Knit of the Living Dead

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “Nell’s fine, I’m sure,” Pamela said. “The police will want to talk more to me and Bettina—and to everyone who was in the park tonight. But Nell recognized the body, or thought she did—though there was a hat over the face. So they’d want to confirm that it’s really Mary Lyon before they do anything else.”

  Bettina nodded. “Clayborn is probably on his way—if he’s not already out there—and the crime scene van from the county.” Bettina reported on the doings of the Arborville police, as well as nearly everything else that happened in Arborville, for the Arborville Advocate. The Advocate was the town’s weekly newspaper, characterized by both its fans and its detractors as the town’s source for “all the news that fits.”

  “Mary Lyon.” Harold shook his head sadly. “She and Nell weren’t all that close, but Mary lived right across the street. Mary wrote that blog, The Lyon and the Lamb: Adventures in Woolgathering.”

  Pamela knew the blog, which often touched on knitting-related topics. During a chat on the sidewalk in front of the Co-Op Grocery, she’d once invited Mary to join Knit and Nibble. Mary had protested that she didn’t have time, and Pamela—who had regretted the invitation the moment it popped out of her mouth—had been just as glad. Mary could be prickly, and with Roland DeCamp as a member, Knit and Nibble already had its share of prickliness.

  Harold, meanwhile, had stood up and was scanning the room. Every seat at every table was full, as well as the comfortable armchairs along the windows and the little stools in front of the computer monitors. People were chatting quietly, or napping with their heads on their folded arms, or staring at their mobile devices—apparently even princess and demon costumes included pockets. Some had shed the most dramatic parts of their costumes. A Big Bad Wolf simply looked like a mild young man with a mop of blond hair wearing a furry set of long underwear, his head, with its long snout and terrifying teeth, resting on the floor next to his armchair.

  “Do you see her anywhere?” Bettina asked, tilting her head upward.

  “Nell would have found us, I’m sure,” Harold said. “We’re not far from the door.” He swiveled his neck and continued scanning. “I’m looking for Brainard,” he explained. “Mary’s husband.”

  Pamela heard herself gasp, a quick intake of breath like a backward sigh. She hadn’t thought of that. Mary and her husband would no doubt have come out to the parade and bonfire together. What fun would it be to come alone? So where had he been when her venture into the little stand of trees led to her death? And where was he now? And did he know what had happened to his wife?

  “Here you all are,” said a voice behind Pamela, a voice that seemed unfamiliar. But Bettina’s expression had cheered and she was mustering a version of her usual smile for the newcomer. Pamela twisted in her chair and recognized Holly Perkins. Holly was another member of Knit and Nibble, but not quite her buoyant self under the stress of the current circumstances—thus the fact that her voice had been drained of its habitual enthusiasm.

  Holly was one of the youngest members of the knitting club, in her twenties. She and her husband, Desmond, owned a hair salon in Meadowside. For Halloween, she’d used her expertise with hair to create a stunning Bride of Frankenstein coiffure that sprang up from her forehead in rippling waves, accented with white streaks at the temples.

  “Have you been here the whole time?” Pamela asked as Holly circled the table to sink into the chair Wilfred had vacated for her.

  Holly pointed toward the ranks of shelves that filled a wide alcove near the library’s entrance. “Both of us. We ended up back there, in a row of study desks against the wall. Desmond fell asleep with his head on a desk—he can sleep anywhere.” She leaned forward. “Somebody said there’s a body? And the police are questioning everyone who was at the bonfire?”

  Bettina nodded. “Some kids, teenage kids, found it back in those trees along the edge of the park. They were looking for a private spot to make out, I expect, and certainly didn’t expect to come upon a dead person. The girl started screaming and Pamela heard her and I followed Pamela, and Nell said it was her neighbor Mary Lyon—”

  Displaying a flash of her customary energy—though not the smile that featured perfect teeth and evoked a dimple—Holly exclaimed, “You both saw it too! And Nell!”

  “We saw it.” Pamela nodded. “But we didn’t find it. The kids did. And Nell said it was her neighbor. So the police made them all stay and sent us in here.”

  “Poor Nell! What a shock that must have been for her! Is she all right?”

