Twenty-Nine

If a recipe held the secret to flavour, a blueprint held the secrets of a building. That’s what Matt was counting on.

His dad had donated a bunch of architectural renderings and maps to the library’s local interest collection about a year ago. Odds were good the plans for the gallery had been in the stack. If Jeffrey was right, and his mom was murdered to cover up a fault in the structure, the answers just might be in the blueprints. But Matt had to get his hands on them to know more.

As the screen door of the library banged shut behind him, he inhaled the musty scent of paper, chalk dust, and coffee. A standing fan whirred, working hard to circulate the hot air. Formerly a one-room schoolhouse, a blackboard still ran the length of the back wall, now used as a calendar for community events. A pot-bellied wood stove took up space in the centre of the room. Mint-green shelves strained under the weight of books, regatta trophies, painted rocks, boardgames, and puzzles.

He approached the circulation desk, the floor beneath his shoes gritty with sand. The small beach, just up the lane from the library, was a favourite gathering spot for families renting cottages on the lake. It wasn’t unusual to see kids in flip-flops and orange life jackets, towels slung over their shoulders, browsing the stacks, but today, his footsteps echoed through the empty building. The Food Truck Festival had lured the patrons away from the books.

“Matt.” Deb looked up from her computer screen. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

She wore a floral blouse but had coiled her grey hair into a sculptural twist that looked set hard as stone. Deborah Hamlin had sat behind that desk and run the library ever since he started coming here, like she held the keys to a kingdom.

“I actually came to look at —” His eyes fell on the book she’d pushed aside. Hamadryads. “— the town archives.” Under the plastic dust jacket protector, the hardback reprint was the same reddish-brown pigment as an old photograph. The woman on the cover a second away from taking a swan dive to God knows what fate.

Deb followed his gaze. “It’s catalogued, labeled, and ready to go. Got any more secrets you’d like to share with us?”

More than she knew. But he said, “It was Dad’s secret, not mine.”

“And threw us all for a loop.” The swivel chair bobbed as she leaned back. She tapped her pencil idly against the surface of the desk. “It’s late in the day to start hunting through the archives. We close in twenty minutes. On the dot.”

“I just want to look at the oversized materials.”

She set the pencil down. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, do you? Opening up the archives is like going down a rabbit hole. Nothing is ever quick. Come back early tomorrow morning.”

Not a chance. It had to be now.

“If you bring me one of your mochaccinos,” she offered, “I might even help you search.”

And that was something he wanted to avoid. “Bribe a public servant? I’m shocked.”

She chuckled. “Bribery normally works on a grander scale than chocolate.”

“It all depends on the quality. And mine’s the best.” Matt amped up the charm. “But my schedule’s full for the next few days. I’d rather check now, if that’s all right with you.”

“What are you looking for?”

The largemouth bass mounted on the wall caught his eye. With a twinge of guilt, he lied. “Lake charts.”

The land surrounding Blue Heron Lake was typical of the Canadian Shield, with bare rock ridges and shallow till. Even with an average depth of sixteen meters, fishermen had to navigate low wet areas, deep holes, islands, and bays.

“Planning a fishing trip?” she asked.

“Thinking about it.” Close enough to the truth to pass.

With a sigh, she rose to her feet. “Right now, the Dewey Decimal System ends with the books. You’re heading into unmapped territory. You’ll need my help, if you want to find those lake charts.”

He had to deter that. “Have a little faith, Deb. You’ve been on your feet all day. I’ll be fine. Finish what you’re doing.”

She drew herself up to her full five foot three inches in a move that was surprisingly intimidating. “Oakcrest’s first pop-up gallery opened tonight and I intend to be there, at least for the last hour.”

“The pop-up gallery? I was just there.” He grinned. “And witnessed the first sale.”

Joy transformed her features. “Charley sold a painting?”

“Two, actually.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Then her expression turned stern. “I’m locking this door at eight thirty, whether or not you’re still here. If I’m late leaving, even by a minute, it’ll be your head that rolls.”

