Privy to the Dead (12 page)

“No problem.” Henry escorted me out again, and I turned toward the Roundhouse, aka police headquarters.

The Roundhouse, which houses the Philadelphia Police Department (although possibly not for much longer, if the city's movers and shakers have their way), is a rather odd building built in the 1960s, and, yes, parts of it are round, or at least curved. I'd been inside it before, and not under the happiest of circumstances. I found it hard to believe that I was entering it voluntarily now, but I was fulfilling a police request, hoping to score a few points against any future issues. Besides, it was my civic duty to present potential evidence in a major crime, even if the police weren't officially calling it a crime. What Detective Hrivnak would make of what I gave her, I couldn't guess.

Clutching my plastic box in its bag, I entered by the front door and stated my business. Someone called upstairs and ascertained that Detective Hrivnak was busy in a meeting and asked, would I wait? I thought waiting was preferable to leaving and coming back again, so I sat in a
hard chair and stared into space while I tried to construct my story.

All Hrivnak knew was that the bartender had seen a small, flat, curly metal object in the dead man's hand, as she had told me. So had someone else, who had buddied up with Carnell Scruggs, and who had left with him. A short time later Scruggs was struck by a car, and there was no metal object found on his body. It was a rather fragile link between that man and what I held in my hand, but it was still a possible one.

Twenty minutes later, Detective Hrivnak finally appeared. “So it really is you. What do you want?”

“I may have some evidence in that death next to our place. Can we take this somewhere private?”

“Yeah, whatever.” She turned and went around the screening devices. I went through the screening, though, of course, my “evidence,” being metal, set things off, so we had to sort that out. Hrivnak was not happy, but she didn't say a word until we reached her small, messy office. “So, what you got?”

“We found something in the basement of the Society when we were cleaning it out.” I was careful not to specify
when
we found it, since we'd been holding on to it for a few days now. “Since that's where the victim was working on the day he died, we wondered if it might be connected.” I opened the plastic box and withdrew the escutcheon. “I thought this might be a match to that ‘flat, curly metal thing' that the victim showed to the bartender.”

“What is it?” Hrivnak asked, her eyes not leaving the piece.

“It's called an escutcheon—it's a plate that goes behind a drawer handle on a lot of eighteenth-century furniture.”

“Where's the furniture?”

I pulled the rest of the items out of my box. “This is all we found: a couple of hinges, some screws, and some chunks of wood.” I didn't mention that we'd held back some of them.

“Where did you say it was found?”

“In a pit beneath the basement floor. That was the last part of the building to be cleared out for our construction project. That's where Scruggs was working. I'm sure the construction foreman will confirm that.”

“Huh,” Hrivnak said, then stopped. I resisted my impulse to start babbling about the theories my friends and I had come up with. Let her draw her own conclusions.

She didn't appear impressed by my fabulous find, and gave me no credit for bringing it to her, even though she'd been the one to ask for it. But at the same time I was relieved: if she didn't think it was important, then she wouldn't push it any further, and the Society wouldn't be officially involved. I knew full well that Marty wasn't going to give up her search for more information, but I wasn't about to tell the detective that.

I got tired of waiting. “Well, I'm sorry I bothered you, then.” I stood up and reached for the items, but she stopped me.

“Leave 'em here. I'll see if that bartender recognizes the es-thing.”

“Will I get them back?”

“What do you care?”

“They came from the Society. We collect and keep things. This is a piece from our history.”

“Fine. Talk to me after we've wrapped up this thing with Scruggs's death.”

Since I had her attention, I thought it was worth asking, “You have any leads?”

“That's police business. Where's your FBI buddy?”

“What's he got to do with this?”
Why was she asking?

“Just wondering—thought you two were a team.” She hesitated for a moment. “There is one thing . . .”

“Yes?” I prompted.

“We figure that driver got it right—the man was moving backward when she hit him, based on the accident reconstruction. Lot of scratches and bruises on him, but it's hard to say if that was because of the car or something else. Like someone pushing him.”

“But he was still okay not long before, in the bar, right? No fight there?”

“Yeah,” she replied reluctantly. “And it's a pretty tight timeline. He left with that other guy, who we're still looking for, but the street cams don't show them and we don't know how long they stayed together. Anyway, whatever happened, happened pretty quick after they left that bar.”

“Was he on his way home, do you know?”

