Once She Knew Read online

  It was still barely past eight thirty, but I liked to allow myself some quiet time to prepare for whatever my day might hold, to check my never-ending to-do list and to look through any messages that had come in after I left. Eric, my assistant, wasn’t at his desk yet, but since his jacket was draped over his chair, I assumed he must be down the hall in the staff room. He liked to control the coffee-making process, and since I enjoyed the results, I wasn’t about to stop him. Eric and I had worked out a deal when he had started working for me: whoever arrived first would start the coffee. I didn’t want to stick him into an antiquated administrative assistant role, but I had to say that the quality was greatly improved now that he was making it at least part of the time. In any case, he usually beat me to it.

  “Hey, lady!” Shelby said, dropping into the eighteenth-century damask-covered settee on the wall opposite my desk.

  “Hi, Shelby. You’re in early. Any particular reason?”

  Shelby grinned. “Probably the same as you; I wanted a little quiet time. Besides, it was such a pretty day that I couldn’t stand staying inside a minute longer, so I walked over.”

  I knew that Shelby lived on the other side of Independence Hall, and sometimes I envied her that walk, so rich with history. Okay, I had the giant wedding cake that was City Hall to admire, but otherwise my walk led me past prosaic stores and restaurants. “I hear you! I felt the same way myself.” I took a long drink of my cappuccino and sighed. “Anything we need to worry about?”

  “No, ma’am,” Shelby replied promptly. “Oh, did you hear about Adeline Harrison?”

  “I saw the obituary in the paper this morning. Did you know her?”

  “Not from the Society, but we’d crossed paths now and then at other events. She was always very kind and remembered me from one time to the next, which I can’t say about many of the older people I meet around here. Should I send flowers?”

  “I think the family asked for contributions to one of her pet causes in lieu of flowers, and I don’t think we’re in any position to send money. But do see that we send a nice card. I’ll sign it.”

  “Of course. See you later.”

  Shelby left, but the early morning spell was broken. Another week had begun . . . following a memorable weekend. I hadn’t done much, but what I had done had been in the company of Special Agent James Morrison of the FBI, so I really hadn’t cared what we did. James and I had been seeing each other seriously for a couple of months now, but neither of us was hurrying the relationship. We both led busy lives, with schedules that resulted in as many canceled dates as not, on both sides. But neither of us was in the first flush of youth, so we weren’t impatient. And I was loving every minute of it.

  James was . . . something special. Neither of us had said the L word yet. We were so cautious, so careful. He had never been married, even though he was past forty; I’d been married once before, in what seemed like another lifetime. When that had ended, without acrimony, I’d never looked for another long-term relationship. I’d been close to a few other men, but generally we had understood and respected each other’s boundaries. But with James, I was finding I had to take another look at those boundaries. Especially since we didn’t have any more professional conflicts to deal with at the moment. We’d first come together when a significant theft at the Society had been discovered, and had been thrown together over various crimes within the cultural community since then. After the most recent problem, James and I had mutually decided that it was silly to keep waiting for external events to do the work for us, and started “dating.” The pace felt almost old-fashioned, but hey, I work in a history museum, and he works for the government, so slow and stately suited us both.

  Looking over today’s agenda, I saw no official meetings, although plenty of official business to attend to—signing solicitation letters, reviewing grant proposals that Shelby prepared, looking over the list of prospective donors and/or board members to see who needed a personal touch again. And then there was the kindergarten.

  Well, that was what I called the area where three of our youngest hires worked together in the third-floor workroom. Only a few months earlier, I had hired a new registrar, Nicholas Naylor, and taken on a new intern, Alice Price, at the same time. Their simultaneous arrival had coincided with the arrival of an extraordinary number of historic documents, artifacts, and who knows what—all courtesy of the FBI, which had seized the various items throughout the course of several investigations, dumped them in the Society’s lap, and asked us to figure out what they had. We had taken the path of least resistance and put the bountiful collections together in the Society’s largest processing space along with the new hires and turned them loose. I stopped in periodically to check on the progress they were making and to make sure they were on track. Collections weren’t my area of expertise—that role belonged to our vice president of collections, Latoya Anderson—but although Latoya was their immediate supervisor, since I had been indirectly responsible for the temporary presence of the FBI materials, I wanted to keep tabs on it. Besides, it was fun to see what they turned up, and I always welcomed the opportunity to visit our collections. And since Latoya was away on a long-postponed research vacation, it fell to me to keep an eye on things. Or so I told myself.

