Page 56 of It Happened on the Lake

R and noticed lights shining from the windows of the Hunts’ house next door as he pulled into his drive.

A big, boxy car was parked in the Hunts’ driveway, a Ford Fairlane from the looks of it.

It looked like Levi really was moving back.

So they’d be neighbors again, and Rand wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

He’d always gotten along with Levi. They’d known each other forever.

But Chase had always thought Levi was a pain in the ass, not to be trusted.

Then again, Chase wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue.

Inside the house, he tossed his keys on a side table and shed his jacket. His stomach rumbled, and he considered his options for dinner.

Frozen pizza?

Mac and cheese?

Leftover takeout from Alberto’s?

Rand’s choices for dinner weren’t exactly epicurean delights, but he didn’t much care. He opted for the pizza, pulled the box from the freezer, and let the “Pepperoni Supreme” thaw a bit as the oven heated.

Stepping outside, he felt the chill of February work its way into his bones as he gathered firewood and kindling from the pile of cordwood he’d stacked behind the garage.

He glanced across the water, to the island, and wondered about Harper.

As he had every day since she’d returned.

Hell, he’d even taken the boat out and motored over there, compelled in some way.

“Idiot,” he muttered. Yeah, he’d had a crush on her as a teen, and even as he’d turned twenty, but that was long over. He turned away and headed back inside.

In the living room he stacked paper and kindling beneath a chunk of fir in the old fireplace and started a fire. The newsprint caught quickly, kindling starting to crackle just as the stove dinged, indicating temperature had been reached.

The fire started to give off a little heat. Rand cracked a beer and was just about to shove the pizza into the oven when he heard a knock on the door.

Snapping on the porch light, he saw Levi through a sidelight and opened the door. “You got a minute?” he asked without any kind of greeting or a smile. He was tense. Something on his mind.

“Sure. Come in. Thought you might be next door. I saw the lights.”

“I’m moving back.”

“I heard.”

“Already started.”

“Good.” Rand didn’t know if it was a good idea or not, but time would tell. “Want a beer?” He held up his bottle of Sam Adams.

“Yeah, sure. Why the hell not?” Levi gave a quick nod, and for a second Rand imagined offering a bottle to Chase.

He wondered if they’d still be friends. If Chase would have settled down here, in Almsville.

If he would have married Harper—even had a kid or two.

Then would Tom Hunt still be alive? Would Cynthia have avoided her descent into madness?

Who knew?

“Have a seat,” Rand said. As he stepped into the kitchen, the oven beeped and he slid the pizza into the oven, then set the timer all the while wondering what was going on with Levi?

He returned with the beer and saw that Levi hadn’t sat down. Instead, he was standing in front of the fire staring off into space. He accepted the bottle from Rand and clinked the neck of his beer with that of Rand’s, then took a long pull.

“Thanks.”

“You want to take off your jacket?” Rand asked.

“Nah. I can’t stay.” He retrieved an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Rand. “Take a look at this.”

“What is it?”

“A note from my mother. She left it with another resident at Serenity Acres. For me. You remember Old Man—uh, Edward—Sievers.”

“My neighbor? Sure.”

Levi explained how he’d run into Sievers when he’d gone to look through his mother’s things at the care facility. “So he gave it to me. Look inside.”

Rand slipped a bit of embossed stationery from its matching envelope and read the simple message.

They killed him. They killed Chase. Make him pay.

“Wait a second. They killed Chase, but make him pay? So is it one person, or several?”

“I don’t know,” Levi admitted. “It could have been a mistake. In the last few years, Mom wasn’t always . . . you know. Not always there. So maybe she wasn’t thinking straight.”

Rand didn’t think so. The note was too perfectly written, too carefully put together. “Did Sievers read this?”

“He said no. The note was sealed. And there’s more. This was with it.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and came up with a piece of paper,

“What is this?” Rand asked, perusing the document as the smell of warming bread dough emanated from the kitchen. “Bank statement.”

“Right, and check the date. All of the withdrawals, cash, on a monthly basis, until the month Dad died. By then the account was drained.”

“Just your dad on it,” Rand said, eyeing the figures. “He was making payments.”

“In cash.”

“No record,” Rand said, starting to get a bad feeling. “You don’t know of anything he was buying on time?”

“I don’t think that’s it. I think . . .” Levi paused and stared into the fire, where the flames were crackling. “I think he might’ve been paying someone off.”

“For—?”

“That’s the part I don’t understand. I’ve been handling Mom’s accounts, paying her bills, collecting Dad’s retirement and social security for her, and there was nothing outstanding.

The house is paid off, and I sold her car.

The boat—it was bought years ago.” He took a long swallow from his beer.

“It could be some kind of personal note, I suppose, for something I don’t know about. ”

“Gambling debt?”

“Never was into that, at least that I know of. It’s the timing that worries me. And then there’s the note from Mom.”

