Knit of the Living Dead

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “Maybe more Brainard’s idea than his own,” Harold added. With his own coat hung up, his corduroy sports jacket, tattersall shirt, and knit tie had been revealed.

  “I don’t like gossip,” Nell said primly. Freed of her coat, she headed back out into the main room.

  Before Harold could follow his wife, Bettina planted herself in the doorway. “It sounds like you know something,” she said, gazing up into Harold’s craggy face.

  “Herc is a graduate student in classics at Princeton,” Harold said, “like his father before him.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure that career path would have been Herc’s first choice if left to his own devices.”

  Nell hadn’t gone far. She was lurking a few yards from the door to the coatroom, and when she noticed that no one else had emerged, she backtracked and beckoned to Harold.

  “I’m being summoned,” he said with a wink at Bettina, who stepped aside. Pamela and Bettina followed the Bascombs as they proceeded toward the buffet table, where a few people more interested in food than drink were browsing, and servers who appeared to be students were stationed here and there.

  “It’s awfully early for wine,” Bettina said, “but just the right time for lunch.”

  Nell and Harold had already picked up plates and were studying an inviting platter that featured raw vegetables arranged in bands of red, yellow, and green. Pamela and Bettina equipped themselves with plates and surveyed the offerings.

  Besides the vegetables and their accompanying dip, there was a cheese ball surrounded by crackers, a chafing dish filled with meatballs in a creamy sauce, chicken tidbits on bamboo skewers, open-faced smoked salmon sandwiches on dark bread and garnished with capers, miniature crabmeat quiches, jumbo shrimp with a red dipping sauce, and several other tempting examples of food that could be managed with fingers or toothpicks.

  Bettina passed by the vegetables and the cheese ball to head straight for the meatballs, adding three to her plate and moving on to the crabmeat quiches. Pamela took a meatball and a chicken tidbit and went on adding to her plate until there was no more space—though the plates, being intended for the use of ambulatory diners, were quite small.

  When Nell and Harold reached the end of the buffet table, they had been hailed by some Arborville neighbors—people who lived on the same street as the Bascombs and Brainard—and were standing near the windows chatting with them. Pamela and Bettina surveyed the group, a mixture of Arborville people and academic types, who for the most part had gravitated toward their own kind.

  Most of the Arborville people were middle-aged or older, dressed in the somber outfits that people of their generation considered suitable for somber occasions. Pamela herself had reached deep into her closet for a pair of brown wool slacks and a black-and-brown-striped jacket that she wore on occasions when jeans wouldn’t suffice.

  Brainard’s Wendelstaff colleagues, however, represented a wider spectrum of ages, and their clothing represented a wider range of styles. Some of the men affected a traditional academic look, involving tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, and some of the women’s grooming choices—hair allowed to go gray, minimal makeup if any—and ensembles—flat shoes, baggy trousers, and shapeless jackets—seemed intended to suggest that their minds were on higher things. Other colleagues, younger for the most part, resembled urban hipsters in their boots, skinny jeans, and flannel shirts.

  Brainard was still standing apart, near the door, greeting a few late arrivals and bidding goodbye to people who perhaps had classes to get to or other demands on their time. Pamela nibbled at a shrimp as she watched him, half-hearing Bettina’s exclamations of pleasure as she sampled her meatballs.

  Brainard was really a very handsome man, Pamela reflected, and Mary had been a beautiful woman. And then—as if the thought had somehow summoned up the person who was the biologically determined result of such a pairing—a young man whose looks combined a classic profile and a sensitive mouth with high cheekbones and russet hair broke away from a group composed of hipster academics and made his way to Brainard’s side.

  The sight of the two together was so striking that Bettina momentarily forgot her meatballs. “That must be the son,” she whispered, staring at the pair. “Hercules.”

  Hercules—or Herc, as Harold had called him—leaned toward his father and said something, but it was impossible to make out his words from where Pamela and Bettina were standing, especially in the echoing hubbub of the room. When Brainard responded, his words too were inaudible. His scowl, however, made it clear that Herc’s words hadn’t pleased him.

