Monument to the Dead (11 page)

It was nearly noon when James and Shelby left for the
city, w
h
ile Marty and I planned to head in the opposite direction.

“Marty, how do you know this Rodney Lippincott? He’s not another relative, is he?”
I asked.

Marty was wandering around my house, picking things up and putting them down. I loved
the house dearly, mainly because it was all mine, and every creature comfort within
its walls I had created—it had started life as a stable. But I’d seen Marty’s house,
and this was not in her league.

“Nice,” she muttered to herself, looking at my woodwork, salvaged from a local junk
dealer and carefully stripped and refinished. “What? Oh, Rodney. No, no relation that
I know of. Kind of an almost relation, though, since he was courting my mother before
she met my father. One look at Dad and Mom was a goner. But Rodney kind of hung around
the edges of our life, when I was younger. I think he thought a small piece of my
mother was better than nothing. That’s why I’m pretty sure he’ll see me now.”

“So he never married?”

“Sure he did, and had six kids. I just think he’s a hopeless romantic at heart. Anyway,
the wife’s gone now, and the kids are scattered all over. Listen to me—kids! They’re
my age, and they’ve got college-age kids of their own. Let’s hit the road, I want
to pick up something to take to Rodney—he’s got a sweet tooth.”

“Fine by me.” I was hungry again, and too antsy to sit still, even in my own living
room. Besides, I knew Marty had no patience with small talk; she’d rather be doing
something. “How do we get there?”

“Route 1, south.”

“Then we can stop at the Brandywine Museum and have a quick lunch and buy some of
their goodies for Rodney.” I loved that museum, loved eating in the glassed-in lunch
area overlooking the Brandywine River. I’d been there many times before, though not
recently.

We wended our way southward to Route 1, with Marty at the wheel. Her style of driving
was rather dissimilar to mine, to put it mildly. She was prone to jackrabbit starts
and abrupt stops, with a bit of tailgating thrown in to add spice. I made sure my
seat belt was buckled and tried to admire the pretty landscape and ignore the rest.
This end of Pennsylvania was delightful—lots of history, mushroom farms, old stone
houses. Past Kennett Square, we turned southeast on local roads.

It took us a bit over an hour to arrive at Rodney Lippincott’s home. If I’d been expecting
another stately mansion, I was immediately dissuaded: Marty pulled up in front of
a very ordinary tract home in a housing development that probably dated to the 1950s.
As she turned off the engine she said, “I know what you’re thinking. Rodney decided
the kids should enjoy the family inheritance sooner rather than later, so he downsized
when his wife died. Kept some nice stuff—you’ll see, inside—but bought this house
outright. It suits his needs.”

“Okay,” I said, reminding myself not to judge a book by its cover. I also had to remind
myself that while Marty’s extended family and many of their friends might be well
established after a couple of centuries in the area, they didn’t necessarily have
a lot of money. What they did have was a strong sense of civic responsibility, and
that extended to preserving their historic heritage, usually through volunteering
to serve rather than writing checks. Hence Rodney and the Forrest Trust, most likely.

“Come on,” Marty said, climbing out of the car. I followed, clutching a box of yummy
cookies we’d bought to soften Rodney up. Marty knocked on the front door, then knocked
again. For a long moment I fought the fear that we might find yet another body, but
eventually we heard shouting from somewhere inside the house. Footsteps stopped near
the door and there was a flash of an eye at the peephole. Finally the door was yanked
open and we were confronted by a rather unkempt man of about seventy, wearing glasses
set askew on his nose, with a hearing aid in one ear. “Martha Terwilliger, what drags
you down to this forlorn outpost of civilization?”

“We want to talk with you, Rodney,” Marty said brusquely. “We brought cookies.” On
cue, I held up the box.

“Bribery will get you in the door, at least.” Rodney stepped back and opened the door.
“But don’t expect coffee. I’m out.”

“Rodney, I don’t expect much of anything from you,” Marty said, brushing past him.
I followed meekly.

“Who’re you?” he demanded as I passed.

“I’m Nell Pratt, a friend of Marty’s.” Marty made a right turn for the living room
and I tailed along.

