Breaking Ground (19 page)

“About suspecting me? I don't take it personally, Mike. I know you have to check everything. As a matter of fact, I have some ideas …”

“Hold it! You said you were going to stay out of this,” he said, but then sighed, and added, “If you have any solid information, of course I need to hear it.”

“I still think it's about the land, but I don't have any ‘solid information.' Just too many loose ends.”

“The land?”

“Birch Brook—the condo development. Mary Ellen could have backed out up till the fifth of July.”

“LaBelle told me that.”

“So isn't that a good motive?”

“For?”

“Frank Nilsson and Luke Dyer had a lot at stake. And the land itself is pretty weird—I mean, as to who owns it.”

“I wouldn't go around naming people as suspects if I were you. If Nilsson or Dyer found out, they could—”

“Of course not!” Julie interrupted. “I'm just confiding my suspicions in you.”

“I hope so. So what do you know about the land?”

“A little.” She proceeded to describe the shifting ownership of Birch Brook as she had sketched it out, with Henry's help. “And Luke's been looking at the Swanson papers here in the historical
society,” she concluded. “He doesn't strike me as your basic amateur historian. I think he knows there's something funny about the ownership.”

“Julie, I think you've learned that land sales in New England are a form of blood sport, but that's not exactly news to folks who grew up here. And you've discovered that maybe Nilsson and Dyer had something to gain—or something to not lose—if Mrs. Swanson was out of the way before the fifth of July. But motive isn't the only thing.”

“So maybe you need to find out what Frank and Luke were doing last Tuesday morning.”

“Maybe. But you can't rule out Steven and Elizabeth Swanson.”

“Myerson, Elizabeth Myerson,” she corrected him. “And isn't it strange that he's her alibi for Tuesday morning? That means she's
his
. Or they could both …”

“I thought you were interested in Birch Brook, Julie.”

“Well, I am. I mean, I think the land's involved in this somehow, which makes Frank and Luke suspicious. At least to me. But you've got to admit that Steven and Elizabeth aren't exactly in the clear. Not that I think Steven could possibly have done it. But you have to look at everything.”

“Gee, Julie, I'll try to remember that. Meantime, maybe you could go back to playing director of the Ryland Historical Society and I'll keep playing at being a cop. Which I'm off to do right now. See you later, I'm sure.”

“And then there's the shovel, Mike. We've got to find that.”

“Drop the
we
…”

“But don't forget about Frank and Luke. If you could just find out where they were last Tuesday …”

“See you.”

“Mr. Townsend for you,” Mrs. Detweiller said through the door left open when Mike went out.

Damn that man! Julie said to herself when she finished the phone conversation with the chairman of the trustees. Of course it made sense to have another board meeting. There were two big items of business: to review whatever the building committee recommended about proceeding on the project, and to consider renaming the new center for both Dan and Mary Ellen. Obviously Howard needed to call a meeting. But why did he have to do it for four o'clock on a Friday afternoon? Julie hoped to be on the road to Orono then. Howard hadn't even asked if it was convenient for her.

She'd have to let Rich know. If the meeting didn't run too long, she could still be in Orono Friday night. But how long would the meeting last? Even under the best of circumstances, the twisty highway between Ryland and Bangor was slow going, but on a late Friday afternoon in the middle of summer, it would be really slow because of all the recreational vehicles and sightseeing tourists. To take her mind off her anger at Howard and off the frustrating trip she was already imagining, Julie decided to move the four boxes of new Swanson papers to the archives. A little physical exertion would feel good, she decided.

“I think she's free, Mr. Dyer,” she heard Mrs. Detweiller say.

Julie quickly moved to stand in front of the boxes to keep Luke from seeing them—not that he'd know what they were, but better not to take a chance.

“Hello, Luke,” she said as cheerfully as she could when he came through the door. Would he wonder why she was shielding the boxes?

