War and Peas

clashing personalities, between them? Caspar seemed to rub everyone the wrong way, but nobody had said anything about Regina’s feelings toward him. She’d helped Jumper defeat Caspar in the incompetency hearing, but no one had mentioned that she’d ever spoken against him.
    Nobody had said, “Boy, was Regina mad!“ or, “Regina had really strong feelings about such and such.”
    Jane couldn’t recall that either Jumper or Babs had expressed anything other than a rather impersonal respect for Regina, either. Did any of them ever socialize? Babs, Miss Daisy, and Regina had attended Sharlene’s junior-college graduation, but that was a business-type social event. Sharlene was a good, valued employee. But had Regina been the sort of person who would help someone move? Or invite him or her to dinner? Or offer to help pick up a car from the repair shop? If she had been, nobody had indicated that kind of association with her.
    Who was Regina Palmer? Jane found herself wondering. What kind of movies had she liked? If she’d rented a video, would it have been the history of the Silk Road or Cheech and Chong or Wuthering Heights? If she’d had a pet, would it have been a tank full of exotic, expensive fish, a cage swarming with twittery little birds, or a slightly lame puppy from the pound? Had she liked junk food? Or chocolate? Or had she been a health nut? Had she kept her checkbook balanced? Good chance she had, but maybe she’d been one of those people who was responsible in every area of her life but one. Had she preferred Elvis to Beethoven? It wasn’t that Jane believed that knowing the answers to these questions would solve the mystery of Regina’s death. But Regina’s character, it seemed, was crucial to the reason for her death, and the questions proved that Jane had no due to what the woman was about.
    She shook her head in frustration as she checked on the progress of the beans. Not hot enough to start the burgers, and besides, Mike and Katie weren’t home yet. She lowered the temperature.
    Who the hell was Regina? Jane wondered again, frustrated and almost angry at the woman’s elusive personality. Was it simply that she’d had no personality? Had she been an automaton? Or a deliberately secretive person? Had she been hiding something so clandestine that she’d tamped down her entire character? A Dreadful Past of some kind? A police record? Surely Mel would have said something if that were the case. Perhaps Regina had been one of those people who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and didn’t want anyone to know about their humble origins.
    Or maybe my imagination’s run amok, Jane thought wryly.
    Since Mike and Katie still hadn’t turned up, she began fixing some dip to go with the chips for dinner. Another of her best things—dip. Fortunately, she had a cucumber in the fridge that hadn’t started on the road to slime, and there was a fresh block of cream cheese. She seeded the cucumber, cut it and the cream cheese into cubes, tossed them into the food processor with some lemon juice and garlic salt, and let the machine turn them into Food for the Gods.

    Mel called after dinner. “I thought you’d want to know that Caspar Snellen has been taken in for questioning,“ he said, sounding irritated.
    “Arrested?“
    “Not yet.“
    “Why?“ Jane asked.
    “Because his greasy fingerprints are all over that pea-storage thing.“
    “You’re not happy with this, are you?“ There was a long silence before he finally said, “No, I’m not. But I’m not in charge.“
    “And you’re wishing you were,“ Jane concluded. “Why don’t you agree?”
    Mel sighed. “A lot of reasons. Partly because he has a story to account for the prints. He says he heard some visitor telling about a fantastic pea that would, if he could find it, revolutionize agriculture. It’s such a nutty, Caspar-trying-to get-something-for-nothing story that I’m inclined to believe him. It’s not that I think he couldn’t have committed the murders. He’s very much a suspect in my mind. But I don’t think the fingerprints prove anything.“
    “Mel, I knew about that amazing pea. I should have told you,“ Jane said. “Couldn’t he have been rummaging around down in the basement and Derek interrupted him? He could be vicious when his get-rich-quick schemes are thwarted.“
    “That’s just it, Jane. He is, at heart, a petty criminal. And even the stupidest crooks know you don’t leave fingerprints all