Fundraising The Dead

CHAPTER 9

I went back to my office, flopped down into my desk chair, and tried hard to think. Marty Terwilliger was important to the Society, not because she had a lot of money (which she didn’t-the old Philadelphia families had run through most of their fortunes a long time ago) but because of her family’s history with the place and because of her extensive and intricate connections with a whole lot of Philadelphia-area society. We needed them, as a group. Which meant that we needed to keep Marty happy, and that made fixing this mess my first priority.

That was the business decision. But I had this unsettling feeling that there were bigger issues involved: namely, how we kept track of our collections, how we fulfilled our obligation to the public and to all those, dead and living, who had entrusted us with protecting their historic treasures. From its inception, the Society had been run like a club. All the members knew each other, and it was a pleasant place to fritter away a couple of hours. It had been a trusting place then, but the world had changed and that trust was no longer justified.

At board meetings, staff and board members had debated about security on many occasions, as I knew well. Certainly the technology had changed, and various consultants had been called in to lay out high-tech options for strategically positioned video cameras, on-screen monitoring, sophisticated alarm systems, motion sensors-the list went on and on. But all of these glitzy systems cost money, big money, and we were barely able to keep the heat and lights on, not to mention pay staff salaries. Somehow electronic surveillance had been bumped far down the wish list, and no one had really protested.

But had we been wrong? Had we been too gullible, too innocent-and were we about to pay the price? I stared at the handsome framed etching on my office wall, but I didn’t see it. What I saw was looming catastrophe. Hang on, Nell, you’re looking at the worst possible case. Maybe somebody just moved the box to clean. Ha, I responded to myself, when was the last time anyone had cleaned in the stacks? Maybe the missing papers were on a cart, waiting to be reshelved. Maybe an inexperienced new hire had simply reshelved the box in the wrong place. Too many maybes.

Sometimes I regretted not having any sort of formal library training, and this was one of those times. I had a lot of questions, and I needed information. But I wasn’t quite sure where to start. As I swung idly back and forth in my swivel chair, I saw two paths: first, I needed to review, for my own understanding, how we tracked items as they traveled within the building. Second, I needed to find out exactly what, if anything, was being done about the items that Alfred had been unable to find. For the first, I needed to talk with our head librarian, Felicity; I’d talk to Latoya second. Maybe that was backwards, since Latoya was officially responsible for managing our collections, but I’d known Felicity longer, and she was far more knowledgeable about what was where in the building than Latoya could hope to be. And, I reminded myself, I still hadn’t given Charles the heads-up about the problem of the missing items; he wasn’t in today, but Marty’s complaint would demand his attention sooner or later-sooner, if I couldn’t come up with an answer for her within the week. I decided to do a little digging myself first, but if I didn’t come up with anything by, say, Tuesday, I’d have to tell Charles that we had a problem.

Before I headed downstairs to the reading room to find Felicity, I stopped to talk with Joan. She had been on staff less time than I had, and had been hired to replace a charming woman who’d been here decades but was completely oblivious to the changes that computers had wrought upon modern communications. “Hey, Joan-have you sent out that statement about Alfred’s death?”

“Sure did, yesterday, once we got wind that the media were already on it. It was kind of generic, since I couldn’t find anybody who knew him well. And before you ask, I also added something to the website.”

“You are good, lady! Maybe you can put together a little more about him-you know, what he did, the collections he worked on, and so on-for the next issue of the magazine?”

“I’m on it. Poor guy! I don’t know if I ever had a conversation longer than two minutes with Alfred, but he always gave me exactly what I asked for, and quickly. Let me know when you’re going to advertise his position-I’ve got some ideas about where to post it online.”

I could tell she was already way ahead of me. “Sounds good, and thanks. I’ll leave you to it.”

I stood up and headed downstairs. Felicity Soames, senior staff librarian, had been at the Society forever, and after Alfred, she was the best person to ask where things were-or where they should be. Briefly I wondered how she and Alfred had gotten along-hadn’t I seen them together at the gala? She was of a certain age, as the French like to put it, had never married, and lived for the purpose of managing the unwieldy mountains of paper housed in the Society’s building. Luckily, she also loved to help other people, in the often-futile hope that they would come to share her passion. A hapless researcher, fresh off the bus from Des Moines with two hours to spare, would be greeted by Felicity and inundated with stacks of books and promises of photocopies to come. They went away either glassy-eyed or starry-eyed, but it made no difference to Felicity. She was an incredible resource, and we were lucky to have her. Of course she was the first person I turned to in my quest.

I found her at her usual station: the elevated desk in the reading room, where she could survey her domain and keep an eye out for people foolish enough to use a pen rather than a pencil, or to think about bending a fragile book spine.

“Got a minute, Felicity?” I asked quietly (in a library, always quietly) as I approached.

Felicity scanned the crowd, though crowd was a rather loose definition, since it consisted of four people, at least one of whom was asleep. The room could hold a hundred easily. It didn’t look like any murder-ghouls or newshounds had made it past the lobby, though, and I made a mental note to ask our front-desk attendant if he’d had to keep any at bay.

“I think so,” she said.

“Privately, please.”

She gave me an odd look, then said, “The new room, then?”

