Fundraising The Dead

CHAPTER 17

After another restless night, I arrived Tuesday morning to see that Charles had taken official notice of FBI agents prowling in our midst: when I arrived there were signs posted at the entry doors and elevator announcing an all-hands staff meeting at nine o’clock sharp, before we opened the doors to the public at ten. I noted with amusement that Charles had avoided any use of the term “emergency.”

I figured there wouldn’t be time for a serious talk with Charles before the meeting, so I filed into the boardroom along with the rest of the staff. There was a low buzz among the crowd: a few people looked bewildered, but most looked worried. Charles was already in place at the head of the long table. He was, as always, impeccably groomed, and was wearing a sober dark suit designed to send the message that he was serious and responsible. He waited until most people had managed to find themselves seats-some had to go back out and drag in some extra chairs-and looked at the crowd. Finally he cleared his throat, marshaling everyone’s attention.

“Thank you for joining me on such short notice,” he began. “I’m sorry to disrupt your schedules, but there is a matter of utmost importance that I need to communicate to you before we open today. Yesterday I was visited by an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who told me that he had received a complaint about items missing from the Society’s collections, and that the complainant suspected theft.” He paused to let that sink in. There was a moment of stunned silence and then an explosive babble of voices.

Charles raised a hand, silencing them, then continued. “Of course I have implicit faith in the integrity of all of my staff members, but as you can imagine, any complaint of this nature must be investigated fully. The agent in charge of the case is James Morrison-some of you may have seen him in the building yesterday. I ask you to give him and his colleagues your fullest cooperation, so that we can get to the bottom of this charge and resume our normal operations. And I don’t think I need to tell you not to speak of this with anyone outside the building-and that most certainly includes any members of the press. Adverse publicity would serve no useful purpose and could damage the reputation of the Society, which I’m sure no one of us wants. If you are approached by a member, a researcher, or an outsider with any questions about an investigation, please refer all inquiries directly to my office- Doris will see that they receive an appropriate response. But to the best of my knowledge, this has not been made public, and I sincerely hope that it will be resolved before we reach that state. Thank you all for coming.”

With that, he stood and exited, ignoring the surge of questions. That left the rest of us seated around the table staring at each other.

“What the hell was that about?” asked one of the junior librarians.

I weighed my options. Several people already knew about the original problem, the missing Terwilliger documents. I could play dumb and do nothing, but that didn’t feel right. I thought I owed my colleagues some small crumbs.

I cleared my throat. “As Charles said, a board member has claimed that some important documents have gone missing. We’re hoping it’s all just a mix-up in filing and we’ll find the missing papers and be done with it. Our people are already working on it. We have nothing to hide.”

“It’s Marty Terwilliger and her precious family papers,” Felicity Soames said. “Nice try at being discreet, Nell, but Marty’s been making a stink for the past two weeks, and half the staff knows about it. But calling in the Feds? Isn’t that a bit much?”

Latoya Anderson had been silent thus far but now said carefully, “Theft of historic documents is a federal offense and has been since 1994. The FBI is the appropriate agency to investigate.”

That silenced everyone. Then one or two people looked at their watches, cursed, and headed quickly out the door: opening time loomed, and business as usual was the order of the day, at least until we were told otherwise. Latoya and I were among the last to leave.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Latoya said to me. “I can’t think of any institution like ours whose practices look good under a spotlight, and we’re going to have a lot to answer for. If only Marty had waited a bit, we would have had things in much better order.” She didn’t wait for a response, but turned and headed for her office. I watched her retreating back, wondering how many more pieces of the collections might have vanished if Marty hadn’t said something and triggered my questions.

I still wanted to speak to Charles. I found him standing in front of Doris ’s desk, giving her instructions. She beamed up at him as usual, and I wondered how he could remain so oblivious to her adoration.

Charles saw me approaching. “Ah, Nell, just the person I need. Please, come in.”

