Fire Engine Dead

by Sheila Connolly

  Felicity was, as usual, behind her desk, which sat on a raised dais so that she could observe activity in the reading room. I took a quick census: the room was moderately filled, and nobody was asleep. That made it a good day. Felicity raised a hand in greeting when she saw me. “What brings you to my lair, Madame President?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “I have a boon to ask of thee,” I replied. Two could play that game. “Can we go somewhere private?”

  She scanned the room and motioned one of the shelvers over. “Keep an eye on the room for a bit, please.” It always struck me as a tad absurd that we had to keep an eagle eye on our library patrons, most of whom were eager researchers with limited time. But that in itself was a problem. All too many thought that they had the right to make off with the pieces they needed for their work—individual documents, pages sliced from books, even books themselves. Since we had no electronic surveillance, and we couldn’t do body searches when people left the building (and I’d seen some pretty creative concealment of purloined items in my day), we had to rely on our staff’s human observation. “I’ll try not to keep you long,” I promised.

  We made our way to a quiet room tucked under the handsome stone and mahogany staircase in the front. When we had settled ourselves, Felicity asked, “What can I do for you?”

  I checked to see that the door to the room was closed. “Did you hear about that warehouse fire?”

  “Yes, where the watchman died. Sad thing. Not the first fire recently, was it? Maybe there’s a firebug on the loose.”

  “That’s the one. The thing is, the director of the Fireman’s Museum, Peter Ingersoll, came by this morning and told me—and this is way, way off the record for now—that the museum had been storing its collections there while they remodeled.”

  Felicity looked appropriately horrified. “Oh no! How awful.” Then her mouth twitched. “And what an ironic thing—the fire collection going up in flames. Are they a complete loss?”

  “He doesn’t know yet, but it doesn’t look good. And worse, his collections files were housed there, too.” I hesitated before adding, “What makes it even worse is that the watchman was a fireman. Retired.”

  “Oh dear—I saw that in the paper. And what kind of idiot is Ingersoll?” Felicity snorted. “What was he thinking, keeping everything there?”

  “He told me he was overruled by his board, who wanted to do things on the cheap. Don’t worry, he already knows it was a stupid decision, but there’s nothing to be done now. Apparently they never anticipated the stuff being in the warehouse for long—but renovations got delayed and dragged on and on.”

  “So what did he want from us?”

  “He wants to know if we have any records of the founding of the Fireman’s Museum, and for the collections. And failing that, I think he’d be happy to have any kind of information about Philadelphia firefighting, particularly images, in the event he has to try to reassemble a collection. For fundraising purposes.”

  “Ah.” Felicity thought for a few moments. “That’s not my area of expertise, but I’ll see what I can pull together. How soon?”

  “He didn’t set a deadline. I think the poor man is in shock. I’m sure I would be, under the circumstances. A day or two, maybe?”

  “I think I can manage that,” Felicity said. “I know I’ve seen several folders…Well, let me take a look and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Thank you. Everything else going well?”

  “About average. We could use another shelver or two—it’s hard to juggle schedules to maintain consistent coverage on the floor. Maybe by summer, when we get more vacation visitors?”

  “No promises, but at least things should have stabilized by then. Have you seen Barney lately?” Barney was a local electrician with a passion for Philadelphia baseball history—and an apparent interest in Felicity. I’d made him an honorary member after he’d helped us with some electrical issues in our aging building.

  “He’s come by a few times,” Felicity said primly. “He certainly is enthusiastic.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Well, I’ll let you get back to your desk. Let me know what you find.”

  We departed and went our separate ways. Upstairs I debated about my next step. I should probably talk with Latoya, although I didn’t relish the prospect. Latoya, a tall, stately black woman close to my age, had been with the Society for several years, although not as long as I had; she had been hired by my predecessor. She was extremely well qualified for her position as vice president of collections for the Society, but she had never quite bonded with most of the staff, and I knew little about her other than her professional credentials. For most of her tenure she had seemingly considered herself higher up the administrative chart than I, although we had both been nominal department heads. My sudden and unexpected elevation to the presidency had unsettled her a bit, and we were still negotiating our new working relationship. Still, protocol dictated that I should consult her about this problem, and there was a good chance that she would have some relevant information about the Fireman’s Museum. So I marched down the hall to her office.

  “Do you have a minute, Latoya?”

  She looked up from whatever she was working on at her scrupulously neat desk and said, without smiling, “Of course. Please come in.” A faint startled expression crossed her face as I pulled shut the door behind me, and when I took a chair, she asked warily, “What can I do for you?”

  “Did you hear about that warehouse fire yesterday?”

  She shook her head slightly. “I don’t pay a lot of attention to local news. What about it?”

  I filled her in on the news about the warehouse fire and the Fireman’s Museum, and Peter Ingersoll’s request. Latoya appeared appropriately distressed at learning of their loss. “What an awful thing. Were they insured?”

  “Peter was kind of vague about that, but probably not fully. After all, it’s a small place, and I think their budget is pretty slim. He implied that they had skimped a bit on the insurance coverage, particularly since most of the items in their collection aren’t intrinsically valuable.”

