Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3)

by Sheila Connolly

  I turned to Joseph Logan, head of Schuylkill Construction, who’d been invited to witness the final board vote. “Thank you, Mr. Logan, for all the work that you’ve put into this so far. We look forward to working with you—as long as you stick to the schedule.”

  Logan smiled. “Don’t worry—it’s all under control. And you’ve got a great building here, so I don’t expect to find many problems.”

  I knew full well that digging into any old building usually resulted in at least a few unexpected problems, but I had faith that they would be minor ones. At least, I hoped so. Hadn’t we had enough problems in the past year? We should have earned some good karma by now.

  “Any new business?” I asked the group.

  One of our older, more scholarly board members raised his hand. “How do you intend to prioritize projects going forward, when we have our own cataloging to do, plus the FBI materials, and now our space will be reduced?”

  “Our vice president of collections, Latoya Anderson, has worked out a schedule to deal with that, and I have every expectation that she will run a tight ship,” I told him. “Of course, our own collections come first—there’s no particular timeline for the FBI materials. I didn’t ask her to attend this meeting because I wanted to focus on the construction aspects, but I can have her forward you a copy of her plans. Anything else?”

  “How do you plan to handle dust spreading through the building?” someone else asked.

  “Fair question. When we reach the stage of adding modern ventilation, we will address protecting the collections then. That’s why we’ve hired people who have worked under these conditions before, and they all have excellent reputations.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been better to remove the collections to an off-site location?” he asked.

  I swallowed a sigh; we’d been over all this before. “We did consider that, but off-site storage presents its own problems—we’d have little control over the physical conditions, and security is not always what it should be, no matter what promises the storage companies make. We’re talking about some priceless documents, among other things, and we’d rather keep them here, even if it means shuttling them from one location to another within the building.”

  I scanned the group, and saw most of them making twitchy ready-to-leave motions. “And remember, when we’re done, we will actually have increased our storage space without expanding the building’s footprint, thanks to installing compact shelving wherever possible. I can’t tell you exactly by how much, because the contractor is still assessing the load-bearing capacity of some of the areas, but I have been assured that it will be substantial.”

  Lewis Howard, the venerable board chair, stood up. “Thank you, Nell, for all the good work you have put into making this happen. If there are no other issues”—he looked sternly at the other people around the table, and nobody opened their mouth—“then I declare this meeting adjourned. Good night, all.”

  The board members gathered up their folders and coats and hurried to the elevator. I thanked the architect and the contractor, who told me they’d be back early the next morning for a final walk-through before the physical work began. Finally I was left alone with Marty Terwilliger, a longtime board member (practically hereditary, since both her father and her grandfather had been very actively involved at the Society) and good friend, both professionally and personally.

  “Good job wrangling the board, Nell,” she said.

  “Thanks. It did go well, don’t you think?”

  “I do. Of course, they had nothing to complain about, since you brought in Wakeman’s pile of money. Which you earned, since you helped save his butt on his pet project.”

  “In a way, I’m glad he restricted how it should be used. He had a pretty clear idea what we needed to do here, and it saved a lot of squabbling among the board members.”

  “He’s a smart man, and an honest one. If you throw a big bash, make sure you invite him—and that he comes.”

  I’d certainly ask, although I knew that Mitchell Wakeman didn’t like socializing much. “Of course.”

  Marty glanced at the clock on the wall and stood up. “I’m heading out. You ready? We can walk out together.”

  I nodded. “Let me grab my stuff.” I went back to my office down the hall, picked up my bag, put on my coat, and rejoined her in the hall after turning out the last few lights.

  “How’re you and Jimmy liking the new place?” Marty asked as we headed out. “Jimmy” was FBI special agent James Morrison, who had somehow gotten sucked into several crimes that I was also involved in, and since we were both single and intelligent and reasonable human beings, the inevitable had happened and a couple of months earlier we had bought a house together. Marty had a proprietary interest in our relationship because James was some kind of cousin of hers (one of many in the greater Philadelphia area) and because she’d introduced us and seen us both through some traumatic events. She was a snoop, but a polite and well-meaning one, and she was willing to back off if asked.

  For the past decade, I’d been living in Bryn Mawr, in what had once been a carriage house behind one of the big Main Line houses. It had been cheaply converted before I bought it, and I’d spent a couple of years improving it. It was small, but it had worked for me.

  And then James had happened, and the carriage house simply wasn’t big enough for two. And he didn’t want to live way out in the suburbs. When we first met, his own place was a Spartan apartment near the University of Pennsylvania, a converted triple-decker. As in my case, it suited him but it wasn’t intended for two adults with decades’ worth of stuff. So we’d taken the plunge and bought a Victorian in an area that wasn’t quite city or suburb but the best of both.