Doris glared at me as I followed Charles into his office. He folded himself gracefully into his leather-covered chair, his hand absently caressing the mahogany of his desk. I took a chair facing the desk.

“You certainly disappeared quickly yesterday,” I began.

“Ah, yes-I had a previous engagement, and it seemed prudent to attend. I take it you met with Mr. Morrison?”

“Yes, he stopped by after he’d seen you, and I gave him a tour of the building. He seems competent. So Marty called in the FBI?”

Charles regarded me across the gleaming wooden surface. “When I spoke with Marty last week, I urged her to allow us to handle this in-house, at least as far as a preliminary review goes. Particularly in light of Alfred’s recent death, which complicates our access to collections records. However, it is clear that she feels strongly about her family’s papers, and that has made her a bit precipitous.”

Yeah, sure, I thought. She gave you a chance to act, and you blew it. I wondered just how long Charles would have stalled if Marty hadn’t acted.

Charles was still talking. “But I’m sure the matter will be resolved quickly in the capable hands of Agent Morrison.” He straightened his Mont Blanc pen, the only item on his desk except for the phone. “In any event, I’m calling a senior managers’ meeting for this afternoon so that we can review procedures and discuss how we want to handle this situation. I’ll see you then-two o’clock?”

Apparently I was dismissed. “Of course.”

When the senior staff met at two, nobody had any brilliant insights, and nobody confessed to the crime-or crimes. As I listened with one ear to Charles drone on in mellifluous tones, I wondered idly whether this was considered one crime, over a long period, or a whole series of separate crimes? Would the FBI file a report on each item? The paperwork must be daunting. Imagine trying to track down each item when there could be thousands of them. I tried to refocus on the meeting. Everyone was properly bewildered, shocked, hurt, confused, and so on. Charles repeated his earlier lecture on cooperating with the authorities and not speaking to anyone else about the disappearances. He also told Latoya to accelerate the cataloging process, although without Alfred I couldn’t see what she could do right now. It would take time to advertise for his position and fill it, and to bring that person up to speed on the computer system. And would we have to disclose to that person just what a mess he or she would be stepping into?

I thanked the fundraising gods that there were no major grant proposals due before the new year, so I didn’t have to craft any creative language to conceal the fact that we were getting robbed and we didn’t even know how or by whom. I started fantasizing about writing proposals requesting support for a high-tech security system, using the documented disappearance of all those items as an argument that we really, really needed the system. Charles finally sent us on our way like a group of chastened schoolchildren, and we went about our various chores in a semidaze. I felt frustrated, foolish, and stupid. How could we have been so blind, and for so long? And what was it going to mean for the Society?

I got home earlier than usual-I’d felt I could legitimately catch the early train, especially since I wasn’t getting anything done at work-but it was still dark by this time of year. I’d forgotten to leave any lights on at home, so the house was dark, too. The world was conspiring to match my mood. Get a grip, Nell, I told myself. I hung up my coat, turned on lights in the living room and kitchen, and poured myself a glass of wine. I stood for a while in front of the open refrigerator, trying to find anything that looked like a potential meal. Inspiration did not strike, so I rummaged in my cabinet for a bag of dry tortellini and a jar of tomato sauce. I put a pot of water on to boil and went to my bedroom to change into something comfortable, a pair of old sweat pants and a matching sweatshirt. I took my wine along, and had seriously reduced the level in the glass by the time I was dressed.

When I came back downstairs the water was boiling, so I dumped in the pasta, then wandered aimlessly around my living room, picking up stray newspapers and magazines and tossing them into the trash. I was restless, and I had to admit I was upset. I loved my job, and I loved the Society. Yet someone had been rifling through its collections for his or her own nefarious ends, and thus threatening both my job and the institution. That made me mad.