  Nicholas, a quiet young man in his late twenties with almost Byronic good looks, had been recruited by Latoya to fill the important staff position of registrar. He had previously been working at the University of Pennsylvania, where he had developed a state-of-the-art cataloging system that he had been itching to try on our collections. Since most of our cataloging was mired in the nineteenth century, we’d agreed to give him a chance, and he had made great strides in imposing order on our processing in the short time he’d been here.

  The intern was a lovely self-possessed young woman named Alice Price, who had come with strings attached. Her uncle, a well-connected local philanthropist, had promised to fund her salary if we took her on. I had no problem with that, since we’d been planning to recruit her uncle for a board position sometime soon, and doing him the favor of hiring Alice would be . . . helpful. Luckily, Alice had also turned out to be smart and hardworking, and despite her lack of job experience, she had settled in well and was pulling her weight.

  The third member of the group was Rich Girard, a part-time postgrad student who’d been hired a couple of years earlier to help catalog the Terwilliger Collection, a massive assortment of documents encompassing everything from the arrival on these shores by the earliest Terwilliger family member in the early eighteenth century to the elaborate business maneuvers of twentieth-century Terwilligers. The gift of the documents had come from several generations of the family, all connected to the Society. The current board member, Marty Terwilliger, was my benefactor, ally, and friend.

  Marty was about ten years older than I was and had little patience for fools or fancy dress. She was also smart, determined, and tenacious, which was why she was such a great ally. And she simply couldn’t stay away from the Society—not that I blamed her. She was deeply committed to the place, and also related to half of Philadelphia, including James Morrison, to whom she had introduced me. Marty had a finger in every pie in the city and the surrounding counties.

  She’d divorced a couple of husbands and had never had kids, so she had plenty of free time to devote to the collections. I was always coming across her in odd corners of the stacks (as a board member, she had a key and free access).

  Which was why I wasn’t surprised when I found her with the young’uns in the processing room when I walked in. “Good morning, everyone! You all look busy. You keeping an eye on them, Marty?”

  “Of course I am. Half of this stuff is the Terwilliger papers.”

  I settled myself on a stool. I had requested that Latoya and I get basic progress reports on a weekly basis—mainly details like how many items had been processed and what kind—and the trio been good about doing so. The most recent report was probably sitting in my email in-box at the m
oment. But reading about something and sitting in the midst of it while talking to its processors were not the same thing, and I liked to check on how they were getting along with each other, and kind of take the temperature of the room. Rich was laid-back, Alice was eager, and Nicholas was . . . an enigma. He was polite and cooperative, but he seldom volunteered a comment or personal fact. Still, he’d walked into a mess—his predecessor had worked for the Society for decades but had only just started transferring our massive quantity of records to a modern digital format before he’d unexpectedly died—and Nicholas had done an amazing job of creating order out of chaos, so I wasn’t about to complain if he wasn’t warm and cuddly. He was getting the job done.

  The group gathered round and showed off their new finds, and Marty and I nodded approval. We were actually ahead of schedule, and we had a handle on what we were working with. Life was good.

  Reluctantly I stood up. “I’d better get back to my office. Great job, all of you!”

  “I’ll come with you,” Marty said. “I want to talk to you.”

  Somehow, that was never good news, I reflected as we walked down the hall together, back to my corner office. When we’d both found seats, I said, “What’s up?”

  Marty gave a snort of laughter. “You look like I’m about to hand you some nasty medicine. I’m not always the bearer of bad tidings, am I?”

