Razing the Dead

by Sheila Connolly

  “Thus far our discussion about this move has been about three sentences long, so I don’t know.” I lived in what had once been a carriage house behind one of the gracious Main Line mansions in suburban Bryn Mawr. The exterior of the house was still gracious, but inside, it had been chopped up into offices by a succession of professionals. At the moment it was owned by a group of psychologists. I wondered how easy my place would be to sell—it was kind of small and had no land attached, and it was in somebody else’s backyard. Something I’d have to think about. If James and I took the next step. If?

  Shelby stood up. “Well, I’d better get to work. But let me say this: If you let him go, you’re an idiot. Get over your fear of whatever and move forward.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. That’s what I plan to do.” Maybe.

  We were interrupted by Latoya. “You wanted to see me, Nell? Oh, hi, Shelby.”

  “Hi, Latoya,” Shelby said. “I was on my way out. You want to have lunch, Nell?”

  “Let me get back to you on that, Shelby. I’ve got an appointment at eleven, and I’m not sure how long that will run.”

  When Shelby left, I turned my attention to Latoya. We’d had a rocky relationship ever since she joined the Society a few years earlier, back when I was still director of development. As vice president for collections, she usually had conveyed the sense that fundraising was somewhat inferior to collections management. She’d had some difficulty adjusting to my unexpected promotion to president—which had made me her boss. I hadn’t wanted to force the issue, but now that I was settled in the position, it was time for me to take a firmer hand. It was hard to do, but I knew it was best both for me and the Society. I just hoped Latoya would adjust to our new working relationship.

  “Is this about the registrar position?” she asked bluntly.

  “It is. What progress have you made?”

  “Actually, we’ve had a lot of applications since we posted the position. Which I will say surprised me, but given the economy, I guess I ought to have expected it. Unfortunately, many of the applicants simply aren’t qualified for a senior position here.”

  “Have you considered moving Alice into the position?” Alice was an intern, very young but very talented.

  “She hasn’t said anything to me, and I’m not sure she wants it. To be honest, I really don’t think she’s ready. She has the ability, but not the depth of experience. I hope she’ll stay on, though. Do you disagree?”

  “Actually, no. I think you’re right. Her job description may change a bit, depending on the skills the new registrar brings to the table. Well, keep looking and keep me informed. The collections here are still superb, and we’re in sore need of someone who can work with the new software and finish sorting them out. We really need to dig out from under all the stuff we’ve got piled up.” Not only was the documentation of the Society’s collections mired in the past, but we’d been handed a mountain of uncataloged material by the FBI recently, and we were bursting at the seams.

  “I’ll do that.” Latoya stood up, then hesitated. “Nell, we really do need to do something to improve our image in the public eye. Almost all of our publicity lately has been about theft and murder, and I can’t imagine that our members are happy about that. Not to mention our donors and the board.”

  As if that was my fault? “I recognize that, Latoya. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them. Maybe we should have an all-hands staff meeting devoted to this, to find out what people have been saying about us and figure out how to fix it.” Now that I didn’t have to worry about James from day to day, I could devote more energy to my own responsibilities.

  “Good idea. Let me put my ideas on paper, and we can talk.”

  “Sooner rather than later, please.”

  “Right.” Latoya left, but as soon as she had cleared the door, Eric stuck his head in.

  “Mr. Wakeman is downstairs. Want me to bring him up?”

  “Please.” The man was early, and I hadn’t had time to check out what we had in our records about him or think through what he might want. When Eric left to retrieve Wakeman, I figured I had about three minutes, so I did a quick online search about my guest. My fuzzy memory was more or less correct: he was a big-time developer in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties. Which didn’t give me a clue about why he wanted to see me.

  Two and a half minutes later, Eric ushered in a tall, greying man in his fifties, whose expensive clothes seemed to have a mind of their own and were flying in several different directions—necktie loose, shirt coming untucked. But I was pretty sure he wasn’t here for a fashion consult.

  I stood up and extended my hand. “I’m Nell Pratt. What can I do for you, Mr. Wakeman?”

  He shook it firmly. “I’m working on a new project, and I want you to help.”

  Music to my ears.

  CHAPTER 2

  Mitchell Wakeman sat heavily in one of my antique guest chairs, legs sprawling. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Pratt. I’ve been seeing your name in the papers a lot lately.”

  I was never sure how to respond to statements like that. It really would be nice to get some press for something related to Philadelphia history instead of my involvement with its crime rate. I hedged a bit. “And how did that lead you here to the Society?”

  Wakeman nodded once, as if noting my tacit acknowledgment of the events he was talking about. “I’ll come to the point. Please keep the details of what I tell you on the q.t.—we’re still in the preliminary planning stages and I don’t want to spread it around yet. You know, drive property values and construction costs up in the neighborhood.”

  “I understand, and I hope I am always discreet about any confidences. What are you asking for?”

  “Now that the economy is turning around a bit, I think the time is right for a project I’ve been nursing along for a while—a multipurpose development in Chester County.”

  “Multipurpose? Meaning a combination of residential and commercial?”

