Privy to the Dead (19 page)

“What? Oh no, nothing like that. I work for the government, and that's about as stable as a job gets these days. But if I want to leave the FBI, I'll discuss it with you first, I promise.”

That hadn't come up before, which was surprising given some of the situations he had found himself in recently. “Do you think about it? I mean, are you prepared to keep running around wrestling with bad guys and getting shot at for the next twenty or thirty years?” I wasn't sure how I felt about that idea myself.

“Those are relatively rare events. I typically spend far more time on paperwork. As you do,” James said, now sautéing what he had finished chopping.

“True. But poor Carnell has been dead for a week now, and if there's a way I can help solve this, I want to try to find it. Whether or not it involves the Society. Because it's the right thing to do.”

“I know. And I love you for that.” James turned down the heat under the pan and proceeded to demonstrate how he really felt. It took a while.

Friday morning, as we drove toward the city, I mentally reviewed what I hoped we would have uncovered since yesterday. How much longer would it take us to find an answer—or to declare defeat and go on about our business? I felt like somewhere there was a clock ticking.

There were times that I had to remind myself that things didn't always move as quickly as I'd like. As the custodian of an historical institution I should be all too aware of that issue, but when someone died and that death cast a shadow on the Society, I became impatient.

My little band of researchers and I were moving forward by inches, one small fact at a time. I was fairly confident that we had answers somewhere in our files, or maybe in Marty's files, but they were well buried, and who knew how long it would take to unearth them? Some ancient Greek had once said (in Greek, I assumed), “The millstones of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine,” whatever that meant.
I took it to mean that there was no hurrying the process, but you'd get it right at the end. Or at least have the flour to make breakfast.

The staff collaborators trickled into the downstairs room at nine, with less energy than they had shown the day before. Going back over the same stacks of dusty documents to see if you'd missed something could be draining. Even coffee wasn't helping.

By seven minutes past nine, we were still short a couple of people. “Has anyone seen Rich or Lissa?” I asked.

“I kept Rich working late at my place last night, going over the family papers with me,” Marty volunteered. “He looked like he was dragging by the time he left. Maybe he's trying to find one last bit of information.”

“I asked Lissa to take on a lot,” I added. “She's thorough—she could still be searching, too. But since most of us are here, we'd better get started. We're all throwing our little pieces into the pot and hoping that they magically come together to make a stew, er, sense.”

Looking at the still-blank faces, I realized that Marty and I were the only people who knew
all
the details. Each of the others knew some parts; most of them had done what I'd asked out of obedience or loyalty, but without knowing their purpose. But if we were ever going to bring all this together, I needed to tell them
everything
we now knew.

I cleared my throat. “I'm sorry. I owe you an apology, because we haven't given you all the available information. In part that was to avoid giving you any preconceptions about what you were looking for. In part it was to keep this whole thing as quiet as possible. A man is dead, and maybe selfishly I didn't want that to be laid at our door. But
keeping the details from you hasn't been fair to you, and it's getting in the way of putting together a coherent story. So this is what we know.” I proceeded to outline what I'd learned from Detective Hrivnak and from Henry Phinney, and I told them about the possible existence of a gun, and sketched out what Marty and I thought might have happened. But it was obvious there were still some gaping holes in the story, and I was hoping against hope that the people in front of me could help fill them. “Any questions?”

Ben, who had been listening intently, spoke quickly. “That's a pretty unusual weapon, a real collector's item now. But it wouldn't look like an antique—if you don't know weapons, you could easily think it was modern, not a century old. And it would probably work just fine, if it was cleaned up.”

“Thank you, Ben. That's what I was thinking. I've been wondering if Carnell Scruggs saw it and figured he could sell it on the street easily. Any other questions?”

There were lots. Marty and I managed to answer all the easy ones, but it was Shelby who offered the biggest piece of the puzzle.

“Let me make sure I've got this straight. Our theory of the moment is that there was an old gun in the box in the pit. Carnell found it and made off with it, someone saw him do it and followed him, and somehow Carnell ended up dead. Sound about right?”

