Christmas Card Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “Yes, yes!” Bettina’s cheer returned. “And this is what we’ll do”—words tumbled out—“Wilfred will drop us off, and he’ll come back at midnight with Woofus, and you’ll wear your red sweater with the bare shoulders . . .”

  The plan was hatched then, to commence that evening at ten p.m.

  “I’ll be over,” Pamela assured Bettina as she stepped out onto the porch and headed back to her own house.

  * * *

  The band hadn’t taken their second break yet when Pamela and Bettina entered the Skycrest Lounge. That had been the plan—to get there before the smokers stepped outside. The stage was a bright spot at the end of the dim room, the spotlights reflecting off the drum kit, the guitar, and the bass. Mack flourished his drumsticks, nodding in time to the beat and shifting his gaze from the bass player to the audience and back again. The guitar player was bent over his sleek red guitar, his fingers moving furiously, while the bass player plucked steadily at his heavy strings. The keyboard player seemed to be having the most fun, beaming at his bandmates as a torrent of notes streamed from his instrument.

  Bettina lingered near the bar as Pamela slipped out of her jacket and took a deep breath. Feeling self-conscious in the eye-catching red tunic-sweater, she headed directly toward the stage. When she reached the table reserved for the band, she paused and waved at Mack. Then she helped herself to the chair next to a woman she recognized as one of the people heading out to smoke the previous night, the woman in the long black poncho.

  Up on the stage, the song was ending in a crescendo of sound, with the guitar rising above the rest in a dramatic flourish that went on and on, until Mack brought both drumsticks down at once with a reverberating crash. The audience applauded, the bass player and guitar player slipped their instruments into stands, Mack and the keyboard player stood up, and they all left the stage.

  As Mack approached the band table, Pamela took another deep breath. She rose from her chair, held out her arms, and gestured at the empty chair next to her. “Act like you’re an old friend,” Bettina had said with a wink, “a very dear old friend.” Bettina was the actress, but as she herself had pointed out, the casting here required someone younger.

  Mack seemed puzzled, but at that moment the server appeared with two glasses of beer (courtesy of Bettina). He shrugged and the puzzlement that had twisted his lips was replaced by the swaggering smile.

  Pamela raised her glass. “To old friends,” she said.

  Mack joined the toast. “Old friends,” he echoed.

  She leaned close to him and whispered, “You probably don’t remember that night last year . . .” Encouraged by his expectant gaze, she went on. “You must meet a lot of women . . . in your line of work. Sitting up there behind that big drum kit.”

  It was easy to flirt, actually, if the person you were flirting with didn’t make your heart pound. Mack seemed happy to talk, and the only requirement on Pamela’s part seemed to be plenty of smiles, and laughter in the right places.

  The other band members had taken their seats at the band table as well, and the smokers, except for the woman in the poncho, had pulled out packs of cigarettes and headed for the exit.

  After about twenty minutes Mack looked at his watch. The PA cut out midway through “The Wind Cries Mary” and he climbed to his feet. “Back to work,” he said, leaning down to give Pamela’s hand a squeeze, and adding, “You won’t go away now, will you?”

  Pamela wished she could join Bettina, or vice versa, but that would spoil the plan. So she remained where she was, enjoying the music with its rock-and-roll feel and jazzy embellishments, as song followed song. After several songs she stifled a yawn and stole a look at her watch. It was nearing midnight, much later than she usually stayed up. Luckily, Penny had gone to Lorie Hopkins’ house for another night of binge-watching. The last one had kept her out till well after midnight.

  Things were winding down with the band. Mack had emerged from behind his drum kit and stepped up to a microphone at the side of the stage. “We’re the Mackinations,” he announced with a satisfied grin, “and we’re here every weekend. I’ll introduce the band, then we’ll do one more tune.”

  Pamela waited until Mack rejoined her, then she leaned close to his ear and whispered, “I’ve got a friend waiting, otherwise . . .” and she squeezed his hand. She hoped that anyone watching—especially the woman in the poncho—would imagine that she was setting up a future assignation.

