Page 34 of It Happened on the Lake

W hile nursing a bottle of Budweiser, Rand sifted through the old files in his home office, the loft of his A-frame, a room that had once been his bedroom.

The workplace was makeshift at best. His old man’s battle-scarred desk was situated beneath the windows that overlooked the lake—a spot where his twin bed had once resided.

Four old, pre-computer files were stacked on the desk.

The important information he tacked to the old bulletin board, again from his father, so he could glance at the facts while working.

Along with the folders Chelle had dug up on Olivia Dixon and Chase Hunt, he’d added Anna Reed and her son, Evan.

His one-time friend. What had his mother said about Evan Reed?

“Spoiled rotten and whip-smart. A deadly combination.”

Barbara Watkins had been right.

As he skimmed the thin files, he had the uneasy feeling that they were incomplete, as if whoever had investigated the cases hadn’t been thorough, or at least not as thorough as police procedures and practices were today.

He reminded himself these were not homicide files.

None of the deaths had been the result of murder.

Just deaths that were investigated. As he read the reports, he made notes because each file brought up more questions than answers.

Worse yet, his old man’s name was listed as the lead investigator in every case.

Gerald Watkins’s slanted handwriting and signature were on all of the files.

Other officers were listed as taking down information, of course.

Thomas Hunt, Dorothy Thiazine, and William McKenna, who were no longer with the department, had taken eyewitness reports.

However, Chuck Fellows and Ned Gunderson were still on the force and might have some answers.

Sipping his beer, he read each of the statements twice.

From what he pieced together, it seemed that Olivia Dixon’s death had been ruled an accidental overdose of sleeping pills and booze. Specifically barbiturates, chloral hydrate, and gin.

That Harper had administered.

Accidentally.

He believed that much.

Harper was many things. But not a killer. At least not in his estimation.

But what did he really know about her? He’d pledged to his best friend that if anything happened to Chase, he would take care of her.

That had proved impossible. He’d shipped out, she’d moved to California, and before his next leave to the States, she’d gotten married to some guy he’d never heard of.

Joel Prescott, he now knew. Once she was married and had a baby, he figured his promise to Chase was no longer valid.

By the time Rand’s tour of duty was over and he’d been discharged, Harper was a wife and mother.

Now she was divorced.

And a rich woman who didn’t need his help in any way, shape, or form. He had witnessed that himself earlier today.

She had a temper.

No doubt about it.

And some people, Cynthia Hunt included, had been vocal about Harper’s guilt. Cynthia had been certain Harper had killed her grandmother with a mixture of pills and alcohol and had been somehow involved in Chase’s disappearance.

Thinking, Rand drummed his fingers on the desk. He located and read the statement of Matilda Burroughs, Olivia Dixon’s caretaker.

In it Matilda swore that she left the right dosage of medication for Harper to give to her grandmother. All the girl had to do was be careful and not allow the old woman to drink alcohol.

While Harper had insisted she gave her grandmother the amount of pills the caretaker left in the kitchen, Matilda had said confidently that she hadn’t made a mistake in dosage.

In the side notes taken by his own father, Gerald noted that the caretaker was visibly distraught and affronted.

Gerald also wrote that the woman called Harper “a self-involved little whore who had left her grandmother to die while out doing the nasty with her boyfriend!” That phrase was left off her official handwritten statement.

He found another note stating that after her oldest daughter’s graduation from high school a few months later, Matilda had packed up her family and moved to Canada.

He snagged his longneck, nearly draining the bottle, and wrote himself a reminder to track Matilda Burroughs down.

As he set the near-empty bottle on the desk again, he glanced up and stared through the window and across the lake.

To Dixon Island, where lights shone from some of the windows in that behemoth of a house.

He wondered how long Harper would stay in Almsville.

Probably just long enough to sell the whole kit and caboodle, pocket her fortune, and leave.

Not that it mattered to him.

As he stood, his shoulder twinged again, a pain that never quite went away, compliments of the shrapnel still buried there.

