Page 9 of It Happened on the Lake

The dolls were still strategically placed around the rooms like little pudgy wide-eyed soldiers, guarding the place and now collecting dust. Though Gram had showered her with several Barbies and a Chatty Cathy that repeated recorded phrases like “I love you,” or “I hurt myself” in a wheedling tone, Harper hadn’t been all that interested.

Eyeing the room, it seemed as if time hadn’t lapsed.

Harper half expected her grandmother to roll into the room in her wheelchair, though that was, of course, impossible. And there was no lingering scent of cigarette smoke or whiff of Chanel No. 5 perfume in the air, no rumble of the ancient Kirby vacuum cleaner being pushed over the patterned carpets by the maid. Nor, thankfully, was there a glint of cat eyes watching her or moving as the furry beasts slipped from one hidden alcove to the next. Even the grandfather clock had gone silent with the passing of time. So no, Gram couldn’t appear from her room just off the parlor, the only bedroom on the first level.

Harper gave herself a quick mental shake.

That was then.

This is now.

She walked to the window and pushed aside the tall curtains before raising the shades. Staring across the terrace, she saw the dark waters of Lake Twilight shimmering restlessly. On the far shore the homes of people she’d known, those who had been close to her, those who had not.Friends and enemies, she thought, staring through the rainy night, remembering what might have been if tragedy hadn’t struck.

But it had. And it had struck with a vengeance.

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda.” She touched one of her grandfather’s telescopes, this one still mounted in the area between his chair and the window. She thought of all the times she, as a kid, had peered through it, “spying” on the people on the other side of the lake. Just like Gramps with all of his sets of binoculars and the more powerful telescope in his private chambers in the turret where he’d focused on the Leonettis’ bedroom. Harper had caught her grandfather once in that tobacco-scented room when he’d forgotten to lock the door and she’d followed one of Gram’s cats upstairs. She’d peered through the crack between door and jamb to spy Gramps, his hand in his pants. His face was red above the bristles of his beard, and he’d been grunting and breathing hard as he’d stared through the lens.

She’d backed out, not understanding until much later.

Tonight, trying to dismiss the disturbing image, she walked directly to the sideboard near the butler’s pantry, where the liquor had been kept. An array of glassware and several crystal decanters half-full of dark liquid were visible behind the glass doors. Good. Telling herself she deserved a drink after her long drive from California, she reached inside for a glass.

Instead she found a gun.

Chapter 2

“What the—?” she whispered, then picked up the revolver with its long barrel and pearl handle. It was heavy. And familiar. The last time she’d held it . . .

“No!” She dropped the damned thing as if it was hot. With a loud crack, a jagged line cut across the glass shelf. She backed away. “No, no, no!” But the memory she’d tried for decades to repress sliced into her brain.

Evan.

Oh dear God.

“Get a grip,” she told herself. She’d been in the house less than ten minutes, and already her nerves were shattered.

This revolver wasn’t the gun that had taken his life. The police had taken that one. This pistol was its twin, part of a set that Gramps had kept locked in his tower room.

So why was it here?

Setting her jaw, she picked up the gun again and examined it. Nearly an antique, the revolver was the kind she had seen in old TV westerns. One side of the mother-of-pearl handle was loose. The screw holding it in place needed tightening with a tiny screwdriver—she remembered that, her grandfather forever trying to fix it.

And Evan had been fascinated by it. She remembered seeing one of the pistols in her brother’s hand as Evan had twirled it and pretended to be Roy Rogers or Wild Bill Hickok or some other TV cowboy she couldn’t name.

She turned the gun over in her hands. Holding the grip, touching the cylinder and trigger, staring at the damned gun with its six deadly chambers, she remembered Evan as he’d been the last time. Eighteen, his blue eyes bright, pupils dilated, brown hair fanned around his face. Always full of “piss and vinegar,” as Gram had said so often. But not then.

Her throat tightened and she refused, absolutely would not think about that hot summer night.

But she was still bothered to have found the pistol and wondered again why it had been left in the cupboard that had housed glassware. And by whom?

Questions flitted through her mind, but she had no answers and wasn’t going to try and force them. “Not tonight,” she told herself and put the damned thing back in the cupboard for now. Later, she would transfer it to Gramps’s locked safe. If she could open the massive thing.

For now, she rooted through another cabinet, found a glass, and blew out any dust that might have collected over the years. She lifted one of the crystal decanters, nudged off the top with her thumbs, and smelled the peaty scent of Scotch.

Her first sip was strong and burned a bit but settled into her stomach. Two more long swallows, and the glass was empty. Soon she would warm from the inside out as the alcohol seeped into the bloodstream.

But first, she needed to unpack the car.

Starting with the cat.

---