Privy to the Dead (20 page)

However, before anyone could leave, there was a rapping on the door, and Lissa poked her head in. “Sorry I missed the meeting this morning, but I found something you've got to see.”

We all settled back in our seats. “Pull up a chair and tell us what you've got,” I told Lissa. “But before you begin, there are some new details you need to know.” When she sat, I gave her the short version that I had presented to the group at the beginning of the meeting and added the bits and pieces that had come up along the way; when I got to the part about the missing weapon, I could have sworn that Lissa grew paler.

When I was finished, Lissa took a moment to digest what I'd said before speaking herself. “Since we're trying to find out why anyone would want to . . . harm that poor man who died last week,” she began, “and you believe there's some link to the Society, you asked me to look at anyone around now who might be related to the people who were in charge back around 1900 through when the new building was finished in 1907. Since I didn't have time to get over here and go through your records, I used online resources like Ancestry.com as
much as I could, though sites like that don't list living people, so I could go only so far. We're talking two, three generations, tops. So then I went looking through obituaries and wills and newspaper articles after that, to get as close to the present as I could. I had the names of maybe fifteen board members, an equally short list of high-dollar donors, and the pitifully few staff members they had at the time, all of whom would have had access to the dark corners of the place. I managed to track down something for all of them, though I didn't look at the Terwilligers, since we've got plenty of info on them already. Several lines petered out—either the family members are all deceased now, or the last few moved away and haven't been heard of locally for years. I could have missed a few female lines who married and changed names.”

“Understood,” I agreed. “Let's start with the obvious ones and see what you found.”

Lissa looked around. “Where's Marty? And Rich? They really need to hear this, too.”

“Marty had to leave. She said she thinks Rich might still be researching something. But go ahead—we can fill them in later.”

Lissa looked at the uniformly somber expressions on everyone in the room. “You really are taking this seriously.”

“Yes, we are,” I said. “Show us what you've put together.”

“All right.” Lissa started dealing out papers in stacks on the polished oak table. “Ten members of that original list still have descendants living in the greater Philadelphia area. I can't give you their financial status back around 1900, but you can infer some details from the addresses and professions, I think. I've sketched out the line of descent from each of the early Society members to anyone currently in the
greater Philadelphia area. Take a look.” She stepped back so that everyone could look at what she had assembled.

I recognized the surnames of a few modern-day members and realized that, like Marty, they were now third- or fourth-generation within the same family. I suppose there were other cities—and other societies such as this one—where the same was true, but it still sort of thrilled me to be looking at it in tangible form.

But I came to a screeching halt in front of one stack of papers.

“What is it?” Lissa asked.

I placed a finger on the nearest page, the one with the descendant tree on top of one of the piles. “You're kidding,” someone whispered. I couldn't tell who because I was still staring at the page.

Rich Girard
. Our intern for the past two years. Marty's right hand in the cataloging of the Terwilliger papers. Nice guy. Easygoing, funny, hardworking, meticulous with details. And a descendant of Harrison Frazer.

I turned to Lissa. “You're sure?”

She nodded. “I double-checked. You didn't know?”

I recalled something about a family connection when he'd originally been hired a couple of years earlier, but it hadn't registered with me. Marty had vouched for him, and that was all that really mattered then. I took my time in choosing my words. “Lissa, while you were putting this together, we arrived at—well, I guess you'd call it a strong suspicion that former board member Harrison Frazer was involved in the fatal shooting of his wife and her probable lover in the summer of 1907. Nothing was ever proved, and no weapon was found. Shelby told us about the Frazer murders this morning.
It seems likely to me that there was a gun that somehow ended up in the Terwilliger lap desk, at least at the time it was tossed in the pit, and that this gun was probably the missing Frazer murder weapon. We also believe that the discovery of this gun by Carnell Scruggs is what led to his death, and someone must have seen him conceal it and take it out of the building. As far as we know, the police have no suspects, but the only visual evidence—the recording from the bar where the man ate dinner—shows him in the company of a young white man.”

Lissa looked stunned. “So this other man at the bar, you're saying you think it could've been Rich?”

