Down River (21 page)

“I didn’t want to waste time. Faster to hang with the ambulance. Besides, I need to be with her in the emergency room whatever happens.”

“I understand. I also understand she’s unstable at times.”

“That’s what Jonas wants me to emphasize to you.”

“I figured he’d try to get you to stand up for him. And Vanessa—never met a man she didn’t like when it came to getting what she wants.”

“Including you?”

“She knew better, since Ellie was around and now sits on the advisory board.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I guess it slipped my mind. This trip has been one thing after the other, a tragedy of errors, in a way.”

“Errors?”

“Accidents, people slipping and slipping up. You don’t think something else, do you? The sheriff said events have been accidental.”

Mitch stopped talking as they made the switch from Route 3 to Route 1, which would take them into the city.
Please, Lord,
he prayed, in fragmented, frantic thoughts,
don’t let her die. Even if she did something to harm herself, please don’t let her die.

At the hospital, he pulled up right behind the squad. “I’ll park for you,” Graham told him. “Go ahead. And tell them I’ll be in with all the insurance info ASAP.”

“Thanks, Graham. For everything.”

For everything? His own words echoed in his head. This man had been the older brother, almost the father figure he’d missed growing up, and he’d been suspecting him of murder over some old case? What a screwed-up world, especially with Lisa in danger again.

He followed the medics pushing her gurney through doors that whooshed open for them. They had Lisa on an IV. The bag of fluids dangled from a metal pole. What else had they done for her during
the ride in? Vanessa had said the prognosis could be bad if she was unconscious, but she looked groggy now, not out. His hopes soared. When they paused at the triage desk, he leaned over her and took her hand.

“Lisa, I’m here with you at the hospital in Anchorage. You’re going to have to fight to stay awake again, do everything they tell you.”

“The door…” she whispered, and he bent even closer.

“It’s all right. We’re in the E.R., and the door just closed behind us.”

“To the sauna. Stuck.”

“No, I opened it to find you, but you’d fallen on the floor.”

“The door—locked.”

“It doesn’t lock, just to be sure that you can’t get caught inside—” he said before he realized she must be delirious. But then, he’d thought that when she told him she’d been pushed into the river. So had someone jammed the door shut? He had to call Christine. See if there was any sign of tampering with the door or the controls. Everyone’s fingerprints would be on the dials, so that wouldn’t help. But first he had to take care of Lisa.

Graham rushed in and patted Lisa’s shoulder. “You’ll be all right, Lisa. Mitch and I will take care of everything.”

“Hit my head—just like Ginger.”

A primal fear made Mitch shudder. Graham pulled him a step away and whispered, “That explains this
accident. Just like with the river, she slipped—hit her head and stayed in there too damn long. Insist they do a brain scan on her. She might be having fainting spells. Low blood sugar, stress, who knows?”

A woman appeared to lead Graham to a cubicle to register Lisa and take care of the insurance paperwork. Before Mitch could say more to Lisa, two nurses wheeled her gurney away. He stood alone and bereft, shivering and scared to the bone, but damned if he wasn’t going to get to the bottom of this.

“C
hristine, it’s Mitch.”

“How is she?”

“They’ve just taken her away for treatment. I don’t know yet. I’ll talk to a doctor soon, I hope. She says she—”

“She’s conscious? She’s talking?”

“Yes, but not really making sense—I think. She says she hit her head and that the door wouldn’t open.”

“
Iah,
that does make sense. Inside the sauna, it looks like she broke the handle, maybe trying to get out. Mitch, there are even scratch marks inside the door at the bottom, like she tried to claw it open.”

He was stunned, and yet he shouldn’t be, he told himself. He had to face it—someone really did want her dead.

“Mitch?”

“Yeah, I’m here. But someone who wanted to harm her wouldn’t risk standing out there to hold the door shut.”

“I can go back out and see if there are any marks from a stick being put through the outside handle or something being wedged against the door. What if the person turned the temperature and time way up?”

“Yeah. Exactly,” he said, holding himself up with one arm stiff against the wall by the pay phone and staring at the floor.

“I’ll get a flashlight and go out to look more carefully, so just hang on a sec.”

“Wait! Christine, no. If someone did that, you could be in danger if they see you checking.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“No, I want you to do it, but call Spike and have him come over to be with you. I think it helps him to keep busy right now. Besides, this could throw some light on what happened to Ginger, too.”

“But who would do such a thing—things—to either of them?”

“That’s the big question. As soon as I make sure Lisa will be all right, I’m going to find out. I’ve got to turn into a bodyguard for her right now—maybe get the sheriff’s help, I’m not sure. One more thing. Our four guests who were playing Monopoly tonight—did you see any of them go out back for a while, go anywhere about the time Lisa could have been in the sauna?”

“Who knows when she went to the sauna? I was in and out of the kitchen. But yes, I’m afraid at one time or another, each of them went to the john or somewhere. I’m not sure, but I think only Vanessa went out twice for any length of time.”

“So maybe once to jam the door closed, once to remove the jam so it would look as if Lisa was to blame for her own demise. Promise me you’ll get Spike there. Don’t tell anyone but Spike about any of this right now.”

