Died in the Wool

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “A delicate way to put it,” Bettina said. “I was thinking that too—but knitting in bed is so domestic. If I was in that . . . business . . . I don’t think I’d linger.”

  “No,” Pamela said. “So we’re back to rejected love. Him rejecting her. She loved him, and she hung in there, hoping and hoping that eventually he’d see the light, that he’d care for her the way she cared for him.”

  “But he was cold.” Bettina stamped her foot as if personally angry at Randall Jefferson. Woofus gave an alarmed start and hopped away. “Cold—and so formal.”

  “She probably thought he was brilliant though, like having a crush on a professor in college.”

  “But then, finally, she’s fed up,” Bettina said, furrowing her brow and gesturing dramatically, as if making a case in a courtroom. “She’s waiting on his doorstep at the appointed time. It’s Saturday night—the night he begrudgingly lets her pretend it’s date night. Maybe she brings food—or cooks dinner for him. She’s been looking forward to Saturday night all week.” Bettina’s eyes flashed. “But he’s not there. She knows where he is—at the library, because he cares more about his research than he cares about her.”

  They had stopped walking. Pamela took up the story, as Woofus investigated a bed of petunias along the sidewalk. “She drives down the hill to the library. People are leaving after working on their booths, but she’s just arriving. She sits on that pretty wooden bench near the rock garden to wait for the library to close. He comes out. He’s puzzled to see her there, but he joins her on the bench. She’s restrained at first—they seem to just be a couple enjoying the spring night.”

  “The library empties out,” Bettina chimed in. “People wander away. Nobody is left near the library but them.”

  “He becomes angry.” Pamela’s delivery wasn’t as dramatic, but Bettina nodded enthusiastically.

  “Why are you following me around?” Bettina growled, acting Randall Jefferson’s part and scowling ferociously.

  “I love you,” Pamela whispered.

  “Well, I don’t love you,” Bettina growled. “You knew the ground rules when we started.”

  “But I—” Caught up in the story, Pamela felt her throat tighten.

  “And then—” Bettina clapped her hands. “She picks up the rock and bam. That’s it. Under the table he goes.” Woofus’s leash dropped to the ground.

  “What about the aardvark?” Pamela asked.

  “We’ll figure that out later,” Bettina said. “First things first. Let’s find that poodle.”

  Chapter Nine

  Suddenly distracted from his investigation of the petunias, Woofus raised his head. His shaggy ears quivered. He spun around, then careened past Pamela and Bettina, trailing his leash behind him. Bettina started after him, heading down the block they’d just come up. A furious yipping drew Pamela’s attention in the opposite direction. Emerging from the cross street and heading toward the petunia patch was a tiny white poodle straining at his leash. Holding the leash was a small, sturdy woman with gray hair pulled into an untidy ponytail. An oversized pair of sunglasses perched on her nose.

  A boisterous laugh erupted from her wide mouth when she caught sight of Woofus. He was cowering at Bettina’s side, regarding the scene from the other side of the street. Bettina had recovered the end of the leash, and her free hand was resting on the nervous dog’s head.

  “It’s the big ones that are the biggest sissies,” the woman said. “My little Rambo here doesn’t let anybody push him around.” She followed the statement with another laugh, equally boisterous.

  Pamela’s first impulse was to retreat across the street too, but it was clear they’d met the very person they’d set out to find. She arranged her lips in her social smile and said, “My, what an adorable dog—and so brave.”

  Within moments, Bettina had joined her, though Woofus lingered a good ten feet away, the leash stretched to its maximum length.

  “I thought I knew all the dog walkers,” the woman said. “Are you new in town?” She took off the sunglasses and studied Bettina, then turned to examine Pamela, grinning suddenly. “Aha!” she said. “I see why you’re hiding out. You’re the knitters, aren’t you? Looking for a neighborhood to walk where you won’t be recognized.”

  Pamela and Bettina looked at each other. Before either could respond, the woman spoke again. “Don’t worry—I’m not one of those gossips. No, sir, not me. Nobody’s business, that’s what I say.” The poodle was gazing up at her. She leaned down and, in a high-pitched singsong voice, addressed the dog. “Nobody’s business, is it Rambo? Nobody’s business at all.”