  She walked slowly toward the double doors, past Bettina. As she crossed the room with the armchairs and plastic plants, she pulled on her jacket. Once outside the building, she lingered in the parking lot until she was sure Bettina was following her. She turned to make sure, and yes, Bettina was there and someone else was following as well, the woman in the poncho.

  She continued on her way, around the side of the motel toward the darker part of the parking lot. She passed Wilfred’s Mercedes, with two figures vigilant in the front seat. Behind her, Bettina veered toward the Mercedes, but Pamela kept walking.

  As she neared the far corner of the lot, where a few cars were nosed up against a chain-link fence, she looked over her shoulder. The figure in the poncho, barely visible in the increasing darkness, was coming closer.

  Pamela paused as if she’d been heading for one of the cars. She slipped her purse off her shoulder and tipped her head as if she was about to draw out her keys. Then she stood with her back to the pursuer, her heart reminding her of its location in her chest with an insistent thud, and sweat prickling her brow.

  “Who are you?” growled a voice, low but female.

  Pamela felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned and stared at a face that was indistinct in the darkness.

  “This isn’t the Christmas tree lot,” Pamela said, “so there’s no murder weapon at hand. And you didn’t have to kill Karma, you know. She wasn’t interested in him anymore.”

  “But you”—the growl modulated into shrillness—“you are, and you can’t have him!”

  She shoved and Pamela felt herself tipping backward. She landed on her back and her head hit the ground with a thump that echoed in her brain like Mack’s final drum crash.

  Another voice, a welcome voice, intruded then. “Get her, boy!” Wilfred’s voice urged. “Rescue Pamela!” The response was a whining bark, then a whimper.

  Pamela pushed herself to a sitting position. Wilfred and Bettina stood several yards away, and Woofus was in retreat, galloping across the asphalt toward busy Route 46.

  Then her antagonist was upon her, thrusting her backward until she was again flat on the ground, and straddling her prone body, fumbling toward her throat.

  Pamela squirmed and managed to roll over, but she still felt the questing hands, now wound tightly in her hair, tugging until her head bent back at a painful angle.

  A siren cut through the chilly air then, a sound more welcome, Pamela thought, than any she had ever heard. The police arrived to hear a desperate voice shouting, “I killed Karma, and I’ll kill you too. Mack is mine, and he’s going to stay mine!”

  Chapter Twelve

  What a pleasure it was to be tackling a new project—especially a project that involved deciphering a knitting pattern rather than a complicated set of clues!

  Pamela drew a skein of robin-egg-blue wool from her knitting bag. She had bought the yarn the previous day, at Penny’s direction, on their visit to the fancy yarn shop in Timberley. They had eaten breakfast, read the Register’s account of Bernice Treacle’s arrest in the parking lot of the Skycrest Motel and Lounge the night before, and then set off.

  At Pamela’s side Bettina paged through a knitting magazine. “I just don’t know,” she murmured. “I do need a new project, but a sweater is such a commitment . . .”

  “I’m at loose ends too,” Holly said.

  “And so am I.” Karen looked fondly at her daughter Lily, who was modeling her hand-knit red Christmas dress before being taken up to bed by her father. The backdrop was a tree decorated wit
h twinkling lights and homemade paper chains.

  Knit and Nibble was at Karen’s house that night. Karen and Dave had been gradually upgrading their décor over the past few years. The streamlined sofa in a pretty shade of blue had been an early purchase and had remained. But the coffee table salvaged from a neighbor’s garage had been replaced, and two armchairs upholstered in a stripe that coordinated with the sofa had been added. A rocking chair that Dave had refinished completed the living room’s seating arrangements.

  Nell looked quite at home in the rocking chair. Her hands were already busy at her knitting, and her white hair glowed like a halo in the light from the brass floor lamp at the chair’s side. “Idle hands . . . the devil finds work for them,” she commented. A wink suggested the words weren’t to be taken literally.

  “Roland’s hands certainly aren’t idle.” Holly turned to Roland, who was sitting next to her on the sofa and casting on from a skein of maroon yarn.

