Murder, She Knit

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “I saw her at the Co-Op. I knew she recognized me, so I followed her home, back to the parking lot behind her building. Luckily the Co-Op sells kitchen tools, so I bought a carving knife. And it was dark out.” Jean paused for a moment as if collecting her thoughts. “Now you know. You know who I really am.” She waved the pistol at Pamela. “Knitting needles don’t make the best murder weapons. I was actually a little surprised that it worked. Carving knives are better, but not all that great. This will be perfect.”

  “Is your husband at home?” Pamela asked, trying to keep her voice steady. Maybe he didn’t know about the other murders. Jean would have wanted to preserve her new identity with him above all. Maybe he’d come down the stairs any minute . . . and this nightmare would be over.

  “He’s at the skeet range. I made myself look and act rich, and then I married a rich man. But money doesn’t just make itself, and he has to relax somehow. And now I realize these guns he collects can come in handy.” She stepped closer to Pamela and glanced around the living room. For a moment her face relaxed and she was Jean Worthington, the proper suburban matron, once again. “All my pretty things,” she said musingly. “I won’t let them take me away from my pretty things.” Her voice hardened. “Let’s head out the back way so I don’t get blood on my Kurdistan.” She circled around Pamela and used the gun to motion her toward the entry hall. “It would be fun to drown you in the koi pond, but I think this gun will be more efficient. Besides, there’s a dinner party on the calendar for this evening, and I don’t want to spoil my dress.”

  Pamela was holding the handle of the knitting basket, but Jean didn’t seem to notice or care.

  Pamela backed up as Jean advanced. Jean herded her down the hall toward the back of the house, the pistol steady in her hand. They passed through Jean’s kitchen with its soapstone counters, stainless-steel appliances, and splendid cabinets. From the kitchen they stepped into the breakfast room with its French doors and multipaned windows, curtained in country lace. Night was falling and the view was shadowy now, but Pamela knew from previous visits that the windows looked out on a well-manicured lawn and the koi pond, and that the French doors opened onto a slate patio.

  “Open those doors,” Jean said. Pamela reached for the brass lever on one door and pushed, edging her way through. She was still holding the knitting basket in the other hand.

  “Hurry!” Jean shoved the other door aside and poked Pamela in the shoulder with the pistol. Together they stepped onto the slate patio. Light spilling from the breakfast room made the gray slabs silvery. The wind was even stronger now. Pamela shivered despite her coat, but Jean, in only her fancy silk dress, seemed oblivious to the cold. “Keep going,” she said. “We’re heading toward the garage.” The garage loomed as a pale shape at the far corner of the property, linked to the patio by a slate path that ended at a door in the garage’s side.

  Pamela’s pulse was thudding in her ears, and her eyes were watering from the wind. She had a lively imagination—too lively, she had sometimes thought. Now it leaped ahead to the probable outcome of this adventure. She could picture what was going to happen. Jean would herd her into the garage via the side door. The main door was conveniently closed, offering the privacy Jean would need to eliminate yet a third person who knew her story. Then perhaps Jean would wait until later, after the dinner party and maybe even a change of clothes, to drive Pamela’s body somewhere and dispose of it. Pamela felt a pang as she imagined Penny waiting and waiting for her return, to no avail. What if she had left a note? Penny and her friend probably hadn’t even started their meal yet. Any note would have been found much, much too late.

  They had reached the edge of the patio, where a few steps led down to the lawn and the slate path. Pamela glanced at Jean, who motioned with the pistol for her to keep moving. She negotiated the steps. Jean followed, teetering with one foot still on the patio. “Damn,” she said, pausing. “One of my damn heels is stuck in one of the damn joints between these damn slabs of slate.”

  Pamela had never heard Jean curse before. Apparently cleaning up her vocabulary was part of leaving Tracy-Jean Slade behind. Jean continued to teeter. Even in the semidarkness it was clear she was holding the pistol steady. But suddenly Pamela had an idea. Evidently the combination of high heels and slate slabs was not one to assure good balance. She hefted the knitting basket in her hand.

