War and Peas (13 page)

“I'll ask her if she still has the copy next time I run into her," Shelley said. "We better get on with what we're supposed to be doing or we'll be here until they cart us off to the nursing home." She tapped down her pile of forms, adjusted them carefully on her clipboard, and turned toward the door.

And stopped.

“Sharlene? What's wrong?" she asked. Sharlene was standing in the doorway. She was dead white and holding a crumpled piece of paper out in front of her by one corner. "I — found this," she whispered.

Jane rose. "Put it down on the table, Sharlene.”

They crowded around and gazed. It was a piece of plain white typing paper. On it were the typed words: "Regina, you can't do this to me. If you try, I'll stop you."

“Where did you find this?" Shelley asked.

“In the dumpster behind the building. I was putting out trash from my office and sort of daydreaming, and I looked down and saw this."

“What else was around it? Whose trash?" Jane asked.

Sharlene looked confused. "I don't know. I didn't think. I just picked it up—"

“Sharlene, you need to call the police again," Shelley told her. "Jane, do you want to stand guard over this and I'll go stand by the Dumpster until they get here?”

Jane picked the paper up carefully, holding it exactly where Sharlene had already touched it. She put it behind the stuffed cat and began entering information on the computer. She had a strong feeling that when Mel arrived, it would be best if she were busily engaged in something — anything — that had nothing to do with the murder. She was typing like her life depended on it when Sharlene escorted Mel into the room a little while later. "Where's that paper, Jane?" Sharlene asked.

“Behind the cat," Jane said without looking up.

The officer with Mel lifted it carefully with tweezers and they left the room without a word.

An hour and a half later, Jane was leaning back and feeling supremely smug over having nearly caught up with all of Shelley's forms. Lisa Quigley came into the boardroom. "You haven't seen Derek, have you?" she asked.

“He hasn't been here," Jane replied.

“Sharlene says she's accumulating a bunch of calls he needs to return. Maybe he went home early." Lisa poured herself a cup of coffee. Jane stretched and got up to refill her cup as well.

“Caspar's roaming around here again," Lisa said, pinching the bridge of her nose as if to compress a headache. "He said the police are back."

“Yes. Sharlene found a note."

“A note?"

“Yes, a note that looked like a threat to Regina. It was in the dumpster out in back."

“
Note!"
Lisa exclaimed. "About Regina not doing something?"

“Yes, it was," Jane said. "What's wrong? How did you know?"

“Oh, my God!" Lisa had turned alarmingly pale. "I knew about that! And I didn't say anything! I'd forgotten! Oh, how could I—?”

She rose suddenly and started pacing. "I told her she should take it seriously, and then
I
went and forgot about it? Is there still a police officer here?"

“Yes, there is," Mel said from the doorway. "When did Ms. Palmer get this note?”

Lisa was wringing her hands. "A week ago? No, longer than that. Let me think for a minute. It was a week ago Monday, I guess. I'm so sorry. I should have told you right away."

“What did Ms. Palmer think about the note?" Mel asked.

“She laughed it off. Almost. She handed it to me and said that somebody was playing childish games. She was sort of irritated, I think, but not really upset."

“And you were?"

“Well, of course. I don't remember exactly what it said, but it looked to me like a vague threat."

“Are we talking about the same note?" Mel asked her, unfolding a photocopy of the note and putting it on the table.

Lisa studied the copy. "Yes, I think so. It was just a line or two like this."

“Did she say who she thought wrote it?" Mel asked.

Lisa shook her head.

“Did you have an opinion?”

She looked at him. "Do I have to answer that? I had a guess, but it was just a guess.”

Mel let her reply go. "Are you aware that this was typed on the machine in Ms. Palmer's office?"

“No, of course not. Are you sure?"

“Quite sure. Who had access to that machine?”

Lisa shrugged. "Practically anyone, I suppose. Regina only locked her office at night, and I don't think she always did that. Except for the typewriter and answering machine and such, there wasn't anything valuable. Valuable to anyone else, I mean. And she kept her door open during the day unless she was having a private conversation."

