Breaking Ground (31 page)

Rich made a quick calculation. If he showed himself and walked toward the vehicle, he'd have some explaining to do, especially if the driver was Luke Dyer or Frank Nilsson. And he didn't
really relish the thought of confronting someone by himself so far from any passing cars down on the road. If he stayed out of sight, the driver might get into the toolbox and retrieve the shovel. But maybe it didn't have anything to do with the shovel.

The vehicle was still sitting by the backhoe, the driver apparently waiting inside. For what? He didn't know that, either. Okay, he finally told himself, I might as well do it. He moved quickly from behind the tree and then broke into a jog toward the parked SUV. I'll make it up as I go, he told himself, but the main thing is to find out who's in that monster and what he wants. Before Rich could get close, the engine of the SUV roared, and the driver pulled it sharply around and hit the gas. As he got to backhoe, he could just see the back of the vehicle as it cleared the hill. And the license plate. He didn't have a head for figures and wasn't sure he read the numbers right, but at least he got the state.

Since Rich did most of the driving on the Orono–Ryland commute, Julie had suggested several times that he needed a cell phone. He resisted, telling Julie he found no need to have a phone attached to him 24-7. And, he also, Julie assumed, didn't want to be like seemingly everyone else in Maine, talking on a cell phone while driving and not paying attention to the road. But she had resolved to break the impasse by buying both of them cell phones for his birthday in September. She'd done away with her own upon moving to Maine, but now that coverage was better in the Ryland area, she was ready for one again. As she drove into Ryland she wished she had acted sooner. She wasn't sure if she'd go all the way home to call Mike or stop along the way. Were there any pay phones left these days? She was coming up to the diner when she remembered that there was a phone there.

She fished some change out of the center console and rushed to the pay phone beside the front door of the diner. Two adolescent boys in those baggy pants so popular even in Ryland were standing in front of it, and a third was using the phone. Julie stepped back so as not to overhear the conversation. Then she began to pace, thinking about the shovel and feeling clever that she had thought of the backhoe as its location. Well, not
thought
so much as dreamed—or visualized it, really, Thursday night when she had trouble sleeping at the Black Crow Inn. But if it came to her in such an odd way, there was a compelling logic, she realized—the backhoe was simply the perfect place to quickly dispose of the shovel. As she paced she still wondered why Frank hadn't removed it—he'd certainly had time and opportunity. And so had Luke, for that matter. Well, everything would come clear when it was checked for prints. So why were these kids taking so long?

“You, like, need to use this?” one of them said in her direction.

“I do, yes. I need to call the police,” she added.

“Dudes,” her questioner said to his friends, “we should, like, let this lady make her call.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” Julie said as the three sauntered off. She couldn't remember the number of the Ryland Police Station and so called 9-1-1 and told the dispatcher she needed to talk to Chief Barlow right away.

“Is this an emergency?” the woman asked.

“Not an accident or something, but I really have to talk to the chief right away.”

“Let me see if I can patch you through. What's your name, please?”

Julie listened impatiently to some clicking and pulsing on the line, fearing she would be cut off, but in thirty seconds or so Mike came on.

“I don't have anything more,” he said abruptly. “I said I'd call when I did.”

“But I have something, Mike: the shovel. We found it!”

“Where?”

Julie explained, omitting the reasons she and Rich had purposely gone to Birch Brook to search the backhoe. “Damn,” the policeman continued. “That's the best news yet on this case. Where are you?” She told him. “Okay, stay there. I'm up the highway about two miles. I'll meet you at the diner.”

She heard the siren before she saw the pulsing blue light of the Ryland police cruiser. Mike pulled into the parking lot beside her and rolled down the window. “You'd better take your car so you can leave if I get tied up out there. I'll follow.”

Julie knew it wasn't logical, but having the cruiser behind her made her drive well under the speed limit. When they reached the parking area at Birch Brook, Mike pulled beside her.

“Up there,” she said and pointed to the knoll.

