War and Peas (7 page)

Lisa paused and looked away as Shelley came in with their lunches, and said, almost under her breath, "There were good times.”

The longing in her tone broke Jane's heart. "There will be lots more good times," she said. "Just think how exciting it'll be when the newmuseum starts taking shape and when you are moving things."

“Yes, you're right," Lisa said with, a sigh. "But Regina won't be here to see it."

“But she'll be with all of you in spirit," Jane said, cringing inwardly at the cliché but unable to think of anything else comforting to say.

Shelley set out their food, distributed napkins and plastic forks, and said, "Who will be in charge now? Will you become director, Lisa?"

“Oh, no! I hope not. It wouldn't suit me at all. I've come to really like my job and I do it well, I think. There's a lot of really boring detail work that goes with the directorship that I'd hate. Correspondence and bookkeeping."

“I guess that's why you have an assistant director, to step in if necessary," Shelley said. "Will Derek Delano be given the position, do you think?”

Lisa didn't answer right away. Then she said cautiously, "I suppose he might."

“I hope he isn't," Shelley said frankly. She drizzled dressing over her salad.

“Why is that?" Lisa asked.

Shelley looked up at her. "Because he's obnoxious."

“Well. ." Lisa began.

“Look," Shelley said, "I realize you have to work with him and I'm not trying to jeopardize your professional relationship, but that man's a jerk and you must know it. Were you in the trailer yesterday when I returned that box of gift-shop stuff and he called me 'babe'? That's just not the way to treat a woman you don't know, and a volunteer at that. If the museum put him in charge, they'd have a sexual harassment suit on their hands in a week.”

Lisa looked stunned at Shelley's bluntness, but acknowledged her remarks with a nod. "I'm afraid you're right. And I know Regina would have agreed."

“Why? Did he try that stuff on her, too? His own boss?" Jane asked.

“Yes, 'tried.' But it was so blatant—" Lisa hesitated again.

Shelley was on a roll and wouldn't let it go at that. "What was so blatant?"

“Well, he was after her job. Everybody knew that. He didn't even bother to disguise it. He was always mentioning how she'd be moving on to bigger and better museums once the Snellen was in its new building and she'd made her name in the profession. At first he flirted with her, which was really inappropriate. Then, when she rejected his requests for dates, he got sulky, and when she became involved with Whitney, he started making remarks that skated awfully close to being sexual innuendos. I'm sure Derek thought Regina found him attractive in spite of all the evidence to the contrary and would push the board to appoint him in her place when she left."

“So she
was
leaving the museum?" Jane asked.

“No, she wasn't. I was saying what Derek thought. He was wrong, but nothing could convince him of it."

“I don't get it," Shelley said. "If she was his boss and he was so obnoxious, why didn't she fire him? Or explain it to the board of directors, if they're the ones who do the firing?"

“Pride," Lisa answered. "That's all. Regina could be awfully stiff-necked at times. She'd searched high and low for an assistant, interviewed a mob of candidates. Somehow Derek managed to behave in the interviews and she recommended him to the board. She just couldn't bring herself to admit to them that she'd made a mistake. And it might have actually been hard to get rid of him. He's superbly well qualified, academically. More so than either Regina or I when we came here.”

Jane nibbled at her salad, reflecting that it was interesting how Shelley's bluntness often encouraged people to talk about things they'd never normally say, especially to strangers. Lisa Quigley hardly knew them, yet Shelley had her "talking shop" in minutes. Of course, part of it was probably the fact that poor Lisa had unexpectedly lost a good friend as well as a coworker.

“Don't you suppose the board knows what he's like?" Jane asked. "Babs McDonald strikes me as a sharp woman.”

Lisa kept poking at her salad as if she really wanted to eat but couldn't quite bring herself to it. "Yes, Babs must realize. And I imagine Regina talked to Jumper about it. She depended a lot on his judgment."

“Then it doesn't sound like there's too much danger of Derek being appointed director," Shelley said. "Who else is on the board?"

“Jumper, Babs, Georgia Snellen — do you know her?"

