Fire Engine Dead (3 page)

Eric disappeared and returned quickly, followed by Peter, who was indeed the man I’d seen the day before. I mentally patted myself on the back for identifying him correctly. But yesterday he had looked concerned; today he looked strained. He strode into my office and extended his hand. “Peter Ingersoll. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. I’m so sorry to barge in on you like this, but there’s something that I hope you can help me with.”

I rose to shake his hand. “I hope I can help, Mr. Ingersoll. Please, sit down. Would you like some coffee?” I noticed Eric was still hovering in the door.

“It’s Peter, please. No, caffeine is the last thing I need right now, I’m so wired.” He dropped into a chair in front of my desk.

I sat in my own chair and nodded at Eric, who closed the door quietly behind him. “And I’m Nell. What can I do for you?”

“As I told your assistant, I’m the president of the Fireman’s Museum. Do you know it?”

I smiled. “Indeed I do—I went to an event there, what, two years ago now? It must have been around the time of the Ben Franklin bicentennial.” I tried to remember details about the museum. I knew it was housed in a former firehouse, and I remembered the collections—what could be seen through the substantial crowd at that event—as a charming assemblage of equipment, emblems, and old photographs.

“Ah, yes—I hope you had an enjoyable evening.”

“I did. I’d heard you’re closed for renovations at the moment?”

He nodded. “We are. We’re almost through. We’d hoped to link the opening of the refurbished museum with some sort of tribute to the firefighters of 9/11, but between permits and planning—and, of course, fundraising—we fell behind. We’re scheduled to open shortly. Or we were.”

I watched in dismay as Peter struggled to control his emotions. “Are you all right? You sure you wouldn’t like a cup of tea or something?” Or maybe a Scotch, straight up?

He waved a hand. “No, I’m fine. It’s just so new, I’m having trouble getting my head around it. Give me a moment.” He looked down at his lap, his eyes closed, for maybe thirty seconds, before facing me again with a much calmer expression. “I apologize—you have no idea what I’m talking about, of course. Did you hear about the warehouse fire yesterday?”

“Yes, I read about it in the paper this morning.”

Peter glanced around the office, as if to confirm that we were alone. “Please don’t spread this around, but…” He swallowed. “That warehouse was where we were storing the museum collections during renovations.”

I felt as though someone had punched me in the gut. Questions tumbled through my head, and I waited to speak, trying to sort out which to ask first. “Are they all gone?”

He shook his head. “We don’t know yet. Parts of the warehouse were spared from the fire, although there may be secondary damage to the stored items that survived—smoke, water. But we don’t know where our particular collections were. I’m still hoping for the best.”

Some small hope, at least. Then the practical side of me took over. “What were you thinking? This was a public warehouse, right? No climate control? What about security? What kind of safety record does the warehouse management have? How could you have put the collections at risk like that?”

If possible, Peter looked even more distraught than he had originally, and I immediately felt guilty. “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself the same questions?” he said. “You’re absolutely right: those collections should have been in a safe and secure location. But it all came down to money. The better the storage, the more expensive it is. We just didn’t have the money, not with all the construction costs and the lost income while we were closed. Surely you can understand that?”

Unfortunately I did understand, only too well. A limited budget could stretch only so far, and corners got cut. “I’m sorry—it’s rude of me to second-guess you now.” Especially since the worst had happened. “You thought the collections would be there for only a short time, right?”

“Exactly,” he said, somewhat relieved. “We thought they’d be in and out just a few months at most, but then the whole process kept dragging on and on and our reopening kept being postponed. There’s nothing you can say that I
haven’t already said to myself. I feel terrible about this. I feel I’ve let the museum down, and the fire department, not to mention the city.”

We both fell silent for a moment, in mourning for the lost collections. Then I gathered myself up. “So, what brings you here, Peter?”

Peter gave himself a shake and straightened his tie. “I’m hoping you have some records about the museum, its founding and its collections, here at the Society.”

“Ah,” I said. “I see. But don’t you have those records?”

“Some of them. The older, archived ones…”

I completed his sentence. “Were sent to the warehouse along with all the other stuff.”