  “We don’t know,” Bettina murmured sadly. “We haven’t seen her since . . . then.”

  They were all silent for a bit. After a while, Holly glanced at the clock above the circulation desk. It was nearly eleven. “When do you think we’ll get out of here?” she asked.

  Bettina shrugged. “Anybody at the bonfire might have seen something useful, so the police will want to talk to everybody. At least tomorrow’s Sunday and we can all sleep late.”

  At that moment. a police officer appeared at the top of the stairs that led to the library’s lower level. Pamela recognized her as Officer Sanchez, the young woman officer who was usually to be found monitoring the grammar school children crossing Arborville Avenue.

  Officer Sanchez approached the long table closest to the steps. “Please come with me,” she said, and gestured for everyone at that table to get up.

  Wilfred helped himself to one of the chairs that had been vacated and pulled it up to the end of the table where the Knit and Nibblers sat. “Might as well be comfortable,” he said with a sigh.

  Harold stood up again and resumed scanning the room. “He’s looking for Mary Lyon’s husband,” Pamela explained.

  “He might be downstairs,” Holly said. “The police filled that big room down there with people first. And he might not know what this is all about . . .”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Harold said. “Brainard might not even have come tonight. I didn’t see him at the bonfire . . . of course I might not have recognized him in his costume—whatever it was.” He furled his cape around himself and sat back down. “I didn’t see Mary either. But with such a crowd, and in the dark . . .” He shrugged.

  An authoritative voice drew their attention to the stairs again. A police officer stood there, not Officer Sanchez but the officer Pamela had seen just that morning on Arborville Avenue arranging orange cones around a spot where the asphalt was being repaired.

  “Harold Bascomb?” the officer inquired. “Is there a Harold Bascomb here?”

  Chapter 3

  Pamela would have been happy to remain in bed until ten a.m., or even later. But, though she’d been a widow for the past seven years and her only daughter was away at college, she was not alone in her large house. The two beings with whom she shared it were at that moment crouched on her chest. Catrina, a lustrous black cat with amber eyes, was studying Pamela’s face intently, as if for signs of consciousness. Catrina’s daughter Ginger, whose name described her color, seemed similarly curious about Pamela’s state.

  “Yes, yes,” Pamela murmured. The cats leaped nimbly to the floor as she pushed herself into a sitting position. “I know it’s past your breakfast time.”

  Down in her cozy kitchen, wrapped in her fleecy robe and with furry slippers on her feet, Pamela scooped a six-ounce can of “fish medley” into a fresh bowl that the cats shared and broke it up into manageable morsels with a spoon. She set the bowl in the corner of the kitchen, where the cats were accustomed to receiving their meals.

  Once Catrina and Ginger were crouched over their bowl nibbling at the glistening mixture from opposite sides, Pamela set her kettle boiling for coffee and headed out to retrieve her newspaper. After the distressing events of the previous night, the familiar rituals with which she always started her day promised to soothe.

  It had been one a.m. before she was back at home again. When she and Bettina were finally summoned down to the children’s library, where the police interviews we
re being held, she’d had to repeat to Detective Clayborn the story she’d already told to one of the police officers who’d responded to Gus Warburton’s summons—how she heard the scream, stepped back among the trees, encountered the frightened teenagers, and followed Gus and the teenagers to the spot where the body lay across the path. Then when she and Bettina and Nell and their spouses left the library, the three women had been set upon by the County Register ’s ace reporter Marcy Brewer, no less perky for the lateness of the hour.

  Back inside, she extracted the Register from its flimsy plastic sleeve and laid it, still folded, on the small table that furnished her kitchen. The table, just large enough to accommodate two chairs, was covered with a vintage cloth featuring fruit in unlikely colors—blue oranges!—that she’d found at one of her favorite rummage sales.

  At the counter, she measured coffee beans into her coffee grinder, depressed the cover, and waited until the clatter of the beans smoothed into a whir. She slipped a paper filter into the plastic filter cone atop her carafe and transferred the ground beans into the filter. She was just about to reach for the kettle, which had begun to whistle, when the doorbell chimed.

