Died in the Wool

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “Reynolds will be here this Sunday,” Benson Jasper said. “But some Sundays I have to go it alone. Much of our stock comes from estate sales. High end, of course, but they often happen on Sunday. Reynolds has an unerring eye for treasures.”

  Bettina gave Pamela a sidelong glance and turned back to the cabinet. “This pair of greyhounds with the little gold collars . . . so adorable.” She reached toward the filigree knob on the nearest door. “Do you think I could . . . ?”

  “Of course.” Benson Jasper was at her side in a minute and after another minute, the greyhounds—whose porcelain bodies were glazed a refined shade of russet that set off their delicate gold collars—were sitting side by side on the well-polished surface of a nearby table.

  “I can’t wait for my sister to see these,” Bettina said, and launched into a tale about her imaginary sister’s collecting habits.

  If Sunday was a busy day for J & J Antiques, Thursday—or at least Thursday morning—was quite slow. Pamela and Bettina were the only people in the shop, and Benson Jasper seemed happy to chat with Bettina while Pamela browsed among the china, glassware, and silver. She stopped to admire a serving plate rather like a deviled-egg platter but clearly designed for raw oysters, as attested by the meticulously rendered strands of seaweed that meandered along its gilt-edged border. As she pictured the feasts such a platter might grace, the quiet murmurs coming from Bettina and the antiques dealer bubbled up into laughter.

  “Me too,” Bettina said when the laughter subsided. “Of course I love her now, but when I was growing up with my sister, I’d have given anything to be an only child.”

  “It’s hard when there are two of you,” Benson Jasper said. “Both too many and too few. With a larger family, things don’t get so intense.”

  “Did Reynolds have other brothers, or was Randall the only one?” Bettina asked as Pamela moved on from the oyster plate to a pair of gilt and marble candlesticks.

  “I believe there was a black sheep, disinherited. Mustn’t have been much of a story though, or I’m sure Reynolds would have told me all about it.” His voice modulated from chatty friend to businessman. “Shall I set these greyhounds aside for your sister to take a look at Sunday? Or perhaps a gift-giving occasion is coming up, and you’d like to . . .”

  “She can be so fussy,” Bettina said. “I wouldn’t want to take a chance. So I’ll see what she’s got on her agenda for this weekend, and I hope to see you again Sunday.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Too early for lunch,” Bettina said with a sigh. “And these aren’t the kind of places where you can pop in for coffee and a sweet roll.” They were strolling back toward Irving Place and had paused in front of a restaurant called Chez Marguerite. Through the window, complete with a window box artfully planted with ivy and begonias, they could see rows of tables covered with starched white cloths. In a few hours, servers would be scurrying among them bearing menus, wine, and baskets of rolls, but just now the restaurant was dark.

  “I’m sure there are places around Union Square where we can find coffee,” Pamela said. “Do you want to get something before we head back to Arborville?”

  “I do,” Bettina said, pulling herself away from the restaurant window. “Shopping for antiques makes me hungry. And these Manhattan parking lots cost the same for three hours as they do for one. We might as well get our money’s worth.”

  So fifteen minutes later, Pamela and Bettina were sitting, not at a table covered with a starched white cloth, but at one whose scarred wooden surface still featured crumbs left behind by previous occupants. Cardboard cups of coffee bearing the Starbucks logo sat before them, along with napkins bearing slices of lemon-poppy seed cake, rich yellow flecked with black dots of poppy seeds. Sharing the table, which spanned nearly the width of the shop, were two twenty-somethings staring raptly at their smartphones and another attached to his by earbuds. A backpack occupied another chair.

  “I liked the story about the sister who collects greyhounds,” Pamela said.

  “They were cute,” Bettina said. “Probably out of my price range though, and my taste in dogs runs more to homely creatures like Woofus.”

  “What do we know that we didn’t know before?” Pamela asked. Bettina broke off a morsel of lemon-poppy seed cake and conveyed it to her mouth. As she chewed, she wrinkled her forehead in thought. Pamela answered her own question. “We know the person who’s been raiding Randall Jefferson’s house is definitely his brother.”