The woman had absorbed thousands of pages of murder and vengeance. It wasn’t an idle threat. “Got it.”

“Everything, and I mean everything, gets put back exactly where it belongs. I’m not cleaning up after you.”

“It’ll be like I was never here.”

“Famous last words,” Deb muttered and turned back to her computer.

On his way through the shelves, he skimmed the watermarked spines for Marco Pierre White’s White Heat cookbook. It was still there.

The black and white photographs made the chef look like a rock star, the kitchen like a war zone of adrenaline, cigarettes, meat cleavers, and passion. Unflinching and honest about the price chefs paid in blood and sweat to be the best. His library number was stamped all over that card. Dark chocolate sauce stained the white border of the recipe for assiette of chocolate on page 114. He’d checked out that cookbook too many times to count, before eventually buying his own copy.

He moved on, further to the back. To the oversized materials in the flat storage file. High shelves shielded him from view.

Building plans, once submitted to the municipality, were public record. His mother’s words came back to him. Blueprints are the bible for a project. It shows what everyone has to do, so you can plan and schedule the contractors. You can see possible problems in a build before starting and prevent them.

Matt yanked out the wide, shallow drawers, one after the other. Local maps, lake charts. He checked over his shoulder, then moved right past.

Engineering drawings. Getting closer now. His pulse kicked up a notch. Architectural drawings.

Bingo. He pulled the drawer out further, flipped through the sheets.

And felt his heart sink. Deb was right. There was no system. At least, not one he could spot at first glance.

He’d hoped the plans would be sorted by contractor, or at least by date. No such luck. He’d have to go through them all. And the clock was ticking. Soon Deb would come looking for him and kick him out.

He pulled out the sheets, skimming, checking the names of contractors, engineering companies. He flipped past architectural drawings, looking for the structural drawings that showed the load-carrying members. The steel beams, framing materials. And joists.

The next stack of sheets laid the drawer bare.

By now his hands were damp with sweat. Ink stained his fingertips as he riffled, searching. It had to be here.

An architectural drawing caught his eye. He pulled it out, held it up to the light.

The project itself was nothing out of the ordinary. A three-story office building.

It wasn’t what he was looking for. Not even one of Jeffrey’s projects. But it was interesting as all hell.

Engineers and architects have to stamp their names and signatures on drawings, to give their final approval. The stamps were a guarantee of professional standing but also helped shift the blame, when necessary. If a contractor followed the blueprints to a T, any errors in construction came back to the engineer and architect who put their stamps on those plans.

Matt skimmed the highlighted text beneath the title block. From proposed five story build on Water Street to three story build on Water Street. Cutting two floors from the design.

Looked like the build was scheduled to begin in October. A risky time to start construction, with months of severe winter weather around the corner. He knew that much. Sub-zero temperatures, deeply frozen ground, high winds, and up to forty inches of snowfall. Even with the right precautions, blizzards and snow drifts could stop work. The foundation would have to be completed as much as possible before frost conditions set in, and they’d have to hope everything went smoothly. If the concrete wasn’t cured to withstand repeated cycles of freezing and thawing, frost heaving would damage the building.

But a last-minute revision had been made to the fill material around the foundation.

The stamps on the blueprint, the names of the engineer and architect who approved those revisions, had his fingers tensing on a corner of the sheet. Andrew Clarkston and Thomas Kelley.

They knew each other. Had worked together before Thomas retired.

“Blueprints? I thought you wanted to see the lake charts.”

“Ah —” With a guilty start, he turned to face Deb, angling to block her line of sight. He’d forgotten how silently she moved between the shelves on those rubber-soled shoes. Nothing compared to the stealth of a librarian. “I got sidetracked. Mind if I use the copier?”

“You’ve got two minutes.”

It would have to be enough.

When Matt left, photocopies still warm from the printer, the realization hit him. He’d never found the plans for the gallery. Though they should have been there.