A Fatal Yarn

by Peggy Ehrhart

  Books by Peggy Ehrhart

  MURDER, SHE KNIT

  DIED IN THE WOOL

  KNIT ONE, DIE TWO

  SILENT KNIT, DEADLY KNIT

  A FATAL YARN

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  A Fatal Yarn

  Peggy Ehrhart

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  KNIT - Cozy Pillow

  NIBBLE - Lemon Yogurt Easter Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 by Peggy Ehrhart

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-2364-2

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2367-3 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-2367-8 (ebook)

  For my aunt, Rosemary Pellegrini-Quarantotti

  Acknowledgments

  Abundant thanks, again, to my agent Evan Marshall, and to my editor at Kensington Books, John Scognamiglio.

  Chapter 1

  If you were going to give a tree a sweater, wouldn’t you do it in the fall—not in the spring when days were warming and nature was coming back to life? Yet the first thing Pamela Paterson had noticed when she stepped outside to collect the newspaper that morning was the swath of knitting wrapped around the trunk of the tree occupying the strip of land between the sidewalk and the street. It was fashioned from yarn in an eye-catching assortment of textures and colors—red, orange, green, purple, and more—and even featured buttons and buttonholes.

  Now she paused to study it again in the twilight. Her day had been busy, so busy that she’d missed her usual walk. As associate editor of Fiber Craft magazine, Pamela enjoyed the fact that she could work from home most days. But some days that work—evaluating articles for publication and then editing the ones chosen—kept her at her computer from after breakfast to dinner time and beyond. And only the occasional email from her daughter, who was away at college, provided a break.

  Today she’d dispatched the edited version of “Depression-Era Style: Frugal Fashion for the Home Knitter” off to her boss at Fiber Craft just in time to warm up a quick dinner of leftover stew and set off for that evening’s meeting of the Arborville knitting club, nicknamed Knit and Nibble. This evening Pamela’s neighbor and best friend, Bettina Fraser, was hosting the group, so Pamela had only to cross the street.

  So immersed had Pamela been in her editorial duties that she was initially nonplussed by Bettina’s greeting. She’d no sooner stepped into the Frasers’ welcoming living room than Bettina announced, “I’m sorry he’s dead, of course, but the timing couldn’t be better for this week’s issue of the Advocate. Clayborn is squeezing me in for a meeting tomorrow morning.” Clayborn was Arborville’s lone police detective and Bettina was the chief reporter for the town’s weekly newspaper.

  “What? Who?” Pamela stared at her friend, who was in bright pink tonight—a jersey wrap dress that accented her ample curves. She’d accessorized it with matching kitten heels and her favorite coral and gold earrings. The effect was striking with her scarlet hair.

  “Mayor Diefenbach, of course,” Bettina said. “Haven’t you seen any news today?”

  “Nose to the grindstone.” Pamela shrugged. “I had a mountain of work for the magazine.” Bettina’s words sank in and Pamela felt herself frown. “What on earth happened to him?” she asked

  Bettina started to answer but was distracted by the doorbell. As she headed for the door, Pamela settled onto Bettina’s comfy sage-green sofa. Punkin the cat, who was stretched languidly along the back of the sofa, raised her head briefly then resumed her nap. Woofus the shelter dog peered nervously from the edge of the dining room.

  Bettina pulled back the door and Holly Perkins stepped in, followed by Karen Dowling. They were the two youngest members of the group and fast friends, despite their considerable differences. “That’s quite a dramatic story for you, Bettina,” Holly said by way of greeting. “A murder, right here in little Arborville.” Her dark eyes widened dramatically, but given the topic she suppressed her usual smile, with its dimple and flash of perfect teeth.

  “Murder?” Pamela half-rose from the sofa. “You didn’t say he was murdered!”

  “Clunked right on the head—” Holly began.

  Bettina finished the thought: “—in his own kitchen.”

  Karen, a delicate blonde with a diffident manner, shuddered.

  The evening was warm for the end of March, and the door still stood open as this conversation took place. So there was no need for Nell Bascomb to ring. She simply stepped into the doorway with a cheerful greeting, her white hair floating in a cloud around her face. But her cheer faded as Bettina continued speaking. “Then he fell, hit his head on the edge of his counter, and again on his tile floor. One or both of those bumps are probably what killed him, Clayborn said, though there’s been no autopsy yet.”

  “This is sad news for our little town,” Nell said. “Harold came home from the Co-Op Grocery today and reported that everyone he ran into was buzzing about it, wondering what will become of Diefenbach’s ambitious plans for the town.” She put a comforting arm around Karen. “Shall we sit down and get to work? There’s nothing like knitting to soothe the spirits.”

