Knit of the Living Dead

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “What did Detective Clayborn say when you told him about the Bo Peep costume?” she asked.

  “He didn’t see the point.” The smile with which Bettina had been regarding the remaining sandwich half vanished. “He said people wear all sorts of costumes on Halloween and whoever killed Dawn had probably been stalking her and maybe even followed her to the Halloween celebration and very likely even talked to her at some point. So he knew perfectly well who he was killing.”

  “He?” Pamela raised her brows.

  “Clayborn always calls killers he.” Bettina reached for the sandwich half.

  But Pamela wasn’t ready to resume eating yet, though she leaned toward the straw protruding from the tall glass that contained the vanilla milkshake and sipped a long sip. Fortified by the cool, creamy sweetness, she went on.

  “You told him Mary put a photo of the costume on her website? So anybody who visited The Lyon and the Lamb would know to look for Bo Peep at the bonfire if they wanted to kill her?” Bettina nodded, chewing. “And that it was just a last-minute thing that Dawn ended up in the Bo Peep costume and Mary was the sheep?”

  Bettina swallowed and nodded. “Everything. I told him everything,” she said. “He pointed out that The Lyon and the Lamb might not have the following that we imagine—especially among killers.”

  “Well, he does think they’re all men.” Pamela cocked an eyebrow and laughed a tiny laugh. She plucked the frilled toothpick from the other half of her sandwich and picked up the sandwich. Mayonnaise was the ideal accompaniment, she reflected as she bit into it. Anything more would disturb the perfect balance of the rye bread, Swiss, and ham.

  For a bit, there was silence again as they alternated bites of sandwich with forkfuls of slaw and nibbles of pickle. But when the plates were bare except for a few crumbs and the empty paper cups that had held the slaw, Pamela spoke again. She’d just remembered the most curious aspect of the crime scene.

  “What about the strands of yarn around Dawn’s neck?” she asked suddenly. “Did you bring that up? It was like the killer had a plan, like he meant to tie them, but then didn’t.”

  Bettina looked up from the glass that had contained her milkshake. She’d just used the straw to slurp the last few drops. “Of course I brought it up,” she said, her good-natured expression softening the impatience implied by the words. “I’m as curious about that as you are.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Bettina twisted her lips into a disgusted zigzag. “He said once the killer realized that the blow to the head had killed her, he realized he didn’t need to strangle her.”

  “Did Detective Clayborn have any idea about why the weapon of choice—even if the killer didn’t follow through with the strangling—was yarn?” Pamela asked as the server approached.

  “I didn’t ask him.” Bettina looked slightly defeated. “You and I didn’t talk about that.” She glanced up and requested the check, and the server gathered plates, tableware, and glasses and carried them away all in one trip.

  “You know what we have to do next, don’t you?” Pamela said.

  “What?”

  “We have to talk to Nell again.” Pamela leaned across the worn wooden table and lowered her voice. “Her neighbor is in danger. I’m convinced the person who killed Dawn thought the woman in the Bo Peep costume was Mary Lyon.”

  “Nell gets upset when she thinks we’re getting involved in things better left to the police,” Bettina said.

  “We’ll just have to convince her that this is really important. Mary’s life is in danger and Detective Clayborn isn’t going to do anything about it.”

  Chapter 5

  “I know you walked here,” Bettina said as they stepped out onto the sidewalk, “but I’m not walking up that hill to the Palisades, especially in these shoes.” She extended a foot to display, below the hem of her chic pants, a suede pump in a dramatic shade of burgundy. “Anyway, my car is by the police station.”

  Pamela followed her friend through the narrow passage between Hyler’s and the hair salon that offered a shortcut from Arborville Avenue to the town park, the police station, and the library. Yellow garlands of crime-scene tape still warned that the stand of trees where Dawn’s body had been found was off-limits. And a charred circle at the left edge of the park marked the spot where the bonfire had blazed. Soon it would be raked and covered with topsoil, and grass seed would be sown in the spring.

