Page 88 of It Happened on the Lake

T raffic was sluggish, the sky ominous and dark, as Rand drove back to Almsville. At Chelle’s request, they stopped at Wendy’s for burgers and drinks. “I work better on a full stomach,” she told him, “and that roasted chicken at the Musgraves’ house was driving me crazy.”

They ate in the near-empty break room, and by the time Rand was back in his office, he found a thick packet on his desk.

Inside was a partially burned and water-soaked photograph album with a few pages still inside.

Also there were dozens of dried-out photographs that had been collected from the lake after Cynthia Hunt’s death.

They were faded, most almost impossible to discern, but as he looked through them he caught images of Levi and Chase, their parents, and even a couple images of Rand himself.

Of course there were a few of Harper. She’d nearly been a fixture in the Hunts’ lives, first as a friend to Levi and then as Chase’s steady. Until she wasn’t.

“What’re you looking at?” Chelle asked as she returned, her drink from Wendy’s in hand.

“Pictures that belonged to Cynthia Hunt. Dredged out of the lake.”

“Oh.” She set her soda on her desk and looked at them. “Is that you?” she asked, and he squinted at a faded, slightly crumpled picture of three people in swimsuits standing on a dock, the lake shimmering behind them.

“Yeah,” he said. Chase, tall and blond, was front and center as always. His arm was slung over Harper’s shoulders with Rand on his other side.

“Who took the picture?”

He thought. “Levi, I think,” remembering that vibrant summer day.

“Chase Hunt’s brother?”

“Yeah. I think it was his camera. He was into all that stuff.”

She held the photo closer to her face. “You look mad.”

“I probably was.” He glanced at her. “Away of life back then.”

“Huh.” Scanning several of the photos, she said, “I wonder why Cynthia took all this stuff with her?”

“Dunno,” he said as she picked up her drink and sipped through the straw. “Obviously she wanted to make a statement.”

“As if what she did to herself wasn’t enough.” She sat on the corner of her desk and took a sip through the straw. “You think she was triggered because Harper Prescott came back to town?”

“A distinct possibility.”

“But how did she know she was back?”

“Good question,” Rand said, and one he’d been asking himself. I doubt I’ll ever know , he thought as he picked up his phone for his messages. He had one. From Janet Collins, the woman they knew as Janet Van Arsdale. Or Moonbeam.

“I know this was all a long time ago, but I read about what happened to Mrs. Hunt in the paper and then I saw that there was a story about tragedies on Lake Twilight, you know? And there was mention of Chase Hunt disappearing. I, um, I lived in a cabin on Lake Twilight years ago with a bunch of kids. It was at the dead end of Trail’s End, the road on that point whatever it was called.

And I remember on the night Chase Hunt went missing, I saw something.

I was with Trick, uh, that’s what he went by, but his name was Tristan Vargas and he had all kinds of equipment.

Cameras. Recorders. Shi—stuff like that.

Anyway, I saw Chase and his old man fighting on their dock.

Really going at it. The father hauled back and clocked Chase, he fell back and went down.

Trick, he got it all on camera.” There was a pause in the recording, then she went on.

“I know I should have told the police a long time ago, but Chase’s father, he was a cop, so I thought what good would it do.

And, to be truthful, I was afraid.” She left her phone number.

They already had her address.

He hung up and returned the call.

It went directly to an answering machine. “Hi, you’ve reached Janet,” she said, and then a younger male voice chimed in, “And Rory. You know the drill. Leave a message.”

Rand left his name and the department’s number, then asked her to call him back.

Chelle, too, had been returning calls, the most important one being to Matilda Burroughs, Olivia Dixon’s caretaker. “She hasn’t changed her tune,” Chelle said after hanging up.

“The gist of it is she blamed—no, make that still blames—Harper Prescott for Olivia Dixon’s death.

Matilda claims she measured out Olivia’s medication carefully, leaving the exact dose with implicit instructions before she left.

She’d done it before. Matilda also insisted that Harper had been old enough to understand that no one should drink alcohol while on that medication. Then she went off on Harper.”

“So no real help,” Rand said.

“No.” Chelle took a last noisy drink from her straw, then crushed the cup and dropped it into the trash. “I guess we’d better go meet the Musgraves.”

“Then we’ll head over to Janet Collins’s place,” he said, filling her in as he grabbed his jacket. “Do we have a work number for her?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s get it. Maybe we can still get to the Musgraves’ cabin before Lynette arrives. I’d like to beat her there. Poke around a bit. Get the lay of the land.”

“Don’t you know it? Being as you’re neighbors and all?”

“Haven’t been down there in years.”

They made the short trip. Rand parked in his own driveway, then went into the small shed at the side of the A-frame.

He slipped a couple of screwdrivers and a claw hammer into a pocket, then picked up his crowbar and ax and hoped that he wouldn’t have to use either as he walked with Chelle to the end of the street.

The Musgraves’ cabin was in need of paint, the porch sagged a little, and the roof was covered in fir needles from the tall trees dominating the yard.

Chelle eyed the place. “Could use a little TLC,” she observed. “The attic access is on the outside, right?”

“Yeah, the west end. Near the woods.” Conveniently out of sight of the neighbors.

He followed her to the narrow side yard where stairs ran up the exterior. He’d noticed them as a kid when he’d ridden his bike or hiked up the deer trails, but he’d never thought much about the rickety steps.

Until now.

Chelle was already halfway up when Rand spotted the orange Pinto rattling down the street to pull into the driveway. So much for getting something done before they arrived.

Lynette climbed out of the driver’s side door, but Camille, hair no longer in rollers but styled into a helmet, was positioned in the passenger seat and didn’t try to get out of the car.