  Bettina swallowed and added, “So . . . motive for murder: like we said before, Randall inherited everything and Reynolds resented that. Something made him snap, and he did away with Randall so he could claim what he thought should have been his.”

  Pamela nodded. “He obviously has a taste for pretty things, since he ended up in the antiques business. It must have been particularly galling to him that all the family treasures went to his brother.” She reached for her cardboard cup of coffee and took a sip.

  “But—we don’t know what Reynolds was doing on the day of Arborfest.” Bettina twisted her lips into a disgusted pout.

  “You really tried though,” Pamela said. “That was a good angle—Sunday is the busiest day and all.”

  Bettina broke off another morsel of lemon-poppy seed cake. “Was he out scouting estate sales for antiques? Or was he in Arborville’s park waiting until the coast was clear so he could perch an aardvark on the chest of the brother he’d killed the night before?”

  Pamela broke off a morsel of her own lemon-poppy seed cake. “That is the question,” she said. “Of course, the other question is where does the aardvark come into all of this? Why return to do that unless it was fiendishly important for some reason?”

  Bettina left off nibbling at her morsel of lemon-poppy seed cake to shrug. “Make Brad Striker seem guilty?” She finished the morsel. “You know what bothers me?” she said. “Benson Jasper was so nice. Could he be in on this?”

  “Not necessarily,” Pamela said. “Reynolds could have set out Saturday night claiming he was driving up to . . . let’s say Connecticut, to be on hand at eight a.m. for a particularly tantalizing estate sale. But really he drives to Arborville and kills his brother. Then he sleeps in the family home—remember, we think he had his own key. Sunday he stops by the park to nab an aardvark and perch it on the corpse’s chest. Then he drives back to Manhattan to report to Benson that he scored big at the estate sale, and he’ll be picking up things and bringing them to the shop a few boxes at a time.”

  “Why would he take an extra aardvark?” Bettina said.

  Pamela felt a little jolt, as if she’d shifted position in a chair with one short leg. “Because,” she said, much louder than she meant to, and Bettina chimed in, “there was another brother.” They stared at each other. Pamela slapped the table with both hands. One of their tablemates looked up from her smartphone in alarm.

  “We’ve got to talk to Reynolds,” Pamela said. “Maybe there’s a greyhound in your future.”

  * * *

  “I’m off again,” Bettina said as she pulled into Pamela’s driveway and Pamela started to get out of the car. “Someone from the nature center in Timberley is bringing turtles to show the kids in the summer youth program, and I’ve got to cover it for the Advocate.”

  Pamela had no sooner turned the key in her front door than her phone began to ring. Dropping her purse on the chair in the entry, she hurried to the kitchen to answer it.

  “Hi there,” said an unfamiliar female voice in response to her “Hello.” The voice went on. “Got the note you stuck under my door. Very old school way to communicate. I like that. Nightingale here, in case you hadn’t guessed—or do you go around leaving notes all over the place?”

  “Oh . . . no. I . . . hardly ever. That is . . .” Pamela struggled to collect herself. Her heart had sped up as soon as she heard the word “Nightingale.” She’d hoped for a response to the note, of course, but she hadn’t planned what her response to the response would be.


  “So . . .” Nightingale had a pleasant voice, rich and deep, like the voice of an actress—or maybe one of those lady DJs on the jazz stations. “You like the hat. I’ll give you the pattern, sure. Always glad to commune with a fellow knitter—or do you even still want it? I’ve been gone awhile. Needed some sea air. There’s ions in it, you know. Clears out the brain, like cleansing. When did you leave that note, anyway?”

  “Monday, I think,” Pamela said. “Shall I pick it up? The pattern?” Say yes, she whispered. I need to talk to you in person.

  “I could photograph it with my phone,” Nightingale said, and Pamela held her breath. But then Nightingale added, “Except I don’t have one of those fancy things. And you know what? I like it that way. It’s restful. Why would I want to be staring at a little screen all the time?”

