Knit One, Die Two

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “I’ll help,” Pamela said, rising from the sofa and hurrying across the room. Her words were echoed by Holly, who hopped to her feet.

  “No, no!” Bettina waved her hands at Holly. “Three people is plenty.”

  “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” Wilfred added.

  “Wilfred made apple pie,” Bettina said, pausing on the edge of the dining room as Pamela and Wilfred proceeded to the kitchen. “And there’s ice cream to go on top. Just sit tight.”

  The kitchen was fragrant with the bitter spiciness of the coffee, which waited in a large carafe on the stove. Wilfred began to cut the pie and ease slices onto Bettina’s pottery dessert plates.

  “Caralee seems to be on her best behavior tonight,” Bettina observed as she stepped into the kitchen.

  “She has been quieter at least,” Pamela said. She took a carton of cream from the refrigerator and filled the cream pitcher.

  “Margo is such good friend of mine, and an old friend,” Bettina said. “I’m sure she’s got her hands full with Caralee as a permanent house guest now. But family is family.” She sighed and handed Pamela a small wooden tray for the cream and sugar. “Too bad about the divorce. I’m sure Caralee felt much more at home in the city.”

  “How many for ice cream?” Wilfred asked as he laid the knife and server inside the empty pie plate and transferred the pie plate to the counter.

  “I’ll deliver the cream and sugar,” Pamela said, picking up the wooden tray, “and take orders for à la mode.”

  She was back in a few minutes. Six steaming mugs of coffee were ready to be served and two teas were steeping alongside them. Bettina arranged four mugs on a larger wooden tray, along with forks, spoons, and napkins—the latter a homespun gray-and-green stripe from the craft shop. As Bettina headed for the living room, Pamela relayed the ice cream orders to Wilfred: “Seven with, but Nell and Roland just want a little bit, and Caralee doesn’t want any at all and not a huge piece of pie.”

  “One pie for eight people,” Wilfred said. “None of the pieces are huge.”

  “They’re just right,” Pamela assured him as he deposited a glistening scoop of vanilla ice cream on the flaky lattice surface of a pie wedge.

  Bettina delivered the remaining mugs and Pamela delivered pie. When Wilfred entered carrying the last two slices, Holly followed his every motion as he handed Bettina her plate and then lowered himself next to Roland on the hearth.

  “You are just awesome,” she said. “And this pie looks amazing.”

  “Eat up, eat up!” Wilfred said jovially.

  A companionable silence descended on the group, punctuated only by occasional moans of enjoyment. When the plates were nearly empty and people had reached the coffee-sipping stage, Nell spoke up. “How are your rehearsals coming, dear?” she asked, directing her kindly gaze at Caralee.

  Caralee twitched on the sofa, as if surprised to be spoken to. “They’re good,” she said. “They’re fine.” She reached forward to set her empty plate on the coffee table.

  “Such a powerful story,” Nell said. “I love the movie, the old one, with Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton. And the actress who played Madame Defarge—such a dramatic role. You’ll be perfect.” Caralee grunted noncommittally and focused on her coffee.

  “Oh, I love that movie too.” Bettina’s fork, laden with a bite of pie, paused halfway to her mouth. “And I remember reading the novel in English class so long ago.”

  When all that remained on the plates were pastry flakes and trails of melted ice cream, and all the mugs had been drained, Wilfred began to gather things up. Holly insisted on helping and hopped up to lend a hand. On the hearth, Roland was methodically thrusting needles and looping yarn, oblivious to the cheerful hubbub around him. Karen was blushing as Nell inquired how she was faring in her early stages of pregnancy—in June she’d announced that she and her husband were expecting their first child. Holly was congratulating Wilfred on his pie and interrupting herself to compliment Bettina on the design of her pottery mugs. And Bettina was assuring Nell that a little sugar had never hurt anyone, especially when combined with something as healthful as apples.

  Pamela remained on the sofa, not quite ready to pick up her knitting again. Next to her, Caralee squirmed as she murmured, “Quite warm in here,” and began to push up the sleeves of her black sweater.

