Fundraising The Dead

CHAPTER 28

I closed the door slowly and walked back to Marty’s living room. Marty looked critically at me and added, “You know, I think he likes you. Most people, he would have chewed their heads off. Yours is still attached. More coffee?”

“Great.” I refilled my cup. “Now what?”

“For once I think I’ll go along with Jimmy. We’ve given him all the information he could possibly want. Let him take care of it.”

I felt curiously deflated. Was that really how this was going to end? And hadn’t we lost sight of Alfred’s death, in all of our plotting and scheming? Neither the police nor James seemed to care about that.

I laughed bitterly. “You know, before this whole mess started, I never realized how much we all depend on the basic honesty of our patrons and staff. We’ve always assumed that they respected the collections, wanted to preserve them-not rip them off for their own selfish ends. I really feel betrayed, even apart from the job thing. Naive, wasn’t I?”

“I don’t think so.” Marty studied her own coffee, swirling the liquid around the cup. “Or even if you were, it doesn’t mean you were wrong. It does take a special kind of person to care more about something abstract, like history, than about their own needs. Hey, I’ve worked with you for years now, since long before Charles came on the scene, anyway. I’ve never known you to cut corners, to fudge anything-basically, to do anything that didn’t benefit the Society. I know you sure don’t do it for the money. I have to figure you do it because you do care. So, if you have to be a little naive, if you have to believe in the best of other people, then I guess it goes with the job. It’s a good thing, Nell.”

I was a bit stunned. I hadn’t known that she had paid me that much attention. “Marty-thank you. I don’t know what to say. I’ve just tried to do my job, and I really do love the place, and the people are great, and, yes, I really do feel it’s a privilege to handle some of the things I’ve had a chance to. And that’s why it makes me so mad that somebody like Charles-somebody in a position of power-doesn’t. But… I guess I never expected anybody else to notice. And I’ve got to say I misjudged you, and I’m very sorry.”

Marty laughed. “Yeah, I know, you thought I was a lightweight who just liked sticking her nose into things. It’s not the first time. Actually, you can hear a lot more that way.”

I laughed. “I’ll have to remember that. Well, then, what about this little FBI trap? Has James told you anything more about it? What’s the bait?”

“You remember that Bucks County collection that was left to the Society a couple of years ago? That guy who had a strange house museum, and who’d never changed anything in the place?”

I nodded. “Yes. I worked with the executors to see that there was enough money to catalog the materials.”

“But it hasn’t happened yet, right?”

“Right. They finished probate maybe a year ago and delivered the stuff to the Society, and we stuck it in storage boxes on the fourth floor until we could get to it. We were going to advertise for a student intern to work on it next semester.”

Marty cocked her head at me. “So nobody really knows what’s in all those boxes?”

“Not really. I looked at some of the stuff right after the man died, when it was still at his house, just to get an idea of the scope, how much space we’d need, things like that. It was a real hodgepodge-junk like his Aunt Minnie’s diaries, which talked mainly about the weather, mixed in with some really good items like detailed eighteenth-century records of the construction of the first house on the property, which architectural historians would love to get their hands on. I don’t think the man ever threw anything out, and he was the last of his family.”

“I’ve been through it,” Marty said.

I looked at her quizzically. “What? When?”

“Not at the Society. His sister was married to my aunt’s husband’s brother, so I spent some time at the house. Since he never married and never had children, and had this big place on the river, he used to hold family reunions every now and then when I was growing up. He loved to show us his treasures when we were kids, and I was one of the few who cared. And when I got to college, I asked if I could use some of his documents for my undergraduate thesis. Why do you think he ended up leaving all the stuff to the Society?”

“Marty, are you related to everyone in the five-county area?”

“Maybe half, or at least the families who’ve been around a couple of hundred years. Anyway, bottom line is I know what’s in the collections now at the Society. So I pointed Jimmy to a couple of real gems. Like some William Penn letters, and the original land grant for the old man’s property, signed by the founder himself.”

“Wow. I had no idea.”

“Thing is, I know who else was poking around the collections.”

The gears in my mind were grinding rather slowly. “You mean-Charles?”

“Yup. I ran into him up on the fourth floor recently-he was rummaging through the boxes. He gave me a nice song and dance about familiarizing himself with the collections, and I bought it at the time. I think we ended up having lunch together that day. Maybe he thought he could distract me with his charms.”

There was a little bell ringing somewhere in my head. William Penn… “Marty,” I said slowly, “when I was planting the bugs at Charles’s place, there was a deed on his desk signed by William Penn. I asked him about it, and he told me he’d picked it up at an auction in New York. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it sounds as though it could have come from that collection.”

“Would you recognize it if you saw it again?”

“I think so. You don’t get to handle original Penn documents that often. And I remember that the purchaser’s name on the deed was the same as one of our major donors.”

“That’s the one. So that would make two of us who would recognize it. Anyway, to get back to the FBI side-Jimmy’s been working with some of his colleagues in the New York office. They’ve got more people there who work with art thefts, dealers, collectors, and such-and besides, they’re somewhere that isn’t Philadelphia, which is good. They’ve got somebody working with them who’s put out the word that he wants an autograph piece from William Penn and is willing to pay big for it. All very low-key, word of mouth, that sort of thing.”

“That kind of stuff really goes on? And is it legal?”

“You really are an innocent, aren’t you? Of course it goes on, all the time. And there are various dealers who are willing to act as go-betweens without asking too many questions-for the right price, or finder’s fee. The FBI knows who they are, but they don’t usually hassle them, because they’re reasonably small fish, at least by their standards. We’re not talking about Rembrandts or Impressionists here, we’re talking about letters, diaries, little stuff. It’s a whole lot easier to trade in, especially below the radar. And, as we’ve already proved, a whole lot harder to identify and track. Anyway, our undercover collector in New York got a discreet message-from someone in Philadelphia.”

“No! You think Charles is selling that deed?”

“Already has. Charles moves fast. He knew you’d seen it, and he probably wanted to get it off his hands ASAP. The collector in New York will be watching for it, and he’ll let Jimmy know when it arrives.”

“He wouldn’t just stick it in the mail, would he?” I was worried about that poor, fragile, three-hundred-year-old piece of paper.

“He’s probably got a courier service, if he does this regularly. I bet the faithful Doris Manning would know.”

“You’re right. She handles all that kind of stuff for him. Heck, she even picks up his dry cleaning.” I grimaced.

“I wonder if she’s in the office today?”

“Maybe, if Charles asked her to be. Should we call her?”

“Let me. She’s more likely to answer the phone if it’s a board member.”

Marty got up and went to the kitchen to make the call. She was gone a couple of minutes, and when she came back she said, “She’s there. She said Charles was in earlier and, in her words, “left some work” for her. I didn’t dare ask any more.”

“Well, if the Penn deed is going out today to the guy in New York, at least we’ll know where that is. I hope there’s nothing else in that shipment.”

“Amen. Anyway, when that arrives, Jimmy should have what he needs to make his move on Charles-if we haven’t given him enough other stuff. The fact that you saw it closes the circle, from the Society to Charles to the FBI’s collector.”

“But James doesn’t know some of it officially.”

“There is that. But cheer up, Nell. Charles’s days are numbered.”

We raised our coffee cups to each other in mock salute.