  The cats preceded her to the entry, streaking ahead and pausing in the middle of the thrift-store Persian rug that covered the floor’s ancient parquet. They stared at the door, and so did Pamela, but only for a moment. Through the lace that curtained the door’s large oval window, Pamela could see a woman, none too thin and not very tall, with hair of vivid scarlet. She smiled and opened the door to Bettina.

  But Bettina, usually quick to smile, didn’t smile back. And the woman who dressed for her life in Arborville with the flair of a dedicated fashionista had crossed the street from her own house and climbed the steps to Pamela’s porch wearing a flowered flannel bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. Her face was free of makeup and her bright hair looked untouched by a comb.

  “Have you seen this?” she inquired, the rising pitch of her voice reminiscent of a distressed Catrina. Bettina held out a section of the Register.

  “I just brought mine in,” Pamela said. “I’m making coffee.” She stepped back and beckoned Bettina across the threshold.

  Bettina shook her head vigorously. “I have to get dressed. We have to talk to Nell.”

  Pamela felt a frown take shape on her forehead. She reached for the newspaper. What could the Register be reporting that was more startling than what they’d experienced firsthand the previous night? And surely Pamela and Bettina wouldn’t even appear in that day’s issue of the paper. Marcy would have filed her interview with them long after Sunday’s Register had gone to print.

  “It wasn’t Nell’s neighbor,” Bettina said. “That body wasn’t Mary Lyon’s.”

  “But the costume—” Pamela stopped. Bettina’s lips tightened and she shook her head again.

  “The dead woman was Dawn Filbert.” Bettina was still shaking her head, and the uncombed tendrils of her hair were bobbing. “She owns—owned—Hair Today, the hair salon on Arborville Avenue. We have to talk to Nell.”

  “But the costume,” Pamela repeated.

  “That’s why we have to talk to Nell,” Bettina said, in the tone of someone stating the obvious. “Maybe the killer was trying to kill Mary.”

  Pamela nodded. “Wandering around in the dark looking for the person in the Bo Peep costume. . .” She paused. “But the killer would need some reason to think the person in the Bo Peep costume was Mary.”

  “She had the blog,” Bettina said. “The Lyon and the Lamb: Adventures in Woolgathering. ‘Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep’ and all that . . .”

  “There’s a connection . . .” Pamela squinted and pursed her lips. “But would the killer make that connection?”

  “That’s why we’re talking to Nell.” Bettina pulled her robe around her. “I can’t go like this and neither can you. Get dressed. I’ll call Nell and tell her we’re coming and I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.” Then Bettina was off, hurrying back across the street.

  The kettle was still on the stove and whistling furiously when Pamela returned to the kitchen. She turned off the flame, thankful that the kettle hadn’t boiled dry. There was no time for breakfast and the coffee she’d ground would serve for the next day. She’d store it in a ziplock bag when she returned from Nell’s, but she paused for a moment to unfold the Register and scan the front page.

  “Arborville Hairdresser Murdered at Town Halloween Celebration” read the bold headline, and in smaller print below were the words, “Unaware, Revelers Frolic Around Bonfire.” According to the article’s first paragraph, Dawn Filbert had been killed by a blow to the head shortly before her body was found by two teenagers whose names were not being released. Pamela skimmed down a bit further, but there was no mention of the strands of yarn. She left the newspaper unfolded on the table and headed for the stairs.

  Unlike Bettina, Pamela was not a fashionista. Up in her bedroom, she slipped into a cotton turtleneck and the same pair of jeans she’d been wearing all week. To the outfit she added a hand-knit pullover in a soft shade of brown and a pair of loafers. She was tall and thin, and the casual look suited her, but Bettina never stopped lamenting her friend’s lack of interest in the clothes Pamela’s figure could have shown off to advantage. In the bathroom, she ran a comb through her shoulder-length brown hair and she was ready to go.

  * * *

  “I started coffee as soon as I hung up the phone,” Nell said by way of greeting. She escorted Pamela and Bettina down the long hallway, decorated with souvenir art from the Bascombs’ many travels, which led to her kitchen, and invited them to take seats around the table. Holly Perkins, who embraced all things mid-century with the enthusiasm of someone who hadn’t actually lived through the era, never tired of expressing her delight in the Bascombs’ kitchen. Their house itself predated the 1950s by several decades, but the kitchen had been redone shortly before they bought it in the early days of their marriage and had remained the same ever since, with pink Formica counters and avocado-green appliances.

