A Fatal Yarn

by Peggy Ehrhart

  The pie—which had been the source of the tantalizing aroma—was a magnificent creation. An elegantly fluted crust, flaky and golden brown, framed a filling that was lustrous in spots and so dark it was nearly black, while other spots resembled the granulated topping of crumb cake.

  “Molasses,” Wilfred supplied. “That’s the main ingredient, and brown sugar. But it’s sometimes called shoo fly cake, because the brown sugar is mixed with flour and shortening and layered in.” He gazed at his creation fondly. “It’s still warm. That’s the best way to serve it, with whipped cream.”

  Next to it on the counter sat a pottery bowl cradling a gleaming drift of whipped cream, and seven of Bettina’s sage-green plates, dessert-size, were stacked nearby. Near the stove, a carafe with a plastic cone balanced on top held freshly made coffee, and on the stove was a steaming tea kettle. Mugs for coffee and tea had been staged on the pine table. A rustic wooden tray held colorful cloth napkins, forks and spoons, and a sugar bowl and cream pitcher.

  “I’ll watch you cut the first slice,” Pamela said. “Then I’ll take the tray to the coffee table and come back to pour coffee and do tea.”

  Wilfred picked up a large knife and aimed it right at the center of the pie. With two long strokes he carved out a wedge and used a pie server to transfer it to a plate. The dark syrupy filling oozed onto the sage-green plate, blurring the wedge’s neat geometry.

  Holly was gazing back and forth from Wilfred’s face to the pie. “That is just too amazing,” she cooed. “You are an awesome cook.”

  Wilfred laughed. “You can catch more flies with a spoonful of sugar than with a barrel of vinegar—but we’ll see. The proof of the pudding—or pie, in this case—is in the eating.” He prepared to cut another slice, then paused. “It’s an Amish recipe,” he said. “Bettina and I first tasted it on a trip to Pennsylvania. I think the Amish invented it long ago for times of the year when no fresh fruit was in season for pies.”

  Holly picked up the large spoon that had been staged next to the bowl of whipped cream.

  “Go ahead.” Wilfred smiled. “And I’ll keep slicing.”

  Pamela returned to find an assembly line in progress. Four plates containing pie wedges topped with drifts of whipped cream were lined up along the counter, and Holly was waiting with her spoon poised over the whipped cream bowl as Wilfred slipped a fifth slice onto a plate.

  “Tiny ones for Nell and Roland,” Pamela said. “Nell said she can tell just by the aroma that it’s loaded with sugar. And neither one wants anything on top.”

  “I’ll cut this one in half for them then.” Wilfred plied his knife on the slice he had just served and transferred a sliver to a fresh plate. “None of the slices are very big though—with one pie for seven people. And I only put in a tiny bit of sugar when I whipped the cream. But to each his own.”

  Pamela slipped behind the counter, removed the plastic drip cone from the top of the carafe, and bore the carafe to the pine table. Tea bags waited in two of the sage-green mugs. Before she poured the coffee, she returned to the stove to fetch the kettle. Wilfred had turned off the burner under the kettle while Pamela was delivering the tray to the coffee table, but the wisps of steam drifting up from its spout showed that the water was just right to set tea steeping. Once the tea was in progress, she filled the remaining mugs with coffee.

  Pamela and Holly set out for the living room together, Pamela bearing the mugs of tea for Nell and Karen, and Holly with two slices of shoo fly pie—a little one bare of whipped cream for Nell and the other for Karen.

  Nell leaned forward to receive her tea with one hand and her pie with the other. “This looks just right,” she said, “though really people don’t need to eat any sugar at all.” She lowered mug and plate to the coffee table.

  Across from her Bettina laughed. “Don’t need, perhaps. But what’s the harm in a special treat now and then? And Wilfred so enjoys his baking.”

  Karen studied her own piece of pie as if wondering whether she’d be able to manage such a hearty serving.

  “Go ahead,” Bettina urged as Karen blushed. “You’re a nursing mother—eating for two.”

  After a few more trips, everyone had pie, coffee had been delivered to the coffee-drinkers, Pamela and Holly had resumed their seats, and Wilfred had joined Roland on the hearth.