  Herc took a few steps toward the door, then pivoted and returned to his father’s side. Father and son stood together then, with matching scowls, ready to greet guests, receive condolences, or thank people for coming.

  “I guess Herc decided to do his duty,” Bettina whispered. “He should be at his father’s side for an event like this, lending support—not to mention that Mary was his mother.”

  “He might feel the loss more than Brainard does,” Pamela said and nodded.

  Bettina picked up the last item on her plate, a bamboo skewer with a morsel of chicken on it, and glanced toward the buffet table. “Not too crowded,” she murmured, “and one of the servers is just adding more meatballs to the chafing dish.”

  “Okay,” Pamela said with a laugh. “I’ll join you for seconds. This is lunch, after all.”

  “Oh my goodness!” Bettina’s glance turned into a stare. “I certainly didn’t expect to see her here.”

  “Who?” Pamela tilted her head in the direction Bettina was staring.

  “The young woman from Hyler’s, Felicity Winkle. We were talking to her the other day when we had the ham and cheese on rye.”

  In an apparent nod to the seriousness of the occasion, Felicity had chosen a simple navy-blue dress, and her fair hair was pulled back in the same low ponytail she wore for her job at Hyler’s. Her only jewelry was tiny gold earrings.

  “I guess she knew Mary from Hyler’s,” Bettina went on. “It was awfully thoughtful of her to come to this.”

  As they watched Felicity, she detached herself from the group she’d been talking to—some of the middle-aged Arborvillians who were likely patrons of Hyler’s—and began walking toward the door. Bettina waved her down as she passed.

  “I can’t stay,” Felicity said, pausing for a moment as Bettina took her hand. “I have to get to class.” She looked around. “Not here,” she added, with a twist of the mouth that suggested awe at her surroundings. “I’m at County Community, like I told you.”

  “Nothing to be embarrassed about,” Bettina assured her with a comforting hand squeeze.

  Felicity continued on her way, pausing again when she reached Brainard and Herc. Herc bent toward her as if acknowledging some expression of sympathy, but Brainard frowned and stepped back with a curt nod.

  “Not very gracious,” Bettina whispered. “I wonder what that’s all about.”

  Felicity disappeared into the coatroom, reemerged a minute later with a puffy down coat zipped over her dress, and stepped out into the hall.

  All that remained on Bettina’s plate was an empty bamboo skewer. She turned toward the buffet table, and Pamela turned with her. But while Pamela and Bettina had been talking with Felicity and then watching her awkward encounter with Brainard, a number of other guests seemed to have decided that their plates needed refilling too. So the two friends joined a line of people slowly making their way past the vegetable platter, the cheese ball, the meatballs, and the other offerings.

  They advanced along the buffet table, waiting as a woman methodically spread cheese on one cracker after another and a man piled his plate with shrimp, leaving only two on the serving platter. When they stepped away at the spot where the food offerings gave way to the liquor, Pamela heard a familiar voice speak her name.

  From a group among which Pamela recognized Marlene Pepper, one of Bettina’s friends from Arborville, Nell stepped forward. “Pamela,” she repeated,
“and Bettina”—she beckoned them closer—“I’d like to introduce you to Mary’s sister.”

  Pamela stared. The group included Nell, with her halo of white hair, and Marlene Pepper, the same size and shape as Bettina and dressed in an attractive skirt suit, and a woman Pamela recognized from Hyler’s and the Co-Op, and a few other people. But no one seemed a likely candidate to be identified as Mary Lyon’s sister.

  Siblings could look very different from each other, of course. But could the stocky gray-haired woman in the shapeless trouser suit really be the sister of the ravishing Mary Lyon?

  Pamela shifted her plate of food to her left hand to free her right hand for shaking as Nell explained, to the stocky gray-haired woman, that Pamela Paterson and Bettina Fraser were fellow Arborvillians, though not actual neighbors of the Lyon-Covingtons. “Martha Lyon,” Nell concluded, and the stocky gray-haired woman extended a hand. Pamela took it, murmuring that she was sorry about Mary’s death. When the hand was available again, Bettina took it and echoed Pamela’s words.

