War and Peas (2 page)

“Do you think it's okay if I use the shower?" she asked.

“I'd say it was mandatory," Jane replied with an encouraging grin.

Sharlene smiled weakly and disappeared into the minuscule bathroom.

“What on earth is going on?" Shelley asked the moment the door had closed.

“Sharlene said someone was shot to death out on that field.”

Shelly put her hand over her mouth. "No!”

“She said it was her boss."

“Regina Price Palmer?"

“Yes, Palmer was the name. Who is she?”

“She's the museum director," Shelley replied. "Oh, of course. Her name was in the brochure. That's why it sounded familiar."

“Is she right?" Shelley asked. "Sharlene's obviously in bad shape herself. Could the heat have made her a little loopy?”

Jane shrugged. "I don't know. But something certainly happened. Someone was on the ground with a crowd standing around looking alarmed.”

Just as the faint sound of sirens became audible, there was a sharp knock on the door, and in stepped a young man in farmer's overalls rolled up to his knees, with a straw hat perched on his head of brown hair worn in a long ponytail. "Excuse me, do either of you know where Sharlene Lloyd is?"

“Yes, she's showering and changing," Shelley said.

“She's okay, then? Good." He put out his hand to Jane, who was closest to him. "Jumper Cable," he said.

Jane took his hand. "I'm sorry — I have no idea where you'd find a jumper cable."

“No, that's me."

“You're a jumper cable?" Jane asked with alarm, gingerly freeing her hand. Had the heat made everyone crazy? Or perhaps she was crazy and imagining this conversation. Soon she'd be thinking she was Napoleon.

“I'm sorry. Tom Cable. People call me Jumper.”

Relieved, Shelley and Jane introduced themselves. Jumper said, "I just wanted to make sure Sharlene was okay. Tell her I came by, would you?”

And with that, he was gone. A second later, Sharlene emerged from the bathroom. She had on a denim skirt, a sleeveless white blouse, and sandals; a towel was wrapped around her head. She held her "pioneer woman" clothes in her arms. She was obviously feeling better, at least physically. "I'm sorry. It was rude of me to rush in first like that. I probably used all the hot water, too."

“I hope you have," Shelley said. "I want a cold shower. Oh, a boy calling himself Jumper Cable came to see if you were okay.”

Sharlene blushed. "He's not a boy. Tom Cable is the museum's attorney. Thanks for telling me."

“Attorney?" Jane asked. "He looked barely old enough to vote!"

“He does look young," Sharlene said a bit defensively, "but he's thirty-three years old. Last May twelfth.”

Shelley picked out her own grocery sack and took her turn in the bathroom. She came out a few minutes later, looking as fresh as new paint. Her short, dark hair was already half dry and as tidy as always. Sharlene went to hang up all their pioneer clothes while Jane got cleaned up. There was no hot water left, as Sharlene had predicted, but the cool shower was refreshing and putting on clean, lightweight cotton clothes was even more so. Jane was still combing out her wet, dark blond mop of hair when Mel arrived.

“I thought I'd never find you!" he exclaimed.

“Sharlene, this is my friend Detective Mel VanDyne," Jane said. "Sharlene Lloyd is Ms. Palmer's secretary.”

Sharlene asked, "Is she dead? Really?"

“I'm afraid so, Ms. Lloyd. Do you feel like answering a few questions?”

Sharlene became teary-eyed again. "I think — will you excuse me for a minute?”

She disappeared into the depths of the mobile home, and Mel said to Jane and Shelley, "Then I'll start with you two."

“Are you in charge of the case?" Jane asked.

“No, just helping with interviews. There was a mob of people out there, you know, and it's important to interview as many as possible as quickly as possible."

“I don't know how much help we can be, Mel," Jane said. "We weren't in 'witness' mode."

“People seldom are," he replied.

“But we were really out in left field, if you'll forgive the expression," Shelley put in. "We were busy pretending like mad. The woman who rehearsed us really emphasized that we weren't to try to
act
the parts, but really get into it and
be
the people. She said that was the whole point of a reenactment. And we took her at her word. It was spooky, in fact. I was really scared of the battle, even though I knew it was all fake."