“We do," Shelley said curtly. "We saw her at the Festival. With Derek.”

Lisa looked for a minute like she was going to question Shelley, but went on instead. "Then there's an accountant Jumper recommended a few years ago when Miss Snellen died and we suddenly had a large endowment. He's in Alaska right now, visiting his brother who's a park ranger or something."

“Is that all?" Jane asked.

“No, there's a history professor from the local junior college, but he's traveling in Europe this summer, doing research for a paper. Then there are a half-dozen honorary board members. They aren't voting directors, but they're community leaders whose support is important, and their opinions are pretty highly valued."

“So right now, the appointment of a new director lies with Jumper, Babs, and Georgia."

“Only Jumper and Georgia, theoretically. Babs is the president of the board and votes only in case of a tie."

“Let me guess," Shelley said. "Jumper would probably vote against Derek's appointment. Georgia would probably vote for it. And Babs would break the tie.”

Lisa thought for a moment. "Yes, but. . I think parliamentary procedure
allows
the president to break a tie, but doesn't
require
it. So Babs might refuse to cast the deciding vote and make everybody wait until the other two board members return or can be reached to cast a vote bymail. I imagine they'll just appoint him acting director while they search for a new person entirely. Unless—”

The word hung in the air for a moment until Jane asked, "Unless what?"

“Unless Derek's arrested for murdering Regina," Lisa said.

"Do you think he killed her?" Shelley asked Lisa seemed to suddenly realize that she'd gone too far. "No, no. Not at all. I shouldn't have even thought that, much less said it. I'm really sorry.”

Shelley brushed aside her objections. "It's natural to wonder when something so terrible happens to someone you love. Do you believe the shooting was deliberate?"

“It had to be, didn't it?" Lisa said, her voice catching. "The police said the gun came from the museum. That had to be deliberate, stealing the gun. And it's hard to imagine why anybody would take it on purpose, then shoot someone with it by accident."

“Who could have taken it?”

Lisa shrugged helplessly. "Anybody, I guess. Well, anybody who knows where the keys to the cases are kept, and that's anyone who's ever worked here. Regina was awfully trusting of everyone and wasn't concerned with theft. In fact, the board had to overrule her objections to updating and improving the security system."

“I suppose the police fingerprinted the display case," Jane said.

“I guess they must have," Lisa said. "But they might have found a ton of prints or none at all. The kids who come here love that display. They all lean on it and touch it. Besides, we had a leak from the sink in the upstairs rest room last week that made a big stain on the wall behind the case. We had to wrestle it out into the middle of the room. It took half the staff to move it out, then move it back when the painting was finished. And in the meantime, it was in the traffic path, and I imagine many people who visited the room touched the display as they squeezed past. But if the — the person who did this awful thing had any sense at all, he cleaned off all the prints."

“And you think that person was Derek Delano?" Shelley asked.

“No. No, I really don't." Lisa obviously regretted her earlier remark about him. She put down her fork and fiddled around pulling her hair back and reclipping a tortoiseshell barrette while she thought. Finally she said, "Derek is ambitious and nasty and has an ego the size of Texas, but I don't think he's truly mean-spirited. And he's very bright and well educated. I believe if it
had
gotten through to him that he probably wasn't ever going to be director of the Snellen, he'd have just altered his plan and gone somewhere else to move his career along. I don't think he especially liked or disliked Regina, either. I'm not sure he
can
like or dislike people. I think he categorizes them as useful or not useful."

“And Georgia Snellen is useful?" Shelley asked.

“Oh, you've seen her hanging on him? I guess either she's convinced him she is or — well, to be vulgar — she's useful, and handy, in other ways.”

Jane had been working her way through her salad, which was very good, while Shelley and Lisa talked. Now she closed the clear plastic container and started tidying up the table. "Was there anyone who did dislike Ms. Palmer?" she asked.

“Well, Caspar Snellen never bothered to disguise his feelings, but other than that, I don't know. Anybody else who found fault with her would be unlikely to tell me about it."

“And why did Caspar Snellen dislike her?" Jane asked.

