Boobytrap

8

The whole thing felt wrong to me.

It felt manipulated, arranged. It felt like homicide.

In my mind’s ear I kept hearing Nils Ostergaard’s words to me on the lake yesterday: I think maybe one of the other first-timers ain’t what he seems to be. Connection? If it was a homicide, that was the most likely angle. Who else would have a reason to kill a proddy but harmless old man like Ostergaard and then try to make it look like an accident?

But what motive would a man who wasn’t what he seemed to be have? Something that involved those missing padlocks on the Dixon property, maybe? Or was that stretching things too far?

And what was this guy and why was he at Deep Mountain Lake if he wasn’t a fisherman?

None of it added up to anything but wild speculation. Which was the main reason I hadn’t voiced any of my reservations or suspicions to the sheriff’s deputies. There were ordinary explanations for Ostergaard leaving his pickup where he had, for him not taking his flashlight and skulking around in the dark. The wound on his temple had looked to be deep and long, more in keeping with a bludgeoning than a fall; but with all the dried blood I couldn’t be sure of the dimensions, and, besides, I was no forensics expert and an old man’s flesh is thin, his bones brittle. A fall could have done the damage.

I told myself, as I walked away from the Stapleton property, that I ought to just forget it, let the county authorities handle it as they saw fit. None of my business, was it? Except that it was, in a way. Ostergaard had been planning to confide in me — involve me in whatever he’d nosed up. By the same token, his death had passed the gauntlet on to me. There were other arguments, too: It had been pretty obvious from the way the deputies talked and acted that there wouldn’t be much of an investigation, if any at all; accidental death would almost certainly be the official verdict. And I could not shake the feeling of wrongness, or the sense of obligation it carried. If Ostergaard had been murdered, I owed it to him and his widow to try to prove it. Once a cop, always a cop, he’d said to me. Right, and good cops look out for their own and do what they can to uphold the principles of duty and justice. Those principles don’t seem to mean as much nowadays as they once did, but they mattered to me and they’d mattered to the man I believed Ostergaard had been.

Talking myself into it was what I was doing. Not that I needed much convincing.

Too much death on my mind today. That worried me a little, that I might be developing a preoccupation with it. But you can’t be confronted by death and not have it affect you in some way. An emotional empath like me couldn’t, anyway. Besides, there are different kinds of death and dying, the explicable and the inexplicable. I’d come up against both this morning, one right after the other, and it was the second kind, not the first, that kept troubling me. If I had a preoccupation, it was the same one I’d always had, the one that had motivated me for fifty-some years: an obsessive involvement with life and the need to solve at least a few of its mysteries.

The last cottage on the western shore was a green clapboard affair with a steep alpine roof: a burnt wood sign at the foot of the drive said The Ostergaards in Spencerian script. A dark blue van was parked near the front door, which I took to mean that Callie Ostergaard was still here. I’d half expected to find the place locked up. the widow gone away to Quincy to be with family or friends.

An older woman with hennaed hair and a take-charge manner came out to meet me as I climbed from the car. Not Callie Ostergaard; one of the summer residents, who announced that she was staying with Mrs. Ostergaard until her daughter arrived from someplace called Graeagle. I identified myself and asked how the widow was bearing up.

“As well as can be expected,” the woman said. “She’s a very strong person, thank God.”

“I’m sure she is. I’d like to speak to her. if I could.”

“Well. I don’t know…”

“Would you ask her if she’d mind seeing me? Just briefly? I have a few questions that might be important.”

“Questions? About what happened to Nils?”

“Please ask her.”

“…All right. You wait here.”

I waited about a minute. Then the door opened again and the woman motioned me inside, led me along a central hallway that emptied into a large lakefront room. Dark and cool in there: the drapes had been drawn. The woman sitting in one of two matching armchairs was in her seventies, trim. tiny, with short shag-cut white hair and a nut-brown face that seemed smooth, almost wrinkle-free in the half light.

“I’m sorry to intrude. Mrs. Ostergaard—”

“Not at all. It was good of you to come by.” Strong voice, with just an undercurrent of the grief she must be feeling. If she’d done any crying, it was long finished: she had her public face on, the one that a woman in a time of crisis applies with lipstick and rouge and an effort of will. “June said you have questions?”

I glanced at the henna-haired woman. She understood what the glance meant; her eyes shifted to Callie Ostergaard, who smiled wanly and said, “It’s all right, dear.” No argument from June; she nodded and left us alone.

Mrs. Ostergaard invited me to sit down. When I’d done that, she said, “Nils spoke well of you. He doesn’t… didn’t always care for strangers.”

“I liked him, too. I’m really very sorry.”

