Page 57 of It Happened on the Lake

C ontrary to Beth’s dark prediction, Harper wasn’t attacked in her sleep that night, or over the next two nights.

No one had snuck into the house and hacked her to pieces.

Nor had they shot her at close range.

Nope, Harper was alive, her brother’s Bowie knife under her pillow, while the scissors and crucifix were in the sleeping bag with her, as they’d been for the past two nights.

She would have loved to keep Gramps’s pistol with her, but despite searching the house over, she hadn’t been able to locate it.

Even with her lesser weapons around her, she’d slept fitfully, the noises of the old house piercing her brain. Creaking timbers, rattling windows, the sound of the train on the tracks just on the other side of Northway Road had caused her to wake with a start each time she’d dozed off.

Still no intruder had attacked her.

“Count it as a win,” she said to herself and stretched in her bed. It was still dark, only a little after six, dark enough to feel like midnight.

But she needed to get up. Face the day.

From the time she’d seen Beth drive across the bridge, she’d worked at getting this behemoth of a house in order.

First she’d gone to the phone company and ordered a repairman to put in two new lines, one for her fax machine, the second for her computer.

She’d picked up new copies of the white and yellow pages and had let her fingers “do the walking,” as the old advertisement had suggested.

She’d also called the two veterinarians in town and a cat shelter, each time asking about an unclaimed tuxedo cat. Unfortunately, she’d come up empty.

More and more she worried about Jinx, but she’d pushed her concerns aside for the moment.

As she was in and out of the house, most of the phone calls that had come into the house had gone directly to her answering machine, which turned out to be a good thing as she was able to avoid Rhonda Simms’s calls.

Rhonda had left three messages, each one a little more terse than the one before, each asking for an interview.

“In your dreams,” Harper had said, erasing them all.

There had been hang-ups as well, which she’d attributed to the pushy reporter.

She’d hired a gardening crew to clean up the grounds and called a local housekeeping company.

The manager had sent over two pairs of housekeepers.

One set had started on the kitchen and main floor, while the second set began cleaning from the top floor turret room and worked their way down.

They had worked long hours, and by six o’clock yesterday, the house was as clean as it was going to get for a while.

As soon as the turret had been scrubbed, vacuumed, dusted, and polished, Harper had been able to haul all of her equipment to her new office on the top floor. She’d boxed up her grandfather’s magazines, books, and cigar boxes and had them taken to the garage by one of the gardeners.

She’d made her appointment with the doctor at his office near the hospital and had all of her sutures removed.

She’d found the time to call Dawn, leaving a message on her pager, and checked in on her father.

Although she hadn’t actually talked to him, Marcia had conveyed that they were home at their condo in Portland and that Bruce was resting but would call her back.

So far she’d heard from neither her daughter nor her father and was running on the principle that no news was good news.

Fingers crossed.

Yesterday morning a locksmith had arrived to re-key all the doors and secure every window. She had a call into someone to check out the elevator and dumbwaiter, and a crew was set to come and clean the roof, gutters, and chimneys next week.

In a house this size, it was just a start, but she was feeling better about living here.

She would learn more about what repairs were needed after her meeting with Craig Alexander later today.

Beth had arranged it all, calling and confirming that Craig would come over this morning.

When Harper protested, Beth had insisted.

“It won’t hurt to get an idea of what you’re dealing with,” she’d said.

“Craig will check everything out and give you an estimate. That’s all.

It’s not like it’s written in stone. Oh, I’ve got another call. Talk later. Kisses!” And she’d hung up.

So Harper was meeting with Craig, and she decided maybe she’d learn a little from him, see if she could get any information about his nocturnal visit to the Hunts’ house.

She rolled out of bed and walked into the bathroom, where she found no menacing doll staring at her.

Thank God.

But her own reflection wasn’t much better.

The bruising around her eye was turning a sickly yellow color, and though her stitches had been removed, Harper could see the spots where the sutures had been.

“Good morning, bride of Frankenstein.” She decided to forgo any kind of makeup again. What was the point?