“Maybe—he was headed that direction, toward Spruce. He'd gotten paid for the work he'd done, so he could have been going to another bar to celebrate.”

One of his coworkers had mentioned that he'd been paid in cash. “You told me he'd had a couple of beers at the first bar?”

“Yeah, but he wasn't drunk enough to stumble, if that's what you're thinking. Not without help.”

Detective Hrivnak was being very chatty, for her. After all, if the Society wasn't involved, she had no reason to share anything with me.

She stood up, signaling that our chat was over. “Let me take you downstairs.”

She escorted me back to the first floor, and I left the building feeling kind of deflated. All right, I'd done my duty. No one could say I was hiding anything. Of course, she hadn't asked any of the right questions, but I didn't feel I had to volunteer information. And it wasn't information I had kept quiet about, really—more like educated guesses, and, I'd be willing to admit, a lot of wishful thinking. I wasn't looking to make trouble. I didn't have to—it kept finding me.

It was now past three. I contemplated briefly stopping by James's office, which was only a block away, but I'd see him soon enough. I should go back to work for a couple of hours, and hope that Marty didn't spring any more surprises on me.

She didn't. The only surprise was a call from Hrivnak about an hour later. “The guy at the bar recognizes that whatchamacallit,” she said without preamble. “It worth much?”

“Not without the piece of furniture it belonged to. Nobody would want to steal it, if that's what you mean.”

“You aren't missing any, over at your place?”

“We don't have room for furniture in the collections here.” Which was sort of true. Of course, now would be the moment to elaborate on some of our suspicions, starting with the likelihood that both of those brass pieces had been in the pit for a hundred years. That sure wouldn't make the detective any happier, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Huh. Well, I'll hang on to it for now, see if anything pops up. Thanks for stopping by.” She hung up. At least she'd thanked me.

Then
Marty showed up, either because she'd been
eavesdropping or because she had some weird kind of radar. “What's the news?” she asked.

“Hrivnak says the bartender ID'd the escutcheon. Definitely, not maybe. She's going to keep it for now.”

I couldn't read Marty's expression. On the one hand, it was the first validation of our convoluted theory: the escutcheons were a pair, they had both come out of the pit, and Scruggs had carried one away with him. On the other hand, I wasn't sure Marty or I were looking forward to following that theory to the conclusion we'd sketched in for it. It was troubling that we wouldn't have known about any of it, save for the death of a stranger, and it was all too possible he'd died only because he'd picked up something he thought looked pretty.

“What'd you tell her?” Marty asked.

“As little as possible, I guess. She didn't ask much—I think she wanted to talk to the bartender first. I don't think she believed it was important, but now she does. What do we do now?”

“Look at the list,” Marty said. “I'm checking out the history of portable writing desks. There aren't a lot of 'em, or maybe they weren't important enough to talk about. I don't know how they were carried around. Slung over a horse? In a backpack? So I need to do some homework. Maybe it was where they kept the good silver, for all I know—more than just letters, anyway.”

“Was Henry any help with that?”

“Henry's a good kid, but he's more into the fixing than the history. He can tell you how old a piece is, and what it's made of, but who made it? Not so much. He usually calls me. He give you anything new?”

“Only that our escutcheon was a clear match to the Terwilliger ones, which we'd already guessed. But there must be other local experts on colonial furniture, if you're stuck on the lap desk part.”

“Yeah. Let me think about it and see who I can ask. Maybe someone at Sommerhof.” Trust Marty to know people at that renowned institution, even though it was in Delaware. She stood up abruptly. “I'm going back to the files.” She disappeared before I had time to say good-bye.

James called minutes later to say he was headed home, and did I need a ride? I told him I did, and gathered up my things. I was waiting on the curb when he arrived, and climbed into the car quickly. “Hey,” I said as I buckled my seat belt.

“Hey to you. Hard day?” James said, pulling away smoothly.

“Mentally if not physically, although I did do my share of walking. I almost stopped by to say hello this afternoon, but I thought that would be complicated. Don't I need security clearance or something to get into your offices?”

“We're not that bad—just give me a call if you want to come in. Why were you in the neighborhood?”

“I stopped by the Roundhouse to turn over the brass bits and splinters to Detective Hrivnak.”

“I see,” James said neutrally. “What did she say?”

“Nothing at the time. But she called back later to say that the bartender said the escutcheon matched the one Scruggs showed him.”

“Ah.”