“Come on, Rodney,” Marty said. “Come talk to us and you can have your cookies.”

“Damn, Martha, you treat me like an idiot or a large unruly dog. Nice to see you,
give me a cookie, and tell me what you want.” That last sentence came out in a rush.

“Ah, Rodney, I’ve missed you. Kids all right?”

“Fine. I’m a grandfather five times over. How’s your love life?” Rodney shot back.

“As dull as ever.” Marty glanced at me. “Rodney, this is serious. This is Nell Pratt,
from the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society. Nell and I need to talk with you because
we think there’s something funny going on with the Edwin Forrest Trust. You still
on the board?”

Rodney dropped into a well-worn chair across from us. “Why would I quit? I don’t have
to do a damn thing except show up for a meeting every now and then. Why, is there
something fishy going on?”

“Maybe, but probably not what you’d expect. Several members of the trust have died
recently.”

“So? We’re all old. Trustees die all the time. It’s getting harder and harder to replace
them, though—nobody wants to be bothered.”

“At first glance it looks like they all died from old age, or miscounted their pills,
or maybe committed suicide,” I said. “But we think they were intentionally given an
overdose of their medications.”

“Rodney,” Marty followed up with surprising patience, “we think someone is killing
the trustees.”

“You’re kidding.” Rodney stared at her for several beats. “No, you’re not kidding.
Why the hell would anyone want us dead? We don’t do anything!”

“That’s what we wanted to ask you. We know some things about the trust, but not enough.
For instance, how did you get involved?”

“My mother was a member of the board, back in the day. Nobody minded when she suggested
me to replace her, so here I am.” Rodney straightened his glasses and looked at me
directly. “What’s your interest?”

“I’m president of the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society, and Marty’s on the board there.
A couple of other Forrest trustees who were found dead were also Society board members
or former members, which is how I came to be involved.”

“Oh, right—you’re the ones with that honking big statue of Edwin.” He turned away
from me. “Martha, who do you think is killing people?”

“That’s the question,” Marty said. “Rodney, have you had any visitors lately? Or unusual
phone calls? Anything at all relating to the trust?”

“Nope. Well, not exactly. I don’t open my door to anybody I don’t know—usually they
want me to buy something or sign some damn petition. And I don’t answer phone calls
from numbers I don’t recognize—same thing. Usually someone shilling for a candidate,
or maybe it’s for sick animals. I know all my family’s numbers. If somebody really
wants to talk to me, I let them leave a message, so I get to decide if I really want
to talk to them. Most don’t. I get ticked off by these people who won’t admit who
they are. Seems rude.” He sighed. “So, who else is gone? I’m kind of behind on my
mail.”

Marty ticked off the deaths on her fingers, and with each additional name, Rodney’s
expression grew more serious. When she was finished, he said, “Damnation. I really
haven’t been paying attention. Six of us? Something’s not right. When did all this
happen?”

“Over the past year,” Marty said. “Although the pace seems to be speeding up. That’s
why we wanted to talk to you—to make sure you were all right, of course, and to see
if you could shed any light on these deaths.”

Rodney ate a cookie, slowly. “Like I said, I don’t talk to many people—not worth my
time. Last trustees meeting was—let me think—six months ago? We’re about due for another
one, I guess.”

“Anything out of the ordinary going on with the trust, Rodney?” I asked.

“Apart from the proposal to dissolve it, you mean?”

My eyes widened: this was the first I’d heard of this idea.

“What? Wait,” Marty sputtered. “Who wants to dissolve the trust?”

“I guess we all do, except we’ve just started looking into how, with a lawyer. We
aren’t in a hurry—this thing’s been ticking along since 1872. But there’s really no
reason to keep going. Most of the money went to setting up that home for decrepit
actors in Forrest’s old house, but no decrepit actors want to go there anymore. Can’t
say as I blame them—the place needs a lot of work, and we don’t want to take on fixing
it up to modern standards—kind of a waste of money. But we’d have to break the trust
in order to sell the place, or even give it away. Old Edwin was pretty clear about
what he wanted.”

“How hard would it be to break the trust?” Marty asked.

Rodney shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve asked a lawyer to check it out, but none of
us knows yet. Like I said, there’s no rush.”