“Mom wouldn’t let me come alone,” Lynette explained as she walked up to Rand, who was standing at the corner of the house.

“It’s like she doesn’t trust me. She seems to expect that I would sell the place out from under her. ”

“Why don’t you pull up to the end of the street so she can watch what we’re doing?” he suggested.

She eyed the ax and crowbar. “Try not to destroy the door,” she warned. “Mom would have a fit, and I really don’t want to buy a new one.”

“Got it.”

As she went back to the car, he mounted the steps. On the small landing Chelle was already attempting to open the door with the key, which when inserted turned, but the door didn’t budge. She gave it a push with her shoulder, but still it remained. “Damn, they’re right,” she said with a sigh.

“Let’s try this,” he said, setting down the tool box and ax and hefting the crowbar. “Stand back.” She took three steps down as the Pinto cruised to a stop at the end of the street.

Rand used the crowbar, wedging it between the door and frame.

He applied all his weight and strength to it.

It held for a second, then with a loud creak, the door gave.

Nails popped. Bits of the door splintered.

“We’re in,” he said. He pushed the door open wider and was hit by a wave of musty-smelling air.

Leaving his tools on the small landing, he hunched slightly to get through the door.

Inside he hit the switch at the side of the door, and the single dangling bulb flashed and then sizzled, the only illumination coming through a round window cut into the angle of the room.

“Got it,” Chelle said, turning on her flashlight, sweeping its beam over the interior as she followed him inside. “What is this place? A crash pad?” The beam crawled over a mattress on the floor, stuffing blooming from it, a layer of dust and grime everywhere.

“And an observation post. Shine the light over here, under the window.”

She did and exposed a long desk running beneath the grimy window, a telescope positioned near the nearly opaque glass.

Two other sets of binoculars were close at hand, along with half-filled ashtrays and a lava lamp, which Rand turned on, a weak light emitting from its conical shape.

Cameras and video equipment, circa 1965, microphones and transmitters littered the desk.

Night vision goggles and scopes were tucked nearby.

A lot of the equipment appeared to be military issue, technology developed during the war.

He remembered.

“It’s a time capsule,” Chelle observed.

She was right.

The lava lamp was heating and oil blobs started to rise and fall within, casting the attic in a weird blue light. Chelle bent over the telescope and peered through the eyepiece. “Weird,” she whispered, adjusting the focus.

“What?”

“This is trained on the house on the island across the lake. Fixed in this position.”

“Really?”

“Like it was left that way.”

“For twenty years?” Rand asked.

“If what the Musgraves say is true.” She scanned the sloped roof and bare beams where spiderwebs and bees’ nests were in evidence. “It sure doesn’t look like anyone’s been up here. Just rats and yellow jackets and spiders.”

“You’re right,” he said. “Let me take a look.”

She stepped aside, and he leaned over to stare through the telescope.

The magnification was powerful and indeed focused across the lake to Dixon Island.

Through the lens he viewed the entire island, including the boathouse, dock, tram, and mansion.

Or, intensifying the magnification, he was able to stare into individual rooms, with enough clarity as to make out the bottles in the liquor cabinet, some old doll on a divan, and a crucifix on the wall.

He froze as Harper passed by the window. She glanced outside, and she seemed to be staring straight at him, so visible that he saw the lingering discoloration on her face, the red area on her chin where there had once been stitches.

Harper blinked, her blue eyes intelligent and searching. He felt a tightening in his chest. Then, as if she’d heard something behind her, she turned quickly and disappeared from the viewfinder.

“You done being a voyeur?” Chelle prodded as Rand straightened from the telescope in the Musgraves’ attic. She was smiling. “And you claim you don’t have a thing for her.”

“I don’t—” He started to protest, then said, “She was someone I knew, a friend. When we were kids.” If that , he thought. But certainly not after the interview. “She’s not that crazy about me now.”

“Uh-huh.” Chelle didn’t bother hiding her skepticism as she shone the beam of her flashlight over shelving on the far wall where movie reels and canisters of undeveloped film were stacked. On the shelf below were microphones, cameras with interchangeable lenses, batteries, and flashbulbs.

Rand picked up a Brownie movie camera. “Straight out of the fifties,” he said, remembering that the Hunts had owned one like this.

The second camera was a Kodak Instamatic M8.

And the third he didn’t recognize, but it looked expensive, more professional as it had interchangeable lenses.

Possibly one allowing night vision? Rand didn’t know enough about photographic equipment to make an educated guess, but the equipment looked state of the art for its era.

He heard footsteps on the stairs. As he replaced the movie camera, Lynette poked her head inside. “Oh. Gross,” she said, looking around. “Holy . . . Was Dad right? Was this a spy ring? Or drug den?”

Chelle said, “We’re still checking it out.”

“And that awful smell—did something die up here?” Lynette’s face twisted into an expression of disgust.

“Maybe a water leak, or mold. Haven’t found any sign of it,” Rand said. “But you might want to check it out with a contractor.”

“Oh, great. One more expense.” She clucked her tongue. “We should just sell this place. I think I’m making an executive decision here, with out Mom.”

Rand said, “We’re going to need to go through everything here.”

“Oh sure.” Lynette flipped a hand. “Anything you want up here, just take. It’s been twenty years.”

“We will,” Chelle said.

“Good.” Lynette started to leave and touched the splintered wood on the door with a finger. “If you want to see downstairs, I’ll stick around for a while.”

“Be right there,” Chelle said and, once Lynette was out of earshot, shone her flashlight on the film canisters and reels. “I think we should go through all of these. Who knows what we’ll find?”

“Right,” he said and hated the creeping feeling of foreboding about dredging up the past again. But it was too late to turn back now.