Privy to the Dead (9 page)

At the end of the day we meandered our way home via country lanes, and pulled into our driveway in the gathering dusk. There was a car parked in our driveway, and Marty was sitting on the front steps waiting for us. When we were within earshot she said, “We need to talk.”

James and I exchanged a look, then he went up the steps and unlocked the front door. He held it open for Marty, and I followed her in. She'd been inside the house once or twice before, but never for more than a few minutes since we'd moved in. That would made her our first official guest, not that we'd invited her or anything.

“Love what you've done with the place,” she muttered, as she strode toward the back. James shut the door and we followed.

In the kitchen she turned to face us, almost belligerently. “You got anything to drink?”

I assumed she wasn't talking about iced tea. “Wine? Or the harder stuff?”

“Scotch, if you've got it. I don't care how many malts or whatever.”

I located a glass in a cupboard—after opening only two wrong ones—and half filled it with Scotch. I looked at James,
and he nodded. What the heck—Scotch all around. Now I knew where the glasses were, so I filled another two and set the bottle, seriously depleted, in the middle of the kitchen table.

Marty sat; we sat. She addressed me first. “You told him?”

“Yes, last night.”

When James started to speak, Marty held up a hand. “Let me tell this in my own way, okay? You can ask all the questions you want at the end.”

Marty took a healthy swig of her Scotch before starting. “You know that the Terwilliger family has been involved with the Society for a long time, starting back when the place was more like a gentlemen's club than a serious collecting institution and there were only a couple of actual employees. Terwilliger family members sat on the board, raised money, solicited donations of family papers—the whole nine yards.” She glanced briefly at James before resuming.

“My father married late, so he seemed old when I was young. He's been gone almost twenty years now.” She took another drink. “I never knew my grandfather, but he donated a large portion of the family papers, going back to the first Terwilliger to set foot in this country, when he was on the board. My father donated another portion years later, while
he
was on the board. That's pretty much all the historical documents the family had, except for bits and pieces scattered around among different relatives. If you recall the official catalog description, there's something like a hundred thousand items in the Terwilliger Collection, housed in five hundred boxes. I've been working for almost two years on organizing all the stuff into a detailed catalog.”

Another swallow finished her drink, and then she helped
herself to the open bottle. “After a while I realized I wouldn't finish until I was a hundred and seven at the rate I was going, so we hired Rich to help, and he's been great. He's pulled stuff from all over the building and brought it together, and even this recent shuffling for the renovation, inconvenient though it is, turned up a few more bits and pieces. Bottom line, there's a lot of stuff from a lot of Terwilligers, and we're still not finished sorting through it, and I don't know when we will be.”

I interrupted gently. “Marty, if you're going to keep drinking, you'd better eat.”

“I'm not hungry,” she muttered like a sulky child.

“I can make us all eggs or something,” I coaxed. “I already know a lot of this story, so I'll listen with one ear while you tell James the rest. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure, fine.” She waved me away. I got up and went to explore the contents of the refrigerator as Marty resumed talking. James, bless him, let her set her own pace. He was a good interrogator, and that meant he knew when to keep his mouth shut.

Marty continued, “So Grandfather had a seat on the board, and if you think
I'm
a busybody around the place, he was worse, from all I've heard. When he got too old to get around, he kind of handed the role off to my father. Not that my father minded—he'd more or less grown up at the Society and he loved it, too, though maybe that was because there were so many good hiding places in the stacks and nobody bothered him. Anyway, he passed the crown on to me before he died. And here I am.”

As I broke eggs into a bowl, found leftover ham in the freezer and onions in a basket, chopped, and mixed, I was
trying to figure out when Marty would get to the meat of the matter. She hadn't yet said anything that I hadn't heard before.

She drank some more, her glass near empty again. “So after Rich and I dug into the Terwilliger collection of documents and had created some kind of order—my relatives may have been nice people, but they had no concept of organization—we started from the beginning chronologically. As you might guess, there's not much from the real early years, but by the mid-eighteenth century there are boxes and boxes of records, as the Terwilligers settled in and started making money. And those guys did keep good records. Then the war came along and John Terwilliger signed up early and ultimately became a general. Washington really respected him, and there's lots of correspondence between the two of them, as you know, Nell.”

For Marty, “the war” was always the Revolutionary War. “Yes,” I answered from across the room, where I was heating butter in a pan. “I've enjoyed looking at some of the originals.”

