Monument to the Dead (5 page)

“That was fast!” I said. She’d had the spreadsheets for
barely twelve hours. “So, tell us!”

“Maybe we’d be more comfortable at a table. Is the boardroom free?”

“I think so. I’ll ask Eric.” I stood up and walked around my desk and out into the
adjoining room, where Eric was already setting up for his day.

“Mornin’, Nell.”

“Morning, Eric. Can we use the boardroom for maybe a half hour? There’s nothing scheduled
in there, is there?”

Eric flipped through his desk calendar. “No, ma’am, it’s clear. You need coffee?”

I smiled at him. “Way ahead of you, Eric. But help yourself to what’s made.”

Marty, Shelby, and I trooped down the hall to the boardroom, a windowless space that
lacked charm but did have a door that closed, giving us some privacy.

Once we were seated at one end of the large table, Marty turned to Shelby. “I’m no
expert on spreadsheets, but you can sort them by whichever column you want, right?”

“That’s right.” Shelby nodded, looking puzzled. “You want to sort them by something
other than name?”

“I do. I couldn’t do it at home, but when I started filling in some of the details
that I knew off the top of my head, a couple of groups kept coming up over and over
again.”

“Such as?” I pressed.

“Well, the Society, of course. We’ve got the most information on those people. There
must have been at least ten names on the list who were once on the board here, who
aren’t anymore. Then there’s the Art Museum, which has a
huge
board, and I’m sure you’d both recognize most of the names on that list. And there’s
one real outlier: the Edwin Forrest Trust.”

I stared at her and said slowly, “Edwin Forrest, as in the statue out by the elevator?
I should know about that one, shouldn’t I?”

“You should, because we have half of their artifact collection on indefinite loan.
Plus a tidy endowment to care for it.”

“Ah yes,
that
I remember,” I said.

“So that whopping big statue downstairs near the elevator doesn’t really belong to
us?” Shelby asked.

“Nope,” Marty said.

Shelby was looking back and forth at us. “Who’s Edwin Forrest?” she said plaintively.

Marty and I exchanged a glance and grinned. Marty said to Shelby, “For shame! Of course,
you’re not from around here, but that’s hardly an excuse to be ignorant of the first
great American-born actor. He was the George Clooney of his day, and more. And he
was born here in Philadelphia.”

“Well, his publicist is doing a lousy job! So what’s this trust all about? I assume
he’s been dead for a while?”

“I don’t know the details of the trust,” I said, “apart from that nice line item on
our budgets. Weren’t there strings attached, Marty?”

“There were, and still are. The income from the trust’s endowment could be used only
to preserve and make available to the public the items from the collection. The Society
does have other papers and such that didn’t come through the estate, which complement
the pieces nicely, but we’ve done bupkes about presenting them.”

I had a small brainstorm—probably the caffeine kicking in. “Shelby, why don’t you
pull together a brief summary of what we have on Forrest, and the details of the trust.
That’s not under the table or anything—it should count as regular business, especially
if we’ve been failing to live up to the terms of the agreement so far. It sounds as
though we could all learn something about the trust.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shelby replied.

I turned back to Marty. “So, what’s the connection between the names you’ve highlighted
and our victims?”

“All of them are, or were, current trustees either here or at the museum or on the
trust. One or more of the three.”

“Any overlaps with the Society, apart from Adeline?”

“Sure. Just look at the museum list—it’s loaded with our board members, past and present.”

“And you don’t think anyone has targeted museum board members?” It would be a daunting
task to review that board—the list of current trustees went on for pages and looked
like a mini Philadelphia Social Register. And that didn’t even take into account former
trustees.

Marty shrugged. “I don’t know. We only just started looking at this problem. We’d
have to go back a few years to see if our three victims have been on the museum board
anytime recently.”

“I can do that,” Shelby said. “But none of this makes any sense. What’s the motive?
Somebody’s got it in for patrons of the arts? High-profile society figures? I thought
Philadelphia was pretty laid-back these days about that kind of thing. And I’ve never
heard a bad word about the museum. What’s there to complain about? Is there some guerrilla
group that thinks it should be free for the public?”

“It
is
pricey, unless you’re a member,” I admitted. “They do open for free one day a month.”

“How nice of them,” Shelby said with a trace of bitterness.

