Page 247 of It Happened on the Lake

There was crowd noise, shuffling of feet, the buzz of excited conversation. “Get back,” someone, another guy with a gruff voice, ordered. “Everyone back. Right now!”

“Would you look at that pistol?” the male voice asked. “Jesus, I haven’t seen one of those cowboy guns in . . . well, maybe ever. Just in the movies as a kid.”

The woman again. “Is anyone talking to the girl?”

Dawn.

Levi tried to speak, to make his lips move, but the words wouldn’t pass his lips.

“Ambulance is coming!” someone yelled amid a muddle of comments, orders, and exclamations.

Nothing that made any sense.

Was someone kneeling over him?

“Oh God, this one’s bad, too. Gunshot wound in the gut. Holy Christ, would you look at that. Could bleed out! We could lose him! Where the fuck are the paramedics?”

He blinked his eyes open.

Saw nothing but blackness . . . and a light. Weak but shining overhead.

He heard Dawn’s voice above the din. “His name is Levi Hunt,” she was telling someone, though her voice sounded far off, as if whispering through a tunnel. “Yeah, yeah, I think we’re related . . . what? . . . Oh well, he doesn’t know it yet, but I’m pretty sure he’s my uncle.”

Chapter 64

Harper found one key on the ring that was a mystery. The only one that didn’t fit any lock she’d located. The key was old and tarnished and seemed original to the house, which was strange. All the exterior doors had been recently changed by the locksmith and were new, shiny, and bright.

Not this one.

But it had to go somewhere. Or at least had gone somewhere in the past.

She donned her rain jacket and walked around the exterior of the buildings, searching the boathouse, garage, a gardener’s shed, and even the tram’s carport for a lock she had missed.

Nothing.

Maybe it wasn’t anything, just an old forgotten key to a lock long gone, but she was curious and couldn’t help thinking the key might be important. It was a long shot, of course, but she thought maybe, just maybe, the key might help her figure out how the intruder had gotten into the house.

Since she failed on her perimeter check, she wondered if she were going about it the wrong way. Rather than start looking outside, maybe she could find the access point from the interior.

Earlier, Dawn had been fascinated by the elevator and dumbwaiter. Yes, they were unique, but they weren’t functioning. Hadn’t been for years, it seemed. She went to the elevator door on the main floor by the back stairs. She considered the elevator shaft. Was it possible that someone had been able to get inside and climb the shaft, forcing the doors open from inside? Starting from the top floor, she checked the doors for the elevator and dumbwaiter, but there was no way to get in, no scratches on either one, nor any other sign of someone forcing the doors open.

She worked her way down, and on each floor she found no indication that someone had used the lifts. As far as she could see, the shaft was impenetrable.

Except for a contractor who knew how things worked, someone who had tools.

Someone like Craig Alexander.

She didn’t trust that guy, even though he was married to Beth.

Who, Harper reminded herself, was having an affair with Levi Hunt, so obviously Beth and Craig’s marriage had serious problems.

As for the mystery key? She found no locks into which it fit.

“Forget it,” she told herself. It could well be she’d put too much emphasis on it. So she’d discovered an old key in a house that had been built at the turn of the century. So what? Maybe she was barking up the wrong tree.

But right now it was the only tree she had.

In the parlor Harper held the key up to the light shed by one of Gram’s Tiffany lamps and scrutinized the long piece of notched metal. She hoped beyond hope for some clue as to its identity. It didn’t look like any of the other keys, not even the ones she’d replaced.