  “Let’s say the jury’s still out on that. Was there something specific you needed?”

  “Nope. I just wanted to say how well it’s been going, our taking on the materials the FBI reclaimed and bringing in those two to work on them. Never hurts to have a favor owed to us by the FBI, you know.”

  “Especially since we’ve created so much trouble for them in the past?”

  “Yeah, well, there is that. But on average they’ve come out ahead, so everybody should be happy. You and Jimmy doing okay?” Since they were cousins, Marty could call him “Jimmy” and get away with it, while he twitted her by calling her “Martha,” which she hated. Me, I preferred to call him James—more fitting for a dignified FBI agent.

  “We’re doing fine, thank you very much, and that’s all I’m going to say.” I smiled at her.

  She smiled back. “Okay, I won’t pry.” She bounced up abruptly. “I’m headed back to the processing room before I lose the thread of what I was doing. See you around.”

  “Bye, Marty,” I said as she disappeared. I heard the phone on Eric’s desk ring, and in a moment he came to the doorway. “Agent Morrison for you,” he said, pulling the door closed as he retreated. Eric was still fairly new at his job as my assistant, but he’d quickly made himself indispensable, and his police Southern accent soothed a lot of my more demanding callers. He’d long since picked up on my relationship with Special Agent James, although he couldn’t always tell whether James’s calls were business or personal.

  James’s ears must be buzzing, I thought as I picked up the phone. “Good morning, Agent Morrison. How can I help you?”

  “Good morning to you, Ms. Pratt. Though maybe not as good as yesterday morning,” James said. Yesterday morning, we’d awakened together. He cleared his throat. “Actually, this is business, or almost business. Sorry to be so vague, but what can you tell me about Adeline Harrison?”

  “Mainly what I read in her obituary this morning. I knew her, but only slightly. We met maybe two or three times, when I first started at the Society, but she was on her way out then. It was a gracious exit—I think she felt she’d outlived her usefulness to us, or maybe she was cutting back on all her activities. She wasn’t exactly young.”

  “Tough old stock, though. I’m guessing you’ll have a file on her?” James asked.

  “Of course. She used to be a board member here. We keep files on all former, current, and potential future members.”

  “Can you take a look at hers and give me the high points?”

  “You want it now?”

  “No rush—how about after work? Meet me at the hotel bar on the corner?”

  I mentally reviewed my schedule. Blissfully empty. “Sounds good. I’ll make copies of what I find. But you didn’t tell me why you wanted to know.” Although based on the knot in the pit of my stomach, I had a feeling I could guess. The FBI wasn’t usually idly curious about death from natural causes.

  “I think Adeline Harrison was murdered.”

  About the Author

  After collecting too many degrees and exploring careers ranging from art historian to investment banker to professional genealogist, Sheila Connolly began writing mysteries in 2001, and is now a full-time writer.

  She wrote her first mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime under the name Sarah Atwell, and the first book, Through a Glass, Deadly (2008), was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel; Pane of Death followed in 2008, and Snake in the Glass in 2009.

  Under her own name, her Orchard Mystery Series (Berkley Prime Crime) debuted in 2008 with One Bad Apple, followed by Rotten to the Core in 2009, Red Delicious Death in 2010, A Killer Crop later in 2010, Bitter Harvest in 2011, and Sour Apples in 2012.

  Her new series, the Museum Mysteries (Berkley Prime Crime), set in the Philadelphia museum community, opened with Fundraising the Dead in 2010, followed by Let’s Play Dead in 2011, Fire Engine Dead in 2012, and Monument to the Dead in 2013.

  She is currently writing a new series set in Ireland, the County Cork Mysteries. The first book in the series, Buried in a Bog, is available now.

  Her first short story, “Size Matters,” was published by Level Best Books in 2011, and was nominated for an Agatha Award.

  Sheila is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Romance Writers of America. She is currently President of Sisters in Crime New England, and was cochair for the 2011 New England Crime Bake conference.