Fundraising the Dead

by Connolly, Sheila

  “If you think it matters.” He looked all too comfortable in his high-thread-count sheets, reclining in state against his many pillows. But I had to move if I was going to pick up pastries and get to the Society in time to start the meeting.

  By seven thirty, laden with goodies, I climbed the timeworn stone steps of the Society building and let myself in with my key. I didn’t linger in the dark and quiet lobby, but I could tell that there was no evidence of the past evening’s revels—the cleaners had done their job well. Instead, I crossed the catalog room and pushed the button for the building’s sole—and antique—elevator. I could hear it lurching into action from somewhere in the bowels of the building, and when it deigned to appear, I inserted my key in the wall panel and pushed the button for the third floor, where all the administrative offices were. I stepped out into the dark hall—no lights meant that no one else was in yet, which didn’t surprise me. I made for the nearest wall switch, outside the education director’s office, which took me past the door to the stacks. When the lights flickered to life, I noticed a dark red stain in front of the door. Damn, I thought, somebody spilled wine up here last night. While this floor was off-limits, plenty of people had access—staff, board members, researchers—and maybe one of them had brought someone up to show off some of our treasures. Was it a turn-on to fondle a letter from one of the Founding Fathers? Maybe it worked for some people. But nobody was supposed to bring their wineglasses up here.

  But as I approached the door, I began to wonder . . . That didn’t look like wine; it looked like . . . blood? No, Nell—that’s ridiculous. You’re tired, and you’re imagining things.

  I bent over to look more closely. It still looked like blood. I stood up and took a deep breath. Maybe someone had had a nosebleed. Maybe someone fell and cut themselves. Maybe you should open the door and find out, you wimp. I laid my hand on the doorknob. It turned, but when I tried to push the door open, it stuck—against something on the other side. Not good. I released the doorknob and thought about what to do. There was no other access on this floor, but if I went to the floor above, there was a spiral iron staircase that led down to the stacks on this floor. With great deliberation I fished out my keys from my bag, went back to the elevator, and ascended one more floor. It was equally dark and deserted, so I headed for the stacks door, turning on lights as I went. Lots of lights, so I’d be able to see . . . whatever I found.

  The internal staircase was located in the front corner, and I grabbed the spindly handrail and climbed down cautiously. The door that had stuck was right around the corner, beyond the next tier of shelves. With another deep breath, I crept around the shelves, then stopped. My worst fears were confirmed: the reason that the door wouldn’t open was because there was someone lying against it. I took a shaky step closer.

  It was Alfred Findley, lying in a pool of dark blood, his eyes staring blindly at his beloved books. Books and papers lay scattered around him on the floor, and the splintered remains of an old wooden step stool lay a few feet away. It looked as though he had fallen while trying to reach something. I didn’t need to touch him to know that he was dead; his peculiar grey color and the amount of blood around him made that clear.

  I backed up until I could lean against the adjoining bookshelves—solidly built a hundred years ago, and perfect for holding up a woman whose knees had just turned to jelly. I was seeing stars—a whole firmament, swarming in a lovely lime green color. I blinked a few times, but that didn’t help, so I tried closing them and breathing deeply until my eyes, and my brain, started working again. You are not going to pass out, Nell. No, you are going to proceed calmly and address this problem. Unfortunately the employee manual did not, to the best of my recollection, have a section on dealing with dead bodies found on site. I’d have to make it up as I went.

  But it wasn’t just a dead body, I thought, as I tried to control my breathing. It was Alfred—poor, sweet, shy Alfred—who was lying there in front of me in a pool of his own blood. What a tragedy. And what a loss to the Society: he was the only person in the place who knew where everything was.

