Privy to the Dead Page 4

  Curiously, James did not look happy at that news, but said nothing.

  “What?” I demanded. “You brought it up.”

  “Upon reflection, I decided that I should warn you that furniture is a sensitive subject in the Terwilliger family,” he finally said.

  “Why?” I asked, bewildered.

  “You really don’t know?”

  “No, James, I really don’t know. What am I supposed to know?”

  He sighed. “It all started with General John Terwilliger . . .”

  “What didn’t?” I muttered. “Okay, I know he was an important figure in the Revolutionary War and the later eighteenth century, and I know he was Marty’s however-many-times-great-grandfather. But where did the furniture come in?”

  “That same John Terwilliger bought a grand house in Philadelphia when he married, and he furnished it in the latest and most expensive manner. You have all the documents pertaining to the fitting out of the house at the Society.”

  “Oh.” He was right: I probably should have known. “Well, I haven’t read every document we have, since there are a couple million of them, at least. I’m sure they must make interesting reading, but where’s the problem?”

  “There were, let us say, issues among various members, and when he died, the general’s pieces were scattered among different branches. Some were even sold, and some people in the family are still a bit annoyed that they ever left the family, particularly when those pieces come up at auction now and then and sell for a couple million dollars.”

  “Ah,” I said intelligently. “Is Marty one of the disgruntled?”

  “It’s not one of her hobbyhorses. Her branch managed to hang on to a few things, and if you’ve seen her house, you’ve probably seen them. How did she react when you told her we needed furniture?”

  “Kind of, ‘I’ll think about it.’ When she asked, I said we preferred Victorian to match the house. Is that all right with you? Do you even like Victorian?” I asked. It was a question that had never exactly come up, although he was the one who had fallen in love with our undeniably Victorian house first.

  “As long as horsehair isn’t involved, I’m good with it. That stuff is literally a pain in the butt, plus it crackles. Frankly I don’t care much, as long as I have something to sit on and light to see by. I give you a free hand. Although, since this won’t in fact be free, what about that budget?”

  I ducked the issue, since I had no real idea what furniture cost, old or new. “Maybe we should go to a Freeman’s auction and see what the market is like,” I suggested. “Of course, they’re going to be high-end, but we can work down from there.” Freeman’s was a long-established and reputable auction house in Center City, and in my position I was aware of the auction house’s standing in the furniture community. I’d never attended anything there, but I knew some of their staff were members of the Society. “I’ll have to check their schedule.”

  We finished dinner, tidied up the kitchen together, read for a bit, and went to bed. Another normal day, with no crises. I felt like I should make a note of it on the calendar.

  —

  The next morning seemed normal, too. The sun was shining, the trees on our still–surprisingly large lot were turning lovely colors (note to self: Buy rake or rakes? Better yet, hire a yard service?), and work was about to begin on the much-needed upgrade at the Society. James and I carpooled into the city once again, arriving nice and early. I couldn’t help feeling pleased.

  Until I walked into the building. Front Desk Bob, our gatekeeper (and a former cop) was already there behind the counter, getting ready for the day. When he saw me, he said, “You have a visitor,” and nodded toward the corner by the front window. I turned to see Meredith Hrivnak, a Philadelphia police detective I’d had dealings with in the past. From her expression, I didn’t think she was there to investigate her family tree. We’d first met after the death of a staff member at the Society. But if someone had died here again—heaven forbid!—wouldn’t the police have called me at home? Or rather, on my cell?

  I plastered on a smile to hide my unease. “Good morning, Detective. What can I do for you today?”

  “A man was hit and killed by a car outside your building last night.” The detective was not known for sugarcoating her pronouncements.

  My stomach plummeted. “How awful. Who is it?” Please, please, not one of my employees.

  “Guy named Carnell Scruggs. You know him?”

  I shook my head, relieved to say truthfully that I’d never heard the name before. “Of course, I’m sorry to hear about anybody’s death by violence. But is that why you’re here? To ask if I knew him?” I glanced at Bob, who gave a slight shrug. Apparently he didn’t know anything more than I did.

  “Thought you might be able to help us out. He was hit by a car traveling north on Thirteenth Street. Nice suburban lady heading home after a dinner with friends and only one glass of wine—and her blood alcohol level checks out all right. She says the guy came barreling out from between two parked cars, right next to that back alley of yours. You know, where you’ve got that big hulking Dumpster parked. What’s that for?”

  “We’re renovating some parts of the building, and we’ve been clearing out old junk. You think this guy was pawing through the Dumpster and got startled and ran?”

  “Don’t know yet. I’d like you to take a look at him.”

  “Am I supposed to, uh, view the body?” Please say no, I willed her silently.

  “Nope. I’ve got his picture right here.” She pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through it until she found the picture she wanted. Then she handed it to me.

  I peered at the small image. The man appeared to be Caucasian, in his thirties or forties, with dark hair, neither long nor short. Ordinary clothes—jeans, a jacket, not particularly remarkable. Nothing that stood out. The tension seeped out of my muscles: I had definitely never seen him before.