  Jean wiggled the foot with the trapped heel, alternating glances at Pamela and at the offending shoe, teetering dangerously but keeping the pistol leveled at Pamela. At last the heel came free. She bent her knee and twisted her head to peer down at the shoe. A bit of light from the breakfast room windows still reached them. “That’s the end of these,” she muttered. “The leather’s a complete mess now.” Then she steadied herself and stepped down onto the path. “Turn around,” Jean growled, “and walk in front of me.”

  Pamela obeyed, alarmed to feel what could only be the pistol poking her between the shoulder blades. She picked up her pace a bit, moving easily along in her sensible everyday shoes. The slate path nearly blended into the shadowy gray of the lawn, but the slabs gleamed slightly in the moonlight. Pamela could tell she was getting ahead of Jean. The slight clicks Jean’s heels made against the slate were growing fainter. Jean must have felt confident that the pistol gave her the upper hand though, because she didn’t complain as Pamela increased the distance between them.

  I could run across the grass, Pamela suddenly reflected, and Jean would be hopeless in those shoes. She paused for a split second and her eyes roved over the lawn.

  “Don’t even think of it.” Jean’s voice was low but it carried through the chilly air. “I could shoot you right out here this minute and nobody would have a clue what was happening. People who live in privileged neighborhoods like this wouldn’t even know that what they were hearing was a gunshot.”

  Reluctantly, Pamela continued on her way. The path curved to outline one edge of the koi pond. Pamela kept moving, more slowly now. The side door of the garage was only a few yards away. She had to do something.

  Jean was catching up. Any second would come the order to open the door, and they’d step into the dark garage. Pamela glanced over her shoulder. Jean had nearly passed the koi pond. Pamela turned around. “Is the door locked?” she asked. Jean paused, confused, as if that wasn’t a detail she’d thought of.

  Then Pamela gave the knitting basket a mighty swing and let it go, aiming for Jean’s knees. The second she felt it leave her hand, she swiveled toward the lawn and dove for the ground. Suddenly the yard was ablaze with light, the lawn Technicolor green, the chrysanthemums—yes, more pots of them, massed at one end of the koi pond—violent shades of rust, orange, and gold. The pistol discharged with an echoing pop, and Pamela, still lying on the ground, heard a terrific splash.

  “Damn, damn, damn!” The word became more shrill with each repetition. Pamela wouldn’t have imagined that Jean’s voice could scale so many octaves.

  She clambered to her knees and turned to see Jean splayed on her back in the koi pond. Her midsection was submerged, but her head and shoulders were above water, as were her feet in the elegant navy pumps, now thoroughly ruined. “Damn security lights,” Jean said, squinting into the glare. “They thought you were a raccoon.” She raised a wet hand to push aside a lily pad that was clinging to the side of her face. A crowd of fish huddled near an arrangement of ornamental rocks at the pond’s edge.

  The knitting basket lay on its side near the slate path, its vividly colored contents strewn here and there on the grass.

  Pamela stood up, feeling a twinge as she straightened her back. She looked around, and her eyes caught a flash of silver in the grass. It was the pistol, lying near a potted chrysanthemum, orange. She darted forward and grabbed it as Jean squirmed to get out of the pond, fumbling at the sides to pull herself upright.

  Then a voice that she didn’t recognize as her own growled, “Stay right where you are.” But it was her own. She waved the pistol at Jean
with a delighted flourish, pulled Bettina’s smartphone out of her pocket, and used her thumb to punch in 911.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Headlights flashed on the shrubbery along the Worthingtons’ driveway, but no car appeared. Jean was still in the koi pond, struggling to pull herself to a sitting position. Pamela was watching her closely, holding the pistol at what she hoped was a threatening angle and wondering whether it had contained more than one bullet. She didn’t think she would have the nerve to fire it anyway and was hoping the police would come very soon.

  Now Jean was on her knees in the pond. She steadied herself with both hands on its edge and started to stand up. Her hair had become quite disarranged, clumps of sodden tendrils interrupting its smooth drifts of blond. She had to be cold, Pamela thought. The garage and the shrubbery provided a bit of shelter from the chilly wind, but not much.

