“Nell, I need to talk to you. We’ve got a problem,” she said curtly. “It’s about the Collection.” Whenever Marty spoke about her family’s papers, you could see the capital letters: The Terwilliger Collection.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Marty. Please, sit down and tell me what I can do,” I said, far more calmly than I felt.
Marty looked at the piles of books and papers on my sole guest chair and remained standing. “I was in yesterday, looking for a folder of papers, an exchange of letters between Major Jonathan”—she seemed to be on a first name basis with all her dead family members—“and George Washington. I know I saw them a few weeks ago. But they aren’t there now.”
Great: a collections problem. Why was she talking to me about this? I did not need to hear about a collections problem at this moment. What was I supposed to do? Drop all the gala preparations, take a flashlight and go hunting through the file boxes in the stacks?
“Are you sure that Rich didn’t take them to his cubicle to catalog them?” Rich was a sweet boy, but he could be absentminded.
“No,” Marty said with conviction. “He was the first person I asked. He hasn’t gotten up to the 1770s yet, and he hasn’t seen them.”
“Maybe they were just misfiled?” I parried. Please, let there be a quick solution to this so I can get back to putting out event-related fires, I prayed.
Marty was not about to back off. “Well, if they were, they aren’t in any of the adjacent boxes. No, I know I saw them just a couple of weeks ago. I was checking where the major spent Christmas in 1774, for the family history”—of course she was also working on a family history, and had been for several years, although no one to my knowledge had seen even a page of it—“and they were there then. But they aren’t there now.”
“I’m not sure what I can do, Marty. Why come to me, rather than to someone in collections, like Latoya?” Latoya Anderson, our vice president of collections, was the most likely person for Marty to talk to about any items that might have gotten misplaced.
“Because we’ve worked together in the past, Nell, and I know you can get things done,” Marty said curtly. “Latoya will just give me the runaround. I need answers.”
“Marty,” I said in my most pacifying tone, “I can understand your concern, and their absence is very troubling. But there must be some simple explanation. Why don’t you and Rich and I get together tomorrow and see if we can track them down?” I smiled hopefully. Tomorrow: the day after the event.
She still looked miffed. “I suppose. But let me tell you, if those letters are really missing, there will be hell to pay. Do you have any idea what they’re worth?”
I didn’t, but I knew that whatever insurance we had wouldn’t be enough. To be totally honest, I didn’t even know if we had insurance for the collections. But I smiled even more brightly. “Marty, of course I know how important they are. And I’m sure we’ll find them.” I stood up, hoping to urge her out the door. “I’ll tell Rich, and we’ll meet you in the lobby at nine tomorrow morning, before anyone comes in, all right?” I came around my desk and moved toward the hall, and Marty grudgingly followed. “And you’ll be back for tonight? It’s going to be a wonderful evening. I’m very pleased at the RSVPs.” I mentally reviewed tonight’s guest list, which included at least six of Marty’s cousins, and those were only the ones I remembered offhand. Marty took her board obligations seriously, and I knew she would be at the gala, no matter how annoyed she might be at the moment. I continued my progress toward the elevator, with Marty trailing behind.
“All right, nine a.m. sharp tomorrow. And of course I’ll be here tonight,” she said tartly. “This party had better be good. The Society can use the money.”
As if I weren’t well aware of that. I kept the smile glued to my face as the elevator doors closed behind her, but it faded immediately once she was out of sight. Just what I needed, one more problem—and I didn’t like the sound of this one. I took a quick look at my watch and cursed silently. There was too much to do in the time I had left, and now Marty had just dumped a whole new problem in my lap. One which I was hardly equipped to deal with, since I had very little working knowledge of the vast collections in the building. Still, I could probably start the ball rolling, and then I could tell her that I was making progress when I saw her at the party. Our registrar, Alfred Findley, the person who’d be most helpful right now, had absolutely nothing to do with the party, so unlike the rest of the staff, at least he wouldn’t be running around like a headless chicken.
Alfred’s cubicle was only fifty feet from my office, but today was no ordinary day, and I was stopped twice en route with questions that absolutely, positively had to be answered immediately.
My membership coordinator, Carrie Drexel, was the third. “Nell, did you want to use the sticky name badges? You know the guests complain when they have to pin something on.”
“Good catch, Carrie. They’re in the supply closet outside my office. We ordered a huge batch after the last members’ meeting.”
“Oh, right. Thanks!” She turned and dashed back the way I had come.
I made it another ten feet before the next interruption: Felicity Soames, our head librarian, emerged from the staff room at the back of the building, a mug of coffee in her hand. “Hi, Nell,” she began. “How’s the—”
I held up a hand. “No time now, Felicity. See you at the gala?”
“Of course. It’ll be grand, don’t worry.”
I turned and all but ran to Alfred’s lair.
* * *
Click here for more books by Sheila Connolly
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An Open Book Page 8