Page 59 of It Happened on the Lake

“While he was driving?” Brady said. “Oh sure. Gross, Gunn. And was it a heart attack at the wheel?” She didn’t seem sure about it, but she shrugged it off. “It was before my time here. Anyway, what does this have to do with Harper Prescott?”

“Just that her family has a history of strange deaths,” Gunn said.

“Strange how?” Brady asked, though she was carrying on the conversation while filling in the squares of her crossword puzzle.

“Unusual deaths. First the woman, Harper’s mother.”

“Anna,” Rand said.

“Right, Anna. Then her old man and then a couple of years later, her kid. The son. Harper’s brother.” Gunn scowled and rubbed his head. “What the hell was his name?”

“Evan,” Rand supplied.

“Yeah, that was it.” Gunn nodded.

Rand asked, “What does that have to do with Cynthia Hunt?”

“Nothin’, probably.” Gunn took a long sip from his cup. “It’s just that damned lake. You know what I mean. You live there. Lots of weird stuff goes on there, if you ask me.”

“No one did,” Brady said, shooting him a glance.

Rand heard muffled voices in the hallway just before two female officers walked to the locker area. The clang of metal doors shutting and locks clicking interrupted Gunn for a second.

As the women retreated into the hallway, Gunn picked up where he’d left off. “Money does weird things to people, you know.”

“I’d like a little of that weirdness,” Brady said. “Try raising a couple of teenage boys as a single mother. I swear they’re gonna eat me out of house and home. When they’re not eating, they’re sleeping, but somehow they make insane piles of laundry and never leave gas in the car. That weird money you were talking about would help.”

“So take your ex to court. Or play the damned lottery,” Gunderson suggested.

As Rand refilled his cup, he noticed Chelle still lingering in the hallway. Sipping her drink, she was listening hard, not even trying to disguise her interest.

“You knew the Reed kid, Evan. Right? Aren’t you about his age?”

Rand nodded. “I knew him.” But he didn’t elaborate on just how close they had been.

Gunderson actually sighed and shook his head, looking up from his paper. “God, that was a tough one. I was the cop on duty.” His expression turned thoughtful. “It looked like suicide, but I never felt right about it.” Gunn’s gaze shifted to a middle distance only he could view as the memory caught him. “His sister found him.”

“Harper?” Brady asked.

“Uh-huh. Just like she found her grandma. She has a way of doing that, doesn’t she?” Gunderson said as Chuck Fellows wandered in and helped himself to a cup of coffee. Fellows was a big, athletic man with thick white hair and a bulbous nose.

Gunderson made his point. “I just think it’s quite a coincidence that she was the one who discovered her brother, her grandma, and now Cynthia Hunt.”

Even Brady had stopped working on the puzzle. “Was she with her mother, too, when she died?”

“No. She wasn’t with Anna Reed, thank God. But she’d been outside.”

“I remember,” Chuck Fellows said as he cradled his cup and walked closer. He was one of the few cops who had been around at the time. “Halloween night. That poor little kid was traumatized. Ended up in the hospital, if I remember right. Had pneumonia or something.”

“Right,” Gunn agreed.

“And wasn’t she involved with Tom’s boy?” Fellows asked before taking a swallow of coffee. “You remember, the older son who went missing.”

“Chase.” Gunn nodded as he poured himself a fresh cup. “Yep. McKenna and I caught the two of them once, parked up at Lookout Point, while we were on patrol. They were, you know . . . doing what teenagers do up there. You remember—Chase Hunt—yeah, ’course you do,” he said to Rand as he took his spot back at the table. “You were his friend, right?”

“Right.”

“Anyway, the girl—Harper—claimed he was supposed to meet her the night he vanished. God, what a shit show that was,” Gunderson said, nodding to himself before taking a sip and pulling a face. “The whole damned department was down there on the lake searching for the kid.” He found another packet of Equal in the basket on the table, opened it, and added the crystals to his cup.

---