  “Perfectly amazing,” Holly pronounced as she lowered her fork to her plate after her first bite. She closed her eyes and curved her pretty lips into a blissful smile.

  Pamela had to agree. The whipped cream, smooth and cool and barely sugared at all, was the perfect complement for the pie filling, dense and warm and achingly sweet, but with an elusive slightly metallic flavor. And the flaky crust set off the contrast to perfection.

  Even Roland was impressed. “Excellent work,” he commented, turning to Wilfred. “Very skillfully done.”

  For a few minutes, there was no sound but the click of forks against plates and the occasional moan of pleasure, even from Nell. Then Bettina asked Karen how she and Dave were adjusting to parenthood, and soon separate conversations had popped up here and there. Pamela and her neighbors on the sofa, Karen and Nell, were chatting about the early signs of spring appearing in their yards—daffodils!—while Holly enthused to Bettina about the latter’s good fortune in having a husband who was such an amazing cook, and Wilfred and Roland talked about cars.

  Suddenly, however, all conversation came to a halt when the doorbell rang.

  “Who on earth could that be at this time of night?” Bettina said, pulling herself out of her armchair. Wilfred rose too, and stood poised near the fireplace as Bettina stepped toward the door.

  She reached for the knob, pulled the door open, and took a few steps back. From where Pamela sat on the sofa, she could see Bettina’s face only in profile. But even in profile it was clear her eyes were wide and her mouth agape.

  “Of . . . of course,” Bettina said in a voice that barely resembled her own. “Yes, he’s here . . . but what . . . ?”

  Chapter 2

  Wilfred by this time had reached his wife’s side and slipped a comforting hand around her waist. From the porch came indistinct voices that nonetheless sounded authoritative. Then Wilfred turned back toward the living room. “Roland?” he said. “You’re wanted outside.”

  Looking more irritated than curious, Roland bounded up from the hearth and strode toward the door. More voices, still indistinct, and Roland stepped through the door.

  Wilfred and Bettina stood in the open doorway watching for a minute. Then Bettina turned away.

  “That was the police,” she said in a small, puzzled voice. “They’ve arrested Roland.”

  Karen grabbed Nell’s hand.

  “Arrested?” Nell’s cheery expression usually softened the lines engraved by her eighty-plus years, but at this moment she looked her age. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  Bettina nodded. “Just the way they do it on TV.”

  Holly stirred in her armchair.

  “What could he have done to get arrested?” she murmured. “Roland, of all people!”

  Wilfred closed the door, slipped his arm around Bettina’s waist again, and led her back to her chair. He continued on toward the hearth, where he sat and picked up Roland’s briefcase. He opened it and carefully arranged Roland’s yarn, needles, and partly completed project inside.

  As if taking the cue that useful action was the best response to shocking news, Holly rose and began collecting pie plates, forks, spoons, and napkins. Bettina picked up Holly’s mug and her own, and Pamela joined in the cleanup.

  A few minutes later the five remaining Knit and Nibblers sat staring at one another across the coffee table, now cleared, as the sound of running water from the kitchen suggested that Wilfred had found another useful activity. Pamela turned her attention to her knitting needles and lilac yarn, trying to reconstruct where in the complicated pattern she had left off. The arrival of the police to arrest Roland had driven from her mind all that had tra
nspired earlier that evening.

  Holly, too, had been studying her project, an inch-wide strip of vibrant green worked in the garter stitch. She thrust her right needle through the loop of yarn at the end of her left needle and hooked her index finger to catch up the long strand that fed from the skein at her side. But suddenly she stopped. “I’ve never seen anyone get arrested before,” she blurted. “I just don’t think I can concentrate on this.” Her serious expression was at odds with her whimsical toilette—Holly and her husband owned a hair salon, and Holly enjoyed experimenting with different colored streaks in her luxuriant raven hair. Tonight bright orange streaks were echoed by matching nail enamel, and for earrings one ear sported a bright golden sun and the other a silver crescent moon.

  “Me neither,” Karen piped up at Pamela’s side, her voice even tinier than usual.

  “Busy hands ease troubled minds,” Nell said. A partly finished infant cap in a soft shade of yellow rested on her thigh. She picked up the needles from which the cap dangled and launched a new row.