I realized I was crumpling a week-old newspaper in my hands, and made a conscious effort to relax. Charles and Latoya were working within the Society to get to the bottom of this; Marty and James were working from their own end and had brought me in to bridge the gap. Things were under control-weren’t they? I stared at my own little collection of treasured objects, arrayed on a shelf-things I had collected over the years from flea markets and antique stores, not for their value but because I liked them.

Then I took a harder look. Nestled among my tchotchkes was something I had never seen before, a charming silver snuffbox. I picked it up and looked at it: eighteenth century, I could tell from the hallmarks. Nice quality. And completely unfamiliar, unless I had already succumbed to early memory loss.

No, this was not mine. I thought for a moment, then began a systematic search of the rest of my house. After half an hour I had collected no fewer than six other items in various locations, all small and exquisite and no doubt valuable. And not mine.

I felt a queasy mixture of fear and anger. I carefully drained my pasta, heated the sauce in the microwave, tossed them together in a bowl, and sat down at my table to think, with the bibelots arrayed in front of me. They ranged from the silver snuffbox to a small printed pamphlet, its paper foxed, bearing a date of 1685, to a pocket-size leather-bound book whose contents were less interesting than the inscription inside-it apparently had been a gift from Benjamin Franklin to a friend.

Somebody had planted these pretty things in my house, I was sure. But who? And why?

Who had had opportunity to bring these items into my home? I had few visitors-except for Rich and Charles the past weekend. When Rich had arrived, I had gone to the kitchen to make him coffee; when Charles had shown up later, I had spent some time in the shower, scrubbing off paint so I wouldn’t sully his borrowed Jaguar-which would have left either of them with enough time to plant the pretty antique trinkets I had found scattered through my house. All the suspicious items were small enough to have been concealed easily, and either one could have carried them into the house, just the way so many people tried to sneak stuff out of the Society reading room.

Were these extremely valuable items? I’d guess no. Could they be traced to the Society’s collections? Maybe, maybe not-but if somebody wanted to identify me as light-fingered, they’d have to be able to prove it, so the odds were good that these items would show up in the online catalog, with definitive descriptions.

So someone was setting me up. Rich or Charles? Or someone else entirely? My security was laughable, but I didn’t have much that anyone would want to steal. Who on earth buys locks to keep people from leaving stolen goods in their house?

But why would anyone plant stolen items here? Did anyone really think that trying to pin the Society thefts on me would work? One look at my bank account would make the idea laughable. No way was I pawning trinkets, valuable or otherwise.

I needed help to make sense of this. With surprising calm I went to my purse and fished out the card that Agent James had given me, which included a cell phone number. I punched it in, and he answered on the third ring. “Morrison,” he said curtly.

I almost hung up then, but he’d already seen my caller ID. “Agent Morrison. James. I think I have a bit of a problem. Is there any way you could come over to my place?”

“This is related to the thefts at the Society?”

“I think so.”

“We can’t do it at your office in the morning?”

“No. There’s something you need to see here.”

“All right. Address?”

I gave him the necessary information and hung up. I supposed that I should be flattered: I call an FBI agent after hours and he takes me at my word that what I have to say is important. Now I didn’t know whether to hope it actually was or not.

He arrived fifteen minutes later, which left me wondering just where he lived. He rang the doorbell and I let him in. “Thank you for coming. Would you like coffee?”

“Whatever. What is it you wanted to show me?”

I guessed that coffee was out of the question. He was a very direct man. “Okay, as you see, I’m not the world’s greatest housekeeper, and I don’t always look too hard at this place. But tonight I noticed something, some items scattered here and there that don’t belong to me.”

“What kind of items?” I had his interest now.

“Nice, small antique items. Items that would fit neatly in a pocket. Items that might have come from the Society’s collections.”

“Show me.”

I pointed at the collection assembled on my table, noting where I had discovered the items. Or at least the ones I knew about. For all I knew, if I dug any further I might find lots more.

