“I can see why that’s important,” said Pete, “but couldn’t you go to the bank and explain that you lost the key? They’d give you a duplicate, wouldn’t they?”
“My father lost the key to his safe deposit box,” said Bob. “He didn’t have any trouble about it. Oh, he did have to see an officer at the bank, and I think they had to change the lock on his box. There was a fee for that, but not very much.”
“I am embarrassed,” said Anna. “At the bank in Bishop they have much respect for me. They know I am careful, and when I needed money to buy the ski lift, they lent it to me. I do not wish to go to the bank and say I have been so foolish that I lost such an important thing.”
“Very well,” said Jupiter. “The Three Investigators should be able to save you that embarrassment. It can’t be an impossible task. The inn isn’t large. Where did you usually keep the key, by the way?”
“In the drawer of my desk. But now… ” Anna spread her hands in a gesture of despair. “I remember thinking that my inn would be empty, and I would hide the key in case someone breaks in. But I cannot remember where.”
“So we search,” said Pete. He pushed back his chair and got up from the table.
“Shall we start with the office?” asked Jupiter.
“We have already looked in the office,” Anna told him. “It is not there.”
“We can look again.” Jupe’s round face assumed a hopeful expression. “We might think of something you missed.”
“If you like.” Anna began to clear the table.
The Three Investigators went immediately to the office, which was still a jumble of papers, folders, and ledgers.
“I think we’re wasting our time here, Jupe,” said Pete. “Cousin Anna and her husband have really turned this place upside down. They’d have found a pin if it had been lost here.”
“I agree.” Jupe sat down at the desk. From the kitchen came the clatter of dishes and the rushing sound of water filling the sink. “But we may discover what Anna’s husband was doing in here last night when everyone else was in bed. Hans and Konrad have asked us to find out all we can about Havemeyer. So first we’ll find out what interests him so much in this office.”
Jupe began leafing through a stack of papers on the desk. “Hmmm. A letter from Hans, and another from Konrad. This one’s over two years old. Anna must have saved all the letters her cousins sent her.”
“No reason for Havemeyer to sit up all night reading them, is there?” Bob took a ledger from the stack on the bookcase and began to page through it. “Hans and Konrad are here now, in the flesh, and if he wants to know anything about them he can just ask.”
“No reason at all.” Jupe leaned on his elbows and began to pull at his lower lip, a sure sign that he was concentrating intensely.
“Say, here’s something,” said Bob. He thrust a ledger across the desk to Jupiter. “Cousin Anna’s record of her savings.”
“That’s a pretty hefty bankbook,” observed Pete.
“It’s not a bankbook at all. It’s only a record book. There’s a column for money put in, and one for money taken out, and the last column on each page is for money that’s available.”
Jupiter nipped the pages until he was halfway through the ledger. Then he stopped. “The latest entry is for the week before last.” he told Bob and Pete. “The week before last, Anna put 176 dollars wherever she puts her money. She took nothing out, and the last column indicates that she has 10,823 dollars available.”
“Wow!” cried Pete. “If that’s in cash, Cousin Anna is way ahead of about ninety percent of the American public. I learned that in social studies this year. Most people never have cash, and they’re so far in debt that a flat tire can be a real emergency.”
“So Cousin Anna is very well off,” said Jupe. “But, we’d better find her key as quickly as possible, and then get to a telephone in the village and call your father. I’d be very interested to know if the credit bureau in Reno has a file on Havemeyer.”
“You think he could be planning to get his mitts on Cousin Anna’s loot?” asked Pete.
“It’s possible. Certainly Hans and Konrad suspect this, and it’s easy to see that Hans and Konrad make him uncomfortable. He was not pleased when they decided to spend their vacation here helping with the pool. And that doesn’t make sense. The pool itself doesn’t make sense. Sweeping the yard doesn’t make sense. A tranquilizer gun doesn’t make sense.”
Jupe held up a warning hand at the sound of footsteps in the living room. A few seconds later, Anna appeared at the door of the office. “Well?” she said.
“You were right,” Jupiter told her. “The key isn’t here.”
“We’ll search the rest of the inn,” Bob assured her. “Will Mr. Jensen and Mr. Smathers mind if we look in their rooms? Would you hide the key in a guest room?”
“Perhaps,” said Anna. “I had no guests when I left for my wedding. But do not touch the luggage. It is not necessary, and they would be very angry if you touched their things.”
“Of course not.” Jupe stood up. “Would you like us to straighten this room for you?”
“It is better if I do it,” said Anna. “You will not know where things belong.”
“Very well.” Jupe came out from behind the desk. He was almost at the door when he stopped, struck by a sudden thought. “Have you used your checkbook lately?” he asked Anna. “I didn’t see a checkbook here.”