  Normally Pamela was not a nosy person, and Caralee certainly wasn’t a close friend—hardly really a friend at all, though Pamela felt a certain sympathy for her. Perhaps, like many creative people, Caralee had never been willing to renounce uncompromising honesty in order to win social acceptance, and she seemed shy as well. Pamela herself was shy. When meeting new people, she sometimes had to remind herself that what she called her “social smile” was in order.

  So not being a nosy person, Pamela wouldn’t have made any comment at all as the sleeve on the arm closest to her slid up above Caralee’s elbow—and she saw what was revealed. But she didn’t think fast enough to suppress the horrified gasp she suddenly realized was her own.

  Chapter Two

  “Yes, it’s quite a bruise, isn’t it?” Caralee said dryly.

  Nearly half of Caralee’s forearm was covered by a dark blotch that shaded from blue-gray to olive green. Down the center a scab like the stroke of a pen marked a long scratch.

  “What on earth happened?” Pamela found herself whispering, despite the fact that Wilfred, Holly, and Karen had disappeared into the kitchen, Roland was intent on his pink angora, and Bettina and Nell were on the other side of the room and deep in conversation.

  “Last week a pile of stuff fell on me in the storage room where the Players keep their scenery. It knocked me down and almost knocked me out. I still have a cut on my head too.” She shrugged. “Perils of acting, I guess. I usually get to rehearsal before everybody else, so I was rummaging around for some chairs to set up. Some fool had jammed them in so tight I had to struggle to get them out. Then it all came down.”

  “Did you see a doctor?” Pamela asked, reaching out to touch Caralee’s hand but then pulling back. She studied Caralee’s face. It was quite emotionless. Apparently she saved her emotions for the stage.

  Caralee shrugged again. “I was basically okay,” she said, “and the show must go on, though I didn’t realize how bad it was till the next day. The odd thing is, that night I told a couple of the guys what had happened and we rearranged the storage room to make sure nothing else could fall. But the same thing happened again, just last night. Luckily I jumped out of the way in time.”

  Caralee was silent then and returned to her knitting. Pamela watched for a minute, but the project taking shape on Caralee’s needles was almost as disturbing a sight as the bruise on her arm. The yarn was coarse, the shade of gray reminded Pamela of her basement floor, and the stitches were a jumble of knitting and purling with no apparent logic.

  At the other end of the sofa, Holly and Karen were back from the kitchen and had returned to the topic of home improvements, conferring about paint colors and wallpaper patterns suitable for a baby’s room. Bettina joined the conversation, lamenting that the “Boston children,” as she called her Boston-based son and his wife, had forbidden any gender-specific décor, clothing, or toys for their baby daughter.

  “I was so looking forward to dolls, and doll clothes,” she said. Her other two grandchildren, offspring of the “Arborville children,” were boys.

  “I wouldn’t mind a doll for my little . . . when she comes . . .” Karen’s shy voice trailed off.

  “I would love to give her a doll,” Bettina said. “I just don’t see the point in being so . . . rigid. Girls will be girls.” Bettina tossed her head and her earrings bobbed. They were jade pendants, set off by her bright red hair, and they matched her gauzy jade-colored shirt and wide-legged pants. “Why, look at Roland here, with his pink angora sweater for Melanie, and I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”

  “Did Ramona like her pink doggy sweater?” Holly leaned past Caralee and P
amela toward where Roland sat on the hearth.

  Roland looked up, as startled as if he’d been asked an unexpected question in a corporate meeting room.

  “The pink sweater you made for Ramona,” Nell said. “Holly is wondering if Ramona liked it.”

  “I’m . . . I’m not sure she noticed it was different from her old one.” Roland licked his lips. “Dogs . . . I don’t think they see colors the way we do.” He frowned for a minute and then added, “In fact, I’m quite sure they don’t.”

  “I love those programs on the nature channel,” Bettina said. “Such things you learn.”