  “He one of yours?” Hrivnak asked.

  “No, I don’t think I know him. Why do you ask? You said you have a name for him, right? Can’t you find out more about him that way?” Without me?

  “Yeah, Ms. Pratt, we will be doing that. He had a driver’s license on him, so we’ve got a name and address for him. We do know how to do our jobs.”

  I ignored her sarcasm. “Do you need to check inside our building, to see if he was here?”

  “Don’t see why. We already looked at your back door—no sign that it had been tampered with, so he probably wasn’t running away from here. Your alarm system was on, right?”

  “Bob here’s the one who manages it, but he’s very careful about that, so I’d guess yes.”

  “Then you’re clear. For now. Oh, there is one thing that’s a little weird.”

  “Weird how?” I asked.

  “The driver of the car—like I said, she wasn’t drunk, and from the skid marks she wasn’t speeding—swears the guy came out from between those cars backward.”

  It took me a moment to process that. “You mean, like going backward, not facing the street?”

  “Yup. What do you make of that?”

  “He stumbled over something?”

  “Backward? And traveled at least ten feet into the middle of the street? Try again.”

  “He wanted to commit suicide but didn’t want to see it coming?” Wow, I really was grasping at straws—and by now I had an idea what she was looking for.

  “Two strikes—you get one more.”

  “He was pushed,” I said bluntly. Of course she thought it was murder. She was a homicide detective, and she wouldn’t be here unless someone had guessed it might be murder.

  “Bingo. I told the ME to look for signs of a struggle.”

  “Was there anyone around to see? Witnesses?” I asked.

  “Nope. It was dark and the street was empty—as far as we know, that is.”


  “What about street cameras?”

  “Focused on the street. Couldn’t see the sidewalk because of all the parked cars. You got one on your back door?”

  “No—we were going to add some outside with this renovation. We managed to get some installed in critical areas inside the building, but that won’t help you.”

  “Were you the last person to leave?”

  “I think Marty Terwilliger and I were—we were here late for a board meeting—but you can check with Bob on that, too. What can I tell my staff? They’re bound to hear about this, and it doesn’t seem right to just ignore the . . . accident.”

  “Looks like this Mr. Scruggs died after everybody here had gone home, but we’ll probably interview them anyway, even if your Bob corroborates that he locked up on schedule. Go ahead and tell ’em it was an accident.”

  Before she could think of something else, I said, “Okay. Well, if that’s all, I’ll turn you over to Bob.” I looked expectantly at her. She gave me a cold stare, as if she suspected I was hiding something. Together we approached Bob again, and I explained what the detective was looking for. Since he’d been on the job once, he knew what to do, so I handed her off to him and scurried toward the elevator.

  When I reached my office, Eric was already there. He greeted me, then he took a closer look “You okay, Nell?”

  “Better than I might be,” I said. “I just heard that there was a car accident outside the building last night. Sadly, someone died, but it’s not a staff member or anyone I recognized. The police aren’t sure exactly how or why it happened, though, so they might want to talk to people here about when we locked up and set the alarm, but I’m hoping it’s not really our problem.” Fingers crossed. “I’ll be in my office if anybody needs me.” I went into my office, shut the door behind me, and sat down behind my desk, and realized I was shaking, just a bit. I waited for the shaking to stop, while I struggled to avoid thinking about that poor woman driver, who could hardly be blamed if a body propelled itself into her path without warning. Then I called James.

  He answered on the first ring. “Nell? What’s up?”

  “There was a fatal traffic accident outside the Society last night, on Thirteenth Street. Nobody I know, and he doesn’t work here. I just thought you should know. I’m hoping it’s just a coincidence.”

  “Oh, Nell, I’m sorry. Anything I can do?”

  The sympathy in his voice was sincere, and it comforted me just a bit. “I don’t think so. So far we’re not involved, except for proximity. He was struck near our back alley. Nothing in the building appears to have been disturbed, although I’d better check that out.” I hesitated before adding, “James, there was something odd about the way the man died. The detective said that he went into the street backward. I’m guessing she believes it’s a suspicious death.”

  James didn’t respond immediately. “You want to meet for lunch, or leave early?” he asked eventually.

  Very cautious of him. “I think I’ll stick around. I may have to field questions here. But thank you for asking. We can talk about it at home later. We may know more by the end of the day.”

  “Let me know when you want to ride home together.”

  “I will.”

  We hung up at the same time. I sat and stared into space. It was nice having someone to tell, someone who understood and would commiserate. Someone who wouldn’t go all macho on me and expect me to fall apart at the sight of a dead person. James knew all too well that this wasn’t my first body. But for once this death had nothing to do with me or the Society, and it would involve straightforward police work, and while Detective Hrivnak might be lacking in a few social skills, she was a competent police officer and would get the job done. I didn’t have to be involved.

  He went into the street backward? That didn’t sit well with me, but I wasn’t going to interfere. This was a city; strange things happened.

