Monument to the Dead (17 page)

“So what now?” Marty shot back.

“Marty, I really don’t know. Look at us—we’re historians, collectors, administrators.
It’s ridiculous to expect that we can solve crimes.” I hated that I sounded whiny,
even if what I said was true.

“Nonsense,” Marty replied firmly. “We’re smart. We’re trained in research. Nell, you’ve
been in development, so you must have some skills in reading people.”

“I guess, but how far has all that gotten us? The thing I keep coming back to is,
what’s the motive? Why this group of people, why now?”

“Good point,” Marty said. “Because the trust is about to be dissolved? Did that set
this off?”

“How many people would know about that?” Shelby asked.

“Not many,” I replied. “The trustees themselves, and the lawyer—who I met with this
morning. He’s an associate and looks about twelve. He’s had the file on the trust
for maybe a year. And I asked about the appointed accountant working on the trust—he’s
apparently disabled, which probably eliminates him as an active murderer. And even
if people knew about the trust and its potential for going away, why would they care?
Cui bono?
”

“Who stands to lose anything if the trust shuts down?” Marty asked. “We know the Edwin
Forrest Home is moribund, and there are plenty of organizations in Philadelphia that
could make better use of the space, whether or not it comes with any funding or endowment.
Or they could tear it down and build something new on the property, especially if
the price was right or it was given outright. Or the trust could really liquidate—sell
the property and put the money to some better use. Of course, they’d need court approval,
but I’m sure that could be managed.”

“Even if some group had its eye on the property, how does killing the trustees help
them?” I asked, rubbing the bridge of my nose. I was getting very tired of thinking
about this.

“Maybe it accelerates the schedule. Now that the trustees are in breach of the trust
terms, the surviving members may be forced to do something. Or at least, the people
involved would
believe
they have to do something. They’re honorable types. And the simplest solution now
is to wrap it up and be done with it.”

“But that will take time, right? The trustees would have to vote to pursue dissolution,
and then documents would have to be drawn up, and then they’d have to be presented
to whichever court covers this, and you know how fast they move. Rodney and Louisa
both said that the trustees hadn’t gone beyond talking about disbanding, and they’d
asked the lawyer to look into the options, and he confirmed it. And from my conversation
with him today, he hasn’t done much.”

“But that’s the way
we
see it,” Marty said. “Maybe someone else doesn’t know all that.”

“So you’re saying that we haven’t looked hard at the possible dissolution as a motive
because we know it’s not happening anytime soon, but maybe someone else thinks it’s
urgent?”

“Exactly,” Marty said triumphantly. “So we need to know who really has a stake in
this. Like you said,
cui bono
? We go back to the beginning and look using that as a filter.”

“Can we do that in the morning?” Shelby said plaintively. “Because I really would
like to get home in time for dinner.”

I checked my watch: well past five. “I think we’re burned out today. Let’s reconvene
in the morning and look at the whole problem with fresh eyes.”

“What a brilliant idea, Madame President,” Shelby said, grinning. “Let’s do that!”

We went our own ways with one assignment: to think. As if I hadn’t been doing that.
But tomorrow was another day, and maybe things would look brighter in the morning.
I hoped.

I find trains soothing, with their rhythmic
clackety-clack
and their stately deceleration and acceleration at stations, and I loved not having
to do anything or talk to anyone—I could just sit until I got where I was going, leaving
my mind free to roam.

On my ride home, my first thought was: the results of the brief discussion between
Shelby, Marty, and me had again made it clear that we had always assumed that a killer
did what he did for a rational reason and with a plan. What we had seen from our killer
so far suggested intelligence and some skill. After all, he’d successfully evaded
detection so far. But if I divorced the method from the rationale for the acts, that
opened up a lot of possibilities. The problem was, I wasn’t sure how we were supposed
to look for irrational ideas.

If this killer wanted only to indulge himself in a few murders, he surely could have
chosen almost anyone other than a small group with obscure connections. We all agreed
that somehow everything came back to the Forrest Trust. Someone was killing its trustees—but
why?

I tried a different angle. Say somebody had buried something precious in the walls
or floor of the former Edwin Forrest Home and was worried that a change in ownership
might threaten either his chance of retrieving it, or its ongoing concealment? Remotely
possible, depending on the timeline. I could probably find out whether the house had
undergone any significant renovations in the last century or so, which might have
uncovered the mystery item or destroyed it. But what could be hidden that would be
so damning? Gold? Diamonds? Another, newer Forrest will? A dead body? It would be
rather ironic if someone was willing to kill in order to prevent a dead body from
being discovered, but not impossible.

