Privy to the Dead (15 page)

“How much do the police know about what you've just told us?” Rich asked.

“As I said, I turned over the brass pieces and the wooden fragments to the detective on Monday, and I know they verified that the bartender recognized the brass escutcheon. I did
not
share our theories. My plan at the moment is to tell them anything they ask, but not to volunteer information, and certainly not to suggest speculative connections. I'm not concealing anything, but the police haven't always been welcoming to outsiders like us, whether or not we come bearing evidence. If that troubles you, feel free to take them anything you find, as long as you let me know. We're all on the same side here.” I thought briefly about asking them to minimize any discoveries that could put the Society in a bad light, but I decided that wouldn't be right, either.

“So those requests you made yesterday—you think they apply to this situation?” Latoya asked.

I nodded. “I do, and I'm sure you can see why. We need to assemble all possible information about who ran the Society, how the collections were managed, the details of the construction of this building—all between, say, 1900, when planning for the new building began, and 1910, when the building reopened to the public. To be honest, I don't know what we're looking for. I suggest we collect all the files we
find that may be relevant, then regroup here to share our findings and brainstorm. How long do you think that will take?” I swept the room with my gaze.

“How about tomorrow morning? Before the building opens?” Latoya said. “Nine o'clock?”

That seemed fast to me, but nobody complained. Maybe there really wasn't all that much to be found in the way of in-house records. “That works for me,” I said. “I know I don't have to tell you not to talk about this to anyone else at the Society, much less with anyone outside these walls, but I want to say again, please be careful. And take good care of the files—they are unique and irreplaceable.” I didn't see the point in mentioning the break-ins—it would only spook them. “We really don't know what we're up against.”

“Amen,” Marty said. “Thanks, everyone.”

The group trickled out, until Marty and I were left alone. “Have we done the right thing?” I asked.

“I hope so. And I can't think of anything else to do.”

“Then let's hope this works!”

The peace did not last, because Marty appeared at my door a half an hour later. “I got a text from Henry saying that he needs to talk to us, fast. Is your office bugged?”

It took me a moment to realize she was joking. At least, I thought she was. “Let's hope not. You want to call from here?”

“Yeah, I can put it on speaker.” She closed the door. When she was settled again, she pulled out her cell phone and made the call.

“Hey, Aunt Marty! You got my message?” Henry's cheerful voice came through loud and clear.

“Obviously,” Marty replied briskly. “I've got you on speaker, and Nell's here, too, but no one else. What've you got?”

“I told you I was going to run some additional tests on the wood? Man, these new machines are something else. They can pick up almost anything.”

“I assume you found something with your fancy toys?” Marty pressed.

“If you saw the price tags, you wouldn't call them toys—and they're real sensitive. Anyway, yes, I found something unexpected and I thought you should know.”

He paused again, no doubt relishing the opportunity to yank Marty's chain. “I found gunpowder residue and gun-cleaning oil embedded in the wood.”

Whoa.
That was something I never expected. A lot of questions came bubbling into my head, but I had no idea where to start.

Fortunately Marty did. “You're saying there was a gun or guns kept in that box at some point?” She sounded as surprised as I felt.

“I can go you one better: it was smokeless powder, which was invented in 1884, so the weapon has to have been made after that. It's a really interesting history—” Henry began with enthusiasm.

Marty cut him off. “What kind of weapon are we looking for?” she demanded.

“Aunt Martha, that's a bit hard to say based on the analysis I've done, with very little physical evidence. You're going to have to do some homework. I can probably dig up a list of weapons available in that time period that used that kind of powder, and since we know roughly what size the box was, we can eliminate the larger weapons, but after that you're on your own. Not my area of expertise. Look for a handgun that dates from between 1884 and 1907.”

“Got it. Thanks, Henry—you've given us something to think about. I'll call you if I have more questions.”

“Any time, Auntie M.” He hung up.

Marty turned to stare at me. “Well.”

“Yes. Didn't see that one coming, did we?”

“No way. So there was at least one weapon kept in there at some point, but we did not find any weapons in the pit. The police did not find any weapons upon Carnell Scruggs's body. Why do I sound like a Doctor Seuss character?” Marty asked.

“Because you're in shock. We're both stunned. You're right. We've been focused on the brass pieces and the possibility of some documents or other valuables in the box, but a firearm puts this in a whole new light—a firearm that we can assign to a fairly precise period. I mean, firearms have significant street value, for ready cash. We don't know if Carnell had any criminal history, but we could find out. Would he know what to do with a gun?”

