Breaking Ground (10 page)

“Good to hear from you,” he assured her confidently. “Thanks for talking to Steven Swanson. He's happy about everything going ahead, and Henry LaBelle is handling the closing on Monday. So everyone wins: Our project goes forward, and, most important, you'll get the rest of Mary Ellen's gift right away.”

Julie considered pointing out that not quite
everyone
won, since the day of the closing of the land sale would also be the day of Mary Ellen's funeral. Instead, she told him that she hadn't really encouraged Steven, who seemed quite content for things to proceed.

“Well, it's settled anyway, and I'm glad the society is going to benefit as Mary Ellen wanted. That new building is going to be quite an addition for you, isn't it?”

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Nilsson—”

“Frank, please,” he interrupted. “And I hope I can call you Julie. Even though we haven't talked much, I feel very positive about you and what you're doing over there. Mary Ellen did, too.”

“Well, Frank, thank you for saying that. As a matter of fact, I was wondering if we might get together when it's convenient for you to talk a little about Ryland Historical Society. Mary Ellen had mentioned to me that she thought you would make an excellent trustee, and we're always looking for strong new members.”

“Sure, I'm very interested. Mary Ellen did talk to me about this last fall sometime. I think I gave her a résumé.”

“That's right. I have it right here, and I'd like to talk to you about what we're doing and whether you'd be able to get involved. Of course it's up to the board to elect new members, but part of my job is to help gather information for them, so if you'd be interested, I'd enjoy sitting down and talking a bit.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Things are going to get pretty busy with the closing and starting the project, so maybe we could get together before that. How would tomorrow be? Say, breakfast at The Greek?”

“Let me just check.” Julie knew her schedule tomorrow included more tours, but the first wasn't until ten. Still, she didn't want to appear too eager. “Yes, that's fine,” she said, after what she hoped he would interpret as a dutiful review of her schedule for the day. “What time would be good for you?”

“Seven-thirty?”

“Great, I'll meet you at the diner then. I'm looking forward to it.”

“Me too,” he said before ending the call.

What Julie called the diner and what Frank Nilsson called The Greek was the same small restaurant just north of town on the way toward Ryland Skiway. The first time she had had breakfast there—with Mike last year during the investigation of the
historical society's missing artifacts—Julie had learned the evolution of the diner. In Mike's early days in town it had been run by a Greek family, and the name was still current with old-timers. Julie honestly couldn't recall its official current name—even though a sign out front said Bert's Family Restaurant and the coffee was served in mugs that said The Food Place—but if you made a date to meet at The Greek or the diner, the result was the same. She wondered why Nilsson, whose résumé indicated he wasn't a Ryland native, used the old-timers' name. Something to ask him, she decided, an icebreaker to open the conversation. After that, she would focus on what really interested her: Did Nilsson play any part in Mary Ellen's death? Of course I could just cut to the chase and ask him, she said to herself with a laugh as she closed her office, locked the door to Swanson House, and headed home to Rich.

At dinner, Rich had told Julie that the person who had waited on him at Holdsworth's hardware store was certain: The latest frost ever in Ryland had occurred in early June, and that had been nearly fifty years ago. So the odds of a frost two days after the Fourth of July were simply overwhelming. But around two o'clock on the morning of Friday the sixth, when Julie got up to rummage for a third blanket, she would have been willing to bet against even those odds. Now, at six, when Rich came back up to the bedroom dressed in a sweatshirt and long pants, he reported that the thermometer outside the kitchen window read 40 degrees.

“And you're going to run?” she asked.

“I do it in Orono when it's freezing, so this isn't a problem, though I did decide on pants instead of shorts. Sure you won't join me?”

Julie said that she was taking a break from their early-morning runs.

“Then I'm off,” Rich said. “Have a good breakfast.”

“I don't have to meet Nilsson till seven-thirty. You'll be back by then.”

“Not today. I'm taking a long one.”

“Not slowed down by me.”

