War and Peas

“Won't it be hard on everyone until you can find another director?' Jane asked.

“I don't think so. I believe we have a line on an excellent candidate already. And I've reached the other board members and they're FedExing proxies to Jumper. If Derek's quit on his own, it will be easier to replace him. Meanwhile, I'll go do his job.'

“What's this, Jane?' Shelley asked when Babs had left. She was holding up an old, flat book.

Jane looked at it for a minute. 'I don't know. Oh, yes, I do. I picked that up in the basement the other day when we were thinking about starting to inventory. I didn't have a clipboard. I thought it would make a good substitute. What is it?”

Shelley set the book on the table and opened it. She flipped a few pages. It was a handwritten ledger of some kind, done in an old-fashioned, somewhat florid style of writing. Some pages were filled out. Others had only a line or two on them.

“Hard to read,' Jane said. 'I wonder what it is. Oh, I see why it's hard to read.' She laughed. 'It's in German. At least parts of it are.' She looked more closely. 'Shelley, I'll bet. .”

Shelley nodded. 'Yes. Auguste Snellen's genetic experiments. Look, some of the pages have the same kind of numbers that are on the little labels on the pea cabinet. And some have a name, too. Here — Snellen's Early Spring, and here's one called Daisy's Favorite. How sweet. He named a pea for his granddaughter.'

“This is a treasure,' Jane said. 'And I was using it just as a flat surface. I'll put it up safely. Remind me to give it to Sharlene when things settle down.”

They put their purses away, poured themselves coffee, and as Shelley gathered her paperwork, Jane booted up the computer and sat down, after sliding the ledger book in under the board the stuffed cat was mounted on. Shelley started to leave the room, but hesitated and came back. 'Jane,' she said quietly, 'you don't think — no, that's too stupid.'

“You can say stupid things if you want,' Jane said, grinning. 'I don't have a secret tape recording going.'

“Smart aleck. I was thinking. . could that book be what somebody was looking for in the basement?”

Jane looked at her for a minute. 'I wish I did have a tape recorder now. Why would anyone care enough to be sneaky about it?'

“You're right. Its only value is probably sentimental and historical. Forget I asked.”

Shelley had been gone only a few minutes when Sharlene came back into the boardroom. 'Babs, I just — oops. Where'd she go? Tom called and said he was tied up in court for a while.'

“She said she was going to make some of Derek's calls,' Jane said over her shoulder. 'Maybe she's in his office.'

“Thanks. I'll look for her there. Isn't that sweet of her?' Sharlene said, bustling out of the room.

Jane smiled at the cat. 'Heidi, would you have the nerve to call Babs McDonald 'sweet'? I wouldn't.”

Babs was back in an hour. 'Any sign of Jumper yet?' she asked Jane.

“Not that I know of,' Jane said. She joined Babs at the board table and said, 'Since you've been so frank with Shelley and me, do you mind if I ask you a question?'

“Fire away,' Babs said cheerfully. 'If I don't know the answer, I'll make one up.'

“Well, I have the impression that the board of directors thought that Georgia Snellen was helping herself to some of the funds she collected for the museum.”

It would be too much to say Babs looked surprised, but she was mildly startled. 'I believe 'think' is the operative word. There was never any evidence of cheating. Merely suspicions. For example, the cash collected at any given activity always slightly exceeded the number of receipts—'

“I don't understand.'

“Then think back to your work at the booth at the Pea Festival. We're a nonprofit organization — a 501 (c) (3) in IRS talk — and if somebody buys an item from the booth, the person working there is supposed to offer them a receipt for the difference between our actual cost and the amount we sell it for, and the purchaser can take it as a tax deduction.'

“Oh, dear. We didn't do that,' Jane said.

“You were working under emergency conditions. I don't imagine anyone thought to tell you. Anyway, most times people don't want to wait for a receipt, or it's such a small amount they don't think it's worth figuring into their taxes. And lots of times, because it's a charitable institution, people often deliberately overpay or refuse to take their change back. So you end up with more cash than receipts to account for it. And Georgia always did end up with excess cash. But not as much as we'd expect. The gift shop, for example, averages about twelve percent extra cash. Georgia always turned in about three percent extra. And that's not proof of anything. You could postulate that Georgia has such an abrasive manner that people are less likely to be generous with her.'

“Yes, but I understood that she's quite good at raising money,' Jane said.

Babs looked at Jane with an arched eyebrow. 'That is true,' she said. 'But proof is proof and speculation's quite another thing.' She made clear that this was all she was willing to say about the matter and Jane let it go.

“May I ask you something else, then?' Babs nodded.

“Sharlene told me that Regina and Whitney were supposed to be announcing their engagement at the groundbreaking ceremony. But she also hinted that Regina hadn't exactly rushed into committing to marriage.'

“Right again,' Babs said.

“Do you know why that is?' Jane asked. 'What an odd question,' Babs said. 'Why do you ask?'

“I'm not sure,' Jane answered honestly. 'I'm just curious about Regina, I guess. I never met her, you know. But from what I hear about her, it's hard to imagine that she'd inspire murderous rage in anyone.”

Babs laughed softly. 'That's perilously close to damning with faint praise.'

“I didn't mean it that way,' Jane said.

“No, dear, I know you didn't. I can't really answer that. If Regina had confided in me whyshe was hesitant about marrying, I wouldn't feel I could break that confidence. As it happens, she didn't. She wasn't a confiding sort of woman. Frankly, I have a theory about it, but it's merely theory and it would be irresponsible to put it out as anything else—'

“Babs. There you are,' Lisa said from the doorway. 'Did you get the message from Jumper? He said he's on the way and please wait if you can.'

“Thank you, Lisa. Sharlene told me. Lisa, I don't mean to be insulting, but you look exhausted. Why don't you go home and rest?'

“I was just planning to.' She jingled her car keys in her hand to illustrate the truth of this. As Lisa started to move away, Babs said, 'I'll walk you out. I need to talk to you about one of the phone calls I made — excuse me, will you, Jane?”

Lisa and Babs went off together and Jane went back to work. But something was nagging at her. Something she couldn't quite get hold of. She sat back and closed her eyes for a minute, trying to tease the idea out of hiding, but couldn't lure it into the light. It was something that Shelley had said recently. She opened her eyes and looked at the stuffed cat. 'Heidi, if only you could talk. Or even listen,' she said. 'Wonder if Auguste Snellen named a pea for you.”

She returned to the computer and a momentlater, as she had hoped, the elusive idea camehunting for her. She stopped typing and got up.She'd put the pea-experiment ledger under Heidi. She now removed it and carefully flipped through the pages. It was confusing and frustrating, the way the text went from formulae to German text to English text, but she finally found what she was looking for. Page 87 was labeled 'Snellen's Little Beauty' and what's more, an envelope fluttered out from between the pages. She picked it up carefully.

It was postmarked 1934 and came from Arkansas.

Eighteen

'I think you might have been right. This ledger is what someone was looking for in the basement,' Jane said. 'That's where the old pea storage thing is, and logically the ledger was there, too.”

“But what would it have to do with Regina's death?' Shelley asked. Jane had located her in a History of