Page 96 of It Happened on the Lake

R and shouldn’t have been surprised to find Levi with Harper at the Dixon estate.

Hadn’t they always been linked in one way or another? Hadn’t they been childhood friends? Gone through school together? Even come to his house together looking for Chase on the night he disappeared? The two of them had always shared a unique connection.

And right now it was more evident than ever.

From the moment Harper opened the door, he noticed the wariness in her eyes and a tightness in the corners of her mouth. Everything about her exuded tension.

“Levi’s here?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

She raised an eyebrow at that, and he explained, “I need to talk to both of you.”

“Guess you’re in luck,” she said, but he knew she didn’t mean it. Her gaze was too guarded. Whatever he’d walked in on, it was private and intense. And he was an interloper. Excluded.

Well, too bad.

She led him into a massive room in the back of the house filled with antiques and eclectic furniture from days gone by.

He’d been here before, but not for years.

Tonight there were no cats slinking through the shadows and only a few of the myriad of dolls he remembered.

The whole house seemed somber and drab. Without the energy that had filled this home when he’d been here as a kid, visiting Evan.

Levi was standing near the windows, and he, like Harper, seemed wound tight.

Rand didn’t care. Too much was at stake.

“What’s going on?” Levi asked, looking from Rand to Harper.

“Sit down,” Rand suggested, then to Levi, “It’s good you’re here. You need to hear this, too.”

“Hear what?” Harper asked as she took a seat on the ottoman and Levi dropped into a wingback chair nearby.

“About Chase.”

“Oh God,” she whispered, hand to her throat.

“It’s not official yet and I’m bending the rules by talking to both of you, but I figured you needed to know. So this is strictly off the record. For now.” He held Harper’s gaze. “He’s dead.”

“Oh. God.” She went ghost white. “Oh God, you found him?” She blinked and looked at Levi.

“Not yet. But we know.”

“How?” she said and looked about to fall apart.

Rand spoke directly to Levi. “Does Harper know about the note from your mother?”

“What note?” Harper demanded. “What’s he talking about?”

Rand said, “Cynthia left a note with Edward Sievers before she died. She instructed him to give it to Levi.”

“Edward Sievers? What’s he got to do with anything?”

Levi said, “He’s living at Serenity Acres. Across the hall from Mom’s room.” He explained about getting the embossed card with its strange message.

“Wait a sec,” she interrupted as he relayed what was on the note.

“Chase is dead? For real? And Cynthia knew it?” Her face drained of color and she took a deep breath before snagging a tissue from a box on a nearby table.

Her eyes remained dry as she twisted the Kleenex through her fingers. “But you said you didn’t find him.”

“Right.”

“I don’t understand.” Harper was shaking her head. “The note said ‘ They killed Chase. Make him pay’?”

As Harper listened in horror, Rand explained about the fight between Tom and Chase, that Chase was accidently killed and Gerald Watkins was involved in the cover-up for his friend.

“Dad killed him,” Levi said, nodding as if finally accepting the truth himself. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I remember he said he would kill Chase if he tried to dodge the draft. But who would do that? Who would even say such a thing?”

Harper sat still. Shocked.

“It was a tough time back then,” Rand said, remembering.

“For all of us.” The country had been in chaos.

He’d come back from war, not heralded as a hero but seen by some as a traitor, someone who had answered Uncle Sam’s call to fight in a war in a far-off country, a war many in the U.S.

despised. For Rand, it was water under the bridge.

He’d done his duty and had memories that he’d rather forget, memories the shrapnel lodged in his shoulder wouldn’t let him bury too deep.

And then there had been Chase. His best friend. Gone. No one knew where.

Until now.

“Tough times don’t mean you kill your kid and cover it up. Even if it was an accident,” Levi said, his voice cold.

“You’re right,” Rand agreed. “Absolutely.” Then, as best he could, he briefed Levi and Harper on everything that Gerald had confided in him, confirming what Levi had already suspected.

Levi was stoic during Rand’s explanation, taking in the information. The only sign of his emotion was the muscle in his jaw becoming tight.

Harper was silent on her tufted ottoman, her anxiety evident in her ever-moving fingers twisting the tissue until it shredded.

Levi said, “They didn’t even call an ambulance?”

“No. According to my dad, Tom took Chase somewhere in his boat, he never said where, then he drove back to the middle of the lake where Dad picked him up. They left the Triton adrift in the middle of the lake.”

Harper was nodding slightly, as if remembering.

“Dad swears he has no idea what happened to the body,” Rand said.

Levi scowled. “Do you believe him?”

“Yeah, but I’m his son. So it doesn’t count with the department.

I’m stepping back. My partner is going to interview him again.

I’m out of it. Dad won’t like it, but that’s too bad.

He’ll probably lawyer up, but at least we have an idea of what happened.

” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.

His father hadn’t been perfect, but all his life Rand had believed that Gerald Watkins was a straight arrow, a good, by-the-book cop.

Now he didn’t.

“The case will be reopened? As a homicide?” Levi asked.

“That’s up to the D.A., but I’m not sure. There’s still no body, and the primary suspect is dead. All we’ve got is rumor and innuendo and the words of an ex-cop who was involved. We’ll see.”

Harper had gone quiet, her cheeks pale. “All this time he was dead?” she finally whispered, her throat thick as she got to her feet and let the flakes of the tissue drift to the floor.

She rubbed her arms as if she’d experienced a sudden chill.

“And we didn’t know.” Her gaze found Levi’s.

“We didn’t know,” she repeated, her voice cracking.

“It’s . . . it’s just effing unbelievable. ”

“I know.” Levi, too, got to his feet to stand near her.