  Nell, you can mourn later. All right, what now? I needed to report this to the police. But for that I needed a phone, and my cell phone was in my bag, on the other side of that door, and there were no phones in the stacks. Therefore I had to leave the stacks, locate a phone, and call 911. Oh, good—a plan. I could do that. And, I realized dimly, I had better do that pretty soon, before other people started arriving and all hell broke loose. I retraced my steps, up the staircase, into the fourth-floor hall, then down to the third floor again, where I headed straight to the nearest office and punched in the three digits.

  I was operating in a fog, but I think I managed to give my name and where I was, and the person on the other end of the line said they would send somebody ASAP, and told me to stay in the building. That part was easy, since I wasn’t sure my wobbly legs would take me very far. I hung up and tried to jump-start my brain. I had to get out of the chair I had fallen into and go downstairs to wait for the police to arrive. Let them deal with the body. That wasn’t my business. I’m a fundraiser. I don’t handle dead bodies. People would be arriving soon for the meeting that obviously wasn’t going to happen. Okay, Nell, stand up and go downstairs to the lobby and keep everyone together. I didn’t want anyone else to see the blood pool or . . . Alfred.

  I shifted my brain into neutral and went down the stairs to stand in the lobby. I was trying to come up with a good reason to give staff members for staying away, when there was a determined pounding on our massive metal front door. Too late—people were already arriving. No peephole, of course—that would mar the historical integrity of the door. Luckily the next thing I heard was, “Police! Open up!”

  I did, gladly. On the other side of the door I found three police officers: two husky uniformed male officers, one black, one white, and a short woman who bore a distinct resemblance to a bulldog. She was in civvies and introduced herself sharply. “I’m Detective Hrivnak. You the one who called?”

  “Yes, I’m Eleanor Pratt, and I’m the one who called you.”

  The detective held up a hand, shutting me up. “What’ve we got? You said a body?”

  “Yes, on the third floor. But he’s lying against the door, so you have to go to the fourth floor and come down again—there aren’t a lot of entrances to the stacks ...” I was dithering and I knew it.

  “Show me. You—Johnson—stay here and keep anybody else from coming in. You—Williams—you come with us.” She turned back to me. “You touch anything?”

  I shook my head. “No. Well, the elevator buttons, I guess, and the phone, and the doorknob, before I knew there was anything wrong, and the staircase inside the stacks.”

  “Right. Now, what is this place?”

  “The Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society.”

  Detective Hrivnak all but snorted. “Library? Museum?”

  “Both, sort of. We have a lot of collections, and we’re open to the public.”

  “You got people coming in soon?”

  I glanced quickly at my watch. “Well, we’re supposed to have a staff meeting at eight, so the employees will be arriving any minute now. We don’t open to the public until ten.”

  “Not today. How many employees?”

  “Uh, about forty. Not all full-time. I came in early to set up for the meeting.” For a moment I thought wistfully of the lovely pastries, sitting in a box upstairs . . . not far from the blood pool. I lost my appetite again.

  “Who’s the boss?”

  “Charles Elliott Worthington. He should be here soon—he was coming to the meeting.”

  The detective was making a few notes in her pocket-size pad. “You see anybody else this morning?”

  “No, and there were no lights on when I came in. I don’t think there’s anyone else here.” At least, no one alive.

  “You know the victim?”

  “Yes, he is—he was an employee here. His name was Alfred Findley. He was
the registrar, and he’s worked here for years.”

  Detective Hrivnak made a final note, then snapped the pad shut. “Okay, let’s go see him.”

  I led the small procession back to the elevator and pushed the button. The detective was looking around at the soaring ceilings, the rows of card catalogs. “What time did you close up yesterday?”

  The elevator put in its leisurely appearance. “We had an event here last night, after normal hours. I left just before midnight, but there were still some staff around, moving tables and stuff.” We got on the elevator, and I inserted my key into the fourth-floor slot.

  “When did you last see the victim?”

  “I saw him briefly at the party last night—maybe around eight? But I didn’t talk to him then.”