  “I don’t like to waste time,” he said without looking up, “and I’m trying to count.”

  “Sorry!” Holly’s apology included one of her dimpled smiles. The entire room fell silent, as if any comment, not just one addressed to Roland, would break his concentration.

  “. . . seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty,” he whispered, glanced at the pattern book that lay open across his knees, and then looked up.

  “What is it?” Bettina inquired.

  “A sweater for me.” Roland seemed willing to talk now. “Melanie suggested I make something for myself, since I’ve already made so many things for her.”

  During Roland’s membership in Knit and Nibble, Melanie had valiantly integrated several of his creations into her very chic wardrobe, and perhaps, Pamela suspected, she needed a little break.

  “And what’s yours?” Holly looked across the room at Pamela, who was sitting in one of the new armchairs.

  Pamela held up a knitting magazine open to the pattern Penny had chosen. The photo showed a smiling young woman in an eye-catching sweater patterned with stripes of various widths in blue, pale green, brown, and three shades of pink. “It’s for Penny,” she said.

  “Oh!” Holly clapped her hands. “That will be fun to do! You are so clever, Pamela. And not only do you knit—”

  Pamela knew what was coming next, and apparently so did Nell, because the rocking chair creaked as Nell leaned forward and one of her growl-whimper sounds emerged from her throat.

  “Yes,” Nell said, “what Pamela did was heroic and we should all be glad that Sorrel Wollcott has been cleared of a crime she should never have been charged with in the first place, but it was also very dangerous—”

  “Oh, please, Nell”—Holly leaned forward too—“it’s not every day we can hear firsthand how someone pieced together the clues to solve a murder.”

  “Might be instructive,” Roland grunted. “I vote in favor of letting Pamela talk.”

  It had been dangerous, and her back was still stiff, and she had a lump on the back of her head. She wasn’t all that eager to talk, really. But figuring out that Bernice Treacle was the real murderer had been a satisfying accomplishment. . .

  * * *

  So she explained how she knew the twist of yarn the police found at the crime scene couldn’t have anything to do with Sorrel and her knitted ornaments, because that yarn was black. The visit to the Skycrest Lounge had brought Bernice Treacle into the picture, wearing her long black mohair poncho. And an overheard conversation had identified her as Mack’s possessive girlfriend. Then a catty acquaintance had quipped, “Isn’t that what they call karma?”—apparently alluding to a rival for Mack’s affections.

  “It seemed that Bernice didn’t believe they had really broken up in October,” Pamela said. (And why should she? Pamela reflected. My flirtation with Mack established that faithfulness to one woman isn’t in his nature.)

  “So she decided to get rid of the competition, once and for all,” Holly concluded. “And the killer did stalk Karma! You were right, Roland, and I was wrong.”

  Roland allowed himself a small smile.

  “I know we’ve all barely done anything so far”—Karen rose from the sofa—“and it’s not eight o’clock yet, but . . .”

  “She’s been baking,” Holly said, “from her new cookbook. . .”

  “. . . that Holly gave me,” Karen said, completing the thought. Karen’s dessert repertoire had, up until then, been limited to chocolate chip cookies.

  “So why don’t we . . . ?” Holly led the way into Karen’s dining room. Her table—also a recent upgrade—had been spread with a tablecloth featuring sprigs of mistletoe and set with simple white china. She gestured around the table and they took their places.

  * * *

  They lingered at the table for a long while, after doing justice to the Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake and draining the last drops of coffee or tea from their cups.

  “Now,” Nell said as contentment set in and conversation lapsed, “not only does the devil find work for idle hands, but an idle mind is the devil’s workshop—and tempted to solving crimes better left to the police.” She aimed meaningful glances at Pamela and Bettina. “So lest anyone here have idle hands, or an idle mind, I’ve promised fifty knitted bunnies to the Haversack community daycare center by Easter.”

  * * *

  They stepped outside and found the ground covered with snow, and flakes swirling in the cone of light cast by the streetlamp. Pamela put up the hood of her new down coat and agreed with Bettina that it was a perfect addition to her winter wardrobe.

