Down River (19 page)

“Ah, Cummings, the money man who was funneling big cash into something—but, we thought, not terrorist activities. So Markus is still rotting in jail? He had a large family to provide for.”

“And I never read him to be the kind of guy who would go to jail to protect someone. I’ll bet he was threatened to shut his mouth—maybe by the same people who threatened us—and/or his family is being taken care of in style by someone while he’s locked away.”

“Doesn’t this kind of remind you of Nixon’s Watergate mess?” Mitch said as he drew in extra arrows and wrote
in prison
by the reporter’s name. “I mean, this reeks of a big cover-up from the top
down by whoever was really getting this money laundered through the South Florida casinos.”

“Like you said before, it’s a spiderweb. But who’s the spider?”

D
inner, though it was their last one at the lodge and the food was delicious, seemed to drag for Lisa. She and Mitch had agreed to meet on the patio in the midnight twilight to take a walk and talk about the casino case, and about their future. She wondered if he’d agree to visit Florida now and then and if they could try to establish a real relationship again. She knew he was hoping she might visit him for a while in the autumn or winter, so that—without the pressure of everyone else around—they could backtrack and then, just maybe, go forward, not at zipline or river-rafting speed, but step by step. Still, someone was going to have to compromise on location and career if they were to be together permanently, and she still couldn’t quite fathom that.

Everyone scattered after dinner: Jonas to his room, Vanessa to walk off their meal. The Bonners and Mitch were huddled in quiet conversation by the hearth, unfortunately, because Lisa wanted to whisper to him about another casino case connection she’d remembered.

During dinner conversation, she’d suddenly recalled she’d heard that Manuel Markus had once written political speeches for several state congressmen, which meant he might have known the Bonners through their political fundraising for Ellie’s brother, Merritt Carlisle. Maybe he’d even written speeches for him. If the coast was clear, Lisa decided she would pop down into the wine cellar and write that on their chart, then see if any of Mitch’s lines and arrows connected to anyone else high up. Absolute power corrupted absolutely, and the spider in the web must be someone powerful.

She peeked in the deserted library and opened the cellar door. Utter blackness below. She switched on the light, closed the door behind her and hurried down the steps. The chart was where they’d left it, rolled up in one of the wine cradles, wedged in above a bottle of Chardonnay. In their haste to leave, they’d left their wine goblets on the crate. She unrolled the chart and, sitting in one of the chairs, smoothed it across her knees. Hunched over it, she took the pencil he’d left and, squinting to see in the watery, greenish light, she wrote her information in the correct place.

But then, a slight shadow shifted and she looked up.

She jumped to her feet and backed into the wall of bottles behind her. Two huge eyes blinked, shifted away. She refused to believe she was going crazy. She had not screamed for her mother when she found Ginger, and she had not imagined eyes staring at her.

She grabbed a bottle and, holding it by its neck, she hefted it like a club. She edged toward the stairs and, bottle raised, peeked behind the opposite wall-to-wall rack of bottles.

Vanessa was wedged in the narrow space between the back of the rack and the stone wall with an unlit flashlight raised like a weapon.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lisa shouted, hoping Mitch would hear and come down.

“What the hell are
you
doing?” Vanessa echoed. “I thought you might be planning another lover’s tryst, sneaking down here to meet Mitch again to convince him to put in a good word for you, convince him with wine and kisses and the rest of you!”

“I have not. You’re a spy, Vanessa! You were here before. We’ve just been trying to work things out so—”

“Oh, I’ll bet. I’m telling Graham about this little love nest.”

That was the last thing in the world Lisa needed, but she knew better than to show Vanessa any weakness, so she counterattacked. “You just do that. He’ll love to hear how you’ve been eavesdropping on us—probably on him and Ellie, too.”

“You mean like Mitch told you he was listening at the Bonners’ bedroom door? I know what I’m up against with you! I was only down here once before, but I’ll bet you’ve been meeting Mitch day and night. I’m surprised there isn’t a bed down here, but I guess the floor will do.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, or you’re projecting your own M.O. on me.”

“Yeah?” she challenged, shaking the flashlight as if she’d hit her with it, however trapped she looked in that little space. “I heard Mitch say he was playing detective for you, but I’ll bet you just want the attention from him. ‘Someone pushed me in the river, Mitch, I’m sure of it,’” she mocked. “Or you hallucinated you were pushed. You’re unstable, Lisa. I’m sorry about your tragic past, but you’re imagining things, and I can’t think of a worse quality for senior partner.”