I turned in my seat to face him. “Ah, what? ‘Ah, I'm making random sounds because I don't know what to say but I think I have to say something'? Or, ‘Ah, that's what I
expected'? Or maybe, ‘Ah, now you've stepped in it, Nell'? Which is it?”

“Don't bite my head off, Nell. I was just acknowledging that I'd heard you. And I was trying to think about what that might mean, as I navigated this two-ton hunk of metal through streets that were laid out over three hundred years ago for much smaller vehicles.”

I must still be on edge, I realized. “I'm sorry I snapped at you. Look, without going into details, Marty came by with a—well, I guess you'd call it a matrix of suppositions and what we would need to confirm or eliminate any of them. Determining that the two escutcheons matched was the first item on that list. We guessed right, at least so far. I just don't like where we go from here. Maybe I don't want us to be right. Maybe I'd like this to be an overblown fantasy that will simply collapse from its own idiocy.”

“Why? I'm not just making conversation, you know. I know you, and I know you don't back off easily. Why with this?”

“Because it involves so much—my friends, your family, the place I work for and am responsible for. Somebody is going to come out of this unhappy, and that's probably Marty, because she'll never view her grandfather and maybe her father in the same way, if we're right.”

“She already knows that, but it's not stopping her.”

“I know! That's why I can't just tell her to drop it. If she can face the truth, I don't have a choice except to back her up and follow her lead. Sorry, that phrasing makes no sense, but you know what I mean.”

“I do. I understand.”

I struggled to get a grip on myself. Where had that little tempest come from? “I know you do. I'm just venting.”

“Feel better?”

“A little. But I'd feel even better after a good meal.”

“That part I can handle.”

We found a nice restaurant in Chestnut Hill, one we hadn't tried before, and after a couple of glasses of wine and some good food, the world looked much brighter to me. When we got home, before I could even hang up my coat, James turned me around and wrapped his arms around me and held on, and I leaned into him. I was not alone in this battle, whether or not the FBI was involved. I was working hard to get used to having someone to depend on. It felt good.

“Thank you,” I said into his coat.

“I'm here, Nell. We'll figure this out.”

I believed him.

Poor Carnell Scruggs had been dead for nearly a week, and we were no closer to knowing why, save for our discovery of one small piece of metal that might have had nothing to do with his death. I'd watched enough cop shows on television to know that if a murder wasn't solved quickly, it might never be. On the other hand, I also knew that history didn't move quickly. If this was a crime that was related to another crime that had taken place a century earlier, we were sort of on track, or at least not
off
track. Heck, we'd solved older crimes than that.

James dropped me off at work, and his parting comment was that he had an all-hands meeting after work he had to attend, so I'd have to make my own way home and I'd be on my own for dinner. I assured him I'd be fine with both. I could take the train home, though I enjoyed our shared commute.

When I walked into the Society, I found it a beehive of
activity. The reading room doors would remain closed to give whatever determined researchers came in a little more peace and quiet, but the big main room beyond the lobby had somehow become a staging area, with boxes both of files and of incoming shelving and tools and whatever. At least the crew had had the foresight to cover the floor with sheets of plywood, because replacing it was not in the budget at the moment.

Felicity Soames, our head librarian, was standing in front of the reading room doors, arms folded, looking disgruntled. I went over to say hello.

“How long will this go on?” she all but yelled in my ear. “Our researchers are going to pitch a fit!”

“The contractor promised only a couple of weeks, but you know how that goes,” I yelled back. “There are almost always surprises with construction.”

I could see Felicity's sigh, even if I couldn't hear it. “Tell me it will be wonderful when it's finished?”

“Fingers crossed!” I shouted, then pointed toward myself, the elevator, then up. Felicity nodded, then returned to the relative quiet of the reading room, ready to soothe patrons when and if they arrived after we opened for the day.

Upstairs I was surprised to find Latoya waiting for me by Eric's desk, looking impatient. “Were we supposed to meet?” I asked her.

“No, we had nothing scheduled. I thought I should touch base, though. With all the collections shuffling around the building, I'm concerned that some things may be . . . misplaced.”

As if we hadn't already reviewed the plans for
temporary relocation of records more than once, with the entire staff. I suppressed a sigh. “Come on into my office,” I said, leading the way. “You want coffee?”

When she nodded, Eric jumped up and went down the hall.

Once we were settled in the office, I decided to take the bull by the horns. “Are your concerns specific or general?”

