Page 14 of It Happened on the Lake

“I ’ll pick you up and give you a ride home!” Beth insisted from the other end of the phone line.

“You don’t have to,” Harper said. She was seated on the edge of her hospital bed and ready to leave. “I can call a taxi, or Marcia can probably take me.”

“The step-monster? Forget it! It’s no big deal for me to swing by.

Besides, I can’t wait to see you! I didn’t even know when you were coming back here, and then I heard from Craig about what happened last night.

For the love of God, Harper, what were you thinking?

What was she thinking?” Beth asked, obviously meaning Cynthia Hunt.

“So don’t argue, I’m coming and I’ll drive you back to the island.

I would love to see it again! And to catch up. It’s been too, too long.”

“Okay,” Harper agreed.

“Good! I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

“Okay, but give me half an hour, okay. I need to check on Dad.”

“He’s at the hospital?”

“Unfortunately, yeah. He had a heart attack. It’s one of the reasons I’m back.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Is he gonna be okay?”

“I hope so.” Harper crossed the fingers of her free hand as she explained what she knew, which wasn’t much, but she had heard from Marcia that Bruce had suffered a “mild heart attack,” whatever that meant.

“Me, too. I’ll see you in a bit. Kisses!” Beth signed off with her signature farewell, which usually included blowing a kiss.

Harper had already signed all the release papers, so she headed down to the cardiac unit.

Harper’s return to Almsville had been prompted by her coming of age according to her grandmother’s will, but she’d also recently been concerned for her father’s health.

Bruce Reed had always been a strong, virile man but just last summer had experienced some vague health issue that he’d told her was not a concern.

Even Marcia had dismissed his case of dizziness as no real problem.

But just two days ago she’d received the call from Marcia that Dad was in the hospital recovering from the slight heart attack.

So she’d packed up her car and driven north, leaving keys to her home with a neighbor until she decided if this was a permanent move. “Unlikely,” she told herself as she took the elevator down a floor.

She braced herself at the door to his room, then stepped inside.

Bruce Reed lay on the hospital bed, his head propped by pillows.

His color was off, his skin wan beneath three days’ worth of graying beard shadow, and he was hooked to an IV and several monitors.

He didn’t seem to notice her as he stared up at a television poised high on the far wall.

The sound was muted, inaudible, a golf tournament playing on the screen.

“Hey, Dad,” she said and walked up to the bed, her fingers on the rail. “How’re you?”

“Still kicking,” he said softly and to prove his point moved his foot beneath the sheets. “How ’bout you?” He pressed a button to move the head of the bed up slightly. Eyeing her up and down, he said, “I heard you were some kind of hero last night.”

“Hardly.” She stepped to the bed and brushed her lips across his grizzled cheek.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Been better.”

His lips twisted into a bit of smile. “Me, too.” Then his eyes turned dark.

“But Cynthia . . .” With an almost imperceptible shake of his head, he whispered, “She’s been out of whack for a while now.

Ever since . . .” His voice trailed off, but Harper knew where he was going because the path always led to the night Chase Hunt vanished.

“Where’s Marcia?” she asked. “I thought she’d be here.”

“In the hospital chapel, I think, praying for me and my sins.” He actually smiled, a bit of a twinkle visible in his eyes. “That might take a while. Or maybe she’s asking about last rites.”

“I heard that!” Marcia’s voice preceded her quick steps as she clicked into the room.

“I’m doing no such thing.” Her narrow face was devoid of makeup for once and visibly etched in concern.

Wearing a mock-turtleneck sweater tucked into belted jeans, she walked to her husband’s bedside. “It’s not your time!”

“Is that what God told you?” he asked.

“It’s what I’m telling you. Don’t you think for one second you can die on me yet!”

“Just joking,” her father said and chuckled.

Marcia shook her head and said to Harper, “I guess he’s feeling better.”

“Good.”

“And you?” She eyed her stepdaughter up and down. “Shouldn’t you be resting? Oh, dear. You look . . .”

“Bad, I know.”

“I was going to say tired.”

