Fire Engine Dead

by Sheila Connolly

  “I thought so. I guess I was wrong.”

  “When did Scott and Jennifer…get together?”

  “It didn’t take long, once he started working at the museum. They really hit it off, and I didn’t interfere. I actually thought Jennifer might be good for Scott—steady him, you know. Then I had to lay him off, when the collection went into storage—there wasn’t anything left in the building to guard. Jennifer didn’t say much about him after that, but I guess they were still together.”

  Shrewd woman. “Would she have been easy for Scott to manipulate?”

  “Jennifer? I doubt it. More likely the other way around. She’s tough, and she’s practical. When I hired her for the museum, it was really as a favor to the union—she just couldn’t make it on her husband’s pension. She didn’t have much in the way of office skills, but she learned fast, and she didn’t mind doing whatever I asked. She’s been a big part of the museum.”

  Too bad that Peter was going to have to come to grips with the fact that she wasn’t going to be his good right hand at the museum anymore. If he even had a museum to go back to. At the rate things were going, I wasn’t sure about that.

  But Peter was already ahead of me. “You’re thinking about the fire engine, right? I know you must think I was stupid, but I couldn’t bring myself to suspect anyone at the museum, and of course I didn’t want to believe that either Jennifer or Scott was involved. Or Gary. These were people I trusted. Maybe I should have told the authorities, but I wasn’t sure, and everything else was in such a mess, I couldn’t face it. I had a feeling that you knew, because you’d seen the same thing in the pictures. I just didn’t want to be the one to blow things open publicly. Sorry, Nell—if I’d done something sooner, maybe Scott wouldn’t have…gone after you and me.”

  And Scott had paid for Peter’s reluctance with his life. No matter where the blame was laid, Peter was going to have to live with that. If he’d spoken up sooner, maybe Scott would still be alive.

  A nurse chose that moment to bustle in to check her patient. She cast a baleful glare at James and me. “I’ll have to ask you to leave now. This man’s not out of the woods yet.”

  I caught James’s eye and nodded. We’d done enough damage already, and there was nothing else we needed from Peter now. “Of course. Peter, you get some rest, and try not to worry.” As if that were possible.

  Peter smiled weakly. “Thank you for coming, Nell. I’m sorry you were dragged into all this.”

  So was I, but it wasn’t his fault. “It’s okay, and it’s over now. Good-bye, Peter.”

  I left the room, and James followed. When we reached the elevator, I said, without looking at him, “I probably broke seven kinds of laws about interfering in a federal investigation, and I’ve screwed up any further interviews. Right?”

  “Probably,” James agreed amiably.

  “I don’t care. I doubt that the police can prove that Peter knew what was going on, and when he figured out some parts of it…well, he’s got his own burdens now.”

  “I agree. I’ll try to keep the police off his back.”

  We got off the elevator and reached the front door. “Can you drop me at the Society?”

  “Do you really need to do that now? Why not just go home and unwind?”

  I stopped on the sidewalk and turned to face him. “Yes, I do. The place is my responsibility, and I want to see how bad the damage is so I can talk to the board and decide when we’ll be able to open to the public. You don’t really want Marty to take over completely, do you?”

  His mouth twitched. “She does get things done, you know.”

  “Yes, but I’m the president, even if she did shove me into that position. Any decisions that are made should be mine.”

  “I’m not going to talk you out of it, am I?”

  “Nope.”

  CHAPTER 27

  It was oddly reassuring to know that I could out-stubborn an FBI agent. We retrieved his car, then James drove me the few blocks to the Society. He parked, but when I climbed out, he did as well. “You’re coming in?” I asked, surprised.

  “Yes. Call it reviewing the crime scene, if you want. And I’ll let Marty beat me up for keeping her out of the loop, if it’ll help.”

  It probably wasn’t worth arguing about, so I didn’t. Actually I thought it was kind of sweet of him. Was he worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle being back in the building, confronting the vault where Scott had died? I was pretty sure I’d be okay, but it was nice that he had my back. I walked to the front of the building and then faltered. Everything looked the same from the outside, but I realized I was afraid of what I would find when I opened the door. And what I would feel.

  But I had no choice, if I was going to live with myself. I squared my shoulders and marched up the stone steps, stopping at the top only long enough to retrieve my keys so I could open the door. I stepped into the lobby and stopped again. I could hear voices farther back—presumably whoever Marty had called in to clean up; Marty must have been letting them in. I could smell a lingering odor of smoke and something chemical. The usually glossy tiles of the lobby were scuffed and smudged—all those firemen and EMTs tramping around, no doubt. I could feel James behind me, silent, like a body guard. He was going to let me find my own way, and I was grateful. I started moving again—through the lobby, through the catalog room. I paused at the nearest door to the reading room and made a conscious effort to blot out my feelings. I needed to do a damage assessment and determine the remedies. Period.

  There were a couple of people pulling books off the shelves, inspecting them, and making notes, with Marty keeping an eagle eye on them. Marty noticed us standing there. “Well, there you are! Hi, Jimmy.”

  “Marty,” I said. “What’s the damage?”