He’d tried and failed to convince himself that the soreness was all in his head, that the continuous ache was like the nightmares that sometimes plagued him, part of the war that would forever be his mental companion.

Shaking the feeling off, he drained his beer and carried his empty downstairs. He left the bottle in an empty six-pack carton in the laundry room where like six-packs were stacked before walking barefoot outside, the boards of the deck wet and cool.

Clouds moved slowly over a quarter moon, and the air was heavy and damp, but no rain was falling at the moment. Even the breeze had died to a whisper.

Next door, the Hunt house was dark. Now that Cynthia was gone, he wondered what Levi would do with the cottage. Rand had heard he might move back; that had been his plan before his mother’s demise.

Rand stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and eyed the cottage with its large daylight basement. He’d spent a lot of time over there, hanging out in Chase’s room listening to records or talking sports.

A ravine with a creek separated the properties, and when they were both on the team, Chase and Rand had spent hours tossing a football back and forth over the stream.

And then things had gotten complicated.

The irony wasn’t lost on him that he’d become exactly what he’d railed against as a youth. Though as a boy he’d admired his dad and had thought he’d become a cop just like his father, that had changed with adolescence, when the police were no longer heroes but the enemy.

And now here he was.

Living in the old man’s house.

Using his desk.

Doing the same job at the Almsville Police Department.

How had that happened?

Rand had asked himself that same question a hundred times over and had never come up with an answer. His gaze dropped to the Hunts’ empty boathouse before he looked to the middle of the lake and wondered again about Cynthia. What had driven her to the lake and her ultimate horrific demise?

He shoved a hank of hair from his eyes and heard a cricket chirping nearby.

Rand reminded himself to talk to Levi, as well as with some of the staff, possibly nurses and a social worker at Serenity Acres, the care facility from which Cynthia Hunt had wandered.

Somehow she’d gotten through the facility’s security and made her way five miles to the Hunt home.

Once there she’d gathered mementos of her life and carried them along with a gas can and lighter to the boat, then motored to the middle of the lake.

Less than an hour after Harper had returned.

What were the odds of that?

He was headed inside again when he noticed lights on at the Sievers’ home.

The old man no longer lived in the house, but his daughter, her kids, and two small mutts had taken over the home.

The chain-link fence was still in place, but the warning signs and security lights had been taken down, fresh paint making the bungalow more welcoming.

The dogs seemed friendly enough, though they tended to bark whenever the ducks and geese that lived on the lake got too close. And they’d put up a helluva ruckus last night.

He’d heard the neighbor dogs barking and going out of their minds about the time he’d been called from the station. While on the phone he’d looked out the window and seen the boat in flames.

He hadn’t waited for the fire department but instead had dashed out the back door and climbed into the old motorboat, heading straight for the flames where a woman was screaming and writhing aboard.

As he got close, he’d recognized the boat as the Hunts’ Triton.

Sick inside, he’d arrived just as the crew on the department’s boat had cleared the area, firemen trying to save her.

Even then he’d known it was too late.

The horror on the sinking craft had consumed his attention while others saw to a lone swimmer, getting her to the hospital, a woman he hadn’t recognized. Only later had he learned her name and was struck that Harper Reed was back in town.

And once again involved in a tragedy.

Coincidence?

Unlikely.

Of course all the neighbors on the point and along the lakeshore had been interviewed, asked about what they’d seen the night before, and most of them were in concurrence.

No one had noticed anything unusual until they’d caught sight of the fire on the water or heard the commotion and looked outside.

Francine Sievers O’Malley had said the same. She’d been watching television, an episode of The Wonder Years, when her daughter had said she saw “something weird” on the lake and soon thereafter the dogs began barking their fool heads off.

Walking inside, he contemplated another beer and battled against it.

His family had a history and a complicated relationship with alcohol, not the least his own father’s entanglement, which had really taken root around the same time that Chase Hunt had gone missing and Rand had left for Southeast Asia.