Page 199 of It Happened on the Lake

She couldn’t move, and when she tried to speak, her voice was the barest of whispers. “Help,” she murmured when she knew there was none.

She was only vaguely aware of being dragged into the garage and then hefted with difficulty into something that she thought was the wheelbarrow. Barely conscious, feeling every bump as the garden cart bounced down a trail behind the main house, she felt the cold drizzle of rain and heard herself moan. She blacked out momentarily, then came to.

Wake up, Anna. Wake up!She tried to force herself up and out, but her legs and arms wouldn’t move and she kept losing her thin thread of consciousness.

Down, down, down she was rolled, her weight shifting to the front of the steel tray, the icy drops chilling her body. Her eyes wouldn’t open, her hands flopped when she tried to move them, and she couldn’t rouse herself. The whole world seemed to be whirling, spinning out of control.

All at once, the wheelbarrow stopped its downward descent.

The back end of the cart was lifted and pushed forward.

She was dumped into the floor of the tram. Seconds later its engine clicked to life. With a whine, it lurched forward.

Anna was aware of movement, ever downward.

She didn’t notice when the tram stopped and was only thinly aware that she was being dragged across wooden planks.

Then she was hauled to her feet and forced to somehow stand. Blinking, she managed it, barely. Swaying. Trying to get her bearings on the edge of the dock. Far in the distance, wavering, were the lights of Fox Point, she thought as she teetered in the rain.

For a second she thought she heard her daughter call out to her—the faintest of whispers.

Or was that her imagination?

Was this all a dream?

A painful, soul-jarring dream?

The black ever-moving water stretched out in front of her.

Lights on the far shore shimmered and winked.

And then in an instant, her balance gave way.

She slipped.

Off the dock.

And into the cold caress of Lake Twilight.

1988

The Present

Chapter 49

Sellwood had changed in the past twenty years.

Harper drove through the narrow streets lined with parked cars. The rain had stopped, a cold wind scuttling down the streets while shafts of sunlight broke through the clouds, shimmering against the wet asphalt.

She was surprised at how many antique stores, boutique shops, and cozy restaurants were in the area. In hooded jackets or carrying umbrellas or laden with backpacks, people crowded the crosswalks. Some walking dogs, others with children, a few couples strolling hand-in-hand as they window-shopped.

Carefully she maneuvered her Volvo through the clog of traffic while trying to locate the address for Levi’s business.

“Thirteenth and what?” she muttered, glancing down at the map lying open on the passenger seat. His address was somewhere north of Tacoma Street and west of Moreland Park. She turned a corner and saw a newer cinder-block structure with storefronts and offices on the lower level, apartments above. “Gotta be it.”

Screwing up her courage at the thought of seeing Levi again, she parked in a tight spot and climbed out of her wagon. “Emotional suicide,” she told herself and felt her insides twist. But here she was, about to deliver all of Chase’s high school memorabilia and the diamond necklace to his younger brother, a brother he never quite trusted. The exchange should only take a few minutes. That was all. Then she was done with it. Once and for all.

With renewed determination she grabbed her bag and hunched against the October breeze, walked back the two blocks to the building. Between a bistro and a boutique was a door marked only by a number. It opened easily, and she hurried down a short hallway that branched to another corridor leading to offices tucked behind the smaller street-facing shops. She found a windowless door marked 121, which sported a single plate: Levi Hunt Investigations. A telephone number was listed beneath Levi’s name.

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