James gave them a cursory look, then said, “Maybe we should have that coffee now.” He watched me with unnerving silence as I brewed coffee and poured two mugs.

“How do you take it?”

“Black.”

It figured. I handed him one mug, added sugar to mine, then nodded toward the living room. He turned and sat down at my dining table, and I joined him. Without preamble I said, “I had two visitors last weekend: Rich Girard and Charles Worthington. It’s the first time either one has been here.”

James nodded, once. “I thought it might be something like that.”

“Then you’d better tell me why.”

He sipped from his mug as though he had all the time in the world. “Good coffee.” He took another sip. “I think someone’s trying to set you up, and that someone is going to drop a little hint suggesting that we should take a closer look at you. And you know, if we hadn’t had our little chat at Marty’s, I think that could have been a real problem for you.”

I laughed incredulously. “Has somebody also deposited a million dollars into my bank account? Just to make me look really guilty?”

He shook his head. “No. Sorry.”

“You mean you already checked? Then maybe I used my ill-gotten gains to buy a lot of gold and buried it in the backyard. Want a shovel?” I was really steaming now.

“Nell, calm down. I don’t believe you had anything to do with the thefts. We’ve been checking everybody’s records as a matter of routine.” He paused as if searching for words. “If, say, your employer, whose record is spotless, suggested that you might have a motive for taking valuable and easily sold items from the collections, we would have to take that seriously. You certainly have had opportunity, and, surprise, we would have turned up suspicious items in your possession.”

I was stunned. Charles? If he was trying to set me up, that meant that he was the one stealing things from the Society… which was ridiculous. He was the leader of a prestigious institution; he made a healthy salary; he had come with glowing recommendations from his prior places of employ. Why would he do it?

“Can you tell me about your relationship with Charles Worthington?” James asked.

Oh, hell. No way was it going to look good if I said I’d been sleeping with my boss. But covering it up wouldn’t look good, either-somebody was bound to know something, or guess. Doris had. Even Marty had hinted at it. “We’ve been, uh, involved in a personal relationship since shortly after he arrived in town.”

James nodded once, and I guessed that he had already known or figured that out. “Thank you for being honest. I had reason to believe that, but you’ve saved us both a lot of time.”

“Thanks, I guess.” I wondered if Marty had tipped him off. “Look, he was new in town, I offered to help him learn the ins and outs of the Philadelphia community, and things just sort of went from there. Apparently we aren’t as close as I thought we were, though, if he’s the one who planted the items. But why implicate me, and why now?”

“Because you know about the thefts, and he knows you weren’t going to let it go easily. That’s probably a compliment.”

How nice of Charles to recognize that I had some moral fiber. “But if it was Charles, what did he hope to gain?”

James sat back in his chair and swallowed some coffee. “Let’s look at this hypothetically. The thefts have been discovered and acknowledged in-house, but it’s hard to pinpoint what has disappeared and when it happened. You’ve been there a few years, you’ve had plenty of opportunity, and your salary’s not terrific. That makes you a good scapegoat. Absent any real proof, it’s unlikely that there would have been any charges made-the Society has its reputation to consider, and they wouldn’t want the publicity. But you would probably have been fired, security would have been beefed up, and the thefts would have stopped.”

I could see his point. “But then Marty got pushy, so we had to go public, or semipublic, anyway, which meant Charles had to move quickly. So he tried to set me up to take the fall by planting this stuff. Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m guessing.”

“What about Rich?”

“As a suspect? Not a likely candidate-he hasn’t been there long enough. Although someone could have pressured him into doing their dirty work, at least where the Terwilliger Collection is involved. He has a juvenile record for theft.”

“I know-he told me when he was here.” Did that make Rich honest, or was he just being devious and trying to throw me off? “But don’t juvenile records get erased or something?”

“We can access those records,” James said bluntly.