  Pamela and Bettina climbed into Bettina’s faithful Toyota, and a few minutes later they were turning onto the hillside block where Nell and Harold lived. The neighborhood that Arborvillians called the Palisades was so named because the east half of Arborville was built on the slope formed by the backside of the cliffs that overlooked the Hudson River. Nell and Harold’s substantial house was built of stones, rugged natural stones cleverly fitted together in no apparent pattern. A flight of steps that curved through thickly planted azaleas and rhododendrons led to its front door.

  Bettina pulled up to the curb and parked, but there was no need to mount the steps to greet at least one of the Bascombs. Harold was standing in his driveway wielding a bamboo rake.

  “The leaves are really starting to fall now,” he said by way of greeting after they had climbed out of the car. Dried leaves like crumpled bits of brown paper littered the driveway and sidewalk. “Nell sent me out to tidy up.”

  “She’s at home then?” Bettina offered a genial smile. Pamela smiled too, not the social smile she produced when she thought the occasion demanded a smile, but a genuine expression of the great fondness she felt for Harold.

  “Two visits in two days?” Harold’s answering smile was teasing. “And yesterday’s visit, as I recall, touched on the fact that our neighbor, Mary Lyon”—he nodded toward the house across the street—“had implied on her blog that she would be present at the Arborville Halloween celebration wearing a Little Bo Peep costume that turned up instead on a murder victim.”

  The smile became more teasing as Harold went on. “I know,” he said, “that Arborville’s finest, under the guidance of the redoubtable Lucas Clayborn, are doing the very best they can to solve this crime. But something tells me that in certain circles his efforts are seen as falling short. Particularly because there’s what might be construed as a yarn connection here.”

  “Can you read Nell’s mind too?” Pamela asked with a laugh.

  Harold laughed in response and he flourished the rake. “Not well enough to know that the driveway and sidewalk needed raking before she told me.”

  As they started toward the steps that led to the front door, he added, “She doesn’t approve of your sleuthing, you know. But I do.”

  * * *

  Nell met them at the door looking rather cheflike, in a white canvas bib apron that covered the front of her chambray work shirt and reached past her knees.

  “Hello,” she said. “What brings you two up here today?”

  “We have something to discuss with you,” Pamela said.

  Nell had a look that was both probing and kind, a slight widening of her faded blue eyes coupled with a softening of her lips. She aimed the look at Pamela and then at Bettina. “Sounds important,” she observed. “I’ve got something on the stove. Come on back in here.”

  They followed her down the long hall to the kitchen. There, one glance made it obvious that an ambitious project was underway. A huge cookie sheet occupied the table. In the center of the cookie sheet was a mountain of pumpkin innards, the flat oval seeds tangled in the strands of fiber as in a moist net. On Nell’s avocado-green stove, a large pot sat atop a burner turned high. The steam escaping from under its cover and the low, rumbling sounds suggested that intense cooking was taking place inside.

  “The Halloween pumpkin,” Nell explained. “We don’t carve it—it’s just as festive whole. And when the flesh is cooked”—she gestured toward the burbling pot—“it goes into the freezer and comes back out next month for pumpkin pie. Waste not, want not, as your Wilfred would
say.”

  “And the seeds?” Bettina asked.

  “I clean them off a bit and put them back by my compost heap. Harold and I could eat them, but the squirrels deserve their share too.” Nell stepped over to the stove, picked up a long fork, and lifted the lid of the pot. She tilted her head aside to avoid the cloud of steam that escaped and probed inside with the fork. “Done!” she announced and turned off the burner.

  Pamela and Bettina had slipped into chairs at the table as Nell checked on her pumpkin. Finished at the stove, she moved the cookie sheet with its cargo to the counter and joined them at the table.

  “And now,” she said, “the important thing? I hope it’s not what I think it is.”

  “It might be.” Pamela tried to muster a look she had cultivated while raising Penny, a look that had accompanied talks on the character-building value of difficult undertakings. “Mary Lyon’s life is in danger,” she said.

