Murder, She Knit

by Peggy Ehrhart

  Ten minutes later knitting was resumed, in silence at first as people reminded themselves where in a complicated stitch-count they had been or what direction they’d been heading if they’d paused while midway through a row. Then there was a burst of renewed praise for the night’s refreshments. Bettina looked up from a pale pink granny square to loyally observe that Pamela’s apple cake had been quite delicious too.

  “Has anyone done an apple-picking excursion?” Karen asked. She added that it seemed a popular autumn thing to do and she and Dave had resolved not to spend every weekend working on the house.

  “Too late now,” Roland said. “People do it in September and October. It’s like leaf-peeping.” His tone of voice made it clear that leaf-peeping, and maybe picking one’s own apples too, were silly pursuits.

  People returned to their own thoughts. After a few minutes, Nell leaned toward Karen. “How is the house coming, then?” she asked. “Such a brave thing, to take on a fixer-upper.”

  “We actually haven’t done much lately . . . since . . .” Karen smiled sadly.

  Nell glanced around, apparently to make sure the other knitters were focused on their work or their own thoughts, or both. In a voice she probably didn’t mean to reach the whole group, she said, “How is Dave’s job hunt coming?”

  “He’s leaving Wendelstaff ?” Jean looked up in surprise. “What happened?”

  Pamela expected Karen to dissolve into blushing confusion. Her cheeks reddened somewhat, but her voice was calm. “His contract wasn’t renewed,” she said glancing from person to person with the resigned air of someone who has given up keeping a secret. “Amy Morgan had different ideas about how the School of Professional Arts should be staffed.”

  Nell’s kind face sagged. She stretched a hand toward Karen’s chair. All she could reach was the partly finished navy blue scarf that trailed over Karen’s knees, so she stroked the scarf comfortingly. “I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she said, half to herself.

  From across the room came Roland’s voice. “But Amy Morgan is dead. Maybe that will help him.”

  The blush Pamela had been expecting arrived now. Karen looked down at her knitting in red-cheeked confusion.

  No one was allowed to leave that evening without agreeing to accept a sandwich bag full of cookies. “For your grandchildren,” Jean insisted when Bettina balked. “You mentioned that you’ll be seeing them on Thanksgiving.”

  Bettina accepted the cookies with a resigned smile. “They may not last till Thanksgiving,” she said. “I don’t have much willpower when there are cookies in the house.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Pies had once come in tin pie pans that could be returned to the bakery for a refill. Anyone prodigal enough to keep the pan would forfeit ten cents. Among the many pie pans in Pamela’s collection was an amusing garage-sale find, a battered tin one with this legend stamped onto its bottom:

  Brooklyn Pie Company

  10-Cent Deposit

  But this was not the one she chose for today’s baking project. A Thanksgiving pecan pie to be shared with her daughter and old and dear friends required a more elegant presentation. She chose a mottled brown-and-cream stoneware pan that looked as if it might have been at home on a pilgrim’s table.

  Today would be a day of useful effort, effort that would distract her from thinking about Karen Dowling—especially Karen’s blushing confusion the previous night when Roland observed that with Amy dead Dave’s job might not be lost after all. Pamela was not hosting the Thanksgiving feast. Ever since her husband’s death, she and Penny had spent Thanksgiving Day with old family friends dating from the era when Pamela was half of a married couple. Michael Paterson had known the male half of that couple since his days as an architecture student, and he had collaborated with him on projects in the city.

  But Penny would be arriving that evening, and Pamela wanted her to find a clean and welcoming house, with fresh sheets on her bed and food in the cupboards and refrigerator. And there were pie ingredients to shop for as well.

  Pamela had barely looked inside Penny’s room since the day the two of them loaded Pamela’s car with suitcases and boxes and set off for Massachusetts. Now she opened a window to let the chilly breeze stir the stale air and peeled the bedding off the twin bed that had been Penny’s ever since she graduated from her crib.

  This had been the first room Pamela and her husband redid after moving into their fixer-upper house. They hadn’t planned on a new baby and a new house in the same year. But settling into their own permanent nest had resulted in a surprise visit from the stork.