Or how about: someone was offended that callous modern people wanted to break the
trust so carefully created by Edwin Forrest? Edwin had wanted his name to live on
after his death; he wanted to be remembered. But he did not foresee that there would
be no more tenants for the home. Any money left, or received from the sale or transfer
of his memorabilia, would be more useful in fulfilling the spirit of the trust and
honoring his memory than would a crumbling, empty mansion.

Well, Nell, if you’re casting off the shackles of logic, why not go whole hog?
What if the ghost of Edwin Forrest was doing it? No, it had to be someone corporeal
to carry out the murders. I’d already dismissed the zombie theory. Well, what if someone
had gone off the deep end and
thought
that the ghost was running the show? Such a person could be crazy enough to do anything
and use the excuse: Edwin Forrest made me do it.

I knew I wasn’t equipped to put myself into the mind of a killer; I had trouble killing
a spider. Still, there had to be
some
rationale. Money? I could understand that some people might kill for money, especially
if it was a substantial amount. But how would it be possible to extract any money
from the Forrest Trust, whether intact or dissolved? It had withstood any number of
lawsuits when it was new, or so I had read. Was there a statute of limitations? Perhaps
the law had changed enough or been reinterpreted enough that the trust might not be
so invulnerable now. But I was not a lawyer, and Jacob Miller hadn’t expressed any
concern when I’d talked to him, although there was no reason for him to share that
kind of information with me. I put the whole idea aside to meditate on it. I wasn’t
planning on doing anything about it tonight in any case. Dinner, a movie on cable,
and bed—alone. That I could handle.

Even a good night’s sleep brought no new perceptions. I was almost afraid to open
my paper on the train the next morning for fear that I’d find that yet another name
had succumbed to a death that might look natural but which I knew most likely was
not. I was beginning to feel ghoulish.

I like to solve problems and bring them to satisfying resolution. In the Forrest Trust
problem, I had a heck of a puzzle but no logical answers. Most of my knowledge of
serial killers came from popular media, which aimed for maximum shock value. How many
pleasant, ordinary people harbored an urge to kill someone? I’d bet I would never
know if I passed one on the street. We were all lucky that only a very small percentage
acted on that impulse.

If this ever became an active investigation, James could check phone records, which
might show that someone had called each victim before showing up and doing the deed.
But if that person was smart, he or she would have used disposable phones that couldn’t
be traced. Still, if each of the victims’ phone records showed a call from the same
unidentifiable phone, that would at least reinforce our theory that there was one
person behind all the deaths. Marty had said that Harby would be happy to share the
records of the landline phone that he and his sister had used, but one phone number
wouldn’t get us very far. Could James get hold of all the victims’ phone records without
jumping through official hoops? I tried calling him again from my cell phone, both
on his office phone and on his cell. No answer. In the end, I settled for leaving
a message, telling him that I would be at the Water Works later in the day. It occurred
to me that James knew far more about my job than I knew about his. I wasn’t sure if
there were restrictions on what he could talk about with civilians, or whether FBI
agents in general cultivated an aura of mystery, which made them appear far more powerful
than in fact they were. I knew that James never talked about any cases that didn’t
involve me, and I’d been surprised when he told me how many he and his colleagues
handled at any one time. But I could dig up information that the FBI couldn’t. Local
history, for one thing—most of that would never show up in a Google search because
it existed in only one typescript copy in our stacks. Edwin Forrest had been a local
boy who had made it big, yet he had chosen to make Philadelphia his home for most
of his life, and he was buried here. Someone had collected all the written documentation
we had about him at the Society—looking for something in particular? To keep it out
of someone else’s hands? But what would be important enough in those records and artifacts
to lead to murder?

I was starting to get seriously annoyed. How dare Edwin cause so much trouble this
long after his death? I pulled from my bag the meager file of information that I had
collected on my own and leafed through it. Forrest’s contentious ex-wife, Catherine
Sinclair, seemed to have lived out her life in relative obscurity after their very
messy divorce. I had come across a newspaper obituary for her that managed to avoid
using her birth name altogether, identifying her only as “Mrs. Forrest,” even though
they had been divorced for years and Edwin had already passed away by the time she
died.

I was still curious about the Elizabeth Welsh mentioned in Edwin’s will: she was the
only anomaly among his bequests. Who was she? Why had he left her money? The logical—or
modern—conclusions were that either she was his child by an unknown liaison, or he’d
been carrying on with her in his later years, when she was in her twenties. Shoot,
maybe he was getting senile and had been taken by a pretty face. Stranger things had
happened.

I knew that John Welsh, Elizabeth’s father of record, had died in 1874. When I looked
at the 1880 census, there was Elizabeth—and a nine-year-old daughter also named Elizabeth,
although no husband was listed for the elder Elizabeth. Edwin’s child? Or grandchild?
Even if either was true, it was unlikely that I could ever prove it.

