War and Peas

speaking to Lisa. Jumper, Sharlene, and Shelley were standing around the coffee machine, shaking their heads in despair.
    Everybody turned at Jane’s entrance.
    “Babs McDonald is locked in a room on the third floor,“ she said. “And I don’t know which key I need to get her out.“
    “Oh, my God!“ Lisa exclaimed, heading for the door and colliding with Sharlene, who was headed in the same direction.
    “Just give me the key,“ Mel said. “I’ll go. Jane, you come with me.”
    When they finally found the right key and rushed back upstairs, they discovered that the room Babs was locked in was a dark closet. She all but fell out. “I hate dark places,“ she said, maintaining a shaky dignity.
    “What happened? Are you all right?“ Mel demanded.
    “Of course I’m all right. I came up here to look in the file cabinet that’s kept in that horrible closet. I heard footsteps, but didn’t think much about it until the door slammed shut. And even then I wasn’t especially disconcerted until the light burned out.“
    “Do you have any idea who it was?“ Mel asked.
    “None. I had my back turned to the door.”
    “How long have you been in there?“ Jane asked.
    Babs looked at her watch, then held it up to her ear before looking at it again. “My goodness. Only about fifteen minutes. But it seemed much longer.“
    “Why would somebody lock you in the closet?“ Jane wondered.
    “As a warning, apparently. Thank goodness you were around to hear me.“
    “A warning of what?“ Mel said.
    Babs stared at him for a long moment, then replied, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Twenty

    “Jane, what in the world were you doing up there?“ Shelley asked as they drove home. “Just trying to get my thoughts in order.”
    “It’s a good thing you didn’t get yourself and your thoughts locked in a closet.“
    “If Babs is right, I wouldn’t have been anyway,“ Jane said, cringing as Shelley’s van whispered by a parked car. She could almost hear the paint on both vehicles gasping at the near miss. As much as she loved and admired Shelley, the way Shelley drove always left her gibbering with terror.
    She drew a deep breath and continued. “Babs said she’d been locked in there as a warning.”
    “A warning about what?“
    “Not to talk about something, presumably. But that’s as far as she’d go. Either she really doesn’t know what she was being warned off or she’s making a convincing show of not knowing.“
    “Which wouldn’t surprise me,“ Shelley said.
    “I think Babs McDonald could have persuaded Newt to head up the Democratic National Committee if she’d set her mind to it. But just the same, if she has some idea, I’ll bet she’s told the police.“
    “Who aren’t going to tell us,“ Jane said glumly.
    “She really was indignant about the way Lisa and Sharlene kept fussing over her,“ Shelley said.
    “It’s probably the only time they’ve treated her like a fragile little old lady.”
    Shelley executed an almost perfect right-angle turn into the parking lot of the neighborhood post office. “I have to mail some underwear,“ she said. “Paul’s sister, Constanza, stayed with us for a couple days and left a bra, which she wants mailed. Don’t you think if you left a trail of lingerie, you’d keep quiet and hope nobody noticed? And it’s a tatty, ragged old thing nobody in their right mind would claim.”
    It was an awfully big box and, knowing Shelley, Jane suspected the item had been washed, ironed, and stuffed into bosom shape with elegant tissue. Shelley knew how to be nasty in the classiest ways. She came back to the car looking smug, which confirmed Jane’s thoughts.
    “Putting Babs’s incarceration aside for a minute, I have some gossip you’ll like,“ Jane said. She told Shelley about her conversation with Sharlene.
    “He forgot the bathrooms? A hoity-toity architect left out the potties?“ Shelley exclaimed delightedly. “He’s probably so inhuman he doesn’t use them himself.“
    “I admit he’s kind of a cold fish,“ Jane said, “but I think you hated him on sight. Why?”
    Shelley shrugged and honked at an inoffensive man trying to cut in on her traffic lane. “I don’t know. Maybe he reminds me of somebody, or maybe it’s just instinct.“
    “You think he’s the murderer?“
    “I think it’s possible. Or at least not impossible.“
    “Then here’s the rest of what Sharlene said. She mentioned that he’d referred to the incident