Fire Engine Dead (2 page)

I found myself an old metal chair and took it to a corner, about as far from the door as I could get. I was surrounded
by large ledgers from long-gone Philadelphia companies, and I knew if I opened any one of them I’d find some clerk’s careful copperplate script in fading brown ink, recording the day-to-day transactions of daily life a century ago. I shut my eyes and breathed deep, waiting for the calm and quiet to do their work…

“Nell?” a male voice whispered.

I jumped a foot and opened my eyes. “Eric, how did you find me?” Eric was my administrative assistant. He’d only been in the job for two months, but I swear he had learned how to read my mind.

“I know you come up here when you get stressed out. I hate to bother you, but you told me to remind you about the luncheon today, and it’s already eleven thirty.”

Luncheon, luncheon…no wonder I’d told him to remind me, since I had no clue what he was talking about.

“The Greater Philadelphia Grantmakers Coalition?” he added.

Oh. I must have been trying hard to forget it. The coalition was a group of local funders who got together to talk about local philanthropy. What that meant, mainly, was that the area movers and shakers with money to give gathered together to divvy up the pot. To be fair, they also offered workshops, issued publications, and held conferences to encourage grant giving and teach effective proposal writing, all of which I had benefitted from in the past. I’d attended their events when I was a fundraiser, and it was now even more important that I have a presence among the group, to keep the lines of communication (and pocketbooks) open. This would be my first meeting with them since I’d ascended to the giddy heights of the Society’s presidency. What’s more, I’d promised to take along my
relatively new director of development, Shelby Carver, so she could start figuring out who was who in the local funding community.

In short, I couldn’t hide out. I sighed and stood up. “Did you remind Shelby?”

“Sure did,” Eric said. “She’s waiting in your office. You want me to tell her I couldn’t find you?”

I straightened my back. “Thanks, but I have to go. And I want to introduce Shelby to some people she needs to know. Thank you for finding me, Eric.”

I led the way back to my office where Shelby was waiting. “Were you planning to duck out on me, lady?” she asked, her faint southern drawl softening her words.

“Believe me, I thought about it. You ready to go? You mind if we walk over?”

“Works for me. Looks like spring might actually get here sometime this year.”

I pulled on my light raincoat, gathered up my bag, and said, “Let’s go.”

Once we were outside the building, I realized Shelby was right: I hadn’t even noticed, but there were green buds peeping from the few spindly trees that could survive on city streets, and the air felt cool but pleasantly so. Shelby matched me stride for stride. I probably needed the exercise more than she did, since she usually walked to work from her home on the other side of Independence Hall, while I took a train from the suburb of Bryn Mawr. At least I walked from the train station to the Society, but that was about all the exercise I got.

“Where’re we going?” she asked.

“The luncheon’s at the Marriott. At least the food should be good.”

“You want me to do anything in particular, or should I just sit there and soak up wisdom?”

I smiled. I enjoyed Shelby’s slightly skewed humor, which matched mine. “I’ll try to point out the important people, and the ones who have looked favorably upon us in the past. Unfortunately they aren’t always one and the same.”

The Marriott was a ten-minute walk from the Society, and we arrived in good time. I usually tried to arrive early for events like this, because it was a good opportunity to renew old contacts and make new ones. Besides, I was trying to set a good example for Shelby. When we walked in, people were standing around in clumps in the hallway, waiting for the doors to the luncheon to open. I greeted several by name—and so did Shelby, to my surprise. She hadn’t lived in Philadelphia very long, but she’d certainly gotten to know a lot of people quickly—and influential ones, at that. I spotted Arabella Heffernan, my counterpart at the Let’s Play Children’s Museum in the city, when she bustled in. She saw me and made a beeline over, and then we exchanged brief hugs.

“Hello, Nell! It’s so nice to see you again.”

“You, too, Arabella. How’s the new exhibit doing?”

She twinkled—hard to believe, but Arabella could do that. “It’s marvelous. The children love it, and our revenues are up. We’re looking forward to the school vacation week.”

“Sounds great. You remember Shelby, don’t you?”