“Even when she was out of the office?”

“I–I think so. I never especially noticed. Sharlene would know better than I do."

“So Ms. Palmer handed you the note?" Mel said, shifting gears abruptly.

“Yes." She looked at him questioningly and then the light dawned. "Oh, fingerprints. Yes, mine are probably all over it."

“And you handed it back?”

Lisa thought for a minute, obviously having trouble concentrating. "I guess I must have. Or maybe I just put it down on her desk. I have no idea. Oh, I feel so bad and stupid about this. Would it have helped if I'd told you about it sooner? I can't imagine how I could have forgotten it, except that so much else has happened—”

Mel refolded the photocopy and put it back in his inside jacket pocket. "No, I don't think it would have changed anything. Did you notice anything different about her after she got this note? Like locking up her office or taking any special care for her safety?"

“No, not really. But then, it was the week that the Pea Festival started. Everybody's frantically busy then. If she did anything differently, I'm not sure I would even have noticed." Her eyes filled with tears again and she said, "I should have paid more attention. She was my best friend. I should have looked out for her better.”

Jane handed her a napkin from the stack beside the coffeemaker. "Lisa, we can't always look after ourselves as well as we might, let alone other people. You can't hold yourself responsible."

“I know — but still—"

“Jane, I have a few more questions to ask Ms. Quigley," Mel said.

“And you want me to get lost. Okay. I need a break anyway," Jane said.

Proud of her day's work and prevented from going back to the computer because Mel was using the boardroom, Jane went home early. It was an unusually cool, dark afternoon with rain clouds threatening. Remembering that trash day was tomorrow, Jane decided she might as well break down and clean out her station wagon, which was in its usual state of looking like a motorized wastebasket. She went indoors to try to recruit "kid help," but found three notes on the kitchen bulletin board.

She rounded up her car-cleaning supplies, invited the cats to come help, went back out to the driveway, and started removing everything that looked useful or important. She stacked things on the cement by ownership: some of Katie's notebooks that had been in there since the last day of school nearly three months earlier; Todd's emergency backup supply of Legos in a clear plastic box; some cassette tapes of Mike's that had been kicking around gathering dust since he got his own vehicle. She decided the movie section of the paper that was a month old was trash, as were a truly disgusting number of fast-food bags and cups.

Jane discovered a number of perplexing things in the car. A long-overdue library book titled
Lilies: The Gardener's Best Friend.
What on earth had inspired her to check that out and why, having gotten it, hadn't she taken it inside and read it? Her garden could certainly use a best friend. The book went into the pile of things to go back into the car when she was through cleaning.

To her embarrassment, she also found the telephone bill that had caused such a hassle. The phone company had threatened to cut her off for nonpayment and, in high dudgeon, she'd indignantly insisted that she'd never received it. They'd sent another, which included a late-payment charge that Jane had fought with a high-minded arrogance that even Shelley had admired. Jane quickly tore up the bill and stuffed the bits into the trash bag, fearing that even as she was doing so, some official of the telephone company was watching through binoculars and saying into a walkie-talkie, "Yup, she had it all along, just like we thought.”

There were treasures, too. Shelley had convinced her a couple of weeks earlier that she needed a bird feeder and there it was, still in its box, waiting to be filled with the special seed mix Shelley had recommended. Unfortunately, there was a hole in the bag of seeds that looked suspiciously chewed. Did she have a critter living in the car? She opened all the doors, giving any resident wildlife the opportunity to escape, and walked around the outside of the house looking for the best place for the bird feeder. She decided on a spot in front of the window the kitchen table sat next to and felt terribly smug that she was able to find a screwdriver and get the bracket in place without any trouble.

She was just filling the feeder when Shelley pulled into her driveway, which adjoined Jane's. "It looks like your car exploded — all the doors standing open that way," Shelley said. "And there are the wildcats picking over the remains.”

Max was sniffing at the glove box and Meow was sitting on the top of a headrest, a golden ball of fur surveying a new kingdom. "Wonder what they'd think of Heidi."

