Wanda stood with her body tense and her lips tightly pursed, displaying her disapproval at having been kept waiting. When she thought she had sufficiently communicated that fact, she nodded just slightly. “I’ll show you. It’s in the SUV.”
Together they started around the side of the barn. Wanda walked just a little ahead of Candy, taking determined steps, as if she were a prizefighter about to enter the ring. She came around the end of the barn at full steam, crossed the driveway toward her vehicle, and practically walked right into Maggie, who was coming around the side of the Jeep.
Both women froze in their tracks. After a few moments, their heads dropped and they took aggressive stances, like two stags on a mountaintop squaring off, antlers lowered. Candy could practically see the steam coming out of their nostrils.
“What are you doing here?” Wanda growled.
“I was
“This is a private meeting,” Wanda insisted.
“Fine by me. I want nothing to do with it, or with you. I just have to get Wilma Mae in the house. She’s worn out.”
“Wilma Mae?” Wanda’s head swung toward the Jeep. She spotted the elderly woman sitting in the backseat.
At the same time, Wilma Mae saw Wanda. Her eyes grew wide with fright as she recalled the times Wanda had come to her house, demanding to see Mr. Sedley’s recipe.
Seeing her reaction, Maggie opened the rear door and spoke softly to Wilma Mae, motioning for her to step out. But the elderly woman refused, clutching her purse tightly and shaking her head in fear.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie asked.
Wilma Mae could only shake her head and point.
Maggie spun on Wanda. “See what you’ve done? Now you’ve scared her.”
Wanda took a step forward, but before she could say anything, Candy interceded. “Wanda, what did you want to show me? Let’s get this over with.”
It took a few moments for Wanda to register the words, but finally she wheeled away. “Fine,” she huffed.
She crossed to her vehicle, opened the back door, and pulled out a large manila envelope, which she held tightly. It was clear she had no intention of handing it over to Candy just yet. “Is there someplace we can look at this... in private?”
Candy and Maggie exchanged a brief, knowing look before Candy waved her hand. “Come on, we can talk in Doc’s office.”
Taking the keys back from Maggie, she walked to the house and unlocked the door. She walked through first, with Wanda right behind her. As she entered the kitchen, Candy took a quick glance at the Jeep and saw that Maggie had managed to coax Wilma Mae out of the backseat. The elderly woman stood uncertainly, looking about her.
Candy turned back to Wanda. “This way.”
Doc had taken one of the rooms at the back of the house for his office. Its hardwood floors were covered with dark area rugs, bookshelves lined the walls, and a large wooden desk, piled high with books, folders, and papers, occupied one end of the room.
After glancing around, Wanda crossed to a table underneath a large window that looked out over the blueberry barrens behind the house. She cleared a spot on the table, opened the manila envelope’s flap, and withdrew an aged, folded document from inside. Delicately she unfolded the document, laid it out on the table in the space she had cleared, and flattened it carefully with her hands to smooth the creases. When she was done, she stepped back so Candy could get a better look at it. “Have any idea what this is?” she asked smugly.
Candy switched on a light and stepped closer. She knew right away what it was. “Some type of blueprint.”
“That’s right, but a blueprint for what?”
Candy held Wanda’s gaze for a moment, then leaned closer for a better look.
It was a single sheet, perhaps three feet long and two feet wide, with several design sketches on it, drawn in thin, precise lines and annotated with an architect’s hand. The sketches showed different angles of a carpentry project.
It hit her quickly, and she couldn’t help gasping. “They’re the plans for the shelving unit in Wilma Mae’s upstairs bedroom.”
“That’s right.” Wanda jabbed a finger at the blueprints. “And if you look right here, you can see the design for the secret drawer.”
Candy studied the drawings for several moments. Wanda was right. She looked up. “These are Mulroy’s plans?”
“A copy of his original, as far as I can tell,” Wanda confirmed.
“But that means...” Candy’s mind worked quickly as the ramifications quickly became apparent. Slowly she straightened. “Whoever had these plans would have known exactly where Wilma Mae had hidden the recipe for Mr. Sedley’s lobster stew.”
“That’s right, Sherlock.”
Candy took a step back as her gaze narrowed on Wanda. “Where did you get these?”
Wanda squared her shoulders back proudly, well aware that she had once again scooped the town’s amateur detective. “I found them in Charlotte Depew’s office.”
Thirty-Two
“Charlotte.” The word left Candy in a long breath. She’d been reluctant to believe it was true, but here was more proof. All evidence pointed to Charlotte as the one who had stolen the recipe from Wilma Mae’s house.
One mystery, it appeared, had been solved. But larger, deadlier questions loomed.
If Charlotte had stolen the recipe, had she also murdered Mr. Sedley?
And who had killed Charlotte?
Candy stood with her arms crossed, staring down at the plans. So Charlotte had managed to get her hands on exactly what she needed to win the Lobster Stew Cook-off — details about the document drawer secreted away in the shelving unit designed by James Patrick Mulroy. The architect’s plans showed the exact location of the drawer, as well as the device that activated it.
But had Charlotte used that information to steal the recipe herself, or had she conspired with someone else, who stole the ledger for her?
It was an interesting question, but either way, Charlotte was still implicated in the crime.
So where had Charlotte found the plans? Probably in the museum’s archives, Candy surmised. It would have been easy enough for Charlotte to dig around up there for hours after work, when the place had emptied out and she could go through the file cabinets undisturbed. She’d probably discovered the plans in the back of some forgotten drawer located in an ancient cabinet secreted away in a dark corner of the archives, some place only she knew about, where no one else looked.
Not even Wanda.
Her gaze was drawn to the upper left-hand corner of the blueprints. Someone had written a message there. She leaned forward again, her eyes squinting so she could see a little clearer. Uncrossing her arms, she put her hands on the table and leaned forward even more, her head twisting around to match the slope of the lines.
The writing was clearly in a different hand than the original architect’s — cursive, slanted, and scribbled hastily, as opposed to Mulroy’s neatly printed block letters. Still, the message was easy enough to read:
