Fundraising the Dead

by Connolly, Sheila

  So, what to do? I couldn’t come up with a solution, so I decided to turn the problem over to my subconscious and do something else instead. Carrie wasn’t in today—not that I blamed her, for she was young, single, and not terribly devoted to her job—but I could check how many of the gala checks she had already processed. I was sure there were more, too, like the ones that had been left on my desk, which in the turmoil following Alfred’s death I had neglected to hand over to her.

  Which reminded me of Alfred’s list, in the same pile. I pulled it out and smoothed it carefully on my desk. I made an effort to relax before running my eyes over the list. It was far longer than I had expected, and even I recognized the names attached to a lot of the items there. My heart sank. If anyone asked me—and I prayed they wouldn’t—I would have to guess that someone with a fine eye and specific expertise had been cherry-picking the good stuff out of our collections. And had gotten clean away with it, for quite some time.

  I needed time to think about this, and to think about what to do with what I knew. I lined up the papers and carefully returned them to their envelope. And then changed my mind, pulled them out, and headed for the copy machine. I wasn’t sure who could re-create this list, with Alfred gone. I knew I couldn’t. So it seemed prudent to make an extra copy and stash it somewhere safe. As I stood over the machine, its scanner lights moving underneath the copier cover, I almost laughed at my own cloak-and-dagger attitude. I was copying a list that nobody else knew existed, to protect it from—who? I had no idea. I just wanted to be sure Alfred’s list had a backup.

  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.

  At the end of an hour, I sat back, a bit stunned. Looking only at the name items—things associated with dead presidents, for example, or other known and noteworthy historical figures—it was clear that the market was booming. And some single letters were going for five and six figures at auction. The Society’s list of items known to be missing was over five pages long, and most of them appeared to be highly desirable, if what I was reading was an accurate view of the market. Take each of those missing pieces and multiply it by, conservatively, twenty-five thousand dollars, and . . . the total ran into the millions. Oh my God. We had a big problem here.

  I allowed myself a moment of panic. The dollar value of the collections was one thing, but I also had to consider the Society’s reputation. Hadn’t there been a recent spate of news articles about someone stealing maps from multiple collections and getting away with it for years? If pieces from our collections were walking out the door, we would look like incompetent fools. And that wouldn’t exactly encourage people to contribute money to us—money we depended on and sorely needed just to stay open. All my hard work, all the small advances we had made since Charles arrived—all trashed, if Marty went public with her suspicions about the Terwilliger Collection, which would lead to more scrutiny, which would lead to . . . disaster.

  Reluctantly, I realized that there was another area I needed to think about: the legal aspects. I didn’t feel like I could go to the Society’s official legal counsel just yet because he was a board member, and I didn’t want to let the board in on this until I was sure of my information. On the other hand, I certainly didn’t want to contact some outside attorney, not only because that would cost money I didn’t have, but also because it might tip off the wrong people that we had a problem, and I didn’t want to bring that down on my head, either. So once again I turned to the Internet.

  I had in the back of my head that there was a special category for the theft of items of historical significance, so that was where I started. Aha: Title 18, United States Code, Section 668: Theft of Major Artwork. “Makes it a federal offense to obtain by theft or fraud any object of cultural heritage from a museum. The statute also prohibits the ‘fencing’ or possession of such objects, knowing them to be stolen.” From another source, “an ‘object of cultural heritage’ means an object that is over 100 years old and worth at least $5,000.” Well, there we were, in the thick of it. I knew for a fact that we were legally defined as a museum in the Society’s bylaws. And we could easily classify all of the missing pieces as at least a century old and worth over five grand.

  I plowed on, glued to my screen. According to the FBI, ninety percent of all museum thefts turned out to be inside jobs. Not surprising, but not reassuring. There were sounds from the outer offices now, people arriving, exchanging greetings, bustling around. I sighed. I really didn’t want to think that anyone on our staff had been systematically ripping off the Society. Most of them did have the expertise to choose what to take, and all of them had free access. But I’d worked with the people here for years. They were good people, knowledgeable, committed to history and its preservation, and to helping other people share their interest. They were willing to work for pathetic wages simply because they did care. And then that little voice inside me said, Maybe somebody’s gotten tired of the low pay and equally low respect, and decided to do something to make up for it. After all, it would be so easy . . .