Instead of responding, Rich asked what she wanted for dinner and said he'd take care of shopping. Knowing she wasn't going to go back to sleep, Julie luxuriated in just lounging under the covers. But when she began to preview the breakfast meeting with Frank Nilsson, she decided to give up and take her shower and dress.

Julie found a table for two by the window at the back of the diner, a spot where she and Frank could talk without being
overheard. But not without being seen. Between 6:30 and 8:30 every weekday, the diner served as Ryland's principal business center. Carpenters and plumbers and builders constituted the first wave. They were gone by 7:30, replaced by shop owners and professionals, who in turn left by 8:30, their tables taken over by retirees and tourists. The time Frank selected, 7:30, seemed to Julie to match his status. As she saw the clock behind the counter registering exactly that moment, Frank entered the diner, spotted her at the table in the back, and waved.

It took him some minutes to reach her, however, as he stopped to exchange words with other diners—here a painter, marked by the swatches on his cap, on his way to the door; there another arrivee known to Julie as an insurance agent; finally, with the manager of Ryland Savings Bank, who was seated at the large table that combined the early and late crowds. Frank's progress reminded Julie of watching the U.S. president make his way up the aisle of the House of Representatives for his State of the Union speech and pausing to glad-hand all along the way. At the large table, the bank manager turned to look in Julie's direction as he spoke with Frank.

When Frank at last reached her, he said, “Would have been on time if I hadn't stopped to talk, but it's good to keep in touch with town opinion. Hope I didn't keep you,” he added as he took the seat opposite her.

Frank Nilsson was a trim, well-built man. From the date of his high school graduation on his résumé, Julie made him out to be forty-five, though his athletic body could have belonged to someone ten years younger. He had dark black hair cut short and carefully brushed. Everything in his appearance was careful, she noted as they ordered breakfast—his crisply pressed tan slacks, long-sleeved cotton dress shirt with cuffs just visible under his green cashmere sweater, well polished tasseled loafers. The only
thing surprising was his gray mustache. Facial hair seemed out of place in someone so carefully done up, and the color was surprising given his black hair.

“Of course everyone's talking about it,” Frank said, interrupting Julie's contemplation of him. “Two murders in such a short time, and both such prominent Rylanders. Natural curiosity. But then you've heard all this, I'm sure.”

“I don't know so many people the way you do,” Julie answered.

“Well, it takes a while to get comfortable in a little town like ours. Just one, soft-boiled,” Frank sharply corrected the waitress, who had come to the table to say the special was two eggs and toast. “And whole wheat, no butter,” he added.

Julie felt embarrassed that she had ordered two eggs over easy with sausage and home fries, but she had eaten at the diner enough to know that if you didn't take advantage of their high-cholesterol offerings, you might as well stay home and indulge in yogurt with berries.

“Have to watch it,” Frank said to her when the waitress left them. “Every ounce counts at my age,” he added as he tapped himself just above his belt—an area that looked to Julie as flat as the table they were sitting at. Instead of flattering him by saying so, Julie decided to use her icebreaker: “Funny that this place has so many different names, isn't it? When you suggested meeting here you called it The Greek, the way old-line Ryland people do.”

Frank laughed. “Afraid I'm not ‘old-line Ryland,' but my wife is, and that's what she always calls it. What
is
it called now, by the way?” he added, looking around the room for an answer.

“Actually, I have no idea,” Julie replied, “and no one else seems to know, either. So your wife is from Ryland?”

“Born and bred, quite a few generations. Patty's maiden name was Oakes—you've probably seen the name in the archives.”

“I think so. Where did you grow up?”

“York; that's in southern Maine if you're not familiar. So I'm not from away, but I'm certainly not old Ryland. Patty and I met in Portland. I was at Bowdoin, and she was at Westbrook. Bowdoin was all-men then, and Westbrook was all-women, so there were lots of mixers. We got married the year she graduated and lived in Wells for a couple of years, and then in Portland when I was doing projects down there. But she always wanted to return to Ryland, and frankly, I was happy to. It's such a great little town and a perfect place to raise kids. Both of ours graduated from Ryland Academy. Great school. They're in college now, but they like to come home anytime they can.”

