“Thaddeus Oakes’s—my great-grandfather. Remember? I think I mentioned that to you when I started to look through these. I figured it was one thing of real value since it’s so old, but I couldn’t find it. And Julie can’t either.”
“Oh, right. Well, that’s a shame. I remember you said it was, what, a hundred years old or so?”
“More than that. He died early in the twentieth century. I don’t know how long he was keeping the diary, but at least twenty years or so.”
Julie stood silently as husband and wife talked. Was Frank’s interest in the diary a husbandly bit of pleasantry? Or was it more? Julie just couldn’t tell.
“Well, I shouldn’t be keeping you,” she said. “I’ll be very happy to take these three boxes, and of course I’ll send you a receipt for tax purposes.”
“I can carry those up for you, Julie,” Frank said. “That must be your car in the driveway? You sure you can fit all these in? I could bring them to town if you’d like.”
Julie assured him her Volkswagen Jetta was up to the challenge. She picked up a box, and he took another. “Just leave that one, honey,” Frank said quickly to Patty. “I’ll come back for it.”
“Sorry I wasn’t here earlier—didn’t realize you were coming out,” he said as he placed the box in her trunk next to the one Julie had carried. “I’ll just go get the other one.”
When he returned with it, Julie said she had been happy to have the chance to talk to Patty. “We should have had you out for dinner already,” Frank said. “Patty’s leaving Saturday for the camp, and I’m going down later. We won’t be back in Ryland full-time till the end of the summer. Let’s not wait,” he added. “Any chance you could come for dinner tomorrow?”
“Friday?” Julie said, startled by the invitation.
“I know it’s last-minute, but if it works for you we’d be very pleased to have you come out.” Julie explained that Rich was coming and reminded Frank they had met at Birch Brook. “Nice young man,” Nilsson said.
Much as she hated to give up their private time the first night Rich would be there, the prospect of having his help in assessing the Nilssons appealed to her. To the extent that being around Frank frightened her—and she wasn’t sure to what extent it did—Rich’s presence was an added bonus. So she accepted. “Unless Patty has something else planned,” she added. “If you want to check and let me know, just call me at the office.”
“It’ll be fine with Patty,” Frank said in a tone that seemed to Julie to command rather than explore his wife’s willingness to have dinner guests. “It’s supposed to cool down again tonight. If we have that weather we had over the Fourth,” he continued, “we could even have a sauna before dinner. Got a great one here. Ever done it?”
“Taken a sauna? No.”
“Wonderful Scandinavian tradition. ’Course you can tell by my name I’m not prejudiced! Why don’t you come about six and we can take a family sauna and then settle in for dinner?” Julie explained that Rich was driving from Orono and that she had a trustee meeting, but that they could try to get to the Nilssons’ by six-thirty.
“Then it’s a date. Of course you know the custom,” he added. Julie said she didn’t. “Part of the tradition—no clothes in the sauna,” he said with a laugh. And then: “Just kidding, Julie. That is the custom, but bring a bathing suit. See you then.”
Frank’s look when he mentioned the custom of nudity in the sauna didn’t bother Julie at that moment, but as she drove back to Ryland she decided that it should have bothered her more. It was consistent with what she had seen about the man’s character over the last week, and reinforced her sense that she didn’t like him or feel comfortable around him. She was glad dinner on Friday would include Rich, and of course Patty, whom she was growing fond of because she seemed so much nicer than her husband.
Thinking further of Frank as she drove, Julie wondered if Mike had talked with him. She thought of calling Mike to find out, but she reconsidered when she thought it through. Despite the good relationship she had developed with the policeman during the past year, she didn’t want to push it, because she knew he was trying to maintain the line between them on this case.