  With a sigh, I turned to the neat stack of messages Eric had left for me the day before, but was interrupted by Eric himself, who stuck his head in my door and asked, “Anything I can do?”

  “Yes, actually. Can you send out a quick e-mail to the staff? Just tell them there was a car accident outside the building last night and a man named Carnell Scruggs died, and ask everyone to cooperate fully with the police if they come by asking questions. It may not even come to that, but I’d rather people knew what was going on.”

  I hoped any police activity outside wouldn’t slow down the start of the construction. And then there was that hole in the basement, which was a nice distraction. I wondered if the crew had finished cleaning it out yesterday, and if so, what they had found.

  I was about to pick up the phone and call Lissa when she showed up at my door. “This is really cool!” she said.

  I could use a “really cool” diversion right about now. “Come on in and tell me all about it.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Lissa was a relatively new contractor, a researcher-for-hire. She’d signed on to work on the Mitchell Wakeman project, which we had both assumed would be short-term. But she’d done a good job with it, and the resolution had ultimately resulted in the big bucks that were now paying for our renovations. Although the Society’s budget couldn’t support an additional full-time staff position at the moment, I’d been impressed by her work and wanted to keep her around in some way, so I’d suggested that we use her to work on single projects, as needed, with an emphasis on regional history and architecture. Since she was a graduate student with a flexible schedule, so far that had worked out well for everyone.

  Researching construction details of the current Society building was one such project. While I knew a fair amount about it from my development days, I certainly didn’t know everything—and I don’t think anybody had known about the hole in the basement floor, or at least, nobody had mentioned it in the records I’d seen (but who records the location of an old privy?). I was hoping that Lissa might be able to shed some light on it. I motioned her toward a chair in my office. When she had sat down, I said quickly, “Before you share whatever goodies you’ve come up with, you need to know that someone was killed next to this building late last night. I didn’t know if you’d heard.”

  “You’re kidding. No one from the Society, I hope?” she asked.

  “No, thank goodness. The man fell into the path of a car, near our back door. I thought you should know. So, back to business. What’ve you got on the building?” I was eager to see what Lissa’s fresh eyes would find.

  “I feel like I’m cheating—a lot of this information was already in the files in the development office.”

  “I know,” I said, “but I didn’t have the time to go looking, and I’ve forgotten the details. Just give me the basic story, please.”

  “All right.” Lissa straightened her stack of notes and began. “Okay, so you know this site wasn’t the first that the Society occupied, right? When the Society was much smaller, in the nineteenth century, the members rented space, which was okay until they received an amazing donation of William Penn’s papers and things got a little crowded. When they started looking around, in the 1870s, there was a nice mansion here, maybe fifty years old, available for sale. Anyway, they had no problem raising the money to buy the site and the lot next door. It was still a mostly residential area, with trees behind. There are some pretty pictures of the old mansion, if you’re interested. The Society added an assembly hall on one side and what they called a fireproof annex on the other, and that’s where things rested for twenty-some years.”

  “Put together a folder on all this stuff, will you? Go on,” I told her.

  “Okay. Collections kept growing, and the place kind of overflowed again. Plus people were worried that except for that one addition, the building wasn’t anything like fireproof. So they started looking for money for a renovation, and they were having trouble until they appealed to the state go
vernment. The governor at the time—named Dudley Pemberton—was sympathetic, since he’d been in your shoes, Nell, before he ran for office. You have any plans along those lines?” Lissa said, smiling.

  “Heaven forbid! I don’t want to try to run anything bigger than this place, and certainly not the whole state! So I take it that’s how they received the money?”

  “Yep, and they turned around and added some new parts to the building in less than a year, if you can believe that. And that was just the first phase—there was a second one a year later, and they more or less tore down the old house and rebuilt it, incorporating the additions they’d already made. They wrapped the whole thing up by 1907.”

  “Wow, that was fast!”

  “It was,” Lissa agreed. “Anyway, most of the original mansion was demolished—I saw something that said they’d hoped to save more of it, but they found it wasn’t structurally sound enough to support a larger building. But the foundation is original, which I assume includes at least part of the basement.”

  That, I hadn’t known. Of course, I didn’t spend a lot of time in the basement. As far as I could tell, no one did.

  Lissa went on, “There are still bits of pieces of the original mansion scattered through the building—like a couple of fireplace mantels. And that gigantic staircase that eats up so much room is kind of an homage to the old building. There are some wonderful old pictures of some of the rooms on the ground floor with leather-covered armchairs and reading lamps. You can just see the board members back then perusing some old tome, with a glass of sherry at hand.”

  “Those were the days,” I agreed.

  “Is that what you wanted to know?” she asked.

  I thought for a moment. From what Lissa had just told me, it sounded as though the building as I knew it had been erected in stages, and in places had incorporated some of the older parts. What I was still wondering was, had the newly discovered pit been part of the original building, or had it lain outside the footprint of the mansion? Was it really an old privy, as the construction foreman had suggested? “Can you see what else you can find about that first building? Or anything more about the construction details in the early twentieth century?”