She twirled her half-empty glass between her hands, watching the liquid slosh around. “Grandfather made an inventory of the family furniture, back before it got split up among the relatives—I'm sure you know that story, James.” He nodded silently. “Anyway, when I left you today I went home and looked at his list, and I noticed something I hadn't paid attention to before—a description of a wooden writing desk General John bought. Which could have been anything, but given when he bought it, it might have been a lap desk, something that he could have taken along on his military campaigns. So I dug around some more among the family papers and found more short references that pointed in that direction.” She looked up at me then. “It was a small
mahogany box, with brass fittings, made by one of the joiners who'd made several other pieces of Terwilliger furniture.”

Was Marty telling us in a roundabout way that she thought we'd held whatever had been left of that box earlier that day? It seemed possible.

I was struggling to wrap my head around that piece of information when I realized the toast was burning, and I jumped into action before all the smoke alarms went off. Marty fell silent, staring glumly at the bottom of her glass. James looked . . . perplexed, but he seemed to be waiting for me to take the next step.

I dished up eggs, threw some toast on the plates, and slapped them onto the table before sitting down. James wordlessly got up, found forks and napkins, and sat down again.

I picked up the thread again. “All right, I'll go ahead and say what we're all thinking: what we pulled out of the pit in the basement is what's left of General John Terwilliger's campaign writing desk. Whether it held anything when it went into the pit and broke is anyone's guess.”

“I think so,” Marty said, and began poking at the food in front of her.

That still didn't explain why she was so upset. “Was that part of your family's gift to the Society?” I asked.

Marty started eating, avoiding my eyes. “It's not on the accessions list,” she mumbled between bites.

I took the opportunity to eat a few bites of my own dinner, which gave me time to think. My guess was that Marty was trying to tell me something she didn't want to put into words. Her ancestor had had a fine writing desk. His descendants had given much of the family treasures and documents they had held to the Society, over time. Had they included the lap
desk? If it had been in the donated collections, Marty would have recognized it immediately, even in pieces, because she'd combed through the Society's Terwilliger collections many times. She hadn't been sure, so she'd looked at the items at the Art Museum and then checked with Henry Phinney. Which meant . . .

“So that particular lap desk shouldn't be at the Society at all?” I asked. Another nod from Marty. “And you think that somebody really doesn't want anyone to know that it
was
there a century ago?”

“You got it,” Marty said and drained her glass again.

We all sat in silence for a minute or so, digesting what we'd heard. “Just to be clear,” I said slowly, “that unrecorded Terwilliger lap desk was hidden in the pit, and you believe that Carnell Scruggs's finding it was what led to his death?”

“I think so,” Marty said.

I swept the last of food on my plate into my mouth, chewed, swallowed, and demanded, “Okay, what now?”

James looked pained. “You know you don't have evidence of anything, just a lot of guesses and leaps of logic. And some bits of wood and brass.”

“That's the way we work best,” Marty said.

James turned to her. “Yes, Martha, I realize that, but what kind of action are you suggesting? You go to the police and say, ‘I think somebody did something a hundred years ago and that's why the construction worker was run down this week'? I assume you can guess just how the police will react to that.”

“James, don't be unkind,” I said. “We've only just heard this for the first time. It's not like we have a plan. Just more questions.”

“Nell, I can fight my own battles,” Marty said sharply. “Jimmy, I'm only suggesting this as a possibility, but I think it hangs together.”

“So what've we got?” I asked. “This lap desk belonged to your family but was not part of any of your family's gifts to the Society. But we may have found it smashed in the bottom of a privy under the Society building, and we have no idea why. Are there any sale records for it?”

Marty shrugged. “Not that I know of, but I haven't looked for them yet. You know, it was around 1900 that a lot of the furniture changed hands, and some family members were really ticked off. Not that it was worth a lot then, or at least, it didn't bring real high prices. Maybe somebody smashed it as revenge because it turned out to be worth less than he thought. Or something.”

“Then why dump it in a pit in the basement?” I demanded. “That makes no sense. How about this? Maybe it was stolen, and the thief thought someone was close to finding out, so he ditched it. Although wouldn't the statute of limitations have run out for theft? James?”

“Probably,” he agreed tentatively. “But you both sound crazy.”

