Today’s excerpt is from Toboggan,
Book #4 of the Janitors Series. Janet
gets a breakthrough in the case of the plane crash. Enjoy and have a great day.
m.j.
On
a hunch—the type of which she often teased Dan about—Janet suggested, “Carter,
we may be looking for something that caused the engines to just up and
quit.”
Carter
asked, “Why do you suspect that?”
“Because
another plane just went down, and it may be connected to this crash. In that case, we know the cause was
complete engine failure. The pilots on
the most recent crash reported dual engine flame-outs, and they tried
everything they could think of to re-start them…without success.”
“You
talking about that crash in the Rocky Mountains
yesterday?”
“I
am.”
“That
was a big bird, not a small private plane like this one.”
“Yes,
I know. But could the same problem,
whatever it is, have caused both to have engine failure? I’m thinking possible sabotage.”
“Sabotage! Shit, lady…er, Jan. That changes things. Let me check a few things out here.”
“Please
do.”
All
through this exchange, the two Gold Rush pilots stood by without saying
anything, but they did exchange glances at the way Janet handled the situation,
and both approved. Now as Carter poured
through the wreckage again, all three watched in silence. As almost an afterthought, he reached up
under the well-smashed instrument panel, tugged on a wire, which came loose
easily, and looked at it in disbelief.
“I’ll be damned.”
Janet
asked, “Find something?”
“I’ll
say. Let me get some tools out of the
trunk and I’ll be able to tell you more shortly.”
After
the car had been rented, Carter had driven to his mechanic’s shed in the small
plane section of the airport and put a tool pouch in the trunk. Now he got out a few tools and went back to
the instrument panel. The going was
difficult due to the mangled state of the plane, but in time Carter found what
he was looking for. He held up a
switching device and the piece of wire he had discovered earlier. “Here’s your problem, and you were
right. If you have this analyzed, I’ll
bet the thousand bucks we agreed to against a donut that acid of some sort will
be found. This was no accident. Somebody shot acid into this cable and, in
time, it ate through the wire and caused a short. No way the engines would stay alive with this
gone. From what I know, on a big bird
there are two of these, so if the same guy did the job, he’d have to get the
acid to both of them. How’n hell he got
access to it is another question. A
small plane like this one wouldn’t be too hard, but a big bird…shit, he’d
almost have to be working for the company.”
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