“I understand, Rich. Marty left our nine o’clock meeting in kind of a hurry, and Bob says she left the building. Do you know anything about that?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her since last night.”
“What was it you found, that you think was so important?” And that you couldn’t share with Marty?
He pulled himself up straighter in his chair. “Last night Marty and I were over at her place going over the family papers, the ones that were personal rather than historical, so they never went to the Society. Her grandfather was careful with his record-keeping, you know? Her father, not so much. He kind of saved everything, but he didn’t organize it very well. So it took some time to sort through what he left, even though Marty’s been through most of it before, and a lot of it wasn’t relevant. I even found a love letter her father wrote to someone who wasn’t her mother. Didn’t seem to upset her, but that stuff didn’t get us any further. And then I found this. I made a copy of it and printed out one for you.”
Rich opened a folder he had brought and slid a copy of what appeared to be a handwritten list across my desk. “This is the inventory for Marty’s grandfather’s gift of the Terwilliger papers and artifacts to the Society. It’s the one in your records.”
I recognized it. “Yes, we’ve all looked at this before. Why are you showing it to me now?”
“Marty probably told you that her father ended up with most of the papers from the extended family because he was the only one who wanted them, and then she inherited them from him. When we were going through them, I found this.” Rich pulled out another sheet and handed that one to me, then sat back and stared at me, waiting.
I looked at the two pages. The handwriting appeared to be the same, although I was no expert. The second one looked very much like the first, and both seemed to enumerate the same sequence of items in the collection.
And the second one Rich had just given me included an extra line in the middle: “lap desk made by Benjamin Randolph ca. 1778.” Just to be sure, I looked back and forth between the two pages a few times. There was no corresponding line on the “official” list.
I took a deep breath. “So there was a Terwilliger lap desk, and it was part of the collection that Marty’s grandfather gave?”
“Looks like it,” Rich said.
“You know Marty’s been looking for something like this for a couple of days now. Why didn’t you just give it to her?”
“Because after everything I’ve been hearing, I knew it would upset her. She’s really into the whole Terwilliger name thing. I didn’t want to be there when she read the two.”
“Why not just leave it where she would find it? Did you think Marty would hide the truth?”
“I don’t know. Okay, I chickened out. But I brought it to you, didn’t I? I mean, I could have destroyed it and nobody would ever have known.”
“You know, Grandpa Terwilliger could have changed his mind about donating that one piece and held it back,” I pointed out.
“But it was found here in the basement,” Rich said stubbornly.
I considered that. “You think he did give it to the Society, but changed the list afterward?”
“Maybe. There aren’t dates on either list, but you can tell the handwriting’s pretty much the same. So he was the one who changed it, and filed the revised one at the Society—that list we’ve both seen.”
“And why would he do that?” I asked.
“Because he knew the lap desk was gone.”
“You’re saying that Grandpa Terwilliger knew the lap desk wasn’t going to be part of the Society collection. Who dumped it into the pit? Did he? Was it someone else?”
Rich looked distressed. “Nell, I don’t know! Either he did it, or he knew who was responsible. But now we know that he knew, and he deliberately kept quiet about it, and he changed the record himself.”
I sat back in my chair and studied Rich. What did his “find” add to our information? Apart from the fact that the Terwilliger family was involved somehow, which had been likely from the start.
Maybe it was time for a new tack. “Rich, was your grandfather Harrison Frazer?”
He looked at me, startled. “Yeah, well, great-grandfather. How do you know that?”
“I asked Lissa to check family histories of the board members and donors just after 1900, with particular attention to the ones who have descendants still in the area. She found your name.”
“I never hid the connection. That’s how I met Marty, a while back. She knows about it.”
“Your grandfather Frazer may have killed his wife and her lover. Did you know that?”
“Sure. It’s a family story. Nobody talks about it much, but a snoopy kid can find out stuff like that, if he keeps asking. So?”
“Did you know that there’s a good chance there was a gun hidden in that lap desk when it was tossed into the pit?”
Rich looked bewildered. “What? Why would I know that?”
“Somebody may have. We think Carnell Scruggs found the gun in the pit, in what was left of the lap desk, and took it away from the Society. And that may be why he died.”
“So that’s what it was!” Rich said.
“What?”
