Fire Engine Dead by Sheila Connolly Page A

in a likewise professional manner. Period. Before I could overthink the whole situation, I picked up the phone and called him.
    Peter Ingersoll answered his own phone, and I could hear sounds of construction in the background. “Nell, thank you for returning my call,” he shouted into the phone, and I winced and pulled the receiver away from my ear. “You said yesterday that you had something for me?”
    “I’ve pulled together what we have here. How about we get together for lunch and I can give it to you?”
    “What?”
    I repeated my question, more loudly this time.
    “That would be great! I can’t hear myself think here. How about the Bourse?”
    “Fine. Noon, at the café there?”
    “Great. See you there.”
    After Peter had hung up, I called out to Eric. “I didn’t have anything planned for lunch today, did I?”
    “No, you’re free. Are you meeting Mr. Ingersoll?”
    “How did you guess? I’ll need you to make copies of the documents we’ve gathered, to take with me.”
    “Of course.”
    I pulled out the folders and started to go through them, using sticky tabs to mark the pages I wanted Eric to copy—and I made a point of including the best and clearest pictures of the fire engine. Peter would have all the information we could offer. The question was, what was he going to do with it?
    It was going to be an interesting lunch.

CHAPTER 8
    Armed with the thick envelope Eric handed me, I left the building a few minutes early so I could enjoy the walk. The place Peter and I had agreed to meet at lay about halfway between our two institutions, so neither of us would waste any time. It wasn’t upscale, but the food was decent, and it was busy enough that no one would pay us much attention. Along the way I took a moment to salute the odd frame structure that embodied the ghost of Ben Franklin’s house on Chestnut Street—the house had been torn down nearly two hundred years earlier, and yet it lingered on. Maybe on the way back I would stop at his grave, in the cemetery not far from the Constitution Center.
    I arrived first, and waited outside since the cool air felt good. I saw Peter before he saw me, and I watched him approach, accompanied by a man I recognized as the curator Gary O’Keefe—tall and broad, with a craggy open face and grizzled hair. Peter looked predictably frazzled; his rathernice suit showed traces of drywall dust. He smiled when he saw me.
    “Nell, you remember Gary O’Keefe. I hope you don’t mind that I brought him along.”
    Peter’s companion extended a hand. “Nice to see you again, Nell.”
    I wondered briefly why Peter had included Gary in our meeting. Support? Or was Gary keeping an eye on Peter? “Good to see you, too,” I said.
    “Shall we?” he asked, opening the door to the building for me and Peter, and I led the way inside. At the café tucked in one corner a young waitress pointed us toward a table with a view of the busy core of the Bourse, a building that had once been part of Philadelphia’s financial center but which now housed a delightful variety of shops and eateries.
    We sat and ordered sandwiches and drinks. Up close, Peter looked even more tired. “I’m glad you suggested lunch, Nell,” he said. “I really needed to get out of the museum.”
    “When I called you, it sounded as though construction was still going on,” I began.
    “It is. Don’t take that as a good sign, but the contractors and the unions insisted that we go forward, in the event that we can reopen. We’re going to have a lovely rebuilt shell with nothing to put in it.”
    “Peter, you exaggerate. People have already been very generous with in-kind contributions,” Gary said.
    Peter shrugged. “I guess,” he said with little enthusiasm.
    I realized I was going to have to pick my words carefully, to avoid looking like I was interrogating him. “Could you salvage anything from the warehouse?”
    He shook his head. “Not a lot. They tried to keep materials from