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

"OK. I'll go back to Jerry. Did you check to see if he really got a note to go out to the site?"

Kay nodded. "I ran down Clyde, and he insists he never wrote the note, didn't know anything about it, would never have wanted to go out to the site, and certainly wouldn't have done any damage to the equipment, since the work there is fine with him. In other words, he denies everything."

"So there," Sid crowed. "Jerry's lying. There never was any note, he faked the sore ankle to get Lily out to the site, and then he called the police once she got there."

"You're assuming a lot, Sid. If Clyde didn't write a note, and I'm not certain he didn't, it doesn't mean that someone else didn't. That would have fit in with someone calling in and saying it was a man they saw at the site."

"Oh. You figure the guy who called in was the one who wrote the note, and he expected Jerry to be there. That's why he reported that it looked like a man."

"Right. And you're still just guessing that Jerry faked a sore ankle. On that score, and just in case you're right, I've persuaded Lily to nag him into going to a doctor. Maybe we'll get a definite answer about that, one way or the other. If he still refuses to go, I'll see if I can get a court order."

"Phew. You're getting serious. What's next, in the meantime?"

"There were three houses along that re-alignment that were torn down to allow the bypass..."

"Hey! That could be it. A disgruntled landowner evicted from his property and taking revenge on the State."

"Exactly. The same person, an Elaine Okabayashi, owned all three houses. She's next on my list."

Mrs. Okabayashi seemed to be an even less likely prospect than Lily for the role of saboteur. Not only was she nearly as small as Lily, and about fifty years her senior, it also turned out that Mrs. Okabayashi was enormously pleased at the State's purchase of her houses.

"I couldn't believe what they offered to pay for them. Forty years ago, when Hideyo-that was my husband-bought those houses, they were offered to him for five thousand dollars. He was really smart about real estate and got them for fifteen hundred apiece. I thought he was paying too much at the time, but he rented two of them out without much trouble, and we lived in the third one.

"And, as long as he was alive, he did all the repair work. Yeah? But after he passed away, they really became a burden. Workers' wages are so high these days. I was actually thinking about selling them when the State made that offer. I couldn't believe it. I know property is worth so much more than when we bought, but it was ever so much more. More than enough to pay for this lovely apartment for the rest of my life. Yeah?"

Kay decided she had pretty much drained the well dry and rose to leave, thanking Mrs. Okabayashi for the tea and cookies. Her hostess was obviously reluctant to have her leave, following her out to the door and chatting as they went, with Kay only half listening.

"Who would have thought when the Queen Emma Mall was being proposed that it would make such a big change in my life? And, do you know, the developer was one of my renters twenty years ago. Yeah?"

Kay decided on the spot to stay a little longer.

"That's a twist," Sid commented an hour later when Kay gave him the details of her visit.

"She says that Milton Fordyce is a local boy. Used to be a building contractor right here in town. That was when he and his wife moved into one of her rental houses. They were there for almost two years. She says his wife took off with another man and moved to the Mainland. Actually, she considered Milton's wife to be a quiet, shy, mousy sort of thing - someone you would never expect to do such a thing."

"Still water runs deep, you know."

"Oh, c'mon Sid, you can do better than that."

"When the cat's away, the mouse will play," Sid replied, grinning wildly.

In spite of herself, Kay had to smile, but then turned serious. "Mrs. Okabayashi says that Milton moved to Oahu shortly after his wife left him. That's where he became a major developer."

Sid's grin continued. "So now he's your prime suspect. He was so in love with the old homestead, and the fond memories of his life there, that he poured sand into the fuel tanks to keep it from being bulldozed."

Kay returned his grin. "I can't quite picture a big-shot developer like Milton Fordyce feeling sentimental about a house he'd rented for a couple of years-twenty years ago. But I did stumble across something else that I should have been aware of. Fordyce was so upset about the PPA's opposition to the original roadway that he sued for an injunction to keep the Department of Transportation from shifting this section of road to the new route."

"Why should he care? I can see why he objected to all the delay, but the new alignment doesn't affect access to the mall. What was his argument?"