Mrs. Detweiller was leaving as Julie returned to her office. She had time before leaving for dinner at the Black Crow Inn to do some work at her desk, and there was plenty of it: bills to be checked and approved for payment, requests for tours, articles for the society’s newsletter to be edited. They were the core of her job, the nitty-gritty that she usually found satisfying to deal with as a way of marking progress. But today her heart wasn’t in it. She listlessly glanced at one of the tour requests and was about to check the time against the master calendar when she spotted the green folder that Tabby had given her last week. More Tabor papers, she thought—just what I need! She opened the folder and leafed through several items on the top: two prescriptions, some notes from a town committee on which Dr. Tabor had sat, and then two letters. She loved reading the copies of his letters. He kept carbon copies of all his correspondence, she had discovered. The practice of inserting a sheet of carbon between two pages in the typewriter was quaint, but she was grateful that Dr. Tabor had taken the time to do so. Both letters were to the doctor’s brother in Connecticut, one of his regular correspondents. She read the first:
January 7th, 1933
My dear brother Lemuel,
I wish you the very warmest greetings for the New Year. Although I know you did not wish to see Governor Roosevelt go to Washington, let us hope he can work the miracle that those of us who did vote for him earnestly pray for.
I read that another bank failed in Hartford last week. I hope it was not one where you keep your money! Things are quite bad here in rural Maine, too. Just this week one of my patients told me he must sell some land that has been in his family for decades because he needs the money to keep his family and business above water. As he is probably the richest man in Ryland, his news was very distressing. If someone like Mr. Swanson is in trouble, what of the little people? Of course in his case there is another layer, as there always seems to be in these small towns. I understand there has been very bad blood between Mr. Swanson and the man he sold to, going back to some longago dispute about the very land he now has to sell.
The letter continued, with comments on Ryland’s weather and some sharp observations about a town selectmen’s meeting. Julie rushed through those parts to be sure there were no further references to the Swanson land sale and then reread the opening paragraphs. “Amazing!” she said out loud. It wasn’t that the letter told her anymore than she’d already guessed about the sale from Swanson to Dyer in the Depression. Rather, it was the coincidence—right here on her desk was a letter from 1933 referring to the very matter she had noted in her chronology of the land’s ownership. As a historian, she shouldn’t be surprised when pieces of evidence came together, but in this case she took delight in it.
And it did seem like two pieces of evidence were coming together; it’s just that the other one—the 1997 letter from Dan Swanson—was missing. No, stolen! But Julie was sure she remembered its reference to the nineteenth-century survey, not some dispute during the Depression. Had it said anything specific about that, about the sale between Dan Swanson’s grandfather and Luke’s grandfather? No, she didn’t think so. But the reference in Dr. Tabor’s letter to “very bad blood” between the families going back to the old dispute surely pointed in the same direction as the words in the now-missing letter.
Julie returned to the green folder and flipped quickly through some newspaper clippings—worth reading for her project, she told herself, but not immediately relevant. She came to another letter:
April 25th, 1933
My dear brother Lemuel,
I am so glad to see our President taking action on the banks. Both of ours have now reopened and are taking deposits again, though I doubt they will be loaning out that money anytime soon. Who can afford debt these days?
You asked about the busine
ss I mentioned at the New Year—the land sale by one of my patients. Your interest in such a small-town transaction doesn’t surprise me. I know you love a good story. So here is what I know.
Back before the turn of the century, the land—it is a beautiful parcel west of town on the Androscoggin River—was the subject of legal action because the two families who owned land on either side of it disputed who owned the middle parcel. There was a survey, but I do not know more about what it determined. I do know, from my patient, Mr. Swanson, that his family ended up with the parcel in question. He says he had to sell it now—back to the family who earlier claimed it—because he needs the money. But that’s not how our Town Gossips see it! I hear that the man who bought it, Mr. Dyer, threatened Mr. Swanson with another lawsuit because of something he found. But then that may just be the talk of the flibbertigibbets!
“The Oakes survey!” Julie practically screamed. This confirmed it: Something fishy about it must have surfaced and caused the one man to sell to the other. But in 1933? Or 1997? Or both?
