Meow or Never (Vanessa Abbot Cat Protection League Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) by Nancy C. Davis Page A

must have blown
up in the explosion.”

    “So how can you investigate the accident?”
she asked. “You have no clues.”

    He shot her a grin. “There is one thing
I’m sure of, though. Even if we can’t look at it to find out, I would say this
explosion was no accident.”

    “What makes you say that?” she asked.

    He led her to the blackened forge.

    “Look at this.” He rubbed his thumb
over a thin tub of metal. The soot smeared away under his touch, and bright
orange metal gleamed underneath.

    “Copper. The gas lines that feed into
this forge are manufactured to a very narrow specification range. They don’t
leave the factory with weaknesses. That gas line didn’t just fail by itself.
Someone must have tampered with it.”

    “How do you know someone didn’t
accidentally bang it, dent it and weaken it?” she asked. “The gas lines in this
foundry must have been installed a while ago. Anything could have happened.”

    “That just goes to show how it is when
you’re President of the Cat Protection League instead of a detective,” he told
her. “The plant owner put in all new gas lines two years ago. And look at this.”
He gestured toward a wall behind her.

    Huge posters covered the wall. They
listed every detail of the plant’s safety regulations, including where and
under what circumstances scaffolding could be erected around the forge to
conduct repairs.

    “See this?” Pete asked. “This is a
roster of all the fitters and engineers who worked on the forge. It lists the
times and locations of all their repairs. None of them could have accidentally
damaged that gas line.”

    “But you’re saying someone deliberately
sabotaged the gas line to make it leak and blow up,” Vanessa pointed out. “That
would be.....”

    Pete nodded. “That would make this
accident a murder scene.”

    Vanessa caught her breath. “What do we
know about the victim, Ronald Eastman?”

    Pete checked the wall chart. “He was
one of ten pipe fitters on shift at the time. He was working over there, on the
other side of the secondary forge.”

    “But that’s nowhere near this forge,”
Vanessa pointed out. “It must have been an incredible explosion to throw him
off a scaffold all the way over there.”

    “Here’s what I don’t understand,” Pete
replied. “Let’s say someone tampered with the gas line to make it blow up. How
could they know it would blow right at the moment Eastman was on the scaffold?
They couldn’t have timed the explosion that perfectly unless they had some kind
of explosive device planted on the gas line to make it blow right at that
moment. See what I mean?”

    Vanessa nodded. “Maybe they didn’t care
who they killed. Maybe this is a case like Ollie Fleetwood planting that poisoned
wine in Sergio’s restaurant. Maybe the killer only wanted to kill somebody,
anybody, to discredit the plant.”

    “I don’t think so,” he replied. “I
don’t think they would go to all that trouble. Look at this place. This plant
takes safety very seriously. They couldn’t operate if they didn’t. Everyone in
this plant is highly trained and regulations are tight. How could the killer
sneak in here to sabotage that gas line?”

    “We’re assuming the killer was after
Eastman,” Vanessa added. “Maybe he wasn’t the intended victim at all. Maybe the
killer was after someone else in the plant.”

    Pete stroked his chin. “We can ask the
foreman if Eastman was scheduled to be working on that scaffold, or if he was
taking someone else’s place. In the meantime, we can look into Eastman’s
personal life and find out if he had any enemies.”

    “We should also look into the plant
owners and managers,” Vanessa suggested. “Maybe they have an ex-employee who
wanted to damage the plant or hurt someone.”

    “That’s a good idea,” he replied. “But
that could be anyone. You know how it is when someone gets fired or leaves
under a black cloud.”

    “We can still check,” she