Peter held up his hand. “I know, you don’t have to tell me how stupid that was. But I was overruled by my board. They were looking at the bottom line, period. They’re firemen and bureaucrats mostly—not collectors or museum people.”

“May I ask why you want this, right now?”

“Because we need to get a handle on what we’ve lost, and what we should look for, if anything in the warehouse survived. I have to report to the board.”

A task I didn’t envy him. “What about insurance?”

“You mean, did we insure the collections? Only minimally. I’ll admit a lot of items weren’t worth much on the open market—you know, antique fire axes and old helmets and the like. It was the collection as a whole that was valuable, at least to us. So much of it was donated by local firefighters—things they had collected or salvaged over the years. Again, the board balked at the premiums. If I recall, a few of the key pieces were covered, although I haven’t had time to check to see for how much. No doubt it’s well
below replacement value. And certainly those items are irreplaceable in any case.”

“What is it you think I can provide?”

“As much information as you have about the individual items, I guess. That would help us to file a claim, and it would also enable us to drum up sympathy from the public when we try to rebuild the collections. Or maybe I should say,
if
we try. For all I know the board may decide to scrap the place.”

He looked so miserable I scrambled to find something positive to say. “Well, until someone has been through the warehouse, you don’t know how much you’ve lost, right? Maybe you’ll be lucky. And in the meantime, I can ask our librarians to see what we’ve got on the collections. I’d hate to see the museum fold—it’s a gem of its kind.”

“I certainly think so.” Peter stood up. “Thank you, Nell. I appreciate your willingness to help, even if you don’t find anything. I feel just sick about the whole thing.”

“I’m happy to help—that’s what we’re here for, as a repository of local archives. Let me walk you out.” I guided him back to the elevator and down to the lobby. Peter said little along the way, apparently sunk in his own misery, and I couldn’t blame him. At the door I said, “I’ll give you a call as soon as I know anything. Try not to take it too hard.” I watched him stumble down our stone steps and pause at the bottom, as if he’d lost his way.

He really did seem like a man in shock. I wondered how I would feel in his shoes. Of course, our collections were much more extensive, and probably more valuable than his. Not to mention far more vulnerable to fire—all those tons of paper, hanging over my head. I resolved to check the
state of our fire suppression systems. As far as I knew, no one had looked at them for a while.

Back upstairs, Eric looked up when I walked past his desk, questions in his eyes. I debated whether to share with him what Peter had told me about the behind-the-scenes mess but decided against it, so I just shook my head slightly. “Eric, I’ll fill you in when I can, but right now I’ve got to keep what Peter Ingersoll told me in confidence.” I checked my watch—almost lunchtime. “I’m going to go out to get some lunch, and then you can go eat. I need to talk to Felicity after lunch, and maybe Latoya.” Felicity Soames was our all-seeing, all-knowing head librarian, who could lay hands on anything that was in the building, as she had demonstrated on more than one occasion. Latoya Anderson was our vice president of collections; her knowledge of our records was less encyclopedic than Felicity’s, but I thought I should keep her in the loop, since this was an outside request for items in our collections. Latoya and I had a slightly rocky professional relationship, but I knew she could be closemouthed about things and wouldn’t let this go beyond the walls of the Society. “I don’t have anything else scheduled for today, do I?”

“No, you’re clear.”

As I left the building in search of a quick sandwich down the block, I realized that Peter hadn’t said anything about whether the fire had actually been a case of arson, although the newspaper article had clearly indicated it most likely was. Not that it would make a difference to Peter, since the collections were gone either way, whether the cause was arson or an act of God.

Once I’d eaten lunch, I went looking for Felicity. I was
caught up on my administrative responsibilities for the day, and I always enjoyed the librarian’s company. She’d been at the Society forever; her love for information in any form was obvious, and she was unfailingly thrilled to pass it on. Any hapless visitor who approached her with a simple question usually walked away with a stack of references and photocopies an hour later.

