Murder, She Knit

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “Quite the up-and-coming talent,” said a voice at Pamela’s elbow. “Leilo Bildlein. His work was featured at the last Venice Biennale.”

  Pamela turned in the direction of the voice. A small wiry man with a cup of take-out coffee in one hand was reaching a key toward the gallery door with the other. He wore a black turtleneck and black pants, and glasses with thick red-plastic frames.

  “I hope you weren’t waiting long,” he added. “I would have left a note, but I just popped over to the coffee shop.” His mouth formed a shopkeeper’s smile. “I’m Gary Grainger.”

  He pushed the door open and flattened himself against it to let Pamela and Bettina go first. “Are you interested in Leilo’s work?” he asked once they were all inside. He backed toward a cluttered desk in the corner and set the coffee down. Curiously, the walls in the room they had just entered were totally bare.

  “It’s fascinating,” Pamela said, “but we’re not here to buy, unfortunately. We’re trying to solve a puzzle.” She shifted the painting, still wrapped in the plastic garbage bag, around so it was leaning against her knees.

  Gary Grainger’s professionally pleasant smile reappeared. “Now you’ve got me curious,” he said, shifting his gaze from her face to the plastic-wrapped rectangle.

  Pamela reached behind the painting, grabbed the edge of the garbage bag’s opening, and tugged at the bag so it fell around the painting like a garment being shed. The plastic rustled on its way down. She lifted the painting so the signature at the bottom wasn’t hidden by the folds of plastic on the floor.

  “Oh, my!” Gary Grainger raised his hand to his mouth. “What has happened to this beautiful work of art?”

  “Is this a Chad Lawrence?” Pamela said. “Do you know him?” She lifted the painting higher and leaned around it to point at the signature she and Bettina and Wilfred had deciphered.

  “Of course. He’s one of my artists. But this particular painting was never handled by this gallery. Where did you get it?”

  “I collect antiques,” Pamela said. “I acquired it . . . from one of my favorite sources.”

  Bettina caught her eye and winked.

  Looking as squeamish as if he was confronting a human who had suffered the same fate as the painting, Gary Grainger aimed a tentative finger at the slash. “What on earth happened?”

  “We don’t know.” Bettina and Pamela spoke in unison, then Pamela took over. “We thought we’d start with figuring out who the artist was.”

  “Unquestionably Chad Lawrence. I’d know it even without the signature.” He retracted his finger and leaned closer. “Ravishing woman. I never knew her full name, but this isn’t his only portrait of her. He called her his muse.”

  Pamela debated whether to tell Gary Grainger that the picture’s subject was now dead. As if she could read Pamela’s mind, Bettina tightened her lips. She signaled a subtle negative with a tiny quiver of the head. Bettina was right, Pamela realized. They might be able to learn more if the gallery owner didn’t realize that one of his artists was connected with a woman who had just been murdered.

  “Chad Lawrence couldn’t have done this, could he?” Pamela asked, running a finger along the edge of the slash. “He’s not one of those eccentric artists who’s never happy with his work?”

  “No, no. He’s very professional. But I’m puzzled about why he never offered me the painting to sell in the gallery.” Gary Grainger’s brow puckered, then he smiled. “Perhaps it was a gift though, a gift for her. It seems very intimate, with the knitting and all. None of the other portraits of her showed her knitting.”

  He gestured at the bare walls. “Chad’s actually mounting a new show today. He’s coming by midafternoon with the paintings. They’ll be hung in here.”

  “Maybe we’ll stop in again later,” Pamela said. She tugged the plastic bag back over the painting.

  Out on Washington Street, they strolled on past the gallery, pausing to admire a window display a few doors down. Ceramic plates and bowls in muted tones that suggested natural clay were arranged in place settings. Tucked beside them were homespun napkins and knives, forks, and spoons shaped from metal with a dark silvery sheen. “Don’t let me go in here,” Bettina said. “I ran out of cupboard space long ago.”