“But unfortunately, it wasn't," Jane added grimly. "Shelley's right. We weren't quite ourselves. Maybe it was just the heat, but I felt — well, almost hypnotized into my part.”

Mel wasn't very sympathetic. "Then you're going to have to snap out of it, because I need information. Do the best you can, okay?”

But it wasn't a successful interview. The experience had been pure chaos and neither of them could satisfactorily choreograph exactly what they'd done in what order, let alone account for anyone else's movements.

“There was a group of women — three of them, I think — just behind us to begin with," Jane summed up. "One of them was Sharlene Lloyd. I remembered her because her red hair and red face made her look so much hotter than the rest of us. And one of the women with her had a hat with cloth flowers like big cabbage roses. I saw her later, when we were trying to escape. She was ahead of us then, though. And she was already lying on the ground. Was that Ms. Palmer?”

Mel nodded. "Did she look injured when you saw her?"

“She looked dead," Shelley said bluntly. "But then, she was supposed to pretend to be dead, I guess."

“You couldn't see her expression," Jane said. "She was facedown and her hat had skewed around and concealed her features.”

Sharlene rejoined them. Her nose and eyes were pink and she had a crumpled tissue in her hand, but she was calm. "I've been listening to your questions," she said softly. "I'm afraid I don't know much, either. I was walking with Ms. Palmer and Babs McDonald. And I know it sounds crazy, but I, too, sort of felt like it was really happening. When the shooting started, I just froze. I was worried about Babs — Mrs. McDonald. She's the older lady, you know. Miss Daisy's friend. And I was worried about her being out in the heat or falling and breaking her hip or something. So I just stood there, and when the soldiers got close, Babs gave me a shove and said to rim for safety. I turned around and ran back the way we'd come."

“Where was Ms. Palmer then?" Mel asked very gently.

Sharlene sniffed and touched the tissue to her nose. "I don't know. I didn't look. I was only thinking about myself.”

Mel nodded and said, "Of course you were. That's understandable. What happened next?"

“Well, I ran a few feet and a soldier almost ran into me. He yelled something about getting out of the way and threw me to the ground. No, not really threw me, but he made it look like that. So I just stayed there, playing possum."

“Could you see the others?" Mel asked.

“No, I was in a low spot."

“Had someone told you to run back that way? Was it planned?"

“No, not really." Sharlene spoke more firmly now. "I believe the actual reenactors have what they do pretty well planned. But those of us from the museum were just extras. We were there for a little extra 'color' and were only told about how we were supposed to imagine we were walking to town and no matter what happened, to act like the person we were pretending to be would probably have acted.”

Shelley and Jane nodded their agreement, and Shelley added, "As part of the museum's function, the woman in charge told us a lot about the clothes we were wearing and how we would have lived, and suggested 'roles.' I was the town minister's wife—" She looked warningly at Jane, as if her friend might make another joke about that, but Jane kept a straight face and Shelley continued. "And Jane was my cousin whose family had come out to homestead next to our farm. We were taking our tomatoes to market to trade for flour. They made us carry gunnysacks of real tomatoes so we'd know how heavy they were.”

Mel nodded. "Excuse me for wandering off track for a minute," he said to Sharlene, "but Idon't recall any Civil War battles around here. I'm not much of a history buff, but—"

“It wasn't meant to be a real battle," Sharlene said. Again she was speaking of something about which she was knowledgeable, and her voice and manner were more confident. "Only to give the flavor of what it was like. Lisa Quigley — she does all our publicity and promotion at the Snellen — set it up, so I don't know a whole lot about it, but I think the reenactors the real ones — based it on some actual battle that took place in Tennessee. They have a club here in Chicago and they like to do this whenever they can. I think some of them spend a fortune on their uniforms and equipment and all, and travel long distances to go to actual sites. But they all have real jobs and can't do that very often, I imagine. They're very picky about accuracy otherwise. Even their underwear and the toothbrushes in their packs are either antique items or exact reproductions. That's why the museum is so strict with the extras. We can't use bobby pins in our hair or wear makeup. And we have to wear wool stockings like the people did then. I'm sorry. I guess you don't care about all that right now."