“Do you live right in town?”

“Not anymore. After the kids graduated from the academy, we rented our place in town and built a new one out at the skiway.”

“I lived up there last year,” Julie said. “In a condo. It was really nice.”

“Ski?”

“Afraid not, but everyone tells me it's a great ski mountain. I'm going to take lessons next year and get started.”

“I can recommend a good instructor when you're ready. I helped develop the ski area and the condos and keep my hand in things there.”

Their breakfasts arrived, and they both began to eat, letting the conversation slide as they did so. After he had crushed his boiled egg into small bits, Frank continued. “So tell me about your plans for Ryland Historical Society, Julie. I hear you're really doing a great job there, by the way. Mary Ellen was so happy. What a shame!”

“Mary Ellen was a great supporter of the society, as you know,” Julie said in the automatic way she had learned to talk about major benefactors. Mary Ellen's intrusive and inconsistent behavior during the planning of the new center wasn't pertinent now. Julie
elaborated on Mary Ellen's gift, the many ways the society would benefit from the building, her hopes for increased programming and activities to increase attendance. “So it's a pretty exciting time for us, and as you know, we couldn't do any of it without the trustees. Mary Ellen certainly thought you'd have a lot to contribute.”

“Mary Ellen was always looking for more money for her causes,” Frank replied.

“Oh, I don't mean money. Or not
just
money, though the trustees do support the society financially.” Or
some
do, she said to herself, thinking particularly of Clif Holdsworth's notable lack of generosity. “There's so much to do in setting directions, developing policy, overseeing operations. It's a very good board, but as you probably know, we lost two other trustees last year, and now, of course, Mary Ellen.”

“Worth Harding and Martha Preston, right,” he said. “Tell me, do you really think I could offer something on the board, really help out? I don't do things halfway, and I don't enjoy just sitting on a board for the sake of it. If I came on, I'd get pretty involved.”

“That's exactly what we need, but as I said before, the decision to elect new members is up to the board.”

“Understood. But you're the director, and I'd come on only if
you
thought I could be helpful.”

“From everything I know, you'd be very helpful. With the new project, for example, Dalton Scott's been such a big help because he's an architect. And we need additional skills like that. You've done so many real estate projects that you could really add to the board's expertise.”

“I do know a little about developments, but I don't have any experience with historical societies. Before I moved here I was mostly in retirement communities, in York County and down the coast. Ryland Skiway was my first project up here.”

“Birch Brook sounds pretty big,” Julie prompted him.

Frank finished his egg, which he had been slowly nibbling at as Julie tucked into her decidedly larger breakfast, which she was a little embarrassed to see was now finished. The waitress refilled their coffee cups, and Julie sipped from hers as she waited for Frank to talk about his new project.

“It's big for Ryland,” he said after their plates were removed.

“Thirty-five townhouses to start with, but that's only phase one. We've got over four hundred acres there—lots of room for more units if things go as we hope. Terrible shame Mary Ellen won't be around to see the project.”

“She was happy about it?”

“Happy to sell the land,” Frank said. “Who wouldn't be? She didn't have any plans for it. She struck a hard bargain, but it was fair.”

“I'm sure it was, but I sort of got the impression that Mary Ellen wasn't entirely sure about it.” Julie didn't consider a small lie too high a price to pay for drawing out Frank on the subject of the land sale, but she was surprised by the vehemence of his reaction.

“Where'd you get that idea?” he asked bluntly, and locked directly on her eyes with a look Julie thought almost menacing.

“Oh, nothing in particular. I just seem to have the impression that she was maybe having second thoughts.” Okay, Julie said to herself, if you get started with a small lie you have to be ready to keep going.