“Have any idea what it means?” Rand said, turning the note over and studying it.

“Obviously she thought that Chase was killed and that whoever did it, whoever ‘they’ were, got rid of his body.”

“But make ‘him’ pay.”

“Right.” Levi took another pull from his bottle and finally sat in one of the side chairs across from the fire. “So somehow one or more of the people she thinks killed Chase is gone, but there’s one left and I’m supposed to make him pay.”

“How?”

“You’re the cop,” he said. “You tell me.”

The timer dinged. “Just a sec.” Rand set his half-drunk beer on a nearby table and went into the kitchen.

Using a pair of ratty old oven mitts his mother had once worn, Rand pulled the pizza from the oven and left it on the top of the stove.

Cheese ran over the sides of the pan, but he didn’t care and stripped off the mitts.

“You want some pizza?” he yelled from the kitchen.

“Nah. Thanks.” Levi shook his head. “Go ahead.”

“I can wait.”

Returning to the living room, he saw that Levi had a torn piece of paper in his hand. “Look at this. I don’t know if you know it, but Sievers bought the old hippie van that was parked down the street when we were in high school. The one painted with flowers and a peace sign.”

“I remember.”

“When I got the note, I looked in the van and I found this.” He handed a scrap of paper to Rand.

“It’s part of an old registration for the van, from years ago.

Sievers said he bought the van from Tristan Vargas, the dude who went by Trick.

Everyone said he was from Texas. That’s where he claimed to have come from.

But the VW was registered in Sierra Vista, Arizona. To Larry Smith.”

“Who’s Larry Smith?”

Levi actually smiled, though it wasn’t all that warm. “I did some checking. Saw the driver’s license pictures of Larry Smith and Tristan Vargas.”

“Let me guess. They’re one and the same.” Rand took a swig from his beer. Levi as a private investigator had his own way of getting information. Rand didn’t ask about how, didn’t want to know.

“You got it. An alias. And it looks like Larry from Sierra Vista also became Conrad Nelson from San Bernardino in California in the seventies, after he split from here.”

“After Chase disappeared.”

“Right. He’s been in and out of prison. Once for dealing and the most recent time for assault. Both in California. His record in Oregon is clean as far as I know.”

“And where is he now?”

“That I haven’t been able to figure out. Released from prison eighteen months ago.”

“And you think Larry or Tristan or whatever he goes by now is somehow involved in this?” Rand held up Cynthia’s cryptic note.

Levi shrugged. “I don’t know. This is as far as I got. But he sure took off fast after Chase went missing.”

“He and the rest of them.”

“He seemed like the ring leader, but who knows? I thought you, or someone with the police, might want to look into it.” Levi scowled into the fire. “Maybe you can figure out who Mom was talking about. That is, if she knew what she was doing.”

“Did you find out how your mother got out of Serenity Acres?” Rand asked, studying Levi’s face.

“No.” Levi shook his head.

Rand pointed to the papers strewn over the coffee table. “Can I keep these?”

“Yeah.” Levi drained his beer. “Sure. I mean, do what you want with it. I don’t know what the hell she expected me to do.

If she knew what happened to my brother.

If she thought he was dead, why didn’t she name names?

” He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration, then set his empty on the table.

“Oh hell, who knows if she even knew what she was talking about? She was so crazy.”

Rand pinned Chase’s brother in his gaze. “What do you think happened to him?”

“I don’t know.” Levi rubbed his jaw, as he thought back. “But after he got back to the house, after seeing you up at the river. That’s where you were, right?”

“Uh-huh. The old logging road.”

“Right. Well, Chase came home all hopped up, almost looking for a fight. He and Dad, they got into it. I mean, really got into it. It got physical. You know, Dad had a temper and so did Chase. They were downstairs. Mom, too. I went down to break it up, but they were both seeing red. I got in the middle of it but ended up taking a punch or two and getting Mom out of there. Then I left. I thought ‘fuck it’ and walked around the lake. When I got back, things had quieted down, so I just went to bed. I thought Chase was in his room. His car was there.”

“But he took the boat out to meet Harper,” Rand said and noted that Levi’s statement hadn’t changed over the years.

“I think I heard him leave. I thought my old man would follow, but he didn’t, at least not that I know. I fell asleep—just before midnight, I think.”

“Did you hear him take the boat out?”

“No,” Levi admitted, apparently lost in thought. “I didn’t hear anything more until Harper woke me up later. You remember. She rapped on the window of Chase’s room, then we came over to your house.”

Rand did remember. He’d just gotten home when there was a knock on the door. His old man was already in bed and hadn’t wakened. Or had he? Now Rand wasn’t sure. The night had been a blur due to the amount of alcohol he’d consumed in a short period of time.

As Levi took his leave and from the porch Rand watched him return to the house next door, he had an uneasy feeling that everything they knew about that night might be a facade.