“Thank you. It’s so hard to believe he’s gone, that I’ll never hear his voice again. It hasn’t really sunk in yet. I expect him to walk in the door any second…” Her head moved: a sad and bewildered little negative. “We were married fifty-seven years, you know. My father, the old coot, said it wouldn’t last six months.”

“Mrs. Ostergaard—”

“Callie. Everyone calls me Callie.”

“Callie, did Nils tell you where he was going last night? What his plans were?”

“No. No, he didn’t. He often went off by himself at night. On patrol, he called it. It gave him something to do that made him feel useful.”

“Did he mention the Stapleton property?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Does it seem odd to you that he’d park his truck off the road and go patrolling on foot, without a flashlight?”

“Odd? Well, he might have seen or heard something that made him suspicious. All sorts of things made Nils suspicious, not always with good cause.”

“Such as one of this year’s first-time visitors?”

“…I don’t know what you mean.”

I related my conversation with Nils on the lake. “Did he say anything to you along those lines?”

Small headshake. “He could be secretive, Nils could. Fifty-seven years, and still he kept his little secrets.”

“Do you have any idea what he meant by a fisherman not being what he seemed to be?”

“A criminal of some kind, I suppose. Hiding out.”

“Why would a criminal come to Deep Mountain Lake to hide out?”

“I can’t imagine that one would. But Nils… well, all his years in law enforcement were uneventful. He never once used his gun, you know. He wouldn’t admit it, but I think he always dreamed of capturing a wanted man, a dangerous fugitive. Being a hero.” She blinked rapidly several times as she spoke the last. If it was a struggle against a new rush of tears, she won it with an effort. “Foolish. He was always a hero to me.”

Those words weren’t really for my ears; they were a verbalization of what she was feeling inside. I let a few seconds pass before I said, “There are four first-timers here now, Callie, including me. Did Nils say anything to you about the others, in any context?”

“I’m sorry, my mind isn’t clear. What are their names?”

“Jacob Strayhorn is one.”

“Strayhorn. Yes, I met him. Strange man. Like the little boy who pulled wings off flies, grown up. Nils said he wouldn’t trust that man as far as he could throw him.”

“Was there any specific reason he said that?”

“Strayhorn’s eyes. Something about his eyes.”

I said, “Hal Cantrell? He’s another.”

Her lips moved, repeating the name silently to herself. “I don’t know him,” she said at length. “At least, I don’t remember the name.”

“Real estate broker from Pacifica. Talkative and sly, but friendly enough.”

“I don’t believe I’ve met him. Or that Nils mentioned his name. But my memory…”

“I understand. Dyce, Fred Dyce?”

“Oh, yes, the surly one. Nils had words with him when he first arrived.”

“An argument, you mean?”

“About fishing.”

“In general, or—?”

“He said Dyce was a blowhard who pretended to be an expert but had gotten all his knowledge from books. Nils hated that type of person.”

“A man who isn’t what he claims to be.”

“Well, yes, that’s right.”

“Did Nils accuse him of it to his face?”

“Oh yes. He never minced words.”

“What was Dyce’s reaction?”

“The usual with that sort. Bluster and obscenities.”

“Were there any other run-ins between them?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did Nils mention Dyce’s name yesterday or last night?”

“No.” She watched me steadily for a time. “You think that what happened wasn’t an accident.”

It was a statement, not a question, and it caught me unprepared. I was trying to frame a response when she said, “Don’t keep anything from me, please.”

“I won’t, Callie. The truth is, I don’t know. It could’ve been just that, a tragic accident.”

“Mack Judson said there was no doubt of it. The deputies who came by seemed to feel the same. Why don’t you agree?”

“No specific reason,” I said uncomfortably. “A feeling, that’s all. A kind of hunch.”

“Suspicious. You’re another like Nils.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you—”

“Upset me? My Lord, if his death wasn’t an accident, if that man Dyce or one of the others… I want to know it. I have to know. Someone has to find out.”

I nodded. “Someone will.”

“You. That is why you came here, isn’t it? Why you’ve been asking so many questions?”

“Not exactly. I’m not in a position to conduct an official investigation.”

“Not even if you were hired to?”

“By you, Callie? No. I don’t do business that way.”

“An unofficial investigation, then. For my sake and for Nils’s. You didn’t know him well, but he was a good man. A good man—”

She broke off at the sound of a car arriving in a hurried squeal of brakes. “That will be Ellen,” she said after a moment. “Our daughter. Don’t mind her if she carries on. She’s very high-strung.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I sat like a lump as a woman’s voice rose querulously out front.

Callie leaned toward me, her eyes fire-bright, and tapped my knee with a bony forefinger. “Find out,” she said in a fierce whisper. “Please. Find out!”