  But it was no use. Holly tugged her knitting bag onto her lap and began to tuck her work away. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I really can’t focus. Poor Roland. He wasn’t at his best tonight, but he’s an okay guy. And what will his wife do? I can’t imagine how I’d feel if Desmond got arrested.” Karen began to pack her work up too.

  Holding her knitting bag, Holly rose from her chair. “Did you walk, Nell?” she asked. Nell’s energy and lithe physique were a testament to her habit of never driving to a destination she could reach on foot.

  “I did,” Nell said. “And I’ll be fine getting home on my own”—her eyes strayed to Bettina, whose knitting lay untouched in her lap—“unless . . . of course, if no one feels like carrying on with the knitting . . . I don’t want to be in your way.”

  “You’d never be in our way, Nell.” Bettina leaned forward with a comforting smile. “But I don’t like the idea of you walking around Arborville at night with a killer on the loose.”

  “I don’t either,” Holly said. “And I’d have picked you up at your house if I’d known you were going to set out on foot.”

  Nell sighed. “Busy hands do ease troubled minds,” she said. “And so do busy feet. But I know when I’m outnumbered.” She lifted her knitting bag from the floor and slipped her project, abandoned in mid-row, inside.

  “Dear Nell.” Karen stood too and offered Nell a hand as she began to rise. The two of them, followed by Holly, made their way toward Bettina’s door.

  “I’m meeting with Clayborn tomorrow morning,” Bettina told them as she fetched their jackets from the closet. “To get the Diefenbach story for the Advocate. But I’ll see what I can find out about Roland.” She twisted the doorknob and swung the door back.

  Pamela was on her feet too, edging away from the sofa with knitting bag in hand, but Bettina motioned her to stay. Nell, Karen, and Holly stepped over the threshold and a chorus of somewhat despondent goodnights echoed from the porch. Bettina waved and replied, then she closed the door.

  “It never rains but it pours, as Wilfred would say,” she commented, shaking her head and setting the bright tendrils of her hair to vibrating.

  Sensing that only familiar humans remained in the house, Woofus ventured cautiously through the arch that separated the Frasers’ dining room from their living room. He made his way to Bettina’s side and snuggled up against the pink jersey of her dress. She rested a hand on his shaggy back. Punkin returned also, and resumed her languorous pose along the back of the sofa.

  The animals were followed by Wilfred, who had removed his apron, a signal that his cleanup work was done. “Dear, dear wife,” he sighed. “What a day this has been. I’m going to retreat to my den with a book.” With a courtly bow to Pamela, he was on his way up the stairs, accompanied by Woofus.

  “I think there’s some pie left,” Bettina said, suddenly cheering. “And more whipped cream. Shall we?” She set off for the kitchen. Pamela followed, dropping her knitting bag in an armchair as she passed.

  “Two pieces left,” Bettina announced from the counter as Pamela entered. “Just as I suspected.”

  “I honestly couldn’t.” Pamela patted her stomach. “The one slice with the whipped cream was just enough. I’ll have a little coffee though, if there’s any to reheat.”

  “That’s why you’re thin and I’m not.” Pamela was not only thinner than her friend, she was also a head taller. And Pamela’s disinterest in fashion, despite having the figure to display stylish clothes to advantage, was a constant source of amazement to Bettina, who dressed for her life in Arborville with the flair and enthusiasm of a confirmed fashionista.

  Bettina surveyed the stove and its neighboring counter, then shook her head. “Wilfred cleaned everything up. But I’ll make more. I’d like a cup too.”

  * * *

  So ten minutes later the two friends were sitting at Bettina’s well-scrubbed pine table with two cups of coffee and one slice of pie, liberally topped with whipped cream.

  “The news didn’t say anything about what the murder weapon actually was,” Bettina said as she used her fork to tease away a bite of the flaky crust with its dense syrupy topping. “But Clayborn should have more details tomorrow. The residents of Arborville certainly deserve to know all the facts. I didn’t care for Diefenbach myself, but enough people liked him to elect him mayor.”

