Fundraising The Dead

CHAPTER 31

I must have slept, because the next thing I knew, the tiny room was flooded with light, and somebody was feeling for a pulse in my neck. Startled, I lashed out.

“Are you all right?” Ah, the gravelly voice of Agent James Morrison. Thank God!

I stopped flailing. “Yes. Yes! Get me out of here.” Back to light and air and freedom-please!

Strong hands reached in and hauled me to my feet. Upright, I found that my legs had gone to sleep, and as I fell forward, James’s arms came around me to hold me up. The sudden shift from total darkness to light blinded me, so I buried my face in his chest and kept my eyes shut. I was also sucking in great gasps of air, which made it hard to talk. And I was shaking from cold, and shock, and reaction. While I waited for the storm to pass, I took a quick inventory: breathing-yes, and getting better; legs-rubbery; brain-definitely fuzzy. Finally, I felt I could breathe normally and I pried my eyelids up. James was still holding on to me, and Marty was dancing around the pair of us anxiously. I didn’t have any desire to move.

“Nell, are you all right?” His voice rumbled in his chest, under my ear. “Are you hurt? Do you need a doctor?”

“I’m okay, really,” I managed. “What day is this?”

“Monday. Morning.” He stepped back enough to look at my face, his hands still on my arms, holding me up-and I still needed holding up.

My brain was beginning to come back to life. “Marty, I didn’t know when you’d get my message, or what you’d do about it.” Reluctantly I peeled myself away from James’s broad chest so I could stand on my own two feet. “We have a lot to talk about. But right now I want a bathroom and food, in that order.”

“You sure you’re all right?” James used his now-free hand to tilt my chin up and look in my eyes. He looked worried, and that made me feel warmer.

“Yes. And I think I’ve figured things out, but I don’t want to talk about it until we can sit down and do it all at once. First things first.”

“Then let’s get you upstairs.” James escorted me to the door and toward the elevator, his hand still on my arm. I didn’t complain. I made a beeline for the nearest restroom, leaving James standing uncertainly in the hallway, and ignoring the startled looks from the one or two staff members around. Inside I did what was necessary, then contemplated my reflection in the mirror. I splashed water on my face and ran my fingers through my hair. Not bad, Nell, all things considered. A bit pale, maybe. My clothes looked like they had been slept in, which they had. I checked my watch: eight thirty. I picked a few bits of brittle old paper off my slacks and pulled my jacket into place.

When I emerged from the loo, my saviors were waiting in the hall, looking anxious. I announced, in no uncertain terms, “Food now, and lots of coffee. Then talk.”

“The Doubletree,” James said with authority. Good choice-it was right down the block, which was about as far as I thought I could walk at the moment. He held the heavy front door of the Society open for me and Marty, then shortened his stride to accommodate me as we walked the half block toward Broad Street. Once inside, he commandeered a table in the dining room and ordered one of everything on the menu while I gulped down a full glass of water. Coffee miraculously appeared before I finished the glass, and I added sugar to my cup and started on that.

I was beginning to feel human again. “While we’re waiting for food, please tell me how you figured out where to find me.”

Marty answered first. “I was out all day yesterday, and I didn’t get home ’til late, so I didn’t check my messages until this morning! I’m so sorry about that. And I had my cell with me, but it wasn’t even turned on-I keep forgetting about it. When I heard finally heard your messages, I started calling you at home and on your cell, and you didn’t answer, and that didn’t seem right. Then I called Charles.”

That was one call I would like to have heard. “What the heck did you ask him?”

“Oh, I was cool. I asked if he’d seen you or talked to you yesterday, and he said no, he had his kids this weekend, and they’d been out sightseeing or some such.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Yeah, because I could hear a computer game in the background. So I said thanks a lot and hung up, fast. Then I called Jimmy.”

I glanced at James-he was still watching me as though he expected me to keel over any minute. “And what did you think?”

“I thought we should track you down. Tried the GPS on your phone, but no luck.”

“I know-I tried to call out, but, surprise, there’s no reception in the basement of the building. So then what?”

“Marty said you mentioned Doris, so we tried to call her-no answer. So the two of us got together and headed over to the Society.”

Hot and plentiful food appeared. I started forking up scrambled eggs almost before the server had set down the plate. With a full mouth I mumbled, “How did you get in?”

“I’ve got all the keys.” Triumphantly Marty held up a loaded key ring. “And I do mean all of them. They were Daddy’s keys.”

I swallowed. “And you remembered the wine cellar?”

