Chapter 36 Avery
AVERY
The Blackwell Hollow Library was in the small cluster of administrative buildings in the town square, next to the police department, which was next to the town hall. All three buildings had been constructed out of the same stately brick, although the police and library buildings were one level.
I carried the transparent slides in a manila envelope I’d found in a kind of supply closet in the hall at home (no, not home, I couldn’t think of it that way) and approached the front desk where a woman in her late thirties sat in front of a clunky old-fashioned computer terminal, her dark blonde hair pinned into a neat bun at the back of her head.
A nameplate sat on the desk in front of her: Iris Fenwick.
She looked up as I approached, and a warm smile washed over her face.
“How can I help you?”
“Hi, I was wondering if you have a projector? Not the laptop kind. The kind to read transparent film.”
She frowned. “We don’t have anything on transparent film here, just microfiche.”
“I don’t need the slides. I have something I want to look at. I just don’t have a projector for viewing them.”
“Ah, I see.” She furrowed her brow. “I’ve never had anyone ask, but I think there might be one in the basement?”
“Is it possible I could use it?”
She stood. “It’s not technically for library-card holders, but I won’t tell if you won’t.”
I exhaled my relief. “My lips are sealed.”
I followed her through the small library, past rows of wooden tables where one older man was reading the newspaper and a girl around my age typed on her laptop, an open textbook on the table next to her.
Iris’s long skirt flowed behind her, her oversized cardigan reaching almost to her knees, her sensible shoes silent on the short-pile carpet. A handful of people browsed the stacks and we continued past them to a door near the back of the building.
Iris pulled a set of keys from her sweater pocket and unlocked the door, then reached in to turn on a light.
I followed her into a tiny vestibule at the top of the stairs and she started down a narrow concrete staircase.
“It’s not as creepy as it looks, I swear.”
I laughed and followed her down.
A row of metal utility cabinets stretched to the right of the stairs. I followed Iris to the left where an array of old equipment was piled up on the green and white linoleum floor.
“Sorry for the mess,” she said. “Old houses have junk drawers, old government buildings have junk rooms.”
“It’s not a problem. I’m just grateful for your help.”
She wound her way through stacks of folding chairs, two tables like the tables I’d seen upstairs, and a couple of empty bookcases.
It was too crowded to follow her, so I peered around everything, tracking her movements until she disappeared behind another bookcase.
“Ah, here we are,” she said.
A moment later she was wheeling out a projector like the one I’d seen at the meeting the night before.
“Amazing.”
She looked around. “I’m not sure we have a screen…”
“I can use the wall,” I said.
She nodded. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“I don’t think so. Thank you so much.”
“It’s my pleasure.” She smiled. “Just don’t steal the extra toilet paper in those cabinets. I rely on it when we run out of money. Small-town budgets, you know.”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
She headed back for the stairs and I maneuvered the projector in front of one of the concrete walls and searched for an outlet.
I plugged it in, and the machine came to life with a hum, a square of light projected onto the wall.
“Bingo.”
I removed the transparent slides from the manila envelope and put the first one on the screen.
It was a survey of the land that made up the proposed Hearthstone development.
Main and State Streets were mapped out, as was the town square.
Then there was Walter Finch’s duck farm, the plot of land that had been purchased by Hearthstone for the gated community, and a piece of waterfront property labeled HEARTHSTONE MARINA.
To the left, the lakeside park was colored green, the cemetery appropriately labeled.
Nothing jumped out at me as strange, so I removed the slide and tried the next one.
And this one got my attention. Because all the other stuff was there, but there was something new too: a grassy area overlaid across Finch Farm and labeled PROPOSED HEARTHSTONE LINKS.
A golf course. On Walter’s duck farm.
No wonder he’d been so upset at the meeting. I paused, wondering if Victor had pressured him to sell, wondering if Walter would even want to stay in Blackwell Hollow if his ducks lost access to the lake.
I removed the film from the projector and added the last one I’d picked up off the floor at the meeting.
This one was a more detailed view of the area around the proposed housing development: street lights, stop signs, lake access. There were even marks that looked like water-table readings.
I squinted at the chicken-scratch handwriting on the slide: initials.
HP.
Harold?
I walked closer to the wall, trying to get a handle on what I was seeing. The initials were next to the infrastructure marks: the street lights and stop signs, the proposed water access.
I didn’t get it right away, but after a minute or so, it started to make sense.
A pit of dread formed in my stomach as I scanned the image.
Assuming there was no one else on the town council with Harold’s initials — and after attending the town meeting I had no reason to think there was — the proposed street lights and rerouted water access had been sketched and initialed by Harold Pembroke.
This wasn’t opposition. It was collaboration.
Harold had been helping Hearthstone, sketching out possible ways they could get around the town’s objections to the development’s impact.
I shook my head in the empty room, suddenly creeped out by the concrete walls and the fact that I was alone in the basement. If I was right, I’d had it all wrong.
The whole town had it all wrong: Harold hadn’t been against the Hearthstone project.
He’d been for it.