“Yeah. Maybe Carnell was the first to claim it, but maybe somebody else saw him pick it up and knew what it was.”
Was this getting a bit too far-fetched? “But that would mean that one of the construction crew could recognize a piece of antique brass hardware and had some reason to care.”
“That’s just one scenario. I didn’t say it was a good one.” Marty didn’t seem miffed by my criticism. “Or it could have been someone else. The contractor. The architect—he must have checked in with the crew to make sure everything was ready to begin the new work. Or someone on the staff here.”
That last one hit me like a punch in the gut. “I can’t imagine who would be interested—except maybe you, Marty. I wouldn’t have known what I was looking at, at least until it was cleaned up.”
“I’m not about to point any fingers,” Marty said. “All I’m saying is that if Hrivnak looked at street cam footage for that night, between here and that bar, she might see someone following our dead guy from this end, even if she couldn’t tell who it was.”
That was not a reassuring thought. “There are always people on the street. And I’m not exactly in a position to ask her, you know. She’s already given me more information than she had to.”
“You told her what we suspect, when you gave her the brass bits?”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t think she’d be very interested in our rather fragile string of hypotheses.”
“But she did follow up with the bartender, which tells us something.”
“True. But I can’t see her making the leaps of logic that we did.”
“You’ve got a point there.” Marty thought for a moment. “There is another option,” she finally said, leveling her gaze on me.
It took me a moment to work out what she meant. “No! I will not ask James to do any favors, legally or otherwise. Besides, what could he do?”
“Get a better look at the street cam footage, or enhance it, or whatever those people do. I can ask him, leave you out of it.”
“No. Marty, that makes no difference. You’re a relative and a friend and a member of the Society—your asking him is only marginally different than my asking him. You can’t just treat him as a handy free pass to any kind of restricted information. It’s not fair to him.” My voice kept going up, in pitch and in volume. I felt really strongly about this. I was not going to put my relationship with James at risk merely to make our crime-solving a little easier. No way. And I wouldn’t let Martha Terwilliger do it, either. Unfortunately Marty usually did what Marty wanted to do.
I softened my tone. “Please, Marty—there’s no need to involve him. You and I are working with the police, as we should. The FBI does not belong in this mix.”
Marty looked at me for a long moment, then her shoulders slumped. “All right, I hear you. I can see your point, even if I don’t like it. So without James’s help, what do we do next?”
“Go back to that first list you made. If we assume that the brass, whatever it belonged to, was why the man was killed, we know that he had the escutcheon when he went to the bar, and we have an eyewitness—the bartender. You’ve looked into lap desks, and that kind of piece fits what little we know. You’re found a connection with the Terwilliger furniture through the brass. You know that the same cabinetmaker made lap desks for others and made other furniture for the Terwilligers. But then we hit a brick wall. We could make an effort to find out what other pieces the furniture maker made using the same brass fittings, and who he sold them to. Henry told us they were commonly used in Philadelphia at that time. Maybe the Terwilliger connection is just a coincidence.”
“Yeah, right. You don’t really believe that, do you, Nell?” Marty said.
“No, I guess I don’t. Where does that leave us?”
“What about what we guess was in the box?”
“We’re still not sure anything was in the box. It could have been empty. Could Henry tell if it was broken before it went into the pit, and how much earlier? All we do know is that whatever it once held—papers or objects—was not in the pit. Or it might have been in the pit but Carnell pocketed it the same way he did the escutcheon. Though, again, if it exists, whoever pushed him took it. It couldn’t have been too big, because there were other people watching when he came out of the pit. So he had to be able to hide it under what he was wearing. Assuming he thought it was worth taking.” I was talking more to myself than to Marty. If there was something missing, what could it be?
“You have a plan?” Marty asked.
“Maybe I do, kind of through the back door. I want to look at this from the Society’s perspective, and I’ve already started that process—I’ve asked Ben, Latoya, Shelby, and Eric to look at our in-house records for any Society documents about that particular time period, just before we know the pit was closed up. One”—I started ticking off points on one hand—“how the collections were managed during the building construction. I’ve already asked Latoya and Ben to pull those records. Two, I’ve got Shelby looking into bequests and begging letters from the same period, to see if there’s any reference to specific collections items in those and who they came from. Three, I’ve asked Eric to track down the board minutes and correspondence, to see if there was any discussion of collections. Surely if the Society owned a Terwilliger lap desk, somebody would have mentioned it somewhere?”
“Of course they would. My family kept good records, before and after they were part of the Society. You know that. The lap desk is not in the Terwilliger inventory for the gift to the Society. Look, we know that my grandfather had the lap desk at one time. We have his own inventory from when he made the first donation to the Society, and several later ones. They’re in his own handwriting—I recognize it—and the lap desk is not included. My father followed the same path, and obviously I know his handwriting, too. I’ve been through his papers, and there is no mention of a lap desk. If you believe the documents, the desk was never here.”