  “Yes, but even more. It’s a unified development that brings together everything you need, kind of like a little community of its own. You know—housing, restaurants and cafés, shops, dry cleaner, maybe even some medical offices.”

  “Like a retirement village for senior citizens?”

  “For all ages. Condos first, then maybe houses in a later phase.”

  “Sounds interesting. Will this be in commuter range?”

  “Good question. Like I said, it’s in Chester County, so it’s in commuting range. Plus SEPTA’s been talking about extending one of its lines out farther that way. I’d like to encourage that. I’ve initiated very preliminary discussions with management there about a sort of public-private venture, but nothing is set in stone yet.”

  “I live near the Main Line. So, this would be out beyond that?”

  “Yeah, that’s where the land is.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice a notch. “I’ve got a nice parcel of land in Goshen, a working dairy farm until recently. I knew the owner for years—his family owned the place for centuries. When he hit ninety, Ezra decided to sell before his kids started squabbling over what to do with it. I was happy to take it at a fair price. The deal was already done when he passed last year, but he had a life interest in it.”

  “This all sounds wonderful, Mr. Wakeman, but where does the Society fit in this?”

  “You know about Duffy’s Cut?”

  “Yes, of course.” Duffy’s Cut had been in the news a lot over the past couple of years—it involved the tragic death of over thirty Irish immigrants working on the “cut” or railroad cutting in Malvern, a town in Chester County, in the early nineteenth century, and the cover-up by the railroad company, which had buried the bodies fast and never reported the deaths. They’d been found only recently. “Various historians and members of the media have done some research on it here. How does that apply?”

  “
Frankly, I don’t want another Duffy’s Cut to happen on my project. It’s not just the legalities about digging up old bones—I can respect that. What I want is to be ready if something like that comes up, so I’m not caught with my pants down. Goodwill is important in making a project like this work, and it’s hard enough without worrying about any messes in the press. You see what I’m saying?”

  “I think so,” I said cautiously. “You want the Society to look into the history of the property you are considering to make sure there aren’t any unpleasant surprises hidden there? Or, if there are, to make sure you’re prepared to handle them?”

  “Exactly.” He sat back and smiled at me. “Can you do that?”

  I thought for a moment. He was right to come to the Society. We had the best collections of documents about Philadelphia history anywhere, although there was a good small historical society in West Chester. But I still wasn’t sure what he was asking. “Do you want to hire a researcher to look into this?”

  “You mean one of your hourly intern types who’ll take a year or two? No, I want the best. I want someone working on this pretty much full-time until I’m sure you’ve turned over every rock and nothing crawls out.”

  Full-time? I wasn’t sure I could help him there. Our staff was pretty limited. There was Rich, an intern whose main job was to slog through the Terwilliger Collection, mainly documents from generations of local Terwilligers—Pennsylvania movers and shakers who went back to the early eighteenth century. The family had included several Society presidents, and its latest member, Martha Terwilliger, was on the Society board. The short answer was, Rich was fully occupied and Marty wouldn’t be happy if I tried to divert him from “her” project. That only left new intern Alice, who was untried. She’d been hired in part to keep her benefactor uncle happy, although so far she’d done a great job for us. But no way was she ready to tackle a major research project like the one Wakeman was proposing. Still, I didn’t want to tell him that we couldn’t handle it or send him off to one of the local universities to find a historian, who would probably want to write a book about it anyway. And academic historians were slow, because they insisted on being careful and accurate, with footnotes on every page. I didn’t condone the quick-and-dirty approach, but I thought we could deliver what he wanted. “Mr. Wakeman, I’ll be blunt. We don’t have enough staff at the moment to provide what you need. But we can recruit and hire someone qualified to take on this project on a full-time basis, if you’re willing to pay for it. And we do have all the resources here on site.”

  “Of course I’ll pay for it,” Wakeman said impatiently. “But I want somebody good, and I want whoever it is to keep his or her mouth shut until I’m ready to go public with this.”

  “That’s not a problem. I take it you want this to happen immediately?”

  He grinned. “Yeah, like, last week. How much you gonna charge for this?”

  I named a figure that equaled six months’ salary for one of our interns—plus fifty percent. I figured the extra would cover speed and silence, of course, and I knew he had the money.

  Wakeman didn’t blink. “When can you start?” he asked.

  “As soon as I can identify him—or her.”

  “Let me know. I’ll want to meet him—or her. And if this goes right, there might be something extra in it for the Society.”

  “I’m sure that would be welcome.”

  Wakeman stood up. “Great. Here’s my card. Give me a call when you have somebody for me to talk to.” He turned and strode out, and I frantically gestured to Eric to see him out of the building, since Wakeman couldn’t use the elevator without a key. Pitiful security, I knew, but it was all we had.

  After they were gone, I sat at my desk for a few moments, stunned. I recognized this as a true opportunity: Wakeman Property Trust was a major player in the greater Philadelphia area and was rolling in money. If we did a good job, there would definitely be rewards, tangible and intangible. And we were clearly the best organization to dig into the history of that particular plot of land. The problem would be finding someone who could do it.

