War and Peas (16 page)

She returned to the computer and a momentlater, as she had hoped, the elusive idea camehunting for her. She stopped typing and got up.She'd put the pea-experiment ledger under Heidi. She now removed it and carefully flipped through the pages. It was confusing and frustrating, the way the text went from formulae to German text to English text, but she finally found what she was looking for. Page 87 was labeled "Snellen's Little Beauty" and what's more, an envelope fluttered out from between the pages. She picked it up carefully.

It was postmarked 1934 and came from Arkansas.

"I think you might
have been
right. This
ledger
is what someone was looking for in the basement," Jane said. "That's where the old pea storage thing is, and logically the ledger was there, too.”

“But what would it have to do with Regina's death?" Shelley asked. Jane had located her in a History of Pitchforks display at the north end of the second floor.

“Probably nothing, but it would explain a little mystery. If, in fact, we discovered that the search in the basement
didn't
have anything to do with Regina's death, it would clear out some debris — so to speak."

“I guess that's true. Okay. Let's assume for the moment that somebody was looking for this ledger — you did take it before the basement was searched, right? Assuming that, who could it be? Only you or Sharlene. You're out because you already found it," Shelley said with a smile, "and Sharlene would have no reason to be secretive about it. She'd search in a tidy manner and even if she'd been sloppy, there'd have been no reason not to admit it."

“But why just the two of us? I was sort of lurking behind a display when I heard that man telling the story about the pea. Why couldn't someone else have been lurking, or at least accidentally overhearing it, too?"

“Like who?"

“Like anybody in the building. I saw Caspar shortly before the old man told Sharlene the story. Anyone else might have been just outside the doorway. Shelley, I want to see if this ledger showing Snellen's Little Beauty actually leads us to some peas."

“And you don't want to go in the basement by yourself? All right. But let me finish with the pitchforks first. Only two more tags to go.”

Jane paced impatiently while Shelley completed her work; then they headed for the stairs. As they went down the last flight, it occurred to Jane that they should have brought a key in case the storage room was locked. But fortunately, it wasn't. She turned the knob and the door swung open. Jane stepped forward into the darkness, flailing for the string that would turn on the overhead light. Just as she grasped it and pulled, her foot touched something in the middle of the floor. There hadn't been anything there the last time they were down here.

She looked straight ahead, afraid to look down.

But Shelley's surprised gasp changed her mind. Automatically stepping backward, she clutched the ledger book to her chest and gazed down in horror at a body.

Jane and Shelley gave their reports to the first police officer on the scene and were asked to wait in the boardroom. They waited. And waited. Too stunned to speak in anything but monosyllables, they sat at the table, drinking far too much coffee and listening as more sirens approached and then one departed.

After a while, Babs came in, looking ashen. She merely nodded acknowledgment of their presence and said tersely, "I'm rather glad that Daisy didn't live to know all this.”

Neither Jane nor Shelley could think of any response to her comment.

Babs took a book from a shelf and sat down, pretending to read and making it clear that she wasn't in a mood to say anything more. A quarter of an hour later, Jumper joined them. He was wearing a green hospital scrub suit and his complexion very nearly matched his clothes.

“The officer outside said he could send someone for lunch," he told them dully.

They all shook their heads in the negative.

“I guess they're asking us the same things," he said. "When we last saw him. And they don't much like the idea that the last time I saw him was here, when I told him what a jerk he was. Or maybe they do like it," he mumbled, more to himself than to them. "Nothing like bagging an attorney for murder. Probably adds a full paragraph to a résumé."

“Résumé. ." Jane murmured. "Was that what all those papers on the floor were? Derek's box of résumés?"

“Was that what was in the box he stomped out of here with yesterday?" Jumper asked. "I assumed so," Jane said.

“Then if he was still carrying them around, that means—" Jumper stopped.

