Back in my office, I slid the original list in amongst the files in my desk drawer. It was highly unlikely that anyone would find it there, since I often had trouble finding my own files. The copy I stuck in my carry bag. Impatient now, I sifted through the stack of checks from the gala, made a few notes, then bundled them up to be input by Carrie on Monday and deposited to the Society’s bank account. Better sooner than later, in case some donors had second thoughts after hearing the news of Alfred’s death and decided to stop their checks.
But it was now late afternoon, and I’d had enough. I was going home to put my feet up, chill out, and try to figure out just what the heck was going on at the Society. I was almost out the door of my office when I remembered one last thing: I had promised Marty that I would let the staff know about Alfred’s funeral. I went back to my desk and wrote a brief email giving time and place, and sent it to all staff and board members. Then I shut down the computer, turned off the lights, and headed home.
CHAPTER 11
Returning to Bryn Mawr and my home always felt like going from one universe to another. Charles and I seldom got together on weekends, since he lived in the city and I lived in the Far West, and there was a great chasm between that I’d heard described as the urban-suburban split. The distance was no more than twenty miles, but to the denizens on either end, it could have been light-years.
My house was small, but it was all mine, and if I wanted to put on my grubbiest sweats and go barefoot, I could. I also had shopping to do, a new Nora Roberts romance novel by the bed, and a lengthy to-do list to work on. I enjoyed the endless small projects that an older house generated. With all the thinking and writing and talking I had to do at work, it was nice to go home to silence or music, and then make something, shape something-sand, polish, reweave, whatever-and have a tangible result to show for it at the end. I found it therapeutic.
I decided to let my subconscious mind gnaw away at Alfred’s list while I did unrelated things, and went about my distinctly suburban business. I shopped, made myself an extravagant dinner on Saturday, and read most of the book. But the problem wouldn’t let go of me. Things looked fine on the surface, but if the issue of the missing documents proved to be the tip of the iceberg, what would happen? I had to assume that there would be a lot of ass-covering and finger-pointing, which would be toxic in a small, tightly knit shop like ours.
Sunday night, I dreamt that I was searching for something in my kitchen cabinets and I kept finding random and illogical things, but not what I was looking for, except I really wasn’t sure what I was looking for in the first place, or why it would be in my kitchen. In any event, I woke up out of sorts and restless on Monday morning. It was a dark, dreary day, and I had to rush to catch my train, which then kept stopping and starting, the garbled announcement over the tinny loudspeaker making the usual excuses about “signal problems.” You’d think after more than a hundred years the commuter-rail system would have worked out their signals. Normally I enjoyed my commute, catching up on my reading, but today I was impatient. I watched the towers of Center City loom through the low clouds and wondered what unpleasantness I might find today.
Like many museums, the Society was closed to the public on Mondays, although the administration staff was expected to be there. Actually, Mondays were usually rather nice, since most of the building was dark and quiet, and there was a more relaxed feeling among the staff who were there. I doubted that today would be enjoyable, though, given Alfred’s death and Marty’s looming deadline. I knew she would hold me to it, and I was beginning to believe that she had every right to do so. I just wished I had better answers for her.
As one more delaying tactic, I stopped at the kiosk down the street for a double cappuccino. Maybe that would jump-start my day. Carrying the cup, I let myself into the building. The heavy metal door swung closed behind me with a reassuring click. The lobby was shadowed, and there were no lights on in the catalog room beyond. I made my way to the elevator and up to the third floor, to my office, without seeing anyone.
I turned on the overhead light in my office and hung my coat on the back of the door, then sat down with my coffee. I squared the piles of papers on my desktop, opened my coffee, sat back, and tried to think. What did I need to do first?
Since no one was around, I pulled out Alfred’s list again and looked at it analytically. The missing items came from no single collection, had been stored all over the building, and represented all different kinds of media-manuscripts, books, letters, objects. But, as I’d noted before, they seemed to share one outstanding characteristic: they all appeared to be potentially valuable. Everything on the list could easily be disposed of on the open market. Or, more likely, on the so-called grey market-to collectors who were less concerned about the source of their acquisitions than having them in their possession. The Terwilliger correspondence between Major Jonathan and George Washington-which wasn’t even on this list, since we didn’t officially know the letters were missing-fit quite neatly into the group.
One other thing that Alfred hadn’t included on this list: when these things had first gone missing-because Alfred had no way of knowing, beyond when he first noted their absence. One of those prove-a-negative problems; how do you show when something isn’t there? These disappearances could have been going on for a long time, or they could have been recent, but we’d probably never know. That deduction did not help me much.
I sat there, rocking slightly in my swivel chair, contemplating doomsday scenarios. A thief in our midst. A public investigation. Humiliation in the eyes of the historic and arts community, locally, nationally. A poisoned fundraising climate (well, that was my job, and I had to think about it). Criminal liability?
The phone rang, jerking me out of my contemplation of disaster.
“Nell. Good, you’re there.” Marty’s voice.
“Hi, Marty. Before you ask, no, I don’t have any answers for you yet.”
“I know that. But we’ve got to talk. Can you come over tomorrow, for dinner?”
“I probably won’t have any answers by then, you know.” In fact, all I was accumulating was more questions.
“Doesn’t matter. See you at six.”
She hung up before I could protest or even ask for instructions, but I knew where she lived-her address was in our donor database, after all, and it was only a few blocks away. Not that I’d ever seen the inside of her townhouse. We weren’t exactly in the same social circle. I had to admit I was curious, both about her house and about what she wanted to discuss with me.
Turning back to the piles on my desk, I took care of several small business items, like writing thank-you notes to the committee members who had helped put together the gala-even those who had done nothing except make sure their names were spelled correctly on the program. I also wrote thank-yous for Charles’s signature to the people who had sent particularly nice (that is, four-figure) checks or bought a table. I reviewed the calendar for grant application deadlines. I checked the status of the agenda for the next board meeting and made a mental note to ask Carrie when she would be mailing the meeting reminder.
That took care of most of the busywork. My mind kept creeping back to Alfred’s list. Many of the items on it looked like high-dollar pieces-but what did that really mean? Not being a collector myself, apart from a few flea-market finds, I wasn’t really tapped into the historic artifacts market, so I decided to do some homework on the Internet. Calling up Google, I started trolling for information on Americana, manuscripts, auctions, dealers-whatever looked promising and included real-world prices.