“I just brought the bill by,” he said. “For the excavation. Left it with your secretary, but since you're here I wonder if we could talk for a moment.” Julie closed the door and beckoned him toward a chair—one facing in the other direction from the four boxes. “I've been using your library,” he said after he sat. “But you know that. Tabby Preston told me just now that you were looking at the letters I read. I'd like to know why.”

It was a perfectly reasonable question, Julie realized, but Luke's tone heightened it. She couldn't really describe the tone as menacing, but it was far from friendly.

“Well, I'm the director here, and I try to know what we have in our collections and how they can be useful to the community and to researchers, and so of course I'm interested in the papers that you—”

“Well, let's just cut the crap. You knew I was looking at the Swanson letters, and you went in there and read the ones I looked at. When I realized someone else had been in the box, I asked Tabby about it. And now I'm just asking you a simple question: What's your interest in those letters?”

“The Swanson family is very important to the historical society, especially now, and I just wanted to see the nature of the papers, see if there was material we could use when we open the new center.” Julie congratulated herself silently on such a clever answer. Luke, unfortunately, didn't share her view.

“So what took you so long? How come you didn't look at them till you knew I was?”

“Luke, really, I'm sorry you're upset about this. It really is just a coincidence. I should have looked at them before, but to be honest I wasn't aware we even had them until Tabby mentioned you were using them. I should have told you that up front, but, frankly, I'm new here, and I didn't want to look silly for not knowing what we have in the collections.”

Julie had often heard people say that honesty could be disarming, but she wasn't prepared for the immediate effect it had on Luke. “That makes sense,” he said in a much friendlier tone. “People here can be tough on folks from away. I can see your point. But you could have told me that when I asked.”

“I'm sorry. But really, that's all there is to it.” No reason to test the old proverb a second time, she decided.

“Okay then. Thanks for your time.” He moved for the door, apparently satisfied.

“I hope you're finding what you want,” Julie couldn't help adding.

“Not yet. But I will. Invoice is with your secretary. No hurry, but we charge interest if you don't pay in fifteen days.”

Had she imagined it, Julie pondered, or did Luke glance at the four boxes when he said he'd find what he was looking for? How could he know? Mrs. Detweiller was an obvious source. Steven could be, too, for all Julie knew. Or maybe she really had just imagined that Luke was interested in the boxes. But she knew her own interest was real. Unfortunately, so was her watch, which told her it was past 4:30. Tabby would be gone, and Julie could hear Mrs. Detweiller closing drawers to signal she, too, was ready to leave. And that would mean all the volunteers were gone and the Ryland Historical Society was about to shut down for the day. So if Julie planned to secure the new Swanson papers in the vault, she was going to have to do it herself. Of course, she could just keep them in her office. She knew it was bad practice, but it was perfectly safe with the security alarm on and all the doors to Swanson House locked. Tomorrow she would talk to Tabby about them and get someone to do the heavy lifting. She locked Swanson House, set the security alarm, and walked home.

A nursing student who was Julie's dorm mate in college had told her that hospital staff dread the period from three to five o'clock in the morning because that's when weak patients tend to die. Something about body temperature, or heart rate, Julie couldn't remember exactly. But the fact—if it really was that—stuck with her the way odd bits of information always do.

The clock beside her bed read 3:20. It would be nice to think her waking was the result of body temperature or pulse, but she knew the cause was more direct: the soft but insistent scraping of the lower branches of a large pine tree against the house just below the window of her bedroom. Rich had identified the noise last week when it had awakened her then, and she had in turn awakened him. Now, the branches kept rustling, swishing, hitting the siding, waking her, and then keeping her awake.

This was the worst night Julie had ever spent alone in Harding House. As on the other nights, before going to bed she had dutifully made the rounds downstairs, checking and double-checking windows and doors until she was satisfied that the house was secure. From eleven until three she had actually slept deeply, but the pine branches put an end to that. For the next thirty minutes or so she turned and tossed, telling herself that at any moment she would slip back down into sleep. But then the birds arrived, encouraged by the breaking dawn. After another quarter-hour spent trying to identify the sounds of individual birds, she gave up and decided to join them in greeting the day. It was still too dark to run safely, but the absence of full daylight didn't deter her from breakfast.