This cast a whole new light on our problem, and I tried to figure out the implications.
If the trust was dissolved, who would be affected? What would happen to the objects
from his collection? That was, after all, my most direct concern, not that I thought
anyone would kill over any of it. The Society might have to give back or try to buy
the collections items we housed, and we’d definitely have to give back the money we
held, but since it was a restricted endowment, nobody had touched it. Was there anything
about the dissolution of the trust that could lead to murder?

Marty beat me to it. “Is the trust out of money, Rodney?” Marty asked.

“Nah. It’s been safely invested for forever, and we don’t mess with it. I’d say in
the neighborhood of a million including the property, but the interest income from
the endowment isn’t enough to cover maintenance of the Home anymore.”

That didn’t help me much. I didn’t see how anyone could get his hands on that million.
“Have you changed financial advisors?”

Rodney turned to me. “Don’t think so—we let our attorney handle that side of things.
No big changes that I can recall, and we’d have to vote on it anyway.”

“You haven’t said anything publicly, have you?”

“Nope. Besides, who cares? We’re small potatoes.”

Who cares, indeed. I wondered what would happen if there weren’t enough trustees to
vote on the dissolution? At the rate things were going, there might be none within
the month. What then? Would whoever was holding the money take over? The attorneys?
Would a trust that had been set up back in the 1870s hold up today? All questions
for which I never thought I would need answers.

And still no motive, and no additional clues from Rodney, apart from the bombshell
about dismantling the trust. A sleepy old trust with modest resources was fading away
because it had become irrelevant in the modern world; its original purpose had ceased
to exist. Why would anyone care enough to kill?

“Rodney, who’s the lawyer that’s handling this?”

“One of those three-name places in Center City, starts with an M . . . Morgan something?”

“Morgan, Hamilton and Fox?” I said.

“Sounds right,” Rodney replied. “The law firm’s been around as long as the trust,
damn near. They recently assigned some young puppy to handle it. I’m sure he’s smart,
but dealing with him is like talking to one of my grandkids, and he thinks we’re all
senile.”

I had to wonder if he was talking about Jacob Miller—the description sounded about
right. “Has he made any recommendations yet?” I pressed.

“Scheduled for the next meeting. The secretary at the law firm usually sends out a
notice telling us when to show up. Like I said, it’s probably soon.”

Marty and I exchanged a glance, and I wondered if she was thinking what I was: that
the pending board meeting had pushed the killer to speeding up his schedule. How would
murdering the board members affect trust procedures? What made up a quorum for the
trust?

“Rodney, we’re going to go see Louisa Babcock next,” Marty said. “You seen her lately?”

“Told you, Martha—I only see family these days. And now you. Life’s too short to waste
on boring people. At least you’ve livened up my afternoon. If I have any brainstorms
I’ll let you know. Thanks for the cookies.”

Apparently the chat with Rodney was over, but I didn’t believe there was much more
to be gained anyway. “Thank you for seeing us, Rodney. And take care of yourself,”
I said.

“I’ve survived this long, haven’t I?” He gave me a searching look, and I wondered
what he was thinking. “Take care of old Edwin, will you?”

I laughed. “I usually say hello to him anyway, while I’m waiting for the elevator.
I’ll give him your best wishes.”

“Ha!” Rodney said. He stood up and shepherded Marty and me to the door, which he closed
firmly behind us while we were still standing on the stoop.

Back in the car, I said to Marty, “Well, that was interesting. Did we learn anything?”

“The trustees want to wrap up the trust, and they’ve talked to their lawyer,” Marty
said, backing rapidly out of the drive without looking. Luckily there were no kids
strolling home from school.

“That’s news, all right. But I can’t imagine there’s enough money there to inspire
murder. Unless, of course, somebody’s been cooking the books. Didn’t Rodney say that
it was the lawyer who took care of the financial management side? Or maybe the bank
holding the assets has been embezzling for years and doesn’t want to be found out?”

Marty gave a short laugh. “There are easier ways to cover up embezzlement than killing
half the board. I don’t think there are any financial wizards among them, so they’d
accept whatever piece of paper was put in front of them. Doesn’t feel right.”