“Marty, of course I respect your expertise here, but things happen. Maybe it was a late addition. Maybe your grandfather forgot or slipped up. And maybe this whole thing is a wild-goose chase. But it’s easy enough to bring together all the documents we have relating to the construction in the early twentieth century and see if there’s anything we haven’t seen before, or that we misinterpreted the first time we looked at it. We’ve got a real asset in Ben in that regard, because he has no preconceptions.”
Marty shook her head. “I want you to be wrong, since I’ve been living with this stuff all my life and I’d argue I knew it inside out. But at the same time, unless we find something real, this whole thing goes away, and I don’t want that, either, not until we know what really happened, if that’s even remotely possible. So prove me wrong, if you can. And we’ll do it the old-fashioned way, with hands-on research. And without James’s help. Good enough for you?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’ve got a very personal stake in all this. It’s my family.”
And the Society was my institution, but I didn’t need to tell Marty that—and I didn’t feel quite the emotional and psychological attachment to this building and what we held within it that Marty did to her multiple generations of Terwilligers.
“I understand, Marty, and I know what it means to you. Look, once everybody has collected all the bits and pieces from all over the building, let’s set up somewhere central where we can spread it out and cross-reference everything. I don’t know that anybody’s looked at the whole picture, at least since this building opened.”
“How about at my place?” Marty asked.
I considered that. Since Marty lived alone, she had some room to spare, and it was close by. I was reluctant to let our documents out of the building, but on the other hand, it seemed like a good idea to keep what we had collected away from prying eyes. “No offense, Marty, but I’d rather keep them here. We can find
a safe place for the documents.”
Marty looked frustrated, but she gave in. “I understand. Besides, who’s to say they’ll take up more than one lousy folder?” She looked at her watch and leaped from her chair. “Jeez, look at the time! I’m meeting Eliot in fifteen minutes.”
“Wait just a second, Marty,” I interrupted. “If we believe your second scenario, there could be someone at the Society who knows something about what’s going on. We can’t afford to spread this around any more than we already have.”
“You said you talked to Latoya and Ben and Shelby. That going to be a problem?”
“When I asked them to look for the records, I specifically did not tell them we were looking into the murder. It was an appropriate request coming from me, and we can use the information. I can’t stop them from making inferences, but I do trust those people.”
Marty gave me a searching look before responding. “So we’re talking about collections management, period. Got it. I’ve got to run, but we’ll pick this up tomorrow, and by then maybe we’ll have more to work with, if people come through. Bye!”
And she was gone before I could open my mouth. Just as well: I needed to sort through what I thought and what I guessed—again. It was a moving target. I reached for my bag and pulled out a train schedule. After ten years living in Bryn Mawr I’d memorized those trains, but I hadn’t yet had the chance to work out the best way to get to Chestnut Hill. The next train left in fifteen minutes, so I could just make it if I hurried.
Eric stuck his head in. “You leaving now?”
“Unless you give me a reason not to,” I replied.
“No, ma’am! Just checking to see if it was okay if I left, too.”
“You go right ahead.”
“Thanks. And I’ll get onto that, uh, project you asked about first thing in the morning.”
“See you tomorrow, then. Hey, I’ll walk down with you.”
The halls were empty as we went down to the first floor. I nodded at Bob, still at the desk, and Eric and I went outside. Eric turned toward the river, and I angled my way toward City Hall and Suburban Station. I caught my train with two minutes to spare, and let my mind drift for the half-hour ride.
When I reached Chestnut Hill it was beginning to grow dark. I wasn’t sure what this neighborhood would be like at night, later in the year. It was lovely—residential, with large old houses and broad, well-maintained sidewalks and plenty of streetlights, but it was still within city limits. Don’t borrow trouble, Nell.
I made the ten-minute walk home with no problems, taking the front steps quickly and letting myself in. James and I had talked briefly about the existing alarm system, but I was ambivalent about them. My former home in Bryn Mawr hadn’t had one, but I’d had nothing worth stealing there. Of course, I had the same lack of valuable stuff here, but the house looked as though there should be good pickings, whatever the reality.
Once inside, the door locked behind me, I wondered if I’d ever be able to live up to the house’s standards—or if I even wanted to. I changed into something comfortable, and since James had said he would be late, I rummaged in the refrigerator for something to eat, eventually heating up some leftovers and helping myself to a glass of wine.
While I ate I thought about the problem of “stuff.” I was the president of a collecting institution, with literally millions of items under my care, but I had never been infected by the collecting bug. I acquired things that meant something to me, and I had inherited a few, but I had never felt the desire to surround myself with material objects, no matter what their commercial worth. What I did want was furniture that matched the general style of the house combined with comfort and convenience—a set of furniture where James and I could sprawl without worrying about spilling anything, which luckily eliminated any valuable antiques. Did such a thing exist? I hadn’t yet seen anything that fit that description. But we needed something: I didn’t plan to live surrounded by cardboard packing boxes indefinitely.