  “It’s pretty up here,” Pamela ventured, “but so steep.”

  “Oh, it is that,” the woman said, spinning around to face up the hill. “Heading this way?” She took off at a trot and the poodle followed, its tiny legs moving so fast they were almost a blur.

  Pamela fell in line behind the poodle. She could hear Bettina panting behind her, and the jangle of Woofus’s leash, but her own long legs allowed her to gain on the small woman. By the time they reached the next cross street, they were walking side by side.

  “Have you lived up here long?” Pamela asked.

  “Forever,” the woman said. “People come and go, but we’ve just stayed.” She launched into a catalogue of all the houses she and her husband had looked at before settling on the one they bought. “Thirty years ago. Seems like yesterday. People come and go, yes, come and go, but we came, and we’re still here.”

  They’d covered three more blocks. Now they paused at the corner of Harold and Nell’s street. Pamela herself was feeling a bit winded, but the small woman showed no signs of having just climbed one of Arborville’s steepest hills. In fact, she let loose another of her boisterous laughs. “They come and go,” she crowed delightedly. “Yes, indeed they do. And he just went.” She pointed down the block toward the corner where Randall Jefferson’s house was situated.

  Pamela looked around for Bettina, but she was too far away to help make use of this promising opening, and Woofus was lagging even farther behind. “Oh, my,” Pamela said, touching her fingertips to her lips. “That’s not where Randall Jefferson lived, is it?”

  “The very house.”

  “Did you know him?” she asked, glancing around to check on Bettina’s progress up the last stretch of hill.

  “We’re two doors away.” She gabbed Pamela’s arm. “See, the gray shingle house, and his house is the big buff stucco one on the corner.”

  “Neighbors,” Pamela said.

  “He was quite the character, I’ll say that. Standoffish, not friendly at all, but living that close to somebody, you get to know them anyway.”

  “All alone, in that big house,” Pamela murmured. Bettina was so good at getting people to say what she wanted, but she was still half a block away. Pamela glanced around again and beckoned discreetly.

  Bettina called, “Coming!” Woofus bounded ahead, Rambo yipped, and Pamela almost missed hearing the small woman say, “Not so alone.”

  “Not so alone?” Pamela was not actually as surprised as she pretended. “Do you mean he had a lady friend?”

  “I guess you could call her that,” the small woman said. The expression on her face combined amusement and skepticism. Pamela wondered whether the word in dispute was “lady” or “friend.” Or maybe both.

  Bettina arrived, with Woofus still ten paces behind and straining at his leash to keep as much distance between himself and Rambo as possible.

  The small woman went on. “She came and went, always at night. Stayed maybe an hour, sometimes less, sometimes more.” Pamela was wondering how to bring Bettina up to date on this promising revelation, but the small woman saved her the trouble. “People aren’t what they seem,” she announced. “Randall Jefferson—to look at him you’d think he was the perfect gentleman, but I could tell you things . . .”

  Bettina widened her eyes and suppressed a grin, then she turned to the small woman. “It’s obviou
s you’re a very observant person,” she said.

  “Well . . .” The small woman acknowledged the compliment with a nod. She stretched her lips into a satisfied smile. “I couldn’t see much. Like I was telling your friend, it was always dark when she paid her . . . visits. But sometimes she parked near the streetlight. We don’t get much traffic up here, so when you hear a car in the middle of the night, naturally you get curious. Not his type at all, I wouldn’t have thought. Of course, he wasn’t taking her to the opera. Or anywhere, for that matter, but he’s devoted—was devoted, I should say—to the opera, you know—reads Opera News faithfully. We get his mail sometimes. Anyway, she had red hair, but not a normal color, if you know what I mean.”

  Bettina raised a hand to her own hair, which was a color she herself described as “not found in nature.”

