The Mystery of the Monster Mountain - M. V. Carey [13]
“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