“All the pain, all the worry, all the guilt, all the time wasted.” Her voice cracked. “If we’d only known.”

“But we didn’t. Couldn’t have.” Levi folded her into his arms.

“If I had . . .”

“Shh,” he said, his breath ruffling her hair. “You—we—had to expect that someday we would hear something. It just took a long time.

“Too long. And Dad knew. All along.” Levi’s voice was low and had a slight tremor. He shut his eyes for a second, just holding Harper, sharing their loss, consoling each other. Levi murmured that everything would be okay.

One more lie.

Things would never be okay.

Once again, Rand felt like the odd man out, the proverbial third wheel. He shifted on his feet and looked away, staring out the window and across the narrow portion of the lake to Fox Point.

The five houses along the shoreline were just visible in the shadowy light of dusk. Five homes that had each played a part in the drama that was their lives.

In the reflection he saw Harper drawing away, extricating herself from Levi’s embrace. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and cleared her throat.

As Rand turned, she said, “At least we know what happened, even if we don’t have his body, I guess.”

Rand had little hope Chase Hunt, or what remained of him, would ever be found.

“My old man,” Levi said. “He caused all this. But Mom? She knew and never told anyone? No, that doesn’t make sense.

She was always at the police department, insisting they dig further, and if she knew Dad was behind it .

. . No, nuh-uh. I remember her making herself a nuisance at the station, and he was angry about it, accused her of not letting him do his job.

He even said something to the effect that he more than anyone else wanted the case solved. ”

“I don’t think Cynthia really knew what happened to Chase until after your dad died. Maybe he told her before he went out in the boat? Maybe she found some piece of evidence that convinced her, or maybe he told her. We may never find that out for certain.”

“You think that’s what pushed her over the edge? Finding out what he’d done? Do you think she snapped? Just mentally broke down?” Levi asked, his stoicism disintegrating.

“Maybe. Again, we’ll probably never know. But what I do understand is that both your dad and mine didn’t want to sully their reputations. Neither did their wives.”

When Levi’s head snapped up at the mention of more than one wife, Rand nodded.

“Yeah. Barbara knew, too. Or at least suspected. She came back to the house to say goodbye to me before I left for Vietnam. She saw that Dad was gone, the boat out, then learned in the next day or so that Chase was missing. She never said a word.”

Levi said, “So they all kept their mouths shut.”

“And let us believe there was a chance Chase was alive,” Harper added.

“Son of a bitch,” Levi said under his breath. “Son of a goddamned bitch. This is all such bullshit!”

Rand wouldn’t argue that fact, but he wasn’t finished. “There’s something else.”

“Oh great,” Harper said, finally in control of her emotions. “The hits just keep on coming.”

Rand ignored her comment. “You remember Janet Van Arsdale?”

Harper shook her head, so he added, “Janet married, so her name is Collins now.”

Harper was still confused, but Levi was picking up on what he was saying. “She went by Moonbeam back in the sixties. She lived for a while in the house at the end of the street. With a bunch of college students.”

Harper repeated, “Moonbeam,” as if she’d heard it before.

“She’s dead, too,” Rand said.

“Dead?” Levi repeated.

“Looks like homicide,” Rand said. “Still waiting for the ME to confirm the cause of death.”

“What does she have to do with us?” Harper asked. “I mean it’s sad and all, but I don’t see how it affects us.”

“Indirectly.” Rand explained about finding her body at her home after she’d called in with information about the night Chase died.

He left out details the police would want to keep from the public but did explain that though there were no official suspects, he was looking into Tristan “Trick” Vargas aka Larry Smith.

The guy’s name, or names, just kept coming up.

“Trick,” Levi said, questions in his eyes. “You found him?”

“Wait—you know about this?” Harper said as she read Levi’s reaction.

“Only that he was a scumbag drug dealer.”

“And blackmailer, we think,” Rand added, not bringing up the fact that, according to Gerald, Levi’s dad had been on the take for years. “We’re just scratching the surface of the crimes he might be involved in. He maybe escalating.”

“To murder?” Levi asked.

“Possibly. We think he was afraid that Janet would spill what she knew about him, dealing and blackmailing, that she was a liability. So we’re looking for him, want to bring him in and see what he has to say.

” Rand reached into his pocket and withdrew the color print of the latest driver’s license issued to Tristan Vargas.

He handed the picture to Levi, and both he and Harper studied it.

In the shot Vargas sported a dark blond mullet and oversized glasses, his slight smile showing off uneven teeth.

“Be on the lookout,” he said. “And if you see him, let me know. Don’t approach him.”

“Armed and dangerous?” Levi asked.

Rand nodded. “Dangerous at the very least. Just give me a call.”

Levi asked, “You think we’ll see him?”

“I don’t know. But there’s a chance he might show up in the area.

He left a lot of his cameras and equipment in the attic of the house at the end of the street.

” Rand pointed through the windows and across the lake to Fox Point.

“He probably doesn’t know what happened to it, but he might get nervous if he killed Janet because there could be evidence linking him to her. ”

“After all this time?” Harper asked skeptically.

“Right. The attic has been sealed for years. We’re banking that he might panic and return.

You and I,” Rand said to Levi, “we live right down the street, so we can keep an eye out, and you?” He turned to Harper.

“You’ve got this.” He touched the telescope.

“Looks high-powered. So if you see him or anyone around that cabin, let me know. It’s empty, not rented currently, so no one should be there. Got it?”

“Right,” she said.

“Good.” Rand checked his watch, saw that he needed to get back to the station and promised, “I’ll keep you posted.”