  Well, Marty Terwilliger was a good person to start with. She knew everybody in Philadelphia and was related to half of them (including James). Funny—I hadn’t seen much of her in the past few weeks. Of course, I hadn’t been around much myself in the past few weeks because of James. But it was definitely time to climb back in the saddle. I picked up the phone and dialed Marty’s cell.

  She answered on the fifth ring. “Nell? What’s up?”

  “Nothing bad, I promise. I’ve got a research project I’d like to discuss with you. Can you do lunch today?”

  I heard what sounded to me like a hand clamping over the phone and a rumble of voices. Then Marty came back. “One? At that place around the corner?”

  “Great. See you there.”

  I checked my watch: twelve fifteen. The meeting with Wakeman hadn’t taken long, because he’d come right to the point. I hated bits of time that weren’t long enough to start anything but were too long to waste. I decided to spend it doing some more online research into Mitchell Wakeman. From my days as Society fundraiser, I was sure he had never been a member of the Society or given us any substantial amount, so I wondered what had made him think of us. It was gratifying to know that we had a solid reputation—apart from a few recent problems—but Wakeman could have hired just about anyone in the business. How hush-hush was this project of his? Had he come to us because he thought none of his construction colleagues would see what he was up to? The next time I looked up, it was twelve forty-five, there was a stack of printouts on my printer, and Shelby was leaning on my doorframe smiling.

  “Earth to Nell?”

  “Have you been standing there long?”

  “Maybe. What had you so absorbed?”

  “I’ll explain over lunch if you want to come along. I’m meeting Marty around the corner in twelve minutes, so we should get going. Say, have you seen much of Marty recently?”

  Shelby wrinkled her brow. “Come to think of it, I haven’t. Maybe Rich is too tied up with general stuff to work on the Terwilliger materials?”

  “That never stopped her before. I’ve been so distracted that I hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t around. But she said yes to lunch quickly enough when I called today. Maybe there’s something else going on in her life.”

  “Heaven forbid Martha Terwilliger should have a life!” Shelby said in mock horror. “Let’s go find out.”

  Marty, unfazed by the August heat, was waiting outside the restaurant when Shelby and I arrived. We gathered her up and ducked into the air-conditioned restaurant as quickly as possible and found a quiet table in the back. Once we were settled with tall glasses of iced tea in front of all three of us, Marty looked me over critically.

  “You’re looking good. How’s Jimmy?”

  “Are those two statements related?” I parried.

  “I’d say yes,” Marty said. “Has he asked you yet?”

  “Asked me what?” I said, stalling.

  “Yeah, what?” Shelby said, smiling and looking back and forth between us.

  “About moving in together,” Marty replied.

  I struggled to answer. How come she knew before I did? “Yes, he mentioned something like that this morning.”

  “You gonna do it?” she asked. Marty didn’t bother withbeating around the bush. But I supposed she had a right to be interested, since she was the one who’d introduced me to James and the one who’d glued me back together when he’d been injured, and forced me to step up to take care of him. “Your house is cute, but it’s not adequate for two people. Kind of like a burrow built for one.”

  “Marty!” I protested. “It’s a perfectly nice Victorian carriage house, but I know it’s small. And how the heck do you know anything about it? Have you even seen James?”

  “We had lunch a couple of times w
hile you were at work.”

  “So, was this your idea or his?” I was working up a head of steam. Was Marty trying to manipulate my life now?

  “His. He asked me how I thought you’d react. I told him you’d back off, and then you’d waffle for a while, and that he should just wait it out because you two belong together.”

  Great. My own life was not my own, apparently. “Shelby, were you in on all this, too?”

  “No, ma’am!” she said quickly. “But I do agree with Marty. Why don’t you skip the waffling part and go straight to yes?”

  “Hey, give me like fifteen minutes to think about this, okay? Besides, a few other things have intervened. Which is what I wanted to talk to you about.” I looked around the room: midweek, after one, the restaurant was sparsely filled, and there was no one seated at a table near us. “I had a very interesting discussion with a certain prominent local developer this morning.”

  “Mitchell Wakeman, right?” Marty said.

  “How did you know?” I asked. The woman was uncanny.

  “Before you ask, no, he’s not a relative, and no, I didn’t send him to you.” She grinned at me. “He figured out where to come all by himself.”

  One question answered, to my happy relief. “I’m glad to hear that. How, then?”

  “Because you say prominent, local, and developer in one sentence, and he’s the obvious choice. What did he want?”

  “Time-out,” Shelby interrupted. “Who is this guy? I mean, I know the name, and I know his reputation, but he’s never been involved with the Society.”

  “You haven’t been around Philadelphia very long, have you?” I said. “He and his various companies more or less shaped the current skyline of the city. He’s had a finger in every pie in half the state. He’s been on boards and panels and who knows what around here. Does that about cover it, Marty?”

  “In a nutshell. He’s one of the good guys. Politically connected, but he uses it for good, not evil. He’s made tons of money, but legally, and not by trampling or squeezing anybody for it. Never been a member or given us any money.” By us I knew Marty meant the Society, to which she was fanatically devoted, just as her father and grandfather had been. “What did he want?”