Page 193 of It Happened on the Lake

Rand had come to the same conclusion. “By this guy?” he asked, pushing the bit of the registration toward his father. Gerald glowered at the name. “Vargas? I wouldn’t put it past him. He was a snake if there ever was one.” Gerald’s eyebrows slammed together as he eyed the old papers again. “The shakedown happened right after Chase died.”

“Until Tom’s death,” Rand said, his thoughts spinning. “I’m thinking Vargas knew something or saw something and he was holding it over Tom’s head.”

“Possibly. Tom said something about that. Pictures or some kind of home movie. But he wasn’t clear, and I really don’t know.”

Rand looked hard at his father. “What about you? Did Vargas get to you, too?”

“What?” Gerald was taken aback. “You mean did he try to blackmail me?” He shook his head. “Nah.”

“You think he knows where the body is?”

Ice pack balanced on his shoulder, Gerald was reaching into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes but stopped. “Don’t know.”

“But you do know that they were dealing out of the house down the street?”

His father’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah. An open secret. Mainly just marijuana. Maybe some speed.”

“More than that. Coke and acid, and whatever. Why didn’t you bust Vargas and the rest of them back in the day?” Rand asked. “Why did you and Tom turn a blind eye?”

Gerald plucked the last bent cigarette from the pack. He lit up, drawing hard and letting out a cloud of smoke. “Because we were told not to.”

“By whom? The captain?” and when his father didn’t respond, he said, “Wait, the chief? You’re kidding me!” Rand dropped into a side chair.

“The way I heard it, the word came down from the mayor, but who knows?” Cigarette clamped between his teeth, he shifted the icy bag on his shoulder. “Chilcote. He was the mayor back then, and the word in the department was that was where he got his supply.”

“The mayor?” Roger Chilcote was long gone but had been the mayor of Almsville for nearly a decade during the sixties. “He was what? A pothead?”

“As I heard it. He lived right across the lake on Northway. Could’ve boated across in the dark of night. No one would be the wiser, so we—Tom and I—were advised to let sleeping dogs lie. So to speak. As long as the peace was kept. If anyone ever got out of line down there, any kind of serious disturbance, then we would deal with it, but, as far as that went, all those hippies kept their noses clean. Except for what they were snorting.”

Rand didn’t say a word, just let his father go on. Now that he’d admitted the truth, Gerald Watkins seemed eager to unload.

“And that Vargas,” Gerald said. “He was a smart one, just slippery as hell. He knew a good thing when he had it and milked it for all it was worth.” He finished his drink and found his son staring at him.

“What? Don’t look so shocked. You think you kids had the corner on getting high?” Gerald scoffed. “I saw people of all ages going in and out of that place.” He grinned without any joy. “So now you know Almsville’s dirty little secret.”

Gerald crumpled his empty pack and tossed it into the fire, igniting the glowing coals in a short burst of flame. “If there’s nothing else, no more sins you want me to confess, then I’d better get goin’. Dorie will be looking for me.” He stood and dropped the package of peas onto the couch.

“There is one more thing,” Rand said before his father reached the door. “What do you know about a missing gun from the evidence room?”

“What?”

“The revolver Evan Reed used when he died in the tram on Dixon Island. What happened to it?”

His father’s spine stiffened, and for a second Rand thought he was going to lie. Then he released a tired breath. “That’s on Tom, too,” he admitted. “I caught him with it and asked him about it. All he said was that it was better off if I didn’t know.”

“And you let it go.”

“Yeah, son,” Gerald said, his jaw set. “I did.”

“You think Evan killed himself?”

“Open and shut.”

“What about Anna Reed, his mother?” Harper’s mother. “You think that was suicide, too?”

Gerald frowned, his dark eyes sober. “You were there, Rand. You saw Tom and me haul her out of the water. Do I think she killed herself? Yeah, I sure do. Do I think it was intentional? No, probably not.”

“An accident then.”

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