  Penny had never asked to have her room redecorated, so the pale blue wallpaper with tight little pink rosebuds had remained, along with the white eyelet curtains and the glossy white-painted dresser that matched the woodwork. A simple white desk and chair had been added when Penny started school. The wallpaper was partly hidden now by samples of Penny’s art.

  Pamela surveyed the walls with pleasure. She’d always been proud of her daughter’s artistic skill, inherited perhaps more from Penny’s father than from a mother whose creative urge was satisfied by knitting. Penny’s output had been diverse: oil on canvas still lifes of flowers and fruit produced in high-school art classes, Arborville scenes dating from a period when she roamed abroad with sketch pad and pencil, and recent portraits of family and friends, including one of Pamela. Pamela wasn’t sure her forehead was quite that smooth or her lips quite that full, but Penny had somehow captured a determined look that Pamela felt mirrored her inner self.

  Dust bunnies lurking where the baseboard met the floor would need to be banished, and the rag rugs taken outside for a good shake. And she’d need to take a dust cloth to the dresser and desk. But first she made the bed up with fresh sheets, enjoying the fragrance they’d absorbed from the sachet of lavender buds hanging inside the linen closet. She added a down comforter. The final touch was to replace the patchwork quilt Pamela’s grandmother had made for her when Pamela was a little girl.

  Penny’s room finished and the upstairs bathroom scrubbed, Pamela turned her attention to the living room. She fluffed the pillows and arranged them in a neat row across the back of the sofa, and she dusted the coffee table and straightened the stacks of magazines. Then she made her way methodically around the edges of the room, lifting each thrift-store treasure and tag-sale find, dusting it and the shelf, cabinet, or table it sat on, and returning it to its place.

  All that remained was to vacuum, and then she’d be off on her errands. But as she ran the vacuum along the base of the sofa, it began to gasp. A staccato clicking sound, like a frantic hiccup, issued from its lower regions. Was this how a vacuum cleaner died? She’d bought it soon after she’d gotten married. It was quite old in vacuum years.

  She pushed the button to turn it off and stepped backward to guide it out from between the sofa and the coffee table. Then she pushed the button again. With a whoosh, it started up, but without the desperate sounds. Perhaps it would last for a few more years. She resumed vacuuming, pushing it smoothly along the other side of the coffee table. She’d do an extra-thorough job and pull the coffee table aside to access the often-overlooked patch of carpet underneath.

  That was when she noticed the glint of silver against the dark blues, greens, and burgundys of her rug. Bisecting a stylized flower bud on a long, undulating stalk was a metal knitting needle. The vacuum cleaner had picked it up, struggled with it in a hiccupping fit, and let it go again when she switched off the power. She carried it to the window to examine it more closely. It had to be the twin of the knitting needle she had found in the sofa cushion and tried to return to Karen. That needle had been silver and—she hefted it in her hand as if beginning to knit—definitely the same length, a good length for the first scarf project Karen had contemplated.

  Relieved, she put it in her knitting bag, to be returned to Karen at next Tuesday’s Knit and Nibble session—though there wouldn’t be a pair for Roland until Detective Clayborn return
ed the one Bettina had given him. Just in time for Thanksgiving, here was something additional to be grateful for. If both her knitting needles were accounted for, sweet little Karen Dowling couldn’t be Amy’s killer.

  She had to call Bettina.

  “So who does that leave?” Bettina asked upon hearing the news.

  “Bob Randolph,” Pamela said decisively.

  “But not Dorrie Morgan,” Bettina answered. “Or Chad.”

  “Maybe the woman at Wendelstaff College who was passed over for promotion when Amy was hired. And the student leading the protests there.”

  “You said they both had alibis.”

  “But each one was the other one’s alibi,” Pamela said.

  “The police must have looked into their alibis pretty thoroughly,” Bettina said. “The people at Wendelstaff are just about the most obvious suspects.”

  “Let’s not forget the yarn woman with the ticking biological clock.”

  “We don’t know her biological clock is ticking.”