  I reluctantly acknowledged to myself that I should take a look at our own insurance situation. I’d had little to do with that when I was director of development—after all, nobody offered grants to pay for insurance. I knew the broad outlines of our coverage, but that was all. As a public institution, we had to maintain liability and property coverage, and for all I knew, coverage for floods, earthquakes, and sewer backups, but collections were another matter. Since it was hard to get a handle on collections that had been accruing for over a hundred years, and harder still to assign a dollar value to them, I could well imagine that my predecessors had stuck with the most vanilla—and least expensive—options in that area.

  Latoya agreed to see what she could find for me, and I felt more hopeful now that I had both Felicity and Latoya, with their varying expertise, working on this. Latoya could give me any information we had on the lost collections, although I didn’t expect her to find a lot; on the other hand, Felicity could ferret out the entire history of the institution and the people involved. As I stood to leave, I asked, “By the way, any progress on hiring a new registrar?” We had lost our long-term registrar last year, and whoever filled the position would report to Latoya. But between the internal changes in administration, the holidays, and the ridiculously low salary we had originally offered, we hadn’t seen a lot of applications, even in the current lousy economy.

  “I’m interviewing several qualified candidates this week. Please thank Marty again for finding a way to enhance the salary.”

  “Will do—and I’ll be happy to talk with anyone you think is appropriate.”

  As I walked back toward my office down the hall, Eric looked up and whispered, “Ms. Terwilliger is in your office.”

  “Thank you, Eric.” I marched in to find Marty sprawled on my gracious antique settee, reading a document. “Hello, Marty. What brings you here?”

 
“Peter Ingersoll and his disaster.”

  I sat down behind my desk and sighed. Why was I not surprised? Marty—Society board member, ally, and friend—knew everyone in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties and was related to half of them; her family had been among the movers and shakers in Philadelphia for a couple of centuries. “Let me guess—Peter is a third cousin, twice removed?”

  Marty snorted. “My brother Elwyn was at prep school with him.”

  “How’d you hear about Peter’s disaster, as you so aptly put it?”

  “Elwyn is in the insurance business.”

  “You mean the Fireman’s Museum has already been in touch?”

  Marty shrugged. “I don’t know, but the insurers have been checking their liability. Why do you know anything about it?”

  “Because Peter was here this morning, asking for help to find records of their collections for the insurance claim. I’ve put Felicity and Latoya on it. By the way, Latoya says she’s talked to some candidates for the registrar position and thanks you for the added financial support.”

  “I want to be sure whoever we hire is good—and will stick around for a while. We really need to tighten up our collections management.”

  “All it takes is money, as you know very well. But I’ll be glad to get that position filled, too. Back to you, though—why would your brother think you wanted to know about Peter Ingersoll’s problems?”

  “You know that fire engine that was the centerpiece of their collection?”

  I tried to recall anything like that from my one visit to the museum and came up blank, although it was hard to imagine missing something as large as a fire engine, no matter how big the crowd. “Not offhand. I was only there once.”

  “My grandfather donated it.”

  “Your grandfather collected antique fire engines?”

  “Just the one, although he had some other fire stuff as well. The cousins and I used to play with the buckets and helmets when we got together there. I’m pretty sure we trashed some collector’s items, though Grampy never said a word. But he wouldn’t let us go near the fire engine, even though of course we wanted to. Made in Philadelphia around 1825. Horse drawn, hand pump. Gorgeous piece, in good condition—even the paint and gilding. Real fancy. It would break his heart to think that went up in flames. Luckily he’s dead. And pretty ironic, don’t you think?”

  “A fire engine burning up? Yes. Let’s hope it escaped the fire. Was that all you wanted to talk about?”

  Marty slouched against the elegant curves of the settee. “What, you want to get rid of me already, Ms. High and Mighty? Position going to your head?”

  I checked to make sure Marty was joking; she was. “Of course not, Marty. I’m always glad to see you.”

  “Yeah, right. But I do have some business—it’s about the Terwilliger Collection.”

  Of course. The Terwilliger Collection consisted of the Society’s vast collection of Terwilliger family papers—records going back to the original Terwilliger settler, in the early eighteenth century, and included those of one of the great leaders of the Revolution, Major Jonathan Terwilliger, as well as a host of lesser dignitaries of Philadelphia political, economic, and social life. Marty’s father had bequeathed the collection to the Society years earlier, and Marty had immersed herself in their cataloging. She’d even cobbled together enough money to hire someone to help.

  The huge collection was housed in our so-called fireproof vault, a sturdy chamber built in 1895 with a special endowment from a then-board member who was concerned about the vulnerability of the Society’s largely paper-based collections to fire and theft. At the time, the room had been state-of-the-art. Now it was just a closely sealed room with metal doors, which made it only marginally safer than the rest of the building. The Terwilliger Collection took up approximately half the room, some four hundred linear feet of books, folders, boxes, and miscellaneous bundles.

  “What about it?” I asked, even though I didn’t really want to hear her new idea. “Aren’t you happy with Rich’s work?”