  Right beyond the tempting window was a café. Lace curtains hid the lower half of the windows, but peering above the curtains, they could see small tables set with perky flowers in vases. A counter along one side was crowded with cakes, pies, and trays of pastries. Most of the customers were well-dressed women of various ages, sipping from cups or raising forks from delicate dessert plates to their lips.

  “Shall we?” Pamela said. “Then we’ll stop by the gallery again. It will definitely be interesting to talk to Chad Lawrence.”

  Seated at one of the small tables, they ordered coffee and cherry tarts. “We’ll be indulging tonight too,” Pamela said. “Jean said something about cookies from a fancy bakery.”

  Bettina laughed. “The knitting may be helping Roland’s blood pressure, but I’m not sure his doctor would approve of the extra calories.”

  They chatted about the knitting group until they were served, and then they lapsed into silence punctuated by appreciative hums as they conveyed forkfuls of pastry and deep red cherries to their mouths. Pamela liked her coffee black, and the rich bitterness of the café’s special coffee made the tart taste all the sweeter.

  “He must have known Amy well if he did multiple portraits of her,” Bettina said suddenly. She rested her fork on the edge of her plate.

  Pamela nodded and swallowed a mouthful of tart. “And he wouldn’t be the first artist to succumb to the charms of his model.”

  They continued eating. But when the plates were empty, except for pastry crumbs and streaks of cherry syrup, Pamela gave voice to the idea that Bettina’s comment had triggered. “Let’s say he was in love with her. He gives her the painting as a love offering and she rejects it—and him. So he destroys it.”

  “And then he destroys her.” Bettina’s eyes widened. But then she frowned. “How would it all work though? He lies in wait for her outside your house? How would he even know she was going there? And then he goes back to her place and somehow lets himself in and slashes the painting? Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to get away as fast as he could after he stabbed her with the knitting needle?”

  Pamela listened, pursing her lips. She shook her head. “It could have happened the other way around. He shows up with the painting, declares his love, and is rejected. He’s so miserable that he slashes the painting, bids her farewell, and goes on his way. But the rejection stings, and he decides if he can’t have her no one will. And maybe she had mentioned that she was going out later. He lurks outside her building and follows her down the street to my house.”

  “And the only weapon that’s handy is a knitting needle?”

  “He used one of her kitchen knives to slash the painting, but he didn’t decide to kill her till he got outside, so he didn’t take the knife with him.”

  A hand appeared and collected the plates and forks. “I like those murder shows on TV too,” the server commented with a genial smile. “Especially the British ones. The people seem so normal, but then they’re killing each other. Not like anything that could happen in real life.”

  * * *

  The street door of the gallery was propped open and Gary Grainger was standing on the sidewalk, regarding the scene though his red-framed glasses. He’d added a trim-fitting black leather jacket to his ensemble. Beyond the row of cars parked nose-in along the curb lurked a battered van with its back doors ajar. Something about the van looked familiar. The doors swung back further and a muscular man leaped to the pavement. He leaned back into the opening and was hidden from view by the door nearest the sidewalk.

  Pamela had gotten only a fleeting glimpse of the man, but something about him looked familiar too. She leaned the painting of Amy, shrouded in its black plastic garbage bag, against the gallery’s front w
indow.

  “Cops don’t like the double parking,” Gary Grainger observed. “But how else can anybody unload anything along here?”

  A curious spectacle moved toward them, edging between two parked cars. It appeared to be a vase of flowers, at least a vase of flowers rendered in two dimensions, walking on human legs clad in faded, paint-spattered jeans. When it reached the sidewalk, the vase of flowers dipped to the ground and a male face popped out above its upper edge. It was a rugged face with an irreverent twist to the lips and blond hair cut so short the man almost looked bald.

  “Four more to go,” the owner of the face said to Gary Grainger.

  “Take your time,” he responded. “No sign of the cops yet.”

