He also carried a briefcase.
“Jumper!" Babs exclaimed. "I thought you'd forgotten the meeting!”
Nine
Since Babs found nothing strange about Jumper Cable's appearance, Jane and Shelley didn't comment, either. Jumper took off the shades and jacket, sat down at the table after greeting them affably, and started removing papers from the beat-up brown briefcase.
“Are you having a meeting here?" Jane asked. "Do you want us to leave?"
“Board meetings are open to the public," Babs said, but she sounded hesitant.
“No, no. We'll go fill some of the forms instead," Jane said. "We have plenty to do elsewhere.”
Jumper and Babs looked relieved.
Shelley gave Jane a bunch of blank forms and a pencil and they left the boardroom. "Where shall we start?" Jane asked.
“I've been working in a room on the second floor, but—"
“Isn't there somewhere more private where we could make ourselves useful?" Jane asked.
“Exactly my thought," Shelley said. "Let's look over the Dreaded Basement.”
It was the basement nightmares are made of — huge, with stone walls, a dank, musty smell, and a labyrinth of boxes, furniture, mysterious equipment, snaky old wiring, and a concrete floor. It was, however, as clean as such a place could be. A push broom with bristles worn down like an old man's teeth stood at the ready by the door. Though it was a single room with support pillars, the stored furniture and boxes created head-high rooms and hallways.
“Do you suppose anyone's down here besides us?" Jane asked.
“There was a light on when we came in. Let's look," Shelley replied.
They prowled the basement, finding an amazing variety of things, but no people — if you didn't consider a family grouping of very badly constructed mannequins that appeared to be posed for eating a meal over a table that had long since disappeared. Jane had rounded a corner and come upon them unexpectedly and nearly had a heart attack at the sight of the black-suited father frozen in the act of carving a missing roast with a wicked-looking knife. She yelped with surprise and Shelley came running.
“My God!" Shelley exclaimed. "He looks just like my dentist."
“Are we going to have to categorize all this stuff?" Jane asked.
“I hope not. I'm certain they won't want to take along something like the Happy Family here. Although" — she grinned wickedly—"I do wonder how you go about disposing of something like them."
“Mike might like to take the daughter to college with him. She's kinda cute," Jane said.
“And you could stand Mother at your kitchen sink so that anybody glancing in the window might imagine somebody domestic lived at your house."
“What's this?" Jane went over to look at a large piece of furniture against the wall. It was eight feet tall and nearly as wide and was composed entirely of wooden drawers about nine inches square. At the front of each drawer was a small brass "picture frame" with a card slipped into it. The cards had numbers and letters on them, like "A34 x N47." Jane cautiously opened a drawer. It was full of shriveled-up peas.
“This must have been Auguste Snellen's storage for his pea experiments, don't you think?" Shelley said.
“I wonder if any of them would grow if you planted them."
“Probably not. Well, maybe so, come to think of it. Didn't they find a bunch of wheat in a pyramid that they got to sprout after five thousand years or something? I saw a program about it on television once."
“Wonder what the numbers mean," Jane said. "Maybe a cross between two other kinds. See, up there at the top are a bunch of drawers without the 'x something' part."
“He probably had all the details recorded in books somewhere," Shelley said. "Some of the cards in the little frames look much older and more faded than others. There were probably lots of duds that got disposed of—"
“Oh! The Depression pea story. I almost forgot to tell you," Jane said. She related the conversation she'd overheard when she first arrived at the museum.
“That is nice," Shelley said when Jane was done. "It really sums up an era, doesn't it? All the kids out crawling around the field to pick the peas so they'd have ground cover to hold the soil down the next year. We couldn't get our kids to do that."
“I bet we could if it was a matter of eating or starving."
“How nice that it was Sharlene he picked to tell the story to," Shelley said.
“Just what I thought. Shelley. ." She paused for a moment. "It really isn't any of our business who killed Regina, is it?"
“No, it isn't. But. .”
Jane sat down on a wooden crate and spoke quietly. "I was determined not to get involved. Not to care about someone I never knew. But now that I've come to know some of these people, I find that I'm caring in spite of myself."
“Me, too," Shelley admitted. She perched on the corner of a sturdy buffet table. "Mel would wash our mouths out with soap if he heard us. We've gotten to know and like people who did care for Regina. I guess that's what makes the difference. I feel so sorry for Sharlene and Lisa, losing someone they thought so much of in their different ways."
"But not Babs? You don't feel sorry for her?"
“I don't think anybody'd ever dare feel sorry for her. Besides, she really didn't say anything much about her relationship with Regina. I wonder if she even liked her."
“Good question," Jane said. "She must have respected her, though. She's the president of the board of directors. If she hadn't thought Regina was good at her job, she could probably have had her fired."
“Yes, if she were incompetent," Shelley agreed. "But I have the feeling that Babs is the kind of person who could despise someone personally and still recognize their good traits."
“You know what I'm wondering?" Jane said. "Whether whoever shot her meant to."
“You means Babs's theory that Caspar Snellen did it by accident?"
“No, what I really meant was this: it was a well-staged riot. The reenactors knew what they were doing, but nobody else did. Couldn't someone have been trying to shoot someone else and Regina ran in front of the target?”
Shelley considered for a moment. "I guess that's possible. Meaning that Derek and Caspar, who are by far the best suspects, might have been the intended victims instead?"
“Or anybody else, for that matter. Neither of them was in the reenactment, though, were they? I saw Jumper in his farm-boy clothes, but I don't remember the other two."
“I don't believe they were participants," Shelley said. "But anybody could have been lurking in those woods. It's pretty overgrown very near where we were walking.'
“But if they were in the woods, that puts them back at being suspects, not victims, doesn't it?”
“Right. It does."
“I couldn't sleep last night," Jane said, "for thinking about it. I've tried and tried to picture where everyone was, but I just can't bring it into focus. I was only thinking about myself. I really was about ninety percent convinced it was really happening. Somehow I don't think the shooting was an accident, though. Just my gut reaction.'
“You're probably right," Shelley agreed. "But think about it. . from what we've heard, Regina seemed to be a sort of ordinary person. A bit dull, perhaps. Ambitious enough, but not a hint of trampling ambition. A good friend to Lisa, a good employer to Sharlene, and a good enough employee, apparently, as far as Babs is concerned. Not the sort of person to inspire passionate emotions. Not passionate enough to lead to murder."
“Yes, but there's a lot of money involved," Jane said. "Millions. That could certainly inspire passion in some people. Like Caspar Snellen. And possibly that awful Georgia, his sister. Just because she was canny enough not to be overt about her resentment doesn't mean she wasn't just as greedy as Caspar."