“I know what you’re saying, Shelby, but they must have massive expenses to cover.
It costs about half as much for someone to use our library, and still our members
and visitors complain if we try to raise admission by a dollar—and you know how much
we need the income.”

We were all silent for a moment, contemplating the irony of trying to juggle our admission
prices to both cover costs and allow more people to enjoy what we had.

Finally I said, “So, next steps. Marty, give Shelby whatever notes you’ve made, or
set up a time to sit down with her and go over the rest of the list. Then maybe you
can take a harder look at the Art Museum list. Shelby, dig up what we’ve got in the
Society files on the Forrest Trust. As for me, I guess I’ll take the Society list.
If I don’t know all the people on the list, I should, so it will be a good exercise
for me. I’d hate to think the Society figures in this problem.”

“Not
all
the victims have been associated with the Society,” Shelby said.

“
If
we are looking at victims rather than coincidences, or suicides,” Marty responded
promptly. “Maybe there are other connections. Maybe Benton and Freddy were working
behind the scenes to close us down, without our knowing it, and the killer thinks
he’s doing us a favor by shutting them up, permanently.” Marty folded her arms and
sat back in her chair, challenging me. Shelby just looked distressed, as though she
was a child watching her parents argue.

I chose my words carefully. “Marty, I recognize the validity of your arguments, and
I’m appalled at how easy it is for you to come up with a variety of possible explanations.
But I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We’ve been looking at this for only
a day, and we’ve barely scratched the surface. Let’s fill in some more of the blanks
before we start weaving together pretty theories. It may turn out to be nothing, after
all.” I hoped. But somehow I didn’t believe myself. Maybe James’s bad feeling was
contagious.

“Are we done here?” Shelby said. “Because I can see I’ve got a lot of catching up
to do.”

I nodded. “We all have our assignments. Let’s plan on getting together like this again
tomorrow morning.”

Marty and Shelby stood up and headed off together toward Shelby’s office, leaving
me sitting alone at the table.

I hadn’t been raised in Philadelphia or even its suburbs, so I hadn’t been absorbing
this kind of who’s who knowledge through osmosis since childhood, the way Marty had.
As development director for the Society, I had done enough research to know who the
power brokers and players were these days, and a bit about the elite citizens of the
past. For a long time in the twentieth century, Philadelphia had looked like a dowdy
cousin compared to its nearest competitor, New York. Part of that might have been
due to the lingering Quaker influence in Philadelphia, which condemned ostentation.
Then the city had suffered from the flight of much of its industry to the growing
suburbs, starting in the 1950s, and as a result had faced serious financial struggles.

But the city had fought back. It had created a world-class convention center to draw
in visitors, and a new venue for its sports teams. The Constitution Center had filled
in a gap across from Independence Hall. New high-rises like Liberty Place I and II
had attracted high-end shops in a central location. Things were definitely looking
up for Philly.

But despite my research, I still couldn’t match Marty’s hereditary and encyclopedic
knowledge of the people we were looking at. Thank heavens I knew more than Shelby
did, or I would really feel like a dope. Having southern-bred Shelby as part of this
team forced us to put a lot of social assumptions into words, which could also be
helpful. All the information she would acquire would also make her much more useful
as a Society employee.

I made my way slowly back to my office. Eric looked up and said, “Something important
going on? You keep disappearing into all these little meetings.”

I smiled at him, glad he was at least observant. “Nothing you need to worry about,
Eric. Just an impromptu research project that I’ve asked Shelby and Marty to help
me with.” Then a thought struck me. “Eric, do you know who Edwin Forrest is?”

“No, ma’am. Is he a member here?”

“No, he’s been dead for more than a century—although that might be said for some of
our current members. He was an actor born in Philadelphia who went on to be quite
famous in the nineteenth century. It seems fame doesn’t last very long. Anyway, that
big statue downstairs next to the elevator—that’s Edwin, in all his glory. Anything
else on my calendar?”

“Just the usual: board reports and that kind of thing. I left some letters on your
desk for your signature.”

What a relief: nice, simple, boring, and predictable things that didn’t involve anyone
dying. “Then I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.”

I wasn’t surprised when at the end of the afternoon, Marty walked in and dropped into
a chair.

“You look frustrated. Have you been working with Shelby all day?” I asked.

