I asked Marian what kind of locks they’d been.
“Heavy duty, with thick staples,” she said. “The kind they advertise on TV as withstanding a rifle bullet.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Chuck said.
“What is?”
“What they were after. The locks. You know, a gang of padlock thieves.”
His mother didn’t smile and neither did I. Heavy-duty padlocks couldn’t be picked by anyone other than an expert locksmith. About the only way to open one without using a key was to hacksaw through one of the staples, which even with a battery-powered tool would take some time and effort. Why go through all the trouble if you weren’t planning to commit theft? There didn’t seem to be any rational explanation for it.
A gang of padlock thieves. It made as much sense as anything I could come up with.
4
Nils Ostergaard was well into his seventies, judging from the wisps of snowy hair that poked out from under his shapeless fisherman’s hat, the cross-hatching of lines on his face, and the skin folds that hung from a set of bulldog jowls. Big and powerful once, still strong-looking now but leaned down to sinew and bone encased in Levi’s and a khaki vest that had half a dozen bulging pockets. Age seemed not to have slowed him down much, though. He slid his skiff in alongside the Dixons’ dock with the ease of long practice, hopped out, and quickly wound a short bowline around a cleat.
The three of us had gone out on the dock to meet him. He hugged Marian, whispered something into her ear that made her laugh, pumped Chuck’s hand, gave me a mildly suspicious look from under wild white eyebrow tufts, and demanded, “Where’s Pat?” Marian told him, and he nodded and fixed his bright blue gaze on me again. “Who’s this?”
I said, “Chauffeur and squatter for a week next door,” and introduced myself.
“He’s not really a chauffeur,” Chuck said. “He’s a private eye.”
“The hell he is.”
“No bull. He’s a friend of Dad’s and he drove us up. Mr. Zaleski’s letting him stay at his cabin for a week, free.”
“Free, huh?” To me, Ostergaard said, “You don’t look much like a private eye.”
“You don’t look much like a retired sheriff’s deputy.”
“Show you my badge if you want to see it.”
“Show you my license if you want to see it.”
“You two can show each other whatever you like,” Marian said, “but don’t do it in front of us.”
We all laughed except for Chuck. He said, “Somebody stole our padlocks, Mr. Ostergaard.”
“What’s that?”
“Off the boathouse and storeroom doors. Both of ‘em.”
The old man scowled. “Busted in? What’d they steal?”
“That’s just it,” Marian said. “Nothing’s missing. Not a thing.”
“Damage?”
“No. It wasn’t vandalism, either. Just the padlocks missing.”
“Hell. Doesn’t make any sense.”
“We were just saying the same thing.”
“Callie and me been up since late March,” he said. For my benefit he added, “Do that every year, soon as the road’s open. Check everything out, then keep an eye on things until Judson’s opens first of May. Afterward, too. Didn’t notice any missing padlocks last time I was over here.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“Few days ago.”
“That makes it even odder,” Marian said. “Why would someone take such a risk with the lake starting to crowd up for the summer, and then not even steal anything?”
“Beats me. You check the Zaleskis’ property? Boathouse and storeroom padlocks over there?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“How about you and me go do that right now, private eye?”
I agreed it was a good idea, and Ostergaard led the way to a barely discernible path that wound up over the hump of wooded ground separating the two properties. He set a fast pace, climbing over rocks and plowing through scrub brush and around tree trunks; I had to work to keep up with him and I was a little winded by the time we reached the Zaleski boathouse. Which proved to both of us that he was in better condition than a city dweller fifteen years his junior, not that I would have disputed it anyway.
A padlock was in place on the boathouse door, an old and sturdy Schlage that yielded to the key on the ring Pat Dixon had given me. Ostergaard took a look inside, shook his head to tell me that nothing had been disturbed, then took me around to the far side of the cabin to where a storage shed had been grafted onto the wall. Same thing there. Padlock in place, no apparent breach of the shed.
“Well, hell,” Ostergaard said as we started back. “Kids, some sort of screwy prank — that’s all I can figure.”
“Local kids, you mean?”
“Probably. Lake’s too far off the beaten track for outsiders to come prowling around at night.”
“Could’ve been done during the day, couldn’t it?”
“Suppose so. But I’m out and around a lot and my eyesight’s as good as it ever was.”
Your nose, too, I’ll bet. But I kept the thought to myself.
“I catch anybody messing around again,” he muttered darkly, “they’ll wish they’d gone someplace else. You keep that private eye of yours open, too. Let me know if you see anything that don’t look kosher.”
“I’m not a Pinkerton,” I said. “They’re the ones who never sleep.”
That got a chuckle out of him. He asked, “What’s your first name again?” and when I told him he said “Nils” and shook my hand for the first time. “You were a cop once, too, am I right?”
“You’re right. SFPD for a dozen years before I opened my own agency.”
“Thought so. Get so you can tell one of your own.”
“Biggest fraternity in the country.”
“And one of the most maligned. I been retired ten years now and I’m still on the job, at least as far as my head’s concerned. Once a cop, always a cop.”
“It’s in the blood,” I agreed. “Even when the blood isn’t as thick as it used to be.”
“Mine’s still thick enough,” he said. “So’s yours, seems like. Be thicker still if you got more exercise, shed that half-inflated spare tire you’re lugging around inside your belt.”
I didn’t argue with him. He was right, and there was no malice in the advice. We knew each other now; we were comfortable with each other and would be whenever we met again. That was one of the plusses in a couple of old birds of a feather coming together: The common ground was enough for both to share and it no longer mattered which one had the biggest pecker.
The one major difference between the Zaleski cabin and the Dixon cabin was a massive elk’s head and horns that took up much of the wall above the native stone fireplace. I wondered if Tom Zaleski was a hunter and it was a personal trophy. Considering the fact that he was a Sacramento lawyer, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he’d stumbled across the animal dead in his backyard and decided to take advantage of the situation. The stuffed head wore a baleful expression and the glass eyes seemed outraged, as if the elk had been mad as hell at dying before his time. I reached up and patted his flared snout and said to him, not at all facetiously, “I’d feel the same way, brother, if some son of a bitch shot me full of holes and then cut off my head and stuck it up on a wall.”
The place smelled even mustier than the Dixons’. I opened windows and shutters and doors, fired up the generator and switched on an old-fashioned ceiling fan in the front room. Then I tested the plumbing — no problem there — and hooked up the propane tank. The beer I’d bought for myself in Quincy had warmed up, but I popped the top on one anyway and slugged at it as I put the groceries away, unpacked my suitcase in the knotty pine bedroom.