Page 76 of It Happened on the Lake

“I have a bone to pick with you,” Rand said, irritated as he slapped a copy of The Twilight Tribune onto the table where Gunn was seated in the break room. Gunn was sipping coffee and picking at the remains of a cinnamon roll.

“About what?” Gunn looked up, then down at the front page of the newspaper with the headline: LOCAL WIDOW DIES IN MYSTERIOUS LAKE FIRE . “Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘Oh.’” Rand twisted a chair around and sat on it, leaning over the back. “I thought all this information was supposed to come from the chief. Either directly or indirectly. He’s hired a public information officer, you know.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t say anything that really wasn’t public knowledge.”

“It’s my case. You could have checked with me.”

Gunn had the decency to frown and nod. “Yeah, I guess, but that reporter? Rhonda? I knew her dad. We were on the same softball team back in the day, and she was just this awkward little kid who hung out. You know the kind I mean? She didn’t seem to have any friends.

Anyway, when she saw me at the auto parts store a couple of days ago and offered to buy me coffee, I thought, what the heck?

She said she wanted to talk about Chase Hunt, and I didn’t think that would hurt anything. ”

“No?”

“No.” Gunn scowled. “I know he was your friend and all, but that case is colder than a witch’s tit.”

“Geez, Gunderson,” his partner said, walking into the room and heading straight for the vending machines. “Do you always have to be so crass? Can’t you just say ‘cold as hell’ like a normal human being?”

“Hell isn’t cold! And fine.” He rolled his eyes. “And the case is cold as hell. Anyway, she asked questions and I was glad to answer. I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to have some public interest in the case.”

“Cases.” Rand thumped his finger on the paper. “She asked about Olivia Dixon.”

“Well, yeah, it all happened on the same night.” He lifted his shoulders in a what’re-ya-gonna-do expression.

Rand felt the cords in his neck tighten as he thought about Harper and what would happen once she read the article. But he was overreacting. Something he seemed prone to do lately. “What you’re gonna do, Gunn, is keep your mouth shut.”

“And what you should do, Watkins, is look at the case like a real cop.” Gunn glared up at him, the folds of his face growing taut.

“Meaning?”

“You’re just like your old man.”

That cut a little too close to the bone.

“I remember he didn’t want anyone else involved in his cases.” Gunderson shoved his plate aside as Brady fed change into the soda machine and the coins rattled down the slot.

She looked over her shoulder, took one glance at the situation, and snorted. “Put your foot into it again, didn’t you, Gunn?” She withdrew a can of Diet Pepsi and walked to the table where she read the headline. “Oh. Geez.”

Rand got out of his chair. “Occupational hazard.”

“Hey, can you leave the paper?” she asked as she popped the top of her can. “Someone took the office copy.”

Rand nodded. “Yeah, fine.” He didn’t need it. He’d seen enough.

“Suki,” Gunn said.

“Suki?” Brady snapped up the copy with her free hand. “Suki took the paper?”

“Yep.” Gunn dabbed at the last crumbs and bits of icing on his plate. “I think she takes copies of recipes or something.”

“Well, it’s the office copy. Meant for everyone.”

“Except for the crossword,” he suggested with a sly wink. “That’s yours. You think you own it and go ballistic if anyone starts filling it in before you.”

“Oh, give me a break.”

Rand left them arguing as he tried to shake off his irritation about the article and Gunn’s remarks about his father. He considered calling Rhonda Simms at the newspaper’s offices and reading her the riot act but decided against any conversation with her until he cooled off.

Because the truth was, whether he wanted to admit it or not, what most concerned him about the article wasn’t the department’s reaction so much as Harper’s. Simms couldn’t compromise a case that was stone cold, at least he didn’t think so. Well, unless she had Gunn’s help.

He remembered Chase’s plea the last night he’d seen his friend. “Just tell me you’ll take care of her. Of Harper.”

Which Rand hadn’t. Despite his promise.

And now wasn’t the time to start. Not that she would allow it, as evidenced by her response during her interview here at the station and how angry she’d become.

Hell, she’d shut off his recorder and dared him to arrest her.