But Babs was recovering and wasn't afraid to say the rest. "It means Derek's probably been lying there in the basement since yesterday. And we've all been complaining about him not doing his job.”

A sort of collective shudder ran through them. Shelley cleared her throat and said to Jumper, "Did the police mention how—?”

Jumper nodded. "There was a blow to his head. I don't know if they've identified the weapon—"

“But his face," Jane said, shivering with revulsion at the memory. "Why—"

“The blow didn't kill him," Jumper went on. "Only knocked him out. Then someone" — he paused, searching for an acceptable word—"someone filled his nose and mouth with peas to obstruct his breathing."

“Peas!" Babs exclaimed.
"Peas?"

“
From a drawer in that big piece of furniture with all the drawers."

“I haven't been down there in years," Babs said. "What kind of furniture is for peas?”

“It's like the seed bins they used to have in hardware stores," Jumper explained. "Except instead of bins, there are drawers. Old Auguste used it to store his genetic crosses. I helped drag the thing away from the wall a couple years ago when the foundation-repair people were here to give us a bid.”

Babs nodded. "Yes, I remember it now. It used to be in his office at the warehouse. Daisy took me there once and I was fascinated with it.”

Jumper had flung himself into a chair, laced his fingers together, and was staring at them as if they held an answer. After a moment, he looked up at Jane. "What were you two doing down there anyway?”

There was only the slightest hint of suspicion in his voice, but it was enough to compel Jane to explain. They'd all find out sooner or later anyway.

“We were going to look in that pea furniture for Little Beauty. When I got here Monday, I heard a man telling Sharlene that when he was a kid during the Depression, his family had grown that particular Snellen pea one year. He said it sprawled around on the ground and was too hard to harvest, but his father had some left over that he planted as ground cover for a couple years. The man telling Sharlene about it said they grew the best potatoes in the world the next year, and carrots and beets and things, and it kept his family from starving.”

Babs said, "Oh, Sharlene started to tell me that story, but the phone rang while we were talking and she never got around to finishing it."

“Carrots, potatoes, and beets?" Jumper said. "Anything else?”

Jane was surprised by the question and thought for a minute. "Turnips, maybe."

“Root crops," Jumper said under his breath.

“Anyhow," Jane went on, "Shelley and I were down there Monday and I picked up a book to use as a clipboard. And we noticed this morning that it was a ledger. I looked at it again and saw that one page of it was about the Little Beauty pea, and there was a letter in the book that's probably the one that the family's father wrote to the seed company when they lost their pea crop to the frost and wanted to order more. The company hadn't pursued growing and selling that pea because it fell on the ground. And I was just curious about it. The drawers have code numbers on them, and there was a code number for Little Beauty in the ledger. So we went to look, but found Derek instead."

“Root crops," Jumper said again. "Don't legumes leave something in the soil? Nitrogen or something? I wonder. . couldn't this particular kind of pea have done something unusually good that caused root crops to thrive?"

“I guess so," Jane said. "I sort of knew that about beans. But I hadn't thought it out that way. I was only curious to know if there were any still left. I thought Sharlene might want to give a few to the man who told her the story. He was sentimental enough to make a trip here to talk about it and—”

Shelley interrupted her. "Jane, a plant that leaves extra nutrients in the soil could be very valuable."

“It sure could," Jumper said. "There are people patenting 'designer' plant crosses these days. I don't know enough about science or farming to actually say, but Shelley could be right. Someone who really knew his or her way around DNA might produce a patented plant that could make a fortune."

“Who else heard this man talking to Sharlene?" Babs asked.

Jane shrugged. "Anybody might have. They were in that room just off the entry. There are lots of exhibit cases in there. I stayed behind the one I was looking at simply because I didn't want to intrude.”

Babs shook her head. "No, it doesn't make sense. Even I knew about legumes and nitrogen, but I can almost promise you that nobody involved with the museum is an expert on genetics and DNA."