“He'd sell it, probably. A clean gun—one with no criminal trail—would have some real value on the street around here, and Carnell would probably have known that. Would the thing still work after sitting in that pit for a century?” Marty asked.

“Maybe, but I wouldn't want to pull the trigger without taking a hard look at it. Heck, we don't even know if it
was
in the pit at all—just because the box once held a gun, doesn't mean the gun was in there at the time the desk got tossed. Maybe the gun was stolen out of the box in 1907 and the thief trashed the box to hide that fact. Did your grandfather have any history with firearms?”

“You mean, apart from the pistols that General John Terwilliger used in his infamous duel in 1778?”

I stared at Marty for a moment, until my brain worked
out that a weapon dating from 1778 could hardly fit the description of what we now thought we were looking for. “I assume your family still has those?”

Marty nodded. “One of my cousins does, but he doesn't talk about it. It's not like he handed them around for the kids to play with at Thanksgiving. I think they're in a safe-deposit box. But they're too early to have anything to do with this The short answer is yes, my grandfather did have a few weapons around. He made sure we kids didn't know where he kept them, although I can't imagine that he'd keep them in the lap desk. What do we do now?”

I thought, and then I looked at my watch. “First we go talk to the construction crew.”

“Why?”

“You'll see.” I crossed my fingers that they'd still be on-site.

They were. I called Bob at the desk, and he told me they were working on the fourth floor today. I thanked him and headed for the stairs, Marty right behind me, then I went straight to Joe Logan. “Can we talk with you a moment?”

He said quickly, “Sure. You got a problem? Because we can't help the noise . . .”

“No, it's not that, Joe. I want to ask a favor. You know that pit in the basement?”

“Sure, what about it?”

“I know your guys cleared it out and gave me what you found, but is it still open?”

“Yeah. We haven't decided if we need to fill it in now, or how, and then with Carnell's, uh, accident . . .” He left the rest of his thought unspoken. “Why?”

“I want to look for something very small, that they
might have missed. I know it's a tight fit, but this is important, or I wouldn't ask.”

“Hey, you're the boss.” He scanned the group of men in the room, but to my unskilled eye they all looked too big to fit into the hole and be able to maneuver once they were inside it. “Carnell was our smallest guy—I don't know if there's anyone else . . .”

“I'll do it,” Marty said.

We both turned to stare at her. The foreman said, “Ma'am, you wouldn't be covered by our insurance. If you can wait until tomorrow . . .”

“I'll sign whatever waiver you want, but I want this done today. Now.”

“You'll mess up your clothes,” the foreman protested feebly.

“My problem, not yours. Can we do this?” Marty demanded.

He looked at me in mute appeal, and I nodded. “Okay,” Logan said. He looked over at his crew. “Hey, guys?” he called out. “Fifteen-minute break.” Then he turned back to Marty. “Let's go.”

We all took the elevator down to the basement and headed for the back room where the pit was. I was surprised at how clean everything looked now, swept and ready for whatever came next. The pit was covered by a couple of sturdy planks, but they were easily removed.

“You got a ladder or a rope or something?” Marty asked.

“Carnell went down by ladder, and then we pulled it up so he could move around,” Logan explained. “Let me go get it.”

Marty waited until he'd gone off hunting for the right ladder before turning to me. “Okay, what am I looking for?”

“One or more cartridges from the gun. It's a long shot—sorry for the pun—but if there was a gun in the desk, there might also have been some bullets in the box, and they'd be hard to see in the dirt at the bottom. Carnell could easily have missed them.”

“Got it. So I get to sift through that lovely dirt with my hands, looking for something dirty that's about an inch long?”

“Right. Hey, you volunteered.”

“I'm the smallest one around—you wouldn't fit.”

“Gee, thanks.”

The foreman returned with a relatively narrow ladder, which he slid into the pit. “I'm going to insist you wear a hard hat, or I'll have state and federal authorities crawling all over me. And here's a flashlight, and a pair of work gloves, and some protective goggles.” He handed her the items. “We think we cleared out anything big. If you find something small, you can put it in your pocket. If it's too big for that, we'll have to work something out.”

“Fair enough. I'm going in.” Marty turned around and backed down the ladder. I heard a few muttered curses, and then she called out, “Pull the ladder up now.” Logan did.

I could hear Marty scrabbling around the detritus at the bottom of the pit, and tried not hard to think about the fact that it had once been a privy. A long time ago. At least a century, right? And she'd volunteered, even knowing its history. How bad could it be?

“Put the ladder back,” she called out, after what must have been fifteen minutes. The foreman complied quickly, and Marty clambered out.

“Well?” I said.