James returned around eight. When I heard his key in the door, I had a fleeting image of greeting him wrapped in plastic wrap with a chilled martini in my hand, but I decided that was too much work, and besides, I didn’t have either plastic wrap or gin. He’d have to settle for just me.
He didn’t seem to mind.
CHAPTER 18
The next morning James and I were running late—no time to talk over coffee and muffins. We drove in together, although James had to pay attention to crazy drivers, and I didn’t want to distract him with conversation.
“How’d your meeting go yesterday?” I finally ventured when the cars on the highway started moving more smoothly.
“About what you’d expect. Before you ask, nothing I can talk about. What did you do yesterday?”
“Nothing I can talk about,” I replied, only a bit facetiously.
“Which I assume means you saw Marty.”
“Yes. Also Latoya, Shelby, and Ben. Busy day. Didn’t even get out for lunch.”
“How’s Ben working out? If you can talk about that?”
“Latoya actually said nice things about him, which is huge for her. He’s been a big help with this planning for the shuffling of collections all over the building. And, yes, I passed Latoya’s comments on to him—I figured he should hear it, in case she doesn’t tell him herself.”
“I’m glad he can handle things.” Back to silence.
After a few more miles, I said, “You know, maybe we should draw up a chart of what we can talk about safely.”
“Anything, as long as it doesn’t involve crime,” James said.
“Even if it’s a long-ago crime?”
“Probably safer to steer away from that, too. You’ve already seen how they bleed into the present.”
“What if we uncovered evidence of a foiled plot to assassinate George Washington?”
“Have you?”
“No. But it’s possible, isn’t it?”
He smiled at my persistence, without turning his head. “With you, anything is possible. My first guess would be that the crime or conspiracy or whatever would not fall under the purview of the modern FBI, given that the parties are long since deceased. They are, aren’t they? No zombies?”
“Not that I know of. Who should I call if I encounter a zombie crime?”
“Not me, please. We don’t handle half-dead perpetrators. Or do I mean undead?”
We piffled along those lines the rest of the way into the city. I told James to park where he normally would, near his office, because I figured I could use the exercise of walking to mine while weather permitted. “Will you be late again?” I asked as we climbed out of the car.
“Not that I know of, but I’ll call you later if things change.”
We set off in our separate directions. It took me less than ten minutes to reach the Society, where I found Marty waiting for me on the front steps. That was unusual, since I knew she had keys to every door in the place, not to mention all the security codes.
“Good morning,” I greeted her. “What are you doing waiting out here?”
Up close, I could see she looked uneasy. “I wanted to talk with you outside the building. I’m not sure who to trust anymore. Coffee?”
“Sure,” I replied, mystified. I followed her around the corner to a small coffee shop, where neither of us saw anyone we recognized. When we were seated with thick mugs of bad coffee in front of us, I said, “What’s wrong?”
“How many employees do you have at the Society?” Marty asked.
I had to stop and think. “Maybe forty? Of course, they’re not all there at the same time. Some are part-timers. Some are cleaning staff, and they usually come in after hours. And don’t forget the construction crew that Carnell worked with. Why do you want to know?”
“Because what if there was a second thing that came out of the pit? If it’s related to
Scruggs’s death, we need to know who might have known about it. There are a lot of people who have pretty much free access to go anywhere in the Society building—and who can lurk in dark corners eavesdropping on private conversations. And whilst in hiding could have seen Carnell pocket whatever it was.”
“Marty, you’re starting to sound paranoid. Can we have a reality check here? You have just postulated that someone saw what Carnell picked up, after it had sat for over a century in a hole in the ground, and that person, rather than telling me or Latoya or someone appropriate at the Society like any honest person would do, decided to pursue Carnell for some unknown reason and quite possibly caused his death. If you heard this story, would you believe it? And what are we supposed to do about it?” I didn’t point out that Marty was suggesting we might have a killer at the Society.
She didn’t answer for a minute. Then she said, “I might have an idea. How about we open this up, instead of trying to keep it all secret?”
“What do you have in mind? And won’t that make things worse? Either the person behind this will panic and do more harm, or he—or she—will disappear, once they know we know there’s something going on.”
“You’ve already talked to some staff members and asked them to do something that connects to this problem, but you didn’t tell them why you wanted the information, did you? You made up a nice, plausible cover story.”
“Yes, one that’s more or less true. But they aren’t stupid, so some of them may make an educated guess about what we’re up to.”
“You think they all believed your little fairy tale?” Marty demanded.
I thought about that for a moment. “I’m not sure. Latoya wouldn’t question it, I think. Eric I would eliminate up front because he’s not from around here and has no history with Philadelphia. Shelby . . . She’s sharp, and I’d guess she’s already figured it out. Lissa, too.”
“About what I figured. I think we have to trust somebody, and we know these people pretty well. Plus we can use their help. What about if we flip it and tell them exactly what we are doing, and what we’re looking for? It’d be a heck of a lot faster.”
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