Page 184 of It Happened on the Lake

The officer in charge, Alicia Jefferson, had only been with the department for three years, and she could offer no explanation as she sat at her desk outside the locked door.

“Who knows when it could have happened?” Jefferson asked. She was a no-nonsense Black woman with half-glasses and big hoop earrings. “It’s been over twenty years, hasn’t it? 1967? And the way I understand it, things were pretty loose in the department back then. No cameras. It just wasn’t a thing. People came and went as they pleased.”

“Not people,” Rand corrected. “Police officers. And they were supposed to sign in and out.”

She looked at him over the tops of her reading glasses. “That’s the operative word, isn’t it? ‘Supposed’ to. I’m just tellin’ you, not everyone goes by the book.”

“And no one noticed the sign-out card was missing?”

“No one cared until just a few days ago.” She leaned back in her chair and eyed him. “Your partner, Detective Brown? She came down here a few days ago. Didn’t she tell you about the missing gun and card and all?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Her eyebrows raised. “Double-checking?” Before he could answer, she shook her head, dark eyes serious. “Don’t you trust her?”

“Of course.”

“Then why are you all down here? If she told you, believe her. That Chelle? Detective Brown? She’s one smart cookie.”

“I know.”

“Then?”

“Fine. Got it,” he said, taking the stairs up to the main floor. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Chelle. Sure, she was green, but smart as all get-out. It was just that the cases involving the entire Reed/Dixon clan were like a spiderweb, woven together, and when you touched one silken thread it pulled on another. The deaths in the family were years apart but all out of the ordinary, accidents in one way or another.

Or so it seemed.

He, like his partner, was starting to wonder about that.

Then there were the Hunts.

Three people gone.

All tragically.

All on the lake.

Coincidence?

He was beginning to think not.

Back in his office, he shuffled some papers, placed a couple of calls, and waited for Chelle to return. She’d been at the hospital, checking records and talking to the staff about Cynthia Hunt’s death.

Within the hour Chelle returned, slipped off her jacket, and before she could settle down, pressed a fingertip to the soil in one of her plotted plants. “Oh damn.” She left the room again and returned with one of the lunchroom carafes, then began drizzling water over the plants on the corner of her desk as well as those with trailing vines lined up on the windowsill.

“What did you find out?” he asked.

“I double-checked the hospital records on Cynthia Hunt and talked to several people on the staff. Everything seemed to be just as reported. A mess-up in that she died in the hallway, but nothing suspicious. At least that’s the general consensus.”

“Okay, good.”

“And . . . I’ve got anaddressfor Camille Musgrave. She and her husband, Victor, owned the rental house where all the students lived when Chase Hunt went missing.”

“I thought you were looking for Matilda Burroughs,” Rand said. After they’d decided to take another look into Olivia Dixon’s death and Chase Hunt’s disappearance, they had split up the work.

Chelle nodded, setting the carafe on a vacant corner of her desk. “I’ll get to that. But first the Musgraves. I found out that Camille and Victor originally moved up to the Seattle area. Well, Bellevue to be precise. Victor died a few years ago, and Camille is now living back in Oregon, in Aloha, with her daughter, Lynette, and her family. I’m going out there later today.

“As for Matilda Burroughs, Olivia Dixon’s caretaker, who had the night off when the older woman died? She still lives in Calgary. I tried calling her earlier and left a message. If I don’t hear back from her in the next hour or so, I’ll try again. Oh crap!” She noticed one of the pots was leaking, a trail of dirty water running down the window ledge and wall. In one quick movement she grabbed another tissue and leaped up to stem the flow. “Damn it all.”