  An ancient aluminum percolator gurgled cheerfully on the stove. “I’ve had my tea and my breakfast,” Nell added, “but there will be coffee soon, and how does homemade granola sound?”

  “Or doughnuts?” came a voice from behind the door that led to the mudroom.

  That door opened and in stepped Harold Bascomb, dressed for an unseasonably warm fall day in jeans and a flannel shirt faded to a pleasant greenish gray. He carried a white cardboard bakery box secured with a crisscross of white string.

  “So that’s where you went!” Nell gave Harold a look that a fond but irritated mother might give a mischievous child. Harold responded with a broad grin that creased his cheeks and crinkled the skin around his faded blue eyes.

  “I thought we could all use a little treat after last night,” he said. “Especially you.” He placed the box on the table, slipped off the string, and folded back the top. Inside were half a dozen plump doughnuts, glistening with a translucent sugary glaze. A look of concern replaced Harold’s grin and he gazed at his wife fondly. “You were certainly ready to go home by the time that cop came up and fetched me.”

  “They had a lot of questions,” Nell said. “And I had to wait around while the crime scene people took pictures before they could lift the hat off her face. And then, of course, I could see right away that it wasn’t Mary. But I had no idea who it was until I saw the Register this morning. And sugar is not going to make me feel any better.”

  But Bettina was eyeing the doughnuts. “I’d love one,” she said. The corners of her mouth lifted and she looked a bit more like herself. The aroma of the perking coffee, which had begun to fill the kitchen, might have also contributed to the boost in her spirits.

  Nell sighed and her lips stretched into a defeated half smile. She reached into a cupboard, took out four small plates, and transferred them to the table. Like Nell’s kitchen, her dinnerware dated from the 1950s, with a coral and gold color scheme, now faded, and a pa
ttern that evoked wildflowers and wheat.

  “You’re wondering why I was so sure the body of that poor woman was Mary Lyon,” Nell said as she set plates in front of her guests, and in front of Harold, who had taken a seat. He put a doughnut on each plate, then jumped to his feet again.

  “We certainly are,” Pamela said.

  “It was her blog,” Nell explained. Harold motioned her into a chair and began bustling around the kitchen. As Nell spoke, he busied himself at the counter and then added napkins, spoons, and cream and sugar to the table setting. Nell went on. “Mary had posted photos of the costumes she and her husband planned to wear: Little Bo Peep and a sheep. So anyone who followed her blog . . .”

  Pamela nodded. Harold appeared behind Nell and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. He bent toward Nell’s ear and whispered, “More tea, my dear?”

  She turned and looked up at him. “Oh, Harold, yes,” she said. “That would be so sweet—especially if I’m going to eat one of your doughnuts.”

  “So how did Dawn Filbert end up wearing the Bo Peep costume?” Bettina asked.

  “Mary and Brainard had a fight and he stayed home last night,” Harold answered from the counter, where he was spooning tea leaves into a squat brown teapot. “That’s why he was nowhere to be seen at the bonfire—or later. Mary recruited her hairdresser—Dawn—to go as Bo Peep. She herself wore the sheep costume.”

  “Harold talked to Brainard this morning,” Nell explained. “They were both outside first thing, collecting the Register.”

  The teakettle began to hoot and Harold stepped toward the stove. He added boiling water to the tea leaves in the squat teapot and began serving the coffee.

  “Sad,” Nell murmured as she watched her husband focus on these domestic tasks. “So sad when couples can’t get along.”

  Harold slipped steaming cups of coffee in front of Pamela and Bettina. “That’s what comes of marrying after a whirlwind romance,” he commented. “Not like Nell and me.” He winked at Pamela. “She was elusive,” he said, pointing at Nell. “But I was determined. The Lyon-Covingtons, on the other hand—love at first sight, once he got a look at Mary. At least that’s how she tells it. Of course, he was already engaged to her sister—” He jumped up. “I’m forgetting the tea!” he said. He reached the counter in two large strides and with two more had delivered Nell’s tea.