Knit of the Living Dead

by Peggy Ehrhart

  * * *

  Harold had driven the little group to the funeral and then to the reception afterward. Now Pamela and Bettina said goodbye to Harold and Nell as he dropped them both off in front of Bettina’s house.

  “Knit and Nibble at your house Tuesday, Pamela,” Nell called as Harold pulled away from the curb. “So I’ll see you both then, if not before.”

  Pamela hesitated before crossing the street. “I’m curious about the craft supplies Martha’s going to be sorting through,” she said. “Mary must have accumulated a lot of yarn and other knitting-related items.”

  “I imagine so.” Bettina nodded. “The Lyon and the Lamb went on for a long time. People probably gave her things, hoping she’d feature them on the blog.”

  “Would it be ghoulish if we went up there this afternoon?” Even more exciting than tag sales and thrift shops, which Pamela loved, was the prospect of cast-off treasures that were simply being given away.

  “Ghoulish?” Bettina laughed. “So what? Halloween is barely over.”

  Pamela suppressed her own laugh. “There could be things for Nell,” she said. “Yarn for her do-good projects.” Perhaps a charitable impulse would make her eagerness feel less ghoulish.

  Bettina shrugged and consulted the pretty face of her gold bracelet watch. “I have time, but”—she lifted a foot encased in a chic burgundy bootie—“I have to get out of these shoes. And even then, I’m not walking up that hill!”

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  Bettina nodded. “Fifteen minutes. And I’ll drive.”

  At home, Pamela fetched her mail from the mailbox and immediately transferred everything except the bill from the water company to the recycling basket. Upstairs, she changed her clothes, trading her brown slacks and black-and-brown-striped jacket for jeans and the same hand-knit sweater she’d been wearing for the past few days.

  She was just descending the stairs when a flash of orange the shade of a pumpkin appeared behind the lace that curtained the oval window in her front door. She opened the door to admit Bettina, who stooped to greet Catrina with a head scratch as Pamela took her jacket from the closet, and soon they were on their way.

  * * *

  The crime-scene tape was gone and the Lyon-Covington residence—though neither resided there now—looked just as it always had: two stories plus an attic, gray shingles with white trim and black shutters, and attractive landscaping that featured azaleas, rhododendrons, and hosta. Only a few leaves littered the lawn, suggesting that the landscapers had continued to do their work despite having recently come upon the dead body of their employer.

  They waited on the porch for several long minutes after Pamela gave a few resounding taps with the brass door knocker. Then Martha swung back the door and greeted them with a breathless hello. Instead of the suit jacket she’d worn earlier, she’d slipped a loose cardigan over her blouse.

  “I was upstairs,” she said. “That’s where the clothes are, and Mary’s craft room, and Brainard’s study.” She stood back and motioned them to enter. They stepped into the living room Pamela remembered from her first visit—the glass coffee table on the brass pedestal, the sofa and armchairs covered in the fabric with the interlocking circles, the dramatic wall hanging above the fireplace.

  Martha had continued talking, more to herself than to them. “. . . so many books . . . a scholar’s library. . . I’ll take some . . . but . . .” She closed her eyes, shook her head with a spasmlike jerk, opened her eyes again, and blinked several times. “Too much to do.” She sighed. “Come upstairs and I’ll show you where the craft things are.”

  Four rooms, plus a bathroom, opened off the hall upstairs. Through the open door of one, Pamela glimpsed a king-size bed made up with elegantly coordinated bedding and decorative throw pillows. The door of another room was closed, but Martha pointed to it and said, “This one was Herc’s when he was growing up.” She took a few steps toward another open door and added, “And here’s the craft room.”

  They stepped inside. Open closet doors revealed shelves upon shelves containing folded lengths of cloth, plastic bins of buttons, bundles of knitting needles, stacks of magazines and pattern books, and of course yarn—balls and skeins in every color and texture imaginable. To the right, an oak library table held a sewing machine. Scattered around on the table’s surface were pincushions, scissors of various sizes, lengths of ribbon and rickrack, jars of pins, and a cloth doll body wearing only a camisole. A huge chest of drawers occupied the opposite wall.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Martha said. “Help yourselves. Just pile up what you want and . . . and you can take it home in pillowcases. There are plenty of those too.”

