"Lee Edgar - The Andromeda Trial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edgar Lee)

door. As she skipped down the corridor in her short summer dress, a door marked “ Dr J
Carrero” opened and out came a woman in her early thirties with dusky skin and curly
black hair. ‘You have-a finished for the day?’
Cassi slipped her arm round the older woman’s shoulders. ‘It’s our wedding
anniversary. Mike says he’ll leave me for another woman if I don’t get home on time
tonight.’
Juanita laughed. ‘He’ll not do that. He is-a loving you too much.’
‘How has Andi been today?’
The white-coated biophysicist smirked. ‘We are-a changing the nappies four times
today.’ She grinned. ‘But it has been good practice for the students.’
‘I’ll take her out of your way then.’ Cassi stooped down to pick up her eight-month-
old baby. ‘So you’ve been a naughty girl for Auntie Juanita, have you?’
The child’s face broke into a grin at the sight of her mother, and baby-speak
commenced in an unbroken chain as Cassi kissed her cheek and forehead.
‘Mike sent you a message on the fax,’ said Juanita. ‘He says can you pick up Maggie
on the way home?’
‘Is he going to be late?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She looked at the paper. ‘He is mentioning something about a
helicopter.’
‘Helicopter?’ Cassi frowned. ‘What does he need a helicopter for, tonight of all
nights?’
Juanita shrugged her ignorance.
‘Set a date with Bob yet?’ asked Cassi as she pulled on Andi’s jacket.
‘Four weeks. Would Maggie like to be bridesmaid?’
Cassi thought of her twelve-year-old step-daughter, the only child of Mike’s first
marriage which had ended so tragically. ‘I’m sure she would. Do you want me to ask
her?’
‘Would you mind?’
‘Not at all.‘ She looked at her watch. ‘Better fly. I want to miss the rush hour. The
Rotterdam by-pass is not a good place to be at five o’clock.’
‘Don’t forget Maggie,’ Juanita called after her in the corridor. Cassi waved her
acknowledgement and so did Andi.

THE fourtrack pulled into the gathering traffic smoothly and roared down the A15
motorway and into the Oude Maas Tunnel. Two-point-nine litres of turbo-diesel engine
kept Cassi in the fast lane as she headed alongside the disused oil terminals which
once were the life-line for Europoort harbour and the Maas estuary. Now, the area was
one big space port, just two kilometres from the conveniently-situated Hoek van
Holland. In ten minutes, she was pulling off the motorway into Dordrecht where she
collected Maggie from outside the school.
She pulled back out into the stream of traffic. ‘Rehearsals go all right?’
‘Terrific,’ said the grinning twelve-year-old as they turned under the railway bridge
and drove along the long narrow road toward Mookhoek. ‘We’ve got a dress rehearsal next
Tuesday.’
‘Looking forward to the show?’
‘I’ve got butterflies about it. Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t volunteered.’
Cassi laughed pleasantly. ‘It’ll be all right on the night.’
After Mookhoek, they turned left beside the stream and then over the bridge just
short of Strijensas. The farm at the end of the somewhat secluded drive, no longer used
for its original purpose, seemed to greet them as they pulled into the yard and parked