“Fifteen minutes,” I said promptly. “I’ll put a five on it.”
“I’ll take twenty minutes,” Marty snapped back. “You may know Charles, but I know Libby.”
“We’re awful, aren’t we?” I giggled. She smiled her agreement.
It was, in fact, eighteen minutes before the rhythmic noises of the bedsprings ceased. There was heavy breathing again, and then it slowed until it approached a normal rate. I handed Marty a five-dollar bill. “You were closer.”
“Oh, Charles,” Libby cooed, “that was wonderful.”
I swallowed a laugh.
“You bring out the best in me, darling,” he replied, his voice rough. “And we could be doing this much more often, if you marry me.”
“Oh, Charles, I’m so tempted. But wouldn’t you be bored?”
“Sweetheart, you could never bore me. I’d love to grow old with you. But ...”
“Yes, Charles?” I wondered if it was possible to hear eyelashes fluttering.
“May I be honest with you?”
“Of course, Charles.” That’s right, Libby, don’t overdo it. Nice restraint.
“Elizabeth, I want to be worthy of you. So I want to share something with you, something I’ve never told another woman. I don’t believe my career is over—I never pretended that being president of the Society was the highest pinnacle. No, I want something more. I want to leave my mark in a bigger way.”
Marty and I exchanged a glance, and she cocked one eyebrow at me.
“And I’m sure you could, Charles, but whatever do you mean?”
Marty and I stopped breathing.
“Elizabeth, I have a plan, something dear to my heart, something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, since the beginning of my career. I’d like to share it with you, and I’d like you to be a part of it.”
“Tell me, Charles,” Libby purred.
“I want to create something new, a multidisciplinary center for the study of American history—sort of a nexus where all the resources come together: museum-quality artifacts, original sources, modern references, state-of-the-art technology, the best academic minds, young scholars in training. Nothing like this has ever been done. Each discipline has been locked into its own narrow concerns, afraid to step outside of their box. I want to break out of the box, create something new, bold, exciting. Can you see my vision?”
“You make it sound wonderful, Charles. But—what does this mean?”
Charles’s voice swelled with a different kind of passion. “A new center, combining the best of the old and the new. Right here in Philadelphia. And where better? This is where our country was born, and the great leaders walked our streets, talking together to shape this nation. We have everything we need right here—but it will take someone with vision to pull it all together, and I believe I am that person. And you can be part of it. We would be an incredible team, darling. What do you think?”
“Charles, I think that’s a wonderful idea. And I can see how excited you are. Mmmm, very excited. Come here.”
I pulled off my earphones again and inhaled deeply, as did Marty.
“Oh . . . my . . . God,” I breathed. I had known that Charles was ambitious. He was, at least once upon a time, a good historian, an honest scholar. He never falsified anything on his résumé—the search committee checked his academic degrees and his references, of course, and some of the board members asked around. But this? I certainly hadn’t seen this coming. “We were right, but we didn’t see the big picture. Charles isn’t doing this just for the money—the money is a means to an end. He’s doing it to build a national shrine to Charles Worthington. Is this even possible, or is he crazy?” I looked at Marty in appeal.
“It looks to me like Charles wants more than the leadership of a small and fusty place like the Society,” Marty began slowly. “He wants a bigger stage—an institution that would shape the direction of modern historical interpretation, with himself at the head. And, as you well know, that would take money. Lots of money. That explains a lot.” She stopped and looked at me to see how I was reacting.
Actually, I felt as though my head was full of Jiffy Pop. Little kernels of doubt that I had nudged out of the way when Charles and I were seeing each other now started popping, expanding rapidly. “So he’s got whatever money he collected along the way, from all those objects he stole and sold at his last few jobs, not to mention some or all of the five million dollar’s worth of items he’s skimmed from the Society’s collections. But five million plus whatever won’t be enough, so he’s going to marry the rest of it.”
“And give himself an entree into top society in town—the ones with money. That matters, too, around here.”
“Hell and damnation. He certainly took a long view when he planned. He’s smart, but he’s also rotten. Do you think we’ve got enough on tape?”
“I know I don’t want to listen to any more, that’s for sure. I’ll give the guy credit—he’s got imagination.” She paused. “And stamina.”
I started giggling and then gave up and laughed out loud. “I do hope Libby is enjoying this as much as we are.”
“Libby always manages to get what she wants. Good person to have on our side. From what we’ve heard, I’d say she’s having a wonderful time.” She punched the Off button on our little box and sat back. “Well, I’m starving now, but I’m pretty sure they closed the kitchen down a while ago—they only let us stay because I gave the staff a whopping tip. What say we adjourn to my place and call Jimmy?”
“Marty, it’s midnight!”
“Oh, fine, you wet blanket. I guess it can wait until morning. I don’t think Charles will have the energy to do any more harm tonight.”
CHAPTER 27
I went home, but I couldn’t sleep. I hated the Charles we had uncovered—user, thief, and apparently megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur.