“Hop in. That path looks doable.”

As they pulled over the top of the knoll, she saw Rich standing beside the backhoe—waving in welcome.

“It's in the toolbox,” she shouted to Mike when they had gotten out of the car. He started in that direction, but Rich stopped him: “There's something else,” he said. He explained about the black Cadillac SUV, and his suspicion that its driver had come to retrieve the shovel but had been scared off by Rich.

“Get the plate?” Mike asked.

“I
think
it was 358 266,” Rich said. “But I didn't have anything to write it down on. But I do know for sure it was a New Hampshire plate.”

“What?” Julie asked loudly.

“New Hampshire. I'm sure of that.”

“Maybe Frank borrowed someone's car,” Julie said. “Or Luke—”

“Or maybe it was someone else,” Mike said. “Let me run that.”

Julie and Rich stood by the car as Mike tapped some keys on the small computer on the front seat of the cruiser. “Takes a little longer when it's out of state,” he said through the window. “The shovel's not going anywhere, and while we're waiting, Julie, why don't you explain why you were looking in that backhoe.”

Julie still felt embarrassed that the idea of searching the backhoe had come to her when she saw the machine in her mind's eye, so she stressed the logic. “I just thought this machine was sitting there where Mary Ellen was killed, and since the shovel hasn't turned up, it seemed possible someone had hidden it in the back-hoe. It isn't a place the police would have searched.”

“Should have been,” Mike said. “I can see that someone would hide it there, but why haven't they retrieved it before now? I mean, this backhoe's been sitting out here for almost a week. Lots of
opportunity to … oh, there's the read on the plate.” He looked down and grinned.

“Myerson,” he said. “Bedford, New Hampshire.”

“Myerson?” Rich said. “Who's he?”

“Not
he!
” Julie shouted. “Steven's wife Elizabeth uses her maiden name, Myerson. But what would she be doing here?”

“Maybe she wanted to see the site,” Rich suggested. “Didn't you say she's in real estate?”

“She's a mortgage broker, but that's different from someone who helps you buy property. But Steven does. Maybe he's using her car and came out to look at Birch Brook for a client or something.”

“Is he a broker in Maine?” Rich asked. “You have to be licensed by the state, and he lives in New Hampshire.”

“Hold on, you two,” Mike said. “Before we get into all that, the important question is why the driver tore off when Rich approached the vehicle. That's what you said, isn't it?”

“Definitely. It just roared off as soon as I started toward it.”

“And you didn't see who was driving—man or woman?”

“No, sorry, the windows are tinted.”

“Okay. Then the first thing to do is find the vehicle. Excuse me a minute.” Mike got into the cruiser and used his radio to put out an alert to stop the Cadillac SUV.

“Think it's time I saw that shovel,” he said when he finished. “In the toolbox, you said?”

Julie and Rich accompanied him to the backhoe and stood below while he climbed up and opened the toolbox. “Looks like a shovel with a ribbon all right. I better call for the crime lab—don't want to mess this up by digging in there,” he added as he climbed down and pulled the cell phone off his belt to place the call.

Rich took Julie's arm and directed her back toward the tree he had sat under before. “Let's sit down. Wish we had brought lunch.”

“How can you be hungry already after that big breakfast? And all that's happened! I can't even think about food.”

“Because you're thinking about what all this means.”

“That too. I mean, it's pretty telling that one of the Swansons was here, don't you think? And especially that he, or she, drove off when they saw you. That's got to be suspicious.”

“Agreed, but—” Before Rich could finish, they heard the crackle of the police radio: “State to Chief Barlow, over.” The policeman ran toward his cruiser, and Rich had to put his arm on Julie to stop her from joining him. “He'll tell us,” Rich said. But the radio was loud enough so they could hear both ends of the conversation from where they sat:

“You put out a call on a Caddy SUV, black, New Hampshire 358 266?”

“Right. You got it?” Mike asked.

“Sitting behind it, down at Gilson—just inside the line. What do you want me to do?”