“And I can’t imagine Graham entrusting the position to someone who spies and lies.”

“Oh, really?” she said, folding her arms over her chest with the unlit flashlight held straight up between her breasts. “You think a few high-tech, underhanded things are beyond Graham, think again!”

“Like what?”

“Never mind changing the subject. I’m talking to him, and you’re not stopping me.”

“Then I’ll go with you. It will give me the opportunity to tell him you’re not only lying about my screaming my mother’s name when I found Ginger’s body, but that you’re the one who set me up to find her.”

“I heard you pull that one on Mitch down here before, but you’re crazy! How could I do that? She was alive and well when I left! So what if I asked you to go tie up the boat on the dock in all those waves?
You pull that one on Graham, and I’ll sue for defamation of character. If you and Mitch kept that insane theory to yourselves, I was going to let it pass, but I’m sure you knocked your head on a rock in the river!”

“Don’t you wish. Actually—and we’ll tell this to Graham, too, if you haven’t already—someone did shove me in, and the lead candidate for that is my female rival for the senior partner position!”

“Ridiculous slander! Jonas says you’re whacked out from seeing your mother and sister drown, that’s all.”

“That’s
all?
”

“Look, Lisa, I didn’t mean it like that, like it was nothing. My point is no one shoved you in, just like that wasn’t your mother in the water but Ginger. I’m sorry, really. Let’s just back off, okay? I apologize for checking on you and Mitch, but it looks like you’re trying to sway him and, through him, the Bonners. It’s like tampering with the jury. It looks bad, you’ve got to admit that. Let’s just put our dueling weapons away and swear we’ll keep each other’s secrets, let things play out, see who Graham names tomorrow.”

Lisa’s mind raced. Let things play out. Vanessa had known for days that Lisa had been pushed in the river but evidently hadn’t tried to use it against her—yet. Was that because she was the culprit and she was hoping it would remain a secret, maybe until she could finish the job? And if they went to Graham, it might spook him before she and Mitch could get
their thoughts together on the casino case he seemed so concerned about.

“A truce then,” Lisa agreed, glaring at Vanessa. “All this will be over tomorrow anyway, one way or the other.”

“Yeah, one way or the other,” Vanessa said bitterly, putting her flashlight down at her side and edging closer, sideways out of her narrow space.

Still unwilling to trust her, Lisa darted back into the room, grabbed the chart and hurried up the stairs before Vanessa got out from behind the rack. She had to tell Mitch all this when she saw him later tonight, because she feared her forced truce with Vanessa was hardly a cease-fire.

Lisa went directly to her room, locked the door behind her and leaned against it. She panted as if she’d run miles. Yes, Vanessa was the one she suspected of pushing her in the river, but what if things did just play out and she and Mitch could never prove the woman’s guilt?

She shook her head to clear it. She ached all over from being so tensed up confronting Vanessa. Or was it the ziplining and the rafting that had brought back all the aches and pains from her battering in the river, even after she’d felt she was healing a bit? She still had to pack to leave the next day, when she could not bear to leave at all. Restless, she decided she’d take advantage of the sauna as Christine had suggested. She wanted to be calm when she met Mitch later.

As she walked away from the door she stepped on a piece of paper someone had evidently slipped under it, as if it were a bill for a hotel stay. Maybe a note from Mitch? In the room’s dim light, with the muted roar of the river outside, she picked it up and walked to a window. She gasped.

It was the printed copy of the painting of the drowned Ophelia that Ellie had mentioned earlier. Someone had written on it.
Since you showed interest in this at the memorial service today, I thought you’d like to see it, death beautified.—Ellie

It was both stunning and haunting. Painter, John Everett Millais, 1851–1852, Tate Gallery, London, England, was printed under it.

Lisa looked away from the picture, but too late. Like Ginger floating in the lake, like her mother floating in the depths of her soul, the drowned woman stared up with her hands open, beseeching….

She threw it in the wastebasket, then dug it out again, but left it facedown on the dresser as she darted into the bathroom and donned her bathing suit.

Ellie should not have shared this with her, but she evidently thought it was comforting or helpful. Yes, that was Ellie, always wanting to help others.

Feeling suddenly chilled, Lisa wrapped the thick terry-cloth robe around her trembling body. That sauna would feel great. Water, water everywhere, but in comforting, warm, relaxing steam.