  “Oh, yours is very attractive.” The small woman reached out and patted Bettina’s arm. “But I mean red, and long, and curly, and all over the place. And the clothes! Capes, and boots, and long skirts like a gypsy, and sandals, even in the winter.”

  Rambo had been nosing enthusiastically at a cluster of ferns surrounding the base of a huge maple tree. Meanwhile Woofus had gradually crept up the hill and stood huddled against Bettina’s leg. Now Rambo looked around as if satisfied with his explorations among the ferns. He bounded across the stretch of lawn between the maple tree and the sidewalk and lunged at Woofus, yipping furiously.

  Woofus reared back, then dashed in front of Bettina and headed down the hill, jerking Bettina’s arm across her body until the leash stretched tight and slipped out of her hand. It trailed along the sidewalk, bouncing and jangling. Bettina paused a minute to get her balance, then took off after Woofus, calling to him to watch for cars.

  “I guess I’d better go too,” Pamela said, raising her voice over the yips. She danced to the side as Rambo, ignoring the tug on his collar as his mistress held fast to his leash, tried to pursue Woofus down the hill.

  “You just hang in there,” said the small woman—or yelled, actually, since Rambo was still yipping furiously. “Don’t let those gossips get you down. The police will have this solved in no time. My money’s on the football coach. He’d be locked up right now except his brother’s on the town council. Of course his wife is going to say he’s not a murderer.”

  * * *

  Pamela caught up with Bettina and Woofus a few blocks above Arborville Avenue. Bettina had lowered herself to the curb and was panting and fanning herself, while Woofus hovered nearby, occasionally dipping his head gracefully to nudge her arm with his muzzle.

  “I wonder if Detective Clayborn knows about the red-headed woman,” Pamela said, joining Bettina on the curb.

  “I expect so,” Bettina said. “I think the police interviewed the neighbors. Our talkative friend might even have been able to provide him with a license plate number.”

  “Do you think he’s followed up?” Pamela asked.

  Bettina shrugged. “Probably not. As far as he knows, there’s nothing but a gossipy neighbor to connect her with Jefferson. So she parked on his street? So what?”

  Pamela nodded. “Because he doesn’t know about the knitting project under the pillow. Are you going to tell him?”

  “I’d have to tell him how we found out about it, wouldn’t I?” She ran a comforting hand over Woofus’s shaggy back.

  “I guess you would.”

  “So, no.” Bettina pulled herself up and gave Woofus’s leash a shake.

  * * *

  Meadowside was the next town south of Arborville, different from its northern neighbor only in being slightly larger and boasting a giant, fluorescent-lit supermarket with wide aisles and a huge parking lot. Convenient as the Meadowside supermarket was—and often even cheaper—most of Arborville’s residents preferred their own quaint Co-Op Grocery where you could always count on running into someone you knew and coming home with both a supply of groceries and an update on doings around town.

  Pamela and Bettina were quite aware of the doings around town that had been providing fodder for Co-Op shoppers for the past few days. It was for that reason Bettina was now pulling into the Food Plus lot.

  “It’s Wednesday,” she said, “so that means meatloaf, and Wilfred made up a list for me. Tomorrow he’ll do some chili, and Friday will be pizza from When in Rome . . .” She glided into a spot, switched off the ignition, dropped the keys in her purse, and pulled out a small sheet of paper. “Then there’s the barbecue on Sunday, but I’ve got time to figure that out.” Bettina hosted a “Welcome Summer” barbecue every year and had been planning this one for several weeks.

  “I’ll bring something,” Pamela said. “How about deviled eggs?” She reached into the back seat for the canvas bags she’d brought along.

  They discussed the menu for the barbecue as they strolled toward the wide glass doors of the supermarket, pausing along the building’s brick façade to collect carts.

  Half an hour later, they had loaded their groceries into Bettina’s trunk and were heading home. Pamela had bought bread, as close to the Co-Op whole grain as Food Plus offered, and cheese and eggs. She’d stocked up on salad ingredients and fruit and bought some already-cooked shrimp at the Food Plus fish counter. Tonight, she’d make a green salad with oil and vinegar dressing and toss the shrimp in. Then maybe there would be toast with grated cheese on top, melted under the broiler, and some sliced tomatoes—though only grocery-store ones—on the side. The next night could be omelets, and maybe she’d borrow Bettina’s idea of pizza for Friday. Or if Penny had dinner plans, she’d make another salad.

