“Drop me at the pool?”
She nodded and turned the car in that direction. "So long as you're home in time for dinner."
“What's for dinner?"
“Tuna casserole."
“Yuck!" he said. "I mean, oh, yum!"
“You know perfectly well you love my tuna casserole. You're just programmed to say yuck.”
She dropped him off and went home, dragging his new clothes inside and dumping them at the foot of the stairs. Her daughter, Katie, ever alert to the sound of shopping bags, galloped down the stairs. "You went shopping without me!" she said accusingly.
“For Todd. You're this weekend."
“Mom, I can shop for myself. Why don't you just give me the money and save yourself the trouble of coming along?"
“Nuh-uh. Unless you can do it on fifty dollars."
“Fifty dollars! I couldn't even get decent shoes for that."
“That's exactly what I'm afraid of."
“Come on, Mom. You only want to buy me geeky-looking stuff."
“I thought only boys could be geeks," Jane said, perplexed. "And you're the one who wants all that clunky, no-color, ugly unisex stuff, not me.”
Katie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, you'd have me in perky little white sandals and pink dresses with matching ribbons in my hair if you could. Mom, you're okay, but your sense of style is twenty years out of date."
“But my checkbook's not," Jane said firmly.
This was such an old argument that either one of them could have recited her part and the other's in her sleep. Often Katie actually seemed toenjoy the familiar dispute. Today she wasn't in the mood. She followed Jane into the kitchen. "What's for dinner?”
Jane sighed. "Tuna casserole. And you like it, too, no matter what you say."
“I think I'll eat at Jenny's house."
“Jenny's mother might have an opinion on that."
“I'll call." But before she could pick up the phone, it rang. Todd, reporting that his friend Elliott had invited him home for dinner. After ascertaining that Elliott's mother theoretically knew about this, Jane put away the tuna and pasta. Next time they asked what was for dinner, she'd lie. Her older son, Mike, was working as a delivery boy for a fancy deli and usually got dinner as part of his pay, so there was no point in cooking for him. In fact, she'd order out from the deli as well, she decided, after giving the contents of the refrigerator a once-over.
She'd just settled down an hour later with a Reuben sandwich and the deli's special homemade potato chips when Shelley knocked at the kitchen door. Jane waved her in.
Shelley had brought her own enormous coffee cup and set it down across the kitchen table from Jane. "Well, you'll be glad to know I did a Good Thing," she said. "After you left the museum, I went back in and apologized profusely to Whitney Abbot for upsetting him. I was gracious. He was even more gracious. All is sweetness and light between us."
“But you still suspect him?"
“Of course I do. But I can't think of a good reason, except that he's a prig."
“And I still think you're on the wrong track. From all I've heard about Regina, she and Whitney Abbot were perfectly suited. Remote, formal, socially acceptable, ambitious—"
“But, Jane, that's precisely the point! If they were such an ideal couple, why the shilly-shallying on Regina's part about getting engaged and setting a date?"
“Maybe she had a secret dream of a dashing reprobate sweeping her off her prim feet. Not such a bad dream, or an uncommon one."
“Are you telling me you're turning Mel in for a pool hustler?”
Jane laughed. "Not quite. Have a potato chip.”
Shelley pointed at the shopping bags heaped at the bottom of the stairway. "What's all that?"
“Clothes for Todd. Nasty clothes. Cost a fortune and none of them fit. The trousers all fall down in folds around his feet, the shorts bag halfway down his calves, and the pullover shirts all look like I bought them at a Big and Tall store. Waste of fabric and he looks like a bag lady in them. Not only that, they're all brown or gray or black. I tried to slip a slate-blue item past him, but failed."
“He'll be right in style and look exactly like the rest of his friends."
“I always thought one of the primary things about human nature is that we'd all like to look better than our friends — if ft's not too much trouble."
“Not for teenagers. Frankly, I like the baggy stuff. At least for the girls. I don't want Denise inflaming the hormones of some gropey boy.”
Jane nodded. "I remember quite a lengthy discussion a couple years ago with Katie about a pointy-boobed corset she actually thought I was going to let her wear over her clothes. I guess this baggy stuff they all wear is an improvement. But Katie wants me to spend a fortune on combat boots. Real combat boots! Jeez!”
There was another knock at the door and this time Jane went to open it. Mel stood on the step, a grin on his face and a paper bag from Burger King in his hand. "Can I eat here?"
“Sure. If I'd known you were coming, I'd have ordered you some real food.”
Shelley and Jane were bursting with questions, but knew better than to interfere with his meal. He polished off the burger and fries and looked longingly at the remaining quarter of Jane's sandwich, which she turned over to him.
When he was done and had put his plate in the sink, he sat down and said, "You two look like vultures. Very attractive vultures. What do you want to know — that I'm free to tell you?"
“Everything," Jane said.
“The gun was from the museum — a.41-caliber percussion pocket pistol, made by Henry Deringer in Philadelphia, probably in the 1850s."
“How far away was it fired from?" Shelley asked.
“Can't tell. It wasn't too close because there weren't powder burns on her clothing, except some on her sleeve, nowhere near the wound. That was, we assume, from a reenactor who shot a blank past her, but close up."
“I thought forensic people had formulas and things to figure out how far away the gun was," Jane said.
“Not in this case. They don't see derringers involved in homicide cases much anymore. The last one that comes to mind is Abe Lincoln. You see, this old gun didn't fire cartridges. The way it works is that you pour loose gunpowder down the barrel and then ram a round lead bullet wrapped in a piece of cloth down on top of the powder. Then you put a small copper percussion cap containing a mercury fulminate on a nipple under the hammer. When the hammer falls, it detonates the mercury fulminate and a flame flashes through a hole in the nipple into the rear of the barrel. That sets the gunpowder off and sends the bullet on its way."
“So if you don't know how much gunpowder the murderer used, you can't tell how hard the gun shot, so the modern formulas don't work?" Shelley asked.
Jane looked at her with amazement.
Mel nodded. "Exactly. And they don't know much about spherical lead bullets anymore, either."
“I thought things were supposed to be simpler in the olden days," Jane said.
“They probably were," Mel said. "A modern firearm is a lot more complicated. You just don't have to know as much about it to fire it. Think of them as more 'user-friendly.' "
“But only a 'gun nut' would know how to fire the old one," Jane said.
Mel shook his head. "You'd be surprised how many people know about guns. Anyone who works in a museum, probably. And a lot of other people, too."
“What about the second reenactment?" Shelley asked. "The one that was filmed."
“No help at all. And before you ask, we've run down nearly everyone who was watching the first time and nobody had a video camera. One woman had a still camera and took a few pictures, but they're all of the soldiers, not the civilian reenactors."
“Go back to the gun," Jane said. "Could it have been fired from the woods instead of on the field?”