Fire Engine Dead Read Online Free PDF

appropriate.”
    As I walked back toward my office down the hall, Eric looked up and whispered, “Ms. Terwilliger is in your office.”
    “Thank you, Eric.” I marched in to find Marty sprawled on my gracious antique settee, reading a document. “Hello, Marty. What brings you here?”
    “Peter Ingersoll and his disaster.”
    I sat down behind my desk and sighed. Why was I not surprised? Marty—Society board member, ally, and friend—knew everyone in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties and was related to half of them; her family had been among the movers and shakers in Philadelphia for a couple of centuries. “Let me guess—Peter is a third cousin, twice removed?”
    Marty snorted. “My brother Elwyn was at prep school with him.”
    “How’d you hear about Peter’s disaster, as you so aptly put it?”
    “Elwyn is in the insurance business.”
    “You mean the Fireman’s Museum has already been in touch?”
    Marty shrugged. “I don’t know, but the insurers have been checking their liability. Why do you know anything about it?”
    “Because Peter was here this morning, asking for help to find records of their collections for the insurance claim. I’ve put Felicity and Latoya on it. By the way, Latoya says she’s talked to some candidates for the registrar position and thanks you for the added financial support.”
    “I want to be sure whoever we hire is good—and will stick around for a while. We really need to tighten up our collections management.”
    “All it takes is money, as you know very well. But I’ll be glad to get that position filled, too. Back to you, though—why would your brother think you wanted to know about Peter Ingersoll’s problems?”
    “You know that fire engine that was the centerpiece of their collection?”
    I tried to recall anything like that from my one visit to the museum and came up blank, although it was hard to imagine missing something as large as a fire engine, no matter how big the crowd. “Not offhand. I was only there once.”
    “My grandfather donated it.”
    “Your grandfather collected antique fire engines?”
    “Just the one, although he had some other fire stuff as well. The cousins and I used to play with the buckets and helmets when we got together there. I’m pretty sure we trashed some collector’s items, though Grampy never said a word. But he wouldn’t let us go near the fire engine, even though of course we wanted to. Made in Philadelphiaaround 1825. Horse drawn, hand pump. Gorgeous piece, in good condition—even the paint and gilding. Real fancy. It would break his heart to think that went up in flames. Luckily he’s dead. And pretty ironic, don’t you think?”
    “A fire engine burning up? Yes. Let’s hope it escaped the fire. Was that all you wanted to talk about?”
    Marty slouched against the elegant curves of the settee. “What, you want to get rid of me already, Ms. High and Mighty? Position going to your head?”
    I checked to make sure Marty was joking; she was. “Of course not, Marty. I’m always glad to see you.”
    “Yeah, right. But I do have some business—it’s about the Terwilliger Collection.”
    Of course. The Terwilliger Collection consisted of the Society’s vast collection of Terwilliger family papers—records going back to the original Terwilliger settler, in the early eighteenth century, and included those of one of the great leaders of the Revolution, Major Jonathan Terwilliger, as well as a host of lesser dignitaries of Philadelphia political, economic, and social life. Marty’s father had bequeathed the collection to the Society years earlier, and Marty had immersed herself in their cataloging. She’d even cobbled together enough money to hire someone to help.
    The huge collection was housed in our so-called fireproof vault, a sturdy chamber built in 1895 with a special endowment from a then-board member who was concerned about the vulnerability of the Society’s largely paper-based collections to