Page 3 of It Happened on the Lake

Once inside again, she swung the weak beam over the interior and saw the soggy mess. Buckled stairs, peeling wallpaper, sodden carpets, and swollen hardwood. The brick floor near the front door was still intact, but everything else inside appeared ruined.

“Well, crap.”

No way could she stay here.

Not until everything was repaired, which would take weeks—no, make that months. So why hadn’t the attorneys in charge of the estate made the repairs? Why had they let the house erode to this abysmal level?

Carefully she stepped into the living room, felt the sponginess of the floor, and retreated to the front hallway again.

There was nothing she could do tonight.

On to Plan B.

Which she had hoped to avoid.

“Grow a pair,” she told herself. For the love of God, she was no longer that desperate, wide-eyed girl who had fled this place half a lifetime ago. She was a grown woman now. A mother and a wife— well, no, an ex-wife , she reminded herself.

The hood of her jacket fell away, and November rain drizzled down her collar as she skirted puddles and made her way to the gate.

Which wouldn’t budge.

The automatic keypad was ruined, the hinges rusted.

“Great.” She shoved again, this time planting her feet, ignoring the pain in her leg and throwing her shoulders into the task.

The gate was heavy and had, it seemed, been closed for eons.

With an effort, using all the strength she could muster, she forced the damned thing open.

Old hinges creaked, but she was able to clear a space wide enough for her car.

Good enough.

“We’re in,” she said to the cat as she settled behind the steering wheel and rammed the gearshift into first. “Even if we really don’t want to be.”

Then she tested the bridge, walking over it and deciding it was still sturdy.

Sending up a prayer as the wipers slapped the rain from the windshield, she drove slowly to the island.

She made it.

The old piers and abutments held.

For now.

She parked in front of the garage and glanced up at the mansion, a huge, three-story monster of a house with a towering turret above it all.

“Home sweet home,” she said with more than a trace of sarcasm. “You’re gonna love it.” She glanced at the passenger side, where the cat carrier was belted tightly into the seat. Two gold eyes peered through the mesh, glaring at her suspiciously. “Trust me, this is gonna be heaven.”

Or hell. Yeah, more likely hell. But she wouldn’t utter those dark thoughts aloud. “Hang here for a sec,” she said, before realizing she was having a conversation with a cat.

A cat!

Not even her cat!

She’d inherited Jinx when her daughter had taken off for college.

“Awesome,” she muttered under her breath. Now she was stuck with the damned thing.

Well, so be it. This was her life now, and bringing Jinx here seemed only right.

Cats had always been a part of this place.

Gram had taken every stray that had ever wandered onto the island.

“It’s a huge house, so why not?” Olivia Dixon had said, upon “adopting” an obviously pregnant calico when Harper was twelve.

She reached into her pocket for the keys, found the one for the front door, and forced it into the lock of the massive double door. With a click, the dead bolt slid out of place, and she pushed the creaking door open.

Everything in the house was as Harper remembered.

Just falling into disrepair.

The split staircase still wound up on either side of the wide foyer to the landing twelve feet overhead.

But the banister was now dull, the handrail no longer gleaming.

Some of the marble tiles in the floor were cracked.

The wallpaper that had intrigued her as a child with its brilliant peacocks and peonies was now faded and peeling near the ceiling where cobwebs collected and draped.

All in all, the foyer was a mess.

And it didn’t bode well for the rest of the house.

Dropping her purse onto a dusty side table, Harper reminded herself that living here didn’t have to be a permanent plan.

As if you’ve ever had a plan in your life .

Face it, Harper, you fly by the seat of your pants.

All the plans you’ve ever made are just reactions to the mistakes you’ve made.

Ignoring the doubts crowding through her mind, she walked quickly through the arched hallway and straight to the back of the house.

Again, she hit a light switch. Several lamps responded to cast a warm glow over the dusty antiques, period pieces, and just plain junk that still filled the room.

Gram’s things. Tiffany lamps and a fringed chaise longue straight out of the twenties mixed with club chairs and a sixties era console housing a TV/stereo combination.

How many hours had she spent in front of that thing watching I Love Lucy or Walter Cronkite reporting the news?

Too many to count , she thought as she spied some of the dolls Gram had collected still propped on the furniture and all the religious paraphernalia from her Catholic childhood evident in the bookcases and walls.

The dolls were still strategically placed around the rooms like little pudgy wide-eyed soldiers, guarding the place and now collecting dust. Though Gram had showered her with several Barbies and a Chatty Cathy that repeated recorded phrases like “I love you,” or “I hurt myself” in a wheedling tone, Harper hadn’t been all that interested.

Eyeing the room, it seemed as if time hadn’t lapsed.

Harper half expected her grandmother to roll into the room in her wheelchair, though that was, of course, impossible.

And there was no lingering scent of cigarette smoke or whiff of Chanel No.

5 perfume in the air, no rumble of the ancient Kirby vacuum cleaner being pushed over the patterned carpets by the maid.

Nor, thankfully, was there a glint of cat eyes watching her or moving as the furry beasts slipped from one hidden alcove to the next.

Even the grandfather clock had gone silent with the passing of time.

So no, Gram couldn’t appear from her room just off the parlor, the only bedroom on the first level.

Harper gave herself a quick mental shake.

That was then.

This is now.

She walked to the window and pushed aside the tall curtains before raising the shades.

Staring across the terrace, she saw the dark waters of Lake Twilight shimmering restlessly.

On the far shore the homes of people she’d known, those who had been close to her, those who had not.

Friends and enemies , she thought, staring through the rainy night, remembering what might have been if tragedy hadn’t struck.

But it had. And it had struck with a vengeance.

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda.” She touched one of her grandfather’s telescopes, this one still mounted in the area between his chair and the window.

She thought of all the times she, as a kid, had peered through it, “spying” on the people on the other side of the lake.

Just like Gramps with all of his sets of binoculars and the more powerful telescope in his private chambers in the turret where he’d focused on the Leonettis’ bedroom.

Harper had caught her grandfather once in that tobacco-scented room when he’d forgotten to lock the door and she’d followed one of Gram’s cats upstairs.

She’d peered through the crack between door and jamb to spy Gramps, his hand in his pants.

His face was red above the bristles of his beard, and he’d been grunting and breathing hard as he’d stared through the lens.

She’d backed out, not understanding until much later.

Tonight, trying to dismiss the disturbing image, she walked directly to the sideboard near the butler’s pantry, where the liquor had been kept.

An array of glassware and several crystal decanters half-full of dark liquid were visible behind the glass doors.

Good. Telling herself she deserved a drink after her long drive from California, she reached inside for a glass.

Instead she found a gun.