I still couldn’t see where Alfred Findley had fit in. The stakes were higher than I had thought, and Alfred’s meddling would certainly have been a threat to Charles’s grand plans. But Charles had a good alibi; I was even part of it. And Alfred’s murder seemed carelessly planned. Unlike everything else Charles had done for, what—decades?—it seemed almost spontaneous, although the murderer had gotten away with it so far. Of course, Charles had enough money to hire whatever muscle he needed . . . and there were the pieces that Marty had seen in Alfred’s apartment—somebody had to have planted those.
Marty called at eight Saturday morning. “Jimmy’s coming by at ten. Can you get here by then?” She sounded subdued. Maybe she hadn’t slept, either.
“Sure. I’ll meet you at your place.” I was already ensconced in one of Marty’s armchairs when James arrived. Marty went to fetch him at the door, and they were talking intently as they came down the hall to the back of the house. He stopped dead when he saw me, sprawled comfortably.
“James, how nice to see you again,” I said amiably, raising my coffee mug in salute.
“Nell,” he said neutrally, his eyes wary. “Marty, you didn’t mention Nell would be here.”
Marty laid a hand on his arm. “Now, Jimmy, don’t get huffy. We have a little surprise for you. Here, I’ll take your coat. Get yourself some coffee and sit down.”
He gave me an enigmatic look, then finally shrugged and took off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, poured himself a cup of coffee, and draped himself on one of Marty’s chairs. “Good boy,” Marty said. She glanced briefly at me before beginning. “We have something we want you to listen to. A recording we made, of Elizabeth Farnsworth and Charles Worthington together.”
James put the cup down and sat up straight again. Uh-oh, Mr. Agent Man was back. “Wait a minute. That’s your old pal Libby, with Charles Worthington? You recorded them?”
“Yes, we did. Charles didn’t know about it, but Libby did. She’s been dating Charles for a while, and she was happy to go along with this. Yes, I know that it will never be admissible in a court of law. Don’t give me a lecture, Jimmy—
we’re trying to help. And I think we’ve got something pretty big.”
He stared at us, one at a time, then shook his head. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I do know you’re messing with a federal investigation. That is not a good idea.”
“Jimmy, just shut up and listen, will you? You can figure out what you want to do to us later.”
She pushed the Play button on the recorder, and the familiar sounds of Libby and Charles issued forth, loud and clear. I watched James’s face as he listened intently, albeit with a growing look of distaste. His expression brightened when we got to the part about Charles’s net worth. As the happy couple decided to go upstairs, Marty pressed Stop.
“So, what do you think?” she asked brightly.
He thought for a moment before speaking. “I think that you have some excellent sound equipment there. I think this is all entirely illegal and I shouldn’t be listening to it. And I think we’d better look a little harder at Charles’s financial records—there must be a dummy organization or an offshore account, or something where he’s been hiding the extra money, because it’s not in any of his regular accounts.”
Marty reached for the machine, but James grabbed her hand. “You can’t mean there’s more?” He looked pained.
“Jimmy, if you could see your face. Yes, there’s more—his motive. Just listen.” She started the tape again. No fast-forward for Marty: she was going to make her unfortunate cousin listen to every sigh and squeaking bedspring. After a certain point, I found I couldn’t look him in the eye any longer, and made an in-depth study of the state of my cuticles. When I sneaked a peek at James’s face, it was an interesting shade of red, but he was still paying close attention. And when Charles launched into his grand scheme, his expression hardened.
The tape finally ended. Marty shut off the machine with a crisp snap, sat back in her chair, and looked at her cousin. “Well?”
I was beginning to appreciate the old-fashioned term apoplectic. Poor James looked as though he wanted to explode. He took a couple of deep breaths, without looking at either of us, before he attempted to speak.
“Martha Terwilliger, I don’t know whether to arrest you, strangle you, or kiss you. And you, Nell—I’m sure she dragged you into this, but you’re still an accomplice. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I don’t know how many laws you’ve broken. We are not having this conversation. I am not here. Got it?”
Marty and I nodded meekly, avoiding looking at each other.
He wasn’t finished. “And I’m willing to bet Charles Worthington has broken a few laws we hadn’t even thought of. Wait until our lawyers get hold of this.”
He took a sip of coffee, then resumed in a calmer tone.
“All right, what does this nonexistent recording tell us? One, Charles has, or at least claims he has, substantial assets that we have not yet located. Two, we know why he has been amassing his little nest egg. Could he really do what he described?”
“I’ll take that one, Marty.” I decided it was time to stake my claim in this conversation. “I think the short answer is yes. I don’t know if you could put a dollar figure on it; a lot depends on whether he can acquire an existing building or needs to build one, what kinds of collections he wants to put together—just how big and ambitious his goals are. He’d need a lot of money—tens of millions. But the more money he brings to the table, or controls directly, the more control he’d have over the whole operation.”
James looked at me, bewildered. “But he’s already head of the place—isn’t that enough?”
I shook my head decisively. “Not for Charles—he’s thinking bigger. I’ve been giving it some thought, and I’m guessing that he figures he can make the Society’s reputation and its financial situation appear so compromised that if word of the thefts got out, he could swoop in and act as a savior—offer to absorb the collections, the library, maybe even the staff, into his new organization. Can’t you see it? He wouldn’t have to kowtow to a board or suck up to outside donors, or at least not as much. He’d tell the citizens of Philadelphia that he’s doing them a great favor, saving a big chunk of their heritage—when all the time he set them up just so he could feed his own ego.” I was working up a good head of steam.