  Pamela and Bettina looked at each other. Pamela already had her own backlog of yarn, yarn she’d bought with no specific project in mind but just because she couldn’t resist it. It filled many plastic bins. And when she visited tag sales at the homes of deceased knitters, she imagined poor Penny struggling—hopefully far in the future—to find takers for all the yarn her mother had left behind.

  Bettina too had her backlog. And at the rate she was progressing with the Nordic-style sweater for Wilfred, Pamela knew it would be ages before her friend was ready to tackle a new project.

  But all this yarn shouldn’t go to waste. She advanced toward the closet and began to examine it. Was there enough of any one particular yarn to actually make a garment? she wondered. Or were these all leftovers? Or samples offered by people hoping for a favorable word in The Lyon and the Lamb?

  In many cases, there was only one skein. But Nell could use those, for the Christmas stockings or the knitted caps for newborns. Pamela began lifting skeins one by one—red mohair, lavender in a fine-gauge wool, soft acrylic in blush pink . . . Infant caps couldn’t be wool, so the acrylic would be good for those . . .

  Meanwhile, Bettina had taken a stack of pattern books and magazines from a shelf and was sitting in the sewing machine chair, paging through one of them.

  Pamela continued with her task, happy to have a goal that would narrow her focus. Otherwise, how to deal with such bounty? Here was a rugged yarn in an austere shade of taupe . . . but this soft yellow would be nice for an infant cap . . . and the powder blue, and—

  Footsteps in the hall, then Martha’s voice, intruded on her thoughts. Pamela turned away from the shelves she was exploring to see Martha standing in the doorway, holding a sheet of paper in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other.

  “Someone wants to buy this house,” she said. She returned the glasses to their position on her nose and tipped her head toward the sheet of paper, frowning as her eyes traveled down the page. She looked up again. “And whoever it is sounds angry. Or something.”

  She advanced to the middle of the small room and extended the sheet of paper toward Pamela, who stepped forward to meet her.

  “Mary never mentioned anything,” Martha commented as Pamela scanned the paper.

  The handwritten letter read,

  I am writing to you yet again to tell you I want to buy your house because in actuality, it is my house. My parents built it and I grew up in it and I lived there for three decades with my mother after my father passed at the age of 55, and when my mother passed I would have owned it except for bad luck and trouble. Well, now my luck has changed and I have $$$$ again. And I’ve told you that I can pay to get my house back and ten times over, and you have ignored me and ignored me, for too long. I’ve written letter upon letter. And my patience is really running out. You know where you can reach me. This is your last chance.

  “Angry, or something, yes,” Pamela said. “Kind of disturbed.” She handed the sheet of paper to Bettina, who was still sitting in the sewing machine chair.

  “Do you think I should show it to Herc?” Martha asked. “He will be selling the house.”

  “There’s no letterhead or phone number or email address,” Pamela pointed out. “Not even a signature. How would Herc get in touch?”

  “There were other letter
s—apparently. This one sounds like a last-ditch attempt to get a response.” Martha twisted her pale lips into an unhappy smile and lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “The person says, ‘You know where you can reach me.’ But Brainard and Mary might not have kept the other letters.”

  “I wouldn’t.” Bettina shuddered and handed the sheet of paper back to Pamela. “Whoever it is sounds like a complete nutcase.”

  “If they’re so interested in the house, they’re probably aware that its owners are dead now,” Pamela observed. “The Register has given the story quite a bit of play: ‘Tragic Sequel to the Halloween Bonfire Murder—Arborville’s Woes Continue’ and like that.”

  Bettina gave a scornful sniff. “Sometimes the Register is no better than the tabloids. The Advocate would never run that kind of headline.”

  “Well,” Martha sighed, “I’ll keep the letter and maybe let Herc know that someone might contact him before the house actually goes on the market.” She edged back toward the doorway. “It looks like you’re finding things.” She nodded at the small cluster of skeins Pamela had set aside on the floor. “You can come back,” she added. “I’ll be working here all day tomorrow and Sunday.”