“What about Alfred?” I whispered. “Did Marty tell you…”

“That she thinks he was murdered? Yes, she told me. I took it with a grain of salt. The police dismissed it, and no matter what you want to think, they’re good at their jobs. They found no evidence that his death was anything but an accident. I know, the timing is pretty suspicious, but there’s no way that the investigation will be reopened, based on the physical evidence, or that the FBI would get involved in it now. The FBI’s responsibility is the thefts.” James looked at me with something suspiciously like pity. “But, Nell-if it’s any consolation, based on what I’ve heard, Charles’s whereabouts are pretty well covered for the time of Alfred’s death. If it was murder-and I stress the if-he couldn’t have done it.”

I resumed breathing. “I really can’t see Charles doing anything as messy as killing someone. I mean, I saw him that night, after the event, and he didn’t act like someone who had just killed someone-at least as far as I know. It’s not like I’ve met a lot of killers.” I straightened my back and looked Agent Morrison in the eye. “All right, what do we do now?”

James grinned. “Good for you. I didn’t think I’d have to hand you a box of tissues.”

I managed to smile back. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Do you have a plan?”

“The barest outline of one. Look, I’ll be honest. It keeps coming back to the fact that we have very little hard evidence that any thefts have actually occurred, beyond a list put together by a man who is now dead, whose information is locked up in a computer system nobody else has figured out yet.”

“Have you looked at his computer?”

“Not yet-our computer whizbang is working on another case at the moment. In any event, even when we do get to it, from what I’ve learned about your operations, it’s going to be hard to prove anything. Now, don’t overreact-we’ve only been looking at this for a few days, and it takes time to follow up some of these trails.”

“But you’ve got to do something! The thief, whoever it is, could be looting the collections as we speak, especially if he thinks we’re on to him. It’s his last chance.”

“We are doing something, Nell. Listen, I’m breaking about every rule in the book by telling you any of this, but frankly, I need your help-I need you on the inside.”

I pondered that. “You mean, you want me to go back to work and wait for someone to drop the dime on me? Is that the right term?”

His mouth twitched. “Yes, it is. And yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do. We wait and see. Look, I don’t know how long he’s been at this, or how good he is. Maybe he thought if the FBI found incriminating evidence in your house, we’d leap to the obvious conclusion and that would be the end of it. Certainly it would take the heat off of him and send us looking in another direction, which could buy him time.”

“Time for what? To get rid of the evidence? To cover his tracks?”

“That’s getting harder to do, thanks to you and Marty. And now we’re watching for stolen goods that might have come from the Society, so he might lie low for a bit.”

I was not convinced. If no one had noticed items from the Society on the black market by now, what would have changed? All I could imagine was more of our priceless collections disappearing, never to be retrieved. “I’ll do whatever you think is best for your investigation-and for the Society.”

“Thank you. Just hang tight. The fact that you found those items here in your house means that our thief is getting nervous, and that’s good to know.”

Well, at least I’d made someone happy. It sure wasn’t me. “So how are we supposed to communicate? I can’t exactly phone you from the office or even talk freely there-you’ve seen that. You want to call me here?”

“We can meet at Marty’s, as long as you’re discreet about it.”

“Sir, I can be the soul of discretion.”

“I’m banking on it.” He stood up. “Thank you for telling me about this, Nell. A lot of people might have been afraid to say anything. I’m glad you trust us.”

“And I’m glad you believe me.”

“Don’t worry. If we’re lucky, we’ll get this sorted out in a few days.”

“Right.” I stood, too, and followed him to the door. I knew perfectly well that it was going to take more than a few days to sort out what was missing and where it might have gone, but nabbing the culprit and stopping the hemorrhage was at least a start. “So I’ll wait to hear from Marty about getting together? Or I’ll let her know if I need to tell you something?”

“Exactly. Good night, now.”

And he was gone, leaving me confused. And hungry-I went back to the kitchen and rummaged in the freezer until I found a half-empty container of ice cream. I ate it all. It didn’t help.