Rich leaned forward eagerly. “Look, that day last week, I was in and out of the basement—Marty wanted me to keep an eye on the Terwilliger stuff so nothing got misplaced, so I kept double-checking. I was afraid the boxes would get shuffled around or stuck in some corner somewhere and we’d have to waste time hunting for them, you know? I was in one of the rooms across the hall when I heard the guys talking about this hole in the floor they’d just uncovered, and they were, like, kidding around with each other about what might be down there, and daring someone to go down and see what was in there. Finally they figured out how to send the smallest guy, Scruggs, down with a ladder. And he went, and he was there for, oh, maybe ten minutes? I was standing by the hall door listening by then. I mean, it didn’t mean anything to me, but I was curious. So first he called out for a bag or bucket or something, so he could dump whatever he found into it and someone could haul it up. There wasn’t a whole lot of stuff—maybe two buckets’ worth. And then he climbed out, all dirty. The other guys were joking about it, calling him things like a mole or a worm, or worse. And it was by accident that I noticed he was adjusting something in his waistband or his back pocket. He was turned away from the other guys, but I could see it from the hall. I figured he had found whatever it was in the pit, and that meant it wasn’t his. It was the property of the Society, right?”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, I didn’t know this Scruggs guy, so I told the foreman, Joe Logan. I just said, I thought Scruggs might have picked up something and taken it with him. Logan said he’d take care of it. He thanked me for letting him know.”
Funny—Joe Logan hadn’t mentioned anything like that. “Did you tell that part to the police?
“I said I thought Scruggs had taken something, and I’d told his boss. Then when I heard what you all had come up with, I figured he’d pocketed one of the escutcheons. Isn’t that what he showed the guy at the bar later?”
The police had known Scruggs took something, but they hadn’t known what. I hated to ask, but I had one rather important question for Rich. “Do you have an alibi for the time when Scruggs was hit by the car?”
Rich’s eyes widened. “What, you think I killed the guy? No way! I was at a bar over near Penn with a bunch of my friends, watching a basketball game until it ended. That’s what I told the cops.”
I felt a spurt of relief. If the cops had checked out the alibi, then there was no way Rich could have been responsible for Scruggs’s death. I was glad, because I liked Rich, and I really couldn’t see him as a killer. “Rich, you don’t know how happy I am to hear that.”
“You really thought I was a k
iller? Wow!” Now he looked almost pleased.
My relief was short-lived: Marty burst through the door. “There you are, you little weasel,” she said to Rich. “What’d you do with them?”
“Nice to see you again, Marty,” I said mildly. “I assume you mean these? The mismatched inventories?” I held up the copies Rich had given me.
Now Marty was glaring at both me and Rich, alternately. “Yes, those.”
“When did you discover them?”
“A few days ago.”
Interesting: she hadn’t hidden or destroyed them. Had she been waiting for Rich to find them? Or hoping no one would? “Were you planning to share this information with me? Or anyone else?”
Marty dropped into the other guest chair, looking deflated. “Yeah, but I wanted to think about what they meant. Heck, if I was going to hide them, I could have destroyed them, right?”
I shook my head. “You would never destroy historical documents, Marty. Even ones that put the Terwilliger family in a bad light.”
“You’re right.” Then she turned on Rich. “So you found them, but instead of coming to me with them, you sneaked them out when you thought I wasn’t looking? Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I knew you’d be upset. Like you are,” Rich said. “But I brought them straight to Nell.”
Marty rubbed her hands over her face. “Oh, crap, crap, crap. This just keeps getting worse.”
“You want to explain why?” I challenged her. “We now can prove that your grandfather owned that lap desk, and that he knew that something had happened to it.” Another thought struck me. “You left the meeting right after Shelby reported on the Frazer murders. What’s the connection?”
“You know anything about the social scene on Long Beach Island, back in that era?”
“Not really. Why?”
“In some ways it was a summer enclave for the Philadelphia elite—that’s why you see so many of those big Victorian hulks there. They’d just transfer their families and staffs to the summer house and keep up with their usual social schedule, throwing in a few events at one or another yacht club. The men with jobs came down by train for weekends, just as that news article described. Just like Harrison Frazer did.”
“I take it the Terwilliger family had a house there?”
“Yup. Right next to the Frazer house. The one where the shootings took place.”
Like Marty had said, oh, crap.
CHAPTER 27
We sat in an uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Finally I took the lead. “Okay, now what? Rich here says he saw Carnell Scruggs take something from the pit, and that he told Joe Logan.”
“And I told the police about that,” Rich added quickly.
“And he has an alibi for the time of Scruggs’s death. What does this new information about the lap desk change?”
“Other than depressing me?” Marty asked. “Not much. According to Henry, there was a weapon in the lap desk. We’ve figured out that it may have been used to commit a crime, and my grandfather probably knew something about it. Nothing we can take to the police. Rich, you didn’t tell Logan what Scruggs took away?”
Rich shook his head. “I didn’t see it. I just know he hid something and acted kind of furtive after that. Which I also told the police.”
“And they probably assumed it was the brass piece,” I said. “If there really was a gun, we don’t know where it is now or who has it.”
Shelby popped her head in. “Wow, you look like somebody rained on your parade. I was going to ask Nell if she wanted to have lunch, but I’d hate to spoil the gloom. Anything you can talk about?”
“You might as well come in, Shelby. To bring you up to speed, we have just determined that Rich has an alibi for Scruggs’s death, that Marty’s grandfather owned the lap desk and knew it had gone missing, and that the Terwilligers and the Frazers were next-door neighbors down the shore in 1907.”
