CALUMET TOWNSHP | Investigators say when Jennifer Gordon talked to her daughter about noon Monday, everything was fine.

That wasn't the case when Gordon returned home from work to her house at 519 N. Colfax St. in Calumet Township.

She found her husband, Mickey Gordon, laying in his robe on the basement laundry room floor, dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

Her daughter, Jessica Janusas, 15, was fully clothed in her bedroom, dead of multiple gunshot wounds to the body.

Lake County Coroner David Pastrick ruled Jessica's death an apparent homicide; Mickey Gordon's death an apparent suicide.

More details the shootings are expected to be revealed today at a news conference at the Lake County Sheriff's Department.

Shaw Spurlock, deputy commander, said Tuesday that Mickey Gordon called his mother about 2:30 p.m. Monday to come pick up his 11-year-old son, Jessica's half-brother.

When his mother arrived, Spurlock said, Mickey Gordon would not let her inside, but instructed her to pick up the boy, who was playing out back.

Pastrick said from autopsy findings, it's likely Jessica was dead at that time.

Besides the gunshot wound to his head, Mickey Gordon suffered a graze-wound to his left hand, Pastrick said. Mickey Gordon was right-handed, the coroner said.

Spurlock said after talking to neighbors and Jessica's brother, investigators feel sure Jessica and her stepfather were the only two in the house at the time she was killed.

Rose Hartman has lived in her house on Colfax Street for 20 years. Hartman said Mickey Gordon grew up in the house he later bought from his parents and lived in with his wife, son and stepdaughter.

She remembered looking out her window Monday evening and seeing Jennifer Gordon laying in the front yard after she found the bodies.

"I'm just as shocked as anyone," Hartman said about the killings.

Hartman's grandson played with Mickey and Jennifer Gordon's son. She said it seemed as if Jessica and her brother got along fine.

"She really was a well-liked child," Hartman said. "I never seen them fighting in the yard or nothing."

Hartman said she never heard any loud fights or saw police at the house. Lake County Sheriff's spokesman Mike Higgins said records show only one call to the house over the past few years. It involved loud music.

Teenagers gathered Tuesday at a shrine of candles and flowers near a tree just beyond the yellow police tape ringing the one-story red house. A glittery poster read "Jessica J: U Will be Missed. We Luv U."

Votive candles spelled "J.J.J." inside a ring of red rose petals.

Janusas had just been elected class president, said classmate Curtis Vician, of Gary.

"Then this happened," he said.

Times staff writer Dan Hinkel contributed to this report.