Fundraising the Dead

by Connolly, Sheila

  “Oh, pooh,” Marty said. “So what?”

  “It means that anything we hear, we can’t use as evidence. And the FBI will be extremely annoyed at us. And finally, Marty, you’re dragging Phil here in as a co-conspirator.”

  Young Phil volunteered something for the first time. “Excuse me, but there is an exception to that—if you record something you could normally overhear.”

  I burst out laughing at the image that conjured up for me. “Great. Libby, all you have to do is tell Charles that you have an ear infection that affects your hearing, so that he has to yell at you to be heard, and then Marty and I can stand on the sidewalk outside, holding a microphone up to the window. Can’t you just see it? Real subtle.”

  Marty was trying to suppress her own laughter. “Ah, Nell, don’t worry about it. We’re not trying to gather proof for prosecution—let Jimmy do that. That’s what the FBI is for. We just want to verify why Charles thinks he needs money—and stop him.”

  Poor Phil’s eyes just kept getting wider and wider. I was not convinced, but I wasn’t about to pull the plug. As long as Libby didn’t feel threatened by this game of ours, I was willing to go along. I threw up my hands. “All right, I’m in. But remember, no court is going to be happy about this.”

  Marty turned to Phil again. “OK, whiz kid, show us what you’ve got.”

  He cast a shy smile around the group. “Aunt Marty said you wanted some transmitters that were small, easy to hide, but with good pickup. I forgot to ask how far you wanted to transmit—are you going to be close by? Do you want to listen in, in real time, or do you want something voice activated, that just records when somebody is talking?”

  We exchanged glances—clearly we hadn’t thought that far. “What’s the potential range?” I asked.

  “Depends. You could park in a car outside the house, or you could sit in a restaurant a couple of blocks away. The further you want to go, the more the stuff costs.”

  I hadn’t considered what this might cost us. I looked at Marty. She waved her hand at me, so I guessed I didn’t need to worry about that. I turned back to the young genius.

  “I can’t see Marty and me freezing our tails off in a car, listening in, and we’d be pretty obvious on the street. And it’s not like we’ll have to burst in and rescue you in the pinch, right, Libby?”

  “I think I can manage to take care of myself, thank you,” she said.

  “So nearby would be good, maybe under a block. Can we record from there, too?”

  “No problem,” said young Phil.

  Marty interrupted. “There’s a nice, quiet restaurant the next block over, almost directly behind Charles’s house. Would that work?” Phil nodded. “Nell and I can settle ourselves there and listen in.” Marty fixed Libby with a calculating eye. “Unless, of course, you’re planning to spend the night?”

  Libby laughed. “I’ll keep my options open. I wouldn’t want to tip him off, now would I? Besides, he’s great between the sheets. Wouldn’t you agree, Nell?”

  I tried to look sophisticated and worldly. “Um, yes.” I avoided looking at young Phil. He was getting a varied education today.

  She gave me one last look, then took pity and changed the subject. “So the plan is that Nell plants the bugs in Charles’s house during their big breakup, then the next night you two sit in the restaurant and listen to him and me do some heavy breathing, right?”

  Poor Phil didn’t know what to make of this, and studied his shoes intently.

  Marty spoke briskly. “More or less, Libs. Phil, we’ll go with the recording device at the restaurant with us—what’s that, a couple hundred feet? Now, where can we put the bugs? How many can we use? How do we attach them?”

  The conversation got technical, but luckily Phil seemed to know what he was talking about, and in the end we decided that we needed two bugs: one in the living room and one in Charles’s bedroom, each with a pickup range of ten feet, and each recording independently. Phil told us that he could get equipment that would record a sneeze on the street a block away, but we assured him that was probably overkill. He looked disappointed. Marty and I would each be equipped with unobtrusive earpieces and a small recorder, so we could sit at a table in the restaurant and not attract too much attention.