  “Will . . . you . . . help . . . me?” Jean gasped pitifully, lifting a wet hand from the grass.

  Pamela was debating whether Jean had some trick in mind when both were distracted by a voice from the patio—a pleasant male voice calling, “Jeannie?” Pamela looked toward the sound and recognized Douglas Worthington stepping through the French doors. He repeated the call, but this time with a note of alarm. Then he charged across the patio and down the steps, shouting, “Jeannie! What’s going on?”

  Still in the pond, but standing now, she turned toward him as he advanced along the slate path. “Douglas!” Her tone was despairing. “There are things about me you don’t know.” Pamela almost felt sorry for her, and she definitely felt sorry for Douglas Worthington, even though at that moment he was two feet away and reaching for the pistol. Pamela grasped it more tightly and tucked both hands behind her back.

  “Jean? What has this woman done to you?” Douglas said. He looked more closely at Pamela. “Pamela Paterson? From down the street?” Pamela nodded. “Why is my wife in the koi pond?” He sounded more puzzled than menacing. Then his tone shifted. “Was that my pistol I saw in your hand?”

  Many questions to answer, and Pamela wasn’t sure where to start, or whether to run as fast as she could down the driveway and call 911 again.

  But the sound of a siren rising and falling on the chilly air made the decision for her. “Your wife is a murderer,” she said. “She killed Amy Morgan and that woman from the big apartment building at the corner, and she tried to kill me just now, with your pistol.”

  Douglas Worthington heard the siren too. He stepped toward his wife, lifted her out of the koi pond, and wrapped his arms around her. “Is that true?” he murmured into her wet hair.

  Jean nodded against his coat front and said in a small voice, “I wanted everything to stay just like it is. But people knew things about me.”

  Pamela wasn’t sure what to do with the pistol. She knew you weren’t supposed to point guns at people unless you were prepared to shoot them. It was possible that Douglas would lunge at her, but the police were on the way. The siren had grown louder and louder. Now its piercing wail softened to an angry moan and suddenly stopped.

  Pamela backed toward the driveway, keeping an eye on Douglas and Jean. She could see the flashing lights of the police car at the driveway’s end. She swiveled and ran toward the lights, the pistol dangling in her hand. “Back here,” she called and paused to get her breath. “Back here,” she repeated. “I’m the person who called.” She was halfway to the street now. A figure swerved from the front walk and tore across the grass. Pamela recognized Officer Sanchez. Another officer emerged from the police car and started up the driveway.

  “It’s Jean Worthington by the koi pond,” Pamela called. “She tried to kill me with her husband’s pistol. She killed those other women too.” She let the officers get ahead of her. Both were running with drawn guns. She stood on the driveway for a minute, panting shallow pants and struggling to fill her lungs with air. She was no longer frightened. In fact, she felt exhilarated, like the heroine of some great adventure.

  She continued on to the backyard. Jean and Douglas Worthington were standing side by side, Jean wrapped in her husband’s coat, his arm around her shoulder. In the glare of the security lights, they looked like actors on a movie set preparing for a retake of some particularly arduous scene. The varicolored balls of yarn scattered on the grass added an incongruous touch. The male officer was facing them, still with his gun drawn. “Where is the weapon now?” he asked.

  “I have it,” Pamela said. “She dropped it in the grass when I swung the knitting basket at her legs. But she fired it. You can see the bullet hole there in the door.” Pamela laid the pistol across the palm of her other hand and offered it to Officer Sanchez, who was standing closer to her. From the street came the sound of another siren.

  “We’ll have some questions,” Officer Sanchez said. “I’ll drive you home.”

  * * *

  Detective Clayborn showed up just as Officer Sanchez, seated on the delicate chair with the needlepoint seat, was tucking her notepad away. Pamela gave Detective Clayborn a sturdier seat and patiently went through the same details she had given Officer Sanchez. She started with the fact that she’d recognized in Jean’s knitting basket a skein of the same rare yarn Dorrie Morgan had given her when she made a gift of her sister’s knitting supplies.

  Detective Clayborn’s homely face creased in puzzlement. “Two people couldn’t happen to buy the same yarn?” he asked.

