Breaking Ground

by William Andrews

  CHAPTER 43

  At home they assembled lunch from leftovers. After they had eaten, Julie cleared the table and Rich settled down with his student papers again. Julie sat at the folding table in front of the puzzle. Instead of working on it she was jotting on a notepad, and she kept rising to walk around the kitchen. After her third circuit, Rich said, “You’re not getting very far on your puzzle.”

  “Just thinking. Sorry. I must be bothering you. I should leave you alone. I can go to the office.”

  Before he could respond, the phone rang. Rich listened as Julie spoke to Mike. As had happened earlier in the day when Mike had called to tell her about his interview with Frank, Julie became more subdued as the conversation continued. At the end she said, “Now’s fine. See you.”

  “No developments?” Rich asked as Julie paced around the kitchen after hanging up.

  “Mike said he’d explain. He’s coming over to take our statements now. I assumed that was okay with you?”

  “What—interrupt my paper reading again!” Julie laughed and punched him lightly on the arm. “So he didn’t say anything about Elizabeth?”

  “Only that he’d finished questioning her and she’s gone back to New Hampshire. We’ll find out more when he gets here.”

  “Does that affect whatever you’ve been thinking about?”

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I really wasn’t thinking about Elizabeth Myerson. I was thinking about what Luke said this afternoon.”

  Rich placed the paper he was reading facedown on the pile. “Something tells me this is going to be more interesting than this paper. Tell all.”

  “I’m still thinking. I just haven’t untangled this yet! Let’s see what Mike says first. Here he is.”

  She opened the kitchen door for the policeman. He accepted her offer of coffee.

  “I’d better take your statements first,” he said. “Then I’ll explain.”

  Julie and Rich repeated their story about finding the shovel, and Mike took notes on his pad. “I guess that’s it,” he said when they finished. “I’ll get these typed up and you can sign them when it’s convenient.” He closed the leather notebook.

  “So?” Julie prompted.

  “Not much to tell,” Mike began, and then summarized his interview with Elizabeth Myerson.

  “So you believe her?” Julie asked when he finished.

  “Not sure. But I am sure that I had no grounds to hold her. The crime scene crew can’t get up till tomorrow morning, and unless we get her prints on the shovel or something else to tie her to it, well—”

  “But you believed what she said about being at Birch Brook?” Julie interrupted.

  “Again, not sure—but it’s plausible. She’s in the real estate business, and if she says she wanted to look the place over, how can I refute that? As to running away like that, well, I can’t prove she didn’t get an important phone call, like she said she did.”

  “You can check her cell-phone records, can’t you?”

  “Yes, and I will. But right now I don’t have any reason to hold her. Any chance you heard her phone ring, Rich?”

  “No, the windows were up, and I couldn’t even see who was driving. So she could have gotten a call right at that moment. It’s possible.”

  “That just seems too convenient to me,” Julie said. “She drives up here from New Hampshire to look at Birch Brook—which she could have done lots of other times. Then she gets a call on her cell phone just at the very minute Rich comes out of the woods toward her, and she just has to roar off to go home—without looking the place over. Come on, Mike.”

  “I know, I know,” the policeman said. “It’s pretty thin, but I have absolutely no reason at this stage to doubt her. I guess mortgage brokers have to be on call all the time, like cops, and if she says she had a call about a major problem with a closing and had to leave right away to sort it out, well, that’s her story. So thanks for the coffee, and the statements. I’m going to go relieve Stearns out at Birch Brook.”

  “Do you have to stay there all night?” Julie asked.

  “Not if I can finally get ahold of my new officer. Anyway, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Julie,” Rich said as Mike stood to leave, “aren’t you going to tell us what you’re thinking?”

  Mike stopped to look at Rich, then turned to Julie.

  “But you need to get to Birch Brook,” she began, “and I haven’t got this clear in my mind yet.”

  “Maybe talking it out will help,” the chief said as he settled back into the chair.

  Julie began after she poured more coffee for all of them. She stood by the sink while the two men remained at the table.