“When it does come out—especially if we bring in the sheriff and he questions the Bonners again—we’ll lose their support and business. Mrs. Bonner was talking tonight about how they want to come back, bring their daughter here for her graduation from law school gift and send others they know. Oh, and she called and cancelled their departure tomorrow. It’s a good thing we don’t have other guests scheduled until next week.”

“I know, but first things first, and that’s Lisa’s health. Gotta go. I see Graham looking for me. I’ll call if I get news of how Lisa’s doing. Thanks,
Cu’paq,
for everything.”

“You saved my sanity, Mitch, and I’m gonna help you save yours.”

The doctor’s name tag on his white coat read Dr. Jason Kurtz. He was probably mid to late thirties, with dark hair and piercing blue eyes. Mitch, wearing pale green scrubs they had given him since his clothes were still damp, realized he was trembling as he shook the doctor’s hand. Graham stood with him shoulder to shoulder. Once that would have encouraged him, but now it only made him more upset.

“Friends of Ms. Vaughn, not family, is that cor
rect?” the doctor asked as he shook hands with Graham, too.

“That’s right,” Mitch said. “I’m her friend Mitch Braxton and this is Graham Bonner, her employer at a Florida law firm.”

He nodded at Graham, but seemed to address Mitch. Was it so obvious how much Lisa meant to him?

“We have her stabilized,” the doctor informed them. “Her core body temperature is dropping with the help of a cooling blanket and some icing, but she’s having heart palpitations—atrial fibrillation—which we will deal with. She’s also lost some trace body minerals with her profuse sweating, but we hope to replace those after we run more tests.”

“Thank heavens,” Graham said. “It sounds like she’ll not only pull through but fully recover.”

“It’s early to promise all that yet. After an EKG, she’ll be on a heart monitor all night, then we’ll reassess in the morning. She has a large contusion on the left temple above her hairline. No blood but edema. She also has a few black and blue marks on her body. I’m theorizing she fell and hit her head. Do either of you know if she’s prone to fainting or blackouts?”

Graham cleared his throat, but before he could speak, Mitch said, “Not that we’re aware of, and she’s quite athletic. As for most of her bruises—not the head injury—last week, she fell in a snowmelt river, and suffered from hypothermia, just the opposite of this.”

“Ah. But the shock to the body was no doubt considerable. Was she admitted for the hypothermia?”

“No. I pulled her out of the river, and we had to hike back to the lodge, and, other than bruises and exhaustion, she recovered well.”

The doctor frowned. Was he just upset that she hadn’t been hospitalized previously, or did he know something worse he wasn’t saying?

“It may be a long night,” he said, indicating the waiting room with a wave of his clipboard. “There are inherent dangers with this besides the cardiac fluctuations—circulatory collapse, possible renal failure. We’ll keep you apprised of her status and consult when we have her test results. She tells me she was alone in the sauna and hit her head, but the head blow and the excessive body temp could have caused her to be confused and disoriented.”

But not, Mitch thought, so disoriented that she had shared with this doctor that someone had shut her in and tampered with the door. She was still thinking that they had better not spook whoever was behind this—and maybe behind Ginger’s death—until they could flush the killer out. Lisa might have cheated a second murder attempt. She was still one sharp lawyer.

Although Christine had been tempted to disobey Mitch’s order and just check the sauna door on her own, it did give her an excuse to phone Spike and see him again. As they played the flashlight beam over
the faint scratch marks at the bottom of the sauna door, she said, “I should tell Mitch to look under her fingernails for splinters. She was desperate, all right, and that had to mean the door wouldn’t open—at least for a while.”

“And it means much more,” Spike said as he examined the wooden door handle. “If someone tried to kill Lisa—twice—it means that same person killed Ginger.”

“Spike, that’s a pretty big leap.”

“I don’t care what you or anyone says. I know it! She must have struggled, too. Remember how the coroner’s report said she had lake mud and stuff under her nails from fighting to get free? Ginger might have died because she knew too much about what happened to Lisa. If it wasn’t for Lisa, Ginger might still be alive.”

Christine faced him squarely in the sauna. Unfortunately, they’d found no evidence to show something had been jammed through the handle or in the door. “You sound like you’re blaming Lisa when she’s a victim. Next, you’ll be blaming Mitch or me.”

“You’re siding with Mitch. No, I’m not blaming him. He’s been great. If the Bonners wouldn’t have helped me out with the funeral costs, he wanted to, but just don’t jump on me for bringing this back to Ginger. And Lisa is to blame in a way, breaking her engagement to Mitch in the first place, not wanting to set foot here. Then here she comes to screw up his mind again. He wants her here, but I’ll bet she wants
him there—Florida. She’s been nothing but trouble, and she’s pulled Ginger and all of us in.”

“I know you’re upset and have every right to be but—”

“Hey,” a woman’s voice said from outside. “What’s going on out here?”

Vanessa peered at them through the door of the sauna. Something really stunk about Vanessa, Christine thought, and it wasn’t the pricey perfume she always wore.

“I was just taking a little walk on the patio and heard your voices,” Vanessa said. “So, have you heard how Lisa’s doing?”

