Fundraising The Dead

CHAPTER 8

The next day was Saturday. The Society was usually open to the public on Saturday, for benefit of those researchers who (heaven forbid) had normal jobs during the week. The staff had agreed that the sooner we got back to business as usual, the better. Generally only the library staff, not the administrative staff, was required to put in an appearance on Saturdays, but the story of Alfred’s death had appeared briefly on the news the night before-“Tragic Accident at Local Institution Claims Life”-and I thought I should be there to help Joan deal with any inquiries from the public-and our donors. And there was a lot of follow-up for the gala that I needed to attend to: writing thank-you letters, paying the bills, summarizing results, and recording comments from the rather fragmented staff meeting. How long ago the event seemed, though it had been only two days! First, of course, there was the meeting with Marty, which I knew she wouldn’t cancel. So I went in to work.

As I walked to the front entrance, I was relieved to see that everything looked completely normal. Rich was waiting for me in the lobby, fidgeting. We had barely exchanged greetings when Marty arrived, dressed in jeans, apparently ready for a hands-on attack of the stacks. “Hi, guys. Rich, Nell told you what we’re looking for?”

Rich nodded diffidently. “I haven’t seen the stuff, but I’ll do my best to help.”

Marty said crisply, “Okay, let’s go.” Then she took off toward the rear of the building, with Rich and me trailing behind. He and I exchanged a wry glance behind her back, then hurried to catch up. We headed for a room that had once been the heart of the Society-the fireproof vault, built in 1905 with a special endowment from a then-board member who was concerned about the vulnerability of our largely paper-based collections to fire and theft. At the time the room had been state-of-the-art. Now it was just a closely sealed room with metal doors, which made it marginally safer than some in the building. A newer fire-retardant system had been installed sometime in the last fifty years, but it would probably do more harm than good in the event of a fire. One more item for the capital budget. The Terwilliger Collection took up approximately half the room, some four hundred linear feet of books, folders, boxes, and miscellaneous bundles.

Most people either love or hate old libraries. To some, a room like this-dim, high-ceilinged, dusty, smelling of old paper and crumbling leather-would be oppressive, a place to flee from in search of sun and air. To others, like me, it was a wonderful cave filled with unimaginable treasures and unexpected treats. I always found myself inhaling deeply when I entered the stacks, as if trying to absorb part of them into my bloodstream.

Marty, however, wasn’t bothering with any romantic illusions, but instead headed straight for her family papers. She stopped in front of the first array of bookshelves, which stretched far over our heads, and turned to face us, arms akimbo.

“OK, the collection begins here, right?” She laid a hand on the shelves behind her. “And the earliest stuff is at this end, beginning around 1720?”

I looked to Rich and he nodded. “Right, with a couple of exceptions-some of the larger folio sizes we’ve had to move around a bit, to save space. But I did a quick pass through yesterday of all the file boxes and cross-checked what I found against the map I made for myself when I started, and this is where they start.”

Marty went on relentlessly. “And the war materials start about here, right?” She pointed to the second tier of shelves. When Marty talked about the war, it could only mean the Revolution. “Now, you know that Major Jonathan Terwilliger and General George Washington began corresponding before the war was declared-before Jonathan was a major-and continued until Washington’s death, right?”

I hadn’t actually known, but I nodded anyway.

“I’ve seen these papers plenty of times, over many years. In fact, I grew up with them. Daddy used to show them to us when we were kids-he was really proud of our history, and he wanted us to be, too. And I’ve seen them since they came to the Society. They used to be on the second-to-top shelf here-I saw them there last month. But they’re not here now.”

She stopped, crossed her arms, and glared at us. I looked briefly at Rich, who said quickly, “As I said before, I haven’t gotten up this far yet. I’ve been transferring some of the boxes to my desk for the more detailed cataloging-about a rolling cart’s worth at a time-but the last batch I took came from those shelves back there.” He pointed toward the far end of the shelves behind Marty, where there was indeed a gap about the size of a document box.

“Would anyone else have been looking at them?” Marty demanded.

I spoke up. “When Felicity comes in, we can ask if anyone has requested them-if so, they could still be down in the reading room, waiting to be reshelved. But I understand that the cataloging is still pretty sketchy, right?”

“Unfortunately,” Rich said.

“So, in order to have requested them, someone would have had to know they existed,” Marty pointed out.

“We don’t let the public in here, wandering in the stacks and browsing. You know that-we’ve discussed access policies at board meetings,” I said.

“Well, if they haven’t been signed out, and Rich isn’t working on them, and they’re not on the shelf… they could have been stolen,” Marty said bluntly. “Damn it, that’s a whole box, not just a single letter. To do that, you’d have to have major balls-and inside help.”

I could almost see Marty’s thermostat rising. “Let’s not jump to conclusions, Marty,” I said in my most soothing tones. “There are several steps we ought to take before we say that. Let me check with the staff, ask if anyone has seen what we’re looking for. Then we can do a more thorough search of the stacks, the reading room-maybe someone in-house decided to take a look at the letters and forgot to put them back, or put them in the wrong place. It happens. Please, give us a chance to sort this out, before you start crying fire.”

Marty gave me a long, calculating look. “I’ll give you a week, until Friday, to find them. And if you don’t, there’ll be hell to pay. I’ll go to the board-and the press. I want those papers.”

That kind of publicity was something the Society definitely did not need, especially coming hard on the heels of Alfred’s death. “I hope it won’t come to that, Marty. I’m sure there’s some reasonable explanation, and I’ll get to work on it immediately.” As though I didn’t have anything else to do. “I’m very glad you called this to our attention-clearly we need to look carefully at our procedures.”

Marty hardly seemed mollified. “One week,” she said again, then turned on her heel and marched out of the stacks. I exchanged another look with Rich, who was several shades paler than he had been a few minutes ago.

“If I weren’t such a lady,” I said, “I’d say we were in deep shit. We’d damn well better find the those papers.” I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Well, I guess I’d better start talking to the staff.” I made my way out of the stacks, followed by poor Rich, who resembled a puppy who had just had his nose swatted.

Rich headed upstairs, but I found Marty waiting for me in the hall. “Did you need something else, Marty? I assure you I’ll keep an eye on things.”

She shook her head abruptly. “It’s not that. Alfred’s funeral will be on Tuesday. Will you let the staff know?”

Marty was handling Alfred’s funeral? That seemed odd. “Of course. Can you give me the details? I’ll send out an email blast right away. Why…”

Marty handed me a sheet with information on the funeral home and the cemetery. “Why’m I doing it? Alfred wasn’t close to most of his relatives, and nobody else stepped up. Thanks for letting people know.”

She turned away to leave, but I wondered if I had seen a glint of tears.