“Yes, in a nutshell. But—

She held up a hand. “I'm not finished. So for the last several days you've had all of us hunting down old records of this, that, and the other thing, I assume in the hope that something will point to someone who had a reason to have
such a gun back in 1907
and
a reason to hide it, and picked this place for some reason that made sense to him. The lap desk shouldn't have been here at all, at least on paper, and you've made it clear that the only way that gun could have ended up in our basement was if it came in with someone who had pretty close ties with the Society at that particular time. That's a short list.” Shelby's smile was still in place. “And you asked me to see what we had in our files about the people on the short list, so that we could put the gun that I didn't know about until three minutes ago into the hands of one of those people. Right?”

“Right again, Shelby,” I said impatiently. “Well summarized. Do you have a point, other than complaining that I kept you, if not in the dark, then at least in the shade? I've already apologized for that.”

“Well, I think I've got something.” With a dramatic flourish, Shelby picked up a sheaf of photocopies and handed them around the table. “You do remember that we're a collecting institution? And that our collections just happen to include microfilms and digitized records of Pennsylvania newspapers going back to before the Civil War?”

“Shelby, if you don't tell us what you've found,” I growled, “I will have to strangle you, in spite of all these witnesses. We're short on time. Can you please get to the point?” I wondered for a moment if she was going to stick out her tongue at me, but she decided to take the high road. “Read,” she said, pointing at the papers she'd handed out.

I read. I read about the tragic death of Mrs. Harrison Frazer and her sailing instructor, one Thomas Westcott, both shot to death at the Frazer summer home on Long
Beach Island, New Jersey, in August of 1907. (From the grainy newspaper photos, it appeared that the sailing instructor was significantly younger than Mrs. Frazer.) Mr. Frazer had arrived at the beach house unexpectedly, having caught an early train from Philadelphia, and discovered the bodies. He blamed an armed intruder—Mrs. Frazer had been wont to travel with her nicer jewelry, for all those yacht club dinners, so the house was a likely target—who was never identified, much less located. No weapon was ever found, which was one reason why Mr. Frazer, the most obvious suspect under the circumstances, was never arrested.

The later paragraphs of the newspaper article made it clear that Mr. Frazer was an important man in Philadelphia and served on many boards, including that of the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society. A second, shorter article reported that he was so devastated by the death of his beloved wife of twenty-seven years that he took his own life a few months later and was found hanging in the carriage house behind his home in a nearby suburb. He left his letters and memorabilia to the Society.

I noticed that Latoya nodded, no doubt recognizing the Frazer gift to the collections.

I looked up from the page at Shelby. “This is amazing.”

“Aw, shucks, ma'am, it weren't nothin'.” Then her expression sobered. “Seriously, it was the only crime that I could find that was linked to any of the people with connections at the Society at the right time. And that was
before
I knew about the gun.”

I looked at Marty, but she was staring into space. “Marty?” I said.

She was slow to focus on me. “What? Oh, right, the Frazers.” She stood up abruptly. “I've got to go.” Then without another word she turned on her heel and left the room.

“What was that about?” Shelby said.

“I have no idea,” I told her.

I'd have to chase down Marty as soon as we wrapped up this meeting. In the meantime, I picked up Shelby's thread again. “All right, then. We have a new hypothesis to add to our string of hypotheses: that Mr. Frazer was the owner of the gun, and he used it to kill his wife and a man we can infer he assumed was her lover. If that's true, how did he manage to conceal the weapon from the police?”

“Just how thorough do you think they were in 1907?” Shelby asked. “I mean, the man was wealthy and respected. The shootings took place at his summer house, which was probably one of those hulking, big places on the beach, so the local police were first on the scene. You think they searched very hard? Besides, back then nobody would have blamed him for shooting his wife and her lover, at least off the record. Hell, there are countries today where that's still considered a legitimate excuse for murder. The article is pretty evasive about where the bodies were found, so maybe we should infer that they were in bed together—this paper wasn't so much into gory details as we are today.”

“I wonder if the original files on the murder are available?” I said, mainly to myself. To the group I said, “From what I understand, there is no statute of limitations on murder, so if no one was ever tried on this, it should theoretically still be an open case.”

