"Broussard, John A - Kay Hoshinobu - Highway 7" - читать интересную книгу автора (Broussard John A)

Sid mulled that one over for a moment, then answered, "A red herring."

Kay guffawed.

The bail hearing went well. An added bonus was the presence of Lily's boyfriend, who hobbled in on a pair of crutches. Kay took a moment to question him in the hall outside the courtroom. Jerry claimed to be "Happy to help," but he turned out to be less than helpful.

Yes, he'd received a note from Clyde. It had been slipped under the door of their apartment when they weren't home. Yes, it had asked him to be at the site at nine that evening. Yes, the handwriting had looked like Clyde's. No, he couldn't be positive. No, he hadn't kept the note.

Lily filled in some of the blanks when Jerry thumped his way off to the men's room. "I never saw the note. I was out buying groceries. Jerry just said it sounded real important, but by then his ankle was hurting so bad he knew he wouldn't be able to go. That's when he asked me to go instead."

"Did Jerry go to the doctor about his ankle?"

"Huh-uh. He hates doctors."

"Did you get a look at his ankle?"

Lily seemed puzzled by the question, then shook her head. "Jerry doesn't like to be fussed over when he's not feeling well. He just goes to bed and looks miserable. Why you asking?"

"It could be broken."

"Oh no. He can walk on it. And it's much better today." As she said that, Kay saw Jerry making his way back from the men's room, seemingly in considerable pain.

After parting from the pair, Kay went on to visit the site. She found the foreman, a big barrel-chested Portuguese called Manuel Gomes. He agreed to talk to Kay, but made no secret of his opinion of Lily. As far as he was concerned, she was guilty, and he denounced her bitterly.

"This is the second day we've spent repairing these rigs," he waved a hand at the mass of equipment lining the road. "We just now got some of them going, and we have to be finished by the first. We'll have to work our tails off to get up to schedule. That bitch even managed to get some sand into the hydraulic lines."

"How much sand did you find in the fuel?"

"Hell, I don't know. It only takes a handful to gum up the works, but she put in a lot more than that. I can show you what we've flushed out so far, but it's all mixed with oil and gas. Maybe two or three buckets full."

"How much would that much sand weigh?"

Manuel seemed taken aback by the question, then said, "Fifty-sixty pounds, I suppose. Maybe more. What difference does that make?"

"I was wondering how it was brought here. Could you show me one of the tanks it was poured into? How about that one?" She pointed over to an enormous bulldozer.

Manuel's eyes narrowed. "You figuring she couldn't have done it by herself? Well, I wouldn't be surprised if she did have help. Those damn activists have already raised a lot of hell about this project; all I want is to get my job done and go on to the next one." As he spoke, he walked her over to the bulldozer and pointed out the cap on top of the equipment's huge fuel tank. The top of the tank was shoulder high on Kay's five-foot five. She reached out for the shiny black cap and tried unsuccessfully to twist it off.

Manuel laughed at her efforts, wrapped one of his enormous paws around the cap, tried to turn it, gave a grunt and put his other hand over the first one. Only after considerable effort did he manage to remove it.

Back at the office, Sid insisted that he had been convinced from the outset that Lily hadn't been the vandal.

"Sure," Kay agreed, "but will the judge be convinced?"

"That's damn good evidence. She looks like she'd have a tough time carrying a quart of milk home from the store, never mind hauling around fifty pounds of sand. And if you can get that foreman on the stand to testify about how hard it is to get the caps off the fuel tanks, that should go a long way toward convincing a judge, not to mention a jury.

"Besides, it would have to take someone pretty knowledgeable about that kind of machinery to be able to get sand into the hydraulic system. I wouldn't even know where to start. But I do know some people who'd know. Aren't those workers getting a lot of overtime for this repair work? Maybe one of them decided he needed some extra cash."

Kay grinned. "You're way behind, Sid. I already looked into that. They don't get overtime, just comp time. Which means that instead of a big paycheck, they just get to sit at home some other day. And you should have seen them out there crawling under those machines and getting all covered with oil; I'd bet they'd much rather be sitting on them, carving out the right of way."