“Who's that?" Shelley asked.

“Mr. Snellen's stuffed cat," Jane said. "I wonder if they'd let me borrow it for a night, just to see if Max and Meow recognize that it was once a cat."

“You've grown attached to that dead cat, haven't you?" Shelley said. "There's no accounting for taste or lack of it."

“But it has such a nice story. It's sort of like that picture Sharlene has of Mr. Snellen himself. Except that Heidi's three-dimensional."

“And hairy," Shelley said. "And probably infested with God knows what."

“Then Max and Meow would be sure to like it. They adore infestations."

“Jane, what did you think about that note Sharlene found?" Shelley said, putting down her purse and helping Jane get the spilled birdseed into the feeder.

Jane went to retrieve a plastic bucket from the garage to put the birdseed bag into and said, over her shoulder, "I've been trying not to think of it, to tell the truth."

“Does that have a lid?" Shelley asked. "If not, you're going to have a garage full of happy, overweight rodents. Why are you not thinking about the note?"

“Because it confuses me," Jane said, rummaging around for the lid, which she was sure existed somewhere. "Ah! Here it is. I'm not so sure that note was really a threat — just a sort of warning. But there's a big difference."

“Well, there can be. ." Shelley said hesitantly.

“Shelley, suppose it was about something fairly innocent. What if, for example, Regina told somebody she was going on a diet and the other person left her that note?"

“Jane, I only saw it for a minute. Exactly what did it say?"

“I'm not sure I remember exactly. Something like, 'Don't do it or I'll try to stop you.' See what I mean? It could just be Babs or somebody making a little joke meaning she'd start leaving candy bars on Regina's desk. It wasn't signed, so presumably Regina knew who had sent it and what it meant. But Lisa didn't take it that way—”

Jane repeated the conversation she and Mel had had with Lisa.

“So Lisa had seen it and was really upset by it?" Shelley said.

“She was upset today and claimed she took it seriously when Regina showed it to her. But that might only be in light of what happened later. After all, Lisa forgot about it until I mentioned that Sharlene had found it. Then she got really bent out of shape, blaming herself for not making Regina take it more seriously."

“But Regina didn't acknowledge knowing who it was from or what it was about?"

“Lisa says not. And Mel asked if she, Lisa, had any thoughts about who typed it, and she said she did, but didn't want to say."

“This is strange," Shelley said, snapping the lid onto the birdseed bucket and hauling it to Jane's garage. "Where are you hanging the bird feeder?"

“By the kitchen-table window.”

Shelley picked up the feeder and went around the house. "Omigawd! Did you put up that bracket yourself?”

Jane preened. "I'm not barefoot and pregnant anymore, Shelley. I'm a modern, liberated woman who can put a couple screws into a wall all by myself.”

Shelley grinned. "What's next? Repairing washing machines? Overhauling carburetors?"

“No, so far I'm only up to spark plugs. But anything's possible. What was going on at the museum when you left? Had anybody admitted to writing the note?"

“Not that I know of, but I got my information from the woman in the gift shop. That's what makes me wonder if the note wasn't a real threat. If it were simply a joke, why wouldn't whoever wrote it just say so?"

“Maybe they have and the gift-shop woman hasn't heard about it yet. And think, Shelley, if you wrote somebody a note like that to be funny and the person turned up murdered a few days later, would you leap right in and say you wrote it?"

“Both of us would. But we wouldn't have killed anyone, so we'd have no reason to worry.”

They walked back around to the driveway. "But what if we'd done something else bad?”

“What do you mean?"

“Suppose Regina told Georgia, for instance, that she was going to expose some financial hanky-panky and Georgia wrote that note, but then somebody else killed Regina for some other reason entirely. If I were Georgia, I wouldn't want to admit to the note and then have to explain to everybody what it was all about. I'm just not convinced that the note necessarily had anything to do with Regina's death. And there’s a lot of further confusion in my mind about Regina's office being searched. Was that note what somebody was looking for? If so, they obviously didn't find it. But why go looking for it in the basement?"