“I do not have a checkbook,” Anna told him. “I always pay for things with cash.”
“Everything?” Jupe was astonished. “Isn’t it dangerous to keep a lot of cash here?”
“I do not keep much cash here,” said Anna.
“I keep my money in the bank, in the safe deposit box. You see, that is why the key is so important. Soon I must pay my bills. I will need money. Also, my husband has ordered cement for the swimming pool. I wish to pay for that when it is delivered.”
“In cash?” asked Jupe.
“It is safer,” declared Cousin Anna. “If I have a checkbook, someone can steal my checks and sign my name. Someone can take all I have before I even know. If I have real money, I do not keep more than I need and no one steals it. I put it under my pillow at night. In the daytime, I have it with me.”
“I don’t think the police would approve of your system, Mrs. Havemeyer,” said Jupiter. “If you pay cash for everything, people must know that you have large sums here from time to time. Suppose someone held you up?”
Cousin Anna smiled. “I think my husband would shoot someone who did that,” she said.
“You know” said Pete, “I think he would!”
6
Monster Mountain
The Three Investigators devoted the rest of the morning to a painstaking search of the inn. They turned back rugs and peeked under bureaus and felt along the tops of window frames and doorways. Pete got up on a chair and took all the dishes down from the top shelves in the kitchen. Bob shook each jar, upended every cup, and probed the flour cannister and the sugar bowl with a long spoon. Jupe scanned every rafter on the second floor of the inn, and then went down into the basement to poke in cracks and corners in the cement walls. Anna’s shoes were taken out of the closet and examined. Her coat pockets were searched and her handbags were turned out.
“Are you sure it’s here?” asked Jupe, when he and Bob and Pete assembled for lunch. “Are you sure you didn’t drop it someplace — perhaps at the bank the last time you used it?”
Anna was sure.
Pete slumped at the table. “Beats me,” he said. “We’ve gone over every inch of this place. How could you hide anything that well and not remember where you hid it? That takes genius!”
Anna sighed and put a platter of grilled cheese sandwiches on the table. “Perhaps you should rest and look again tomorrow,” she suggested. “I will try to remember. But I try and try, and I cannot remember.”
“Don’t try,” advised Jupiter. “Don’t even think about it and it may come to you.”
Anna did not join the boys for lunch. Instead. she went into her office and closed the door.
“Why is she that upset?” said Bob. “She can get another key, or another lock, or whatever she needs to get into her safe deposit box.”
Jupe could only shrug, and the boys ate in silence. They hastily washed their dishes, then went out into the back yard. Jupe paused and stared at the clean-swept earth, which now showed the footprints of everyone who had gone back and forth from the pool site.
“Ho, Jupe!”
Hans was calling from the edge of Joe Havemeyer’s excavation. The boys heard a vigorous pounding. Someone was hammering at the bottom of the future swimming pool.
Jupe, Pete, and Bob hurried over and looked down. Konrad was in the hole, pounding nails into planks to make the forms that would hold the poured concrete.
“Did you find out anything?” asked Hans. Konrad stopped hammering and waited.
“We’ve been looking for Cousin Anna’s key,” said Jupe. “I’m afraid we didn’t find it. Now we can concentrate on Havemeyer. I’m sure we’ll be able to get some information about him for you. Bob has to make a telephone call. Where is Havemeyer, by the way?”
Hans pointed toward the top of the ski slope. “He has taken his gun and some things in a knapsack and has gone up there. He said he had work to do in the high meadow and he will come back later.”
The Three Investigators left the brothers and walked down the drive. They turned right on the village street, and soon came to the little gas station where Hans and Konrad had asked for directions the day before. The inquisitive attendant was nowhere to be seen, and the place appeared to be closed. There was a telephone booth on one corner of the property. Bob stepped inside, closed the door, and placed a call to his father at the newspaper office.
“Well?” said Pete, when Bob emerged from the phone booth.
“We’re in luck.” Bob reported. “I got the standard lecture about calling him when he’s at work. but he does know a newspaperman who lives in Reno, and he’ll get in touch with him and see what he can find out about Havemeyer. He said I should call him tomorrow night after he’s home.”
“Good enough.” said Jupiter.
The boys strolled back up the village street past the Slalom Inn, then went on down the road toward the Sky Village Campground.
“This vacation isn’t exactly what I expected,” said Pete. “We were going to camp out and hike and fish. Instead we wind up sleeping on the floor in the inn and eating Cousin Anna’s home cooking. If it were a little foggy, I’d think we were back in Rocky Beach.”
“We can camp out, I suppose,” said Bob. “We could move our tent down here this afternoon. Hans and Konrad probably wouldn’t come. They’re too nervous about Cousin Anna’s husband. But we can do it.”