  “I wouldn’t completely discount the vicuña fertility ritual angle,” Pamela said. “That mystery yarn is definitely from a cuddly animal. Did you notice how Roland said it made him want to pet it? I think vicuñas are cuddly.”

  * * *

  As she hung up from talking to Bettina, Pamela’s stomach told her it was lunch time. There was just enough cheese left for a grilled cheese sandwich. She buttered two slices of bread, laid one on her griddle, buttered side down, and arranged every last morsel of cheese on it. She topped it with the other slice of bread, buttered side up. Then she watched, carefully lifting the edges of the sandwich to check as the bread turned from pale to golden to toasty brown. When the melting cheese began to emerge from between the crusts, it was time to transfer the sandwich to a plate. She ate it while glancing again at the morning paper she’d hurried through in her rush to start cleaning.

  Pamela had already listed cheese on her shopping list for her Co-Op errand, along with the ingredients for the pecan pie. Now she pondered what to have on hand for Penny’s visit. The next day would be the Thanksgiving feast with friends, but they could start the morning with scrambled eggs. Penny had always loved spaghetti with meat sauce. She’d make a big batch of that this evening. And she’d get yogurt and orange juice, and maybe deli sliced ham for sandwiches. And they could have a pizza delivered from When in Rome on Saturday, or eat out.

  She collected her canvas grocery bags, pulled on her jacket, wrapped her violet mohair scarf around her neck, and set out.

  The empty cat-food dish sat squarely in the middle of the doormat. Was that a thank-you, or a reproach? In addition to her usual evening visit, Catrina sometimes showed up for a handout first thing in the morning. Pamela had been bustling about upstairs and then running the vacuum cleaner downstairs, possibly missing the plaintive meow or the eyes peering over the bottom edge of the oval window in the front door. But with Catrina not in evidence at the moment, she didn’t want to invite the raccoons to a cat-food feast on the front porch, so she moved the empty dish to a less conspicuous spot and went on her way. Overnight, crisp weather had turned to cold. A blustery wind made her pause to readjust her scarf so it skimmed the top of her head and covered her ears. But the wind had also banished clouds, and the sky was a dazzling shade of blue.

  Half an hour later Pamela was heading along Arborville Avenue toward home, wishing she’d used her car for her Co-Op errand. The canvas bags were heavier than usual, with food for two and pie ingredients as well. She reached the stately brick apartment building at her corner and turned onto Orchard Street. Weighed down though she was by her parcels, she couldn’t resist a tiny detour to peek behind the wooden fence that hid the trash cans. Who knew what treasures people cleaning for the upcoming holiday might have discarded?

  The trash cans were lined up neatly as usual. Mr. Gilly might be a gossip, but he was a conscientious super. Piled between the trash cans and the fence were several black plastic bags, apparently filled to capacity and tied securely at the top. But tucked among the bags was what looked like a very nice fur jacket, a dark lustrous fur like one saw in the newspaper ads for Manhattan furriers. Pamela had never owned a fur, and the sudden mental image of herself strutting into the Co-Op wearing a fur jacket made her laugh. But someone might want a fur jacket. It shouldn’t just go out with the trash.

  She set her grocery bags down, balancing them against the fence to keep the contents from tumbling out, and stepped gingerly over the nearest plastic bag. Except her foot didn’t make contact with the ground. Something was down there, something not exactly hard but not exactly soft. She retreated, then grabbed the plastic bag by the tails of the plastic tie that cinched its neck. She tugged it out from between the fence and the trash can at the near end of the row. It rattled as it dragged along the ground, but she only noticed that for a second.

  After that, all her attention was focused on what had been under the bag. The scene was imprinted on her mind as if frozen by a sudden flashbulb going off. She was staring at two feet, one of them wearing only a sheer stocking, the other wearing a casual shoe, like an expensive loafer. Linking the feet to the lustrous jacket were a pair of legs clad in wool slacks, dark like the fur. The person wearing the slacks and jacket was positioned on her side, facing the brick wall of the apartment building.