  Martha, it seemed, did not normally live in the Northeast. She taught classics at a college in the Midwest but had come east on a one-year sabbatical, subletting an apartment in Manhattan and doing research at libraries and museums.

  As she spoke, Pamela studied her features, searching for some resemblance to Mary. Her mouth was less generous than Mary’s, her eyes narrower and closer together. The strong bone structure and pronounced cheekbones that had given Mary’s face its elegance just made Martha look stern. Earrings that were simple gold studs, a utilitarian watch on a leather band, and a small curiously shaped charm—to Pamela’s craft-oriented eyes, it resembled a spindle—on a chain around her neck did little to mitigate her plainness.

  “I never imagined my sabbatical research in Manhattan would coincide with attending my little sister’s funeral across the Hudson,” Martha was saying as Nell nodded sympathetically. “But I guess it was convenient that another family member was right here when it happened,” she added, “for Brainard and Herc’s sake.”

  “I’m sure they appreciate having you here.” Nell’s kind expression was even more comforting than her words.

  “I’ll be doing some organizing at the house,” Martha explained. “It’s painful for Brainard to see Mary’s things every time he turns around.”

  “Not taking too much time from your research, I hope,” said a masculine voice just behind Pamela.

  Nell and Martha stared in the direction of the voice, both looking equally puzzled as to the identity of the speaker. Pamela stepped aside to see a pleasant-looking, middle-aged man in a tweed jacket.

  “I’m sorry to intrude,” the man said. “I’m Arnold Linden, one of Brainard’s colleagues here at Wendelstaff.” He glanced around the group, which now consisted only of Martha, Nell, Pamela, and Bettina. Marlene Pepper and the others had split off to form their own group.

  “Martha Lyon,” Martha said, extending a hand, which Arnold took, and she gestured toward Nell, Pamela, and Bettina in turn, mentioning their names.

  Good memory, Pamela observed to herself. Probably comes of being a professor and keeping track of all those students.

  “Brainard mentioned your sabbatical project to me—before this sad thing happened.” Arnold waved a hand around the room. “And now here you are. My field is art history, but there’s so much overlap, especially in the ancient world, with art standing in for written documents and . . .”

  Pamela’s mind began to wander and she noticed Bettina glancing toward the buffet table, where several trays of petits fours had replaced the empty platters that had offered raw vegetables, salmon on dark bread, chicken skewers, and the rest. Harold appeared and drew Nell away to join him in talking to Herc.

  Martha had taken several steps back, as if to acknowledge that discussion of her sabbatical project would not be of interest to anyone but her and her fellow academic, and Arnold had followed her. He had become quite animated, however, and snippets of the conversation drifted toward Pamela and Bettina as they made their way back to the buffet table.

  “. . . Princeton degree, of course, like yours . . .” This from Arnold.

  “You must know Tigard Sanders, then,” Martha responded.

  “. . . such an influence . . .”

  Pamela handed her plate to a server and picked up a napkin and a delicate square pastry iced in pink and yellow.

  Martha and Arnold’s voices blended, occasional words popping out here and there. “. . . amphorae. . . Moirai . . . deconstruct . . . university press . . .”

  At Pamela’s side, Bettina was nibbling a chocolate petit four. “Such a shame Martha let her hair turn gray,” she observed between bites. “Mary’s was lovely, that russet shade.” She paused. “Though I’d have gone a bit brighter if I was her.” Bettina raised her free hand to touch her own vivid coif.

  Chapter 13

  It was nearly two by the time Harold turned onto Orchard Street and cruised to a stop in front of Bettina’s house. Pamela and Bettina climbed out of the Audi and lingered at the end of the Frasers’ driveway as Harold and Nell continued on up toward Arborville Avenue and the Palisades neighborhood beyond.

  “Do you have plans for dinner tomorrow night?” Bettina asked as Pamela commented that she had chores waiting at home.

  “You know I don’t,” Pamela replied with a laugh. “You and Wilfred and the knitting club are just about my whole social life.”

  “It didn’t have to be like that.” Bettina tipped her head toward the house next to Pamela’s, of similar vintage to Pamela’s, though hers was sheathed in clapboard and this house was shingled.

