Fire Engine Dead (8 page)

Meddle? I didn’t like his choice of words, but I grasped what he was asking. “Understood. I’ll see if I can distract Marty—we’ve decided to do a thorough overhaul of the Terwilliger Collection here, so maybe that will do it. But if there’s anything more I can do, just ask.”

“I will. Thanks, Nell.” He rang off.

I’d do what I could, but Marty didn’t answer to me—more like the other way around. And she was strong willed. Handled right, she could be an asset in any investigation of this kind—but I wasn’t sure either James or I could handle her.

At precisely nine the next day, Latoya Anderson, looking
smug, shepherded her handpicked candidate into my office. “Nell, this is Nicholas Naylor. Nicholas, this is the Society’s president, Nell Pratt. I’ll leave the two of you to talk.” She turned and withdrew, closing my office door behind her.

Nicholas and I sized each other up. He was a tall, pale young man in his late twenties, with wavy dark hair, worn a bit long. Nicely dressed, as befit an interview, in tailored pants and a sports jacket over a collared shirt, no tie. He carried a leather folder, which I assumed contained a résumé. And he wasn’t smiling. “Thank you for making the time to see me, Ms. Pratt. I appreciate the opportunity.”

“My pleasure, Nicholas.” He was definitely a
Nicholas
, not a
Nick
. Why was this self-possessed young man making me nervous? “Please, sit down.” I gestured toward one of the chairs in front of my desk. He sat. Still no smile. “Do
you have a résumé handy? I haven’t had an opportunity to get it from Latoya yet.” Which again put me at a disadvantage.

Wordlessly, Nicholas opened his folder and handed me a single sheet of paper. I glanced at it briefly and realized that half of the position descriptions on it were gobbledygook to me. “So, tell me about yourself. I understand you’re currently working? Why would you want to give up a secure job at Penn to work here?” I knew it was hard to break into employment at the university, and I couldn’t remember anyone I knew leaving it, except under dire personal circumstances or for a step up the professional pyramid. I didn’t think the Society could compete with Penn in the latter regard. Certainly not in salary or prestige.

“I’d prefer a smaller milieu and greater flexibility. Did Ms. Anderson explain to you my area of expertise?”

“Briefly. Why don’t you tell me how you define it, and how you see it helping us?”

“Certainly.” He leaned forward, his expression earnest. “As I’m sure you know, the transition from traditional cataloging functions to the modern digital age has been erratic…”

I listened with half an ear, nodding at intervals. I’d spent enough time writing the grant proposals for our current cataloging system, and talking with Alfred, to understand the basic outlines of what Nicholas was describing. I had to admit that the program he had been developing sounded both innovative and potentially more user-friendly than what we had currently, which would be a big plus, since it might make it possible not only to integrate in-house tracking systems but also to permit a greater degree of member access, and even to allow transfer of higher-quality images
for internal and external reproduction. A seamless and unified system certainly sounded appealing—but could Nicholas deliver, or was he just spinning me a nice story?

I noticed he was gazing at me expectantly—apparently he’d run through the set piece. “Sounds fascinating, Nicholas. I do have a few questions. For a start, is this a proprietary system? Does Penn have any claim to it?”

He shook his head. “No, this is mine. I’ve developed it on my own time. I’ve used some items from the Penn collections for a test run, but my supervisor has been aware of everything I’ve been doing and has had no objections. I’ve been aboveboard with him and with the department.”

I found that emphasis curious. Was he protesting a wee bit too much? And if his software performed as well as he claimed it did, would his superiors be reluctant to see him go? “Does that mean that the Society would be your guinea pig, so to speak? Your first full test of a major collection?”

He had the grace to look slightly sheepish. “Well, yes. But I know it works on a smaller scale, and ramping it up shouldn’t be a problem.”

“You do know the scope of our collections? How would you prioritize your activities?”

He nodded. “I’m well aware of what collections the Society holds—I’ve always been interested in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania history. In my opinion, new and recent acquisitions here should take precedence, but as I understand it, those have slowed over the past few months?” I guessed that he had followed the news.

