War and Peas

anywhere. Probably somewhere better in terms of salary and benefits ifthey'd really wanted to. Even Derek, who's a sexist jerk, is supposed to be well educated and qualified. He could have gotten a job at some place where his contempt of women might not have bothered anyone.'

“Like where?' Shelley exclaimed.

Jane grinned. 'The Citadel? They must have a military museum. Okay, I'm kidding. My point is, I can't imagine anyone killing someone over the directorship of the Snellen Museum.'

“Then why were they killed?' Shelley asked.

“Some help you are!' Jane said. 'There are bound to be better reasons. More 'passionate' reasons.'

“Jane, I think we're in over our heads. Maybe this is one of those times we should just shut up and let the police figure it out.'

“Are you suggesting that a woman who can change a spark plug and hang a bird feeder can't figure out a double murder?' Jane asked.

“I don't think those are really related skills,' Shelley replied.

Twenty-one

Jane went home and started dinner. She fried some bacon, set it aside to drain, and poured a can of pearl onions into a sieve, then into the bottom of a baking dish. A large can of baked beans went on top of the onions, then a drizzle of molasses, and finally the crumbled bacon. She put the baking dish into the oven and cleaned up the top of the molasses jar before putting the lid back on. She'd learned to do that after permanently gluing the tops on three or four bottles. Her baked beans were a nuisance to make, but the kids loved them and she had something of a local reputation on the neighborhood picnic circuit for them.

She dialed Mel's office number, but he wasn't in. She didn't leave a message. He'd call when he got a chance anyway, and it wasn't as if she had anything worthwhile to tell him, nor did she want to openly pump him for information. He'd tell her what he could, when he could. She'd been involved with him in murder investi? gations before. In fact, that was how she'd met him. Shelley had found a dead cleaning lady in her guest bedroom and Mel had been the detective in charge of the investigation. Back then, he'd thought their interest was merely interference. But Shelley and Jane had solved the case — Mel called it 'stumbling onto the solution' — and his attitude had changed slightly.

Though he'd never admit it, they'd helped him a couple of times, and he'd learned that he could share some information with them and trust that they wouldn't go blabbing it around or put themselves in danger — at least, not much danger — by snooping. Jane and Shelley didn't fool themselves into thinking they were better at solving crimes than the police were. They just had a different fix.

The police had all the technical expertise: the fingerprint people, the specialists in blood, fiber, and DNA — the people who could make a case hold up in court. And they had the manpower to check alibis, look into suspects' legal histories, and call on other, far-flung law-enforcement agencies. But they were, of necessity, slow and meticulous, not given to the bizarre flights of imagination that had sometimes led Jane and Shelley in the right direction. While Mel concentrated on evidence, they tended to chew over relationships.

Occasionally they 'chewed' them into unrecognizable shreds, Jane thought. This was such a case. Too many relationships, too many people whose real feelings about others were a mystery. And at the heart of this case, Regina Palmer.

Jane still had no clear idea of what the woman had been like, and that kept nagging at her. It wasn't just that she'd seen Regina only briefly in life. Jane had the feeling that if she'd met Regina a couple dozen times, she probably wouldn't know much more about what had made her tick. Regina had apparently been a very self- controlled, logical person. A secretive person, but not necessarily in a pejorative sense, as in keeping guilty secrets. Just a person who 'kept herself to herself,' as Jane's grandmother would have put it.

Nearly everyone spoke of Regina with respect and admiration. There was no question that she had been extremely efficient at her job. But Jane hadn't heard much warmth of feeling expressed. Lisa, as her best friend, spoke of her fondly, and Derek had had some heated negative feelings about her. Yet, taken together, their views didn't seem to make her quite real. Whitney Abbot, a cold fish himself and offended by Shelley's prying, wasn't about to paint a vivid word picture of his fiancee.

Sharlene worshipped Regina, but through an idealistic haze of gratitude. And in spite of her adoration of her boss and the fact that she had kept Regina's appointment diary, Sharlene hadn't seemed to really know her, either. There had been, apparently, an unspoken barrier between them that both women had respected. Sharlene wouldn't have dreamed of prying into Regina's personal life. Even if she'd been curious, doing so would have offended her sense of professional propriety.

As for the others involved with the museum, Caspar made no bones about disliking Regina, but he seemed to dislike anyone who stood in his way. It was an oddly impersonal antipathy based entirely on his thwarted financial expectations. Or was it? Had there perhaps been a genuine spark of antagonism, of clashing personalities, between them? Caspar seemed to rub everyone the wrong way, but nobody had said anything about Regina's feelings toward him. She'd helped Jumper defeat Caspar in the incompetency hearing, but no one had mentioned that she'd ever spoken against him.

Nobody had said, 'Boy, was Regina mad!' or, 'Regina had really strong feelings about such and such.”

Jane couldn't recall that either Jumper or Babs had expressed anything other than a rather impersonal respect for Regina, either. Did any of them ever socialize? Babs, Miss Daisy, and Regina had attended Sharlene's junior-college graduation, but that was a business-type social event. Sharlene was a good, valued employee. But had Regina been the sort of person who would help someone move? Or invite him or her to dinner? Or offer to help pick up a car from the repair shop? If she had been, nobody had indicated that kind of association with her.

Who was Regina Palmer? Jane found herself wondering. What kind of movies had she liked? If she'd rented a video, would it have been the history of the Silk Road or Cheech and Chong or Wuthering Heights? If she'd had a pet, would it have been a tank full of exotic, expensive fish, a cage swarming with twittery little birds, or a slightly lame puppy from the pound? Had she liked junk food? Or chocolate? Or had she been a health nut? Had she kept her checkbook balanced? Good chance she had, but maybe she'd been one of those people who was responsible in every area of her life but one. Had she preferred Elvis to Beethoven? It wasn't that Jane believed that knowing the answers to these questions would solve the mystery of Regina's death. But Regina's character, it seemed, was crucial to the reason for her death, and the questions proved that Jane had no due to what the woman was about.

She shook her head in frustration as she checked on the progress of the beans. Not hot enough to start the burgers, and besides, Mike and Katie weren't home yet. She lowered the temperature.

Who the hell was Regina? Jane wondered again, frustrated and almost angry at the woman's elusive personality. Was it simply that she'd had no personality? Had she been an automaton? Or a deliberately secretive person? Had she been hiding something so clandestine that she'd tamped down her entire character? A Dreadful Past of some kind? A police record? Surely Mel would have said something if that were the case. Perhaps Regina had been one of those people who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and didn't want anyone to know about their humble origins.

Or maybe my imagination's run amok, Jane thought wryly.

Since Mike and Katie still hadn't turned up, she began fixing some dip to go with the chips for dinner. Another of her best things — dip. Fortunately, she had a cucumber in the fridge that hadn't started on the road to slime, and there was a fresh block of cream cheese. She seeded the cucumber, cut it and the cream cheese into cubes, tossed them into the food processor with some lemon juice and garlic salt, and let the machine turn them into Food for the Gods.

Mel called after dinner. 'I thought you'd want to know that Caspar Snellen has been taken in for questioning,' he said, sounding irritated.

“Arrested?'

“Not yet.'

“Why?' Jane asked.

“Because his greasy fingerprints are all over that pea-storage thing.'

“You're not happy with this, are you?' There was a long silence before he finally said, 'No, I'm not. But I'm