I nodded. “The bar video isn't conclusive, but there's nothing in it to eliminate Rich. It's just a suspicion, but this whole mess has been rife with coincidences, and they keep adding up. Marty was with Rich last night, but she didn't tell us if they'd found anything of interest. She stayed at this meeting long enough to hear about the Frazer murders, but then left in a hurry. She may hold some of the answers.” In fact, I suspected she might have left
because
of those answers.

I stopped and thought for a moment, then said, “I'm sorry if this sounds, well, procedural, but let's take a moment and see if we can we put together a timeline for where we all were last Wednesday night, when Carnell Scruggs was hit by that car.”

“I assume you mean whether and when we saw Rich?” Shelby asked quietly.

“I'm afraid so. If one of you can tell me that the two of you were together at the dentist at the time Scruggs was killed, I'll feel a lot better.”

Everybody sat silently, scribbling notes on pieces of paper. Latoya finished first. “I'm afraid this won't help much—I spent the afternoon in my office. I did not go to the basement. I might have seen Rich in the processing room, but only in passing—we didn't speak. He wasn't working on anything in particular for me. You'd do better to ask the others who spend time in that room.”

I wasn't surprised; her recollections were no better or worse than my own.

“Ben?”

He was shaking his head. “Rich wasn't around the processing room that day. Of course, that doesn't mean he wasn't in the building somewhere.”

I nodded. “Shelby?”

“More or less the same as Latoya. I was working in my office all day,” Shelby said. “I didn't talk to Rich. If I saw him at all, he would have been trailing after Marty, but I see them a lot, and I couldn't swear to what day it was.”

“Does Rich ever look in the development files?” I asked her.

“Sure, although mostly at the Terwilliger stuff. But he probably looks at the people who knew the various Terwilligers . . .” Shelby's voice trailed off when she realized what she had just said. “He could know as much as we do about any connections between the Frazers and the Terwilligers. More, in fact. He's had a couple of years to work on it.”

Maybe. I had worked with Rich for all that time. He was a nice guy, a competent cataloger. Marty had been pleased with his work. How could he go from that to shoving a man to his death? Why would he do that? I wasn't ready to believe it. I wanted to hear what
he
had to say. I wanted to know
why Marty had left so fast. I wanted to understand what the heck was going on.

Since everyone was now staring expectantly at me, I struggled to pull myself together. “Okay, people, let's focus. We're looking for anything to do with the Frazer family, whether it's in collections or development or board records. And I will try to track down Marty and see what she knows.” I was pretty sure she knew something. Maybe even a lot. “And if any of you see or hear from Rich, let me know.”

“You really believe he's involved?” Latoya said.

“Honestly, I don't know. I hope not. Anyway, thank you all for your work on this.”

We straggled out to our various offices. On the way, I noticed the lobby was empty, so I stopped to talk to Bob. “Did Marty leave the building, Bob?”

“She did, maybe half an hour ago.”

Well, that saved me hunting through the stacks, where she might have hidden herself like a wounded animal retreating to her den. “What about Rich—have you seen him today?”

“Not that I can recall, but he could have come in early.”

“Thanks, Bob.” The lobby was a bit too public to ask Bob about where Rich was on the day of Carnell's death. Surely the police had already talked to them both. Maybe they'd done all of this already.

I trudged back to my office. Eric was back at his desk. “You look like you need more coffee, Nell. And Rich Girard is waiting for you in your office—said he really needed to talk to you.”

I didn't have time to wonder how Rich had escaped Bob's notice, but he knew the place well. Had he come to confess? No, that seemed ridiculous—he didn't even know we knew about his Frazer connections, or that we had reason to care. Had Marty sent him to me? One way to find out. “Hold off on that coffee, Eric. I want to talk to Rich first.”

I squared my shoulders and marched into my office, shutting the door behind me. Rich was wandering around looking at the framed engravings on the walls, but he turned quickly when I came in. I held my tongue until I had walked around my desk and sat down.

“Eric said you wanted to talk to me? Why don't you sit down and tell me what's on your mind.”
Like, have you killed anybody recently?

Rich dropped into one of the antique visitor chairs in front of the desk. “I don't know where to start. I'm sorry
to bother you when I know you're busy, but I found something in the Terwilliger papers yesterday, and I didn't want to show it to Marty until I'd had time to think about it, and I haven't seen her yet this morning, so I figured I'd better bring it to you. I ducked out of that meeting this morning because I didn't want to face Marty before I talked to you, you know?”

“I understand, Rich. Marty left our nine o'clock meeting in kind of a hurry, and Bob says she left the building. Do you know anything about that?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “I haven't seen her since last night.”

“What was it you found, that you think was so important?”
And that you couldn't share with Marty?

He pulled himself up straighter in his chair. “Last night Marty and I were over at her place going over the family papers, the ones that were personal rather than historical, so they never went to the Society. Her grandfather was careful with his record-keeping, you know? Her father, not so much. He kind of saved everything, but he didn't organize it very well. So it took some time to sort through what he left, even though Marty's been through most of it before, and a lot of it wasn't relevant. I even found a love letter her father wrote to someone who wasn't her mother. Didn't seem to upset her, but that stuff didn't get us any further. And then I found this. I made a copy of it and printed out one for you.”

Rich opened a folder he had brought and slid a copy of what appeared to be a handwritten list across my desk. “This is the inventory for Marty's grandfather's gift of the Terwilliger papers and artifacts to the Society. It's the one in your records.”

I recognized it. “Yes, we've all looked at this before. Why are you showing it to me now?”

“Marty probably told you that her father ended up with most of the papers from the extended family because he was the only one who wanted them, and then she inherited them from him. When we were going through them, I found this.” Rich pulled out another sheet and handed that one to me, then sat back and stared at me, waiting.

I looked at the two pages. The handwriting appeared to be the same, although I was no expert. The second one looked very much like the first, and both seemed to enumerate the same sequence of items in the collection.

And the second one Rich had just given me included an extra line in the middle: “lap desk made by Benjamin Randolph ca. 1778.” Just to be sure, I looked back and forth between the two pages a few times. There was no corresponding line on the “official” list.

I took a deep breath. “So there
was
a Terwilliger lap desk, and it was part of the collection that Marty's grandfather gave?”

“Looks like it,” Rich said.

“You know Marty's been looking for something like this for a couple of days now. Why didn't you just give it to her?”

“Because after everything I've been hearing, I knew it would upset her. She's really into the whole Terwilliger name thing. I didn't want to be there when she read the two.”

“Why not just leave it where she would find it? Did you think Marty would hide the truth?”

“I don't know. Okay, I chickened out. But I brought it
to you, didn't I? I mean, I could have destroyed it and nobody would ever have known.”

“You know, Grandpa Terwilliger could have changed his mind about donating that one piece and held it back,” I pointed out.

“But it was found here in the basement,” Rich said stubbornly.

I considered that. “You think he
did
give it to the Society, but changed the list afterward?”

“Maybe. There aren't dates on either list, but you can tell the handwriting's pretty much the same. So he was the one who changed it, and filed the revised one at the Society—that list we've both seen.”

“And why would he do that?” I asked.

“Because he knew the lap desk was gone.”

“You're saying that Grandpa Terwilliger knew the lap desk wasn't going to be part of the Society collection. Who dumped it into the pit? Did he? Was it someone else?”

Rich looked distressed. “Nell, I don't know! Either he did it, or he knew who was responsible. But now we know that he knew, and he deliberately kept quiet about it, and he changed the record himself.”

I sat back in my chair and studied Rich. What did his “find” add to our information? Apart from the fact that the Terwilliger family was involved somehow, which had been likely from the start.

Maybe it was time for a new tack. “Rich, was your grandfather Harrison Frazer?”

He looked at me, startled. “Yeah, well, great-grandfather. How do you know that?”

“I asked Lissa to check family histories of the board
members and donors just after 1900, with particular attention to the ones who have descendants still in the area. She found your name.”

“I never hid the connection. That's how I met Marty, a while back. She knows about it.”

“Your grandfather Frazer may have killed his wife and her lover. Did you know that?”

“Sure. It's a family story. Nobody talks about it much, but a snoopy kid can find out stuff like that, if he keeps asking. So?”

“Did you know that there's a good chance there was a gun hidden in that lap desk when it was tossed into the pit?”

Rich looked bewildered. “What? Why would I know that?”

“Somebody may have. We think Carnell Scruggs found the gun in the pit, in what was left of the lap desk, and took it away from the Society. And that may be why he died.”

“So that's what it was!” Rich said.

“What?”