  Pamela and Bettina looked at each other. It was the man from the funeral; the man who’d seemed so distraught. “Is he Chad Lawrence?” Pamela asked Gary Grainger after the man had edged through the doorway with the painting.

  The gallery owner nodded. His eyes remained fixed on the van.

  Pamela and Bettina stepped into the gallery and watched Chad Lawrence lean the painting carefully against one of the walls. Gary Grainger stayed behind on the sidewalk. Twenty or more paintings leaned against the walls, some stacked against one another, waiting to be hung. Most of them were larger than the painting of Amy, and none of them were of humans—at least, none of the visible ones. Chad Lawrence seemed to have been exploring variations on a theme, painting the same vase and the same flowers over and over, the flowers becoming noticeably droopier and then finally dead.

  Pamela waited until they were alone in the gallery and then leaned toward Bettina and whispered, “Would he have been so sad at the funeral if he’d been the one who killed her?”

  Bettina shrugged. “Feeling guilty?” she whispered back. “Or he realized that if he’d left her alive she might change her mind about him some day. Now it’s hopeless.”

  They waited while Chad Lawrence brought in the remaining paintings and moved his van to a side street. When everyone was back inside the gallery, Pamela introduced herself. She explained that she had come across an interesting painting and had traced its artist to the Grainger Gallery. She reached for the wrapped painting, which had been leaning against Gary Grainger’s desk. Chad Lawrence regarded the plastic-swathed parcel with amused condescension, as if humoring its owner.

  Pamela loosened the plastic garbage bag and let it fall to the floor. Chad Lawrence’s face went blank. As if remembering himself, he twisted his lips back into their former near-smirk.

  “Interesting,” he said in an offhand way. “Where’d you come across this?”

  Pamela repeated her line about acquiring it from one of her favorite antiquing sources. She watched his face closely. If he’d given it to Amy and he was the one who slashed it, he’d know perfectly well it hadn’t made its way to an antique store. But he was on guard now, and his expression remained bland, except for the slightly up-tilted lip.

  “It is one of mine,” he said. “An earlier period in my artistic evolution.” He stared at it fixedly for a long minute. “Too bad about the damage, but it’s not worth much now. What would you take for it?”

  “I’d like to hang on to it,” Pamela said. “At least for a while.” Her fingers tightened on the edge of the canvas. “Did you know the subject?”

  “A model.” He shrugged in a not very convincing show of offhandedness. Pamela shifted her gaze to Bettina’s face. Bettina bit her lips as if suppressing a laugh. “I worked with her for a while. Now I’m into flowers.” He waved toward one of the canvases lined up against the walls. It was one in which the flowers still looked reasonably fresh. “I don’t know what I’d do with it anyway.”

  He rearranged a few of the paintings, stepped back from the wall, glanced around the room, and nodded in satisfaction. He reached a hand toward Gary Grainger for a handshake. The contrast between the tall, muscular artist in his grimy jeans and the slight gallery owner in his trim black outfit and his determinedly fashionable red-framed glasses was striking.

  “I guess we’re all set, then,” Chad Lawrence said. “See you at the opening.” With a nod toward Pamela and Bettina, he was out the door. They watched through the gallery window as he hurried out of sight. Pamela was just about to suggest that she and Bettina head back to Arborville when Gary Grainger spoke.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “He was in love with her, you know,” he said suddenly, his voice rising. He seemed excited to have someone to share this bit of gossip with. He nodded toward Bettina. “I could tell he wasn’t fooling you with that story about how she was just a model. Like I said, I never knew her full name. But his feelings were obvious from the way he talked about her. And for a while there he hardly painted anything else.”

  He whirled around, took a few quick steps toward the cluttered desk, and began shifting piles of paper here and there. A few loose sheets fluttered to the floor. After a bit he gave a cry of triumph and waved a catalogue in the air.