Jupe grinned. “Aren’t you afraid of the bears?” he asked.
“That bear didn’t bother us last night,” Bob pointed out. “He was only after food.”
“But something bothered Mr. Jensen,” Jupe reminded him. “What could it have been? And why did Havemeyer sweep away the tracks this morning?”
The three boys went around a bend in the road and the campground lay before them. It consisted of five stone firepits in the ground, and an equal number of redwood picnic tables. To the right was the bed of a small stream. It was almost dry. Only a trickle of water ran down through the rocks. Beyond the campground a path twisted away through the brush.
Pete looked at the creek and ran his hand through his hair. “I can see what Joe Havemeyer meant about water being a problem here,” he said. “If we move our gear down, we’ll have to bring water from the inn.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much point to that,” said Jupiter. “Besides, I’d like to stay close to the inn, at least until we get more information about Havemeyer. There are too many odd things about him. And the attack on Mr. Jensen… ”
“That couldn’t have been Havemeyer,” said Bob. “We could see Havemeyer inside the inn at the time Jensen was hit.”
“No. It couldn’t have been Havemeyer. But something fishy is going on at the inn. I’d like to know what it is.”
There was a rustling in the bushes behind Jupe. All three boys jumped.
“Scare you?” asked an amused voice. “Sorry about that”
Jupe spun around. The man who ran the gas station in Sky Village emerged from a clump of wild lilac. He was busily stuffing a wad of muddy, crumpled paper into a burlap sack.
“You boys a little bear-shy?” he asked. His keen eyes twinkled. “Hear you had a scare at the inn last night.”
“How… how did you know?” asked Jupe.
“Mr. Jensen stopped by this morning to buy some gas,” explained the man. “I noticed he had a stiff neck, so I asked what was the matter. I kind of like to find out about people. He was madder ’n a hornet. Claimed somebody gave him a rabbit punch while he was trying to take a picture of a bear.”
“So far as we know, that’s what happened,” said Bob. “Mr. Havemeyer thinks it was a second bear.”
“Interesting way for a bear to behave,” said the man. “Still, you can’t tell, and we’ve had a lot of bears in the village this year. Always do in the dry years. They raid everybody’s trash cans. I always let them alone. That way I don’t have any grief.”
The man surveyed the campground. “That’s better,” he announced. “A couple came in here from the city last week and made an awful mess. Paper towels all over creation and orange peels in the creek. Makes you lose your faith in people.”
“Are you responsible for the campground?” asked Bob.
“Not really,” said the man, “but it’s about the only thing around here that brings in business in the summer, and I like to sell gas. Campers tell one another about the conditions in the different campgrounds. If this place got a bad name, I could close up my station and starve from May until the snow flies.”
“I see,” said Bob.
“My name’s Richardson, by the way,” said the man. “Charlie Richardson, only they call me Gabby.” He chuckled. “I wonder why they do that.”
Pete laughed. “I wonder, too,” he said. He held out his hand. “I’m Pete Crenshaw and this is Jupiter Jones. My pal with the glasses is Bob Andrews.”
Gabby Richardson said he was pleased to meet the boys, and shook hands all around.
“You thinking of moving your camp down here?” he asked. “I saw when I passed Anna’s place that you had your tent out under the trees.”
“Actually, we slept inside last night,” said Jupe. “After the bears raided the trash, Mr. Havemeyer thought it would be better.”
Gabby Richardson laughed. “Easy knowing Anna Schmid’s new husband hasn’t been on Monster Mountain very long if he’s spooked by a bear or two.”
“Monster Mountain?” echoed Pete.
“Yep. Oh, I guess for the benefit of you tourists I ought to call it Mount Lofty, like it says on the maps. But when I was a kid, there were just five families living here, and we called it Monster Mountain.” He pointed toward a watchtower which was barely visible on the high slopes toward the north. “See that fire tower? It’s abandoned now, but when it was used it was officially the Monster Mountain tower.”
Pete sat down at one of the picnic tables. “Any reason why they called it that?” he asked.
Gabby Richardson sat next to Pete and leaned back against the table. “When I was young,” he said, “the grown folks used to tell us there were monsters on the mountain — giants and ogres who lived in caves and ate kids who stayed out past dark.”
Bob laughed. “That sounds like a story some mother made up to keep her kids in line.”
“Probably,” agreed Richardson, “but we believed every word of it, and what the grown-ups didn’t tell us, we made up ourselves. We scared each other half to death telling how terrible creatures came out on nights when there was a full moon and prowled around houses, looking for ways to get in. An old trapper lived here once, and he swore he’d found the footprints of some huge man in the snow high up near the glacier. Said it was a barefoot man. That was pretty silly. A man would freeze his toes off running barefoot up there.”