Breaking Ground Read online

  BREAKING

  GROUND

  BREAKING

  GROUND

  BY WILLIAM D. ANDREWS

  ISLANDPORT PRESS

  P.O. Box 10

  Yarmouth, Maine 04096

  www.islandportpress.com

  [email protected]

  Copyright © 2011 by William D. Andrews

  First Islandport Press edition published in June 2011

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-934031-77-3

  Library of Congress Card Number: 2011922198

  Book jacket design by Karen F. Hoots / Hoots Design

  Book designed by Molly E. Charest for Islandport Press

  Publisher Dean L. Lunt

  Also from William D. Andrews:

  Stealing History

  Also from Islandport Press:

  Old Maine Woman: Stories from The Coast to The County

  by Glenna Johnson Smith

  Where Cool Waters Flow

  by Randy Spencer

  Contentment Cove and Young

  by Miriam Colwell

  Windswept, Mary Peters, and Silas Crockett

  by Mary Ellen Chase

  My Life in the Maine Woods

  by Annette Jackson

  Shoutin’ into the Fog

  by Thomas Hanna

  Nine Mile Bridge

  by Helen Hamlin

  In Maine

  by John N. Cole

  The Cows Are Out!

  by Trudy Chambers Price

  Hauling by Hand

  by Dean Lawrence Lunt

  down the road a piece: A Storyteller’s Guide to Maine

  by John McDonald

  Live Free and Eat Pie: A Storyteller’s Guide to New Hampshire

  by Rebecca Rule

  Not Too Awful Bad: A Storyteller’s Guide to Vermont

  by Leon Thompson

  A Moose and a Lobster Walk into a Bar

  by John McDonald

  Headin’ for the Rhubarb: A New Hampshire Dictionary (well, sorta)

  by Rebecca Rule

  At One: In a Place Called Maine

  by Lynn Plourde and Leslie Mansmann

  Dahlov Ipcar’s Farmyard Alphabet

  by Dahlov Ipcar

  The Cat at Night

  by Dahlov Ipcar

  My Wonderful Christmas Tree

  by Dahlov Ipcar

  These and other New England books are available at:

  www.islandportpress

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Right after the publication of Stealing History, many friends and many more folks I met at book signings and talks asked if a sequel was in the works. It was, and Breaking Ground is it. I hope those who asked for the sequel will enjoy it. I want to thank those who helped, some who read and commented on this book, and some who more generally encouraged me to keep my fingers on the keyboard when a long trek on snowshoes had more appeal: Al Cressy, Bruce Edwards, John Jebb, Jeff Newsom, Francis Richardson, Kathy Richardson, Saranne Taylor. A small mystery surrounds the question of whether my wife, Debby Andrews, has read Stealing History. That’s best left to Julie Williamson to solve, but I express again my thanks to her, along with my guess that, no lover of mysteries, she’ll skip this one.

  At Islandport Press, Amy Canfield repeated her performance as a sharp-eyed and supportive editor, and Trudy Price arranged promotions and signings both cheerfully and efficiently. Warm thanks to them.

  My friends on the staff and board of trustees of the Bethel Historical Society suffered the odd delusion that they could find parallels between that organization and the Ryland Historical Society. To them I say, give it up. More seriously, I also say hearty thanks—for all they do to advance the Bethel Historical Society, and for giving me the chance to be part of that vital and fun cultural institution. Ryland should be so lucky.

  PROLOGUE

  The excavation site looked colorful, festive. Like a mother sheltering her children, a dark green tent spread its top and its partially furled walls over the patch of grass where construction stakes with small orange flags marked the outline for the digging. Also under the tent were chairs and a small table, and leaning against the table were shovels, each decorated with a bright red ribbon. The red ribbons contrasted colorfully with the green of the tent and the yellow of a backhoe that sat off to the side, with its long arm that ended in a toothed scoop turned down and tucked underneath like the neck of a sleeping swan.

  Closer up, at the edge of the wood, just barely within the shade of the tent on the recently mown ground, was another splotch of red, but this red was not sharp and confined like the ribbons. Instead, it pooled around the head of a body crumpled and lying facedown in the grass.

  Blood. So colorful. Not so festive.

  CHAPTER 1

  Julie Williamson considered it positively absurd to quarrel about how many shovels to use at the groundbreaking for the Ryland Historical Society’s Daniel Swanson II Center.

  Similar disagreements had occurred over the past year, during which, as the historical society’s director, Julie had been overseeing final planning for the project. Of course she understood that Mary Ellen Swanson, as the principal donor, had every right to express her opinions and expect them to be listened to. And Mary Ellen exercised that right at every meeting of the board of trustees and its building committee and, in what seemed to Julie, her daily—and rarely announced—visits to Julie’s office. As she fell asleep at night, Julie could still hear Mary Ellen’s questions in her head:

  Should the main entrance door be wood or metal? If wood, should its color match or contrast with that of the facade? Should the door have windows? Should it open to the left or the right?

  Was the color of the library walls perhaps just a bit too dark? Wouldn’t a nice cream be better?