And then there was last night, when he couldn’t sleep and had taken the boat out, steering close to the island, circling it, and remembering how many times he’d done the same as a teenager.

Maybe he should have docked and gone up and pounded on the door, had a real conversation with her.

But he hadn’t. He’d hoped that getting on the water, being close to the island and the nexus of all that had happened, would make things clearer.

He’d been wrong. He should’ve gone for a run. A long run.

“Fuck it,” he said under his breath, then made his way downstairs to the windowless evidence room where he double-checked the records on the missing gun in the Evan Reed suicide case.

He ended up spinning his wheels. Just as Chelle had said, there were no records, no card indicating who had last handled the evidence or ever looked through the locker.

Another dead end.

The officer in charge, Alicia Jefferson, had only been with the department for three years, and she could offer no explanation as she sat at her desk outside the locked door.

“Who knows when it could have happened?” Jefferson asked.

She was a no-nonsense Black woman with half-glasses and big hoop earrings.

“It’s been over twenty years, hasn’t it?

1967? And the way I understand it, things were pretty loose in the department back then.

No cameras. It just wasn’t a thing. People came and went as they pleased. ”

“Not people,” Rand corrected. “Police officers. And they were supposed to sign in and out.”

She looked at him over the tops of her reading glasses. “That’s the operative word, isn’t it? ‘Supposed’ to. I’m just tellin’ you, not everyone goes by the book.”

“And no one noticed the sign-out card was missing?”

“No one cared until just a few days ago.” She leaned back in her chair and eyed him. “Your partner, Detective Brown? She came down here a few days ago. Didn’t she tell you about the missing gun and card and all?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Her eyebrows raised. “Double-checking?” Before he could answer, she shook her head, dark eyes serious. “Don’t you trust her?”

“Of course.”

“Then why are you all down here? If she told you, believe her. That Chelle? Detective Brown? She’s one smart cookie.”

“I know.”

“Then?”

“Fine. Got it,” he said, taking the stairs up to the main floor.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Chelle. Sure, she was green, but smart as all get-out.

It was just that the cases involving the entire Reed/Dixon clan were like a spiderweb, woven together, and when you touched one silken thread it pulled on another.

The deaths in the family were years apart but all out of the ordinary, accidents in one way or another.

Or so it seemed.

He, like his partner, was starting to wonder about that.

Then there were the Hunts.

Three people gone.

All tragically.

All on the lake.

Coincidence?

He was beginning to think not.

Back in his office, he shuffled some papers, placed a couple of calls, and waited for Chelle to return. She’d been at the hospital, checking records and talking to the staff about Cynthia Hunt’s death.

Within the hour Chelle returned, slipped off her jacket, and before she could settle down, pressed a fingertip to the soil in one of her plotted plants.

“Oh damn.” She left the room again and returned with one of the lunchroom carafes, then began drizzling water over the plants on the corner of her desk as well as those with trailing vines lined up on the windowsill.

“What did you find out?” he asked.

“I double-checked the hospital records on Cynthia Hunt and talked to several people on the staff. Everything seemed to be just as reported. A mess-up in that she died in the hallway, but nothing suspicious. At least that’s the general consensus.”

“Okay, good.”

“And . . . I’ve got an address for Camille Musgrave. She and her husband, Victor, owned the rental house where all the students lived when Chase Hunt went missing.”

“I thought you were looking for Matilda Burroughs,” Rand said. After they’d decided to take another look into Olivia Dixon’s death and Chase Hunt’s disappearance, they had split up the work.

Chelle nodded, setting the carafe on a vacant corner of her desk.

“I’ll get to that. But first the Musgraves.

I found out that Camille and Victor originally moved up to the Seattle area.

Well, Bellevue to be precise. Victor died a few years ago, and Camille is now living back in Oregon, in Aloha, with her daughter, Lynette, and her family. I’m going out there later today.

“As for Matilda Burroughs, Olivia Dixon’s caretaker, who had the night off when the older woman died?

She still lives in Calgary. I tried calling her earlier and left a message.

If I don’t hear back from her in the next hour or so, I’ll try again.

Oh crap!” She noticed one of the pots was leaking, a trail of dirty water running down the window ledge and wall.