“Maybe,” I replied. “But remember, a man is dead, and we're pretty sure he was last seen alive showing off a piece of this presumed lap desk. Which piece is now missing.”

“Which could also be lying in a Philadelphia gutter or storm drain and have nothing to do with his death,” James countered quickly. “You're getting ahead of yourselves.”

Marty blew him a raspberry, and I realized she was rapidly getting drunk. “You're no fun, Jimmy,” she said.

“What, you two enjoy wallowing in crime?” he responded quickly. “As you pointed out, a man is dead. This isn't a joke.”

I knew he was right, but I didn't know what any of us was supposed to do now. “James, of course it's not a joke. It's just a very fragile link between his death and something he may have found while at the Society—something that was not supposed to be at the Society at all. It could be a coincidence. Or there could be something else going on.”

James regarded me with what must be his professional stare: calm, level, and giving nothing away. “So you're saying that you think Carnell Scruggs may have died because of what he found at the Society? Then tell me this: Who knew about the box? Who recognized that brass piece for what it was? Most important, who cared?”

That silenced Marty and me.

But not for long. “It's going to sound petty and/or pompous if I say it out loud, but the Terwilliger family has had a long and important history in Philadelphia and the area. We may have petered out, and God knows we've spent most of the family fortune, but we still have our good name. The same is true at the Society: we're proud that the Terwilligers have nurtured it and kept it strong all these years. So if there's something fishy about this, and it led to that man dying, then it's a nasty blot on our record, and as for the Society, either Grandfather and my father may have been personally involved.”

“Fair enough,” I told her. “James, what do you think?”

He sighed. “Martha, a century is a long time. How do you intend to prove that anything happened back then, and then figure out who might have done it, and
then
figure out who
might have a motive now that led to the murder of an innocent stranger?”

“Jimmy, we've done it before—right, Nell?”

“Uh—” I began.

Marty ignored my clear lack of enthusiasm. “Look, I know the Terwilliger family tree inside and out. I'll start there. Who in the family back then knew about the lap desk? Who had the last known possession of it, and where did it go? Who had the means, motive, and opportunity to toss it in the pit?”

James couldn't suppress a smile. “Martha, you are a piece of work.” But his smile faded when he added, “I cannot see the police swallowing your absurd story—they're already stretched thin. And I cannot involve the FBI. You—and presumably Nell, and your intern, Rich, and any other innocent bystanders you can dragoon—are on your own. But, absurd or not, be careful. If your wild assumptions turn out to be correct, there could be a modern-day killer out there.”

“Thank you for your concern, Jimmy,” Marty said sweetly. “We'll be careful. Won't we, Nell?”

Great—now I was stuck between the two of them.

Marty bounced to her feet. “I'd better get going.”

James rose more slowly to his six-foot-something height. “Martha, you've had, by my count, at least three straight Scotches. You're not going anywhere.”

Marty cocked her head and studied his expression, then caved with some dignity. “Oh, goodie—a sleepover!”

I had a moment of panic. Much as I supported James's suggestion, I couldn't remember if we had any clean sheets for the guest beds, or where I'd last seen them since we moved in. And then there was the bathroom issue: there was only one on the second floor. Oh, it was a palatial bathroom, about as big as my former living room, with a magisterial claw-foot tub that I adored—but there was still only one. And the spare towels were probably hiding along with the sheets . . .

But Marty's safety came first. “James is right, Marty—you shouldn't drive. Please stay.”

“You guys are the best. Which way are the stairs?”

Marty was definitely acting un-Marty-like, so I thought we'd made the right decision, however inconvenient. “Right behind you,” I said, pointing to the back stairs that led up from the kitchen. I gently pushed her in that direction and followed so she wouldn't fall backward, although she seemed steady enough. “James, we'll meet you upstairs posthaste.”
Posthaste?
I remembered that I'd had my own share of Scotch, which seemed to have affected my vocabulary. In any case, by the time Marty and I made it to the top, we were met by James (who'd taken the front stairs), bearing towels. No wonder he was such an asset to the FBI.

“The bathroom's that way, Martha,” he said, handing her the stack of neatly folded towels. She took them and disappeared into the room, closing the door behind her.

“I don't suppose you found the sheets, too?” I asked hopefully.

“I did. Let's go make the bed.”

“Have I told you lately that I love you?”

“Not often enough. But let's save that until we get Martha tucked in.”

“Gotcha.”

