Julie nearly lost her grip on her glass of iced tea and had to use her left hand to steady it and lower it to the table. Thaddeus Oakes’s diary might contain information about the Birch Brook property. Henry had mentioned that the dispute between the Swansons and the Dyers over the property had been settled by a survey. And it was sometime in the 1880s!
“I should be letting you get back to your packing,” she said to Patty. “About that diary—maybe we should take a quick look together and see if it’s here somewhere. I’ll just go through these things in the three boxes and that way you can also see what materials I’m taking.”
Patty agreed, and they spent another half-hour examining the contents of the three boxes Julie planned to accept on behalf of the Ryland Historical Society. Thaddeus Oakes’s diary was not in them. Patty suggested they take a quick look at the other boxes to be sure, and again watched as Julie thumbed through the items.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised my mother kept all these things,” Patty commented. “Lord knows I’ve kept enough memorabilia from when my own kids were young, and it probably will all end up in the recycling one day, just like these boxes should.”
“Of course if you should find the diary—t” Julie said. But before she could finish the sentence a man’s voice interrupted: “What diary?”
“Oh, Frank, I didn’t hear you,” Patty said. “Julie and I were just going through these boxes. How was Boothbay?”
Frank Nilsson, wearing a crisp cotton shirt and creased slacks, walked into the room from the steps and extended his hand to shake Julie’s. “Everything’s fine in Boothbay,” he said. “Went down to the coast yesterday to check on a project I have going there,” he added in Julie’s direction. “Stayed over at our camp. I finished a little earlier than I expected,” he said, this time in the direction of his wife. “So what are you two up to here?”
“I told you I was going to call Julie about the papers,” Patty said. “She was so great to come right out, and she’s been through the boxes and is going to take three of them for the society.”
“Glad to hear it,” Frank said. “I hope I get some credit for this,” he added to Julie. “After I stopped by your place, I went to see Tabby Preston in the archives, just to be sure Patty’s family papers would be safe, I encouraged my wife to get a move on with it.”
“I appreciate it.” Try as she did, Julie couldn’t read the look on Frank’s face. He paused, looking directly into Julie’s eyes. Then he abruptly turned to his wife: “But what diary were you talking about?”
“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 business 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.