After showering, she dressed in worn jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, then, because it was still dark as midnight, picked up the knife. Just in case. Gripping the hilt, on the lookout for some intruder or, more likely, the cat, she made her way down to the main level.

She wasn’t accosted.

Nor did she spy Jinx.

“Crap.” This was getting serious. “Come on, Jinx,” she said to the empty hallway. In the kitchen, she checked his food dish and water. Untouched. “Where the hell are you?”

He should have come back by now.

Today she’d make some calls. Not only did she want to ensure that all the bills for the property came to her rather than to the attorneys, but she needed a repairman for the dryer, which took forever to get anything dry. Thankfully, all the other appliances seemed operational, if a little quirky.

She made coffee, nearly burned a couple of slices of toast, then walked to the parlor window and stared out past the misting fog that was creeping over the water to the far shore where a few lights were visible.

She spread butter on her toast and sipped the hot coffee, then took a peek through the lens of the telescope, still trained across the lake. For two full days she’d refrained from peering into the lives of those on the point, but this morning she couldn’t resist.

“Some people read the morning paper, but you, Harper Prescott, you watch the neighbors, just like Gladys Kravitz,” she chided herself, remembering the nosy neighbor on Bewitched , one of her favorite TV shows as a teen.

Lights were on at the Sievers’ bungalow, and next door at the Hunts’ place she spied Levi without a stitch on. Standing at the sliding door, drinking coffee, and naked. She couldn’t help staring at him, noting how he’d changed in the years since she’d lived here.

A shadow passed behind him, and Harper froze.

He wasn’t alone?

Maybe someone helping him move in? She’d caught glimpses of Levi moving boxes into the house in the last couple of days and some of the existing furniture moved around. But would someone be helping him move at this hour?

Of course not. He was a man in his late thirties. It shouldn’t surprise her that he had a lover. Yet it was unexpected and surprisingly unwanted. Which was ridiculous. She had no tie to Levi.

Not that she would admit.

She tore herself away from the damned telescope and told herself Levi Hunt deserved a life. A life without Harper poking around in it.

Besides, she had a lot to do today, and she couldn’t waste any time putting her nose into someone else’s business.

Today she planned to start by boxing all of Gram’s things that she planned to donate or throw out.

Or keep. No matter what Beth said, Harper didn’t see any reason not to preserve at least some of what Gram loved, her most precious belongings.

In a house this size, Harper could dedicate a room, maybe even a floor, to Gram’s things.

She picked up Toodles from the love seat and stared at her cracked face.

“You, for sure, have to go,” she said, her eyes moving to the window and the houses across the lake.

A few lights were winking on. The loft in Rand’s A-frame with its triangular window.

The hand binoculars were resting on a side table, and she couldn’t resist lifting them to her eyes.

Sure enough, she spied Rand in a black T-shirt doing something—oh, possibly riding a stationary bike.

The desk was in the way, but she was certain he was exercising.

She moved the binoculars to the Alexanders’ split level. Still dark. Harper was about to turn away when she saw the front door open, the entry hall visible through the windows on the lake side of the house. Backlit by the street light, Beth entered, closed the door, and hurried up the stairs.

She’d been out?

And wasn’t turning on any lamps?

Harper raised her binoculars so she could look into the master bedroom, no curtains or shades obscuring her view.

“None of your business,” she told herself, but she noticed headlights flashing through the trees and between the houses as a pickup drove down Trail’s End Road.

For a second she thought it might be someone delivering newspapers, but the pickup must have stopped at the Alexanders’. The beams of the headlights went out.

Within a minute Craig walked through the front door and flipped on the lights.

A black bag was slung over one of his shoulders. He dropped it as he kicked the door shut, then shed his jacket. Working the kinks out of his neck, he walked to the kitchen, where he was in clearer view. He took a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator and drank from it.

Harper couldn’t tear her eyes away.

So both he and Beth had been gone in the wee morning hours?

Possibly overnight?

But, seemingly, not together.

You don’t know that. They could have gone somewhere in separate cars.

But she hadn’t noticed Beth’s headlights. Only the dark street.

What does it matter? It is NONE of your business!