  I looked around at the group. The tea and cookies were long gone, and it was getting dark outside. Inside we were hatching a plot to catch a thief. Ms. Farnsworth in the bedroom with the electronic bug—the old game Clue drifted through my mind. And Charles’s career and reputation would be the victims, if all went according to plan. That was still a big if.

  “Well, now all we need is a time line. Libby? You and Charles have anything scheduled?”

  “Charles has tickets for the symphony on Friday, so we could come back to his place after,” she said. “Phil? Does that give you enough time to get the equipment? And to show us how it works?”

  He nodded. “No problem.”

  She turned to me. “Nell, how about you?”

  “I’ll aim for tomorrow night. The timing might be tight—I’m flying back from Boston in the afternoon, and you’ll still have to show me how to plant the bugs and how the listening end works.” If Charles was going to the symphony with Libby on Friday, I could probably count on him being home on Thursday night. I could show up on his doorstep for a good-bye scene, which would allow me to wangle the opportunity to collect the few personal possessions I had left there—the nightgown, some toiletries, a bottle of perfume. Which would give me a legitimate excuse to get into the bedroom—just where I needed to go. “If I don’t make it back in time, Libby will just have to take them along and figure something out.”

  “Great. Phil, when can you get the stuff together?” Marty asked.

  “I can pick ’em up tomorrow morning.”

  “If you can get them to Marty, I’ll come by her place on the way back from Boston,” I told him.

  “Make it happen, sweetie,” Marty said. “So that’s the plan. I get the bugs from Phil, Nell plants them at Charles’s place, then Libby does her bit on Friday, with us listening. God, I feel like we’re the Three Musketeers.”

  Libby stood up. “Ladies, this calls for a toast. I’ve got some champagne in the fridge.” She disappeared toward what I assumed was the kitchen. Marty and I looked at each other.

  “The time line is pretty tight, and I don’t know what we do if the gizmos don’t work. I sure as hell hope we’re doing the right thing,” I said dubiously.

  “Nell, you worry too much. We are doing the right thing. It’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll make it work,” I replied, with more assurance than I felt.

  Libby returned with a champagne bottle and flutes. When she had filled and distributed them, Marty stood up and raised her glass. “To the downfall of the mighty Charles Worthington!” We saluted her and drank.

  Driving home after dark, a single glass of Libby’s excellent champagne bubbling through my system, I hoped that this crazy plan was going to work.

  CHAPTER 24

  I caught an early flight to Boston the next morning— hard on the credit card, but I didn’t have much time, and now I needed to be back in the afternoon in time for Phil’s tutorial. I’d told Carrie to let people know I was researching security systems at our sister institutions, which was at least partially true. I was scheduled to meet with Gail Wallace at the Massachusetts Book Club, a private library in Boston.

  On the short flight, I found my thoughts drifting to Charles. Thinking about him was like poking a sore tooth: it was painful but hard to stop. I had trouble being objective about him when he’d made me feel like such a fool. I didn’t mind getting kicked around in my love life—I was a big girl, I had gotten involved with Charles with my eyes wide open, and those were the breaks. I could handle that. But when he started messing with the Society, undermining an institution whose sole purpose was to preserve and protect the remnants of the past, I got mad. Nell Pratt, guardian of the gates, keeper of the flame, protector o
f the departed, and their treasures and reputations. I was ready to fight for truth, justice, and the American way. Don’t mess with the Society, bub, or you’ll have to answer to me.

  I dragged my mind away from Charles and back to Gail Wallace, who seemed to be a more likely candidate to share gossip than Diane had been. The last time I had seen Gail had been at a fundraising seminar a couple of years ago. After we had suffered through an endless series of droning discussions about database management programs, multipart mailings, and event planning, ad nauseam, punctuated by inedible meals in airless function rooms, a number of us had retreated to the hotel bar and swapped development horror stories until they closed the place. I remembered that Gail relished the telling of a juicy anecdote, especially if she had an eager audience. I was prepared to be eager.