  “There’s something new, something I just found out this afternoon.” She explained about meeting Luke at the Birch Brook site.

  “The planning folks are nuts,” Mike said. “I understand why Luke’s mad about that.”

  “Whatever. Let me just tell you what Luke said: that Frank didn’t know about the shady aspects of the ownership of Birch Brook until Luke started looking for letters in the historical society and told Frank why.”

  She paused for dramatic effect, but the two men just looked at her, waiting for more. Finally Rich said, “I sense you’d like a drum roll here, Julie, but I still don’t get it.”

  “Think about it, Rich. You were there when I asked him.”

  “I was there, but I obviously wasn’t applying your puzzle-solving skills to what Dyer said. You’re going to have to spell it out—for me, at least. Maybe Mike understands.”

  “I feel like I arrived in the middle of a movie,” the policeman said. “Put me down with Rich as one of the dumb kids at the back of the class.”

  “Okay, two things: One, it was Luke who put Frank on to the fact that the ownership of Birch Brook was clouded and maybe subject to dispute; two, that happened after Mary Ellen was killed.” Julie smiled brightly and looked at Rich and Mike hopefully. “You see it now?” she asked to break their silence.

  “I think I’m beginning to,” Mike said. “But I’m not sure where it leads.”

  “Give it a try,” Rich said. “Anything you say will be illuminating to me.”

  “I think what Julie is pointing at is that Mary Ellen’s murder isn’t connected to the letters that show Birch Brook might not belong to the Swanson family. Because—”

  “Right!” Julie shouted before Mike could continue. “Look at the dates.” She grabbed her pad and made a list:

  July 3: Mary Ellen murdered, 2 days ahead of date to back out of deal

  July 5: I found out Luke Dyer was reading Swanson papers

  July 11: I found Dan Swanson’s letter

  July 12: break-in at my house; copy stolen; found that original also missing

  “You see the problem, don’t you?” she asked, looking first at Mike and then at Rich. Neither spoke. “Okay, the first dates have to do with the land sale—but it was another week before the whole business of Dan Swanson’s letter came up. I was confusing them, but they’re separate. I was thinking the two things were directly connected, and that Luke had to be involved because he stood to gain by disputing Mary Ellen’s ownership of the land. But Dalton Scott pointed out that Luke had every reason to make the letter public, not to hide it. It’s only Frank who gained by suppressing the information in the letter—and in the Oakes diary, I think, though I’m still not sure what it proves.”

  “But Mary Ellen’s murder?” Rich interjected.

  “I think she was killed to stop her from exercising the option to back out. Look at the dates, Rich! If she had lived till July fifth she could have stopped the whole thing, which would have left both Frank and Luke in a pickle because they had borrowed so much—or at least Frank had.”

  “So both Frank and Luke gained by her dying on the third,” Rich said.

  “True. And that’s part of what confused me: they had a common interest in her dying before the fifth, but if Luke had been involved in that—alone or with Frank�
��he wouldn’t have continued digging in the Swanson papers. He wouldn’t do anything to draw attention to himself or the land. Whatever he might have gained financially from bringing the ownership into dispute would have been lost by focusing interest on the sale, because that would have revealed the motive for Mary Ellen to be killed when she was. So that’s where Luke’s interests diverged from Frank’s.”

  “Okay,” Mike said. “You’re saying Frank killed Mary Ellen to make sure the deal went through?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve got a question on that,” the policeman said. “Why did he do it at the groundbreaking site, and with a shovel that just happened to be there? That doesn’t sound premeditated to me.”

  “Nor to me,” Julie said. “I don’t think he planned to do it, and certainly not where and how. My guess—it’s only a guess, but I think it’s reasonable—is that he happened by the site, saw Mary Ellen, started talking to her about the price. And Mary Ellen, being Mary Ellen, got stubborn and said she had time to back out of the deal altogether. Now that would really have scared Frank because he just had to go ahead with this project because of his debts.”

  “So he panicked and killed her?” Mike asked.