“They’re running tests. Not sure yet,” Christine told her.

“Are you going to close the sauna until it gets fixed?” Vanessa asked. “Wow, how did that handle get broken?”

“It’s been loose for a long time,” Spike lied before Christine could think what to say next. “When Mitch shoved the door aside to rescue Lisa, he probably knocked it off.”

“Well, let me know if you hear anything about her. All of us are starting to think this place is cursed—you know what I mean. Besides, all of us, Lisa included, have clients scheduled and have to get back to reality—our reality—on the other side of the country. And with this new accident, I’ll bet Graham postpones naming the new senior partner again. At least, with all Lisa’s been through and her sad past,
I think we’re down to two candidates, but Graham Bonner has always been full of surprises. See you in the morning, but let me know if there’s any news before.”

Spike and Christine stood silently as Vanessa’s footsteps faded, then the patio door opened and closed. Finally, Spike said, “She didn’t believe me about how the handle broke. But was that because I’m a bad liar when I’m so upset, or because she knew damn well Lisa was trapped in here? And she was the last one we are sure saw Ginger alive.”

It had been one hell of a long night. Not only was Mitch mourning all that had gone wrong this past week, but he was afraid Graham had betrayed him. Again, over breakfast in the hospital cafeteria, he didn’t respond to Mitch’s probing of whether anything else had come of the casino case. As a matter of fact, he changed the subject, except to reveal something pretty interesting about Vanessa.

“After I pulled you and Lisa off the case to be certain you weren’t endangered, Vanessa insisted I let her get in on it,” he finally admitted. “I knew she wanted the publicity if it started to hit the papers, but I told her the managing partner controls assignments, and I didn’t want any of my lawyers to be harassed or hurt—still don’t.”

“You’ve always been protective of your attorneys, as if we were family.”

“But you were always special, and I—we—hated
to lose you. Of course, that’s why I’m so distraught about Lisa, as we’ve brought her along, too. I need to get her back in her own environment, where horrible things won’t happen to her—no offense, Mitch.”

“None taken. It’s been a crazy week. I know you all have key clients scheduled, and it was tough to block out this much time.”

“As a matter of fact, I want to fly Lisa home and get her some psychiatric counseling. I know she saw a psychiatrist years ago, but she may need help now.”

That was exactly what Mitch had thought at first, but not now. Someone was definitely out to eliminate Lisa from more than the senior partnership, and he might be chatting with that very bastard over pancakes and sausage right now.

“So,” Mitch said, trying to keep his voice in check, “I’m assuming Lisa’s out of the competition for senior partner.”

“Remains to be seen.” Graham leaned closer across their small Formica table as if someone could overhear. “I had planned to name her to the position this morning, before all this happened. The adversity she’s been through past and present have made her stronger, more empathetic, maybe even more driven, all qualities that would help her in the position. There are drawbacks with all three candidates, ones you could no doubt list for me. So, the truth is, I’m still considering Lisa.”

Mitch was speechless. If Lisa accepted such an offer, that would keep her away from him. She had
wanted that position, argued with him about it, but how did she feel now, after all she’d been through? Or, if Graham was hiding something—namely, that he himself might be the spider behind all the money machinations in the casino case—was this a way to buy Lisa off, to assure her silence when destructive tactics hadn’t panned out? Or would the fact that, as senior partner, she would have insider information and access to more people and past records endanger her even more, an entire continent away from where he could help to protect her?

“Nothing to say?” Graham asked as they got up from the table to go check in with the nurses’ desk on Lisa’s floor again. “You thought I’d take Jonas? Ellie and I both admire Lisa, you know that.”

Mitch nodded, trying to process everything, including Lisa’s insisting that Graham “doth protest too much” about the casino case. Now, it seemed he was doing the same thing about how much Lisa meant to him.

“Listen,” Graham said, “I know it was hard for you to give up what you left in Lauderdale. Ever think of coming back to the firm and using the lodge for an investment you can visit? The best of both worlds? Spike and Christine could run it for you, you could work part-time for us, mostly consulting, which would give you time to visit Alaska often.”

Mitch had no trouble looking surprised. He had not and would not consider such an offer, but he didn’t say so now. He was being played here, gamed
by a master. And maybe so was Lisa. He had to find a way to keep Graham away from her for a while so he could talk to her privately. Would she be doped up or asleep now so that would be useless?

The familiar nurse at the reception desk on Lisa’s floor saw them coming. “This time,” she told them before they could ask, “one of you can see her. The doctor said one at a time—no excitement.”

Mitch almost laughed out loud. No excitement? Lisa’s life—his, too—had been nothing but that since she’d set foot in Alaska. But he could have kissed the doctor, because now he had an excuse to see her alone before Graham tried to control everything and everyone again.

“I should see her first,” Graham told him, “assure her we’re not heading home without her, tell her she’s still in the running and try to convince her she needs some counseling.”

“This is my bailiwick, so I’m going to pull rank on you,” Mitch told him. “I’m the one responsible for her well-being here, maybe her problem in the sauna if the controls were defective. Didn’t you ever hear the Chinese belief that, once you save a person’s life, you’re responsible for them?”