“Eventually. We started with the third floor-damn, I was scared we’d find you where you found Alfred. And then we looked in the upstairs stacks, although there’s no place there to hide a human, dead or alive. We even looked in the dumbwaiter that runs between the floors. And when we didn’t find you up there, we started for the basement. Remind me to tell the board we really need to do something about the mess down there. And, yes, I knew about the wine cellar because Daddy used to talk fondly about the good old days, when the building was new. Not that he was old enough to remember, but his father must have told him. Then it took me a while to figure out which key opened it, but I did, and voila! There you were, thank goodness. Okay, your turn.”

The food on my plate had vanished, and I started in on the pastries in the center of the table, with another cup of coffee. “I had plenty of time to think yesterday, or last night, or whenever it was. I told you Doris called me at home and said that Charles had found something at the Society that I really needed to see. I thought he was going to try to make us believe that he’d located the missing items, or at least some of them, so I decided to go along with it. But something didn’t feel right-that’s why I called you, Marty. I figured somebody should know where I was going.”

“Thank goodness!” Marty actually looked humbled.

“So I let myself in and went upstairs. There was nobody around except Doris, who was waiting for me. She said Charles was downstairs, and she took me down to the basement.”

“And no Charles?” There was a hint of steel in James’s voice.

“No. Doris headed straight for the back room downstairs, where a light was on. She said Charles was waiting in there for me, but when I went to look, she gave me a shove and locked the door behind me.”

We all fell silent, contemplating the awful what-might-have-been. I didn’t stop eating, however. I had three meals to make up. When the last of the pastries had disappeared, I said, “Well, before I went to sleep”-or passed out, I thought-“the conclusion I came to was that I really don’t think Charles knew I was there. I think it was all Doris ’s idea. And I think she may have killed Alfred.”

James managed to look both bewildered and frustrated-no easy feat. Marty just looked mad. “ Doris, that spineless drip?” she said. “Why on earth do you believe that?”

“Think about it. She knew all about the wine cellar. In fact, I’m willing to bet there’s not much she doesn’t know about the Society-she’s a snoop. And I know she was the one who pushed me in there; there was no one else around, and nowhere to hide in that room. And as you’ve noticed, she has a nasty habit of listening in on conversations. Let’s say she happened to overhear Alfred and me talking about the missing items, and she decided to nip the problem in the bud. Alfred probably trusted her-he had no reason not to-so maybe she came to him during the gala and told him she needed his help in the stacks, whatever, it doesn’t matter why. So he followed her, and all she would’ve had to do was get behind him and hit him with something, or even just shove him so he hit his head on something, and that would be that. It wouldn’t take a lot of strength, would it, James?”

Now he looked grim. “No, not really, if you hit him in the right place. And left him there to bleed to death. Either the scalp wound or cranial bleeding would have done the job, and she knew nobody was going to come poking around the stacks that night. Did you see her at the party?”

I shook my head. “Not that I recall, but she’s kind of an unnoticeable person. She just fades into the woodwork, if you know what I mean. I don’t think anyone would have noticed whether or not she was there.”

“Say I buy that,” James said slowly. “Why would she kill Alfred, and try to kill you?”

“Because she’s in love with Charles, and she knows what he is up to.” That silenced both of them. I noted that neither one of them was arguing with me. “Marty, you’ve seen the way she looks at him. Is it so hard to imagine that she would kill in order to protect him? I don’t think she has much else in her life. Alfred was a threat to everything she cared about. And so was I, because Alfred confided in me, and then I wouldn’t let it go. Maybe she would have gone after you next.”

“Do you think Charles knows what Doris did?” James kept his voice level.

I answered slowly. “I don’t know. He may have guessed about how she felt about him, but he probably found that convenient. Do I think he asked her to do his dirty work for him, or that he knew or guessed what she was doing? I can’t say. But if he did figure it out, after the fact, no doubt he realized that to implicate her would only throw a spotlight on his own activities. Maybe he even worried that she’d give him up in order to save herself if it came down to it. Maybe he hoped the police would just chalk Alfred’s death up to an accident, which is exactly what they did.”

We all fell silent, working through the various ramifications of what I had said. Finally James broke the spell. “I think we need to have a conversation with Doris. And with Charles.”

I nodded. “I think you’re right. But do we bring the police in now?”

He regarded me levelly. “I think we’ll have to, but let’s talk to Doris first. I am obligated to point out that the only crime we have any evidence of at the moment is Doris ’s attempt to kill you, and even that isn’t clear-it would be her word against yours.”

We stared at each other for several beats. He was right: if I accused Doris, there was no way to be sure that a charge of attempted murder would stick, and there was still no guarantee that we could prove she was Alfred’s killer. And frankly I wasn’t sure that the Society could recover from the double whammy of a murder plus grand larceny splashed across the headlines. While my construction of the plot had seemed perfectly logical when I worked it out in the silent darkness of the wine cellar, I wasn’t sure if it would stand up under scrutiny. But there was one way to find out.

“Let’s go talk to Doris.”