  “Yes,” Nell agreed, and she launched into a description of a recent series on rhinoceros conservation. Pamela felt awkward carrying on conversations that required nearly shouting to be heard across a room, but Caralee hadn’t proven to be a very forthcoming conversational partner. Nevertheless Pamela felt awkward too sitting next to a fellow knitter in complete silence. So she was just as happy when Roland once again consulted his impressive watch to announce that it was nine o’clock and time for him to say goodnight.

  Caralee reached under the coffee table and pulled out the attractive carry-all she stored her knitting in, and Holly and Karen began to pack up, chatting now about window treatments that could serve as a baby turned into a little girl and then even a teenager.

  From across the room, Bettina caught Pamela’s eye. “Don’t leave yet,” she mouthed, as Roland and Nell stood up.

  People made their way toward the door, Holly taking Nell’s arm and insisting she accept a ride back up the hill since Holly and Karen were going almost that far anyway. Pamela and Bettina watched as the three of them headed toward the street and Roland followed toward where his Porsche waited at the curb. As Caralee paused under the porch light, from across the street came a male voice. Pamela couldn’t make out the words, but Caralee turned and raised an arm. The gesture was either a wave or a motion like one would make to shoo a fly away. Pamela wasn’t sure which.

  Caralee crossed the street, then Bettina nodded toward the house next to Pamela’s. “Well,” she said, “he’ll be back in a few days.”

  “Who?” Pamela said.

  “Richard Larkin, of course. I know you’ve been looking after things for him.”

  A slight line appeared between Pamela’s brows and she tightened her lips. “I told him I’d pick up stray mail and make sure newspapers didn’t pile up in his driveway. That’s all. It’s what any neighbor would do.”

  Richard Larkin was a recently unattached man who had bought the house next to Pamela’s the previous year. “You know he’s interested in you,” Bettina said, controlling a giggle. Sweet-natured as she was, she occasionally enjoyed teasing her more serious friend.

  “I don’t know that at all.” Pamela stepped off the porch onto the path that bisected Bettina’s carefully groomed lawn.

  “You’re barely forty,” Bettina added, “and he’s an attractive, eligible man.”

  “Thank you for hosting the group,” Pamela said somewhat stiffly, “and thank Wilfred again for the pie.”

  Bettina reached out and gave her a hug. “See you tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve got to cover a morning event at the senior center but I’ll drop by after. I’ll bring some Co-Op crumb cake.”

  “I’m really not interested in him,” Pamela said, a little less stiffly. Bettina meant well. “See you tomorrow.” She set off down the walk.

  A minute later, she was stepping over the curb on her side of the street. She paused to let a few people go by—apparently the Players’ rehearsal in the auditorium next door was just breaking up—then paused again on her own front walk. A tall and thick hedge separated her yard from the grounds of the church, but just now she could hear voices as clearly as if the voices’ owners were standing on her own lawn.

  “This is the last time I’m going to discuss this with you,” said an angry woman’s voice. It was a familiar voice, and Pamela suddenly realized it was Caralee’s. “So don’t talk like that again. Just don’t. Because it’s not doing you any good and I don’t want to hear it.”

  “You don’t understand,” said a male voice, more sorrowful than angry, but equally loud. “I can’t help how I feel—” The voice broke and Pamela heard a gulp. Despite the gulp, the voice went on, gasping for air between words. “Don’t be so mean. I’m just asking you to listen.”

  “I don’t want you to mention this ever again,” Caralee said. “Goodnight. You’re pathetic!”

  Pamela was still staring at the hedge when Caralee spoke from the sidewalk. “You heard that?” she said, still sounding irritated. “Sydney Carton, aka my fellow actor Craig Belknap and my colleague at Hyler’s Luncheonette. He’s the one who goes to the guillotine at the end.”

  She strode past Pamela and hurried up the street.

  Chapter Three

  Pamela was not alone in her house, despite the fact that her architect husband had been killed six years earlier in a construction-site accident and her only daughter, Penny, had returned to her college in Massachusetts at the beginning of September. She climbed her front steps, traversed the wide porch that had attracted her and her husband to their hundred-year-old house so long ago, unlocked the heavy oak door with its oval window, and peered cautiously inside. But nothing stirred. The lamp in the corner of the entry illuminated the aged parquet floor, the worn but lovely Persian rug, the small wing chair where she sat to read her mail.