  “You know, I’m really not settled into this commute to Chestnut Hill yet. I don’t want to drive every day. I’m still trying to figure out the daily train schedule—I had the one to Bryn Mawr memorized, but this one is new to me. I catch a ride with James when I can, but his schedule is kind of unpredictable.” We’d been living in the house only a month, once all the closing formalities had been completed and we’d written checks with a horrifying number of digits on them, and we still hadn’t established any kind of routine. But if that was the worst of my problems, I wasn’t going to gripe. “Eliot waiting for you tonight?”

  Marty and Eliot Miller, the Penn professor she’d been seeing, were moving more slowly than James and I were, and still maintained their own domiciles. Marty lived in a lovely nineteenth-century row house in a convenient Center City location—the better to walk over to the Society when the spirit moved her, which was often—and I had no idea where Eliot lived. He taught urban planning at the University of Pennsylvania, though, so I figured he probably lived not far from campus. Marty and I hadn’t discussed their long-term plans, and she was volunteering little information, maybe afraid she would jinx the fledgling relationship. She had a couple of failed marriages on her résumé.

  “Not tonight—he had an all-hands faculty meeting, and I had this, so we decided we’d see each other tomorrow. How’s Lissa working out?”

  Lissa Penrose was one of Eliot’s advisees as she worked on a graduate degree. “Great. I’ve asked her to review the history of this building. She’ll be working with Shelby, too.”

  Shelby had taken over my previous position as director of development at the Society when I’d been abruptly elevated to the position of president, and we worked well together. Her dash of Southern charm had proved to be an asset when wangling contributions from our members. She had submitted a brief report on contributions and attended this meeting for purely ceremonial purposes, as a senior staff member, but had disappeared quickly while I was still saying my farewells to the board members. “I’m hoping we can put together some material on interesting building details, to use for fund-raising.”

  We closed up the building behind us, making sure the security system was armed, and said good-bye at the foot of the stairs outside. Marty headed home, and I crossed
the street and retrieved my car from the lot. At least this parking fee I could charge to the Society. At this time of night there was little traffic, and it didn’t take long to reach home.

  Home. I had trouble wrapping my head around that. The house was gorgeous, and I still tiptoed around it waiting for someone to tell me I wasn’t worthy of it and throw me out. It had a parlor. It had five bedrooms. It was ridiculous for two people, but James had fallen for it on sight, and I had, too, when he showed it to me. And we could afford it, mostly. Neither the government nor mid-sized nonprofit organizations pay very well, but we were managing, albeit with not much with the way of furniture. But now it was . . . home.

  I parked in the spacious three-car garage, then made my way to the back door, which led into the kitchen. “Hello?” I called out. “I’m home.”

  I could hear James galumphing down the stairs (original woodwork! Never painted!), and then he joined me in the kitchen (which had a modern stove that terrified me with its array of knobs and digital indicators). As he approached I marveled once again that this tall, dark (well, greying a bit), and handsome—and smart and successful—FBI agent had fallen for me. “How’d it go? Have you eaten?” Rather than waiting for an answer, he gave me a very satisfying kiss. I was definitely enjoying coming home these days.

  When he finally let me go, I said, “I’ll answer question number two first: no. What is there?”

  “Check the fridge. I think there are still leftovers.”

  “I’m afraid of the fridge. I keep thinking I’ll start looking in there and I’ll never find my way out again.” I walked over to the gleaming expanse of stainless steel, opened the door, and peered in. “I see . . . Ooh, Chinese. How old is it?”

  “Three days, maybe?”

  “Good enough.” I dumped a half-full carton of lo mein into a bowl and stuck it in the microwave. “As for the first question, fine. No surprises. The next couple of months will be chaotic, but we’ll survive. Wine?”

  “Way ahead of you.” James handed me a glass of white wine, and we clinked glasses.

  “Ahh, that’s good,” I sighed after downing a healthy sip and kicking off my shoes.

  He carefully took my glass and set it on the shiny granite-topped island—and repeated his earlier greeting. It took a couple of minutes before we peeled ourselves apart. “Welcome home, Nell,” he said softly.

  “You must have missed me. How was your day?”

  “Very ordinary, thank you. That’s a good thing. No crises, no disasters. I filed a lot of reports.”

  “And here I thought that working for the FBI was exciting,” I said, pulling the hot food out of the microwave. “Where did we hide the chopsticks?”

  “That drawer? Or maybe the one over there. I haven’t seen them lately.”

  Our few pitiful utensils looked like orphans cringing in the vast spaces of drawers and cupboards. It didn’t take long to look. “Got ’em. I assume you ate? Because this is all mine.”

  “I did, and it is. Enjoy.”

  When I’d all but licked the bowl, I drained the last of my wine. “Much better.”

  “By the way, the faucet is still dripping in the bathtub.”

  “Hey, you’re the big, strong man—you’re supposed to know how to fix it.”

  “You’re the historian,” he countered. “This is definitely Victorian plumbing, therefore old, therefore your territory.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said dubiously. “Well, let’s go look at it together, and maybe something will occur to us.”

  On the way upstairs, something did occur to us. It was a while before we reached the bathroom.