“Money. His aunt's money, which he counted on getting and didn't. And the fact that he's a miserable person who goes around imagining that everybody's conspiring against him." Lisa shuddered a little and suddenly said, "I really appreciate you two letting me blow off steam. I'm sorry — I probably ruined your lunch and said a lot of dumb things I shouldn't have."

“Not in the least," Jane assured her.

“You know, I've realized since Saturday that when someone close to you dies, people tend to think the kind, polite thing to do is try to take your mind off it. As if it's somehow ghoulish or tasteless to even mention the person's name in polite company."

“It's well meant," Shelley said.

“I know. But it can make you feel that everybody just wants to forget they existed at all. Thanks again for listening. It helps. And thanks for picking up lunch, Shelley. I think this is the first time in days that I just sat down for this long. Oh, give me your receipt and I'll make sure Sharlene reimburses you.”

When Lisa had gone, Jane gave the stuffed cat a preoccupied pet and went right back to work so she could push away the thought that was troubling her. To lose a best friend must be an awful thing. If Shelley were suddenly taken out of her life, Jane couldn't imagine how she'd, cope. Nobody could fill that empty space. And it must be worse for Lisa Quigley, who had no husband or children and, given her work schedule, probably no other close friends.

Jane forced herself to concentrate on cataloging a collection of turn-of-the-century corsets and petticoats.

By two-thirty, Jane was more than ready for a break. She used her computer a lot at home: she'd been working — or rather playing — at a story that she hoped would someday miraculously turn into a novel. But at home she was always up and down, throwing in a load of laundry, letting the dog in and out of the backyard, running errands. She seldom sat in front of the screen for such long, intense periods. And the strain was getting to her neck and eyes. She moved over to the board table, sat down, gingerly rested her heels on the very edge of the table, and slouched into the chair. The change in posture hurt, but in a good, stretchy way.

When the door opened, she hastily sat up.

“Taking a break?" Babs McDonald said. "Put your feet back up. You can't do that table any harm. I did a little nursing during World War Two and the head nurse always told us that if we put our feet up every single chance we got, we'd add at least five years to our lives. You're Jane, right?"

“Jane Jeffry, yes."

“I'm Babs McDonald. I hope everybody's fawned over you and your friend Shelley for helping us out. We're really enormously grateful."

“Everybody's fawned very nicely," Jane said with a smile. "And I'm finding it very interesting. Besides, it gets me out of the house and away from my children for a while. By August, that's a real perk."

“Oh, yes. Summer vacation." Babs had brought along a cup of coffee and sat down to put a packet of powdered dairy mix into it. "I remember when Daisy was raising Caspar and Georgia. By the end of vacation, she was exhausted."

“Daisy Snellen, you mean? She raised—?" Jane was confused.

“Not officially, of course, but her brother was — not to speak ill of the dead — but he was a bum. His wife left him and the kids and he pretty much dumped them on poor Daisy. I helped her out as much as I could, but I'm not one of those women with a maternal pilot light that makes me automatically love children. Even very nice children. And Caspar and Georgia weren't ever especially nice children. You've probably met them and could have guessed that.”

She was stirring in the dairy mix and looking at the result with disgust. Jane was again struck by how well Babs seemed to "fit" her age. Her thick white hair was in a Gibson Girl type of loose knot on top of her head today. She wore crisply tailored white slacks, an obviously expensive light blue safari-style blouse, and a gorgeous fuchsia, navy, and white silk scarf tied as a belt. She looked both stylish and comfortable, as if it came naturally.

“I've only seen Caspar Snellen once — no, twice, including this morning — and the first time he was very rude."

“Oh, he's his father all over again. But how his father got to be that way is a mystery to me. Old Auguste Snellen was about the kindest, most courteous old gentleman I ever met and his wife was a sweet little dumpling of a woman. And Daisy's parents were lovely people, too, but they died very young. Her brother, who was the father of Caspar and Georgia, was only a teenager when Auguste died, and Daisy was about twenty. Auguste left his fortune to Daisy, supposedly because his grandson was so young. But I think old Auguste had already seen the writing on the wall and knew the boy was going to turn out badly."