  The elevator doors opened, and I led Detective Hrivnak and Officer Williams to the staircase. They went down first, which was fine with me, because I didn’t want to see Alfred again. Unfortunately they waited for me at the bottom of the stairs, so I pointed them toward the body and followed slowly, looking at anything but the floor.

  Detective Hrivnak stood looking down at Alfred, who didn’t look any better than he had the last time I saw him. “Dead, all right. Probably about eight, maybe ten hours—blood’s pretty much dry. I’ll let the ME decide.”

  Poor Alfred. That meant I’d been herding caterers and lingering guests out of the building while he was quietly bleeding to death upstairs. And the party had been so loud that no one could possibly have heard him fall all the way up on the third floor. I was startled out of my thoughts by Detective Hrivnak’s no-nonsense voice. “Okay. Williams, call the ME’s office, get someone over here to pick him up. You—Ms. Pratt? You go to your office. That’s on this floor, right? And wait for me. As soon as I get this end sorted out, I need to talk to you. And then we can decide if I need to talk to anyone else.”

  “Right. Sure, fine.” My mind spinning, I hurried out. Once I escaped from the stacks, I took another deep breath and tried to figure out what I had to do next. The detective had said stay put, but there was no way I could do that just yet. The staff would be arriving at any minute, if they hadn’t already. Step one, rig up a sign to keep the public out. Step two, figure out where to put the staff members. The old conference room on the ground floor would do; the police might want to talk to them, so I should keep them there. Step three, talk to Charles, who should be on his way here now. Right, Nell. Make a sign, then go downstairs and herd the staff aside, and then let Charles deal with the rest.

  CHAPTER 6

  Officer Johnson was down in the front hall, looking bewildered. I took pity on him. “Officer Johnson? I thought I would put up this sign”—I waved my hastily crafted piece of paper at him—“to keep out the rest of the world. I suggest we tell the staff members to wait in the conference room over there.” I pointed around the grand staircase; the old conference room was tucked away beneath it, but it had plenty of chairs and would be big enough to hold all the staff members. “Is that all right?”

  Officer Johnson looked relieved. “Yeah, sure, good thinking. Staff have ID, so I’ll know who’s who?”

  “Yes, they do. Let me just put up the sign, then.” I hauled open the heavy metal door and came face-to-face with Charles.

  “Good morning, Nell,” he said, in case anyone was listening. “Are we all set for the meeting?”

  I grabbed his arm, pulling him back outside and letting the door slip shut behind me. “Charles, we have got one large problem. Wait here a sec.” Scanning the still-empty street, I went down the steps and taped my notice over the placard on the iron railing at the bottom. I had tried to be discreet—somehow Closed due to death did not seem like the appropriate wording, so I had settled for Closed for emergency repairs. We apologize for the inconvenience. The word would get out quickly enough. If it was a slow news day, Alfred might even rate a mention on the nightly news. I felt a pang again: poor Alfred. What a sad way to die. Although at least he had gone surrounded by the books and documents that he loved.

  “Nell?” Charles said impatiently from his place at the top of the steps. He did not like to be kept waiting, and the wind was biting.

  “Right. Sorry.” I waited until I stood next to him and could speak quietly. “I found Alfred Findley in the stacks when I came in—dead. I called the police, and they’re upstairs now.”

  “Oh my God! How horrible.”

  For a moment my sarcastic inner voice wondered what he thought was horrible: that Alfred Findley had been murdered, that I had found him, or that this would mean negative publicity for his beloved Society, and thus, indirectly, him. Not that it mattered much, and all were true. “Yes, it was. There was . . . a lot of blood.” Another note to self: who was supposed to clean up the bloodstains? Our custodial staff, or did the police have people for that? “The detective in charge is upstairs now. She asked that we keep the staff away from the third floor until this is sorted out, so I figured we could send them to the old conference room.”

  “Excellent idea. Well, then, I suppose I should go introduce myself to this detective and see what the story is. What is her name?”