  • • •

  As we walked down the hall, Scott asked, “Do you want to start at the top or the bottom?”

  “Top, I guess,” I told him. “Although you don’t have to point out all the leaks—I know them all too well.” There were some areas of the stacks on the top floor that were draped with plastic, to keep the collections dry, and it broke my heart every time I went up there. But that was going to change, thank goodness. “You mind walking up?”

  “Of course not.”

  We took the side stairs up to the top floor, and meandered through the forest of shelves, which held a wide variety of items—books, of course, often old leather-bound ledgers from nineteenth-century companies long gone, but also boxes that held china and fabric items and various oddities that had been given to the Society over its long history and we’d never had the time or the heart to get rid of (at least, not as long as any of the donors or their heirs were still living). It was an intriguing jumble, but its storage was unprofessional and messy—another thing that would change soon.

  It was a blessing to have an excuse to overhaul everything in the building, even though it was going to be a heck of a lot of work. Collecting institutions like ours acquired stuff over decades or even centuries, but there were seldom enough staff members to manage said stuff, which meant that sometimes it wasn’t cataloged fully and accurately or stored in an archivally appropriate manner. Mainly, something would arrive, the donor would receive a nice thank-you note, and unless the item was of significant historical interest (and to be fair, a few of those did pop up from the most unlikely donors), a brief note would be entered in our computerized cataloging system and the item would get stuck on a shelf, wherever there was room for it. Sometimes that remained the status quo for years.

  Now that we were going to have to move these items, we’d have a chance to sort through all of the accumulation and redistribute much of it throughout the building. Some things we would likely dispose of, discreetly. Other things we might discover needed conservation, which was beyond our staff’s skills, so they’d be sent out for treatment. Yet more things would be consolidated, like with like, so we could more easily find them in the future. And everything would be cleaned along the way—that board member last night had been right to worry about dust, because we were looking at the dust of ages here. Maybe I should poll the staff for allergy sufferers and hand out dust masks. Or maybe I should trust the renovation team to have planned for all this and stop worrying.

  I was happy that Scott Warren proved to have an interest in historical objects, and he didn’t rush me through. We toured the top floor, then the portions of the third that weren’t given over to offices. The second floor housed the processing area and fewer stacks; the ground floor was the public space, with the sumptuous reading room, computers for public access, and open stacks—we didn’t plan any significant changes there. It was nearly noon by the time we made it to the basement, which was seldom visited by the staff, and never by the public.

  I hadn’t seen the lowest level lately. I’d had a regrettable experience with the former wine cellar down there some time ago, but I’d surprised myself by asking that the architect preserve it as a memorial to the original planners of the building. Nowadays there was no call for fine wines for the gentlemen who had once run this establishment along the lines of a private club, and in the past few years it had served only as storage. The rest of the basement space had until recently held a jumble of retired furniture and files. But now the files had been properly archived, and most of the usable furniture had been donated to a local charity. Anything else had ended up in the Dumpster (under the watchful eye of a member of the collections staff). As I looked around I realized how large the space actually was, and how we’d wasted its potential.

  “You’re putting shelving in here, too, right?” I asked Scott.

  “We are,” he replied. “Since this is the lowest level, it can easily tolerate the weight of that kind of shelving. It’s up to you to decide what you want to store down—it won’t be public space, right?”

  “Right, staff only. My staff and I will be discussing the best use for the space,” I told him, “but I’m sure it will be a big improvement. We won’t have a problem with damp, will we?”

  “No, it’s surprisingly dry. Well built, for its time. You know the history of the building?”

&nbs
p; “I know where to find it in our records, but I haven’t memorized it. What I do remember is that there used to be a nice large house here, but when the Society decided to expand they looked at the existing building and found that it was falling apart, not to mention inadequate for the growing collections, so they started fresh.”

  “Smart move,” Scott said, with an architect’s appreciation.

  We’d been alone in the basement, but now a workman stuck his head in the door and addressed Warren. “Hey, Scott? There’s something you’d better come see.”

  “Trouble?” he asked quickly.

  “Uh, I don’t really know. It’s kinda odd.”

  I felt the slightest hint of a knot in my stomach. We hadn’t even started construction. This could not possibly be a problem. Could it? Maybe we had vermin? Maybe toxic mold? I was still running through a menu of possible issues when Scott nudged me. “You okay? Let’s go check this out.”

  “Of course.” I followed the two men to a windowless room toward the back of the basement. As we walked, the man who had come to find us was saying, “So we hauled the last of the old cabinets and junk out yesterday—first time we’d seen the floor. Then we notice this wooden cap thing in the middle of the floor. Tight fit, looks like it’s been there forever. So we find us a pry bar and pull it up, and damned if there isn’t a hole going down who knows how far?”

  We’d reached the room in question, and it was easy to see the circular hole in the floor, about three feet in diameter. My first wild thought was to wonder if there was a dead body down there—clearly, I’d been through some rough times lately. I shook it off.