“Mmph.” James didn’t offer any additional comments. “Tell me, whatever made you get Libby involved?”
Marty said promptly, “Luckily she’s his latest conquest—at least that’s what he thinks—and she was happy to help. But we figured he was acting according to pattern; he tends to use women, as Nell found out, for inside information, to make his job easier, and, yes, for money. He’s done it before. Nell talked to a couple of women who confirmed it, one way or another.”
James regarded me as though I were a specimen under a microscope. “Ah, yes, your colleagues in Boston and Washington.”
I grinned at him. “They both said pretty much the same thing. There were some thefts around the time Charles was at their institutions, as I’m sure you know. What they might not have told you is that he’d also charmed a number of strategic women and then dropped them when they were no longer useful to him. And he was very careful—he kept his thefts off the radar for a long time.”
James didn’t say anything. After a few moments, he stood up. “Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about.”
Marty was on her feet quickly, blocking his way to the door. “Oh, no, you don’t. We showed you ours, now you have to show us yours. You must have found something on the thefts, or you aren’t half the man you claim to be.”
James looked a bit smug. “Yes, Martha, we are about to close the jaws of the trap. That’s all I will say, but you can expect news shortly.”
She tried to outstare him, hoping for more specifics, but he had clammed up. He looked at me. “Nell, would you see me out, please?”
In the vestibule, his coat on, he turned to me and launched into a lecture. “Are you crazy? I know my cousin is a loose cannon, but I thought you might have enough common sense to at least stay on the right side of the law. What on earth were you thinking?”
I fought a fleeting impulse to apologize, and then I got mad. “Hey look, pal, this is my career, my credibility on the line. Unlike Marty, I don’t have a nice rich family to fall back on—I work for my living. The longer this drags on, the less marketable I become, especially if the Society sinks under me. And you all at the FBI have no imagination! You never would have stumbled on the way Charles uses women, not in a million years! And it was even worse than we thought!” I felt the sting of tears behind my eyes, and now I was mad at him and at myself. “Well, I’ve had enough. Sure, Marty and I bent a few laws, but we got the goods, didn’t we? We figured out the why for you—now all you need to do is work out the how and prove it.”
I stopped, since I had nothing left to say, and I was either going to spit at him or burst into tears. “So get out there and do it, damn you,” I ended feebly.
James stood perfectly still, staring at me. I had no clue what he was thinking. I knew what I was thinking: that I looked like a fool. He started to raise a hand, then dropped it. Finally he spoke.
“Nell, I’m sorry. You’re right. I hadn’t thought about how this affects you personally, and I can understand your frustration. But you have to look at it from my end, too: I need to build a case that will stand up in a court of law, that can’t be challenged, and you’re not making that any easier. I appreciate what you’ve done, but, please, can you two stay out of it from here on out? I promise, this will all be over soon.” For a moment he looked as though he wanted to say more but then apparently thought better of it. “I’ll be in touch.”
CHAPTER 28
I closed the door slowly and walked back to Marty’s living room. Marty looked critically at me and added, “You know, I think he likes you. Most people, he would have chewed their heads off. Yours is still attached. More coffee?”
“Great.” I refilled my cup. “Now what?”
“For once I think I’ll go al
ong with Jimmy. We’ve given him all the information he could possibly want. Let him take care of it.”
I felt curiously deflated. Was that really how this was going to end? And hadn’t we lost sight of Alfred’s death, in all of our plotting and scheming? Neither the police nor James seemed to care about that.
I laughed bitterly. “You know, before this whole mess started, I never realized how much we all depend on the basic honesty of our patrons and staff. We’ve always assumed that they respected the collections, wanted to preserve them—not rip them off for their own selfish ends. I really feel betrayed, even apart from the job thing. Naive, wasn’t I?”
“I don’t think so.” Marty studied her own coffee, swirling the liquid around the cup. “Or even if you were, it doesn’t mean you were wrong. It does take a special kind of person to care more about something abstract, like history, than about their own needs. Hey, I’ve worked with you for years now, since long before Charles came on the scene, anyway. I’ve never known you to cut corners, to fudge anything—basically, to do anything that didn’t benefit the Society. I know you sure don’t do it for the money. I have to figure you do it because you do care. So, if you have to be a little naive, if you have to believe in the best of other people, then I guess it goes with the job. It’s a good thing, Nell.”
I was a bit stunned. I hadn’t known that she had paid me that much attention. “Marty—thank you. I don’t know what to say. I’ve just tried to do my job, and I really do love the place, and the people are great, and, yes, I really do feel it’s a privilege to handle some of the things I’ve had a chance to. And that’s why it makes me so mad that somebody like Charles—somebody in a position of power—doesn’t. But . . . I guess I never expected anybody else to notice. And I’ve got to say I misjudged you, and I’m very sorry.”
Marty laughed. “Yeah, I know, you thought I was a lightweight who just liked sticking her nose into things. It’s not the first time. Actually, you can hear a lot more that way.”
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