The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale - Marc Brandel [20]
Fluke slowed as he reached the metal case. He hesitated. Then he gently rubbed his lips against it.
“Good,” Constance said, lifting the case out of the water. “Good Fluke. Good baby. Good little boy.”
She was smiling with pleasure as she threw up a fish for him and he caught it in midair.
“That’s what I wanted to see,” she told the boys. “It looks as though it’s going to be okay. If he strays away from us out at sea, we can call him back by playing his own voice to him underwater.”
“I could re-record it if you like,” Jupe suggested. “Play it over and over so we’d have a whole half hour of his voice on one tape.”
Constance thought that was a good idea. She gave the metal case back to Jupe.
“I want to go to the hospital and visit Dad,” she said. “I’ll drop you three off at the yard on the way.”
She had left the pickup truck on the street outside the ranch house. Pete climbed into the back again, and the other two boys sat in front with Constance.
The road was level until the first corner, then it started to wind steeply down the hill. Constance was going awfully fast, Jupe thought. He wondered why she didn’t brake on the curves. She was usually a skillful, careful driver. But the way she was going now, hurtling around the bends, she seemed to be trying to beat the speed record.
Then Jupe saw that Constance was using the brake. She had it pushed all the way down to the floor.
There was a sharp, almost right-angle turn ahead.
The truck was rushing toward it like a bolting horse. Instead of slowing, the truck was going faster and faster.
Constance reached for the hand brake and eased it back. The truck was still racing along. She wrenched the emergency brake full on. The speedometer was still climbing. Forty. Forty-five. Fifty miles an hour.
“Is there something –” Bob asked in a choking voice. “Something wrong with the brakes?”
Constance nodded, gripping the stick shift. “They don’t work,” she announced briskly. “Sorry.”
She changed rapidly down to low gear, trying to slow their speed by using the engine as a brake. Jupe could feel the truck tremble like a boat in a storm, but a glance at the dashboard told him it was still going fifty.
Straight ahead of them, where the road turned sharply to the right, was an old house set back among some trees.
Surrounding the house was a solid stone wall.
Traveling so fast, Jupe thought, there was no way the truck could make the turn.
There was no way it could do anything but crash head-on into that wall!
Chapter 8
The Three Suspects
CONSTANCE WAS WRENCHING the truck into the center of the road. Then far over into the left lane. If a car came around that corner now, both vehicles would end up a tangle of twisted metal.
But there was nothing ahead. Nothing but that stone wall that looked as solid and unyielding as a cliff.
Bob and Jupe were bracing their legs against the dashboard, waiting for the impact, the shock, the sudden rending crash.
Constance tore the wheel hard over to the right. At the same instant she threw the gear shift into reverse.
The wall still seemed to be rushing toward Jupe … except that – and it was all happening so fast that every impression was like the flash of a strobe light – except that it seemed to be slanting to the left now.
Instead of looming straight ahead through the windshield, the wall was turning away. It was out of sight for an instant, blocked by the window post, then was suddenly there again only a few inches from the side window.
The engine was grinding, screaming in protest. Bob and Jupe gripped their seats, hanging on with all their strength to keep from being flung sideways against Constance.
She was still holding the wheel hard over to the right. The tires squealed like police sirens as they skidded across the macadam. The stone wall seemed to reach out, trying to tear off the door, the whole side of the truck.
Constance straightened the wheel.
The