Privy to the Dead

by Sheila Connolly

  “Oh, I do, believe me. But all I wanted was a simple answer: Do you have the records for the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society for the first decade of the twentieth century, and can I see them?”

  “The answer to both questions is yes, but they remain in paper form—they have not been digitized, largely because there has been little call to do so, and they are presently stored in a remote warehouse. I can order them up for you to be here sometime next week.”

  I didn’t want to wait, but did I have a choice? I summoned up my chief-executive-but-really-nice-lady voice and said sweetly, “Is there any possible way you could get them any more quickly? I hate to bother you, but it’s really important.” I lowered my voice. “There’s a police investigation involved.” Not exactly a falsehood, was it? When he started sputtering, I hurried to say, “Oh, it’s nothing that your bank has done. In fact, I’m hoping that your records will help us establish someone’s innocence.” I hoped he wasn’t going to ask me how a bank record from that early era was going to make that happen.

  He didn’t. “Well, of course we’ll do whatever we can to expedite their retrieval. After all, you’re one of our oldest and most respected clients. I’ll make a few calls, and if we’re very lucky, they could be in Philadelphia by, say, tomorrow afternoon? Will that be satisfactory?”

  “Oh, yes, more than satisfactory. I can’t thank you enough, and I’ll be sure you get the recognition you deserve for assisting in this matter. Please call me when you know when they’ll arrive. And I hope you’ll take the time to visit the Society—we have some wonderful original documents here pertaining to the early history of banking in Philadelphia, and I’m sure you’d be interested.” I was laying it on with a trowel.

  “I, er, um—that sounds delightful. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up, and I sat in my seat, smiling at how my silly, sexist strategy had gotten me what I wanted.

  Would the bank records show any unlikely inflows of cash? It might be instructive to compare the bank’s details of the cash flow in the construction account with Shelby’s contributions records. Or it might yield another big fat goose egg. Still, I could cross one more thing off my list.

  There were no further revelations that afternoon. James picked me up at five thirty. I let him navigate Philadelphia rush-hour traffic before I said, “May we have a hypothetical conversation?”

  “You mean a conversation about something hypothetical. Certainly.”

  “Excellent. Say, hypothetically, that we may have knowledge of an old crime, and all the parties involved are long dead, so they don’t care. And say we have a new crime, which may or may not be related. And we think it is possible that we have a weapon that may link the two. Except that we don’t actually ‘have’ it, but we think it exists. What should we do with this hypothetical information about the hypothetical crime or crimes?” I ended sweetly.

  James’s mouth twitched as he tried not to smile. “Could you be more oblique if you tried? More to the point, does this involve anything confidential or proprietary?”

  “Not right now, as far as I know.”

  He sighed. “You’ve found something more about this recent death, haven’t you?”

  No wonder James made such a good agent: he could read between the lines. “Marty and I think so. But we have little hard evidence.”

  “Then go ahead and tell me what it is you’re thinking.”

  I presented him with Henry’s new information about the gunpowder residue, and added my discovery of the cartridges in the pit, which I thought established the existence of a weapon—a specific weapon whose current whereabouts were unknown. I laid out our theory about the removal of the hypothetical weapon from the Society, Carnell Scruggs’s putative possession of it (if briefly), and the alternate scenarios for its seizure, which had resulted in his death. I pointed out which details I had given the police, and which I hadn’t. And then I sat back, shut up, and let James mull it over for a few miles.

  His first comment was, “The recent death—the only one the police care about—could be no more than a string of coincidences.”

  “We acknowledge that, which is why I haven’t gone back to them with this. I really don’t want the Philadelphia Police Department to see me as a crazy lady who keeps bothering them with wild theories.”

  “So what were you planning to do next?”

  “I’m holding another meeting with the inner circle of staff members tomorrow morning, where we will pool the results of our latest research. Marty and I have agreed that if we don’t turn up something of substance, we’ll cut it off. It’s not right to waste the Society’s time chasing wild geese.”

  “Will Martha let it go?” James asked.

  “I . . . don’t know. You know how she feels about her family, and this hits kind of close to home.”

  “I know. She was close to her father—he was a good man, and so was his father, based on all I’ve heard. I’m sure she doesn’t want to see his memory tarnished by finding that he was involved in a serious crime or a cover-up.”

  “You have any suggestions?”

  “Off the top of my head, only one: Have you tried contacting any gun collectors?”

  That hadn’t occurred to me. “No, but it’s a great idea. You know any?”

  “I might,” James said. “Let me make a call tomorrow.”

  A collector might know who’d be interested in that kind of antique weapon, I thought. Or who might buy one, if it turned up on the street. But then again, it might not be relevant.

  “You’re familiar with that weapon, right?” James asked.

  “I’ve never handled one, but I’ve seen pictures. Why?”

  “Because to someone like Carnell, it would look a lot like a modern weapon,” he told me. “I doubt that an unskilled laborer would look at it and say, ‘Ah, a rare and valuable antique!’ He’d be more likely to think, ‘Bet I could get some quick cash if I can find a buyer.’ Right?”