  “Oh!” Nell’s laugh was like an explosive sigh. “Surely the police—”

  “Not surely the police.” Bettina joined in, rising up in her chair. “The killer absolutely thought Mary would be wearing that Bo Peep costume and that’s why he killed the person wearing it.” The scarlet tendrils of her hair quivered as she bobbed her head decisively. “Clayborn is ignoring that fact, which seems quite obvious to me and to Pamela—and to you, I think.”

  It seemed to Pamela that Nell nodded the tiniest nod.

  “The police are interviewing everyone who had an appointment at Dawn’s salon during the past six months,” Bettina concluded, with a twist of her lips that implied her low opinion of this strategy.

  “And so you want me to . . . what?” Nell shrugged.

  “We have to talk to Mary,” Pamela said. “We have to first of all tell her to be careful, not to go out alone at night and like that. And we have to ask her about people who read her blog and might want to kill her.”

  Nell frowned slightly and looked as if she was about to speak, but Bettina spoke first. “You know her,” she explained. “We don’t, really. So why would she listen to us?”

  “So we go across the street now?” Nell started to rise. “All three of us?”

  “All three of us.” Pamela nodded and they rose to their feet.

  A few minutes later, Harold waved them on their way.

  * * *

  Unlike many people, Mary Lyon closely resembled the image posted on her website. She was not, in person, older or chubbier or less becomingly coiffed than her digital photo intimated.

  She was a bit over fifty, Pamela imagined, though the years had been very kind to her. Her slender face was beautifully modeled, with high cheekbones tapering to a delicate chin. Her deep russet hair made her creamy skin seem all the creamier, and her blue eyes all the more striking. She was tall—even taller than Pamela—and thin enough that the leggings she wore didn’t seem ill-advised.

  “When Dawn Filbert was killed, she was wearing the Little Bo Peep costume you posted on your blog,” Pamela said, once they’d been welcomed and offered seats in Mary’s artistically furnished living room. She and Mary were occupying two armchairs upholstered in a nubby fabric featuring interlocking circles. Bettina and Nell faced them on the matching sofa. Between the armchairs and the sofa was a glass coffee table supported by a brass pedestal. A dramatic wall hanging dominated the fireplace wall.

  “Such a shame,” Mary said. “The killing, I mean. And Dawn was such a good hairdresser too.” She raised a hand to smooth her lustrous tresses and explained that at her hair appointment Saturday afternoon, she and Dawn got to chatting about the Halloween celebration and Dawn said she hadn’t given much thought to a costume.

  “So you offered her Bo Peep?” Bettina supplied.

  “Sure,” Mary said. “Why not? It was a great costume, if I do say so myself, and she didn’t want to be a sheep.” She shrugged and managed to look sad without looking any less beautiful. “Now, of course, after what happened . . .” Mary stared at the coffee table for a moment, where a low pottery vase held giant golden chrysanthemums. As if the sight of the flowers cheered her, her expression brightened. “It didn’t have anything to do with the costume, so I guess I don’t need to feel bad.”

  “What if the killer thought that was you in the costume, though?” Pamela smiled to herself at the intent look with which Nell asked the question, as if she was determined to prove herself on her first foray into sleuthing.

  “Why?” Mary opened her eyes wide and drew out the question.

  “The wig and the hat made the costume a pretty good disguise,” Pamela said.

  A tiny wrinkle began to form between Mary’s well-shaped brows. “Who would want . . . to kill”—she paused and laughed—“Brainard?” She laughed harder. “If they’d been after Bo Peep, they wouldn’t have killed me. They’d have killed Brainard!”

  “Brainard?” Pamela, Bettina, and Nell all spoke at once.

  “We always dress as famous couples on Halloween, but we do it backward. Our friends think it’s funny. Last year I was Sonny and old Brainy was Cher. But this year he was just a big spoilsport. So”—Mary made a gesture of wiping her hands—“nothing to worry about.”

  Pamela felt her eyes widen. Across from her, on the sofa, Nell just looked sad. Did Mary really not care that someone might have intended to kill her husband as long as she was okay? But she wasn’t, actually, and that’s what Pamela was about to explain before Bettina jumped in.

  “You didn’t make it clear on your blog who was going to wear what,” Bettina pointed out, “and most people would think the woman was going to wear the dress.”