  “He’s doing fine, don’t worry. But I’m thinking that when you hire your new registrar, it might be a good test to hand him the collection and see what he makes of it. With Rich’s and my help, of course.”

  “Or her,” I said automatically. “Interesting idea.” And not unfair, considering that Marty and her extended family were chipping in a healthy sum of money to endow the registrar’s position. “But do we need to do something now?”

  Marty, as usual, went straight to the point. “I want to move the whole collection upstairs, at least temporarily. I know Rich has been working hard on it, but this one-box-at-a-time approach is taking too long. And since the registrar’s position has been vacant for a few months, most of the other projects have been cleared, so there’s room right now.”

  “You’re thinking of the third-floor room?”

  “Yup, with all those big tables. Rich and I can shuttle the stuff up there. All I need is your permission to move forward.”

  The request was purely pro forma: what Marty wanted, Marty usually got. But it was her collection, she was putting up the money, and the space was available. Why not? “Make it so,” I said grandly. “And since moving the collection out will open up the fireproof vault, we can take the opportunity to do a thorough overhaul in there, maybe shuffle some other collections around to improve our use of space.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll go talk to Rich.” Marty bounded up and headed for the door.

  “Right now?” Her energy never ceased to amaze me.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Okay, go for it.”

  Before exiting, she turned back and said, “Heard anything from Jimmy lately?”

  Jimmy was James Morrison, one of Marty’s many cousins and a special agent in the local FBI office. He was in charge of the disposition of a chunk of recently recovered items that had been stolen from our collections, including a number from the Terwilliger Collection, as soon as the FBI sorted out the legal aspects of the case.

  We’d also been kind of seeing each other for a few months. “Now and then,” I said evasively, then hastened to add, “Which works fine for us. Don’t do anything, please.”

  “Who, me?” Marty said, and went on her way.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next morning the warehouse fire story in the Inquirer had slipped to page two, but the reporter had made the connection to the Fireman’s Museum, and this time there were pictures, including a large one of the charred ruins. In the midst of one almost self-consciously artsy photograph, I could make out the ruins of a vehicle, the twisted remains of the piece looking like a tortured skeleton. My fears about what it was were confirmed by the caption: Prized antique fire engine consumed in warehouse fire. It saddened me, both for the museum’s sake and for Marty’s, since for her it was a piece of her family’s history as well as a Philadelphia artifact.

  When I arrived at the station, I stuffed the newspaper into my bag and strode briskly to the Society. Once again Eric had beaten me to his desk. “Mornin’, Nell. Can I get you some coffee?”

  “I’d love some, Eric—thank you.” I hesitated a second, then asked, “Did you see the paper today?”

  “You mean about the fire and the collection? I did. So that’s why Mr. Ingersoll was here?” I nodded, and he stood up quickly. “Oh, Agent Morrison called a few minutes ago.” Eric handed me a phone slip and went down the hall to the break room.

  I went into my office and hung up my coat—I’d eagerly retired my winter one for the season, but the mornings were still nippy enough to require some sort of jacket. Had Marty prodded James once again? I really didn’t need her interfering with my love life, such as it was, and I was pretty sure James could manage on his own as well. I sighed, then picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Nell.” James, sounding rather grave, answered on the second ring.

  “James,” I replied. So much for the niceties. James could be brusque. “You called?�
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  “I did. Can we meet for lunch?”

  From his tone I inferred that either this was business or someone could overhear him. “Sure. When?”

  “Noon, at that Italian place around the corner?”

  “See you then.” We hung up simultaneously. Not exactly romantic, but I’d be glad to see him anyway.

  When Eric came back bearing my coffee, I said, “I’ll be out for lunch. With Agent Morrison.”

  “I’ll put it on your calendar,” Eric said, with no further comment. Definitely discreet.

  Half an hour later Rich Girard knocked on my door. He was one of our part-timers, a lanky young man who was trying to figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life while learning some useful skills for collections management, in case he wanted to go to library school or get an advanced degree in history. Marty had quickly put him to work on the Terwilliger Collection. I gestured him into my office. “Let me guess—Marty talked to you?”

  He threw himself in a chair and nodded. “She told me what she wanted to do. I just wanted to make sure that you knew about it and approved. I mean, I work for you, right?”

  “That you do—well, more directly for Latoya—but I thought Marty’s idea made sense, so you go right ahead. Unless it’s too much work?”

  “It may take a couple of days to switch things around, but it’s probably a good idea to clear stuff out of the vault anyway. Actually I like the idea of having the whole collection in the workroom rather than having to bring up one box at a time. It’ll make my job easier.”

  “Will there be enough room in the workroom on this floor, do you think?”

  “Probably. And maybe we could take a look at what else should go in the old vault, while we have it opened up?”

  “My thought exactly,” I replied, and we launched into a discussion of which collections would complement the Terwilliger Collection, in terms of both period and frequency of use. Marty’s focus was her family papers, but I had to look at the bigger picture. Luckily we could serve both with this project. “Just don’t forget to maintain good records of what you’ve moved where, and keep Latoya updated. I know that’s usually the registrar’s job, but we’ve got to keep things current until we find one.”