Murder Gone A-Rye (A Baker's Treat Mystery) by Nancy J. Parra Page B

Lois?”
    “I’m getting to that part; hold your horses.” Grandma took her refilled cup from me and fixed it up until it was unrecognizable as coffee. I shook my head as she sipped her cream and sugar with a little coffee. “Now . . . where to start? Ah, yes, I recently remembered that five years ago when they were renovating the county courthouse the original plans were to remove a wall from the old judge’s chambers.”
    “Exactly,” Phyllis said. “But there was some kind of structural issue that made them work around the wall. Right?”
    “That’s what we were told.” Grandma raised one orange eyebrow. “When I researched Homer Everett, I found an old floor plan for the courthouse. They did a renovation in the late fifties.”
    “I didn’t remember that until you brought it up last week.” Phyllis sat back.
    “That’s because it was a small change to the judge’s chamber. It turns out that Judge Jonas was a good friend of Homer Everett.”
    “And?” I sat and leaned toward her.
    “And the renovation was a ‘wall repair.’” Grandma made the quote marks in the air with her hands. “They said that there was water damage and they had to redo the wall.”
    “Okay . . .”
    “Except it was on the first floor, and the redone wall was the same one that allegedly was used for support and unable to be torn down.”
    “Again, I say, and . . . ?”
    “And the current support wall is eight inches thicker than the one in the original plans.”
    “How do you know?” I asked.
    “We compared floor plans,” Phyllis said.
    “Yep.” Grandma looked please with herself.
    “How did you get the original plans?” I leaned back and chewed the inside of my cheek with worry. “Did you do something you shouldn’t?”
    “I would never. . . .” Grandma snorted and pretended to be insulted.
    I crossed my arms over my chest and gave her a long look. Grandma grinned at me like a drunken sailor.
    “The plans are a matter of public record,” Phyllis said. “Every building in town has to have a permit to be built. Those permits and floor plans are all a matter of public record.”
    That thought sobered me. “Does that mean that someone can look at the floor plan to this bakery?”
    “Yes.”
    “My house?”
    “Yep.” Grandma’s grin widened. “So, you see, I compared the two courthouse floor plans. It was pretty clear to me that that so-called load bearing wall was a false front.”
    “When Ruth told me about it, I sent the plans to an architect friend of mine. He agreed with Ruth. It’s not a load bearing wall—and the 1950s renovation added eight inches to it,” Phyllis said.
    I drew my eyebrows together. “How long have you two been working on this?”
    “About three weeks,” Phyllis said.
    “Just a week or so,” Grandma said.
    Right,
I thought. “Grandma when were you going to tell me?” I held up my hand to cut off her reply. “I know, right after you broke into the courthouse and cut a hole in that wall. Right?”
    “Oh, no, we weren’t going to cut a hole,” Phyllis said.
    “We rented a metal detector.” Grandma looked so proud of herself. “I wanted one of those sound wave machines that bounce off metal objects and gives their shape, but we weren’t able to get our hands on one.”
    “Besides the handheld metal detector will be easier to smuggle in.” Phyllis sipped her coffee.
    I shook my head. “What do you think you’ll find in there?”
    “The murder weapon, I hope,” Grandma said. “At least I told Lois I’d found one. It’s why she agreed to speak with me.”
    That made me sit back. “You told Lois you found a murder weapon, and she believed you?”
    “Not
a
murder weapon;
the
murder weapon. The one that killed Champ.”
    “Over the years, Dr. Abernathy was able to figure out that Champ was killed by a military handgun. He thought maybe a Beretta.”
    “You think Homer killed Champ and Lois knew about it? Is that what you think is the motive for