“Yes, in New Jersey,” Latoya said, throwing some cold water on my thinking. “Isn't there a problem of jurisdiction? Are you going to go to the Shore and ask the police there if you can see the files? You don't exactly have any standing there.”

Latoya had raised a good point. We still needed more information before we could take any of this to Detective Hrivnak. If we could convince her, she might be willing to approach the New Jersey police and gain access to whatever remained. Maybe. All we had to offer her at the moment was a pretty weak string of conjectures and very little evidence.

This was getting ridiculous—castles in the air built on straw, or some other, equally mangled analogy.

I realized that everyone else was waiting for me to say something. “Latoya's right. We have a series of assumptions but little more. What can we find that will support our theory, that Frazer killed two people and got away with it? And how did the gun end up here? We need to know more about the man. Was he a banker? A lawyer? A businessman along the lines of John Wanamaker? Or just a member of the idle rich? Maybe he belonged to a gun club.”

“Why didn't he just pitch it in the ocean?” Shelby asked. “Or bury it in the sand until the police had checked the house? There is sand at the shore, isn't there?”

“Yes, Shelby, there is,” I said patiently. “Lots of it. Why don't you check exactly where Mr. Frazer lived—or rather, summered—at the shore? There must be a record somewhere. For that matter, find out where he lived in this area, and how active he was here. I mean, was he primarily a donor, or was he an historian?”

“Will do,” Shelby said. “And we'd better find out if Mr. Frazer knew Mr. Terwilliger, right? I know you hope to keep Marty's family out of this, but if there's any evidence that her grandfather was involved, it'll have to come out,” Shelby said.

“Yes, please look into that, too. You know Marty—she's honest, and she respects the facts of history. If her grandfather turns out to have been part of any kind of cover-up, she would want to know. Find out anything you can.” Privately, though, I wondered if Marty already had or knew of some evidence of his involvement, which would explain her abrupt exit. I turned to Latoya. “Can you check what was in Mr. Frazer's donation to the collections? He could have left almost anything, or nothing of value. Let's find out.”

“Of course,” Latoya said. “I can have that quickly.”

I had almost forgotten my request to the bank. “One more thing—yesterday I got in touch with the Society's bank, which has been the Society's bank from Day One. I asked if they could retrieve the records from the period we're talking about. If we're lucky they'll be available today. If not, probably early next week. I want to see if there are any unexpected contributions. I'll share whatever I find with you, Shelby, since you've already looked at the development records for the construction projects. We can compare those to the bank records, and look for any odd timing, or an unexpected late contribution. I'll let you know when the bank receives them and I've had a chance to look at them.”

“Nell, I apologize if this is a dumb question, but what do you hope to learn?” Ben asked. “I don't know how your donor records work.”

“Sorry, Ben—I keep forgetting you haven't been here
long. Assume the lap desk went into the pit no later than 1907, when the building was completed. If a donor contributed a significant amount around or after that time, we would take a harder look at him. If his contribution is way out of line with any prior or later contribution of his, then we look even harder.”

“You think it would be something like hush money?” Ben persisted. “Someone here who knew what was going on said, ‘Ante up and I'll keep quiet'?”

“It's a possibility. It probably would have looked like an ordinary contribution to most people who knew about it.”

“I'm way ahead of you, lady,” Shelby said. “I've already pulled together a list of the Society's contributors from that particular period. Here, I made copies for everyone.” She tossed another stack of stapled copies on the table, and everyone helped themselves to one. “I included both regular operating contributions and special campaign contributions. I haven't really had time to digest the results, so if anything pops out at you, tell me and I can look for more detail.”

Nobody volunteered any comments immediately, so I went on, “Thank you, Shelby. I asked Eric to look for additional financial reports from the board records, and he came up with a few. I have to say I'm appalled at how sloppy the board's records were back then. There are a few treasurer's reports from that decade, but it's not like they're monthly, or even from every meeting. That doesn't mean they aren't somewhere in the records here, but they could have been filed—or misfiled—almost anywhere. But if we can find them, they might bolster whatever you come up with, Shelby.” I looked at the people seated around the table. “Anything else?” I asked, and got no response. “Thank you
all for your efforts. I know you're doing this on top of all your regular duties, and I appreciate it. Okay, that's all, folks. Back to business.”