Fundraising the Dead

by Connolly, Sheila

  I thought about looking at my watch to see how long I had been sitting here, trapped, but that would be a waste of precious flashlight power, and it had probably been no more than half an hour anyway. So, Nell, let’s examine the curious question of why Doris locked you in the wine cellar.

  What did I really know about Doris Manning? She was at least ten years older than I was, and had worked here ever since Charles had started. Had he brought her with him from an earlier job? I couldn’t remember. She was very good at her job, and she was in a position to know everything about the building and operations. She had never married, and she obviously worshipped Charles—it was clear every time she looked at him. It was something of a joke among the rest of the staff. Although to be fair, Charles did nothing to encourage her; he just accepted her adoration as his due. She would do anything for him . . .

  Like kill?

  Oh my. I started to run the mental video of the gala. Had I seen Doris then? She had been invited, of course, but she was such an invisible sort of person that no one paid her much attention. She could have been there throughout, or she could have slipped out and done almost anything—including kill Alfred. He knew her and would’ve had no reason to be afraid of her. Doris could have asked him to check something in the stacks, maybe for a member, and he would have followed her willingly. Even eagerly—anything to get away from that party he hated. And it wouldn’t have taken much strength to whack Alfred on the head with something heavy or to shove him into the metal bookshelves. Based on the push she had given me, I had no reason to question Doris’s strength. And nothing ever ruffled her—she would have walked calmly away from Alfred’s cooling corpse and gone about her business, without a hair out of place.

  But why? What possible motive could she have to kill Alfred? But for that matter, what motive could she have to lock me in here? It had to come back to her adoration of Charles. No doubt she would have picked up some whispers of missing documents. We all knew she tip-toed around the place eavesdropping on conversations. Maybe she’d overheard me talking with Alfred. Heck, for all I knew, she was Charles’s fence. Somebody had to arrange for negotiations with those under-the-radar collectors, and I knew for a fact that Charles was clueless when it came to computer programs, let alone mailing packages. Doris always handled it all for him. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me.

  The question I really didn’t want to ask myself was, what did Charles know? He couldn’t have known how much Alfred knew, because Alfred hadn’t told anyone except me, and then Marty. Even so, what had Charles thought when he heard that Alfred was dead? Did he never once consider that faithful Doris might have been involved? Or had he carefully avoided even thinking about it?

  Which at the moment was moot. How the hell was I going to prove any of this, locked in the basement? Knowing Doris, she would purge all records of anything remotely incriminating, if she hadn’t already. By the time anyone found me, all the evidence would be long gone. Did she know that Marty knew the whole story? I went around and around with my reasoning. If I had really loved Charles, how far would I have gone along with his schemes? Luckily I would never have the chance to find out: the only thing I had done right lately was to dump him. At least my moral compass seemed to be working. I wasn’t so sure about my brain.

  When I had said good-bye to Charles, I had said I wanted something more in my life than he was willing to offer. I guess what I meant was someone. I had opened my mouth and that was what had come out, unscripted. Did I believe it? I did. I thought of Alfred, all but caressing Cassandra, his computer, and gathering his little trinkets in his small apartment. Or Doris, giving everything she had to her low-level job and worshipping the man she worked for, who took her slavish devotion as his due without giving her a second thought. What did I want? I liked my job, loved history and tending the bits and pieces of it that had survived. But I had to admit, it would be nice if there was someone who cared about me. Someone who would notice if I went missing for a few days—or forever.

  I don’t know how long I sat there in the dark, just thinking. I might have shed a few tears about the abysmal mess I’d made of things. Every now and then I worried about the air, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. There wasn’t enough room to get comfortable, but I thought I remembered that the air would be better down low. Or maybe that was in case of fire. Still, I might as well lie down and conserve energy. I put my purse under my head for a pillow, wrapped my wool jacket around me, and curled up in a fetal position to wait.

  CHAPTER 31

  I must have slept, because the next thing I knew, the tiny room was flooded with light, and somebody was feeling for a pulse in my neck. Startled, I lashed out.

  “Are you all right?” Ah, the gravelly voice of Agent James Morrison. Thank God!

  I stopped flailing. “Yes. Yes! Get me out of here.” Back to light and air and freedom—please!

  Strong hands reached in and hauled me to my feet. Upright, I found that my legs had gone to sleep, and as I fell forward, James’s arms came around me to hold me up. The sudden shift from total darkness to light blinded me, so I buried my face in his chest and kept my eyes shut. I was also sucking in great gasps of air, which made it hard to talk. And I was shaking from cold, and shock, and reaction. While I waited for the storm to pass, I took a quick inventory: breathing—yes, and getting better; legs—rubbery; brain—definitely fuzzy. Finally, I felt I could breathe normally and I pried my eyelids up. James was still holding on to me, and Marty was dancing around the pair of us anxiously. I didn’t have any desire to move.

  “Nell, are you all right?” His voice rumbled in his chest, under my ear. “Are you hurt? Do you need a doctor?”

  “I’m okay, really,” I managed. “What day is this?”

  “Monday. Morning.” He stepped back enough to look at my face, his hands still on my arms, holding me up—and I still needed holding up.