  “I’ll be right over,” Pamela said. “I’ll photograph it with my phone.” She’d report to Bettina after Bettina got through covering the turtle demonstration. Before she left, Pamela tucked the yarn, hat, and knitting needles from under the pillow into one of her canvas bags. Bettina was so good at getting people to talk, but Pamela didn’t want to wait. She’d do the best she could.

  * * *

  Nightingale was attractive, in a flamboyant way. The red hair indeed was wild, curly and uncontrolled, framing a face in early middle age, with large eyes, strong brows, and an expression of amused worldliness. She was wearing a T-shirt with a heart on the front and a gauzy skirt that reached her ankles. Her feet were bare. The apartment, a studio, featured a huge bed covered with an Indian-print bedspread, a beat-up chrome and Formica table, and a pair of purple velvet chairs.

  A rumpled page that looked like it had been torn out of a magazine sat on the table. Shown in the black and white illustration that accompanied the directions, the hat was not nearly as eye-catching as Nightingale’s garish renditions.

  “Have at it,” Nightingale said, waving toward the table as Pamela retrieved her phone from her purse. She watched as Pamela focused on the page, clicked, and turned the page over. “Those things can be useful, I guess.”

  Pamela finished, made a show of checking that the photos were in focus, and smiled. “Thank you so much. The knitting club will be delighted,” she said as she slipped the phone back into her purse. Nightingale smiled back. “Nancy Billings is a lovely person,” Pamela added. “Do you have other connections in Arborville?”

  “No,” Nightingale said dryly. “And I try never to go there. The place might as well be named ‘Bourgeoisville. ’”

  Pamela suppressed a laugh. She actually thought the “Bourgeoisville” quip was rather funny. “But your niece,” she said. “You made her the hat.”

  “Maybe she can still be rescued,” Nightingale said. “But I doubt it. I go there for Christmas. That’s it.”

  “Arborville can be a bit dull,” Pamela said. “But there was that murder.” She watched Nightingale’s face carefully and went on. “Randall Jefferson.” There was no reaction. “Not many people were close to him though,” Pamela said.

  “I wouldn’t know.” Nightingale picked up the knitting pattern and glanced around the room as if trying to recall where it came from.

  “That page looks like it’s been handled a lot,” Pamela said. “Is this pattern a favorite?”

  “Who’d make this thing more than once?” Nightingale wrinkled her nose.

  “Well . . .” Pamela reached toward where the canvas bag sat on one of the velvet chairs. Trying to ignore the tight feeling in her throat and the tremble in her hands, she slowly drew out the orange and chartreuse hat and the knitting needles with the beginnings of the tail.

  Nightingale stared at the spectacle. Then she attempted an unconcerned shrug and said, “So? Somebody else has a copy of the September 1961 issue of Yarn Fancies. What of it?” She used her fingers like a comb to push her tangled mass of hair away from her forehead.

  “It’s exactly the same yarn as in the hat you gave your niece,” Pamela said. “That’s quite a coincidence.” She was feeling calmer now.

  Nightingale frowned. “What are you, anyway? An undercover cop?” Pamela didn’t answer. She concentrated on looking stern. “Okay,” Nightingale said at last. “It’s my project. But I don’t know how it got to wherever you found it.”

  “It was under one of the pillows on Randall Jefferson’s bed.” Pamela locked her gaze onto Nightingale’s, recalling the few times she’d had to exert her motherly authority to find out what Penny was up to.

  “Can’t think how it got there,” Nightingale said. She fidgeted with her hair again. Perhaps nerves were making her perspire and her forehead needed air.

  “I could return it to where it came from,” Pamela said, tucking the project back into the canvas bag and clutching the bag closed with both hands. “Police are bound to find it, and they’ll use DNA to trace it right to you. They’ve released their chief suspect because he turned out to have an alibi. So they’re back to square one.”

  “I thought you were the police,” Nightingale said.

  “Never mind what I am.” Pamela slung the bag over her shoulder and took a few steps toward the door. “The relationship you had with Randall Jefferson seems very suspicious, especially if you’re not willing to acknowledge it.”

