” Mitch told her. “It’s a fundraiser for the Talkeetna Historical Society, and it brings in a bundle. There’s a raffle, and people buy numbered, shellacked moose droppings that are let go from that big net up there,” he said, pointing. “See that moose-shaped board on the ground? Whoever has the number that hits closest to the bull’s-eye on it wins big prizes.”

“Most unique,” she said with another little laugh. “But, still, I preferred the way I played my own moose game. Of course, I just pretended that bull moose coming out of the lake scared me so I could jump into your arms.”

“Hah! Wish that were true!”

Lisa knew they were flirting just the way they had when they first knew each other. Here she was with a man she’d thought she never wanted to see again. Being with Mitch might be a dead-end street, but she loved it—maybe still loved him.

As the two of them headed back toward the rows of rented booths, they saw Jonas, Graham and Ellie in the distance, heads bent together in earnest conversation. Then nodding at something and somehow looking relieved, Jonas went off by himself, talking into and snapping pictures with his cell phone.