“Of course I do! Shelby, it’s so good to see you. Are you settling in?”

“I am indeed, Arabella. Nell was kind enough to bring me along today so I can get to know people.”

“I brought you along so you could take some of the load
off of me!” I said in protest. “And for that, you have to know the players.”

The doors to the main dining room opened, and the crowd surged toward them like water down a drain. You’d think that they hadn’t eaten in days. Was a free meal really that exciting? In these tough times, maybe it was. We were separated from Arabella, and I guided Shelby toward a table of local CEOs I recognized, as well as other museum colleagues. “Hi, Arthur—do you have room for two more here?”

Arthur Mason, a man some twenty years older than me, stood up courteously and all but bowed. “Of course we do, for two such delightful companions. You’re looking fine, Nell. And I don’t believe I’ve made the acquaintance of this lovely lady?”

“Shelby, this is Arthur Mason. He’s the CEO of the Waterfront Museum. Arthur, please meet Shelby Carver, who’s replaced me as director of development.”

Shelby turned on the charm. “We may not have met, but my ex-husband was positively addicted to your model ship collections. I swear, he was in there at least once a week.”

“I’m delighted to hear that. Please, sit down.”

We sat and were joined at the last minute by a young woman, about thirty years old, whom I didn’t recognize. She seemed a bit breathless. “Can you fit in one more here?”

In fact there were several seats open, but I sympathized with anyone walking into an event like this and not knowing who was who. “Of course,” I said warmly. “I’m Nell Pratt, and this is Shelby Carver. We’re from the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society. And you are—?”

The woman sat and flashed an uncertain smile. “I’m Jennifer
Phillips. I work at the Fireman’s Museum. My boss is here somewhere, but we came separately.”

“Haven’t I read that you’re currently undergoing renovations? Are you in fundraising?” I asked.

“That and just about everything else,” Jennifer said. “We’ve got a very small staff. And, yes, we’re finishing up a renovation project right now, but we haven’t started to reinstall the exhibits yet.”

“Have you had much luck finding funding for the work?” I asked with sincere curiosity. “This is a difficult time to go looking for outside support.”

“We’ve done all right,” Jennifer answered.

“I do hope you reopen soon. I’ve taken my grandchildren to your museum,” Craig said. “They loved it.” Conversation with Craig carried us through the appetizer course. When there was a lull, I leaned toward Shelby and pointed out several more members of the local institutional hierarchy, and with the next course came the requisite speeches from assorted coalition members, which in turn led to the keynote from a doddering local philanthropist whose name adorned several buildings in the city. Since he had a tendency to mumble, many members of the audience unconsciously leaned toward the podium where he stood speaking. I hoped they were only straining to hear, but I briefly entertained the suspicion that they were eagerly anticipating his demise: it was rumored that he had left some handsome bequests to several museums in his will, although nobody knew exactly which ones.

I was enjoying my more than adequate chicken dish when Jennifer jumped and fished under the table for her bag. It took me a moment to realize that the bag, or more precisely, the cell phone in her bag, was buzzing discreetly.
She pulled it out and answered, politely turning away from the table, but it was hard to miss the intensity of her response. “What? Oh my God. Yes, he’s here. We’ll be right there.” She turned back to the table. “Sorry, I’ve got a crisis. Nice to meet you all.” She stood up, gathered her things, and headed for the nearest exit door, all the while scanning the crowd. She stopped at the door, her eyes fixed on someone halfway across the room, who had just pulled a cell phone from his pocket and answered it. Clearly he didn’t like what he was hearing. He hung up quickly, then looked around until he spotted Jennifer near the door. She waved him over. He stood and made his excuses to the people at his table, then wove his way around several tables before stopping to lean close to Jennifer. He said a sentence or two, and she nodded before they both turned and went through the door at a brisk clip.

Who was he? Fortyish, slender, and nicely dressed but rather washed out in coloring, he looked vaguely familiar, but he wasn’t anyone I knew personally. Most likely Jennifer’s boss, whose name escaped me at the moment. They’d both seemed extraordinarily upset, and I wondered what kind of museum crisis could inspire that strong a response. But it wasn’t really my business, so I turned my attention back to the droning speaker and tried to keep my eyelids up until the coffee was served.