  Should the signs on the restroom doors say “Gentlemen” and “Ladies”? Wouldn’t “Men” and “Women” be more, well, up-to-date?

  And on and on Mary Ellen went, questioning choices, suggesting alternatives, raising hypothetical issues. The problem wasn’t really that she was trying to impose her will; the problem was that she didn’t know her will. She had as many questions as there were details in the building plan, and she insisted on trotting them all out and subjecting everyone around her to the endless stream of doubts, thoughts, insights, and suggestions.

  Now, just a day before tomorrow’s July third groundbreaking, Mary Ellen was at it again. About the number of shovels! Because she was the major financial backer and because the new building would bear her late husband’s name, Mary Ellen Swanson was the obvious person to take a ceremonial scoop of earth and declare the ground broken. But last Friday, Mary Ellen had dropped by Julie’s office to suggest that Julie, as the society’s director, should also heft a shovel. Julie had expressed her humble thanks for the honor and tried to change the subject.

  “So we’ll require two shovels,” Mary Ellen had then said. “I’ll take mine home as a memento of the occasion, and you can keep yours here in your office.” Eager not to prolong discussion of a point of such little significance, Julie had promptly agreed.

  But this morning Mary Ellen had returned—this time to propose that there be four shovels—“one for each of us,” she had said. Responding to Julie’s quizzical look, Mary Ellen had explained: “You, me, and Steven and Elizabeth. I think they should each take a scoop, too. I’m sure Clif Holdsworth would be happy to provide the extra shovels. He should do something for this project.”

  Julie couldn’t miss Mary Ellen’s dig at Clif Holdsworth. Trustee and treasurer of the Ryland Historical Society, Clif owned the local hardware and lumber store and so could readily provide shovels. He was quite well off, but had contributed only $1,000 to the construction project, a fact t
hat rankled Julie almost as much as it obviously did Mary Ellen.

  As for the addition of Mary Ellen’s son and daughter-in-law to the ceremony, Julie would be happy to comply, even though Steven—Julie thought of him as Always-Steven-Never-Steve—and his wife hadn’t been involved in the planning of the Swanson Center and were, as far as Julie could tell from brief conversations with them, uninterested in the whole idea. Steven had at least been polite, but Elizabeth was simply cold about the project—and about pretty much everything else, really.

  After Mary Ellen left, Julie had reluctantly called Clif Holdsworth to ask for the extra shovels. With equal reluctance, he had agreed. But fifteen minutes after that, Mary Ellen had called Julie to say she thought Steven and Elizabeth should share a shovel. “Elizabeth isn’t really a Swanson, of course. She still uses her maiden name, you know,” Mary Ellen had explained with no small amount of distaste in her tone, “so I don’t think she needs a separate shovel. Wouldn’t it be better, symbolically, if the married couple used the same one?”

  Julie agreed—and decided not to mention that she had already called Clif to ask for four shovels. She also decided not to call him back to reduce the order, guessing that before tomorrow morning Mary Ellen was likely to think of someone else who needed a shovel. Actually, Julie wondered if Mary Ellen was physically capable of lifting one herself. She was very tall and achingly thin. Julie couldn’t quite put a finger on Mary Ellen’s age, but she was aware that the gray-haired, patrician-looking elderly woman had grown more angular and grayer over the past year.

  Anyway, the main thing was to get the ceremony over with and the construction under way, Julie thought. No, the main thing, she reminded herself, was to keep Mary Ellen from driving her crazy and stretching out the project to the point where the new building wouldn’t be completed until Julie retired! And since she was only thirty-five and had been in the job for just a year, her retirement wasn’t exactly on the horizon.

  The new building had been one of the reasons Julie had accepted the job as director of the Ryland Historical Society. It would expand the society’s three-building campus and provide secure, climate-controlled space for the papers and artifacts currently crammed into the archives/library and attic of the building where Julie’s office was located. That building, Swanson House, was also named for the family, which had roots so far back in Ryland that even Julie hadn’t sorted them out yet. Mary Ellen took particular delight in the fact that with the new center named in her husband’s honor, the Swansons would have an even bigger presence at the society. The new Swanson Center would support better public programming and attract more scholars and genealogists to use the rich collections. It would, in other words, improve the image and reputation of the Ryland Historical Society—and of its new director. Julie wasn’t at all ashamed of her ambition. If she helped her career by helping the Ryland Historical Society, wasn’t everyone a winner?

  Besides giving her career a boost, the job had appealed to Julie for another reason: Ryland, Maine, was a two-hour drive from Orono, where her boyfriend taught American history at the University of Maine. She and Rich O’Brian had met in graduate school at the University of Delaware. He finished his doctorate a year before her and took the Maine job, and during that year they kept the relationship going by commuting by plane as their finances allowed. So when the Ryland job became available, Julie pursued it enthusiastically, and when she got the offer Rich was as happy as she was.

