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?"
“I know, I know," Shelley said. "I can't make any sense of it, either. I'm starting to get paranoid and think everybody's up to something shady."
“I wonder if it comes down to Regina herself," Jane said, putting the library book back in the car and closing the doors after making sure the cats were out. "I can't face vacuuming this now. I'll try to bribe one of the kids to do it. Let's go in and sit down. I think it's about to rain.”
When they were settled at Jane's kitchen table, and had duly admired the birdless bird feeder, Shelley said, "What do you mean about Regina?"
“Just that we didn't really know her at all. We're relying almost entirely on other people's impressions of her, and they're not all the same. And yet I don't feel like I've got a balanced picture of what she was really like, merely a bunch of conflicting ideas. How long will it be before birds come?"
“Any second now."
“Really?"
“No, Jane! Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. You're right about Regina. Sharlene thought she was a goddess — remote, perfect, sort of bloodless, but kind. I'm not sure that's what Sharlene thinks, but that's the impression I had."
“Right. Me, too," Jane said. "But Derek seems to have seen her as a stumbling block to his sexual and professional ambitions. He tried to seduce her out of her job and it didn't work. He thinks she was cold and probably imagines she was as ambitious and aggressive as he is. And for all we know, he was right."
“And we're told that Caspar Snellen hated her, too, claiming that she'd tricked Miss Daisy into giving the money to the museum just to further her own ambitions. Regina's ambitions, I mean.”
Jane nodded. "Caspar's a creep, but even creeps can be right occasionally."
“Probably not in this case, though," Shelley said. "Everybody seems to agree that Babs McDonald was a lifelong friend to Miss Daisy, and if Babs even suspected that Regina was conning her friend, she wouldn't have been supportive of her. And she must have been, or Regina wouldn't have kept her job all this time."
“I suppose so," Jane allowed. "But Babs said herself that she didn't approve of Caspar or Georgia. She wouldn't have wanted them to have Miss Daisy's money to throw away. Maybe she just turned a blind eye—"
“I don't think Babs ever turned a blind eye on anything," Shelley said.
“You say that only because you want to be her when you grow up," Jane said.
Shelley laughed. "I guess I wouldn't mind. I sure hope I have her figure, her hair, and her wardrobe when I'm her age."
“You can't fool me. You can buy all that stuff. What you want is her 'presence.' “
Shelley looked disgruntled at this blunt truth. "I wonder what the real story is about her husband's death. I didn't have any opportunity to ask Sharlene about the newspaper clipping."
“Let's stick to Regina," Jane said. "Whitney Abbot thought well of her. He wanted to marry her. More than wanted to, he planned to. I can't imagine him getting swept away by anyone who was less than perfect."
“Yes, but like we said before, if he felt he'd been made a fool of in some way, or tricked by her, it might be a motive for murder."
“A pretty thin one," Jane said. "My take on him is that he'd consider social shunning a fate far worse than death."
“Lisa, of course, thought well of Regina," Shelley said. "But what about Jumper?”
Jane shrugged. "No idea. He was Miss Daisy's attorney and probably would have dissuaded her from giving her money to the museum if he thought there was anything dishonest or disreputable about Regina."
“What if he was in love with her?" Shelley said suddenly, looking as if she'd taken herself by surprise with the thought.
Jane stared at her friend for a minute as if she'd gone completely mad. "I — you take my breath away. What an extraordinary idea! But if he were, why would he kill her?"
“Because she was going to marry Whitney.
They were going to announce it at the groundbreaking party. The if-I-can't-have-you nobody-can thing. Jane, that makes more sense than anything else. It's passion. Even the most normal people can be driven to murder by passion.'
“I don't like it," Jane said. "I really, really don't like this idea, because I do like Jumper."
“But that's got nothing to do with it," Shelley said. "Give me a good reason why it couldn't be Jumper."
“I can do that," Jane said after a moment's thought. "Because I think he's in love, all right. With Sharlene. She's certainly in love with him. And what's more, I think it's up to us to do something about it!"
“Jane, will you please make up your mind whether you're a sleuth or a matchmaker?"
“I can be both. I told you, I'm a modern woman.”
Sixteen
The rain was only a drizzle and stopped just as Todd arrived home. Jane managed, by a balanced combination of bribes and threats, to convince him to take the hand vacuum outside and finish the car cleaning. She got busy fixing her own special macaroni and cheese casserole (part of the bribe), and because this was a great favorite with the kids, all three of them managed to fit dinner at home into their social schedules.
Jane was loading the dishwasher when the phone rang.
“Jane, this is Babs McDonald. I hope I'm not interrupting your dinner."
“No, we just finished."
“Good. I wonder if I might ask you a favor. I'd like to meet you to discuss something. I understand from Jumper that you were present this morning when he had a rather unpleasant discussion with Derek Delano—"
“I was," Jane said hesitantly. So much for thinking she'd made herself invisible.
“And I presume you've discussed it with your friend Shelley."
“I — er, yes."
“Quite natural that you would," Babs assured her. "Then perhaps you two would be willing to get together with me so I can tell you about killing my husband?”