She glanced at her watch and saw that she should be starting off to Dalton’s. After losing the original and the copy of the 1997 letter, she wasn’t about to expose these two to a similar risk, even though she couldn’t imagine who besides Tabby knew of them. (Had Tabby read them? she wondered.) The Tabor letters belonged upstairs, in the safe.
CHAPTER 34
As she drove out of town toward the Black Crow Inn, Julie felt pleased that the few breathing exercises she had forced herself to do before and after entering the safe and placing the letters there had had the intended effect. She was also feeling a kind of high about what she had found; it was the very same feeling she got when she clicked the last piece of a difficult jigsaw puzzle into place or entered the Latin name for raccoon in a crossword. But then, she asked herself, what had she actually learned? That the ownership of the Birch Brook property was contested, tangled in family feuds and perhaps more, was hardly fresh news. Nothing in Dr. Tabor’s reports to his distant brother explained exactly what had gone on between the Swansons and the Dyers.
So what had she learned, she asked herself again as she pulled off the highway and entered the drive up the hill toward Dalton’s. And more to the point, she reminded herself, what did it all have to do with Mary Ellen’s murder? That was the trouble with historical research, she thought as she parked her car: it’s so much fun, but a lot of the time you have no idea where it’s going. If anywhere.
Dinner was good. Running the Black Crow Inn had turned Dalton Scott into a very respectable cook, another example of Julie’s belief that men were taking over in the kitchen. Conversation over dinner was led by Nickie, whose current obsession was what she considered the high-handed approach of Ryland’s planning board in the implementation of the town’s new sign ordinance.
“It’s a good approach,” Nickie said. “Dalton was on the committee that developed it, and it’s very reasonable. But the way the planning board is handling these cases is just crazy. They’re letting the motels put up all sorts of crap—really ugly signs—but then when I present my request they turn it down flat. Too big, wrong colors, too close to the road. I mean, Dalton designed the sign, and he knows the standards better than anyone.”
“But you did make some changes in my design,” Dalton interjected.
“A few, but still. I just think the planning board is a bunch of idiots.”
Neither Dalton nor Julie had a good counter to that observation, and Nickie seemed to realize that her interest in the topic far outpaced theirs. “So you’re having the house painted?” she asked Julie, whose blank stare promoted a refinement in the question. “Did you say that, Dalton, or did I dream it up?”
“I think I guessed that,” Dalton replied before turning to Julie: “You didn’t say, but since you needed a place for the night I assumed you were having some work done at Harding House.”
“I didn’t want to get into it on the phone,” Julie said, and then explained to them about the break-in.
“My God!” was Dalton’s response when Julie finished.
“Holy shit!” was Nickie’s. “You must have been terrified. You poor thing! What did they take? Do you have antiques or something?”
“Well, that’s another story, and sort of a long one.”
“To the deck!” Nickie commanded. “Leave these dishes and I’ll clean up later, Dalton. And bring us some brandy; I think we’re going to need it.”
On the deck overlooking the woods behind the inn, Julie told them about the missing letter and her guess that whoever broke into the house took her copy. Although she had talked before to Dalton about her suspicions, she had to go back a bit and bring Nickie up-to-speed. It was a longer story than she meant it to be, but the brandy helped. She didn’t mention the two Tabor letters because she still didn’t know what they proved.
“So you think Nilsson or Dyer or maybe both of them killed Mary Ellen to stop her from backing out of the land deal,” Nickie summarized. “And then one of them, or again, maybe both, found out that the deed to the property was in question anyway. And then that you had a copy of the letter that proved that. Wow!”
“I guess that’s it in a nutshell, but there are too many loose ends here. Like whether Nilsson and Dyer have alibis for last night or for the morning Mary Ellen was killed.”
“I assume Mike’s checking on that,” Dalton said. Until now he had listened quietly to Julie’s recounting of the incidents.
“He said he was going to, but I haven’t heard. I hate to keep bothering him.”