  Pamela felt her lips tighten and a crease form between her brows. The inhabitant of the house was an attractive single man named Richard Larkin. He had wooed Pamela, in a low-key manner, starting shortly after he moved in a few years earlier. She’d found him very appealing but had resisted his overtures. Why, she wasn’t sure, except that her bond with her beloved husband had been so strong that she couldn’t imagine ever feeling that close to anyone again. And the thought of trying, and then realizing that she was now messily entangled in a relationship that wasn’t what she’d hoped, had made her reluctant to encourage him.

  Bettina had lost few opportunities to talk up the romantic possibilities of Richard Larkin—until Pamela’s lack of encouragement finally resulted in his looking elsewhere.

  “Bettina—please! I thought we’d agreed that . . . that we weren’t going to talk about Richard Larkin anymore.”

  “I didn’t say his name.” Bettina raised her carefully shaped brows and smiled a close-mouthed smile. “You did.”

  “I have to get home.” Pamela turned away and began to cross the street.

  Bettina’s voice floated toward her as she approached the opposite curb. “Wilfred is making beef bourguignon,” she called. “Come over at six.”

  * * *

  That week’s copy of the Advocate had arrived while Pamela was out. She stooped for it when she reached her driveway and then continued on along the sidewalk and up her front walk. The Halloween murder had happened less than a week ago, and Mary had been killed just the previous Tuesday, so this would be the first issue of the town’s weekly since those two tragic events.

  As Pamela was turning her key in her front door’s lock, she heard Bettina’s voice behind her again, this time closer.

  Coming to apologize for bringing up Richard Larkin? Pamela nudged open her front door but paused on the threshold, turning to watch as Bettina hurried up the front walk. She had apparently picked up her own copy of the Advocate and was now carrying its plastic wrapper in one hand and the newspaper, open to an inner page and flapping in the breeze, in the other.

  “ ‘Pursuing all leads!’ ” she panted as she negotiated the porch steps in her high-heeled shoes. “That’s a laugh! He has no leads at all except the llama hair, and of course he wouldn’t say anything about that.” She pointed to a column of text. “ ‘Assuring the citizens of Arborv
ille that the police are doing their utmost.’ This must be a press release from the police department, because I certainly didn’t write it.”

  Pamela stood aside and waved Bettina through the door.

  Hearing the front door open, Catrina and Ginger had come out to investigate. But when Bettina swept in waving the open newspaper, they both scurried away.

  When both Pamela and Bettina were inside, Pamela extracted her own copy of the Advocate from its plastic sleeve and unfolded the paper. The front-page headline read, “Back-to-Back Murders Stun Arborville,” and a quarter of the page was taken up with a large photo of the woodsy spot where Dawn Filbert’s body had been found—minus the body, but plus crime-scene tape and seemingly taken after the sun had risen the next morning. Another quarter of the page was taken up with another photo, more dramatic, of the Lyon-Covington house with police cars clustered at the curb and police bustling here and there.

  “This is my article right here,” Bettina said, pointing to the text that filled the remaining space on the front page. “And I have another inside specifically about Dawn Filbert—I interviewed some of the people who work at her shop—and another specifically about Mary Lyon.”

  She began to fold the newspaper back up. “I’m going to keep on Clayborn about those llama hairs,” she declared. “Germaine van Houten is still the only likely suspect I can see—unless those mummy costumes were disguising the fact that one or more of the Barrows wasn’t really at home that night.”

  “I’ll come tomorrow night,” Pamela said as Bettina stepped toward the threshold.

  “No more Richard Larkin.” Bettina reached for Pamela’s free hand and squeezed it.

  * * *

  No messages from Pamela’s boss waited on the computer, and she’d met yesterday’s deadline for returning the articles she was to evaluate. So she dedicated the rest of the afternoon to domestic chores: laundry, housecleaning, and preparing a shopping list for a Saturday morning trip to the Co-Op. First, though, she set the carcass left from Tuesday night’s chicken simmering on the stove as the first step in cooking up a pot of chicken soup.