  Mary’s reaction this time furrowed her lovely brow and disturbed the symmetry of her well-shaped lips. “You’re right!” she exclaimed. “And I have tons of followers. But why would they want to kill me?” Her voice modulated to a thin wail.

  “Most people probably have some secret enemy who’d be glad if they were gone.” Despite the dire import of the words, Bettina’s tone was encouraging.

  “I just can’t—I don’t—” Mary stared at the chrysanthemums. As if addressing them, she went on. “Well, there was that knitting book ‘author’. . . not books exactly, more like booklets. Like they sell at those hobby stores side by side with that cheap yarn in garish colors.” Mary looked up. “I couldn’t give them a positive review, could I? Ski hats with pompoms? Infinity scarves? Hello? Originality? So the husband of the ‘author’ shows up and offers me a bribe to revise the old reviews to make them positive and make the new ones positive in the future. And when I refuse the bribe, he threatens me.” She shrugged and raised her hands, palms up. “I have standards. What could I do?”

  Pamela didn’t think infinity scarves and ski hats with pompoms sounded that terrible. Not all knitters wanted to take on projects requiring intense concentration and advanced techniques. And some people were grateful to find money in their budgets even for hobby shop yarn. But she—and Bettina and Nell—were saved from answering by the sound of feet drawing near.

  A handsome man in a tweed jacket strode into the room.

  “It’s my husband, the Brain,” Mary said with a lazy glance in his direction.

  “Brainard Covington,” Nell supplied. Looking up at him from her perch on the sofa, she said, “I don’t think you know Bettina Fraser.” She gestured toward Bettina, who was sitting next to her. “And this is Pamela Paterson.” She nodded at Pamela, across the room.

  “Delighted.” He smiled a small smile. Then, displaying a bulging leather satchel and speaking to no one in particular, he announced, “I’m off to my seminar.”

  “I’m sure they’re counting the minutes until you get there,” his wife murmured

  “What does Brainard teach?” Bettina asked as the front door closed behind him.

  “Not much,” Mary said. But then, apparently sensing that she hadn’t found an audience for her wit, she added, “Classics . . . Greeks, whatever. Old stuff. We moved up here from Princeton when he got the offer from Wendel
staff College and he’s been there ever since.”

  “Did you meet at Princeton, then?” Bettina inquired in her sociable way.

  “He was there and I was visiting someone. I’m not smart enough for Princeton, but he must have thought I was smart enough to appreciate how smart he was. Or maybe he just liked the way I looked.” Mary laughed, but not as heartily as she’d laughed when contemplating the Halloween killer targeting Bo Peep and discovering he’d killed Brainard.

  She stopped suddenly and raised a finger in the air, as if sensing that her audience’s attention was flagging.

  “Secret enemies! The llama farm! Don’t let me forget,” she exclaimed before carrying on with her earlier theme. “But anyway, men?” Even twisted by scorn, her features were beautiful. “That’s all they want, isn’t it? Somebody to admire them? Brainy’s first choice was too smart for that.” She flopped back in the armchair as if worn out.

  “Llamas?” Nell inquired after a few moments.

  Mary leaned forward again. “I’m supposed to do a post on llama wool, or whatever they call it—fur?—for the owner of some llama farm in Kringlekamack? Please! I said. Hello? It’s ‘Mary had a little lamb,’ not ‘Mary had a little llama.’ ”

  * * *

  “Sad,” Bettina commented when they reached Nell’s side of the street. “Just like you said, Nell. It’s sad when couples can’t get along.” Bettina shook her head. “I wonder if she gets along with anyone. You consider her a friend, but . . .”

  “A neighbor,” Nell said with a raised eyebrow and a tilt to her head that suggested she was making a distinction. The three of them took a few steps in the direction of Bettina’s Toyota.

  Before leaving Mary’s, they had suggested that she be very careful when she left her house, especially at night. Perhaps there was another explanation for Dawn’s murder, one that didn’t involve the killer’s expectation of who would be wearing the Bo Peep costume, Pamela had told her. But perhaps there wasn’t. And it didn’t hurt to be careful.