As she ate her cereal, she fiddled listlessly with the jigsaw puzzle she had started the night before—the map of Maine, which Rich
had given her along with the grill as a housewarming present. She was working her way north, from York County to Aroostook County, and hadn't yet gotten to Ryland. She couldn't concentrate and got up to pour a second cup of coffee. She stood at the counter and thought about her less than brilliant performance as a tour guide yesterday with the garden club. She had become more and more confident, learning about Ryland and its history, picking up interesting stories from volunteers and her own reading of documents and old newspapers, developing an entertaining and informative line of patter for visitors. But yesterday's experience had thrown her for a loop. Had she just glanced at the booking form, she would have known it was a garden group, and while she couldn't make herself expert on the society's plantings, she could have made sure Mabel Hanson would be available to handle the flora. Luckily Mabel had been there, but luck was something Julie knew she couldn't count on.

Instead of concentrating on her job, she was spending too much time thinking about suspects, speculating about motives, digging into town history not so she would be a better tour guide and director, but so she could figure out who killed Mary Ellen—and why. And she couldn't say her efforts were paying off. The murder was already more than a week old, and Julie knew that as more time passed the odds of identifying the killer waned. If Mike and the Maine State Police were unsuccessful in that time, what hope had she of sorting it all out?

Maybe, she decided, it was a good thing that those pine branches woke her. The boxes of Swanson family papers Steven had brought in yesterday were there waiting for her in her office. She abandoned the puzzle, left the dishes in the sink, showered and dressed rapidly, and entered her office at five-thirty, feeling that early hours were becoming too common. And it was going to be a long day; the building committee didn't meet till four.

The boxes were where she had left them, just inside the door of her office. She lugged the first one to the long table and began her search. Bills, newspaper clippings, more bills, some canceled checks. The second box contained more of the same. The third box was all letters to and from Dan Swanson. Julie was pleasantly surprised that he had been so orderly; he kept copies of his letters and attached them with paper clips to their responses. Most dealt with business matters of one kind or another—dunning letters to renters tardy in paying up, appeals to the town tax board about assessments, instructions to brokers about buying and selling. Near the bottom of the box was a handwritten letter to Paul Dyer, dated October 12, 1997:

Dear Paul,

Considering the tangled web surrounding the ownership of the river property, I would be pleased to make an offer to you to purchase the land outright and end once and for all the disputes and bad feelings that have arisen over the years between our families because of it. Naturally, once I obtained free and clear title to the land, I would have no further interest in pursuing the matters we discussed on Saturday. You have my word as a Christian and a gentleman that any and all disputes, including the clouded nature of the 1883 survey, would, from my point of view, be put behind us and forever buried in history—a history neither of our families need ever revisit.

Please let me know your intentions. I will instruct my attorney to draw up the necessary papers as soon as I've heard from you.

Sincerely,

Daniel O. Swanson II

It was a copy, not the original. Had the letter ever been sent? There was no appended response. But she knew Paul Dyer had sold the land to Dan Swanson. She extracted from the manila folder the sheet of notes she had written after talking to Henry LaBelle.

1890s: Herbert Swanson (Dan's grandfather) owned land west along river; Leonard Dyer (Luke's great-grandfather) owned land east along river; current Birch Brook parcel was between and disputed; they went to court, Swanson got Birch Brook.

Depression: Old Dan Swanson (Dan's father) sold Birch Brook to Paul Dyer (Luke's father).

1997: Paul Dyer sold it back to Dan Swanson for $700,000.

This year: Frank Nilsson and Luke Dyer buy from Mary Ellen Swanson for $2.5M.