Still, she considered herself an intelligent person and she'd done a few head slappingly stupid things in her life. Anybody could make a moronic mistake now and then. And at least he'd been nice to Sharlene about it, even if he had tried to partially blame the computer program.
Jane knew if she went back to the boardroom she wouldn't be able to do any work amid a roomful of people, so she decided to take advantage of the fact that the museum was closed and roam around on her own. She was feeling overloaded by people and opinions and facts. Especially since so many of the facts and opinions were so hard to sort out and place in one camp or the other.
She went upstairs to the second floor. She'd been up here once as a room mother on a field trip, but never on her own. To the right of the wide, well-worn oak stairs was a series of 'period' rooms that a visitor could walk through. A late-Victorian bedroom, parlor, and kitchen. She liked the way the velvet-roped path led through the center of the rooms, rather than having to view them from the doorway, and the Snellen had banned identifying tags on everything. At each doorway was a guide to the room, a little drawing that numbered and described each item on display. That was nice. Much more realistic and less 'museum-y.' Since there were no other visitors, she had the imaginary house to herself. Perhaps it was the recent experience of trying to imagine herself in an earlier time, perhaps not, but she found herself pretending this was a real home.
The bedroom had masses of little things to dust — pictures, paper flowers, vases, lamps with hideous ruffled and fringed shades. The parlor was much the same and crammed with furniture that would have been waxed at least weekly by a house-proud Victorian wife. Or her maid, Jane thought. And the lady of a house like this one would probably seldom have entered the kitchen. Some poor cook had to cope with the huge, sullen oven with all the ornamental bits to collect grease, the cold granite sinks, the pump for water, the huge, heavy bowls and cooking pans.
How did they survive such a life? Jane wondered. She'd have to make a point of remembering this display the next time she became cranky about car pools, computer glitches, and vacuum-cleaner ailments.
Did people who made their living in the museum business ever just roam around and let their imaginations run riot? Or did they come to regard the place in a strictly business sense, losing sight of the forest with concern for the trees? Had Regina Palmer ever stood here pretending this was her kitchen and she was the woman who had to haul the dirty dishwater out the back door and dump it next to the kitchen garden? Had she imagined sleeping in that high bed and having to find the little steps in order to climb down to use the chamber pot at night? Or had Regina, out of necessity and perhaps inclination, been more concerned with tour schedules, salary increments, accounting procedures, professional publications, and the quest to snag touring exhibits? Without having met Regina, Jane couldn't guess. But she certainly couldn't imagine Derek Delano entering into a sort of fugue state and truly appreciating the sense of another time that a well-planned museum could produce. The man had struck her as having imagination only when it came to his sexual fantasies.
She had left the room displays and was wandering aimlessly down the hall to the next room when she heard a strange noise. A faint voice. Tapping. She glanced around, unable to determine where it was coming from. She continued down the hall, but the sound grew fainter. Turning, she headed for the stairs. Yes, it was coming from above. She climbed the stairs cautiously, listening.
Finally, she located the source of the sporadic sounds. A heavy door just beyond the third? floor landing. And the voice was Babs's. She tried the door, but it was locked.
“Who is that?' Babs called out.
“It's me, Jane. The door's locked.'
“Then get the key,' Babs said sharply.
Jane dashed down the stairs and examined the board on which the keys hung, but there were dozens of them. There was no one in the hallway to the staff offices, not even the police officer, so she went into the boardroom. It was mobbed. Caspar Snellen was trying awkwardly to comfort Georgia, who was sobbing. Whitney Abbot was tinkering with the computer. Mel was there, too, speaking to Lisa. Jumper, Sharlene, and Shelley were standing around the coffee machine, shaking their heads in despair.
Everybody turned at Jane's entrance.
“Babs McDonald is locked in a room on the third floor,' she said. 'And I don't know which key I need to get her out.'
“Oh, my God!' Lisa exclaimed, heading for the door and colliding with Sharlene, who was headed in the same direction.
“Just give me the key,' Mel said. 'I'll go. Jane, you come with me.”
When they finally found the right key and rushed back upstairs, they discovered that the room Babs was locked in was a dark closet. She all but fell out. 'I hate dark places,' she said, maintaining a shaky dignity.
“What happened? Are you all right?' Mel demanded.
“Of course I'm all right. I came up here to look in the file cabinet that's kept in that horrible closet. I heard footsteps, but didn't think much about it until the door slammed shut. And even then I wasn't especially disconcerted until the light burned out.'
“Do you have any idea who it was?' Mel asked.
“None. I had my back turned to the door.”
“How long have you been in there?' Jane asked.
Babs looked at her watch, then held it up to her ear before looking at it again. 'My goodness. Only about fifteen minutes. But it seemed much longer.'
“Why would somebody lock you in the closet?' Jane wondered.
“As a warning, apparently. Thank goodness you were around to hear me.'
“A warning of what?' Mel said.
Babs stared at him for a long moment, then replied, 'I haven't the faintest idea.”
Twenty
'Jane,
“It's a good thing you didn't get yourself and your thoughts locked in a closet.'
“If Babs is right, I wouldn't have been anyway,' Jane said, cringing as Shelley's van whispered by a parked car. She could almost hear the paint on both vehicles gasping at the near miss. As much as she loved and admired Shelley, the way Shelley drove always left her gibbering with terror.
She drew a deep breath and continued. 'Babs said she'd been locked in there as a warning.”
“A warning about what?'
“Not to talk about something, presumably. But that's as far as she'd go. Either she really doesn't know what she was being warned off or she's making a convincing show of not knowing.'
“Which wouldn't surprise me,' Shelley said.
“I think Babs McDonald could have persuaded Newt to head up the Democratic National Committee if she'd set her mind to it. But just the same, if she has some idea, I'll bet she's told the police.'
“Who aren't going to tell us,' Jane said glumly.
“She really was indignant about the way Lisa and Sharlene kept fussing over her,' Shelley said.
“It's probably the only time they've treated her like a fragile little old lady.”
Shelley executed an almost perfect right-angle turn into the parking lot of the neighborhood post office. 'I have to mail some underwear,' she said. 'Paul's sister, Constanza, stayed with us for a couple days and left a bra, which she wants mailed. Don't you think if you left a trail of lingerie, you'd keep quiet and hope nobody noticed? And it's a tatty, ragged old thing nobody in their right mind would claim.”
It was an awfully big box and, knowing Shelley, Jane suspected the item had been washed, ironed, and stuffed into bosom shape with elegant tissue. Shelley knew how to be nasty in the classiest ways. She came back to the car looking smug, which confirmed Jane's thoughts.
“Putting Babs's incarceration aside for a minute, I have some gossip you'll like,' Jane said. She told Shelley about her conversation with Sharlene.
“He forgot the bathrooms? A hoity-toity architect left out the potties?' Shelley exclaimed delightedly. 'He's probably so inhuman he doesn't use them himself.'
“I admit he's kind of a cold fish,' Jane said, 'but I think you hated him on sight. Why?”