“Yes, that’s true, and acquisitions may remain slow for a bit. I think that segment should be of a manageable size and would be a good place to start. But what approach would you use for converting earlier catalogs?”

“I’d start with…” Obviously I had punched the right button, and he demonstrated that he had done his homework well. Nicholas knew our collections, their strengths (mainly in quality) and their weaknesses (in how we had tracked them—or hadn’t—over the years).

When he stopped for a breath, I broke in. “I’m impressed. But I have another question: do we have the technology in place to implement all of this? The hardware or software or whatever? Because you have to know that money is tight, and we can’t afford to replace a lot right now.”

“I can minimize the computer storage required, and as long as you can upload…” And he went on. And on.

An extremely knowledgeable young man, clearly. But would he fit in here? “Nicholas, obviously you know the technical aspects of what you’re working on, and it sounds as though you could do a lot for us. But this is a small place, and most of us are here because we love history, one way or another. Does that appeal to you? Are you a collector, in any sense of the word?” I guess I was asking if this would be just a job for him, or something more.

He seemed to get my drift. “As you can see from my résumé, I majored in history as an undergraduate. I’ve spent years trying to integrate methodical analysis with the vagaries of recorded history—you know, trying to correlate different contemporaneous reports of a battle, say, and see if I could arrive at some sort of consensus truth about what really happened. You might say I’m fascinated by historic minutiae, but at the same time, I’m skeptical of any individual report, absent corroboration. I suppose in layman’s terms, what I think I’m trying to do is to computerize history.”

I was beginning to feel overwhelmed. “Okay, one last question. You know our previous registrar had begun to update our records in our recently acquired software program. Can you integrate what he had accomplished into your own system? Because I’d hate to lose all that time and effort.” Not to mention, I’d hate to erase Alfred’s last contribution to a place that he had loved.

“No problem. I can write a transfer protocol that would…”

I’d heard enough. Nicholas was clearly qualified, and he appeared to want the job, for reasons I found more or less credible. He might be a stereotypical computer geek, although better dressed and more articulate than many I had encountered. I wondered how he would fit with our motley crew of librarians and administrators, but he did seem to have a genuine interest in history, and so didn’t exactly fall outside the bounds of what passed for normal here. He was staring at me expectantly.

“Nicholas, you’re definitely well suited for this position, and I’m flattered that you’re interested. May I contact your references?”

“Of course.”

“Do you have any questions for me?”

Nicholas appeared to reflect for about three seconds. “I think Latoya told me everything I need to know.”

“Then let me get back to you, one way or another, early next week.”

“That would be fine.” He stood up and extended a hand. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice. I look forward to hearing from you.”

I stood as well and walked him to the outer office. “Eric, could you take Nicholas back downstairs?”

“Sure, Nell.” Eric stood up. “Follow me, Nicholas.”

As I watched them walk down the hall, I realized that not once during the interview had Nicholas smiled, tried to make any small talk, or said anything about his life apart from the software he had created. Nor had he appeared nervous. He was a serious young man. Maybe I didn’t have a lot of experience with interviewing job applicants, but those I had interviewed had generally acted eager to please, nervous, or over-talkative. Nicholas fell at the opposite end of the spectrum: he was reserved almost to the point of stiffness, and while he had said all the correct things, I had learned very little about him, apart from his professional skills.

I decided I needed Latoya’s input, so I walked down the hall to her office. She looked up from her superbly clean desk when I walked in. “Do you have a moment to talk about Nicholas?”

She closed the folder she was reading. “Of course. He’s left already? What did you think of him?”

I dropped into the chair in front of her desk. “I guess I’d have to say I had mixed feelings about him. He seems very bright, and he has some interesting ideas. He said he could pick up where Alfred left off, so we wouldn’t lose any ground. But personally? I guess he seems a little cold.”

“And the Society is such a warm and fuzzy place?” Latoya arched one eyebrow.