“But an outsider might be," Shelley said. "An outsider wouldn't know about the pea bin in the basement," Babs said.

“I'm not sure you'd have to be an expert," Jumper said. "It's not an area of the law I've had reason to study, but my guess is that if you had possession of the peas, you could hire an expert. Or turn the matter over to an interested scientific facility under a royalty arrangement. But you said it was during the Depression that the family grew the peas. Even if there were still seeds around, would they grow?"

“How long do peas remain viable?" Babs asked, probably knowing nobody had the answer.

Shelley spoke up. "I don't know about peas, but some grains will grow after hundreds of years."

“And even if you couldn't grow them, you might be able to clone cells to determine the genetic makeup," Jumper said. "Could that be why somebody tore up the basement the other day — looking for that ledger?"

“I'd wondered that, too," Jane said.

“And if he or she went back to search again—" Jumper went on.

“Derek might have found the searcher—" Shelley said.

“Or
been
the searcher," Jumper amended. "What if he'd overheard the conversation about the special pea and gone down to look a couple days ago? Then, when I told him that he wasn't going to be appointed director, he went back to make a more thorough search so he could steal the peas before he left?”

Jane shook her head. "No, I don't think so. There would be no reason for someone to kill him just because he was looking for the pea ledger. Unless he was in it with someone else."

“Like Georgia," Shelley said.

“We have turned into ghouls," Babs said. "This is all wild, irresponsible speculation. And it's not our job. It's up to the police."

“True," Jumper said, chastened by her tone. "But it's up to us to tell them all we know. And part of what we know is the relationships of the people here at the Snellen."

“Yes, of course. I'm sorry. Old-lady nerves," Babs said. "All right. Let's don't wander off into a science none of us knows anything about. Justlook at the overall picture. If Derek's death actually did have something to do with the peas, and if we assume that his death and Regina's are connected in some way—"

“I think that's a logical assumption," Jumper said. "I can't believe we have two murderers operating independently."

“—then what has Regina got to do with the pea — what was it called? Little Beauty? That's impossible. Nobody had ever heard about it until after Regina was dead.”

Jane
excused herself, theoretically to visit
the
rest room, actually to get away from the others in the hope that her own mind would clear. It seemed that no matter how they looked at the situation, eventually they splatted up against a brick wall of common logic. She sensed that they were wallowing in a swamp of speculations where there was an answer hovering over their heads that they hadn't bothered to look at.

Or maybe she was going a tad batty herself. She wished she had a better idea of what the police knew, but she suspected that, for all their technical expertise, they were as baffled as she.

The officer lounging at the door of the boardroom let her go without any difficulty. Apparently the confinement in the boardroom was merely a suggestion, not a requirement. Jane decided to make a preventive visit to the bathroom, and when she was washing her hands, Sharlene came in, pushing the door with her derriere and holding her hands in front of her as if they were contaminated. "Laser copier dust," she explained.

Jane turned on the faucet for her and leaned back against an old steam-heat radiator under the window. "So you're being allowed to do your work?"

“Somebody has to if we're going to run the museum and get moved. Thank heaven we didn't have any tours scheduled today, since the police have closed us up."

“You're taking this surprisingly well," Jane remarked.

“No use pretending," Sharlene said, sounding a little like Babs. "I really think it's terrible that somebody killed Derek, but I can't act like I liked him just because it happened. What I think is most awful about it is that it happened
here.
This is bad for the museum. Bad publicity. Lisa's going to have a big repair job when this is all over. I'm starting to think somebody's doing it simply to ruin us. But that's silly, I know. Nobody would take horrible risks like that just to hurt the museum's reputation."

“I'm confused, too," Jane admitted. "There are too many trivial motives, real or imaginary."

“That's exactly it," Sharlene agreed. "I can't imagine killing anyone for any reason, and because we're all stuck in the middle of this, we're all thinking of really stupid reasons. It's easier with Derek than it was with Ms. Palmer."