  “That’s my guess, yes; and walking away with a bloody shovel wasn’t possible, so he hid it. And then afterwards he found out from Luke that the ownership might be disputed, which would put him right back where he was—in financial trouble.”

  “But don’t you think he could get back the money they paid?” Rich asked.

  “Probably so, or at least probably, eventually. But just imagine the legal mess that would follow if Luke made the various claims public. You know what the law’s like—a case like that would keep an army of lawyers busy for years. Frank couldn’t wait—he had borrowed heavily and needed to get the project under way. I really think his debts are at the heart of this, dragging him deeper and deeper.”

  “So he had good reason to steal the letter from the archives and then to steal your copy of it,” Rich concluded.

  “And to hide the family diary,” Julie added.

  “I see that,” Mike said.

  “Me, too,” Rich added. “But there’s a big problem here, Julie: Frank had plenty of chance to retrieve the shovel from the backhoe. He could come and go whenever he wanted at Birch Brook. Why would he leave it there?”

  “To implicate Luke!” Julie shouted. “That’s not a problem, Rich—it’s the solution. With Mary Ellen out of the way, Frank thinks the deal is safe. But then Luke starts to dig into the Swanson papers and tells Frank why. If Luke can prove the land didn’t really belong to the Swansons because they got it through trickery or blackmail or whatever, he could sue to regain the title—and make himself a lot of money, at Frank’s expense.”

  “So Frank had a double reason to get rid of the letter and the diary,” Mike said. “First, the money, and second, to keep us from seeing that Mary Ellen’s death was related to the sale. If he killed her to keep her from backing out, he sure didn’t want Luke Dyer messing around in the matter and putting everything up for review.”

  “Exactly! Doesn’t it all fit?” Julie said.

  “I’m still stuck on the shovel,” Rich said. “To implicate Luke, which is your assumption, Frank would have to be sure his own prints weren’t on it. That’s at a minimum. Better yet if Luke’s were—but how would he do that?”

  “I’m not sure he had to go that far,” Julie said. “I agree it would be hard to do that. But if the shovel doesn’t have any prints, the fact is, it’s still in Luke’s backhoe, and that would certainly make Luke a suspect. Wouldn’t you be interested in that, Mike?”

  “Sure. Though I guess Luke could argue that if he had killed Mary Ellen, he would have gotten rid of the shovel as soon as he could, and he had even more opportunity than Frank to do that.”

  “He could argue that, but wouldn’t you still be suspicious, Mike?”

  “Absolutely. Especially since his alibi for the time of Mary Ellen’s death was that he was at Birch Brook alone. Which means no alibi at all. And like Frank, as you said, Luke had a motive—to make sure Mary Ellen didn’t back out.”

  “But even if you’d suspect Luke,” Rich said, “that doesn’t put Frank in the clear. It just seems to me he’s sort of trapped still. If we follow Julie’s logic, he killed Mary Ellen and then figured he was in the clear on the deal. Then he found out from Luke about the Swanson papers and the clouded ownership. So he stole them, and he thinks he’s in the clear again. Except that Luke can still keep digging, and if he does, the whole business comes out. He’s got to do something to keep things from flying apart.”

  “And you know what that means,” Julie said.

  “No, I don’t think I do,” Rich replied.

  “I do,” Mike said. “He’s got to kill Luke.”

  “Exactly!” Julie said.

  CHAPTER 44

  “Damned answering machines!” Mike said more to himself than to Julie and Rich, who stood watching as he called Frank Nilsson. “Either he’s not home or he’s not answering,” Mike said, this time in their direction. “Can you find Luke’s home number for me?”

  Julie pulled the thin Ryland directory from the drawer and read the number out as Mike dialed it.

  “Mrs. Dyer,” he said with a calmness that amazed Julie, “this is Chief Barlow. I’d like to talk to your husband if I may.” He listened silently to her reply. “What time was that?” he asked. And then: “Did he say where they were meeting? Okay, thanks, Mrs. Dyer, I can check there. If he does get home before I catch up with him, would you just ask him to call me, please? Thanks. You too.”