  My brain was beginning to come back to life. “Marty, I didn’t know when you’d get my message, or what you’d do about it.” Reluctantly I peeled myself away from James’s broad chest so I could stand on my own two feet. “We have a lot to talk about. But right now I want a bathroom and food, in that order.”

  “You sure you’re all right?” James used his now-free hand to tilt my chin up and look in my eyes. He looked worried, and that made me feel warmer.

  “Yes. And I think I’ve figured things out, but I don’t want to talk about it until we can sit down and do it all at once. First things first.”

  “Then let’s get you upstairs.” James escorted me to the door and toward the elevator, his hand still on my arm. I didn’t complain. I made a beeline for the nearest restroom, leaving James standing uncertainly in the hallway, and ignoring the startled looks from the one or two staff members around. Inside I did what was necessary, then contemplated my reflection in the mirror. I splashed water on my face and ran my fingers through my hair. Not bad, Nell, all things considered. A bit pale, maybe. My clothes looked like they had been slept in, which they had. I checked my watch: eight thirty. I picked a few bits of brittle old paper off my slacks and pulled my jacket into place.

  When I emerged from the loo, my saviors were waiting in the hall, looking anxious. I announced, in no uncertain terms, “Food now, and lots of coffee. Then talk.”

  “The Doubletree,” James said with authority. Good choice—it was right down the block, which was about as far as I thought I could walk at the moment. He held the heavy front door of the Society open for me and Marty, then shortened his stride to accommodate me as we walked the half block toward Broad Street. Once inside, he commandeered a table in the dining room and ordered one of everything on the menu while I gulped down a full glass of water. Coffee miraculously appeared before I finished the glass, and I added sugar to my cup and started on that.

  I was beginning to feel human again. “While we’re waiting for food, please tell me how you figured out where to find me.”

  Marty answered
first. “I was out all day yesterday, and I didn’t get home ’til late, so I didn’t check my messages until this morning! I’m so sorry about that. And I had my cell with me, but it wasn’t even turned on—I keep forgetting about it. When I heard finally heard your messages, I started calling you at home and on your cell, and you didn’t answer, and that didn’t seem right. Then I called Charles.”

  That was one call I would like to have heard. “What the heck did you ask him?”

  “Oh, I was cool. I asked if he’d seen you or talked to you yesterday, and he said no, he had his kids this weekend, and they’d been out sightseeing or some such.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Yeah, because I could hear a computer game in the background. So I said thanks a lot and hung up, fast. Then I called Jimmy.”

  I glanced at James—he was still watching me as though he expected me to keel over any minute. “And what did you think?”

  “I thought we should track you down. Tried the GPS on your phone, but no luck.”

  “I know—I tried to call out, but, surprise, there’s no reception in the basement of the building. So then what?”

  “Marty said you mentioned Doris, so we tried to call her—no answer. So the two of us got together and headed over to the Society.”

  Hot and plentiful food appeared. I started forking up scrambled eggs almost before the server had set down the plate. With a full mouth I mumbled, “How did you get in?”

  “I’ve got all the keys.” Triumphantly Marty held up a loaded key ring. “And I do mean all of them. They were Daddy’s keys.”

  I swallowed. “And you remembered the wine cellar?”

  “Eventually. We started with the third floor—damn, I was scared we’d find you where you found Alfred. And then we looked in the upstairs stacks, although there’s no place there to hide a human, dead or alive. We even looked in the dumbwaiter that runs between the floors. And when we didn’t find you up there, we started for the basement. Remind me to tell the board we really need to do something about the mess down there. And, yes, I knew about the wine cellar because Daddy used to talk fondly about the good old days, when the building was new. Not that he was old enough to remember, but his father must have told him. Then it took me a while to figure out which key opened it, but I did, and voila! There you were, thank goodness. Okay, your turn.”

  The food on my plate had vanished, and I started in on the pastries in the center of the table, with another cup of coffee. “I had plenty of time to think yesterday, or last night, or whenever it was. I told you Doris called me at home and said that Charles had found something at the Society that I really needed to see. I thought he was going to try to make us believe that he’d located the missing items, or at least some of them, so I decided to go along with it. But something didn’t feel right—that’s why I called you, Marty. I figured somebody should know where I was going.”

  “Thank goodness!” Marty actually looked humbled.

  “So I let myself in and went upstairs. There was nobody around except Doris, who was waiting for me. She said Charles was downstairs, and she took me down to the basement.”

  “And no Charles?” There was a hint of steel in James’s voice.

  “No. Doris headed straight for the back room downstairs, where a light was on. She said Charles was waiting in there for me, but when I went to look, she gave me a shove and locked the door behind me.”

  We all fell silent, contemplating the awful what-might-have-been. I didn’t stop eating, however. I had three meals to make up. When the last of the pastries had disappeared, I said, “Well, before I went to sleep”—or passed out, I thought—“the conclusion I came to was that I really don’t think Charles knew I was there. I think it was all Doris’s idea. And I think she may have killed Alfred.”

