Page 97 of It Happened on the Lake

R and’s news about Chase had shocked her.

Why? Harper had no idea. She’d known that Chase was probably dead, that if he had been alive, he would have contacted someone somewhere or there would have been “sightings” of him.

Even though Elvis was dead and buried for over ten years, there was always a rumor that someone had caught a glimpse of him.

Of course Chase wasn’t a music legend.

She could hold out hope, she supposed, as there was still no real evidence of Chase’s death. Just a troubled mother’s cryptic note and an ex-cop’s side of an unconfirmed story.

Then there was Levi.

Now that he knew the truth about Dawn, everything had changed.

He’d left within minutes of Rand, and Harper was alone in this massive home. It seemed more cavernous than ever. As night descended, the rooms with their high ceilings, winding staircases, and long hallways felt empty and dark, shadowy and intimidating.

As she put together a tuna sandwich, she thought of how many people used to fill the hallways, stairs, dormers, and rooms. Her family, for starters.

Mama and Daddy, Evan, Gramps and Gram, even the dour Matilda added life to the place, not to mention the servants that seemed to be on every floor.

She even missed the cats slinking up the stairs or hiding beneath the tables or lounging like royalty on Gram’s bed.

Thinking of the cats brought her back to Jinx.

She’d not seen hide nor hair of him, never heard him scratching or crying.

Yet someone knew exactly where he was and what had happened to him.

The damned intruder had left his collar on the doll as well as a rotting feline carcass under the chaise in the tower.

Had he just found the breakaway collar on the grounds somewhere?

Had Jinx wiggled out of it? Or did the intruder actually have her cat?

In the back of her mind she hoped that if Jinx didn’t come home, he’d found a good life by being adopted by another family, but she had worries as well, worries that something awful had happened to him.

“Don’t go there,” she reprimanded herself as she slapped butter on two slices of wheat bread, grated cheese on one side and the tuna mixture on the other. Then she added sliced pickles and chopped onion and turned on the stove.

As the sandwich toasted, sizzling in a pan, she listened to the phone messages that had come in while she was talking with Dawn, then Levi and Rand. She’d silenced the ring and let whoever called leave a message.

The first message was from the cable company, confirming their appointment in three days. The second was from the ever-present Rhonda Simms reminding her that the next installment of the series about the lake was due. “If you want to add your perspective, just give me a call,” she’d said brightly.

“Next,” Harper said in a flat tone, then let the following message play as she flipped her sandwich. Lou Arista’s office. Not even the lawyer himself. An assistant asking she return the call and rattling off the number. “Fat chance,” Harper said just as the phone rang, and for once she picked up.

“Hello?”

“Oh, hi, Harper,” Marcia said, and Harper pictured her in the penthouse, walking around the living room and staring out the floor to ceiling windows while stretching the long phone cord.

“Look, I just wanted you to know that we missed Dawn today and are devastated. We hope you saw her, and we’re reporting Dad is feeling lots better. ”

“Right,” her father said, sounding far from the receiver. And then more distinctly, “Don’t list the house with Beth Leonetti.”

“Her name is Alexander now,” Marcia reminded him.

“I know, I know, but tell her, you tell her, Marcia, that I still have my license if she really wants to sell the place.”

“You heard him, right?” Marcia said, then in a whisper, “He’s very agitated at the thought of you putting the house on the market. So, just hold off, okay. I don’t want him to get overly upset—”

“I heard that!” Dad cut in. “I’ve got a weak heart but damned good ears!”

“I’d better go,” Marcia said without really stating the reason for her call.

Harper smelled butter burning and hung up, then flipped her sandwich, noting that the crust was pretty black. She paid more attention for the final side, then slid it onto a plate before scrounging in the fridge for a can of Diet Coke to wash down the meal.

“The dinner of champions,” she mocked. She thought about watching TV, but the cable wasn’t hooked up yet and the only television in the house was a small black and white relic from the sixties set up in Gram’s bedroom.

Harper doubted it worked and made a mental note to buy a new model so she could get lost in The Wonder Years or Cheers or whatever.

Even the news or Monday Night Football would be welcome tonight after all the hard truths she’d had to face this afternoon.

I can’t change the past , she thought, sitting in the wingback chair Levi had occupied earlier.

All she could deal with was the here and now.

For her future. And, more importantly for Dawn’s.

For the first time in years Dawn was more interested in being a part of the family, if her enthusiasm for living in this house were to be believed.

That might change when she learned the truth about her biological father and that her mother had lied about him.

There are lies of commission and lies of omission , she told herself as she bit into her sandwich.

Yeah, it had a definite burned taste but was edible, so she ate over half of it and finished the Coke.

Time will tell , she supposed, but for now, she needed to make the house secure. Someone was intent on scaring her off. She didn’t know why and she didn’t know who, but whoever it was had found a way to get inside.

Despite the new locks.

She had to find a way to stop anyone unwanted from entering, and to do that she had to locate the point of entrance, a door she’d forgotten.

She remembered the set of keys she’d found in Gram’s drawer.

Maybe one of them would give her insight to another entrance to this old house.

She snagged the ring off the kitchen counter where she’d left it after emptying her pockets the other day.