“I just wanted to check in on Dad.”

“I see that, but I thought you’d been admitted, that you were injured.” She motioned to the bandage on Harper’s chin.

“I’m fine, just a little beat-up.”

“I’ll say.” She frowned as she noted the bruises on Harper’s face.

“You should see the other guy,” Harper said, but the joke fell flat.

“And are you healed from the last time?” she asked, referring to Harper’s previous hospital bout, one she didn’t want to think about, the one for which she still blamed her ex.

“I think so, it’s been a while.”

“I remember. Good Lord, you scared us half to death with that fall!”

Absently Harper rubbed her hip where the scars from her surgery still bothered her every once in a while.

“You were in the hospital for what—a week?”

“Nearly,” Harper admitted, then lied, “But I’m good now.” Her broken ribs had healed as well as her punctured lung, but she had shattered her pelvis in the fall and her hip still gave her trouble when she overdid it.

“If you say so.” Marcia didn’t seem convinced as she waggled her fingers at Harper’s clothes as if noticing them for the first time. “Dear God, what’re you wearing?”

“Scrubs. Compliments of the hospital. Everything I wore here is wet.”

“Seriously?” Marcia frowned. “Well, I guess . . . but I could have brought you something or . . .” Marcia started to say, then waved away whatever other thought had crossed her mind.

“What in the world happened last night? We’re just hearing bits and pieces here, that Cynthia Hunt was on her boat and it caught fire. Or something?”

“Or something.” With a glance at her father, who was watching from the bed, Harper sketched out the events of the previous night.

“How horrid,” Marcia whispered and made the sign of the cross over her chest. “I mean . . . My God.” She shuddered.

Her father’s expression had hardened. “It’s too bad, but it was bound to happen. As I said, Cynthia’s been you know . . .” With one finger, he made a whirling motion near his head.

“Crazy,” Harper said.

“Bruce!” Marcia shook her head, permed blond hair brushing her shoulders. “That’s not true. She was a fine, good Christian woman who raised those two hellions the best she could and—”

“Oh, come on, Cindy’s a nut case. You and I both know it.” Bruce’s gaze landed on his wife as if he hoped to shut her up.

“I know no such thing,” Marcia argued. “It was just, you know, losing Chase that was difficult for her. And then Tom. That fishing accident that made her a widow. On the damned lake, no less! It was just too much for her.”

Frowning, Bruce pressed the call button on the bed. “I’m just tellin’ it like it is. No reason to sugarcoat it.”

“Geez.” Harper backed up a step. The horrid memory of Chase’s mother engulfed in flames flashed through her mind. “That’s harsh,” she told her father.

“Maybe. But it’s the goddamned truth.”

“Bruce, do not take the Lord’s name in vain!” Marcia actually stomped a booted foot just as Harper heard the elevator ding.

“Not the point, Marcia,” he argued stubbornly. “You and I both know it.”

Marcia shot Harper a glance that silently said, See what I have to put up with?

From his bed, Bruce asked, “Where’s the nurse? It’s time for my pain meds.”

Marcia’s lips curved downward. “It’s only been—”

As if hovering at the doorway, a twenty-something nurse bustled into the room. With short dark hair and glasses, she smiled brightly. “What can I do for you, Mr. Reed?” she asked, while pulling out a thermometer and placing it under his tongue.

Marcia spoke for him. “He wants his pain medication.”

Harper could relate.

The nurse glanced at his chart and the clock over the wall. “Not quite yet,” but to Bruce, who was starting to mumble a protest around the thermometer, she added, “Soon. Forty minutes.”

While Marcia shot her husband an I-told-you-so glance, the nurse removed the thermometer and placed a blood pressure cuff over his upper arm.

Once she was gone, Harper glanced at the clock mounted on the wall near the television.

“I’d better go. Beth’s probably waiting for me.

She’s giving me a ride back to the house. ”

“Beth Leonetti?”

“Alexander.”

He frowned and ran a hand over his unshaven jaw. “That’s right. She married that son of a bitch. They got married and somehow ended up with the house on the lake. Cut her brothers out completely.”