Rich leaned forward eagerly. “Look, that day last week, I was in and out of the basement—Marty wanted me to keep an eye on the Terwilliger stuff so nothing got misplaced, so I kept double-checking. I was afraid the boxes would get shuffled around or stuck in some corner somewhere and we'd have to waste time hunting for them, you know? I was in one of the rooms across the hall when I heard the guys talking about this hole in the floor they'd just uncovered, and they were, like, kidding around with each other about what might be down there, and daring someone to go down and see what was in there. Finally they figured out how to send the smallest
guy, Scruggs, down with a ladder. And he went, and he was there for, oh, maybe ten minutes? I was standing by the hall door listening by then. I mean, it didn't mean anything to me, but I was curious. So first he called out for a bag or bucket or something, so he could dump whatever he found into it and someone could haul it up. There wasn't a whole lot of stuff—maybe two buckets' worth. And then he climbed out, all dirty. The other guys were joking about it, calling him things like a mole or a worm, or worse. And it was by accident that I noticed he was adjusting something in his waistband or his back pocket. He was turned away from the other guys, but I could see it from the hall. I figured he had found whatever it was in the pit, and that meant it wasn't his. It was the property of the Society, right?”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, I didn't know this Scruggs guy, so I told the foreman, Joe Logan. I just said, I thought Scruggs might have picked up something and taken it with him. Logan said he'd take care of it. He thanked me for letting him know.”

Funny—Joe Logan hadn't mentioned anything like that. “Did you tell that part to the police?

“I said I thought Scruggs had taken something, and I'd told his boss. Then when I heard what you all had come up with, I figured he'd pocketed one of the escutcheons. Isn't that what he showed the guy at the bar later?”

The police had known Scruggs took something, but they hadn't known what. I hated to ask, but I had one rather important question for Rich. “Do you have an alibi for the time when Scruggs was hit by the car?”

Rich's eyes widened. “What, you think I killed the guy?
No way! I was at a bar over near Penn with a bunch of my friends, watching a basketball game until it ended. That's what I told the cops.”

I felt a spurt of relief. If the cops had checked out the alibi, then there was no way Rich could have been responsible for Scruggs's death. I was glad, because I liked Rich, and I really couldn't see him as a killer. “Rich, you don't know how happy I am to hear that.”

“You really thought I was a killer? Wow!” Now he looked almost pleased.

My relief was short-lived: Marty burst through the door. “There you are, you little weasel,” she said to Rich. “What'd you do with them?”

“Nice to see you again, Marty,” I said mildly. “I assume you mean these? The mismatched inventories?” I held up the copies Rich had given me.

Now Marty was glaring at both me and Rich, alternately. “Yes, those.”

“When did you discover them?”

“A few days ago.”

Interesting: she hadn't hidden or destroyed them. Had she been waiting for Rich to find them? Or hoping no one would? “Were you planning to share this information with me? Or anyone else?”

Marty dropped into the other guest chair, looking deflated. “Yeah, but I wanted to think about what they meant. Heck, if I was going to hide them, I could have destroyed them, right?”

I shook my head. “You would never destroy historical documents, Marty. Even ones that put the Terwilliger family in a bad light.”

“You're right.” Then she turned on Rich. “So you found them, but instead of coming to me with them, you sneaked them out when you thought I wasn't looking? Why didn't you say something?”

“Because I knew you'd be upset. Like you are,” Rich said. “But I brought them straight to Nell.”

Marty rubbed her hands over her face. “Oh, crap, crap, crap. This just keeps getting worse.”

“You want to explain why?” I challenged her. “We now can prove that your grandfather owned that lap desk, and that he knew that something had happened to it.” Another thought struck me. “You left the meeting right after Shelby reported on the Frazer murders. What's the connection?”

“You know anything about the social scene on Long Beach Island, back in that era?”

“Not really. Why?”

“In some ways it was a summer enclave for the Philadelphia elite—that's why you see so many of those big Victorian hulks there. They'd just transfer their families and staffs to the summer house and keep up with their usual social schedule, throwing in a few events at one or another yacht club. The men with jobs came down by train for weekends, just as that news article described. Just like Harrison Frazer did.”

“I take it the Terwilliger family had a house there?”

“Yup. Right next to the Frazer house. The one where the shootings took place.”

Like Marty had said,
oh, crap
.