She nodded, the turned to the foreman. “Thanks for your help, Joe. I got what I needed.”

The poor guy stood there for a few seconds, obviously waiting for an explanation, but Marty didn't volunteer anything else, so in the end he pulled out the ladder, picked it up, and left. We waited until we could no longer hear his footsteps.

“Okay, what've you got?”

“Some nice china shards, and what I think is an old pipe—couldn't be sure.” Marty grinned wickedly. “And these.”

She reached into her pocket, then pulled her hand out and opened it to reveal three brass cartridges, tarnished and covered with soil—and I recognized them immediately. “Damn! These cartridges are .45 ACPs. They were invented in 1905. The timing fits.”

“What?” Marty said. “Wait? Why do you know this?”

“Long story. The point is, we've just narrowed down what weapon we're looking for.”

“Hang on,” Marty said, “we've just shown there
was
a weapon, probably when the box went into the pit. Unless some idiot came down here and felt like chucking bullets into a hole in the ground. At least they're whole shells, not just the casings, so they weren't fired here?”

“Right again. Ergo, they must fit the missing weapon.”

Marty said. “Why are you assuming the gun was in the box when it was tossed? How do you know that the gun wasn't removed first, and then the box was dumped?”

“Like, how do you prove something
wasn't
there?” I retorted. “I can't, but think about it: Why would anyone kill Carnell over a bunch of old cartridges? There
had
to be a gun. Carnell would have seen it in the pit and known he could sell it, so he hid it in a pocket or under his belt and didn't tell anyone. But somebody
else
saw him pocketing something—maybe one of his construction buddies—and followed him when he left.”

“Maybe.” Marty didn't look convinced. “So what is it we're supposed to do with this piece of information?” she demanded.

After my first burst of deductive reasoning, I had run out of steam. We still had no more than some chemical traces and some wild hypotheses—and no gun. Nothing worthy of taking to the police yet. “I . . . really don't know. I need to think. You need to shower and change clothes.” When I looked at my watch, I was shocked to see that the workday was barely half-over. “Late lunch? Early supper?”

“I smell that bad? No, don't tell me. I'll go home and clean up. You gonna tell Hrivnak? Or James?”

“Marty, please.” I held up one hand to stop her. “I need to get my head around this first. Don't worry, I won't do anything without consulting you. Let's go upstairs.”

We took the elevator up to the first floor, where Marty in her present condition evoked a couple of stares, which she ignored. She headed straight out the front door, and I went back to my office, where I sat and stared into space, trying to think.

Henry had said the broken box with the brass fittings that we'd pulled out of the pit in the basement dated to the eighteenth century and probably came from the same furniture
maker as the famous Terwilliger furniture. I trusted his opinion.

Henry also said he had found traces of gunshot residue—a kind that hadn't existed until 1884—and gun oil on the bits of wood we'd given him. I was less sure of that fact, since the box had been sitting in a hole in the floor for over a century. But he was the test-machine wizard, and I'd have to accept what he and his machines told us.

And now Marty and I had found cartridges from an appropriate era in the same hole. And I was guessing that there was a weapon, that it also been in the pit, along with the cartridges, and that Carnell had pocketed it. Should I tell the police that they should test Carnell's clothing for firearms residue? Would their equipment even be able to detect such small traces, and how quickly could they do it?

Had someone seen Carnell take the weapon out of the building, then taken it from him and made sure he was dead so he couldn't tell anyone about it?

Where did the Terwilliger family fit in all this?

If I tried to explain this to the police, what would they think? But if I didn't tell them and the gun showed up in a crime now, I'd be liable for something, wouldn't I? Would it be concealing evidence if the concealing took place
before
the crime?

And why had the hypothetical gun hypothetically ended up in the pit at all?

I was getting tired of my own thoughts. I hadn't heard from Marty, who lived a short walk away—maybe she was taking a very long bath. And thinking along the same lines I was, about where her grandfather and her father fit in this
puzzle, that now included an old or antique firearm. I stood up, stretched, and meandered out to Eric's desk.

“I collected those board files you asked about, Nell,” Eric said.

Great—if I wanted to read them in time to talk about them tomorrow morning, I'd have to take them home. James would love that. “Thank you, Eric—that was fast. Nothing from Latoya?”

Eric shook his head.

“Shelby?”

“I saw her for about a minute earlier, but she said she was still working on what you asked.”

There was not a whole lot more I could do before the end of the day. We'd all be hearing the new information cold at the meeting in the morning—assuming there was anything to hear. “Okay, let me take the management files home with me and go over them and see if I learn anything. Do they include budgets, Eric?”