Marty scrubbed her fingers through her short hair. “With a quick break for lunch.
The good news is, she’s got the hang of this research, and she’s really into it now.
The bad news is, she doesn’t know the kind of details I know, so it’s been kind of
slow, going back and forth and filling in the spreadsheet. The worse news is, we still
don’t have anything conclusive, so we haven’t been able to eliminate any group. Heck,
I’m scared we’re going to find
more
possible connections. Like former members of the Merion Cricket Club or members of
the committee for the Devon Horse Show. You know, I thought the Terwilliger family
was kind of tangled, but a lot of these people overlap in the most unexpected ways.
And how far should we go? If two people sat next to each other at a mayor’s banquet
in 1993, does that count as a connection?”

“Well, maybe one of them spilled red wine all over the other, and the spillee has
been nursing a grudge ever since.”

“Very funny.” Marty sighed. “You know, the problem is not knowing whether some piece
of information is important or if we’re wasting our time. And the Society’s.” She
stared pensively at my ceiling. “Did all three take the same medicine when they overdosed?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask. Do you think it matters?”

“Maybe. If the police assumed the death in each case was natural, they might not check
prescriptions. Of course, there are plenty of over-the-counter medications that can
kill you if you take too much, particularly if you’re old or have other underlying
conditions. Or if you mix them with alcohol. Why the heck does toxicology take so
long in the real world? On these television shows, you get results in about three
minutes. If these are murders, a whole lot more people could get killed before anybody
even sees the first reports. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“I can’t argue with that. But everything costs money, and a lot of police departments
or government agencies don’t have as much as they need, and the labs are underfunded
and understaffed.”

“True enough,” Marty said. “I’ll take this stuff home with me and go over it again
tonight. You going to talk to Jimmy?”

“I . . . don’t know. I’d rather wait until we had something solid to tell him.”

“Good luck with that. See you in the morning.”

All the way home, I wrestled with whether to call James.
And then wondered why I was reluctant. Okay, I’ll admit it—I wanted to hear his voice.
I wanted to reassure myself that we were actually together in some way, shape, or
form, and I wasn’t just fantasizing about a relationship with a hot FBI agent.

But maybe part of the problem was precisely that he was an FBI agent. I felt flattered
that he considered me a good resource for certain information, and I was happy to
help, but almost every time he called me, I had to ask whether it was for business
or pleasure. I felt like a frustrated teenager.
Does he like me? Really like me?

So here we were in the thick of it again. Someone might be killing Philadelphia board
members, with the stress on
might
, for reasons nobody could fathom. Being a board member for a cultural institution
is boring, most of the time. Nobody had ever thought it was dangerous, except to your
checkbook. You sat through meetings, reviewed budgets (well, you were supposed to—I
knew our board members usually gave them no more than a cursory glance), planned events,
and hit up friends and peers for financial contributions. The last was probably the
most important, and some board members were clearly better at it than others. Was
it possible that some disgruntled soul had been asked once too often for a gift and
had decided to eliminate anyone who asked? That would be an interesting addition to
Shelby’s chart: who had asked whom for a contribution. I knew we had some sort of
records for that in our own files—development usually assigned board members an “ask”
list. But finding that for any other place, like the museum? Not likely, and probably
overwhelmingly large, even if the institution was willing to share.

It would be a lot easier to look at this Forrest Trust, because the Society had a
direct connection. I
should
know more about it, since the Society currently had possession of some of its objects
and money, but since there had never been any problems with the arrangement, I suppose
we had mainly ignored it. I didn’t know how much the trust was worth, but it couldn’t
be large, and I doubted that the trustees had much to do. Why kill any of them? There
was neither power nor money to be gained.

I went home, threw together an uninspired dinner, then settled down in front of the
television for some mindless entertainment. Then the phone rang: James.

“Hey there,” I said articulately. “I hope you’re not calling because someone else
is dead.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Have I violated any laws?”

He chuckled. “Not that I know of. Have you?”

“Nope. I’m a sterling, upright citizen. But I’m glad you called.” I pulled my bare
feet under me on the couch, and we talked happy piffle for a while. Nice. Maybe I
was too old to be doing this, but I didn’t care. Neither, apparently, did James. Maybe
he’d had a romantically stunted youth, like I had.

It wasn’t until we’d begun winding down that he said, “You’re still looking into the
boards?”