  Chapter 21

  Pamela awoke later than usual on Saturday. By eight a.m., the white eyelet curtains at her bedroom windows usually glowed with early morning sun, but today they hung in shadowy folds. Even Catrina and Ginger had dozed longer than was their custom—though in their cozy nest beneath the covers, mornings were never bright.

  Pamela felt a slight motion at her side, then an elongated softness made its way over her chest. In a moment a heart-shaped face covered in silky black fur emerged from beneath the sheet’s edge. A few seconds later Ginger joined her mother, blinking her jade-green eyes as she surveyed Pamela.

  Pamela’s brain had been busy while she slept. But the complicated pattern woven by her dreaming mind had begun to unravel even before she opened her eyes. Just a few threads remained, fading and vanishing. She reached for them in vain. Something about the dream had seemed important, but what? And she couldn’t linger in bed, courting their return. It was nearly nine a.m., and there were cats to be fed.

  Having no need to don robes and slippers, Catrina and Ginger reached the head of the stairs before Pamela. She followed, tugging her fleece robe around her and looping the tie at her waist.

  In the kitchen, she opened a fresh can of their favorite chicken-fish blend and transferred it to a clean bowl, using the serving spoon to break the larger chunks into appealing morsels. As she worked, her brain grappled with the sense that something had seemed obvious in the fuzzy moment between sleep and waking—something important.

  She set water to boiling in the kettle, slipped a paper filter into her carafe’s plastic filter cone, and ground a generous few scoops of coffee beans. Maybe coffee would help recapture the elusive dream. Then she braved the chilly morning in only her robe and slippers to dash down her front walk for the Register. By the time she returned to the kitchen and slipped the newspaper from its flimsy plastic sleeve, the kettle was whistling.

  A few minutes later, she was sitting at the table with coffee in a wedding-china cup and a slice of whole-grain toast on a wedding-china plate. She put off paging through the newspaper until the toast was gone and she’d sampled the coffee. When she did begin to read, she was not surprised to find no column inches at all devoted to the Arborville murders after the dramatic story that had appeared the day after Brainard’s body was found. She already knew from Bettina that Detective Clayborn had made no progress on the case.

  She finished her browse through the Register at the same time that she drained the last drops from her first cup of coffee. Before refilling her cup, she closed her eyes for a moment and tried to will herself back into the nearly-awake-but-not-quite state she’d been in when the tantalizing dream, or whatever it had been, retreated. But it was no use.

  She refilled her coffee cup, set the paper aside, and fetched a pen and one of the little notepads that came unbidden in the mail. The pages of this one, in acknowledgment of the season, were decorated with a border of tiny pumpkins linked by a spiraling vine.

  She’d last shopped for groceries the previous Saturday, and a trip to the Co-Op was due. Catrina had wandered back in from the entry. With the overcast sky, there was no sunny spot to bask in on the entry rug. Flourishing her pen, Pamela bent toward Catrina. “More chicken-fish blend?” she inquired. “Or would you prefer a change this week?”

  Getting no answer, she began her shopping list with Cat food—chicken-fish blend.

  * * *

  Bearing a canvas shopping bag that contained yet more canvas shopping bags, and with her purse over her shoulder, Pamela headed up Orchard Street toward Arborville Avenue. More trees had begun to show their autumn colors, and the vivid reds and golds were bright against the moody sky. The day was still, but crisp enough that the violet scarf Pamela had only recently brought out of its summer retirement provided a welcome coziness at her neck.

  When she reached the stately brick apartment building at the corner, she paused and detoured briefly to check for interesting discards behind the discreet wooden fence that hid the building’s trash cans. But there was nothing of note. After she turned the corner and walked a block, however, she paused again.

  Interspersed among apartment buildings and garden apartments along Arborville Avenue were a few single-family dwellings. And in front of one of them, a nondescript brick two-story, was a Realtor’s sign announcing that it was for sale.