  Julie didn’t need to ask for an explanation. “Frank called Luke around three o’clock,” Mike said, “just after he came in from taking those pictures at Birch Brook. Said something important had come up and they needed to talk. Mrs. Dyer says Luke left to meet Frank at four. At Birch Brook.” He smiled. “They’ll be surprised to find Officer Stearns when they get there.” He looked at his watch. “Almost four. I better get going.” He picked up his notebook and was reaching for the radio sitting next to it on the table when it crackled to life and a voice asked, “Chief Barlow? Stearns here.”

  “Go ahead,” Mike answered.

  “Sorry, Chief, but I had an urgent call. Two-car accident on the East Flat Road—sounds serious. I’m on my way, but I wanted you to know I had to leave the Birch Brook site. Maybe you can get someone else out there. It’s been real quiet.”

  Barlow frowned but told Stearns to continue to the accident scene. “I’ll head to Birch Brook now,” he said. “Anyone else around there?”

  “No. Like I said, it’s real quiet. You want me to come back after I do the accident?”

  “I’ll take over, Stearns. Got to go,” he said in Julie’s direction after he ended the call. “I’ll get in touch later.”

  Before Julie and Rich could say anything, the policeman was out the door, running across the garden toward his cruiser. Rich put his arm around her. “Nothing you can do now,” he said.

  “I guess not.”

  “Except, of course,” he quickly added, “to tell me what the hell’s going on. Why did you say Frank has to kill Luke?”

  “You said it, Rich: to keep things from flying apart. Every time Frank thought he had something under control, it came loose. It must have seemed like that Whack-a-Mole game to him: you hit one, and up comes another. If Mary Ellen backed out of the deal, Frank would be in big financial trouble. So he got control of that one by killing her. Then up popped Luke with questions about ownership, so he got that back under control by getting rid of the evidence. But then when Mike interviewed him this morning about where he was last Wednesday night, he realized something else had gotten loose—he was definitely under suspicion for the break-in.”

  “I follow all that—but not why he has to kill Luke.”

  “Because Luke could tell Mike what he told us—that he told Frank about the land problems. And that proved Fra
nk’s motive for getting rid of the letter and the diary. So killing Luke brings everything back under control.”

  “Not everything,” Rich said. “What about the shovel?”

  “That, too. If Luke’s dead, and even if there are no prints on the shovel, the police will assume he killed Mary Ellen and hid the shovel in his backhoe.”

  “If Luke’s dead, doesn’t Mike have to find his killer?”

  “Not if he committed suicide.”

  “But you said Frank wants to kill him.”

  “He does. For all the reasons I said. But he has to make it look like suicide. At least that’s what I think he’s going to try. I just hope Mike gets there in time!”

  The next hour felt to Julie like the longest day she had ever spent. Rich tried to read papers, but Julie’s pacing distracted him. He suggested they take a walk, but Julie wanted to stay in the house in case Mike called. He suggested they take the portable phone out into the garden and he’d do some work on it. She agreed.

  Julie circled around and around Rich, who was on his knees, pulling weeds.

  “I wish we could drive out to Birch Brook, but Mike would kill us.”

  “Wrong word,” Rich said.

  “I can’t stand this waiting. I just hope Mike gets there in time.”

  “He’ll call as soon as he can, Julie. We just have to be patient.”

  The phone rang, and Julie answered it on the first ring. “Not interested!” she shouted and hit the OFF button. “Damned telemarketers!” she said. “I hope Mike wasn’t trying to call right then.”

  “You weren’t on the line for more than two seconds.”

  “Maybe three,” she said. “It’s after five, Rich,” Julie replied. “This is taking too long! I just wish …”

  And as if in response to her wish, the phone rang. Rich watched as she smiled and the smile swelled to fill her face. “I’m so glad, Luke,” she said. “I was expecting Mike, but it’s even better to hear your voice. No, I understand—it was good of Mike to have you call. Yes, I’m sure he’ll be busy. Well, thanks, but really, I don’t deserve any credit. Okay.”