Back to business, then. “Yes. Marty and Shelby are making great progress. I didn’t
want to bother you with the lists until we found something significant. I hadn’t realized
how interconnected Philadelphia society was and still is. Although I don’t know why
I’m telling you—you grew up with it.”

“And I hated the snobbery of it all. Sure, I went to the right schools and knew the
right people, but I joined the FBI because I wanted to do something with my life,
not just have lunch at the Union League. The rest of my family still hasn’t forgiven
me.”

There was a hint of bitterness in his tone. I felt for him: how peculiar to be forced
to apologize for doing something good and useful. “Marty respects you.”

“Marty thinks I’m still a snoopy, snot-nosed kid.”

“Were you ever?”

“Snoopy, yes. Snot-nosed? I hope not. Although we did have one cousin . . .”

More piffle. In the end I had to end it. “We’re meeting again tomorrow morning. Maybe
we’ll have something for you then. You’re still not officially involved?”

“Nope. Like you, I’m waiting until I have more than a vague suspicion before I ask
to be invited to the dance. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Nell.”

“I’ll call you no matter how our meeting goes. Good night.”

The next morning found Marty, Shelby, and me huddled in the boardroom before nine
o’clock. Eric had beaten us in and made coffee. No matter what I said or didn’t say,
he seemed to sense that there was something going on, but he wasn’t going to pry,
bless him.

I surveyed my colleagues in . . . what was it we were doing? Crime solving? FBI research?
I settled on “board candidate analysis,” which was nice and neutral sounding and non-incriminating,
just in case anybody asked. Thank goodness we didn’t have to account for our hourly
productivity at the Society, as I’d heard some businesses required, because we were
throwing a whole lot of hours at this project, which might end up with little result.

“So, what have we got?” I asked.

Marty and Shelby exchanged a glance; Shelby nodded at Marty to proceed.

“Not a whole lot,” Marty said flatly. “Or maybe too much.”

“Which means?” I prompted.

“Based on our combined input, we have thirty-seven people who are linked to either
two or three of the institutions in question, or by other external factors such as
club memberships or location of vacation homes. And a lot of other variables that
I won’t bother you with.”

“Isn’t that good news? It’s a shorter list than yesterday’s.”

“I suppose. But I don’t know what to do with it.” Marty really looked deflated.

“Maybe you’re too close to all these people, Marty,” Shelby suggested. “I don’t know
most of them, so I can be objective. Nell, I think Marty’s reluctant to look at any
of her friends as killers, potential victims, or suicidal. I know I would be, if I
knew any of these people.”

I nodded. “Makes sense. No reflection on you, Marty, but maybe Shelby’s right. Maybe
this is too personal for you.”

Marty sat up straighter in her chair. “Well, if we don’t find out something soon,
any one of my friends or relatives might be the next victim. I can’t just sit here
and wait to see who the next person is to die. Maybe even me.”

That stopped me. I hadn’t considered that she might consider herself a target. Was
Marty Terwilliger actually afraid? “But you’re not affiliated with the Art Museum
or the trust.”

“Don’t be so sure. My father gave a nice Degas to the museum. And you should know
by now that the Society and the trust overlap. They’ve given us money and collections.”

“So you’re three for three. I see your problem.” Though I didn’t see what to do about
it.

There was a rapping at the door. Eric called out, “Agent Morrison is on the phone
for you.”

I felt a chill. Was he calling with more bad news?

I turned back to Marty and Shelby. “I have to take this; I’ll be back in a few.” Before
they could answer, I shut the door behind me and went to my office and shut that door,
too. I took a deep breath and picked up the phone. “James? Is . . .”

“Is anyone else dead? No. But I wanted to pass on one piece of news. The three people
who died? In each case, the cause was an overdose of a medication that had been prescribed
for them. But the numbers don’t match up.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know when you pick up a prescription, you get a certain number of pills, and
the pharmacy keeps a record of that?”

“Sure, and that’s why I get reminders from them that I’m running out, as if I can’t
tell by just looking at the bottle. So?”

“In Adeline Harrison’s case, she had called in her prescription but hadn’t picked
it up yet. The bottle she had at home should have had only one or two more pills in
it, but her blood level showed far more. Where did those pills come from?”

I turned that over in my mind. “Did the pharmacy say that she was scrupulous about
refilling her prescription on schedule?”

“They did, and all her other prescriptions tracked closely. That’s why this one stood
out. The one that killed her is the only anomaly.”

