Page 215 of It Happened on 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.

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