  Their relationship was evolving. During the past year they had settled into an easy pattern for their visits. They’d enjoy one of Rich’s gourmet meals, run and hike, or just sit reading or working. Julie kept trying to engage Rich in the board games and jigsaw puzzles she was drawn to, but he usually begged off on the grounds of having to read student papers or prepare lectures. Rich was quiet, steady, supportive, and loving. He was easy to be around, comfortable enough in his own skin to let Julie relax in hers. While she was ambitious and outgoing, he was self-contained and quiet. Julie liked to take hold of problems and solve them, and Rich enjoyed contemplating the bigger picture. She was a doer and Rich a thinker. As much as she hated the cliché, she had to admit that the old saw about opposites attracting applied to them. But she just wasn’t sure what the long-term held—or even what she wanted. Marriage? After so much time together, neither could help talking about it, but the conversations had been casual and indirect, and Julie sometimes did wonder what life would be like if they were together all the time. Would her frenetic pace wear him out? Would his constantly calm manner drive her mad? Well, she was prepared to see how things developed; and since Rich wasn’t pushing for more, that part of her life was fine.

  As for work, after a year in the job she had no regrets, despite her tumultuous start that involved discovering that a number of precious artifacts were missing from the historical society and then, soon after, finding the murdered body of the former director. She was working to put all that behind her, however, and truly was enjoying the job. The position was a great fit with her doctorate in museum studies, and she felt she was mastering the job and learning the ways of small-town New England life. Julie would have been happier if Mary Ellen hadn’t been so difficult, but she knew she’d meet Mary Ellens everywhere she went in her line of work. So she remained calm and suffered in silence at the endless meetings in which the benefactor bobbed and weaved and kept plans up in the air. But now it looked like actual work would begin. The ceremonial groundbreaking tomorrow would signal the start. Julie was more than ready. She just wasn’t sure how many shovels they would end up needing.

  CHAPTER 2

  It could have been the sunrise, dazzling already at just a little after five o’clock. Or it could have been the plaintive moaning of the doves that, like a search party in pursuit of a body, fanned out across Julie’s new backyard to see what seeds or bugs the grass would yield. Or it could have been the excitement the day promised: July third at last, and groundbreaking for the Swanson Center.

  Whatever the reason, Julie was awake and ready to go. But Rich was still sleeping. She turned to face him, partly hoping her gaze would stir him, partly just happy to look at his handsome face and hairless but muscular chest exposed above the sheet. He extracted his arm and reached down to pull the sheet higher.

  “Awake?” Julie asked.

  “I guess I am now. What time is it?”

  “Five-fifteen. But the sun’s been up for a while.”

  “God.”

  “I just don’t want to miss such a beautiful time of day. Want to take a run before breakfast?”

  Rich was by far the faster one, and Julie liked to run with him because his pace made her push herself. They left the house through the back door and after stretching headed across the garden and out to the street toward the historical society, passing her office in Swanson House, a straightforward three-story structure built in 1865. Below it were Ting House and then Holder House, both Greek Revival structures painted pale yellow. Ting was maintained as a period house, its rooms furnished in the style of the 1840s and open for guided tours. Holder was the society’s welcome center and museum, with galleries for rotating exhibits and the gift shop. Behind them was a long shed, covered with rough siding boards, divided into rooms where volunteers gave demonstrations of nineteenth-century crafts—spinning, weaving, blacksmithing, cooking. The new Swanson Center would stand at the end of the crafts shed and directly behind Swanson House. She gestured for Rich to turn right, and they cut through the parking area and toward the open space where the new building would be. A yellow backhoe was waiting, as was the dark green tent erected yesterday at the site of the groundbreaking.

  “Through the woods,” she shouted to him, and he led them toward an opening in the trees at the back of the construction site and into the wooded area that separated the historical society’s campus from the street behind it. They followed the street down to the bottom of the hill and cut across the park and onto the paved walk beside the river. The view of the water wa
s dazzling, with the early sun glancing off it and illuminating the birches on the opposite bank. At the end of the pavement they turned left and headed back up Main Street toward the Town Common. The town’s shops were grouped on lower Main, but as the street rose to the Common they gave way to well-kept residences: Victorian and classic-revival houses mixing in a pattern produced by changing tastes and the vagaries of land ownership. The lack of uniformity in styles created the overall impression of a very dense, rich architectural treasure trove. It was not for nothing that Ryland was called “Maine’s loveliest mountain village.”

  At the entrance to the Common, Rich paused. “Enough?” he asked.

  “Maybe ten minutes more,” Julie replied. “Let’s go up past the inn.”

  Beyond the Ryland Inn—a stately structure in white—lay its golf course and along its eastern side several dozen townhouse condominiums. They jogged along the edge of the golf course and into another wood above the townhouses. Rich jogged in place till Julie caught up.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “Home. Keep to the left, back toward the street.”

  When they were a few blocks above her house, Rich cut back onto the Common and came to a stop by the gazebo. “Walk now,” he said and put his left hand on his right to check his pulse. “Let’s get the old heart rate back to normal.”

  “God, it’s a beautiful town,” he said as they walked down the Common and then turned back toward her house.

  “It is, isn’t it? I feel so at home here now. It really is a great place.”

  “And this?” he asked, pointing to the three buildings of the Ryland Historical Society.

  “The job? Yeah, I love that, too, even though there have been times this past year when I wondered if we’d ever be able to build the new center.”