  “Good point, James,” I said. “Although whoever took it might still go to a dealer, if he recognized it for what it was, so it’s worth looking into local dealers. Can I ask, would it be valuable enough to kill for?”

  “It may be rare, but it’s not that important,” James said.

  That was what I had thought, but it was nice to have confirmation. “Which brings me back around to our hypothetical crime. Carnell found it by accident and took it because he thought he could sell it, but whoever stole it from him more likely wanted it to disappear again, for reasons not connected to its value. Otherwise, why would he have taken the escutcheon, too? You think our story hangs together?”

  “It’s possible, even if it’s a stretch. You’re going at this in the right way: you and your staff are looking at the earlier event, assuming it exists, where you have details that no one else would. What happened then may or not be related to what happened last week, but that’s not your business. Let the police handle that.”

  “And that’s exactly what I told Marty. But we could be helping by providing a motive.”

  “And Martha accepted that?”

  “I think so. For now. She kind of defines her own boundaries, doesn’t she?”

  “She is a force to be reckoned with,” James said solemnly.

  I allowed myself a small giggle, and then we lapsed into a comfortable silence. I felt like I’d cleared one hurdle in working out the ebb and flow of our relationship

  I really hoped my Society staff and Marty and I either caught a break with our research efforts or ran into an insurmountable brick wall, because I was getting heartily sick of devoting so much of my time and energy to figuring this out, not to mention that of a large portion of my administrative staff. Was Detective Hrivnak good at her job? Reasonably. Would she solve this one? I had no idea. Last time we’d talked, at the beginning of the week, she’d been all but clueless—and I meant that literally. We’d handed her the
information about the escutcheon, which unfortunately tied some part of the event to the Society, but the man in the blurry bar video who had shown interest in it could have been practically anybody. At least any slim, white, able-bodied thirtysomething male. Which narrowed it down to a few thousand people in Philadelphia.

  But which one of those people had a motive to kill Carnell Scruggs? Was I relying too much on motive? Was it as simple as a mugging gone wrong? Not that Mr. Scruggs had looked like he had much on him, but maybe he’d flashed his wages at the bar. How much money was worth mugging someone for? Was there a minimum, or did it depend on how desperate you were?

  “Were you going to get out of the car?” James’s voice broke into my racing thoughts.

  I looked up to find we were parked in our own driveway. “Oh, are we home already? I was trying to work something out in my head.” I pulled myself together and gathered my things, then climbed out of the car. He already had the back door open when I reached it. “Thank you, kind sir,” I said as I brushed past him.

  A short while later, I sat admiring James as he prepared dinner and I enjoyed a glass of wine. “Have you caught any new cases lately?” I asked. “I mean, that you can talk about?”

  “Nothing major. I think I’ve told you before, usually each of us has between ten and thirty open cases at any one time, so there’s plenty to keep us busy. Some drag on because we’re waiting for one more piece of evidence, or a lab report—and you know how backed-up the labs are—or a piece of information from a different agency. Make haste slowly, as the saying goes. Not unlike your place.”

  “I guess I have a different perspective, since we think in terms of centuries. Funny how we keep things because we believe they matter—that something someone did or said in 1823 would mean something to a researcher today. I can’t believe I and my staff are trying to solve a killing that took place last week based on something that happened more than a century ago.”

  “That does sound unlikely,” James replied amiably,

  “And it’s intriguing how perspectives on history, and which bits are important, keep changing.”

  “Could you see yourself doing something else?” James asked as he chopped something.

  “Like what? Academia? I think that boat sailed a while ago, and I’m not sorry. A corporate position? Politics? Or maybe I could become an antique dealer so we could finally furnish this place at a cost we could afford?” I laughed. “Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of moving to Bora Bora and opening up a beachfront bar.”

  “What? Oh no, nothing like that. I work for the government, and that’s about as stable as a job gets these days. But if I want to leave the FBI, I’ll discuss it with you first, I promise.”

  That hadn’t come up before, which was surprising given some of the situations he had found himself in recently. “Do you think about it? I mean, are you prepared to keep running around wrestling with bad guys and getting shot at for the next twenty or thirty years?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that idea myself.

  “Those are relatively rare events. I typically spend far more time on paperwork. As you do,” James said, now sautéing what he had finished chopping.

  “True. But poor Carnell has been dead for a week now, and if there’s a way I can help solve this, I want to try to find it. Whether or not it involves the Society. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “I know. And I love you for that.” James turned down the heat under the pan and proceeded to demonstrate how he really felt. It took a while.

  CHAPTER 24

  Friday morning, as we drove toward the city, I mentally reviewed what I hoped we would have uncovered since yesterday. How much longer would it take us to find an answer—or to declare defeat and go on about our business? I felt like somewhere there was a clock ticking.

  There were times that I had to remind myself that things didn’t always move as quickly as I’d like. As the custodian of an historical institution I should be all too aware of that issue, but when someone died and that death cast a shadow on the Society, I became impatient.

