Fundraising The Dead

by Sheila Connolly

  CHAPTER 4

  The last guests trickled out the door after eleven, helped into their waiting cars or taxis by the security manager. It was nearly midnight when the caterer loaded the final crates of dirty dishes into his truck, and I handed him his hefty check and thanked him profusely, even as I noticed that his assistants were still folding chairs and rolling tables toward the loading dock. He’d done a good job, and we might want to use him again. The edible leftovers were stowed in the staff refrigerator for tomorrow’s lunch. The maintenance manager and a couple of helpers were busy moving the library tables back into position for the readers who would be arriving in ten hours. I thanked him for his help and headed out myself.

  The cool and bracing October night air cleared my head. It was only a few minutes to Charles’s house off Rittenhouse Square, and by day I would have walked, but it was late and I was wearing heels… so I treated myself to a taxi. It pulled up in front of the brick-fronted townhouse, and I dragged myself out. I lingered briefly on the pavement, looking up at the building’s façade, before ringing the bell. Even in the dark, Charles’s place was exquisite: early nineteenth-century glass in the multipaned windows, original door frames and window sashes, all meticulously maintained, gleaming with fresh paint. The street was quiet, lined with similar elegantly appointed houses. It more than suited Charles, who had outstanding taste in all areas, as far as I could determine. Including women, I reminded myself. Charles had been married once upon a time, and he and his wife had produced a brace of smart, quiet children, now in their teens, who lived in another state but visited at wide intervals to dutifully troop around the significant sights of the city. Their mother had agreed to an extremely amicable divorce, and having family money, had made few demands on Charles since their split. He reciprocated by diligently remembering the children’s birthdays, travelling to attend the major milestones in their lives, and generally ceding all responsibility to his amenable ex. Everyone seemed very happy with the situation, including me.

  I’d been married once myself, a million years ago-a college sweetheart, and we did the big wedding thing and lived happily ever after for about three years, at which point we decided we really didn’t have anything in common. When he was offered a good job in California, I think we both sighed with relief for the excuse to split up. He still sends Christmas cards, and I see him when I’m on the West Coast, which is almost never.

  After the divorce, I decided that I needed some stability in my life, so I bought myself a charming (that is, tiny) converted carriage house that sat behind one of the grand old estates west from the city on the Main Line in Bryn Mawr, where the power players of Philadelphia had moved when commuting by train was still new and exciting. I like to think of those upper-crust types having been delivered to the Victorian train stations-which somehow cling to precarious life-in carriages driven by their chauffeurs, or later in motor cars, greeting each other on the platform as they went off for another day of dabbling in banking and lunching at the club.

  But back to my carriage house: the grand house in front has long since been broken up into smaller units, and at the moment I think it houses a group of psychiatrists-the tenants seem to change every few years-but my little place is completely separate. When I bought it, it was barely livable: two rooms upstairs, two down, with minimal plumbing, antiquated wiring, and no insulation. The kitchen was nothing but a jumble of secondhand appliances shoved behind a screen in one corner. In the ten-plus years since I bought it, I’ve added a real kitchen, upgraded the plumbing, heating, and wiring, and filled it with funky, homey semi-antiques, the sort of stuff found at upscale yard sales in Bryn Mawr. Which is exactly where most of them came from, since after paying for the mortgage, and the second mortgage to cover the improvements, I didn’t have a whole lot left over. Small nonprofits don’t pay very well. But the little house was mine, and I loved it. And I loved being able to walk to the train station, since I took the train into the city most days (when I didn’t have a special event or other engagement to keep me in Center City), and I loved being able to leave the city behind at the end of the day and come home to the cool, leafy green suburbs, to the elegance of a bygone day (if you closed one eye and squinted).

  Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy spending time at Charles’s house. It was everything that mine was not: elegant, tasteful, clean (thanks to a series of cleaning personnel who came and went invisibly). He kept his immaculate black and white kitchen (dark granite counters, glossy white tile, halogen lights tucked out of sight so that the light seemed to emanate from the walls and ceiling) well stocked with delightful and expensive goodies, and there always seemed to be a bottle of champagne lurking at the back of the stainless-steel refrigerator. Sometimes it was hard to believe that a real person lived there, since it looked almost like a movie set-what some California director thought an upper-crust Philadelphia row house should look like. No matter: it was like playing dress-up for me anyway, only I was putting on a fancy house rather than fancy clothes.

  I rang the bell, and Charles opened the door promptly. He had been home long enough to divest himself of his jacket, vest, and tie, and his still-crisp white shirt was open at the neck, which for him was the height of casual. He stood courteously aside to let me come in, but as I passed by him, he lifted my hair off my neck and kissed my nape. I shivered, and not from the cold. He moved on to the kitchen, and I followed.

  “ Champagne?” He had already pulled a bottle out of the refrigerator and was peeling away the gold foil, twisting off the wire cage that held the cork. “I thought that went very well. Several of the board members said that they were going to write us nice checks-in fact, several did, and I had them left on your desk.” He mentioned that one new local CEO whom we had been courting for some time, who had come as the guest of a board member, had hinted at six figures, as long as we put his name on something. “Actually, I think it’s his wife who’s pushing him-thinks he needs a bit of class, now that he’s established here. I’m sure we can accommodate him.” He poured two glasses of champagne and handed me a flute threaded with lacy trails of minuscule bubbles-only the best French champagne, of course.

