Boobytrap

From the notebooks of Donald Michael Latimer

Sun., June 30–12 noon

That private cop worries me.

I’m not sure why. He’s porky, he must be close to sixty, he moves as though he’d have trouble getting out of his own way, and he’s got a soft side, yet there’s something about him that makes me nervous. Something in his eyes. You look into them and you can see that he’s intelligent, good at what he does, but it’s more than that, it’s a kind of steel inside all that flab and sentimentality. Like the old cons in prison, the ones who’d seen it all and done it all that you didn’t dare provoke, no matter how frail they seemed. This one, this private cop, would make a deadly enemy.

I keep thinking about yesterday afternoon, when the kid found the boathouse padlock missing and first the cop and then old man Ostergaard started nosing around. They had no idea I was watching through my binoculars, anchored over on the far shore, but I can’t chance a regular surveillance or one of them is sure to become suspicious. The old codger worries me a little, too, but mainly it’s the private cop. He’s the one I’ve really got to watch out for.

Careful. Very careful from now on. I’m just another fisherman. Keep everybody thinking that, keep the stage set just as it is, and when Dixon shows next Tuesday or Wednesday it’ll be party time. A surprise blowout nobody around here will ever forget.