Felicity was, as usual, behind her desk, which sat on a raised dais so that she could observe activity in the reading room. I took a quick census: the room was moderately filled, and nobody was asleep. That made it a good day. Felicity raised a hand in greeting when she saw me. “What brings you to my lair, Madame President?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“I have a boon to ask of thee,” I replied. Two could play that game. “Can we go somewhere private?”

She scanned the room and motioned one of the shelvers over. “Keep an eye on the room for a bit, please.” It always struck me as a tad absurd that we had to keep an eagle eye on our library patrons, most of whom were eager researchers with limited time. But that in itself was a problem. All too many thought that they had the right to make off with the pieces they needed for their work—individual documents, pages sliced from books, even books themselves. Since we had no electronic surveillance, and we couldn’t do body searches when people left the building (and I’d seen some pretty creative concealment of purloined items in my day), we had to rely on our staff’s human observation. “I’ll try not to keep you long,” I promised.

We made our way to a quiet room tucked under the handsome stone and mahogany staircase in the front. When we had settled ourselves, Felicity asked, “What can I do for you?”

I checked to see that the door to the room was closed. “Did you hear about that warehouse fire?”

“Yes, where the watchman died. Sad thing. Not the first fire recently, was it? Maybe there’s a firebug on the loose.”

“That’s the one. The thing is, the director of the Fireman’s Museum, Peter Ingersoll, came by this morning and told me—and this is way,
way
off the record for now—that the museum had been storing its collections there while they remodeled.”

Felicity looked appropriately horrified. “Oh no! How awful.” Then her mouth twitched. “And what an ironic thing—the fire collection going up in flames. Are they a complete loss?”

“He doesn’t know yet, but it doesn’t look good. And worse, his collections files were housed there, too.” I hesitated
before adding, “What makes it even worse is that the watchman was a fireman. Retired.”

“Oh dear—I saw that in the paper. And what kind of idiot is Ingersoll?” Felicity snorted. “What was he thinking, keeping everything there?”

“He told me he was overruled by his board, who wanted to do things on the cheap. Don’t worry, he already knows it was a stupid decision, but there’s nothing to be done now. Apparently they never anticipated the stuff being in the warehouse for long—but renovations got delayed and dragged on and on.”

“So what did he want from us?”

“He wants to know if we have any records of the founding of the Fireman’s Museum, and for the collections. And failing that, I think he’d be happy to have any kind of information about Philadelphia firefighting, particularly images, in the event he has to try to reassemble a collection. For fundraising purposes.”

“Ah.” Felicity thought for a few moments. “That’s not my area of expertise, but I’ll see what I can pull together. How soon?”

“He didn’t set a deadline. I think the poor man is in shock. I’m sure I would be, under the circumstances. A day or two, maybe?”

“I think I can manage that,” Felicity said. “I know I’ve seen several folders…Well, let me take a look and I’ll get back to you.”

“Thank you. Everything else going well?”

“About average. We could use another shelver or two—it’s hard to juggle schedules to maintain consistent coverage on the floor. Maybe by summer, when we get more vacation visitors?”

“No promises, but at least things should have stabilized by then. Have you seen Barney lately?” Barney was a local electrician with a passion for Philadelphia baseball history—and an apparent interest in Felicity. I’d made him an honorary member after he’d helped us with some electrical issues in our aging building.

“He’s come by a few times,” Felicity said primly. “He certainly is enthusiastic.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Well, I’ll let you get back to your desk. Let me know what you find.”

We departed and went our separate ways. Upstairs I debated about my next step. I should probably talk with Latoya, although I didn’t relish the prospect. Latoya, a tall, stately black woman close to my age, had been with the Society for several years, although not as long as I had; she had been hired by my predecessor. She was extremely well qualified for her position as vice president of collections for the Society, but she had never quite bonded with most of the staff, and I knew little about her other than her professional credentials. For most of her tenure she had seemingly considered herself higher up the administrative chart than I, although we had both been nominal department heads. My sudden and unexpected elevation to the presidency had unsettled her a bit, and we were still negotiating our new working relationship. Still, protocol dictated that I should consult her about this problem, and there was a good chance that she would have some relevant information about the Fireman’s Museum. So I marched down the hall to her office.