  I arrived at the library promptly at eleven. I played out my spiel, dutifully took notes about the security system vendors Gail had interviewed; we wandered through the building, noting the carefully concealed spy cameras, the limited means of egress, the process for tracking who was in the building and who had left. Even if she ultimately kept silent about any tasty gossip, I was learning a heck of a lot about institutional security, which I hoped would come in handy. As the tour wound down, I said, “Gail, that was great—exactly what I needed. How about I take you out to lunch, to pay you back?”

  She grinned at me. “I thought you’d never ask. What do you feel up for?”

  “Hey, it’s your city—you choose.”

  “Expense account?”

  I gulped. “Sure—but remember I work for a nonprofit, just like you.”

  “I hear you. Okay, follow me.”

  Gail led the way down Beacon Hill and into the Back Bay, and she guided me to a charming small restaurant on Newbury Street. Once we were seated, she gave me a long look. “You didn’t get in touch with me just to talk about security, did you?”

  “No,” I replied. “There’s something else, now that we’re off-site.”

  “That’s what I figured.” She waved at a waiter and ordered a drink. I stuck to iced tea, but I hoped that alcohol would make it easier for me to direct her conversation along the lines I needed.

  “So, Gail,” I started again, “nobody’s stormed your gates since you put in this wonderful magic electronic system?”

  Gail was ogling a thirty-something banker type who was standing at the bar with some buddies. “What? Oh, no, it works just fine. We’d been having some little problems with things vanishing, but it stopped cold, maybe six, seven years ago. You know, if we could just pay our staff better, they wouldn’t feel the need to walk out with our stuff.”

  “You have a problem with staff pilfering?” I tried to sound appropriately incredulous.

  “Oh, don’t play dumb. You mean you don’t have the same problem?”

  I thought I’d do just that—play dumb—to be safe. “Hey, that’s not my department, that’s collections’ problem. I just use what they tell me in my proposals.”

  Gail snorted. “Don’t ask, don’t tell, huh? Well, babe, it goes on everywhere. Sometimes it’s bigger and better stuff, that’s all.” Her glass was empty, and she signaled for another drink. Since the banker had ignored her come-hither looks, she shifted her attentions to a tweedier collegiate type a few tables away. I thought I had better get my questions about Charles in before Gail became totally inebriated, or her longing gazes snared some hapless male.

  “Wasn’t Charles Worthington running your place a few years ago?” I probed.

  Gail dragged her gaze back to me, reluctantly. “Sure was. That’s right—he’s your boss now, correct? I could tell you a few things about ol’ Charlie.”

  Exactly what I wanted to hear. I put on my best gossip face and leaned forward. “Ooh, spill it!”

  “You plan to hit him up for a raise or something?”

  No, Gail, I intend to feed him to the FBI as a felon. “You never know. But he’s quite a charmer, isn’t he?”

  “Ha!” Gail’s eyes wandered again. “Well, Barbara Kensington certainly thought so.”

  It took a few moments for my mental database to crank out just who Barbara Kensington was: the current director of the Book Club—and Gail’s boss. I put on what I hoped was a shocked expression. “You don’t mean . . . were they?”

  Gail nodded vigorously. “Oh yeah, big time. All the time. You know Barbara?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve seen her a couple of times, but I’ve never talked with her. But—she’s got to be pushing sixty, and, uh, not exactly a babe.” That was being kind: Barbara was short, shapeless, and plain as a post. She had an excellent reputation as a scholar and administrator, but no one had ever said she had a life outside of her job.

  “Yeah, I figure that’s why she fell so hard. You know, repressed virgin or whatever. Charles came along and swept her off her feet, sweet-talking her, taking her out, wining and dining—the whole nine yards. Hey, for a while there she almost looked pretty. It got kind of embarrassing; in staff meetings she’d give him these gooey gazes and defer to him all the time. For the love of God, she was practically simpering, which sure isn’t her usual style. I swear, that man turned her brain to mush.”

