Page 81 of It Happened on the Lake

“You pay for the service?”

“Dad does. He knows. He’s got one, too.”

Of course. Joel always had the latest gadgets, anything bright and shiny that caught his eye. Including women.

“So, this way you can reach me anytime. So, like, if I’m out of town, you won’t have to wait for me to get home and go through my messages and call you back. I’ll know you want to talk to me when you call—your number will show up on the screen.”

“I don’t know.”

“You want the number or not?” Dawn sounded exasperated.

“Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Hold on.” Harper stretched the phone cord so she could reach the junk drawer. “I’m looking for a pen.” She opened the drawer and pawed through paper clips, old lists, keys, cat collars, and even several books of S&H green stamps, which her grandmother, like everyone else in the sixties and seventies had collected. “Just a sec.” She tried several pens that didn’t work before she located a pencil that was more than a stub. “Go ahead,” she said, cradling the receiver between her shoulder and head as Dawn rattled off a number. “Got it,” she said, scratching the digits onto a book of matches from a steak house that no longer existed.

“You really should get one.”

“A pager?”

“Yes!”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good. I’d like that.” A pause. Then, “Hey, I just saw the time. Oh God. Sorry, Mom. Gotta run.”

“Love you,” Harper said, but the line was already dead, her daughter having hung up.

She held the receiver in her hands, then finally replaced it. A pager? Really? She found a bottle of Anacin in her purse and walked back to the parlor, where she tossed back two tablets and washed them down with the left-over drink from the night before. It burned on the way down again, but she poured herself another, which she drank far too quickly. On her third drink, she reminded herself to sip.

She told herselfnotto pour another as she felt like warmed-over crap and eyed the telescope again. Looking through it would only get her into trouble. She had no right to peer inside other people’s lives.

And yet . . .

She couldn’t help but lean down and train the telescope in the direction of the Alexanders. They were seated around the table, the three of them in the nook off the kitchen. Nothing going on there. And the Hunts’ place was dark. She moved the telescope again to focus on the Watkins’ A-frame. The lights were on, shining brightly from the peak of the windows at the top of the A-frame and down the back side to the floor below to the bank of windows that illuminated the kitchen area and part of the living room.

She wondered if Rand was home, and just as she did, she saw the top of his head and then his body as he climbed the stairs into the loft. He’d pushed a desk up to the glass, so that he could sit and stare out at the water, and though he didn’t know it, he was facing her as well. His features seemed less harsh in the soft glow of the desk lamp, and she observed the brush of his eyelashes against his cheek as he opened an accordion file folder that seemed ancient. Slowly, he pulled out a sheaf of papers tucked inside. The pages were yellowed, obviously very old.

“What’re you up to?” she whispered, watching the man who had questioned her at the police station, the detective who had once sworn he hated the fact that his dad was a cop, the one person she suspected of knowing what really happened to Chase Hunt.

How ironic.

As she viewed him, she saw Rand frown and sit on a corner of his desk as he began to read, and she watched him sort through the pages slowly, his eyes scanning the yellowed sheets.

Funny, she’d never noticed his eyelashes before, though earlier today she’d been reminded that his eyes were golden brown, his cheekbones as sharp as they’d been in his youth, only his jaw darker from beard shadow. Also he bore a tiny scar above his eyebrow that she was certain he hadn’t had in high school.

There had been a time in junior high when she’d been teased mercilessly that he had a crush on her. They’d even shared a kiss, compliments of a taboo game of Spin the Bottle at a seventh-grade party. Her first kiss. Maybe his, too. She didn’t know. Didn’t care.

A smile touched the corner of her mouth as she focused and caught sight of the newspaper clipping he’d been reading, holding up to his face. As he spun in his chair, she was able to barely make out the headline over his shoulder. Then he tacked the article to a bulletin board, and she could see the headline clearly. although she remembered it.

TEEN GIRL SUSPECTED IN GRANDMOTHER’S DEATH.

She gasped, her heart turning to stone. “You son of a bitch,” she muttered, all kind memories of Rand Watkins withering quickly. There were other articles and notes tacked to the board, most of which she could read due to the intense magnification of the telescope.

He rotated back to the desk and glanced up then, to look out the window as he ran a hand through his black hair. His eyes narrowed, and she wondered if he could see her through the panes and across the distance, but she doubted it. She didn’t think he was focusing on anything nearby, anything real. No, he seemed caught up in his thoughts, staring into the middle distance but searching inwardly, possibly returning to the night when his best friend vanished and the only person he could blame was Harper.

Angry, she backed away from the window and told herself to let it go. Rand was only doing his job.

“Really?” she asked aloud, then forced herself to turn away. The events playing out on the other side of the lake were already plaguing her thoughts. She couldn’t quite forget that Rand appeared to be investigating her, and Craig Alexander was doing what? Hiding a weapon he didn’t want his family to find? Planting evidence of some crime in the Hunt house? Returning a gun he’d stolen or been given?

And what about Levi?

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