After dessert and the accompanying platitudes, Shelby and I found our way out to the sidewalk. The fresh air felt good after being cooped up in the ballroom for a couple of hours.

“A little stuffy in there, wasn’t it?” Shelby asked as we waited for the light to change so we could cross Market Street.

“The air or the speeches?” I smiled at her. “You’d better get used to it. A lot of these people made their money the old-fashioned way: they inherited it.”

“Not so much of that these days, is there?”

I sighed. “Sad to say, no. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, as the saying goes. You’d better sharpen up your grant-writing tools.”

“I’m ready and willing. But you’ve got to tell me what we should focus on first.”

“I know, I know.” Our needs were many and the resources few. It was hard to set priorities when what we needed to do was everything. “You’ve seen the shopping list, and now you’ve heard what the funders are looking for. See if you can match them up, and I’ll run the options by the board at our next meeting and see if they have any connections with the funders.”

Shoptalk took us back to the Society. We went up to the administrative floor and parted ways, to our respective offices. When I settled myself at my desk, I realized that it was indeed time to set Shelby to hunting for funds. She’d been at the Society long enough to get to know us, and outside money was drying up fast, thanks to the current financial markets. I pulled out a pad and started making a list.

As guardian of a building full of millions of documents
on paper, I consider it my duty to support printed newspapers like the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. Plus reading the paper gives me something to do while I ride the train from Bryn Mawr to the city every day. This morning’s lead story, above the fold, was about a major warehouse fire that had occurred the day before and had resulted in the death of at least one person. After fire companies from Philadelphia and several surrounding communities had put out the fire, the body of the warehouse watchman had been found among the ruins.

The watchman had left no close family. No firefighters had been hurt in fighting the fire, which was the only bright note. The warehouse was not a total loss, but it would take time to assess the damage. Arson was suspected, but authorities would not say whether they had any leads, only that the investigation was ongoing. The article mentioned
that a string of similar fires had occurred recently in various parts of the city, although none quite as spectacular as this one—and no one had died in those earlier fires. There was a sad footnote: the late watchman, Allan Brigham, had been a retired firefighter himself.

As the train pulled into Suburban Station, I folded up the paper and tucked it in my bag. I enjoyed the brief walk to the Society, especially now that the weather was improving, and I stopped to pick up a cappuccino along the way. As far as I knew, my calendar was clear for the day, and even for the week. The next Society institutional event was still several months off, although planning was already under way; the next board meeting loomed, but it was still a couple of weeks distant. This would be Eric’s first exposure to the full board. He already knew the members by name, and more important, knew which ones required special handling. I was trying to ease him slowly into the process of gathering information and distributing it to board members in a timely fashion. Not that they’d read it until the day before the meeting, but at least we in administration were holding up our end. Eric had proven to be a quick learner. In spite of his youth and lack of experience, he had shown good judgment about what to pass on to me and what to divert to other departments, for which I was grateful. And he was discreet. I was glad I had taken a chance on hiring him.

He was, as usual, at his desk when I arrived. “Mornin’, Nell.”

“Good morning, Eric. Anything I need to know about?”

“Only one change to your schedule. A Mr. Peter Ingersoll from the Fireman’s Museum called and asked to see you, and I penciled him in for eleven. That work for you?”

I couldn’t recall having met anyone named Peter
Ingersoll—but I could hazard a guess that he was the man who Jennifer had huddled with at the luncheon yesterday. They had both looked upset then, and I had to wonder if whatever he wanted to talk to me about was related to those frantic phone calls yesterday afternoon. “That’s fine. I’ll be in my office.”

I managed to accomplish quite a bit before Eric stuck his head in my door to say, “Mr. Ingersoll’s here. You want me to go down and bring him upstairs?”

The third floor, where our administrative offices were located, was off-limits to the public, although they could circulate freely in the reading rooms on the first and second floors. It wasn’t much in terms of security, but it was the best we could afford for the time being. “Please.”