By the time we had assembled the bed, complete with blankets, a duvet, and pillows, Marty emerged from the bathroom. “Aw, you guys . . .”

“Good night, Marty. We can talk in the morning.” I all but grabbed James and we made a swift exit toward our room at the other end of the hall. But once there we kind of lost momentum.

“Did you know what Marty was so worried about?” James asked.

“No. Marty's been very closemouthed about all of this, and now I can see why. She's very protective of her family—all of it, past and present. Does it matter? What she told us, I mean?”

He shook his head, but I wasn't sure whether he was responding to my question or merely to the mess of the situation. “I can't say that it does. And I meant what I said—there's nothing you can take to the police. They'd laugh in your face, and I can't say that I'd blame them.”

“Hrivnak asked me to find the curly thing, which I think we have.”

“All right, give that to her. Don't spin out your wild stories. If she asks, tell her what you've guessed. But don't be surprised if she doesn't swallow it.”

I'd have to retrieve the remnants of the box from Henry tomorrow. “Agreed. So what do we do?”

“What do you mean
we
, kemosabe?”

“Oh, right, you're keeping your nose out of our business.” I wondered how long that would actually last, but I wasn't about to challenge him on it at the moment. I was tired. We'd had a long and pleasant day, and then Marty had showed up and dropped her bomb on us, and all this emotional seesawing was really exhausting. “Can we pick this up again in the morning? Because I must perform my ablutions.” All right, I was definitely a bit tipsy.

“Of course. I'm sure if all this started more than a century ago, it's not going to disappear overnight.”

With that, we went to bed, although I won't say we went to sleep right away.

—

Sunday morning I stumbled down the stairs to find Marty already sitting at the kitchen table, looking disgustingly chipper.

“I made coffee,” she said, “although it took me about ten minutes to find all the stuff I needed. How long have you been in the house now?”

“A month. Yes, I know it's a mess. We're still trying to figure out where to put things, except there's either too much—like books—or not enough—like furniture. Come back in, oh, a year or two, and we might be settled.”

I helped myself to a cup of coffee and dropped into a chair at the table. The coffee was strong enough to make my hair stand on end, but it worked quickly. “Marty, about all that stuff you told us last night . . .”

“Yes, I remember telling you, and yes, I feel a lot better getting it off my chest and sharing. Question is, what now?”

“That's what I was going to ask. Is this kind of murky family history typical for the Terwilligers? Stories that are hinted at but never explained? Did your father ever let anything slip?”

“No details, if that's what you're asking. Like I told you, he loved the Society all his life. But he was never comfortable serving on the board. I just pegged it as shyness—he was a private person, and he never liked ordering people around, so being board chair was difficult for him. He was always honest, extremely loyal to his friends, and took his responsibilities very seriously. But sometimes I wondered
if there was something more—things he wasn't telling us. I don't know. I didn't ask questions back then. Now I wonder, if he hated being on the board so much, why did he stick to it for decades? Maybe he thought he was guarding secrets. But nobody ever came out and said anything.”

“Did he recruit you? For the board, I mean?”

“Not in so many words. I mean, like him, I kinda grew up in the place, and we had more bits of history scattered all over our house. So it seemed natural. If you're asking very indirectly, did he give me any hints or warnings, the answer is no. He never sat me down and said anything weird, like, ‘We the mighty Terwilligers have committed a great sin and it falls upon our shoulders to pay the price.'”

I tried and failed to imagine that. “So he never told you directly that he had been party to or had knowledge of a theft committed by somebody somehow connected to the family.”

Marty studied the grounds in her coffee cup as if looking to read them. “I'm going to have to go back and reexamine a lot of things now, based on what I'm guessing. And look through a bunch of stuff. That's the problem with history—you have to keep reinterpreting it.”

James came down the back stairs, freshly shaved but wearing grubby sweats. “I smell coffee. Is there more?”

I waved toward the counter by the stove. “Be warned, Marty made it.”

“Ah. Thank you for the warning.”

“Jimmy, you're a wimp. If you ordered that in a restaurant you'd pay extra and it would come with a fancy Italian name.”

“Understood. Breakfast?”

“Feel free to forage,” I said. He did.

After we'd eaten something, Marty said, “Thanks for looking out for me last night, Jimmy. I hadn't realized how bent out of shape this whole mess has made me. But the big question is, what do we do now?”