“You mean, am I just worrying about the total chaos under my purview, or do I have reason to believe that specific items are being—how shall I put this—systematically misplaced?”

“Are you talking about theft?”

“Not yet, but you have to admit the possibility is there.”

“You mean the construction crew?”

“I do.”

That was not something I wanted to hear, especially now.

Eric appeared with two coffee mugs, and Latoya stopped speaking until he had gone. Didn't she trust him? Or did she not trust anyone?

After Eric had shut the door, I pressed, “Can you be more specific?” I'd worked with Latoya for several years now, and I knew that in general she was unflappable. She might also be a bit stiff and arrogant, but she knew our collections and she was diligent in managing them. If she was worried enough to come talk to me, I should be worried, too. It came with the job.

“Nothing specific,” she admitted, “but I'm always troubled when there are a lot of strangers coming and going in the building. The construction crew has more or less
unrestricted access, and there's little oversight. Before you say it, I know they're bonded and all that, and that we're insured against loss, but that's not really the point. If items from our collections go missing, they're irreplaceable, no matter what their financial value.”

She had a point, of course. “I won't argue with your concerns, Latoya, but I'm not sure what more we can do. Bob is keeping an eye on things in front. The construction workers sign in and out each day—they'd do that anyway, because they're paid by the hour. If they wandered into the public spaces they'd be pretty obvious, but there's no way we can watch all the stacks at once, and I'll admit they can easily gain access to them. I suppose we could ask the contractor to hire extra people to check every bag that's going out the door, which we can't afford to do, but I'm not sure how we can trust the watchers, either. Do you have any ideas?”

“Not really. I just wanted to go on record as having said it may be a problem. I hope it's not.”

Yes, Latoya, your derriere is covered, should anything disappear in the course of renovation, thank you very much.
“Is Ben providing much help?”

She nodded. “He is, despite having been here only a short time. He has created an excellent matrix and has been scrupulous about tracking what items have been shifted and where they have gone. He's also been proactive about evaluating the capacity of the new shelving and assigning priorities to collections that have seen the most use over the past few years—as long as we've been tracking them electronically. He was a good choice for the position.”

Coming from Latoya, that was high praise indeed, especially since Ben had more or less been presented as a
fait
accompli
when we brought him in—he was an old friend of James, and he had really needed the job.

“I'm glad to hear you say that. So his management and data skills are making up for his lack of historic collections experience?”

“So it would appear.” She stood up. “That's all I wanted to say. Unless you want to add anything?”

It was only then that I realized there
was
something more I could do. “This may seem a bit late in the game, but could you pull together the records for earlier renovations? I don't mean the architectural plans—I think the architect has all those. What I was thinking of were things like budgets, or board discussions during the planning stages. Would that be hard?”

“Those records might be distributed in several places—for example, the board minutes would be in one place, while the collections records would be in another. But the records are not extensive, and Ben and I have already begun assembling them. I'll make another pass at the collections files, in case I missed anything, and then I'll make copies of everything for you. When do you want them?”

“It's not urgent. Mostly it's to satisfy my own curiosity. Maybe we can get an article out of it, for our website. You know, a ‘then and now' kind of thing.”

She nodded. “That might be entertaining. I can have most of it together in a couple of days.”

“Thank you, Latoya. And I'm glad you came to me with your other worries.” To my surprise, I meant it.

Having heard Latoya's side of the situation, it occurred to me that I ought to talk with Ben. I hadn't had much contact with him since he'd been hired, and I was happy that I could
pass on Latoya's compliment to him. I wandered downstairs and into the processing room, where Ben was dug into his corner with the specially altered desk that accommodated his wheelchair. I came up behind him, trying not to startle him. “Hey, Ben, how's it going?”

He swiveled in his chair. “Hi, Nell. As well as can be expected. You need something?”

“Nothing specific. I'm trying to keep an eye on a lot of things at once.” I pulled up a chair and leaned toward him, though there was no one to overhear. “I also wanted to let you know that Latoya thinks you're doing a great job with managing the movements of our collections during the renovation process.”

His eyes lit up. “That's good to hear. The challenge is to keep track of the stuff—it doesn't matter whether they're priceless antiques or boxes of rubber bands. You know, where they started, where they're supposed to go when this is all finished, and where they wander to in between, so we know where everything is at all times. Of course, there are other specific variables here, like frequency of accession, fragility, storage requirements, but those can all be factored in.”