  “I knew him.” Nightingale grabbed Pamela’s arm and steered her toward one of the purple velvet chairs. Pamela lowered herself into it, still holding tight to the canvas bag. Nightingale sat in the other. “We were casual friends,” she said. “We got together every once in awhile to chat about . . . about . . . opera. I’m a huge fan.”

  “The knitting project was under one of the pillows on his bed,” Pamela said.

  “That’s not his bed,” Nightingale said firmly. “It’s the guest room bed.”

  “He kept his clothes and his glasses and his bedtime reading material in the guest room?” Pamela said. “Seems odd.”

  “Okay. Um, well.” Nightingale licked her lips. Her glance flickered around the room as if she was an actress frantically searching for a cue card. “He must have taken it up to his bedroom and put it under the pillow. We were chatting in the kitchen. Over coffee. I knew I’d left my knitting somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where.” She ventured a smile. “You know how it is when you love to knit—you carry it around with you wherever you go.” Her eyes begged Pamela to acknowledge their kinship as fellow knitters.

  “That’s very far-fetched,” Pamela said. “And I don’t believe it. Neighbors saw you visiting him late at night, and then leaving again.” She stood up and started toward the door. “The hat’s going back under the pillow.”

  “Why?”

  Pamela turned. Nightingale was still sitting in the purple velvet chair, her face with its strong features looking like a tragic mask, and her tangled hair vibrating as if alive. “You were having a relationship with him,” Pamela said. “You’re a grownup, he was a grownup, so why lie about it unless there’s some reason you don’t want anyone to know you knew him? Like the fact that you killed him?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Nightingale moaned. “I didn’t. I really, really didn’t.”

  “So why not admit you were involved with him? You might have information that would help the police find his killer.” Pamela retraced her steps and perched on the chair again.

  “It wasn’t a conventional relationship,” Nightingale said, her eyes focused on her hands, which were gripping each other tightly in her lap. She wore several large rings, and Pamela hoped the combination of large rings and intense squeezing wasn’t too hard on the fingers involved.

  “Lots of relationships aren’t conventional,” Pamela said encouragingly.

  “He paid me.” Nightingale sneaked a furtive glance at Pamela, then her gaze returned to her hands.

  “Oh?” Pamela tried to make the word sound nonjudgmental.

  “It wasn’t sexual!” Nightingale straightened her shoulders and raised her head. She fixed Pamela with a defiant stare.

 
“No?” Pamela tightened her lips to suppress any hint of amusement.

  “He had insomnia, okay?” Now Nightingale sounded angry. Perhaps she’d had to explain one too many times that accepting money for visiting a man late at night didn’t always mean what people thought it meant. “His mother was a knitter. The only thing that helped him get to sleep was hearing the click of knitting needles while a woman’s voice told bedtime stories. He especially liked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. He envied Sleepy.”

  Pamela couldn’t contain herself. Laughter bubbled up, driven partly by amusement and partly by relief. She’d begun to like Nightingale and was just as glad to cross her off the list of suspects—especially now that Reynolds Jefferson was looking so guilty.

  “I did feel bad when I heard he’d been killed. And those local radio stations can be so ghoulish with all the gruesome details.”

  “So why didn’t you come forward and say you knew him? The police were interviewing everybody they could find.”

  “I went away,” Nightingale said. “I didn’t want to hear about it anymore.” She sniffed vigorously and blinked a few times. Perhaps she was struggling with tears. She leaned toward Pamela. “I liked Randy,” she said earnestly. “He could be stuffy, but it wasn’t his fault. His dad was stuffy—that’s what he said anyway. Determined for his sons to be gentlemen. Ivy League schools and all that. I didn’t want it to come out that he had to have somebody tell him bedtime stories in order to fall asleep. I didn’t want people to laugh at him.”

  Pamela hated to think of herself as a nosy person, and she’d learned everything she needed to learn. But she couldn’t resist asking one more question. Nightingale saved her the trouble.

  “You’re wondering how I met him, aren’t you?” Nightingale asked, looking more cheerful. She nodded in response to Pamela’s surprised expression. “I can be kind of psychic. I knew what you were thinking.” She tapped her forehead with an index finger.