“Marty,” James said with what I thought was admirable if annoying patience, “as I've told Nell repeatedly, there is no
we
. I cannot involve myself in this . . . I won't even call it an investigation. I will not undertake any research into what may be wild conjecture. Certainly not on FBI time or with FBI resources—not that I think they'd be relevant anyway. You may recall I have a full-time job, and I've recently returned from sick leave, and you wouldn't believe the backlog of stuff on my desk. I don't mean to be rude, but I don't have time to get into your problem.”

“It's your family, too,” I reminded him, “but I do understand about your time commitments.” I turned to Marty. “So it's you and me? What about Rich?”

“Rich is a good kid and he works hard, but he doesn't know all the family details.”

“He's been working with you and the collection for going on two years now—he must have picked up something. And he does bring a fresh eye,” I countered.

“True. But what do I tell him to look for?”

I shrugged. “Got me. What was your father like? I never met him, remember. Why would he have created or maintained any mystery about this lap desk? I mean, anybody who loves history, and who recognizes how much we've lost and how hard we have to fight to preserve what has survived, would probably feel a responsibility to leave some kind of record. Don't you agree? Maybe he was conflicted because
he knew it was a family member who trashed the piece, and family came first. Maybe he did write down a clear account saying Cousin X stole it to buy his mistress a town house with the proceeds, and then had a change of heart. Or maybe he was torn for another reason, like Cousin X stole it to sell because he needed the money to pay for lifesaving surgery for his mother, but she passed away before it could happen.” By now both Marty and James were staring at me as if I'd gone nuts. “What?”

“You've gone from zero to about seventy in no time flat,” Marty said. “I'm impressed. Except none of your stories explain why it got smashed and why it's in the pit. Neither my grandfather nor my father would have done that.”

“But you agree with me that there are other possibilities?” I knew Marty was sometimes touchy about comments about her family, and I wasn't sure if I'd stepped over a line. It had happened before.

“I do, much as I hate to think my father hid things from me. I reserve the right to believe that if he did, he had a good reason, like you pointed out. He really did care about history, family or not.”

James spoke up for the first time in a while. “Aren't you two losing sight of the main issue here? Carnell Scruggs, the man who died? It's all well and good to speculate about what your father or grandfather might have thought a century ago, but a man was killed last week. If you believe the two are related, you've got a lot of work to do.”

Marty answered quickly. “Jimmy, you think we don't know that? We're trying to figure out
why
that poor guy ended up dead, and what little we've got points to the Terwilligers. So I feel an obligation to get to the bottom of it.
Nell here can help, but only if she wants to. And don't forget you're a Terwilliger too, Jimmy.”

“My mother never bought into all that society stuff, if you recall.”

“Blood will out!” Marty declared dramatically. “Nell, you in?”

“It involves the Society, therefore I am involved. I can't play ostrich and pretend it's not happening. We know about it now.”
Or think we do
, I added to myself. I had nothing better to suggest.

Marty slapped her palms on the table, startling both James and me. “So let's move forward. Look, I've got some digging to do at home. Nell, how about I come by the Society tomorrow morning and we can go over what I find, or don't find? This may take a little time.”

“Construction is going on tomorrow, so things are going to be unsettled,” I reminded her.

“When aren't they?” she retorted. “You're okay if I bring Rich into this? We can use his help.”

I wondered if it was wise to drag someone else into this growing mess, but I agreed that we could use the help of another trained researcher. “Go ahead, Marty. He should know the Terwilliger Collection pretty well by now.”

“Will do.” Marty stood up. “Thanks for your hospitality, you two. We'll have to work on your furniture problem once we get this other thing cleared up. Bye.” With that, she picked up her bag by the front door and left before James and I could muster a protest.

We were left staring at the closed door. “What just happened here?” I asked James.

“Martha Terwilliger wants to play detective. I must say I
have mixed feelings about it. I'll concede that she has a point, and that solving this crime may hinge on information that she has unique access to. Or it may be a wild-goose chase. Either way, I know I can't stop her. But I worry about what she's dragging you into. There's already been one death.”

How sweet: he was worried about me. I couldn't remember the last time someone had looked out for me, before James. “Thank you, James. I'll certainly try to be careful. But as I said to Marty, since this does seem to involve the Society and its collections, I have a responsibility here.”

He reached out and took my hand. “Of course. You know I've got your back.”