He really did sound in command of the situation. “Sounds good to me. I know I wouldn't want to try to do it. By the way, I asked Latoya to find records from our past renovation campaigns, and that would include the construction of this new building on top of the old. Lissa may have told you the chronology—this building opened to the public in 1910, although it was finished in 1907, and I imagine there was a lot of sorting out of the collections in those three years. Obviously the collections were much smaller then, but so was the
staff. I was curious about how they kept track of things. She said you two had already started looking at those?”

“Sure have. I needed to know what was where before it went somewhere else. I'll keep my eyes open for anything more historical. How's everything else?”

“Like, how is the great experiment of living with James going?” Since Ben knew James, his curiosity didn't trouble me, although as a rule I didn't share the details with the rest of the staff. “Fine so far, but it's early days yet.”

“I'm glad. He's always been kind of a loner.”

“So have I, I guess. What do you get when you put two loners together? You know, that sounds like the start of a bad joke, but I don't have a punch line for it. If we ever get things settled, we'll have to have a housewarming party.” Even as I said it, I wondered how that would work: FBI agents plus historic researchers? It would be an odd mix—if any of them came. But no doubt we'd have plenty of Terwilligers. I stood up. “Thanks, Ben. You'll let me know if you see any red flags with the construction or with stuff migrating around the building?” I wasn't about to tell him about Latoya's concerns—I'd let her handle that.

“Of course. Maybe next time we do this we could get GPS trackers for each box and a computer program to follow them all over time.”

“Interesting idea, but probably expensive. And I hope there won't be a next time, at least not on my watch!”

Since I seemed to be on a roll, I decided to stop by Shelby's office and add one more piece to the puzzle. I stuck my head in the door to find her desk covered with stacks of paper. “You look busy,” I said.

She looked up. “Good, because I am busy. You need something?”

“I was wondering if you could find fundraising records for earlier building campaigns—you know, begging letters and what they claim about what the Society was doing and what was planned? Contribution records? I'd love to go back to the construction of this building, but's that more than a century, and I have no idea if there are records that old, or where to find them.”

“Oh, sure, give me the easy jobs.” Shelby softened her comment with a grin. “You want this yesterday?”

“No rush—end of the week is fine. I've asked Latoya and Ben to look out for the same kind of thing for their areas of responsibility. When I put it all together, I'll see what we've got and what we can do with it.”

“Sounds good. Now go away and let me get something finished.”

“Yes, ma'am!” I left and went back to my office, and was about to dig into my daily paperwork pile when I realized there was one more detail I wanted to follow up on. I walked out to stand in front of Eric's desk.

“Eric, you know where the board records are, right?”

“Sure do. You need them?”

“It occurs to me that I don't know much about the early board members, particularly the ones who oversaw the construction of this building. I've asked Latoya and Ben to go through collections records for that time, and Shelby to find contribution records, but I don't know the people involved. Can you hunt those down those old ones for me?”

“I can do that. When would you like them?”

“Friday would be okay.”

“I'll find them. Anything else?”

“Nope, not now. I see you left me a pile of goodies on my desk, so I'll get right on them.”

Back in my office again, I mentally patted myself on the back for having figured out what details I might be able to contribute to this investigation. Of course, the records might be missing, or they might have nothing useful in them (board minutes in particular tended to be dry as dust, and for all I knew, when there were only a few people involved back in the day, maybe they'd skipped taking minutes at all). But at least I would have checked. I set to work reading what Eric had left for me.

The day passed quickly; Eric brought me a takeout sandwich so I could stay focused on my own work. Everything was peaceful until Marty showed up about four, looking unhappy.

I sat back in my chair and stretched. “What's up?” I asked, although I probably didn't want to know.

“I've been doing research on lap desks,” she said.

“You mean like the one we think was in the pit?”

“The very same. How much do you want to know?”

“What do I need to know?”

“They were mostly an English phenomenon, often used for military expeditions, but they also showed up in libraries and drawing rooms. They usually had a slanted front for the writing part, when they were open, and often, inside, there were wells to hold containers for ink and sand for blotting the ink. And sometimes there would be one or two side drawers to hold letters and so forth.”

“And drawers mean drawer pulls, right?”

“Yup. Some of the lap desks even had secret drawers,
although I have no clue where you could hide one of those in a smallish box. There was a particular military style, also called a campaign box. You want details?”