  Pamela set her coffee mug down after an exploratory sip of the bitter brew, still too hot to drink. “He wasn’t supposed to win,” she observed. “The Wendelstaff College poll had Brandon MacDonald leading by a good margin.”

  Bettina shrugged. “MacDonald had been the mayor forever. Diefenbach proposed to really shake up the town government—Arborville was stuck in the past, he said, and his ideas would propel it into the future. Maybe people were embarrassed to admit to the pollsters that he had a point. Everybody likes MacDonald but he never really got much done.”

  “I think MacDonald and Diefenbach lived right next door to each other,” Pamela said. “Wasn’t that in one of the articles you wrote about the election for the Advocate?”

  Bettina nodded. “ ‘Competition for Top Spot Pits Neighbor Against Neighbor.’ That was the headline. I interviewed them both. As different as night and day—MacDonald so easy going and Diefenbach wound as tight as . . . well, as tight as Roland. No wonder Roland liked him.” She scooped up a bigger forkful of pie, making sure to include a daub of whipped cream.

  “Roland.” Pamela shook her head. “What on earth could that all be about?”

  Bettina mirrored the head-shake, setting her coral and gold earrings to swaying. “Like Holly said, he certainly wasn’t at his best tonight. But Poor Melanie!” Melanie was Roland’s wife. “What must she be thinking?”

  “Maybe it’s just some kind of mistake.” Pamela sampled her coffee again and found that the temperature was just right for drinking.

  “Maybe it was,” Bettina agreed. “I’ll know more after my meeting with Clayborn.”

  Chapter 3

  The next day, Pamela was hard at work in her office when the doorbell chimed at a little after ten a.m. She transferred Ginger the cat from her lap to the floor and hurried toward the stairs. On the landing she paused and glanced toward her front door. Through the lace that curtained the door’s oval window, she could make out a blur of bright yellow accented by a touch of vivid scarlet above.

  When she reached the entry, she was greeted first by her other cat, Catrina, who was lounging in the spot of sunlight that reliably set the colors in the worn Persian rug aglow every morning. Pamela opened the door to discover Bettina. The blur of bright yellow resolved into a stylish trench coat in a glazed fabric that looked almost like patent leather, and the vivid accent was Bettina’s scarlet hair, which she herself described as a color not found in nature.

  But Bettina’s expression was far from cheery, and her message so dire that she began speaking before she even stepped over the threshold.

  “
They think Roland killed Diefenbach,” she wailed.

  “How could they?” Pamela felt her heart thump heavily. She reached out and drew her friend inside.

  “Ohhh . . . they’ve got it all figured out, or think they do.” Bettina handed Pamela a white bakery box secured with a double twist of string. Then she unbelted and unbuttoned her coat, shrugged it off, and dropped it on the chair that, with a small table, made up the entry’s furniture. Catrina raised her head briefly then returned to her nap. “Is there coffee?” Bettina asked. “I only had time for one cup before I had to run out for my meeting with Clayborn.”

  “There certainly can be,” Pamela said, slipping one arm around Bettina’s shoulders and cradling the bakery box in the other. “Come on out to the kitchen.”

  “Roland had an argument with Diefenbach early Monday evening,” Bettina said as she filled Pamela’s cut-glass cream pitcher with heavy cream. She set it next to its companion sugar bowl on Pamela’s kitchen table and settled into her accustomed chair. Pamela stood at the counter measuring coffee beans into her coffee grinder. She’d already started water boiling on the stove.

  Bettina went on. “It was a very public argument, out on Roland’s front lawn, and several of his neighbors witnessed it.”

  When Bettina finished speaking, Pamela pressed down on the grinder’s cover, and for a moment the whir and clatter of coffee beans being ground took the place of conversation.

  “Two thoughts,” Pamela replied when a low snarl and then silence marked the grinding’s completion. “First of all, people have arguments—even public ones—all the time without deciding to kill each other. And second, why would Roland argue with Diefenbach? From what he said last night, he sounded like a big fan.”

  She placed a paper filter in the plastic cone balanced on top of her carafe and carefully poured in the ground beans. The kettle hadn’t yet begun to hoot, so she opened the cupboard where she kept her wedding china and took out two cups and two saucers.