Free War and Peas by Jill Churchill Page B

Happy Family here. Although“—she grinned wickedly—“I do wonder how you go about disposing of something like them.“
    “Mike might like to take the daughter to college with him. She’s kinda cute,“ Jane said.
    “And you could stand Mother at your kitchen sink so that anybody glancing in the window might imagine somebody domestic lived at your house.“
    “What’s this?“ Jane went over to look at a large piece of furniture against the wall. It was eight feet tall and nearly as wide and was composed entirely of wooden drawers about nine inches square. At the front of each drawer was a small brass “picture frame“ with a card slipped into it. The cards had numbers and letters on them, like “A34 x N47.“ Jane cautiously opened a drawer. It was full of shriveled-up peas.
    “This must have been Auguste Snellen’s storage for his pea experiments, don’t you think?“ Shelley said.
    “I wonder if any of them would grow if you planted them.“
    “Probably not. Well, maybe so, come to think of it. Didn’t they find a bunch of wheat in a pyramid that they got to sprout after five thousand years or something? I saw a program about it on television once.“
    “Wonder what the numbers mean,“ Jane said. “Maybe a cross between two other kinds. See, up there at the top are a bunch of drawers without the ‘x something’ part.“
    “He probably had all the details recorded in books somewhere,“ Shelley said. “Some of the cards in the little frames look much older and more faded than others. There were probably lots of duds that got disposed of—“
    “Oh! The Depression pea story. I almost forgot to tell you,“ Jane said. She related the conversation she’d overheard when she first arrived at the museum.
    “That is nice,“ Shelley said when Jane was done. “It really sums up an era, doesn’t it? All the kids out crawling around the field to pick the peas so they’d have ground cover to hold the soil down the next year. We couldn’t get our kids to do that.“
    “I bet we could if it was a matter of eating or starving.“
    “How nice that it was Sharlene he picked to tell the story to,“ Shelley said.
    “Just what I thought. Shelley...“ She paused for a moment. “It really isn’t any of our business who killed Regina, is it?“
    “No, it isn’t. But...”
    Jane sat down on a wooden crate and spoke quietly. “I was determined not to get involved. Not to care about someone I never knew. But now that I’ve come to know some of these people, I find that I’m caring in spite of myself.“
    “Me, too,“ Shelley admitted. She perched on the corner of a sturdy buffet table. “Mel would wash our mouths out with soap if he heard us. We’ve gotten to know and like people who did care for Regina. I guess that’s what makes the difference. I feel so sorry for Sharlene and Lisa, losing someone they thought so much of in their different ways.“
    “But not Babs? You don’t feel sorry for her?“
    “I don’t think anybody’d ever dare feel sorry for her. Besides, she really didn’t say anything much about her relationship with Regina. I wonder if she even liked her.“
    “Good question,“ Jane said. “She must have respected her, though. She’s the president of the board of directors. If she hadn’t thought Regina was good at her job, she could probably have had her fired.“
    “Yes, if she were incompetent,“ Shelley agreed. “But I have the feeling that Babs is the kind of person who could despise someone personally and still recognize their good traits.“
    “You know what I’m wondering?“ Jane said. “Whether whoever shot her meant to.“
    “You means Babs’s theory that Caspar Snellen did it by accident?“
    “No, what I really meant was this: it was a well-staged riot. The reenactors knew what they were doing, but nobody else did. Couldn’t someone have been trying to shoot someone else and Regina ran in front of the target?”
    Shelley considered for a moment. “I