In one quick movement she grabbed another tissue and leaped up to stem the flow. “Damn it all.”

She was still blotting the drizzle as Rand said, “I’m on my way to see the officer in charge of these cases back then.”

Chelle glanced over her shoulder. “Your dad.”

He nodded.

“Need company?” She wadded up the tissue and tossed it into a nearby wastebasket.

“I think I should handle this one myself.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. See ya later.” Chelle was still grumbling to herself as she found another tissue and started swabbing the windowsill.

Rand started down the hall only to sidestep Chuck Fellows lumbering in the opposite direction.

In Chuck’s wake was a twenty-something man, thin as a rail, three days’ growth of beard covering his jaw, eyes wide, pupils dilated, stocking cap pulled low over his ears.

His flannel jacket was unbuttoned, beneath which Rand noticed a faded T-shirt printed with Go Ahead, Make My Day!

Scratch marks were apparent on his cheeks, and his wrists were cuffed, no shackles on his legs.

Despite the fact that Fellows was strong-arming him down the hall to the booking area, he shuffled as if he could barely move.

“I didn’t do nothin’,” the cuffed guy protested, the smells of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and sweat permeating from him.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Just like you never do.” As they passed Rand, Fellows grabbed the guy by the elbow to shuffle him along and muttered under his breath, “I’m gettin’ too old for this.”

“I swear, she was lyin’!” the guy argued. “You know she’s a liar! You know it!”

“What I know is that she has a restraining order. Jesus, Curtis, just shut up, would ya? You know the drill. You’ll get your chance to talk.”

“I want my attorney,” Curtis insisted.

“On his way.”

“ Her way! I got a woman this time!”

“Fine, fine, then she’s been notified.” A door opened and closed with a thud, and the rest of the conversation was cut off.

Rand stopped at his locker for his sidearm, though he told himself he didn’t need it; he was interviewing his dad, for God’s sake. He packed the Glock anyway.

When he left, it was raining, hard enough that he had to flip his wipers on once he started driving. He hadn’t told his father he was coming, wanted to see Gerald’s reaction face to face.

Even with the rain beginning to sheet and traffic snarling, Rand made it to his father’s duplex in less than half an hour.

He and his wife, Dorie, lived on a golf course in Oregon City, and when Rand knocked on the door, his latest stepmother answered.

She was a bit of a thing, less than a dozen years older than Rand, her oversized glasses and curling blond hair reminiscent of Charlie, the love interest in Top Gun.

“Rand,” she said with a wide grin as he stood dripping on the porch. “Come on in!” She held the door open.

“Is Dad here?”

“No, he’s golfing at the country club.” Then she looked past Rand to the wet day beyond, where rain was pounding the brick walk.

“Well, he was, it’s his regular day, you know, the morning men’s group, but I don’t know with this weather.

He’s probably playing cards. Most of the time he’s an all-weather golfer, but this is pretty bad.

” She turned her head to look up at the gray clouds.

“He’s usually back by one or one-thirty.

” She teetered one hand to indicate maybe less, maybe more.

“Maybe I’ll catch him there.”

“Or you could wait if you want.” She was stepping aside, allowing him into the living room where the television was tuned to some game show and the paper lay open on a side table, the front page headlines visible from the porch.

“Thanks. Another time.” He couldn’t imagine trying to make small talk with Dorie, nor did he want to discuss what he planned to ask his father in front of the third Mrs. Gerald Watkins.

“Do you want me to give him a message, in case you don’t connect with him?”

“No. I’ll call.” With a wave, he turned back to his Jeep.

As he slid inside, the words Chuck Fellows’s prisoner had shouted sliced through his mind. “She’s a liar. You know it.”

Lies, that’s what these cases always were about, and he knew, deep in his gut, that his father was lying.

Or covering up. The notes on Chase’s disappearance and Olivia Dixon’s death weren’t up to Gerald Watkins’s usual clear, concise, and complete standard.

No, something had been off. And it was more than the fact that his best friend’s son had gone missing.

But who would know?

How could Rand prove it?

Confront his father?

That was his plan, but now, thinking about it, he decided he needed a little more ammunition, and he knew where he might find it.