  She got serious, fast. “The sprinkler system works by zones—thank God it wasn’t an all-or-nothing situation, like in the old days. The fire triggered the sprinklers in the reference room only, so the damage was limited. The fire was out fast, but a few thousand books got soaked, and I don’t know how many will be salvageable.”

  I nodded. “I don’t need to tell you that most of what we keep in the open stacks here are general reference, so they can be replaced if need be. Can we get an evaluation of what the cost of restoration would be versus the cost of replacement?”

  “Sure can,” Marty said. “The stuff in the vault, now—what little there was—is fine, since that’s the way the halon system is supposed to work. The old metal door will have to be replaced, of course, and the floor tiles in that corner of the reference room, but since it’s concrete underneath, there’s no structural damage. Oh, and the police showed me where the guy got in—a broken window in the back of the building. Overall I think we really dodged a bullet. Oh, sorry—I didn’t mean that literally.”

  I assumed the police had found Scott’s gun and taken it away. “It’s okay, I know what you mean. It could have been so much worse.”

  I didn’t hear anything, but James pulled a phone out of his pocket and stepped away to talk. After a moment he came back. “The police are going to talk to Jennifer again, and I want to be there. I’ll come back for you later, give you a ride home.” Before I could protest, he was gone.

  “Let’s go check out that window problem,” Marty said, grabbing my arm and all but dragging me toward the back of the building. She let go only when we’d reached the area near the back loading dock, where I could see a scattering of glass shards on the floor.

  “We should call a glass place,” I said.

  “I already have, and they’re on their way. What I want to know is, what the hell was going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, let’s see. Why were you here alone with Peter Ingersoll, one of the prime suspects in an arson-murder? Why did a gun-toting arsonist show up and try to kill you? And how did you end up at James’s apartment?”

  “This may take some time. Pull up a seat.” There weren’t any chairs handy, but t
here were several sturdy wooden packing crates, so we sat, and while we waited for the glass repair person to show up at the back door, I gave Marty the details of everything that had happened, since she’d heard only the outline earlier. She was appropriately shocked.

  “Peter’s brother? He was carrying on with that secretary person, what’s her name?”

  “Jennifer. It sounds like it. Or maybe Scott and Jennifer were just using each other for financial gain, or in Scott’s case, revenge. I don’t know. We’ll see what Jennifer has to say. But I still believe Peter. He may have suspected that something fishy was going on with the fire and the fire engine, but he didn’t want to admit it, even to himself. I hope the police aren’t too hard on him.”

  “Serve him right. It’s always best to face things head-on—that’s what I do. And I thought you did, too.”

  “I try.”

  “Then will you please take a look at what you’re doing with James?”

  “What?” I really didn’t have the time and energy to fend off Marty’s efforts to manage my personal life, even if it did involve one of her relatives.

  “You just spent the night with him.” Before I could sputter a protest, Marty held up a hand. “Okay, given the circumstances I’m sure that there was nothing remotely like hanky-panky going on. But I’ve never known him to step up and look after anybody that way.”

  Oh. Well, yes, there was that. I’d been so stunned that I hadn’t been able to think, but he had swooped in and taken charge, and I had been and still was grateful. I should have realized that caretaking of that sort was not part of the standard FBI investigative package. Of course Marty was going to feel she had a stake in this, because she had introduced us.

  “Nell, I may be nosy,” she went on, with what for her passed for softness, “but I’ve known Jimmy since he was bratty little kid. I also know that he’s a competent adult and he’s good at what he does. So are you, to both. Don’t let that get in the way of the two of you.”

  How had I ever ended up in this position? Trying to run an unwieldy, cash-strapped institution; facing repairs for a fire and all the related questions from law enforcement, insurers, and even my board; and now being lectured by Marty—board member, colleague, and maybe friend—about my love life? It just wasn’t fair, and for the second time in twenty-four hours I wanted to cry. For all that I was putting on a brave front, deep down I was still pretty shaky. But Marty wasn’t about to hold me the way James had, and I didn’t want her to; I had to deal with this on my own.

  And, damn it, she was right. James and I had been dancing around our apparently mutual attraction since the second or third time we’d met, and we’d both been careful to maintain a professional distance. Well, it was time to admit that was nonsense. Physical attraction—that came and went. But no one had ever stepped in and taken care of me the way James had last night, and this morning.

  “Marty, you’re right.”

  Apparently my quick capitulation had startled her. “I am? You mean I’ve wasted all this time thinking up good arguments when I didn’t have to?”

  “Yes. Look, the last twenty-four hours have been hell, and I know there’s more to come. But that kind of puts things in perspective, because I don’t have either the time or the energy to play silly games anymore. And it makes me sad to see how people screw up their lives for all the wrong reasons.” Like Scott Ingersoll doing everything he could to thumb his nose at dear old Dad. What a waste.

  “Nell, you make me proud to know you. I promise I’ll stay out of it from here on out. Now, let’s get the immediate problems taken care of, like having the window repaired before some other lowlife crawls in.”