Rich stood up quickly and backed away, apparently glad to be out of the line of fire, and Shelby dropped into the chair he had vacated. “Wow,” she said, “I can’t leave you alone for long, can I? What do we do with this information?”
“Got me,” I said. “Hey, if Grandpa Terwilliger and Harrison Frazer were friends once, or at least cordial colleagues, he might have cut off all social interactions with the Frazers after this murder. Right, Marty?”
“Frazer killed himself not long after, didn’t he?” Shelby reminded me. “Out of grief for the loss of his wife, or so said the papers.”
“That was the public story,” I said. “Wonder what the real story was.”
“A guilty conscience? But where would Grandpa Terwilliger fit in that? Marty, you have any ideas?” Shelby asked.
Marty roused herself from her funk long enough to say, “Not yet. I’m going to have to go back and look at the more personal papers, see if there are any references to the Frazers there.”
“Do you happen to know if the Frazers had any other children, Marty? Apart from Rich’s grandfather?”
She shook her head. “I can’t say—before my time. Shelby, you can find out, right?”
“No problem,” Shelby said.
“So, Shelby is going to go back and dig through her files some more. I’ve got Eric hunting for any board notes and reports that might have gone AWOL, looking for references to Harrison Frazer. Latoya’s going to check out the details of his bequest to the Society. You found a contribution to the building fund from Frazer, right, Shelby?”
“I did. Came in early, too—long before his wife’s death. The family was rolling in money. What are you going to do?”
“See if the bank records have arrived. If they have, I’ll check them to see if there were any odd deposits from Harrison Frazer.”
The mass exodus from my office was quick, and I was left with my thoughts. Gun: still missing, unless the police hadn’t bothered to tell me about finding it. Suspects in Scruggs’s death? We were back to none again, since we had eliminated Rich. I assumed the police had interviewed Joe Logan, and wondered what he had told them. Other guilty parties: Harrison Frazer, who had probably killed his wife and her lover, and Grandpa Terwilliger, who most likely had some knowledge of that. Would confirming that he had leaned on Harrison Frazer for a contribution in exchange for his silence help anything? So far, nothing seemed strong enough to take to the police.
It all came circling back to Carnell Scruggs’s death and the missing and still-hypothetical gun.
I called the bank. Yes, the records had arrived, I was told. Did I want them delivered? No, I decided. I needed to get out of the building and clear my head. “Why don’t I stop by and look at them there? I’m only a few minutes away.”
We settled on one o’clock, which meant I could get myself some lunch. As I gathered up my things to leave, another thought bubbled to the surface, and I wondered if the Frazer house was still standing, particularly after Hurricane Sandy. If a firearm that had been used in the killing had turned up amid the debris, would anyone have reported it? It was equally likely that if it had been concealed in the house, it had been washed out to sea, and it might reappear somewhere else entirely or not at all. But somehow I didn’t really believe it had been hidden in the house. My gut was telling me that it had been in the Society building.
I marched out of my office and stopped at Eric’s desk. “Eric, I’m going out to grab a bite. Then I’m going over to the bank to see what the old records can tell us.”
“Have a nice lunch, Nell.”
“Thanks, Eric.”
I couldn’t tell you what I ate. I think it was a sandwich, and I managed not to drop it down the front of me or in my lap while I was lost in thought.
Reviewing what I had heard from the others about what they had found, and what I had asked them to look for now, I felt like we were actually getting closer to a solution. The net
was closing, the noose was tightening . . . but I didn’t like what was in that net or noose or whatever. Stop with the metaphors, Nell! I was looking in the bank records for something very specific, within a short time frame, so it shouldn’t take long there.
The bank looked like exactly what you’d hope an nineteenth-century financial institution would look like, with a small staff and discreet electronic devices scattered around. I waited in the wood-and-marble-paneled lobby for Jacob Keefe, our account representative, to come collect me. When he arrived, he escorted me upstairs in a small elevator (also wood-paneled, with polished brass accents) to a small conference room, where several boxes were stacked. “I’d offer you coffee or tea, but I wouldn’t want to present a risk to these archives,” he said apologetically.
I laughed. “Believe me, I understand. I’m just pleased that you could get them here so quickly. If I want photocopies of anything, should I ask you?”
“Of course. Will there be many copies required?”
“I hope not, but I can’t be sure.”
“Then I’ll leave you to your work. Please let the woman outside the door know when you’ve finished.” He retreated silently, leaving me alone with all the paper.
It took me several minutes to work out the coding system for the files, but in the end I zeroed in on 1907 easily enough. The Society files in that folder were a bit thicker than those of the surrounding years, most likely because of the influx of contributions for the new building, but given the limited number of donors, even those files were relatively slender. I pulled out the earliest one and started skimming.
It was heartening to see the influx of the state funding, all duly recorded and reported on. I wondered what that $150,000 from the state government would be worth in today’s money. They’d built our entire building with that amount—I’d settle for a mere ten percent in modern dollars.
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