Sheila Connolly: Fundraising The Dead

That kind of publicity was something the Society definitely did not need, especially coming hard on the heels of Alfred’s death. “I hope it won’t come to that, Marty. I’m sure there’s some reasonable explanation, and I’ll get to work on it immediately.” As though I didn’t have anything else to do. “I’m very glad you called this to our attention-clearly we need to look carefully at our procedures.”

Marty hardly seemed mollified. “One week,” she said again, then turned on her heel and marched out of the stacks. I exchanged another look with Rich, who was several shades paler than he had been a few minutes ago.

“If I weren’t such a lady,” I said, “I’d say we were in deep shit. We’d damn well better find the those papers.” I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Well, I guess I’d better start talking to the staff.” I made my way out of the stacks, followed by poor Rich, who resembled a puppy who had just had his nose swatted.

Rich headed upstairs, but I found Marty waiting for me in the hall. “Did you need something else, Marty? I assure you I’ll keep an eye on things.”

She shook her head abruptly. “It’s not that. Alfred’s funeral will be on Tuesday. Will you let the staff know?”

Marty was handling Alfred’s funeral? That seemed odd. “Of course. Can you give me the details? I’ll send out an email blast right away. Why…”

Marty handed me a sheet with information on the funeral home and the cemetery. “Why’m I doing it? Alfred wasn’t close to most of his relatives, and nobody else stepped up. Thanks for letting people know.”

She turned away to leave, but I wondered if I had seen a glint of tears.

I went back to my office, flopped down into my deskchair, and tried hard to think. Marty Terwilliger was important to the Society, not because she had a lot of money (which she didn’t-the old Philadelphia families had run through most of their fortunes a long time ago) but because of her family’s history with the place and because of her extensive and intricate connections with a whole lot of Philadelphia-area society. We needed them, as a group. Which meant that we needed to keep Marty happy, and that made fixing this mess my first priority.

That was the business decision. But I had this unsettling feeling that there were bigger issues involved: namely, how we kept track of our collections, how we fulfilled our obligation to the public and to all those, dead and living, who had entrusted us with protecting their historic treasures. From its inception, the Society had been run like a club. All the members knew each other, and it was a pleasant place to fritter away a couple of hours. It had been a trusting place then, but the world had changed and that trust was no longer justified.

At board meetings, staff and board members had debated about security on many occasions, as I knew well. Certainly the technology had changed, and various consultants had been called in to lay out high-tech options for strategically positioned video cameras, on-screen monitoring, sophisticated alarm systems, motion sensors-the list went on and on. But all of these glitzy systems cost money, big money, and we were barely able to keep the heat and lights on, not to mention pay staff salaries. Somehow electronic surveillance had been bumped far down the wish list, and no one had really protested.

But had we been wrong? Had we been too gullible, too innocent-and were we about to pay the price? I stared at the handsome framed etching on my office wall, but I didn’t see it. What I saw was looming catastrophe. Hang on, Nell, you’re looking at the worst possible case . Maybe somebody just moved the box to clean. Ha , I responded to myself, when was the last time anyone had cleaned in the stacks? Maybe the missing papers were on a cart, waiting to be reshelved. Maybe an inexperienced new hire had simply reshelved the box in the wrong place. Too many maybes.

Sometimes I regretted not having any sort of formal library training, and this was one of those times. I had a lot of questions, and I needed information. But I wasn’t quite sure where to start. As I swung idly back and forth in my swivel chair, I saw two paths: first, I needed to review, for my own understanding, how we tracked items as they traveled within the building. Second, I needed to find out exactly what, if anything, was being done about the items that Alfred had been unable to find. For the first, I needed to talk with our head librarian, Felicity; I’d talk to Latoya second. Maybe that was backwards, since Latoya was officially responsible for managing our collections, but I’d known Felicity longer, and she was far more knowledgeable about what was where in the building than Latoya could hope to be. And, I reminded myself, I still hadn’t given Charles the heads-up about the problem of the missing items; he wasn’t in today, but Marty’s complaint would demand his attention sooner or later-sooner, if I couldn’t come up with an answer for her within the week. I decided to do a little digging myself first, but if I didn’t come up with anything by, say, Tuesday, I’d have to tell Charles that we had a problem.

Before I headed downstairs to the reading room to find Felicity, I stopped to talk with Joan. She had been on staff less time than I had, and had been hired to replace a charming woman who’d been here decades but was completely oblivious to the changes that computers had wrought upon modern communications. “Hey, Joan-have you sent out that statement about Alfred’s death?”

“Sure did, yesterday, once we got wind that the media were already on it. It was kind of generic, since I couldn’t find anybody who knew him well. And before you ask, I also added something to the website.”

“You are good, lady! Maybe you can put together a little more about him-you know, what he did, the collections he worked on, and so on-for the next issue of the magazine?”

“I’m on it. Poor guy! I don’t know if I ever had a conversation longer than two minutes with Alfred, but he always gave me exactly what I asked for, and quickly. Let me know when you’re going to advertise his position-I’ve got some ideas about where to post it online.”

I could tell she was already way ahead of me. “Sounds good, and thanks. I’ll leave you to it.”

I stood up and headed downstairs. Felicity Soames, senior staff librarian, had been at the Society forever, and after Alfred, she was the best person to ask where things were-or where they should be. Briefly I wondered how she and Alfred had gotten along-hadn’t I seen them together at the gala? She was of a certain age, as the French like to put it, had never married, and lived for the purpose of managing the unwieldy mountains of paper housed in the Society’s building. Luckily, she also loved to help other people, in the often-futile hope that they would come to share her passion. A hapless researcher, fresh off the bus from Des Moines with two hours to spare, would be greeted by Felicity and inundated with stacks of books and promises of photocopies to come. They went away either glassy-eyed or starry-eyed, but it made no difference to Felicity. She was an incredible resource, and we were lucky to have her. Of course she was the first person I turned to in my quest.

I found her at her usual station: the elevated desk in the reading room, where she could survey her domain and keep an eye out for people foolish enough to use a pen rather than a pencil, or to think about bending a fragile book spine.

“Got a minute, Felicity?” I asked quietly (in a library, always quietly) as I approached.

Felicity scanned the crowd, though crowd was a rather loose definition, since it consisted of four people, at least one of whom was asleep. The room could hold a hundred easily. It didn’t look like any murder-ghouls or newshounds had made it past the lobby, though, and I made a mental note to ask our front-desk attendant if he’d had to keep any at bay.