  We went back to the reference room and helped the emergency conservation crew to inventory the books, dividing them between those that could be saved and those that had to be tossed. I supposed I could have called in one or more staff members, but I wasn’t ready to share the news with them yet—I thought I owed the board an explanation first—although I’m sure they and members and others were clogging the phone lines and email in-boxes with questions. But I preferred to deal with something tangible like soggy books, and it didn’t take a lot of expertise to decide a book could never be brought back to usable form and should go off somewhere to be recycled or burned or whatever. It was a horrifying number, but less than I had anticipated. And it was only a tiny fraction of what the Society held.

  It was getting dark when James came back. I was drafting an email to the staff on my laptop, explaining briefly what had happened and what they should expect on Monday, when I looked up and found him slouched in the doorway, watching me.

  Marty saw him, too. “I can stay here until this crew is finished, Nell. You must be wiped out,” she said. “I’ll try to get the board here sometime in the afternoon tomorrow, if that works for you. I’ll call you in the morning when I’ve got that sorted out.”

  The weight of the day came crashing down, and I realized I was exhausted. I hit Send and said, “Sounds good to me.” I stood up and stretched to loosen up my spine, and recalled that some of the scattered aches and pains came from other recent events, like wrestling with a criminal. I wondered if there were bruises to match.

  James straightened up and walked toward me. “You ready to go?”

  “Yes. Home?”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  And that was the extent of our conversation until we reached my house. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but I felt a bit out-of-body. Nothing seemed quite real; the world wasn’t the same one I had awakened to yesterday.

  At my house he helped me out of the car and walked me to the front door. “You’re coming in?” I said as I unlocked the door, although it wasn’t exactly a question.

  He smiled. “Of course. We had a date, remember? I brought dinner—it’s in the car.”

  “You know, I don’t deserve you.” I smiled back.

  “Yes, you do.”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I said nothing. I walked into my house and almost expected it to look different: it seemed ages since I’d been here. James went back to the car and reappeared moments later carrying a couple of bags. When had he had time to find food, what with interviews and paperwork and all that stuff?

  After I’d shut the door behind him, I found myself saying something stupid along the lines of, “I think I’ll change.” I was still wearing Marty’s smart outfit, and I thought I should take care of it, since it was better than most of the stuff in my closet.

  “I’ll deal with dinner,” James said, heading for the kitchen.

  Upstairs I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. I was pretty sure the dark circles under my eyes were expanding by the minute, and when I carefully pulled off the layers of clothes, purple bruises emerged—and I felt every one. I was in no mood to be entertaining or witty, or even coherent, but I didn’t think I could send James away if I tried, and I didn’t really want to. I finally pulled on some of the loosest, softest, oldest clothes I owned. I wasn’t going to impress him in a ragged college sweatshirt, but I didn’t think it mattered.

  Downstairs again, I found that James had located plates and silverware and set my table, and I could hear the microwave humming. Takeout, then, but high end—I had recognized the bags. He ferried something to the table and asked, “Wine?”

  “Please.” I assumed he didn’t expect me to string together logical sentences, so what could it hurt? He emerged from the kitchen again with a large bowl filled with some kind of pasta that smelled incredible even from across the room, and set it on the table before pouring me a glass of wine. “Sit.” I sat.

  The next few minutes were devoted to intense consumption of wondrously flavored carbohydrates, accompanied by that first glass of wine. Then the pace slowed, and I helped myself to a second glass from the bottle James had so kindly left on the table.

  “The police let me sit in on their interview with Jennifer while you were at the Society with Marty,” James said without preamble.
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  “Oh? What did she have to say?”

  “Something along the lines of, Scott seduced me and persuaded me to give him the whereabouts of the collection—I had no idea what he was going to do, et cetera.”

  “And of course she didn’t ask why he wanted to know,” I followed sarcastically.

  James nodded. “So she says. After all, Scott’s not around to contradict her.”

  “Did she know Scott was an arsonist?”

  “Not that she’d admit. It would be hard to prove. When we showed her the surveillance footage, she admitted that it was her brothers’ trucking firm that hauled the fire engine away. But she’ll find a way to blame Scott for that, too—he’s been working for the brothers on and off, since the museum laid him off. Everything is Scott’s fault—and he’s not here to defend himself.”

  “Ah,” I said. “So if she knew her brothers were involved, and she knew they were switching machines, she must have known about the fire? Does that make her an accessory in the death of the watchman?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Have you rounded up her brothers?”

  “Of course. They are, as they say, singing like birds. And since they’re across state lines, it’s actually a good thing the FBI is in the mix here.”

  “You know, I never thought to ask where the other fire engine came from—the one that burned.”

  “One of the brothers said they came across it in a hauling job. It was a mess, in pieces, but they figured if it was in a fire no one would notice.”

  “So odds are good that the museum will get their original fire engine back? If there’s a museum for it to go to.” That made me sad and glad at the same time.

  “Eventually, if Peter’s up to managing the place.”

  “That could be a problem. I get the feeling that if Peter doesn’t come back, the city might seize the opportunity to shut the place down. Which would be a shame.”

  James was silent for a few beats, staring into the depths of his glass. Finally he said, “Nell, I’m so sorry you got caught up in this. I’m sorry I brought you into it.”