Page 252 of It Happened on the Lake

It started with shots of the fight between Chase and Tom. Though some of them were blurred, there were photos of Tom and Gerald loading Chase’s body into the boat, then leaving the boat adrift in the middle of the lake.

“These confirm your dad’s statement,” Chelle said, pointing to the pictures of Chase and Tom on the Hunts’ dock. That much was true, and Rand only hoped that his father had truly and completely come clean. She said, “It’s amazing that Trick got them.”

“He was always on the lookout for something to use to get a buck ahead, and he was lucky that the Musgraves’ dock was the largest so he could get an angle on the other houses on the point.”

“Especially the Hunts’ property as it sticks out farther into the lake,” she observed. “The real point of Fox Point.”

But there were other photos that bothered him. Photographs taken that night, most likely with a telephoto lens, possibly taken from a boat or some other watercraft. They were shots of Dixon Island, the manor house, and the people within.

He recognized Harper.

And her image was caught on the island’s dock. Wrestling with a canoe.

Then another couple of pictures of her near Tom Hunt’s empty boat in the middle of the lake.

“He was there,” Rand said. “On the lake. He had to have been.”

There were more pictures of the huge house on the island.

Images of someone in Harper’s grandmother’s room while Harper herself was in the canoe looking for Chase.

Someone who could have doctored the old woman’s drink.

Someone he recognized.

And in that second the jagged pieces of what happened that night began to tumble into place. As he double-checked the time, an icy dread began to take hold. He was vaguely aware of the phone ringing but let Chelle answer it.

“That’s right,” she said after a short conversation, and when he started to reach for his jacket she held up a finger, her face going somber. “. . . the next of kin? I believe he has a daughter,” she was saying, her gaze locked with Rand’s as she reached for a pad and pen and held the phone between her ear and shoulder. “. . . No. Divorced as I understand it . . . Yes, we’ll let her know. Where is the body?” she asked. “Mercy General? Yeah, Got it.” She wrote across the top of the note so that Rand could read: HOMICIDE, JOEL PRESCOTT. “Okay, we’re on it.” She hung up and explained as she grabbed her coat. “Portland PD. It looks like Joel Prescott fell, jumped, or was pushed off a rooftop in Portland. He had ID on him and info with Harper Prescott’s name. At first look, it was suspected suicide, but the bartender said he had a friend with him, someone he knew.”

“Jesus.” He felt sick inside. He picked up the phone and dialed a number he’d remembered, the number for the house on Dixon Island. He needed to tell Harper about her ex, and more than that, he felt an urgency.

Two people dead in as many days.

Who knew how far this would go?

And then there were the photographs of the intruder who, he believed, may have sent Olivia Dixon to an early grave and let Harper take the fall for it.

He waited, phone to his ear, sliding his arms into his jacket. “Come on,” he said, willing her to answer.

Chelle, too, was slipping into her coat.

On the other end of the line the answering machine picked up.

“Shit!” He slammed the phone down. “Let’s go!” he said to Chelle, who was zipping her jacket. “And bring your gun.”

Chapter 66

Finally.

Sitting in the dark, Harper heard the key turn in the lock of the storm door.

She raised the shotgun to her shoulder, pointing its double barrel toward the chute.

With a creak the door opened, and she felt a rush of cold night air seep into the basement.

Finger on the trigger, nerves strung tight as bowstrings, she didn’t move. Her heart was pounding, sweat collecting on the back of her neck.

Come on in, she silently welcomed, straining to listen as she heard him enter, pushing his legs through the opening, then with a soft nerve-wracking whoosh sliding his body down the chute.