  Their jackets stowed in the closet, she and Karen made their way to the sofa, where they settled in beside Pamela, who had already extracted her project from her knitting bag. It was to be a gift for her daughter Penny, a lacy tunic in a delicate shade of lilac. Penny had picked out the pattern and the yarn—a silk and merino wool blend—at Christmas, and the tunic had been Pamela’s Knit and Nibble project ever since. Bettina and Holly lingered at the door looking out toward the yard, and a moment later Roland DeCamp stepped over the threshold.

  “I believe I’m the last one,” he said, scanning the room, and he pulled the door closed behind him.
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br />   “Take an armchair, Roland, please.” Bettina gestured toward the armchairs that faced the sofa across a long coffee table. “And you too, Holly.”

  “No, no, no.” Roland waved his free hand in a dismissive gesture. In his other he carried the impressive leather briefcase in which he stored his knitting. “You ladies, please have the armchairs. I’ll be fine with one of these cushions on the hearth.” A row of bright cushions lined up on Bettina’s hearth complemented the sage-green and tan color scheme of her living room.

  He strode toward the fireplace and perched on a cushion, looking somewhat incongruous in the flawlessly tailored pinstripe suit and aggressively starched shirt that marked him as a high-powered corporate lawyer.

  Holly had pulled out her knitting needles and was casting on with fuzzy yarn in a vibrant shade of green, but once everyone was settled, she broke the silence. “What were Bill Diefenbach’s plans for the town?” she asked. “Desmond and I spend so much time at work in Meadowside, we know more about town politics there than right here in Arborville where we live.”

  Roland and Nell spoke at once. Their voices overlapped, with Roland observing, “Excellent ideas. Just the leader Arborville needed,” while Nell commented, “Horribly distressing. No sense of what makes Arborville Arborville.”

  “Well!” Holly laughed and the dimple appeared. “You first, Nell.”

  Nell surveyed the group with her faded blue eyes. The hands holding her knitting needles trembled slightly. “I’ll grant he gave a lot of his time to the town, heading up the Arborists and serving on the town council for years and years, and then taking on the job of mayor. But he wanted to sell the community gardens to a developer. The community gardens serve a valuable purpose, especially for people who live in apartments. And Arborville doesn’t need more development.”

  Roland was leaning forward, his lean face intense and his knitting forgotten for the moment. “Of course it does,” he said. “My property taxes go up every year, and everybody likes the things their taxes pay for, like the schools and the police and road repair—though I’m still waiting for the broken curb in front of my house to be fixed. More development means more people to share the tax burden.”

  “The developer wanted to get that land rezoned for a high rise!” Nell was leaning forward too, her expression more sad than intense. “Can you imagine a high rise, looming over a residential neighborhood? And with commercial space at street level? Arborville doesn’t have adequate parking for its existing shops.”

  “That could be easily remedied.” Roland’s tone suggested the parking problem simply hadn’t been addressed by anyone with common sense. “A multilevel garage would solve the problem.”

  Nell’s face tightened and her voice took on a scolding edge. “A multilevel garage would completely destroy the small-town feel of Arborville’s shopping district—and it would encourage people to use their cars when they could just as easily walk.”

  “It’s the twenty-first century now,” Roland said with a laugh. “Arborville needs to keep up with the times.”

  “That was Bill Diefenbach’s view.” Nell shook her head sadly. “And apparently a majority of voters agreed with him, a narrow majority.”

  “Enough of a majority for him to win”—Roland was scowling now—“and a good thing. How many people does that land serve as community gardens? Twenty or thirty?” He laughed again. “Taxes on a high rise with commercial space would lighten the tax burden for everybody who lives in this town.”

  Nell’s faded blue eyes brightened. “The community gardens serve a valuable purpose for people who don’t have yards of their own. Home-grown food is healthy and economical and—”

  Roland half rose and his knitting slipped from his lap. “They don’t have yards of their own because they made poor choices in life. If they wanted to own their own land, they should have worked harder. It’s not my responsibility to subsidize—”

  Nell cut him off, her voice rising to a pitch Pamela had seldom heard from her gentle friend. “We are all each other’s responsibility,” Nell said as she tossed her knitting aside and pulled herself up from the sofa. Karen, sitting next to her, stared in alarm and Punkin the cat leapt from the sofa’s back to its arm, from there to the floor, and scurried toward the dining room.

  Suddenly Bettina was on her feet too, gazing back and forth from Nell to Roland with her eyes wide and her lips, bright pink to match her dress, stretched into a grimace. She was about to speak when from the dining room came a hearty “Is everyone present and accounted for?” Wilfred Fraser appeared in the arch that separated the dining room from the living room, an apron tied over the bib overalls that had been his customary garb since his retirement.

