Dead Hunt by Beverly Connor Page A

circumstances they could remove her. It was going to be an interesting meeting.
Diane started out the door, hesitated. Clymene’s concern for Grace Noel nagged at her. Damn, if she hadn’t enough to do. She turned back to Andie and pulled the piece of paper from her pocket with Grace Noel Tully’s information written on it that Rev. Rivers had given her.
‘‘Andie, get this woman on the phone for me. When you find her, transfer the call to the office in the boardroom.’’ Andie nodded. ‘‘This is the only interruption I want,’’ Diane said.
‘‘Got you . . . MOF. . . .’’ said Andie, nodding her head up and down as she read the card.
MOF was Andie’s abbreviation for museum on fire , which meant only in a dire emergency did Diane want to be disturbed.
Diane cocked an eyebrow at Andie. ‘‘If the museum’s on fire, just let me and the board go up in the conflagration,’’ said Diane.
Andie giggled and reached for the telephone. Diane left the office, still holding the rolled-up newspaper.
The board members were waiting for her in the third-floor meeting room. Diane wasn’t in a hurry to get there. She needed to regain her focus. On the way up she reread the newspaper article to rekindle her anger and her indignation. It worked. What could board member Madge Stewart have been thinking?
Diane knew the answer to that question. Madge liked to feel important and in the know. She also liked to blame others for her own lapses in judgment. How she must have enjoyed it when Ms. Boville called for her opinion. No one on the board ever did.
It probably was not simple chance that led the reporter to the one board member who was most likely to speak unguardedly to her. Someone had primed the reporter and pointed her toward the weakest link. Diane looked again at the byline—Janet Boville. She didn’t know her. She wondered if David could wheedle out of the reporter the name of the person who started this whole mess. Perhaps not without extreme trickery.
Madge Stewart was on the board of directors because her parents were friends of the Van Rosses and had donated a substantial sum to the museum. Madge had studied art and she worked as an illustrator for a publishing company in Atlanta. Added to her trust fund, her work should have provided her with a good living. But Madge had reached her
Diane sensed she was feeling that
her by.
mid-fifties, and life was passing
    Diane didn’t hesitate at the door when she reached the meeting room. She opened it and walked in. They were all there—Vanessa; Laura Hillard, a psychiatrist and Diane’s friend; Harvey Phelps, retired CEO; Madge Stewart; Kenneth Meyerson, CEO of a computer company; and the newest members—Martin Thormond, American history professor at Bartram; Thomas Barclay, a bank president; and Anne Pascal, schoolteacher and Georgia Teacher of the Year.
    They were divided up—old Rosewood families on one side of the table and more recent residents on the other. Recent meant having great-grandparents who weren’t from Rosewood. It was odd how social boundaries were subconsciously maintained.
    They all looked up as she entered. Laura smiled slightly. Vanessa didn’t smile, but she rarely did in board meetings. All their faces reflected the seriousness of the situation. Their frowns deepened when they saw Diane. She must look as pissed off as she felt.
    Thomas Barclay looked
eyes over glasses pushed
at her with dark, serious forward on his nose. His bushy eyebrows met in the center as he frowned. She wondered how many loans he’d turned down with that weighty expression. Laura told her that he had been shocked to discover how much power Diane had and how little the board had. She said he had been lobbying Vanessa to make changes. Were it not that the governance was Milo’s plan—and as far as Vanessa was concerned, Milo was a saint—she might have considered it.
    Diane reminded herself that most of the people in the room were her friends. Not because she was