  * * *

  At home, groceries put away, Pamela climbed the stairs to her office. Catrina had lately taken to napping on the computer keyboard, and was sprawled across Pamela’s desk now, a sleek swathe of glossy black fur. She allowed herself to be gently lifted to the floor and wandered off toward the door, tail waving gracefully.

  The article on weaving one’s own bed linens waited on her computer, along with her boss’s instructions to do whatever she needed to do to bring it up to Fiber Craft’s editorial standards. She’d get to it soon, but first she had another task, unrelated to her professional duties.

  She opened the Google search page and keyed “Wendelstaff College” into the waiting rectangle. The Wendelstaff College website came up with an image of the central quadrangle, crisscrossed by paths and flanked with ivy-covered buildings. She clicked on the “Departments” tab and located a description of the history department with a list of faculty—among them the person she was interested in: Marcus Verteel.

  Marcus Verteel had his own page, complete with a list of his degrees and his many publications—including articles in Studies in Eighteenth-Century American History. Most interesting to Pamela, however, was the fact that his page also featured his picture. He might have been a formidable adversary in print, but . . . in person? Marcus Verteel’s photo showed a man of at least sixty, with neatly combed white hair, a well-groomed moustache and goatee, and little rimless glasses. A person can perform amazing feats when adrenalin is surging, but—she studied the image of the mild-looking professor—could he have picked the yam-shaped rock out of the rock garden and used it to murder Randall Jefferson?

  * * *

  She was so caught up in untangling the syntax of the woman who wove her own bed linens that Penny had crept all the way up the stairs before Pamela was aware how late it had gotten. “I fed Catrina,” Penny said. “She was getting quite desperate. And,” she added, “I brought some food for you. From the Co-Op.”

  Pamela turned. Her daughter was standing in the doorway, her dark hair setting off her blooming complexion, and still dressed in the green-print dress and pearl earrings she’d worn to work. Pamela saved her in-progress editing and closed the file. She arched her back and stretched, then turned off her desk lamp and followed Penny down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  “Whole-grain bread,” Penny called over her shoulder. “I know you can’t get the kind
you like anywhere else. And I got some good cheese.” The groceries were arranged on the kitchen table—the crusty bread on a cutting board with the cheese, a buttery-yellow wedge of Swiss patterned with random holes. “And this,” Penny said, holding out a white bakery bag, “is crumb cake.”

  “Thank you!” Pamela reached out to give her daughter a hug. “Bettina and I went to Food Plus, but they don’t have the right bread, or the really good cheese. Or the crumb cake.”

  “Mom?” Pamela still held her daughter in a hug and couldn’t see her face. But her voice sounded suddenly mournful. Pamela stepped back. Penny grabbed her mother’s hands. “It’s good you didn’t go to the Co-Op today.” Pamela felt a twinge of alarm. Penny’s pretty mouth twisted and she bit her lip. “There’s a big box out in front. People are putting the aardvarks in it.”

  Chapter Ten

  “No good deed goes unpunished. That’s all I have to say.” Wilfred returned his coffee cup gently to its saucer and stood up. He walked to the porch railing and gazed over the hedge that separated Pamela’s yard from the church next door. “That young man is doing a nice job over there,” he observed in a more cheerful voice. “Very industrious.”

  Joe Taylor was tidying the shrubbery that edged the slate path from the sidewalk to the church steps.

  But Bettina wasn’t ready to let the subject drop. “Dumping the aardvarks in a cardboard box in front of the Co-Op—after all the work we did on them! And I suppose people will want their money back!” She leaned forward in her chair, and the plate with the remains of her crumb cake nearly slid off her lap.

  “Dear wife, dear wife—” Wilfred retreated from the porch railing to stroke Bettina’s shoulder.