Locking her room, she hurried downstairs and out onto the patio. It was either her confrontation with
Vanessa or that picture that had made her feel chilled, because the evening was mild enough.

She glanced up into the gray twilight sky, wishing she could see the dancing colors of the aurora borealis Mitch said were always there, but could not be seen unless the sky was dark. That’s how it was for her attempts to discover who had hurt her, she thought. The danger, that person’s evil was there, but hidden in the light of pretense and lies. If events got even darker, would that reveal the murderer, the crooked, clever monster?

She forced her fears away and checked to see if the sauna was empty. She was relieved to see it was. The sauna fit the patio and lodge, for it looked like a small rustic cabin. It had an external wood-burning heater. She walked around to the side where Mitch had pointed out the timer and temperature-setting dials. She set the timer for six minutes and the temperature to a hundred and thirty, although both dials could go much higher.

She hit the button to start the firebox next to the eight-gallon stainless-steel water tank that vented into the sauna. That first day, Mitch had also demonstrated for them how you could pour extra water on the heated river rocks inside for a moister, thicker steam.

She couldn’t wait to get inside, to just let all the tension drift away.

Mitch took the phone call at his desk as the Bonners left his office. They’d not only paid him the
rest of what they’d negotiated but included a hefty bonus. They’d agreed on another local pilot to fly them to the airport in Anchorage, since Spike was going into Talkeetna to pick out a coffin for Ginger.

“Mitch Braxton,” he answered the phone.

“Hey, Mitch, it’s me—Lucky, at the saloon in Bear Bones. Gus is in here, drunk as a skunk, shooting off his mouth and getting kinda rough. Says you’re his lawyer, but he doesn’t need you ’cause he didn’t do nothing wrong—cryin’ in his beer about Ginger. Nobody seems to be able to talk him down and, if he starts breaking the place up, I’m gonna have to call the sheriff. Considering things, that would be bad news.”

Mitch looked at his watch. Nine-thirty. He had time to drive in, get Gus home and get back before meeting Lisa.

“Thanks, Lucky. Tell him to cool it, and I’ll be right there.”

He scribbled notes to Graham and Lisa. For something like this, he would ordinarily have sent Spike into town, but no way was he mixing Spike with a drunk Gus right now.

He shoved the note under the Bonners’ door, because talking with them again would take too long, then hurried to Lisa’s. He listened for a minute but heard nothing, so she might be lying down. She needed her rest, so he pushed the note under her door and rushed downstairs to tell Christine he was leaving.

Lisa went into the sauna and closed the door. The cedar interior smelled good. It was about eight-by-six feet with an built-in L-shaped bench she gratefully sank onto, then remembered she should leave her robe outside so it wouldn’t be a sodden mess. She got up again, opened the door and put it over the bar outside. That was one way, she supposed, people would know the sauna was being used and could knock before coming in. A lot of people she knew saunaed in the buff, but she never had. Still, if she took a sauna with Mitch here someday…

Already she heard the steam hissing through the vents as they circulated heat and humidity into the small room. She’d wait to see how thick it got before she poured a wooden ladleful of water onto the heated river rocks from the very river she’d conquered—with Mitch’s help. Nothing like bodysurfing the Wild River in the heart of Alaska, she told herself, still trying to shut out the image of that painting, of Ginger, of—

No. From now on, it was going to be mind over matter. Although her psychiatrist had told her that repression was worse than letting terrible memories surface, she was just going to shut out nightmare images from her past. She would go on, face the future, maybe with Mitch back in her life.

The increasing steam and temperature felt great. She warmed up, then began to perspire. Yes, sweat it all out, all the poisons, physical and mental, she
thought. Pour it out through those pores. Get those endorphins released from the pituitary gland to get a natural high—not that she needed that around Mitch—as well as relieve aches and pains. Tension and stress should melt away. Besides, she knew taking a sauna increased the heart rate, so it had the benefit of mild exercise without moving, the perfect prescription for her. For a moment, sitting there, leaning back against the fragrant cedar wood, she almost nodded off to sleep.

She jerked alert. Had she slept? Obviously, the six minutes she’d set weren’t up yet, but the steam was so thick, the heat still rising. She had selected a heat she could tolerate, hadn’t she? If it got any warmer, she’d end her session early, go out into the evening air, then hurry up to her room to take a cold shower.