  James managed to look both bewildered and frustrated—no easy feat. Marty just looked mad. “Doris, that spineless drip?” she said. “Why on earth do you believe that?”

  “Think about it. She knew all about the wine cellar. In fact, I’m willing to bet there’s not much she doesn’t know about the Society—she’s a snoop. And I know she was the one who pushed me in there; there was no one else around, and nowhere to hide in that room. And as you’ve noticed, she has a nasty habit of listening in on conversations. Let’s say she happened to overhear Alfred and me talking about the missing items, and she decided to nip the problem in the bud. Alfred probably trusted her—he had no reason not to—so maybe she came to him during the gala and told him she needed his help in the stacks, whatever, it doesn’t matter why. So he followed her, and all she would’ve had to do was get behind him and hit him with something, or even just shove him so he hit his head on something, and that would be that. It wouldn’t take a lot of strength, would it, James?”

  Now he looked grim. “No, not really, if you hit him in the right place. And left him there to bleed to death. Either the scalp wound or cranial bleeding would have done the job, and she knew nobody was going to come poking around the stacks that night. Did you see her at the party?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I recall, but she’s kind of an unnoticeable person. She just fades into the woodwork, if you know what I mean. I don’t think anyone would have noticed whether or not she was there.”

  “Say I buy that,” James said slowly. “Why would she kill Alfred, and try to kill you?”

  “Because she’s in love with Charles, and she knows what he is up to.” That silenced both of them. I noted that neither one of them was arguing with me. “Marty, you’ve seen the way she looks at him. Is it so hard to imagine that she would kill in order to protect him? I don’t think she has much else in her life. Alfred was a threat to everything she cared about. And so was I, because Alfred confided in me, and then I wouldn’t let it go. Maybe she would have gone after you next.”

  “Do you think Charles knows what Doris did?” James kept his voice level.

  I answered slowly. “I don’t know. He may have guessed about how she felt about him, but he probably found that convenient. Do I think he asked her to do his dirty work for him, or that he knew or guessed what she was doing? I can’t say. But if he did figure it out, after the fact, no doubt he realized that to implicate her would only throw a spotlight on his own activities. Maybe he even worried that she’d give him up in order to save herself if it came down to it. Maybe he hoped the police would just chalk Alfred’s death up to an accident, which is exactly what they did.”

  We all fell silent, working through the various ramifications of what I had said. Finally James broke the spell. “I think we need to have a conversation with Doris. And with Charles.”

  I nodded. “I think you’re right. But do we bring the police in now?”

  He regarded me levelly. “I think we’ll have to, but let’s talk to Doris first. I am obligated to point out that the only crime we have any evidence of at the moment is Doris’s attempt to kill you, and even that isn’t clear—it would be her word against yours.”

  We stared at each other for several beats. He was right: if I accused Doris, there was no way to be sure that a charge of attempted murder would stick, and there was still no guarantee that we could prove she was Alfred’s killer. And frankly I wasn’t sure that the Society could recover from the double whammy of a murder plus grand larceny splashed across the headlines. While my construction of the plot had seemed perfectly logical when I worked it out in the silent darkness of the wine cellar, I wasn’t sure if it would stand up under scrutiny. But there was one way to find out.

  “Let’s go talk to Doris.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Back at the Society, Marty, James, and I hurried up to the third floor. I was not surprised to find that Doris was not at her desk; Charles wasn’t at his, either. I retrieved Doris’s address; she lived within walking distance in nearby Society Hill. “What if she’s not home?”

  “We’ll deal with that when we come to it.”

  It took no more than fifteen minutes to wa
lk the mile or so to Doris’s address. I was torn between the need to find out if I was right about what had happened, and the reluctance to confront Doris. We walked up the two flights of the nineteenth-century brick row house, now apartments; Doris’s apartment was on the top floor. James rapped authoritatively on the door as Marty and I hung back. Inside, there were footsteps; the peephole darkened briefly, and then multiple bolts were shot back. The door opened.

  Doris was neatly dressed, every hair in place. She took a long time studying us: first me, then James, then a quick look at Marty. Then she stepped back. “Come in, please. Can I get you some coffee?”

  I squashed an urge to giggle. Doris, my would-be murderer, was pretending this was a social occasion. But then, I wasn’t sure what the proper etiquette for an accusation of murder might be. I decided to let James handle this—he had a lot more experience than I did.

  He stepped into the short hallway. “No, thank you, Ms. Manning. We need to talk with you. You weren’t at work today.”

  Doris sniffed. “Miss, if you don’t mind. Mr. Worthington gave me the day off. I’ll be happy to talk with you.” She turned on her heel and led us to a small living room, its windows overlooking the street. We distributed ourselves among the chairs. “What did you want to talk about?” Very cool and unruffled. I felt a tingle of alarm.

  James began. “Can you tell us what happened yesterday afternoon at the Society?”

  She glanced at me. “Of course. Mr. Worthington asked me to call Miss Pratt. He wanted her to see something he had discovered in the basement. I called her, and she arrived an hour or so later.”

  “And then what?”

  “I escorted her to the basement.”

  “Where was Mr. Worthington?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “He was not in the building?”