“Routine check. Keep it there—I'll be down in fifteen minutes. Kill some time. Do a safety inspection, walk around the car. Say your computer is slow on the registration. Just keep it there till I get there. Who's the driver?

“The owner—Elizabeth Myerson. She's pissed and nervous.”

“So it's Elizabeth, not her husband, who came here and then got out so fast,” Julie said before the policeman could speak.

“I'm in a bind here. The crime scene officers have to call me back because they said they can't come till Monday, and that's just not acceptable. I told them to get permission for Saturday overtime and get their butts up here. They'll call me back about that. But it'll take at least an hour for them to get here from Augusta once they clear it, and I don't want to leave this site unprotected. I'm going to call in my new officer to cover it, but she's off this weekend. If I can't reach her right away on my way to Gilson, I'll
get that statie to come cover until I can reach her. Anyway, the point is—”

“We can stay, Mike, if that's what you were going to ask,” Julie said.

“That'd be great. Don't do a thing. Just hang around till the statie gets here. I don't think anyone will come by, but if they do, don't say anything about the shovel—just make sure no one goes up on that backhoe.” Rich said they would. Then Barlow said: “Look, there's a small problem here about your being on private land when you found this. I don't want any technicality to screw things up. I gather you two were hiking and came through here to get to the road.”

“Exactly,” Julie said before Rich could respond. “And we did the same the other day, when Frank and Luke were here.”

“And of course they didn't object,” Mike said.

“Not at all—told us to do it anytime,” Julie said.

“Good. I need to go. Be careful.”

Julie and Rich stood by the big machine as the cruiser bumped down the path toward the road. They heard the siren as it disappeared in the trees, heading back toward the highway that led to Gilson.

“Let's go sit down over there,” Rich said. “We can keep an eye on things from there.”

“I just can't believe it, Rich,” Julie said as they found spots under a large maple. “I was so sure Frank Nilsson had done it. That's still just so fishy about his alibi. But it was Elizabeth!”

“You don't know that.”

“No, but it looks like it was her, doesn't it? Why else would she be here—and then run off so quickly when she saw you—except if she was coming to retrieve that shovel?”

“Plausible, but maybe she really was just looking over the site—for an investment or something, or to tell her husband in case he had some buyer for a condo.”

“So why'd she rush away?”

“She doesn't know me—maybe she got scared that I was some sort of nut. Or maybe she thought she shouldn't have driven her SUV up the hill and the owners were going to chew her out. There could be an innocent explanation.”

“True. But you're overlooking a big thing: The shovel is still here. If Frank killed Mary Ellen and hid it in the toolbox, why didn't he come for it before now? He had plenty of time. And so did Luke —even more since he works out here. I just don't see how Elizabeth Myerson fits in all this. What's that?”

Julie jumped up. Rich did the same. “What's what?” he said.

“That noise—it sounded like a car.”

They walked to the edge of the hill and peered toward the road. “Get down!” Julie commanded in a whisper. Rich obeyed and dropped down on the ground beside her.

“Holy shit!” she exclaimed. “It's Luke.” They watched as Luke walked slowly around his truck and reached into the passenger side and extracted a large leather bag. “With a gun!” Julie exclaimed.

“He's got a gun!” she repeated, her voice more urgent for its low tone.

“Try camera,” Rich said as he extended his arm to point toward the scene below them. “He's taking pictures, that's all.”

Luke was walking around the sign for Birch Brook Condos and, as Rich had said, taking photographs of the sign—from the front, close up, far away, and then from each side. He was taking his time, walking and snapping, and Julie began to think she'd never be able to stand up. “This is crazy,” she whispered to Rich. “I can't just lie here. Let's get up and go down and talk to him.”

They pulled themselves to a standing position, dusted off their clothes, and started down the hill toward Luke. When they were halfway down, he looked up from his photographing and saw them coming toward him. Julie immediately waved and yelled his name in the friendliest tone she could summon up.