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.
"That reminds me," Mitch said. "Graham wants to have one-on-one interviews with his three candidates this evening. More of a debriefing, if you ask me. Then tomorrow, I thought we'd have a memorial service for Ginger, and Spike really liked that idea. He asked that we have it at the ziplining site, since she liked that so much, but I'm wary of actually doing the ziplining. Too many so-called accidents lately."
"But if it means something to Spike..."
"Yeah, I know. Maybe we can just have the service out under the platform and make the ziplining completely voluntary. I can picture Ginger now, zinging along, red hair flying, whooping and hollering. She never liked flying like Spike does but she loved zooming along on my zipline."
"You know, when Spike was flying us in to the lodge, Jonas was kidding about our challenges here being like that Survivor show, but Ellie vehemently said this was as much for bonding as competition. At that moment, it almost made me think this might be her idea as much as Graham's. I think she's always been the power behind the throne, but she sure was shaken last night."
"Alaskan sheriffs aren't supposed to step behind the throne or even near it," Mitch muttered so darkly that Lisa turned to look at him. He'd seemed so even-tempered and strong through the chaos of this week, but she saw that he, too, was deeply bothered by the betrayal of someone he knew and trusted.
As they turned the corner toward the bakery booth, where Vanessa and Christine were taking their turns, Gus appeared, putting himself in their path. Lisa thought he must have been waiting for them. As far as she could tell, the cranberry muffin he was just finishing had been baked by Ginger, so he must have been over to the booth. Wasn't the fact he wasn't shunning any of them a sign he wasn't guilty of anything? The guy didn't seem to have a duplicitous bone in his big body.
"Hey, Gus," Mitch greeted him.
Gus motioned them off to the side, and they walked over to a quiet spot where they could hear each other better. Gus kept looking around, rather furtively, and Lisa's lawyer antennae went up. She could tell the big man was distraught, so he'd probably not only been told about Ginger's bizarre death, but interrogated about it. Lisa had known the sheriff would question Gus immediately.
"Sheriff Moran came to Bear Bones to talk to me," Gus said, "then drove me here to get fingerprinted. He was asking all kinds of stuff about me and Ginger. Mitch, you know I'd never hurt her. Fighting--arguing, I mean--that's how we got along half the time. She wouldn't move into town, said I'd have to live in the boonies if we got married, but I said no way."
Mitch put his hand on the big man's shoulder. "We've all