“I don't know what I care about," Mel said with an encouraging smile. "I'm just collecting information. You seem to have a lot of it."

“Well, I've worked at the museum since I finished secretarial school," Sharlene said modestly. "I've picked things up."

“Tell me about the museum, then," Mel said. Sharlene briefly repeated what was in the brochure Jane had read earlier. "Miss Daisy Snellen inherited all her grandfather's money that he made from peas. When she died a couple years ago, she left most of it to the museum board of directors. It had grown to around ten million dollars.”

Mel whistled softly.

Sharlene nodded agreement. "Most of it was invested, and part of it was used to hire an architect to—" She stopped suddenly. "Oh, Mr. Abbot! Poor Mr. Abbot!"

“Who's that?" Jane asked.

“Ms. Palmer's fiancé. He was the architect who was hired to make the plans for a new museum building. And he and Ms. Palmer fell in love and were supposed to be married this winter. Oh, no! How terrible for him! Somebody has to tell him!"

“I'm sure someone's told him about it already," Mel said.

“Or asked him," Shelley muttered under her breath to Jane.

“I have to talk to the others," Sharlene said. "Lisa and poor Mr. Abbot. May I go now? Everybody's going to be so upset, and we're supposed to have the groundbreaking ceremony tomorrow. Oh, dear!”

Mel nodded, thanked her for her information, and warned her that he'd probably have more questions for her later on.

When she'd gone, Jane said, "We'd better get out of here. Everybody's going to be wanting to change. Mel, what happened out there? Was the woman really shot?"

“It looks like it. And damned near everybody out there had guns. One poor guy is trying to collect them all now and the reenactors aren't happy about turning over their weapons. We can't require them to, only ask them to do so voluntarily, of course, and since most of the weapons are valuable antiques or expensive replicas, many reenactors aren't feeling especially cooperative. It's a mess."

“Can you tell if she was shot up close or at a distance?" Jane asked.

“That'll be for the coroner's office to determine, but there weren't any visible powder burns."

“At least you're not in charge," Jane said with an attempt to cheer him up.

“Jane, I'm out in the middle of nowhere on what is probably the hottest day of the year, if not the hottest day in recorded history, and I'm trying to be authoritative and official while wearing shorts and a silly green T-shirt that says, 'The Best Pea-Pickin' Festival in the World.' Not being 'in charge' isn't much comfort."

“But you've got great legs," Jane said, unimpressed by his complaints.

He glared at her for a minute, then laughed. "I do, don't I?”

Jane
arid
Shelley went
to
the Snellen
booth, where a couple of museum volunteers wearing pea-green T-shirts were anxious to be relieved. They were also desperately eager to know what all the sirens and police were about, but Shelley and Jane pleaded ignorance.

The booth not only was shaded, it had aluminum lawn chairs and, more important, a big floor fan humming along under the counter that made everything almost pleasant. Shelley set to work sorting out and stacking up the brochures, which were randomly spread all over the counter. Jane tidied up the sale items — little enamel pea-pod lapel pins and matching earrings, peashooters, jump ropes that were a string of green plastic peas with pod handles, and ceramic dishes with ceramic peas and carrots. There were necklaces made of dried, shellacked peas that were actually rather pretty, and a Chinese checkers game with brightly painted peas for players that wasn't pretty at all. And there were a great many of the green Pea Pickin' T-shirts like the ones Jane had unwisely persuaded Mel to wear.

“Did you know this Palmer woman?" Jane asked Shelley as they finished their work and sat down to wait for customers.

“Not well. We'd met when I started working as a volunteer at the museum, and I'd seen her around. Probably hadn't exchanged more than a hundred words with her."

“Did she strike you as the type of person somebody would want to kill?"

“You think it was deliberate?" Shelley asked. "Surely it was just an accident."

“I don't see quite how it could be. Like Mel said, everybody had guns out there, but none of them were supposed to have real bullets. I don't know anything about guns, but I wouldn't think anybody who knew about them could mistake a blank for a bullet."