“Hell, it was your house that was broken into,” Nickie said. “You have a right to know.”
“But Mike doesn’t want you involved in the murder investigation, does he?” Dalton said.
“Obviously not.”
“Which doesn’t stop you, of course.”
“If the break-in and the murder are connected—and I’m sure they are—well, then, of course I’m involved. I have to be.”
“Mike would say you don’t have to be involved, Julie. And he’d be right.”
“And Rich says the same.”
“Then there you are,” Dalton said.
“Did I tell you Frank Nilsson invited Rich and me to dinner tomorrow night?” Dalton shook his head. “Oh, and about the diary. I didn’t tell you that, either.” So she filled them in.
“This really is bizarre,” Nickie said when Julie finished this new portion of the story. “Fights over land, murder, missing letters, a break-in. Sounds like a TV show.”
“Or life in a small Maine town,” Dalton said. “Anyway, folks, it’s getting late, the mosquitoes are starting to bite even though it’s cooling down, and I need to clean up in the kitchen. So …”
“I said I’d do that, Dalton. You and Julie can go inside and continue this.”
Sitting in the lounge, Dalton repeated that he thought Mike and Rich were right, and that Julie should stop trying to do the policeman’s job. “And why would you even want to go to the Nilssons’ for dinner when you suspect him as a murderer and as someone who broke into your house?”
“Rich will be there. And you know how I love puzzles, Dalton,” she replied. “Besides, this really does involve me.”
“I don’t know …” he said, adding, “Hey, what’s happening about the missing shovel? I always heard that you can’t solve a murder without the weapon.”
Julie smiled. “See, you like puzzles, too. I think you can solve a case without the weapon, but it sure would help to locate that shovel. Mike and the state cops came up empty there. There’s got to be a simple explanation. A shovel just can’t disappear.”
“But the person who used it to kill Mary Ellen—assuming that’s what happened—could have taken it. And then hid it or got rid of it somewhere. That seems pretty logical to me: If you just bashed someone with a shovel, you wouldn’t exactly place it beside the body, would you?”
“Of course not, but then walking around Ryland with a bloodcovered shovel migh
t attract a little attention.”
“It might. Then again, Ryland’s a funny town.”
“Not that funny, Dalton,” Nickie said as she came in from the kitchen to join them in the lounge.
“Except for the planning board,” Dalton pointed out.
“True. Maybe the planning board killed Mary Ellen!”
“I think it’s time for bed, Nickie,” Dalton said. “Let me show you your room, Julie, but don’t feel you have to turn in now just because we are. Stay here if you want to read or something. How about some more brandy?”
CHAPTER 35
It had not been a good idea to accept that offer, Julie thought when she looked at her watch and saw it was after midnight. Instead of easing her into sleep as she had hoped, the brandy left her feeling both sluggish and restless. But then she couldn’t blame it all on brandy. She was exhausted after a very short and very frightening night and a busy day. And she kept thinking about that missing diary. Surely Thaddeus Oakes had done the survey that settled the dispute over Birch Brook back in the 1880s. Dr. Tabor’s letters confirmed at least the dispute. And if there had been some hanky-panky, Oakes’s diary might prove it. How convenient that it was missing! Like the Swanson letter. Patty Nilsson was certainly surprised. Was Frank?
That was hard to figure out, Julie said to herself as she shifted once more in the unfamiliar bed. Frank had certainly shown interest in the fact that Julie and Patty had been discussing the diary. But she really couldn’t read his reaction to Patty’s comments. At least she didn’t remember anything particularly revealing. So, she considered as she rolled to her left side, what I should focus on is whether Frank had a reason to be glad the Oakes diary wasn’t going to end up at the Ryland Historical Society. And he did: If there was a problem in the ownership of Birch Brook that Frank aimed to suppress by taking Dan Swanson’s letter and Julie’s copy of it, then information in Thaddeus Oakes’s diary had to be suppressed, too.
Breaking Ground Page 19