Again, Marcia feigned surprise at her husband’s assessment. “Ouch.”

Harper said, “Craig’s a contractor now.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Still, he frowned, fingers scraping against his whiskers.

“So he says. But if you ask me, it’s not that much of a business and wouldn’t exist without his wife supporting him.

I just don’t trust him. I knew him as a kid.

You did, too,” he said to Harper. “He and his father—what was his name, the gardener?”

“Martin,” Marcia replied.

“Right. Martin. Didn’t like him much. And his kid? That Craig is a sneaky son of a bitch. If you ask me, some of those cats that went missing when Olivia was alive? I think he shot them.”

“What?” Harper said, horrified.

Her father was insistent. “That son of a bitch had a damned pellet gun and was always killing birds and moles and whatever. The cats would’ve made easy targets.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marcia said. “Dear Lord, Bruce, just shut up about it, would you?” To Harper she whispered, “It’s his medication talking.”

“I heard that!” Bruce said. “It’s not the medication. It’s the damned truth,” he insisted, shooting his wife a narrowed glance. “Craig learned it from his old man, a mean son of a bitch if there ever was one. Used to take a strap to his kid, for all the good it did.”

“Enough!” Marcia pronounced.

Bruce snorted and looked out the window where rain was peppering the glass pane. “It’s all a fact.”

“Pure fiction, you mean,” Marcia argued.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I wouldn’t trust Craig—or Martin, for that matter—as far as I could throw them!”

Harper had taken a step back. Didn’t want to think that Craig had purposely wounded or killed any of Gram’s cats.

But the truth was that some had vanished over the years.

Earline, the ever-hissing one with only one ear, in particular had just disappeared.

And another one—Long John, the silver tabby.

Hadn’t he hobbled home with a BB in his hip?

“The island was never safe with those Alexanders living there. Probably still isn’t. Who knows? And that’s a helluva big place. It’s too much for you. You should sell it.”

“I said, ‘enough,’” Marcia warned her husband. “And Harper doesn’t need to sell the island.”

“Why not? It’s a damned albatross around her neck! It would take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions, to fix it up.”

“You don’t know that,” Marcia said. “Now sit up and I’ll adjust your pillows.” He obliged and Marcia straightened the linens. “No more arguing,” she ordered.

For once, Harper agreed with her stepmother, wanting the argument to end before it exploded into an out-and-out shouting match.

“Let’s just deal with the here-and-now, Dad.

Craig’s an adult, Beth’s husband, he’s got his own business and still volunteers with the fire department. Maybe we should give him a break.”

“You give someone a break and you could end up falling into the crack.” He scowled, turning away from the window. “Where the hell is my medication?”

“Coming,” Marcia said.

“I should get going,” Harper said. “You feel better, Dad.”

“And you don’t trust Craig Alexander or his wife. She’s a real estate agent now. A crafty one. Part of the ‘million dollar club’ or whatever. A little on the shady side, if you ask me.”

Harper held up one hand. “Dad—”

“You just wait. I bet you she’s gonna want to wangle a listing for the island from you, gonna want you to sell the whole kit and kaboodle now that it’s yours.

Probably gonna insist that her husband do the work to fix it up for the market.

” The lines around the edges of Bruce’s mouth deepened, and he picked at the tape holding his IV in place on his wrist. “Don’t forget, I was in the business for years.

Still have my license. If you were going to sell, I could do it for you.

Much less commission.” He scratched at the stubble on his chin. “I know what she’s up to.”

“Beth was my best friend.”

“And a schemer,” her dad said. “Always had her eye on the prize.” He pointed a finger at her.

“You be careful, Harper. You’re a rich woman now.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, will be gunning for you.

Offering you sweet deals and new ideas and ways to invest your money.

And those are the clever ones. Others will flat out ask you for loans.

” He pointed a finger at her, stretching his IV line.

“That’s the problem with money, Harper. When you have it, everybody else wants it.

So be cautious, I mean it. You can’t trust anyone. ”