  Gail had my full attention. “So what happened?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. One day they were all lovey-dovey, and then suddenly he was gone—had a new job somewhere else. Boy, was she a pain to live with for the next few months, even though she stepped into his shoes. Everybody at the place was tiptoeing around, scared to death of her. If you looked at her cross-eyed, she’d bite your head off.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Yeah, right.” Gail focused on her empty glass in front of her. “But you know the worst part? He was two-timing her.”

  “Huh?” I was rapidly exhausting my witty repartee.

  She leaned forward over the table and dropped her voice. “I saw him in a restaurant one night—he didn’t see me. He was with another woman, and he was dripping charm all over her, and she was eating it up with a spoon. Funny thing was, she wasn’t a babe, either, kind of middle-aged and plain. A lot like Barbara, come to think of it. What is it with this guy—he goes for pathetic older women?”

  Yeah, like me, I reflected grimly. “Maybe he was just doing a little donor cultivation?” It was the best thing I could come up with. It’s what I’d told myself, after all.

  “Right,” she snorted. “Very up close and personal. Say, has he been working his way through the society dames of Philadelphia?”

  I wasn’t about to say anything. “Got me. I don’t run in those circles. He’s certainly been a big help with our fundraising—our last president was a disaster. Had no tact and no social radar at all. Hey, shouldn’t we think about ordering food? I’m starving.”

  She looked at me. “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  The food was good, and Gail ordered another martini. After declining dessert, I was trying to figure out how to make my escape without insulting her—although I wasn’t sure she’d notice if I wasn’t there—when she fixed me with a bleary eye.

  “That Charles—he sure was something.”

  She looked almost wistful, and I had a sudden, awful thought. “Were you two . . . ?”

  “Yeah. It was great while it lasted.” Her gaze sharpened as she looked at me. “You?”

  I sighed but figured I owed her a nod.

  Gail raised her glass to me. “Welcome to the club.” Then she drained the glass.

  I wondered how much of this conversation she would remember. Since her glass was officially empty, I convinced her that it was time to go. Luckily there were taxis cruising on Boylston Street, so I got her into a cab and pointed in the right direction. I stood on the pavement, watching the cab disappear, and felt sad and foolish. And then mad. Charles was a cad, a rat, a scoundrel . . . I couldn’t find an adequate vocabulary, even dipping into Dickensian adjectives. But no way was I going to let him get away with it any longer—and I had the means to stop him.

&nbs
p; I caught my plane back and after retrieving my car from the lot, I took off for Marty’s house in the thick of rush-hour traffic. Phil was already there when I arrived, and Libby arrived soon afterward.

  Phil had brought us an amazing array of tiny toys and was delighted to show us how they worked. We spent an hour playing with them, interrupted only when Marty sent out for pizza. Marty’s row house was large enough that we could test varying distances, and the reception was excellent from anywhere within the building. We also made sure we knew how to activate the recorder, since we might have only one chance to get this right, and we didn’t want to blow it because we didn’t know which button to push.

  The bugs were simple—tiny disks with sticky stuff on one side. I could keep them in my pocket easily and stick them on the underside of something with no problem. That was the least of my worries.

  Shortly before eight I stood up. “I’d better get going. Wish me luck, ladies.”

  “Go get ’em, Nell!”

  CHAPTER 25

  It was dark when I left Marty’s house and drove slowly toward Charles’s, and traffic had thinned out. I went around the block a few times until I began to wonder if the police would think I was casing the place. There was only one light on downstairs. I certainly hoped he didn’t have another woman there, but I didn’t think even he could find another dupe that fast, especially if he thought he had Libby on his line. Finally I parked, walked with heavy feet to his stoop, and rang the doorbell.

  He opened the door quickly. I stood on the step below him, looking up at him. Casually dressed, by his standards—which meant he’d taken off his silk tie and his collar was unbuttoned—he looked tired. But he still looked good, even though I knew what a rat he was.