She wondered what each key would unlock or if the locks even still existed.

Of course she recognized the car keys, one to Gram’s Cadillac and the other to Gramps’s Corvette. There were other keys as well of varying sizes—none, it seemed, for Evan’s motorcycle. At least not on this ring.

She figured the cars wouldn’t start. Surely their batteries were long drained. Did they have gas? Was it still good after twenty years?

But she decided to try anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained , she reminded herself and headed to the garage.

Once inside, she flipped on the overhead lights and opened the doors to each of the bays, just on the off chance the old engines actually sparked. She didn’t want to fill the garage with exhaust.

She needn’t have worried.

The Corvette was dead as a doornail, and as she sat in the driver’s seat, she thought of her grandfather behind the wheel, driving way too fast, a driving cap tight on his head, white tufts of hair poking from beneath the brim.

On a whim, she used one of the smaller keys to open the glove box.

The catch stuck, but with a little effort it opened.

She expected to find nothing, other than perhaps a second key.

After all, Gram had had the car completely restored after it had been totaled in the wreck that had cost Gramps his life, so Harper assumed all of his personal items to have been removed.

She was surprised.

Inside the glove box she found a pair of Gramps’s Wayfarer sunglasses. She remembered him sliding them onto his nose whenever he was “gonna take the Vette out for a spin.”

Gram hadn’t been impressed. Once she’d confided to Harper, “He thinks he’s James Dean in them, you know. Like in that movie, Rebel Without a Cause .” She had sighed and rolled her eyes. “If only.”

Harper dug deeper and found an unopened pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, two cigars, a pair of driving gloves, and Gramps’s tweed driving cap. Gram must’ve retrieved them all from the wreckage and returned them to the glove box once the car had been restored.

Why?

As some memorial to Gramps?

That didn’t seem likely considering their remote, often icy marriage. But maybe once he was gone, Gram had experienced a change of heart.

Harper turned the driving cap over in her hand and noticed something shiny and black within. Flipping the cap inside out, she discovered not one but two dead hornets caught in the lining.

“How weird.” She stared at their slim little bodies and remembered the others she’d discovered in Gram’s dresser. Then she looked over her shoulder to the nest still hanging by the garage window. It had been abandoned years before but still clung to the casing, a papery gray.

She replaced the cap, dead hornets and all, closed the glove box and climbed out of the low-slung sports car that Craig Alexander lusted after. She really had no use for it.

Nor the Caddy.

Nonetheless, she tried to start the big pink beast anyway. Why not?

It was an exercise in futility. Gram’s Cadillac didn’t so much as make a click or turn over when she twisted the key in the ignition.

She sat for a minute in the driver’s seat, staring over the huge steering wheel and through the open garage door to the night beyond. Her Volvo was caught in the light that shafted from the garage and angled across the parking area to the rose garden with its macabre cat cemetery.

Someone had dug up one of Gram’s cats and left it under the chaise in the turret room. Someone who wanted to terrorize her. Someone who knew where the cats were buried.

That narrowed the suspect list down a lot.

Even Beth, who had been at the cottage often while they were growing up, hadn’t realized that Gram had interred her pets between her beloved rose bushes.

But someone knew. Someone who had helped bury a cat or two. Someone like the gardener, Martin Alexander, and maybe the son who had helped him with the pruning and raking and spraying?

“Craig,” she whispered.

Harper adjusted the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of the wide rear seat in the back of the Caddy.

How many times had Evan and Harper ridden on that two-toned bench without seatbelts?

Evan had fiddled with every button and knob he could while Gram eyed him from the mirror and cautioned him to stop.

“Don’t you be squirreling around back there,” she’d said, stubbing out a cigarette in the ashtray as they cruised along Northway.

“I can’t very well drive and watch you two, now can I? ”

Harper recalled how her grandmother had loved the behemoth of a car.

“It’s custom, you know,” Gram said proudly, showing the car to Harper for the first time and admiring the pink color and white-walled tires.

“Brand new. A 1960 DeVille. Isn’t it just grand?

” Her eyes had sparkled and she’d actually spun in front of the massive chrome grille, the skirt of her de Givenchy skirt flaring.

“Your grandfather bought it for me,” she added, but her smile had turned a little bitter as she’d whispered under her breath, “But, of course, he owes me.”

Now Harper thought the car wasn’t payment enough to assuage Gram’s pain when it came to her philandering voyeur of a husband.

She started to climb out of the car but glanced into the side view mirror. In the reflection, just beyond the Caddy’s pink tail fin, she caught the image of Gramps’s locked gun closet. And she had a couple more keys that didn’t have homes.

“Let’s just see,” Harper said, closing the Caddy’s wide door.

She tried the smallest of the keys on the ring on the gun cabinet’s lock and heard a satisfying click. With a creak of rusted hinges, the door opened to expose two rifles, three army-style handguns, and a shotgun—the Parker Side by Side.

The gun Craig Alexander wanted so badly. She reached inside the cabinet, withdrew the shotgun, and cracked it open.

A shell filled each of the chambers.

Perfect , she thought, snapping the shotgun closed.

Because she needed a loaded gun for what she was planning.