“Could she have been hoarding them, planning on using them to kill herself?”

“Interesting theory, but in this case, unlikely. She’d seen her doctor recently, and
he’d given her a clean bill of health, as far as possible for someone of her age.
No terminal illnesses, not even arthritis. She took a number of medications for various
complaints, but none of them was life-threatening. Adeline Harrison took good care
of herself.”

“What was she taking medication for?”

“Low blood pressure. Not unusual in older people, and she wasn’t taking a very large
dose. Doubling it unexpectedly could cause real problems.”

“And you think that means . . . ?” I waited almost breathlessly for his answer.

“That somebody else gave her those pills. Someone brought enough to do the job. That
person hadn’t counted on the refill still sitting at the pharmacy.”

I felt both glad and saddened at the same time. It was progress, at least. “So does
that mean you’re officially on the case now?”

“Not yet, but it’s a step closer. I’ll still need more. How’s your meeting going?”

“Marty and Shelby have whittled things down to a short list of other possible names
who fit the victim profiles, but it’s still got close to forty people on it. James . . .
maybe I shouldn’t tell you, but I think Marty’s scared. She’s on that list.”

“Because she’s connected to so many things? Maybe she’s right to be scared. Tell her
not to accept candy from strangers.”

“James, this is serious!”

“I know,” he said gently. “I care about Marty. I’m doing the best I can. Tell her
to be careful, will you? I’d prefer you didn’t tell her and Shelby about the pills,
but you can tell them it wasn’t suicide. That’s the best I can do at the moment.”

“It may help. Wait—do you know how the pills were administered? Orally, by injection,
inhaled?”

“Not yet. I’ve got friends at the labs where the analyses were done, so they tipped
me off. But I didn’t get the full reports, or maybe they haven’t finished the analyses.”

“Okay. Look, I think we can clean up the spreadsheets and get them to you later today.
That is, if you still want them?”

“I do. I promise I won’t blow your chances of fundraising.”

“You’d better not, or you’ll have to write a check to make up for it. Do you have
six figures in the bank?”

“Uh, no comment. Can I come by around five and pick them up?”

“Sure. Give me a call when you arrive downstairs so I can let you in.”

“Will do.”

After we’d hung up, I went back to the conference room. Both women looked up at me
with fear in their eyes.

I hurried to fill them in. “No, it’s not bad news. James said I could tell you one
piece of information that might be important: Adeline’s death doesn’t look like suicide,
and it at least suggests that the other deaths might not be. He thinks it’s murder,
but he still doesn’t have enough to open an official case.”

“Well, at least we know that our work here might be good for something,” Marty said.
She stood up abruptly. “I’m going to go distract myself by bothering Rich in the processing
room.”

Shelby stood up as well. “Then I’ll go pretty up my spreadsheets. Will you be passing
them on to Agent James?”

“He said he’d be here later this afternoon to pick them up. Thanks, both of you. Good
work.”

I went about my usual business for the rest of the day—appalling how much paperwork
was involved in running an institution—and James called about four to say that he
was running late, and would I mind waiting until six? I told him that was fine.

Shelby stopped by shortly after his call to give me the spreadsheets. She dropped
into a chair and said, “Well, I’ve learned a lot.”

I sat back in my chair. “I can imagine. I won’t claim I knew half of what you put
together. It does seem kind of incestuous in Philadelphia, doesn’t it?”

“Sure does, although I’m sure it’s just as bad in other cities. It’s all about who
knows who, and there’s a lot of horse trading that goes on. You know, I’ll give to
your cause if you’ll give to mine.”

“Isn’t that the truth? I guess it’s kind of like a local aristocracy. So I have to
work that much harder to make people open their checkbooks.”

“Marty is part of it, though,” Shelby said thoughtfully. “Do you think she
should
be scared?”

“I don’t know, Shelby. In the more than five years I’ve known Marty, I’ve never seen
her scared of anything, but I think you’re right—this has her rattled. Give Marty
a tangible problem and she’s all over it. But this? It’s harder when you don’t know
if, or from where, an attack is coming. But she’s a single woman who lives alone.
So I’d rather she was on her guard, just in case.”

“Amen. And here I thought this would be a nice cushy job.” Shelby stood up. “Well,
I’m heading home in a little while, unless you need me for something else.”