Page 240 of It Happened on the Lake

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.

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