  I shook myself. I was almost afraid to look, but I needed to know what the proper procedure would be to report such a theft. The FBI was kind enough to provide just such an outline on their website. One, do not let staff or visitors into the area to disturb evidence. Well, it was a little late for that. Two, notify the local police department. That clearly hadn’t happened yet. Three, determine the last time the objects were seen and what happened in the area, or to the objects, in that time. Like that was going to happen—although, I realized, Marty could give specifics for the Terwilliger Collection. One more reason to keep her happy. Four, gather documents, descriptions, and images of the missing objects and provide to the police. Well, we had a start on that, thanks to Alfred. Five, follow up on police actions and investigations to ensure that everything possible is being done. Yeah, right.

  So it looked like the police were the first line, and then they would call in the FBI, since this was clearly a federal offense. What wasn’t clear was who from our end was supposed to report the problem to the police. Me, who had first discovered it? Latoya, as head of collections? Charles, as the president? The board, as the official managing body for the institution? Or Marty herself, as an interested outside party as well as a board member?

  I felt sick. I felt scared. Right now I was sitting on a guilty little secret that Alfred had shared with me, but he couldn’t help me now. Oh, and the thief—if there was one—probably knew about it, too. But I didn’t see what I could do about it.

  Charles. When should I tell Charles? This would devastate him. He had worked hard to identify himself with this institution and to make his way into the local historical community, and he had done it well. A theft like this, under his aegis, would be a serious blow to his professional standing, both locally and in the broader museum community.

  OK, Nell, slow down. I gripped the edge of my desk and took a deep breath. Take this one step at a time. I believed the Society had a problem, thanks to what Alfred had told me. I had reported Marty’s complaint to the next person in the chain of command: Latoya. She had dismissed Alfred’s reports as trivial, or as a normal part of his cataloging procedures—of course there would be a few misplaced items among the thousands he had looked at. Maybe we could just make it go away, hush it up, save our reputation. Why didn’t I believe that?

  Maybe she hadn’t listened to him, but she was going to listen to me.

  CHAPTER 12

  I stood up and headed to Latoya Anderson’s office. She was on the phone, but I summoned up my patience and waited. Finally she managed to extricate herself from the phone call and gestured for me to come in. I closed the door behind me, and Latoya’s eyebrows went up a notch. She must have picked up on my unease—not to mention the fact that I’d closed the door. “What’s going on now, Nell?” She folded her hands on her pristine desk blotter and waited.

  I took a deep breath. “You remember I talked to you Saturday about the problem with the Terwilliger papers?”

  She nodded, then said contritely, “Oh, and I promised to get you the files—it slipped my mind entirely. Let me hunt them up for you.” She started to rise, but I held up a hand to stop her.

  “Latoya, that’s not the immediate problem. There’s something bigger that we need to talk about. Something that Alfred told me about the collections.”

  She sat back and said, “All right. What’s the problem?”

  Here we go, I thoug
ht. “When Marty came to me with her question, I realized how little I knew about the maintenance of our collections, in hands-on terms. So I talked to Alfred, since he was more directly involved in the day-to-day management.”

  Latoya’s expression was wary. “Go on.”

  This was the difficult part. “Alfred told me that there are a number of other items he had not been able to locate.”

  She sniffed. “I know—that was in his reports. That’s to be expected in an organization of this size and age. You should know that.”

  “Yes, I do know, and that’s what Alfred told me.” I pressed on. “I think the problem is bigger than that. Alfred gave me a list of the items he knew of, that he hadn’t been able to find. I looked at the list, and even to my untrained eye it appears that most of them are both historically significant and valuable.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  I drew myself up and said deliberately, “I think there is good reason to believe that there has been systematic looting of the Society’s collections.”

  There was silence in the room. I could almost see the wheels turning in Latoya’s mind: where did her responsibility lie? “Alfred never mentioned anything like that to me. That’s a very serious allegation,” she said slowly, buying time.

  “I understand that Alfred gave you regular reports on the status of his cataloging—and on the numbers of items that he has been unable to locate?”

  She stared at me. “Yes, that’s part of his job description—he provided monthly summary reports.”

  “And,” I went on, “did you never see any reason for concern, in the reports that he gave you?”

  “No,” she replied stiffly. “He did not give me any indication that there was anything out of the ordinary. As I said, misplaced items are a fact of life in institutions like this.”

  I wasn’t going to let her brush me off. “I understand that. But you were not worried about the extent or the nature of the disappearances?”