  Pamela felt her throat tighten. Was there a head? She pulled at another bag. Later she would ask herself why she didn’t instantly summon Mr. Gilly to call the police—she’d gone out without her own phone. But perhaps she needed to satisfy herself that there was indeed a head, lest the vision of a headless woman in the trash become the stuff of nightmares for years to come.

  As she drew yet a third bag out from behind the fence, the fur jacket began to shift. Suddenly, with a dull thump, the body (as she now thought of it) rolled onto its back, and the fur jacket slipped open.

  Underneath the fur jacket was a sweater, not a handknit sweater but a fine-gauge wool—or maybe cashmere—turtleneck in a subtle shade of peach. And above the turtleneck, a face was now visible, a fourth bag having slid to the side as the body moved. But Pamela barely registered the fact that the body was in fact not headless. Her eyes were drawn to the dark stain that marred the left side of the sweater. She bent to look closer. The stain radiated outward from a neat slit that interrupted the even rows of knitting. The slit was right about where Pamela imagined one would find a person’s heart if one could peer through layers of skin, muscle, and bone.

  It was a slit, not a hole, and there was no knitting needle protruding from this victim’s chest. But there was no question that the dark stain, a deep brownish maroon, was blood.

  Pamela realized that she was shaking—shaking so violently that she had to steady herself against the fence as she backed out of the trash can enclosure. She clung to the post that marked the end of the fence and tried to tame the thoughts that were swirling in her mind like random shouts from a restless crowd.

  She didn’t have her phone, because she never brought it on her walks, but she was at the corner of her own street. She could run the half block to her own house and call the police from there. Or she could hurry around to the front of the apartment building, push random bells until someone buzzed her in, and knock on the first door she came to. She could hail a passing car. She could search for Mr. Gilly in his basement lair.

  But she was saved from having to choose among these alternatives.

  “Doing my work for me today?” a genial voice called. Mr. Gilly came loping around the corner from Arborville Avenue. In deference to the weather, he’d tucked a muffler into the neck of his quilted utility jacket and pulled a knit cap halfway down over his bony forehead. “Nothing goes out to the curb today. They won’t be picking up on Thanksgiving.”

  Pamela opened her mouth but no sound came out. Finally, when he was about ten feet away, she managed, “Something awful has happened.” She backed shakily away from the fence post she’d been clinging to and nodded toward h
er recent discovery.

  “Not those blasted raccoons again.” Mr. Gilly hurried to her side and bent his lean frame to look around the edge of the fence. Then he froze. “Son of a gun,” he said. “Somebody’s grandmother. I’d better get the cops out here.” He scurried toward the door in the back of the building.

  The woman could even have been someone’s great-grandmother, Pamela realized, since she herself was almost old enough to be a grandmother. The clothes could have been worn by any stylish woman of any age, and the hair was a soft light brown, but the face, though pleasant, was the face of someone who had already lived much of her life. And it looked familiar. But where had Pamela seen this woman before? If the outfit was typical, it couldn’t have been in Arborville. Aside from Jean Worthington, few women in Arborville dressed with particular attention to current fashion or shopped at the mall anchored by Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom. And for a woman of this age, Nell Bascomb’s look was much more typical.

  “You better stay,” Mr. Gilly said, rejoining Pamela. “They asked me was I the one that found the body and I had to say no.” He unzipped his quilted jacket and felt around for his cigarettes. “Need one of these?” he said, offering her the pack. Pamela shook her head no. “Do you want to sit down or anything?” he asked. “You look a little shaky. We could go inside. Or I could bring a chair out.”

  But Orchard Street was barely five blocks from Arborville’s center, where the police station, fire department, rec center, and library all clustered around the town’s park. Pamela barely had time to assure Mr. Gilly that she was feeling okay now when they heard the rising and falling squeal of a siren. A police car swung around the corner and swerved into the apartment building’s parking lot. Both doors opened at once. Officer Sanchez, the woman officer with the sweet, heart-shaped face, emerged from one, and a male officer emerged from the other. Pamela wasn’t sure whether he was the same one who had come the night Amy was killed or not.