  “Chad’s last show,” he explained, stepping back toward them and leafing through the catalogue. “Here she is.” He pointed to a color photo of a painting in which Amy was stretched out on a sofa in an interior that evoked a Victorian parlor. He flipped from page to page. “Here she is again, and here, and here.”

  Pamela was glad they’d lingered. She’d suspected the connection between Chad Lawrence and Amy went beyond artist and model—tantalizing as even that connection might be. But learning that he’d been in love with her was very useful. She recalled the crack Bob Randolph had made about too many people in the world having nothing to do but mind other people’s business. Gary Grainger certainly had many things to do besides keeping track of which artists were in love with which models, but it was understandable that he would take an interest. He might seem nosy, but nosy people were a great boon to the amateur sleuth.

  She was distracted from these reflections by a sound between a gasp and a yelp. It had come from Gary Grainger. “Are you okay?” Bettina said soothingly and reached out a comforting hand.

  He was holding the catalogue in both hands, pages spread wide, staring at yet another of the Amy portraits. “This is that woman who was killed last week,” he murmured as if to himself. “Amy Morgan.” He looked up from the page he was staring at and turned toward Pamela. Through the lenses of the red-framed glasses his eyes looked larger than normal. “I can be a very perceptive guy,” he said. “About two minutes after you showed me that painting I realized there was more to your interest than just who painted it. And now I know why. What are you up to, anyway?”

  Pamela explained that Amy Morgan had been very kind to her at a difficult time of her life and had recently become a neighbor. She confessed that she’d come upon the painting in the trash outside Amy’s apartment building. She had embarked on a quest to figure out who painted it and who might have damaged it, because the answers to those questions might lead to Amy’s killer.

  “The police aren’t looking for her killer?” Gary Grainger said.

  “Of course they are,” Bettina cut in. “But sometimes the police don’t ask the right questions.”

  “Well.” Gary Grainger closed the catalogue with a snap. He was silent for at least a minute, as if processing this new information.

  “I feel sorry for anyone who suffers from unrequited love,” Pamela said. “Amy was single. And Chad is attractive, in a way—and certainly talented. He seems a little eccentric, but nice enough. Do you think he was too Bohemian for her tastes?”

  “She may have been single,” Gary Grainger said, “but he isn’t. In fact, we show his wife’s work too.” He darted toward the cluttered desk and returned with a glossy postcard that he handed to Pamela. “There’s a show of her work up in here right now.” He continued on toward an adjoining room.

  But Pamela stared at the card, too distracted to follow. Bettina lingered at her side. “New work by Dorrie Morgan,” the card announced. “Meet the artist 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 16, at th
e Grainger Gallery.”

  “Dorrie!” Pamela whispered, displaying the card. “Dorrie Morgan is his wife.”

  “Different last names,” Bettina whispered back. “Everyone does that now, including my Boston son and his wife, but it’s confusing.” They caught up with the gallery owner.

  Like the front room of the gallery, the walls in this room were white. Hanging all around were row upon row of striking black-and-white photographs. Each showed a stark shape, like a malformed castle or a rock formation from some alien planet.

  “Ice sculptures,” Gary Grainger said. “For obvious reasons I can’t exhibit the actual works of art, unless I decide to install a walk-in freezer.”

  Pamela leaned close to the nearest photograph to ponder the signature. “She’s Amy Morgan’s sister, you know,” she said in response to Gary Grainger’s puzzled look.

  “Oh, my.” Gary Grainger’s eyes got big behind his glasses. “I didn’t make the connection. I never knew Amy’s last name when she was just . . . the model. That certainly makes things interesting.” Then, as if returning to the role of gallery owner, he said, “Dorrie makes the actual sculptures and then photographs them. So artistic and so perishable. Amazing what you can do with an ice pick.”

  They strolled from picture to picture, occasionally pausing in front of an especially curious image. In her mind Pamela was comparing ice picks with knitting needles and realizing that Chad Lawrence and Dorrie Morgan probably had equally strong motives for murdering Amy.