  “No problem. Let me know what he’s interested in, and I can work up a proposal. This tastes wonderful,” I said, sipping the wine, savoring the delicate tingle on my tongue. “God, I’m tired-it’s been a long week, and it’s going to be an early morning tomorrow with the staff meeting at eight.” I wandered toward Charles’s living room, then slipped off my party shoes and wiggled my toes happily, sinking them into the lush carpet.

  “Not too tired, I hope,” he countered. On anyone else, the look Charles gave me could best be described as a leer. On him, it looked like aristocratic passion. Intense, brooding, lascivious-what was it about Charles that made me want to multiply my syllables?

  “Not hardly, sir,” I responded flirtatiously. “Shall we go up?” Charles was already leading the way up the narrow but highly polished walnut staircase.

  “Would you like to use the bathroom first?” he asked.

  “You, sir, are a gentleman.” In his bedroom, I stripped down to my slip and made my way to the pseudo-Victorian bathroom. To an inexperienced eye, it would have looked exactly like an 1880 bathroom, which was the intent; to someone like me, who had put in many hours refinishing my own period bathroom, searching for replacements, stripping, sanding, and so on, it was clear that everything was a modern reproduction. But the ensemble drew on the best of the old and the new, and it worked. I washed my face and decided I could wait until morning for a shower. “Charles, where’s my nightgown?” I usually left one-an absurdly expensive Victoria ’s Secret silk number that I devoutly hoped made me look slinky-hanging on the hook in the bathroom, where, tonight, it was not.

  “Hmm? Perhaps Maria moved it.” Maria was the latest of his cleaning women, who all seemed to be called Maria. “Check in the drawers in the guest-room chest.” I padded down the short hall, barefoot, and found the nightgown neatly fol
ded in the third drawer I checked, along with my toothbrush. Apparently this new Maria had issues with unmarried ladies spending the night.

  I returned to Charles’s bedroom, suitably clad, or rather unclad, to find him comfortably ensconced in the king-size bed with a plethora of pillows, reading glasses (which he was far too vain to wear in public) perched on the end of his aquiline nose, reading a weighty tome. He put down the book as soon as I entered.

  “I see the lost is found-just in time to lose it again,” he said, carefully removing the reading glasses and pulling me to him. There followed a pleasant interlude. Well, more than pleasant. Charles approached sex the same way he approached all other aspects of his life: with grace, elegance, and charm. We were well matched in bed, and we both knew it. That was one area I didn’t question, although sometimes on a dark night, I wondered what he saw in me-I was smart and competent but not exactly young, nor exactly svelte or hard bodied. Charles professed to appreciate my maturity, however, and what he labeled “the opulence of my flesh.” Who was I to argue?

  It seemed to be enough for both of us. We didn’t harbor false expectations. I wasn’t looking for a husband, and if I had been, I’m not sure he would have been on the short list. If I was totally honest, I suspected I might be more enamored of Charles’s image, his lifestyle, what he represented, than the man himself. We were discreet about the relationship, whatever it was. But we shared an unvoiced feeling that it would be frowned upon at the Society if it were known that we were seeing each other, so we had been silent about it. Again, that suited me. I liked keeping work and play separate. Our attraction was not of the sort that would send us panting into each other’s arms in the stacks, overcome with lust. No, we were adults enjoying an amiable, low-commitment relationship, and that suited both of us just fine.

  And when we were finished with our inventive and completely satisfying bedroom activities, we would each retreat to our respective sides of the bed and sleep, to be ready to face another day of strenuous fundraising, arm in arm.

  But tonight there was that one niggling worm of doubt. Before I could drift off to my well-earned rest, I nudged Charles. “I need to tell you about something Marty Terwilliger said to me today.”

  Charles’s hand caressed my hair. “Sweet Nell, you worry far too much about your work. I’m sure it will keep until morning. Won’t it?”

  I fitted myself against his lean body. “I suppose. But remind me in the morning, will you?”

  I don’t think he heard me, because he was already asleep, and in minutes so was I.

  CHAPTER 5

  The day started badly, and there was no time to talk to Charles about missing collection items. Charles had neglected to set the alarm (could he have been distracted?). Luckily I woke up early anyway, then collected my scattered garments and showered and dressed in the change of clothes I’d brought with me, as quietly as I could. Charles stayed in bed, serving as an admiring audience.

  “Must you go so soon?”

  “Yes, I must, and you know why. We’ve got the wrap-up meeting early, and I wanted to pick up some goodies for the gang-you know they’re always friendlier when you feed them.” Following any major event, we always held a before-hours staff meeting in the morning at eight, so that everyone could unload whatever gossip they had heard or overheard while it was still fresh, and review the event as a whole-what had worked, what needed improvement before the next one. Besides, if I was going to demand that people show up early, the least I could do was to dangle some yummy carbohydrates in front of them, and there was an excellent French patisserie on the way to the Society. “And then Marty’s coming at nine-oh, shoot, I didn’t have time to tell you about that. I’ll fill you in later, okay?”

  “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 stac
ks. 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?”