Perfect, I thought. The absurdly designated new room was another artifact from an earlier, more gracious age. Once it had been a comfortable sitting room for gentlemen-I had seen old photos showing overstuffed armchairs and brass floor lamps. Then it had been modified to house our collection of paintings, on specially designed vertical racks, but more recently it had been turned over to much-needed shelving, for those reference books we allowed the general public to access. I followed her there, making sure there was no one in the room. The chairs were long gone, so we retreated to the furthest corner and leaned gingerly against opposing bookshelves.

“What’s up?” she asked. “Does this have to do with Alfred’s death? Such a tragedy. He had a most meticulous mind.”

I debated for about a half a second about whether to bring her into the loop about the missing Terwilliger papers, and then decided that she needed to know; she would be essential to figuring things out. “No, this is something else. We have a problem. I hope it’s a small problem, just a minor mix-up. You know Marty Terwilliger?”

She nodded. “Of course. I saw her in the reading room earlier today.”

“She came to me just before the gala and said she couldn’t find a particular group of documents from the Terwilliger Collection, and she knows that they were there not long ago. Rich and I went with her to look for them again this morning, and we couldn’t find them, either-at least, not where they were supposed to be. So, before we all fly into a panic, I wanted to check with you about the tracking procedure for a document in the building-you know, if somebody calls something up to use in the reading room, or if one of the staff takes it to look at, or if it goes out of the building for restoration, or something. Whatever you can tell me.”

Felicity pinned me with a look that combined contempt and pity: How could you be so ignorant? her stare said. She cleared her throat. “Certainly we have procedures in place for any such movement within the building-and of course, items seldom leave the building, and then only under very carefully regulated restrictions. Here,” she said, pulling a slip of colored paper from a small pile on the shelf behind her, “this is a tracking slip. When a book or folder or box-whatever-is removed from its place, the staff member who removes it fills out this slip, with the item’s title, call number, and shelf location, and then signs it. It’s a multipart form: one copy remains on the shelf, and the other is inserted into the article in question.” She fixed me with an eagle eye. “Surely you’ve used these? I know I’ve seen items from the collections on your desk.”

I tried to avoid her look. All right, I’d been guilty of sneaking a book out of the stacks now and then if I couldn’t find the form, or I didn’t have a pencil, or I was in a hurry and I was going to bring it right back… “Well, I always put things back,” I said defensively.

She sniffed. “Actually, we prefer if people don’t reshelve things on their own-all too often they end up in the wrong place.” Oops, she’d nailed me again.

I threw up my hands. “Mea culpa, mea culpa. I’ll never do it again, I promise. But in this instance, if something was removed legitimately from the shelf by an authorized person, there should be a multipart tracking slip-have I got that right?”

Felicity nodded. “Exactly. And when the book is returned to its rightful place, the two slips are stapled together and filed.”

At last, a ray of light. “Could we check the slips to see if this particular item was requested anytime recently?”

“Of course. Do you have the call number?”

“I’ll get it for you-if it exists. This collection isn’t really cataloged yet, you know-that’s what Rich has been working on. Oh, another question. If, say, this was a box full of individual documents, or folders of documents-would you sign out the whole box or just the items from inside the box?”

Felicity said primly, “The box, of course-or, if you requested such a folder to be brought to the reading room, the shelver would bring the whole box, not just a single folder. Again, it’s far too easy to mislay a single folder, and often they are identified only in the broadest of terms. We’re working hard to correct that, but there are many, many boxes, and a limited number of staff members. I had asked Alfred to pursue that, as time permitted.”

My first attempt to track down the missing items had already revealed to me a major flaw in the process: keeping track of something depended on the good intentions of the person who took it-who would have to be scrupulous about leaving a paper trail. For anyone with less-honorable intentions, he or she could just walk away with the item, at least out of the stacks, if not out of the building. Assuming, of course, that the person was able to gain access to the stacks in the first place. And although such access was limited to staff, a select few researchers (whose credentials had been checked up one side and down the other), board members, and special friends (Marty fell into two or three of those categories and had free rein of the place), unfortunately it was not a short list.

“One last thing-didn’t I see you talking with Alfred at the gala?”

“I spoke with him, yes. Actually I was surprised to see him there-I know how much he hates such events. I believe he was looking for you.”

“Me? Did he say why?”

“No. I told him I hadn’t seen you but I was sure you were around somewhere. So he never talked to you?”

“No. I was kind of distracted.” Was that when he had left the list for me?

“If you have no more questions at the moment, I do need to get back to the desk,” Felicity said.

“Go ahead,” I responded. “I’ll get you the call number on the box if I can, and I’ll help you look through the slips if you want-I know how busy you are.” While it sounded like sucking up, it was true: Felicity was one of the hardest-working people in the place, as well as a stickler for details. I really needed her as an ally in this search. “Thanks, Felicity. I appreciate it. And, I hate to say it, but the sooner the better, please. Marty’s breathing down my neck.”

“I understand, Nell. It’s a fairly quiet day, so I’ll see if I can find an answer for you.”

Fairly quiet was an understatement: nobody had moved from their position in the room since we’d left. Maybe they were all asleep.