  My little band of researchers and I were moving forward by inches, one small fact at a time. I was fairly confident that we had answers somewhere in our files, or maybe in Marty’s files, but they were well buried, and who knew how long it would take to unearth them? Some ancient Greek had once said (in Greek, I assumed), “The millstones of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine,” whatever that meant. I took it to mean that there was no hurrying the process, but you’d get it right at the end. Or at least have the flour to make breakfast.

  The staff collaborators trickled into the downstairs room at nine, with less energy than they had shown the day before. Going back over the same stacks of dusty documents to see if you’d missed something could be draining. Even coffee wasn’t helping.

  By seven minutes past nine, we were still short a couple of people. “Has anyone seen Rich or Lissa?” I asked.

  “I kept Rich working late at my place last night, going over the family papers with me,” Marty volunteered. “He looked like he was dragging by the time he left. Maybe he’s trying to find one last bit of information.”

  “I asked Lissa to take on a lot,” I added. “She’s thorough—she could still be searching, too. But since most of us are here, we’d better get started. We’re all throwing our little pieces into the pot and hoping that they magically come together to make a stew, er, sense.”

  Looking at the still-blank faces, I realized that Marty and I were the only people who knew all the details. Each of the others knew some parts; most of them had done what I’d asked out of obedience or loyalty, but without knowing their purpose. But if we were ever going to bring all this together, I needed to tell them everything we now knew.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry. I owe you an apology, because we haven’t given you all the available information. In part that was to avoid giving you any preconceptions about what you were looking for. In part it was to keep this whole thing as quiet as possible. A man is dead, and maybe selfishly I didn’t want that to be laid at our door. But keeping the details from you hasn’t been fair to you, and it’s getting in the way of putting together a coherent story. So this is what we know.” I proceeded to outline what I’d learned from Detective Hrivnak and from Henry Phinney, and I told them about the possible existence of a gun, and sketched out what Marty and I thought might have happened. But it was obvious there were still some gaping holes in the story, and I was hoping against hope that the people in front of me could help fill them. “Any questions?”

  Ben, who had been listening intently, spoke quickly. “That’s a pretty unusual weapon, a real collector’s item now. But it wouldn’t look like an antique—if you don’t know weapons, you could easily think it was modern, not a century old. And it would probably work just fine, if it was cleaned up.”

  “Thank you, Ben. That’s what I was thinking. I’ve been wondering if Carnell Scruggs saw it and figured he could sell it on the street easily. Any other questions?”

  There were lots. Marty and I managed to answer all the easy ones, but it was Shelby who offered the biggest piece of the puzzle.

  “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. Our theory of the moment is that there was an old gun in the box in the pit. Carnell found it and made off with it, someone saw him do it and followed him, and somehow Carnell ended up dead. Sound about right?”

  “Yes, in a nutshell. But—

  She held up a hand. “I’m not finished. So for the last several days you’ve had all of us hunting down old records of this, that, and the other thing, I assume in the hope that something will point to someone who had a reason to have such a gun back in 1907 and a reason to hide it, and picked this place for some reason that made sense to him. The lap desk shouldn’t have been here at all, at least on paper, and you’ve made it clear that the only way that gun could have ended up in
our basement was if it came in with someone who had pretty close ties with the Society at that particular time. That’s a short list.” Shelby’s smile was still in place. “And you asked me to see what we had in our files about the people on the short list, so that we could put the gun that I didn’t know about until three minutes ago into the hands of one of those people. Right?”

  “Right again, Shelby,” I said impatiently. “Well summarized. Do you have a point, other than complaining that I kept you, if not in the dark, then at least in the shade? I’ve already apologized for that.”

  “Well, I think I’ve got something.” With a dramatic flourish, Shelby picked up a sheaf of photocopies and handed them around the table. “You do remember that we’re a collecting institution? And that our collections just happen to include microfilms and digitized records of Pennsylvania newspapers going back to before the Civil War?”

  “Shelby, if you don’t tell us what you’ve found,” I growled, “I will have to strangle you, in spite of all these witnesses. We’re short on time. Can you please get to the point?” I wondered for a moment if she was going to stick out her tongue at me, but she decided to take the high road. “Read,” she said, pointing at the papers she’d handed out.

  I read. I read about the tragic death of Mrs. Harrison Frazer and her sailing instructor, one Thomas Westcott, both shot to death at the Frazer summer home on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, in August of 1907. (From the grainy newspaper photos, it appeared that the sailing instructor was significantly younger than Mrs. Frazer.) Mr. Frazer had arrived at the beach house unexpectedly, having caught an early train from Philadelphia, and discovered the bodies. He blamed an armed intruder—Mrs. Frazer had been wont to travel with her nicer jewelry, for all those yacht club dinners, so the house was a likely target—who was never identified, much less located. No weapon was ever found, which was one reason why Mr. Frazer, the most obvious suspect under the circumstances, was never arrested.