  “Dear wife!” he exclaimed, his ruddy face beaming. “Why didn’t you let me know?” He surveyed the group, as if unaware that anything was amiss, but Pamela caught a subtle wink as he glanced in her direction. “Tea, as usual, Nell? And Karen?” Looking somewhat chastened, Nell sank back onto the sofa with a nod. “And coffee for everyone else? Roland?” Roland nodded too, cleared his throat, and lowered himself onto his cushion. He retrieved his knitting from the floor and began to examine it more intently than perhaps strictly necessary.

  “I’ll get things started then,” Wilfred said, and headed back toward the kitchen with a cheerful wave.

  Looking relieved, Bettina sat back down. “He was baking all afternoon,” she said. “He does so look forward to having an audience for his pies.”

  “Ohh, I can hardly wait! What kind is it?” Holly exclaimed, even more animated than usual, as if to do her part in restoring cheer to the group.

  “Shoo fly,” Bettina said. “Perhaps it will sweeten us all up a bit.” Roland, totally absorbed in his knitting, didn’t notice the glance she aimed in his direction.

  But Pamela did. A fresh topic was definitely in order—and in fact the interesting development she’d come prepared to discuss had been driven completely from her mind by the revelation of Bill Diefenbach’s murder. Now she summoned it back.

  “My tree has a sweater,” she said.

  “So does mine,” Holly chimed in. “And one of Karen’s trees has one too.” From across the room, Karen met her friend’s gaze and nodded. “What on earth can be going on?”

  “It’s a group,” Bettina said. “The Yarnvaders. I was working on the story for the Advocate before this Diefenbach thing happened. A few people had already posted about it on AccessArborville. They wake up in the morning and discover their trees have sweaters. It’s knitters that are doing it, obviously, and they’re doing strange things like that everywhere—even in Russia. In Los Angeles they covered an entire building with a giant sweater. I found some things on the internet.”

  Roland looked up with a frown, started to speak but then evidently thought better of it and returned to his knitting.

  “It seems wasteful,” Nell observed. “When there are people who could use sweaters. Who are these knitters, anyway?” Nell herself devoted her knitting to worthy causes—currently knitted caps to donate to hospitals for newborns.

  “No one knows,” Bettina said. “The members are all sworn to secrecy. Some of us could be Yarnvaders for all the rest of us know.”

  The teasing aroma of freshly brewed coffee had been growing stronger and stronger as they spoke, along with the aroma of something richly sugary baking. Pamela worked steadily on her knitting, enjoying the way the lacy pattern with its filigreed shells took shape as row followed row. Tucked between her and Nell on the sofa, Karen was engrossed in a lacy pattern of her own, in pink. The Dowlings’ first child, Lily, had been born at Christmas. Many tiny knitted garments had been prepared for her arrival and Pamela was sure Lily would be supplied for years to come with the fruits of her mother’s artistry. Across from Pamela, Bettina had relaxed back into her project, a Nordic-style sweater for Wilfred—which Bettina, not the fastest knitter, had said just might be finished in time for next Christmas.

  The sugary aroma had become
almost unbearably tempting—sweet to be sure, but with an interesting darker undertone—when Roland spoke up from his perch on the hearth. Consulting the impressive watch that had been revealed when he pushed back his aggressively starched shirt cuff, he intoned, “Exactly eight p.m. and I believe it’s time—”

  “For refreshments.” Wilfred stepped into the arch that separated the dining room from the living room and completed the thought.

  “I can help,” Holly said. “I’ve never seen shoo fly pie before. Or tasted it.” She rested knitting needles with an inch-long swath of vibrant green suspended from them on the arm of her chair and jumped to her feet. Bettina started to rise too, but Holly urged her to stay put and hurried out looking as excited as if experiencing shoo fly pie had been a life-long dream.

  “I haven’t either,” Pamela said, and followed Holly toward the dining room and thence into the Frasers’ spacious kitchen.

  Woofus was sprawled in his favorite corner when they entered. He raised his head in alarm and trotted to Wilfred’s side. The shaggy beast reached Wilfred’s thigh, but he cowered against his master, trembling visibly.

  “The poor fellow,” Wilfred sighed. “He’s gotten so much better than when we first brought him home from the shelter, but I guess he’ll always be nervous.”

  “Some people just are.” Sympathy replaced excitement on Holly’s expressive face. “And dogs,” she added. Then excitement returned. “Oh! Is this it?” She stepped toward the high counter that separated the cooking area of the Frasers’ kitchen from the eating area, with its well-scrubbed antique pine table and four chairs.