  “It was very rare yarn,” Pamela said. “Made from dog hair and dyed with turmeric. Only a few skeins in existence.”

  Looking no less puzzled, he wrote something on his notepad.

  There were more questions—many more questions. At last he stood up. “I guess it turned out okay,” he said. “I’m glad nobody else got hurt. You took a big chance.”

  * * *

  Pamela had no sooner seen Officer Sanchez and Detective Clayborn on their way than Bettina was at the door. “Did something happen?” she asked as she stepped into the entry. The look on her face mingled apprehension with excitement. “I heard the sirens and saw the police cars in front of Jean’s house.”

  “A lot happened,” Pamela said and led her friend to the kitchen. “And Jean Worthington isn’t going to kill anyone else.”

  She had just described launching the knitting basket at Jean’s knees, to Bettina’s delighted clapping, when the doorbell rang.

  “Penny has her own key,” Pamela said. “And anyway, what time is it? Only about seven, I think. She’s gone to dinner with a friend.” Pamela had been amazed to check the clock when she got home. Scarcely more than an hour had elapsed between the time she left Bettina’s for Jean’s house and the time Officer Sanchez delivered her back home.

  “I’ll get it,” Bettina said. “And then let’s adjourn to my house. Wilfred is warming up some of his Thanksgiving chili.”

  Pamela waited at her kitchen table as Bettina hurried toward the entry. She heard the door open and then Bettina’s voice saying, “Hello!” There was an indistinct reply, then Bettina’s voice again. “Yes, it is me, Bettina from across the street. I’m her neighbor too. So nice to meet you at last.”

  Pamela frowned. Bettina sounded positively flirtatious.

  Another indistinct reply, then Bettina said, “That was quite a commotion, wasn’t it. But she’s fine. And I’m sure she’d like to say hi.”

  The next thing she knew, Bettina was ushering Richard Larkin into her kitchen. He ducked coming through the door, as if—Pamela thought—a person as tall as he often risked bumping his head and he had learned to be careful.

  “Ummm.” He surveyed the room. “I like the yellow in here. It . . . works.”

  Bettina took over. “Richard saw the police cars at the corner and the police car bringing you home. He just wanted to see if you were okay or if you needed anything.”

  He smiled shyly, ducked his head again, and addressed Bettina. “It’s Rick, actually. You can call me Rick.” He glanced toward Pamela. “Both of you. Please.” He shrugged an
d looked around the kitchen again. “Well . . . I’m glad you’re okay. I just wanted to check. So . . .” He edged toward the door. He was wearing a pair of faded and patched jeans that could have been the same pair in the photo Penny had found online. A worn leather jacket completed the look.

  “Do you have plans for dinner?” Bettina laid a hand on his arm.

  “Ummm?”

  “My husband is warming up a pot of his homemade chili. He always makes it for Thanksgiving. Pamela is coming.” Bettina flashed Pamela a huge smile. “And that reminds me, Pamela. I’ve still got that leftover turkey you were going to take home.”

  “Turkey?” Richard said with a smile. “I’ve got turkey too, and all the trimmings. I can’t do chili tonight, but what if we all have a neighborly get-together tomorrow? We can pool our leftovers.” He cast a hopeful glance at Pamela.

  Pamela was just framing a refusal in her mind when a voice came from the entry. “That sounds like a lot of fun.” The front door closed with a gentle thump, and a few seconds later, Penny stepped into the kitchen.

  “My daughters will be there,” Richard said, turning toward Penny. “I’d like you to meet them.”

  “I’d love to.” Next to Richard’s great height, Penny looked tinier than usual.

  “So that settles it.” Bettina gave a decisive nod.

  “How about six?” Richard said. He and Bettina and Penny were all beaming at one another. Pamela was still sitting at the table, wondering how she could possibly veto a neighborhood potluck that had been so heartily endorsed by her daughter and her best friend.

  Richard glanced around the room again, smile still in place. “So,” he said, “tomorrow then.” He started toward the entry.

  Pamela jumped up. No point in being unmannerly, she said to herself. It had been kind of him to look in, and at least she could see him to the door. She’d have to think about the potluck though.