  For sale, Pamela murmured to herself. And with a suddenness that jolted her, the errant thought that had fled upon waking was back. Of course, she murmured, stamping her foot in irritation. It was so obvious. As Holly would say, Duh.

  Someone had been angling for ages to buy Brainard and Mary’s house, someone whose prose style suggested a mind not at ease. And that someone might finally have theorized that if the house’s owners were dead, the house would go on the market.

  The llama woman and the Barrows had been eliminated as suspects, and it was too sad to think that sweet Felicity could have murdered her potential in-laws. Greg Dixon had seemed possible—though Bettina had had a point. Two points, really. Detective Clayborn had undoubtedly learned about Greg Dixon—and the fact that he had a very legitimate grudge against Brainard—when he interviewed Brainard’s colleagues. But for some reason—probably a credible alibi—he hadn’t followed up. And the murder yarn hadn’t been crinkly, so it hadn’t come from Greg’s missing sweater sleeves.

  Pamela would do her grocery shopping, but as soon as she got back home, she would confer with Bettina about this new possible suspect, the letter writer. Detective Clayborn would have to be told.

  * * *

  Pamela took a cart from the small cluster right inside the Co-Op’s automatic door and steered it over the ancient wooden floor toward the produce department with its leafy and bulbous offerings. She added greens, a few sweet potatoes, and a carton of cherry tomatoes to the cart, suddenly nagged by the recollection that a huge bowl of heirloom apples waited uneaten on her kitchen counter at home. But then she recalled that Knit and Nibble was meeting at her house on Tuesday. She’d make something with the apples then, but something different. Not a pie, a crumble, or an apple cake.

  Co-Op fish was always fresh, and eating it the day it was bought took advantage of that fact. So shopping day often concluded with fish for dinner. Pamela steered her cart toward the fish counter and browsed among the offerings. She ate salmon so often—maybe it was time to branch out a bit. Displayed on the bed of crushed ice behind the counter’s glass was an overlapping row of hand-length fish with gleaming silver scales and bright, clear eyes. “Sea Bass” the sign said. When the fish man turned to her with the jovial greeting that was his custom, she requested a sea bass, and waited while it was descaled and filleted.

  At the meat counter, she added a pork tenderloin to her cart—it would be dinner for several days. A detour down one o
f the narrow aisles that occupied the center of the Co-Op’s space took her to the cat food section. After a stop for a pound of Vermont cheddar, she wound up at the bakery counter.

  Ranged along the top of the counter was an assortment of loaves—every shape from baguette through oval to round, and every color from burnished gold to deepest brown. Some were crusty with dramatic slashes, others were smooth or studded with seeds. Pamela requested a loaf of her favorite whole-grain bread and waited while it was sliced and bagged. Tucking her list back into her purse, she wheeled the cart toward the checkout station with the shortest line.

  She emerged onto the sidewalk five minutes later, quite weighed down by three canvas tote bags full of groceries. The walk south on Arborville Avenue was thus not nearly as pleasant as her earlier stroll to town had been. She paused at a bus stop to rest her bags on a bench, then continued on, and was relieved when she finally reached the corner of Orchard Street. In just a few minutes she would be home.

  But as she waited to cross Arborville Avenue, she heard a voice calling her name. The voice was coming from behind her, from the hill that sloped up to the Palisades. She turned, and when she recognized the owner of the voice, she lowered the tote bags to the sidewalk and waited.

  Nell was a block away, but hurrying toward Pamela, her white hair floating around her face.

  “What is it?” Pamela asked, feeling her forehead wrinkle. Nell’s tone had sounded so urgent.

  “Nothing desperate, dear. Don’t look so worried.” Nell slowed to a walk, panting. “Just a bit curious. But I was going to call you, and then when I saw you—” She had reached Pamela’s side. From her arm hung a canvas tote that was the twin of one of Pamela’s. It bore the image of a panda munching on a stalk of bamboo and an exhortation to save the panda’s habitat.

  “I’m all ears.” This corner featured a bus stop too, and Pamela picked up her groceries and led Nell to its bench.