room. As if he were a harbinger of doom, in full uniform with a paper in his hand, Sheriff Mace Moran walked in the doorway.
Mitch jumped up and went to greet the sheriff.
"Sorry my timing's so lousy," he told Mitch, shaking his hand and glancing over his shoulder in the expectant hush. "I asked Sam Collister to expedite the findings on Ginger Jackson, and he did. Got the results right here."
"Would you like to go upstairs to use my office, just tell Spike first?" Mitch asked. Not a murmur or a clink of dishes came from the table behind them as everyone obviously strained to listen.
"It will soon be public knowledge anyway. The local paper's already been asking, and a Fairbanks reporter in town to cover the festival wants the story. Mitch, when I hauled Gus Majors in again--"
"A second time? After yesterday?"
"Yeah, early this morning. Thought maybe he'd crack, but he didn't. I swear he only told me you represented him after I had another go at him."
Spike rose from the table and came over. "Is this about my sister?" he asked the sheriff, pointing to the paper in his hand.
"Yes, Mr. Jackson, it is. The coroner's report is inconclusive about whether or not it might have been foul play."
"Foul play--a stupid way to put it," Spike insisted, balling up his fists at his sides. "It sounds like a mistake in baseball, not a cold-blooded murder."
At that, Graham and Jonas came over with Ellie and Lisa right behind, followed by Vanessa and Christine.
"Those are the findings, Mr. Jackson. It wasn't a cold-blooded murder or any murder."
"You want me or Spike to read the ruling, Sheriff? Or will you?" Mitch asked.
The sheriff cleared his throat, glanced down at the paper and said, "According to Dr. Samuel Collister, coroner, Ginger Jackson died of asphyxiation--lack of oxygen--not drowning per se."
"But she was in the water!" Spike protested. "You don't mean she was strangled?"
"No, not at all," the sheriff said. "Actually, Doc Collister said it's called a dry drowning. Her lungs were dry because she'd had a--" he glanced down at the paper again "--a laryngeal spasm, which kept water from entering. The doc says about fifteen percent of drownings are like that. It's no doubt why she stayed so buoyant in the water--air in her lungs."
Mitch shook his head, remembering how Ginger had looked below the surface, moving, shifting. No wonder Lisa had nightmares about her own mother and sister's deaths, because Ginger's haunted him.
"She did have a head injury to the back of the skull," the sheriff said, "but that's consistent with her hitting her head on the dock or boat when she fell in. No doubt, it disoriented her, may have almost knocked her out."
"But," Lisa said, "no one saw any blood on the dock or boat, right? I didn't, and I sat there a while."
"Right," the sheriff said, sounding annoyed and frowning at her. "But I figure, if she fell right in, she may not have bled right away, then the water washed away whatever there was on her skull. Obviously, the heart stops pumping at death, so bleeding stops, too. But hemorrhaging was found in the sinuses and airways," the sheriff went on, then paused. "You sure you want this read aloud, Mr. Jackson?"
"Go ahead. Dry drownings don't make sense to me, but we're loaded with lawyers here."
"The hemorrhaging means she was conscious when she entered the water and struggled to breathe," the sheriff said, looking more nervous after the reference to a lot of lawyers. He spoke more deliberately and slowly, as if that would clarify his explanation. "She sucked in water and her larynx spasmed, so indirectly the water still caused her death. The blow to her head could have incapacitated her from getting back up for air. She had tiny plants and lake-bottom debris under her fingernails but nothing else--nothing to show she'd struggled with a person, that is."
"But depending how long she was in the water, that trace evidence, like the blood, could have been washed away," Lisa argued, despite the fact Ellie put a restraining hand on her arm. "Did the coroner calculate a time of death?"
"Only within a big time frame that takes in the hours she had all those visitors. He recorded the time he pronounced her as the time of death--perfectly legal. Lastly, I surmise that, as she tried to kick to get herself back up to the surface, she snagged her leg in the anchor chain, and that was