  KNIT

  Cozy Doll Sweater

  Bettina’s son and daughter-in-law don’t want to impose “girly” expectations on their young daughter, so they request that gifts not be the traditional things often given to young girls. Bettina had looked forward to taking her granddaughter shopping for cute outfits and showering her with dolls and doll clothes, but that is not to be. If such gifts were welcome, however, she would be busily at work knitting this cozy doll sweater.

  It’s not as tiny as the knitted sweaters, mittens, and stockings that feature as tree ornaments in Death of a Christmas Card Crafter, but it’s small enough to be a quick, fun project, and it’s assembled from basic rectangles, so it requires no fancy knitting. Since it uses only about 60 yards of medium-weight yarn, a typical skein of yarn will make plenty of doll sweaters—or you can use odds and ends left from other projects.

  Directions are scaled to fit a doll about 15 inches tall and 10 inches around the torso. There are about 4 stitches to the inch if you use medium-weight yarn and size 6 needles, so if your doll is a different size, you can measure your doll and modify the pattern to fit.

  If you’ve never knitted anything at all, it’s easier to learn the basics by watching than by reading. The Internet abounds with tutorials that show the process clearly, including casting on and off. Just search on How to Knit. You only need to learn the basic knitting stitch. Don’t worry about purl. That’s used in alternating rows to create the stockinette stitch—the stitch you see, for example, in a typical sweater. If you use knit on every row, you will end up with the stitch called the garter stitch. That’s a fine stitch for this sweater.

  The sweater is created from five rectangles. For the back, cast on 20 stitches, using the simple slip-knot caston process or the more complicated long tail process. Knit 26 rows and cast off. For the right and left fronts, cast on 10 stitches, knit 26 rows, and cast off. For the sleeves, cast on 14 stitches, knit 26 rows, and cast off.

  Casting off is often included in the Internet How to Knit tutorials, or you can search specifically for Casting off. In each case leave a yarn tail of at least 2 inches when you clip your yarn after casting off. To hide your tails, use a yarn needle—a large needle with a large eye and a blunt end. Thread the needle with each tail, work the needle in and out of the knitted fabric for ½ inch or so, pull the tail through, and cut off the bit of yarn that’s left. Thread your yarn needle with the tails left from when you ca
st on and hide them too.

  To assemble the sweater, first thread your yarn needle with more yarn and sew up the long sides of the sleeves to make tubes. Hide the tails. Then lay the back flat and position each front on top of it. The sweater will be wider than it is long, so the rectangle will be horizontal rather than vertical, and the two fronts will fit side by side. It can be helpful to pin each front in place before you begin to sew. Thread your yarn needle again and sew about halfway up each side seam. You need to leave a space on each side long enough to fit a sleeve in.

  Now add the sleeves. Continue sewing, but instead of sewing the front and back together, sew the side of one sleeve to the back. When you get to the top, keep going, but now sew along the shoulder, again sewing the front and back together for about 1 inch. Make a knot by passing the needle through a loop of yarn, pull tight, and hide the tail. Then sew the other side of the sleeve to the front, rethreading the yarn needle if necessary. Hide the tails.

  For a picture of the finished Cozy Doll Sweater being modeled by a cloth-body doll from an estate sale, as well as some in-progress photos, visit the Knit & Nibble Mysteries page at PeggyEhrhart.com. Click on the cover for Christmas Card Murder and scroll down on the page that opens.

  NIBBLE

  Chocolate Mousse Cake

  This delicious cake is a three-layer creation—if you count the dusting of cocoa powder that gives it its distinctive taste. The other two layers are a dense not-too-sweet flourless chocolate cake and a rich chocolate truffle-like mousse. It’s not technically a mousse, since it’s composed only of chocolate and heavy cream, but the effect is very mousselike.

  The cake layer of this cake comes together quite quickly, but the mousse layer requires an hour of chilling, so start the mousse layer first. The cake can also be made a day ahead and stored in the refrigerator.

  Ingredients: