“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.
CHAPTER 10
My next step was to check in with Latoya Anderson, our vice president of collections, and the person charged with oversight for all collections. Latoya was a relative newcomer to the Society: she’d been on the staff just over two years, one of Charles’s first major hires, and she was, in grant-writing terms, a “person of color.” I always found it offensive to label any staff member based on race (or gender, sexual preference, handicap, whatever), but the reality was that a lot of the organizations that awarded grants gave extra points to your application if you could demonstrate diversity, especially if it was not just for show. Luckily for everyone, Latoya was extremely well qualified, with an undergraduate degree in history from Princeton and a degree in library science from Simmons in Boston, and we were very lucky to have her. We had snagged her not because of our shining status in the historical world (although we did all right in that department), or the magnificent salary which we could offer (we couldn’t), but because the Society had an outstanding and largely unexplored collection of documents pertaining to slavery and the abolition movement in Philadelphia, and Latoya had been smart enough to negotiate for time to continue her own research, using those collections, while giving the Society four days a week.
I liked Latoya, or maybe respected was closer to the truth. She was smart and politically aware-which was more than could be said for many of the staff members. At the same time, I had a small but nagging doubt about her: she wasn’t a risk taker, and was almost fanatical about maintaining the status quo. She did her job well and conscientiously, but she stayed strictly within the confines of a narrow job description-which I thought could have been broadened to greatly enhance the Society’s standing within the academic world. Sometimes I wondered if she was giving one hundred percent to the Society. Or one hundred percent of the eighty percent she was committed to, anyway. Maybe I was biased because we didn’t have a particularly warm relationship, but as far as I could tell she had remained aloof from most people at the Society.