I checked to see if she was being sarcastic, but she seemed sincere. “We have our share of odd ducks, I’ll admit. But we do have to play well together, because nobody is working at the Society for the money or the glory. I know the registrar operates fairly independently, and certainly
Alfred kept his interactions with staff to a minimum. So social skills are not a high priority.” I wondered why I felt so defensive about a polite, intelligent young man’s lack of warmth and humor—neither was a requirement for the position.

“Do you want me to keep looking?” Latoya asked neutrally, although it was clear that it took an effort. Did she expect me to reject Nicholas just because she was the one who had found him? I hoped I wasn’t that petty.

I thought for a moment. “Give me the weekend to think about it, all right? I told Nicholas we’d get back to him next week. You’ve seen his résumé—have you called his references?”

Latoya relaxed slightly. “I’ll get on that today. In his favor, let me say that his credentials seem solid, and I think he’d be a real asset. But it’s your call.”

Was it? Clearly he was Latoya’s pick, and I didn’t want to butt heads with her over something like this. “Then I’ll let you know on Monday. On another note, have you heard from our friends at the FBI lately, about returning our collections?” And talk shifted to other topics.

When I turned to leave, Latoya said, “Oh, one moment—these are the records on the Fireman’s Museum collection that you asked for. Not a particularly impressive group of artifacts.” She handed me a slender file—far less substantial than the one Felicity had assembled for me.

“But people enjoyed the exhibits there,” I reminded her. “Thank you, Latoya.”

Back at my office, I stopped at Eric’s desk and glanced around me: no one else in sight. “What did you think of the registrar candidate?” I asked Eric.

Eric looked up at me with a half smile. “Based on my two minutes of acquaintance, and the three sentences we exchanged? Kind of a cold fish, but smart. At least, he
thinks
he’s smart.”

I nodded. “That was about what I thought. I’ll see what his references have to say about him—Latoya will be checking those. Thanks, Eric. Have I missed anything important?”

He handed me a few message slips. “I’d say the most important is from Peter Ingersoll.”

“I saw him yesterday at the funeral—he said he was going to call. Thanks, Eric.” I assumed Peter wanted to set a time to get the documentation we had found about the Fireman’s Museum’s collections, and I would be happy to turn over what we had assembled, but I was nervous about sharing anything regarding the destroyed fire engine. I didn’t want to bring up the issue, but I was curious to see if he would say anything about it on his own. Back at my desk, I decided to first check with James.

“Did you need something, Nell?” he barked when I got through to him. He sounded harried, so I cut to the chase.

“Peter Ingersoll called while I was tied up, and I need to call him back. I ran into him yesterday at the funeral procession. I told him that I had collected the information about his lost collections. What do I do now?”

James sighed. “You can’t stall him?”

“Would it make a difference? I’ve pulled together what we’ve got here, and I can get Eric to make copies. If I put him off, it makes me look sloppy or incompetent. I owe Peter a prompt response, as a peer and a colleague. Innocent until proven guilty, right?”

“I never said we suspected him of anything.”

“You never said you didn’t, either. I know you and the police have to look at everybody.”

“We do. Can you omit the details about the fire engine?”

“It would be kind of an obvious omission, since it’s not only the centerpiece of their collection but also the one thing we’d be most likely to have information about, especially given the Terwilliger connection. Do you want me to give him the whole package and see how he reacts?”

“You can give him copies of what you have in your files, but do not—repeat, do not—bring up anything about what we suspect.”

“You don’t think he’s come to the same conclusion himself?”

“If he has, he hasn’t told the police, as far as I know.”

Should I be concerned about that? Was Peter hiding something, or was he really clueless? Still, I could sympathize. If he had reason to suspect something suspicious was going on within his museum, he would be reluctant to bring any outside attention to it, at least until he was sure. I’d been in much the same position. Of course, if he was in on it, the result would be the same. I decided I should get to know Peter a bit better.

“Nell—” James began.

I cut him off. “I know, don’t meddle. I’m just going to talk to a colleague in a difficult situation, one that I’m familiar with. Okay? No probing questions, no cross-examination.”