I tried to envision explaining to the police or the FBI that there was a serial killer
on the loose who was obsessed with the long-dead actor Edwin Forrest. I could only
imagine (and cringe at) what they would think.

When I arrived at the Society, Eric was already at his desk, as usual. He looked at
me and said promptly, “I’ll get your coffee.”

“Thanks, Eric.” He was right—I needed caffeine. Too bad he couldn’t bring some inspiration
along with it.

He was back in three minutes. “I made a fresh pot. Don’t forget you have that meeting
at the Water Works this afternoon.”

“Thanks, Eric. I know. Four o’clock, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and retreated to his desk.

I shuffled through the papers Eric had left neatly stacked on my blotter, and found
enough work to keep me busy. Actually it was rather nice to do simple, routine things.
Nobody called or dropped by—not James, not Marty, not Shelby. I assumed that meant
that nobody had anything new—and that nobody else had died.

It was well past lunchtime when I realized that I hadn’t seen the report that Nicholas
had promised me. I really should read that before we talked to Phebe Fleming. I went
out into the hall. “Back in a sec,” I told Eric, and continued down the hall to Nicholas’s
cubicle. He wasn’t there. I scanned his desk for anything that looked like a report.
He was scrupulously neat, with everything stacked up in tidy piles, mostly on the
credenza behind his desk, leaving his desk clear. One pile looked promising: I knew
some of the Water Works files should be a century old, and I recognized the outdated
folders and the file coding on them as our in-house system. I walked around the desk
and picked up the top folder of that pile and opened it.

And nearly dropped it: it contained handwritten letters—signed by Edwin Forrest. I
froze, my mind racing, even as I admired the clear, bold handwriting, and the purple
ink. Why would Nicholas have Edwin’s letters?

I could feel a seed of suspicion germinating. I laid the folder down where I had found
it, neatly squaring the corners. I found a scrap of paper and made a note of the call
number, and then I walked calmly down the hall, past my office, and toward the elevator.
I had to talk to Felicity—now.

Luckily, Felicity was already at her high desk in the reading room. “Hi, Nell,” she
greeted me. “Is everything okay?”

So much for my poker face. “I hope so. Listen, did you have time to check the Forrest
call slips?”

She cocked her head at me. “I did. The original materials haven’t been signed out
for quite some time. Everything appears to be in order. Did I forget to give you the
list? I know it’s here somewhere.” She rummaged through the neat piles on her desk.
“Oh, here it is. Is there a problem?”

I took the papers she handed me, although I wasn’t surprised by what she had told
me. “No. I was just following up. Thank you.” Before she could ask any more questions,
I turned away and went back to the elevator. Edwin ignored me as I waited for it to
arrive.

Back at my office, I wondered what I was supposed to do next. Now I knew that Nicholas
had been looking at Forrest documents, and he hadn’t signed them out officially—although
he hadn’t taken them very far. They weren’t hidden, and he could have a legitimate
reason to be looking at them, although I couldn’t think of one. It was an unsettling
coincidence.

I realized with a start that I might be able to add one piece of information that
could either lay my suspicion to rest or confirm my fears. I reached into my desk
drawer and pulled out a copy of Nicholas’s resume. Latoya was the one who had talked
to his references when we were considering hiring him, but I knew that he had been
at the Penn library for a couple of years before that. In fact, he was still working
there when we’d offered him the job at the Society. I didn’t recognize the name of
the person who had recommended him, but it wouldn’t hurt to talk to her, and I could
come up with some pretext for my call.

I punched in the number, and someone picked up on the third ring. I introduced myself,
then said, “Nicholas Naylor used to work for you, right?”

“Yes, until you snatched him away. I don’t hold it against the Society—he’s a smart
one, and you were lucky to get him. How’s he working out?”

“He’s doing great work here. He’s made amazing strides in organizing things, even
in the few months he’s been here. I did have one question, though.”

“Yes?”

“He said that when he was working there, he’d given his database management system
a test run on one of your smaller collections. Do you recall what that was? I wanted
to know how it compares to what he’s working on here.”

“Oh, sure. We have a nice collection of Edwin Forrest literature and letters, and
we thought that was diverse enough yet small enough to make it a good test. You know
of Edwin Forrest?”

All too well. I swallowed and tried to sound normal. “Indeed I do. We have a fair
collection of our own here. Did he suggest the topic or did you?”

“I really can’t recall, but we agreed that it was an appropriate choice. Was there
anything else?”

“I’d love to compare notes sometime on our Forrest collections. We’re thinking about
putting together a small exhibit. Well, that’s all I need. Thanks for your help.”