  My mind went blank for a moment, then my fundraiser mentality kicked in. “Detective Hrivnak. By the way, she’s never been here before and doesn’t know who or what we are, so you can fill her in.” And turn on the charm, I added silently. I had the feeling Detective Hrivnak didn’t like me very much, and she certainly hadn’t seemed too impressed by the august Society.

  “Thank you for the heads-up, Nell. Shall we?”

  I rapped on the door, and when Officer Johnson opened it, I introduced Charles. “This is Charles Worthington, the president of the Society. I’m sure the detective will want to talk with him, so I’ll just take him upstairs to her. All right? But you can keep anyone else who comes downstairs here. You shouldn’t get any patrons this early, so just direct everyone to the conference room.” Without waiting for an answer, I took Charles’s elbow and all but dragged him toward the elevator.

  Once the doors had closed behind us, Charles asked quietly, “Do they know when this happened?”

  “Hrivnak guessed before midnight, probably during the gala. Look, you go sweet-talk the detective, and I’ll talk to the staff downstairs. Heck, we can even go ahead with the debriefing.” Yeah, right—like people would want to talk about who said what to whom at the party, when there was a dead colleague lying two floors above.

  The elevator doors opened, and I stepped out to be confronted by an angry Detective Hrivnak. “You, Pratt—I told you to wait in your office. And who’s this guy?”

  “I’m sorry, Detective, but I thought I should tell your officer downstairs where to direct people, and I put a sign outside to keep patrons out—I assume you would want that? And this is Charles Elliott Worthington, our president.”

  Charles stepped forward smoothly. “Detective—Hrivnak, is it? I can’t tell you how horrified I am by this event. Alfred Findley was a valued employee, and a very pleasant person. He will be missed.”

  I wondered uncharitably if Charles would have recognized Alfred if he met him in the hallway. But Charles turned on his carefully calculated smile, combining just the right mix of sorrow and sympathy, and the detective softened.

  “Yeah, well, he’s still dead. Look, I’ve got to talk to Ms. Pratt here, since she’s the one who found the body. And I’ve got my people coming to handle the body. So maybe you should just wait downstairs with the rest of your staff until I get to you.”

  Under different circumstances I might have been amused by the sight of the mighty Charles Elliott Worthington being told to wait by someone so . . . uncouth. But this was serious business, and out of the corner of my eye I could still see the dark pool of blood. Charles’s ego would have to take it.

  “Of course. I’ll be available when you need me. You’ll be all right, Nell?” When I nodded, he went on. “Then you’ll find me downstairs.” He beat a dignified retreat, leaving me alone in the hall with the
detective.

  “Okay, where’s your office? Shouldn’t take long. This looks pretty clear-cut.”

  “This way.” I led her down the hall and into my office, turning on the lights as I entered. I gestured toward the visitor’s chair and went around the desk to my own. There were a few envelopes on my blotter that hadn’t been there before—presumably the checks that Charles had mentioned—so I shifted them to my in-box and faced Detective Hrivnak. “All right—what do you need?”

  “Tell me again exactly what you did this morning.”

  I went through the steps, adding more detail as more came back to me. The detective took some notes but mostly watched me, sneaking an occasional glance around my none-too-neat office. When I had finished, she asked, “Give me a time line for this shindig last night.”

  I complied, giving her the rough schedule for the event. Afterwards, she said, “Right. So let me see if I’ve got this right. There were a couple of hundred people milling around downstairs last night, and nobody could have heard this guy fall?”

  “That’s about it. It’s a concrete-reinforced building, built around 1900, so it would be impossible to hear anything even if the place were empty.”

  “Who was there?”

  I tried to think of a way to describe our guests. “Philadelphia society, plus some newcomers who can help us.”

  “You mean rich people?”

  “More or less. And society doesn’t mean the same thing here, inside these walls, as it does in the gossip columns. There are a lot of names that go back a couple of centuries, and they may or may not have money.”