  She made her way cautiously to the kitchen and then along the hallway that led to the laundry room, tiptoeing as she got closer to her destination. Trusting the hall light to reveal all she needed to know, she slowly pushed the laundry room door open. From the floor two eyes, glowing amber, met hers. The rest of the cat, a sleek swath of jet-black fur, blended into the shadows. But a few sleeping kittens— the ginger ones that took after their dashing father—were just visible, clustered around their mother in the comfortable bed Pamela had arranged for their mother’s confinement.

  “Goodnight,” she whispered, backing away and tiptoeing back to the kitchen.

  Upstairs, she stopped in her office and brought her computer to life, waiting through the attendant chirps and hums. No new messages had arrived from her boss at Fiber Craft, though she was sure there would be a work assignment in the morning—her boss was an early riser. But Penny had sent a note to say she’d gotten an A on the test she’d been so worried about.

  Back downstairs, in pajamas and robe, she applied herself once again to the ruby-red yarn and the in-progress sleeve, while a mystery with a plot as genteel as the actors’ British accents unfolded on the screen before her.

  * * *

  Pamela stood at her counter grinding coffee beans while Bettina set out portions of crumb cake on dessert plates from Pamela’s wedding china. The grinder growled and whirred in spasmodic bursts, making conversation momentarily impossible. On the floor, a black kitten and a ginger one tussled near Bettina’s sandaled foot, stopping their play to investigate her toes.

  “They already have sharp little claws, and this ginger one is a tough character,” Bettina said.

  “All the girls are,” Pamela said. “They take after their mom.” Catrina had been adopted as a stray the previous fall after surviving many frosty November nights outside.

  The kettle’s whistle summoned Pamela to the stove, and a minute later she was pouring boiling water through the fragrant, fresh-ground coffee she’d spooned into the filter cone. As the coffee dripped into the carafe, she set out two cups and saucers from her wedding china. Pamela saw no point in saving her pretty things for some imagined future time. And anyway, aside from her wedding china, most of her pretty things were tag-sale finds valuable to no one but her, like the cut-glass cream and sugar set that waited on the kitchen table.

  “I do know who Craig Belknap is,” Bettina said, returning to an earlier topic of conversation after they were settled on either side of the table with their coffee and crumb cake, “but I don’t know why she would hav
e been arguing with him. If anything, she owes him a favor.”

  “The job at Hyler’s?” Pamela asked, teasing a forkful from the golden crumble-topped sponge cake in front of her. “He’s got an in with the management?”

  “He works there,” Bettina said, “but you never see him because he’s back in the kitchen.”

  Pamela finished chewing and swallowed. “What was Caralee doing when she lived in Manhattan?” she asked.

  “Same thing,” Bettina said, “but a grander place than Hyler’s Luncheonette, I’m sure—and the tips for a tuna melt with fries probably don’t match what a server gets from somebody who’s just dined on a dozen raw oysters and a filet.”

  They sipped their coffee and finished off their crumb cake, chatting about Bettina’s grandchildren and Penny’s reports from college. When the last crumbs had been forked up from the wedding plates and the last drops of coffee had been drained from the wedding cups, Bettina climbed to her feet, careful not to step on the tussling kittens, whose number had grown to five.

  “I’m off to the mall,” she said. “Feel like taking a break from work today?”

  “Too much to do,” Pamela said. “I’ve got four articles to edit for the next issue, and my boss wants them back today. Besides, you know . . . I’m not really . . .” She looked down, taking in the none-too-new jeans and simple cotton blouse she’d put on earlier that morning.

  “You could dress up more,” Bettina said. “I certainly would, if I was tall like you and had your figure.”

  “You do dress up,” Pamela said, smiling fondly at her friend. Bettina had an extensive wardrobe, and she dressed for her life in Arborville with as much flair as a Manhattan fashionista. For her visit to the town’s senior center to cover an event for the Arborville Advocate, she’d chosen a silky wrap dress in a swirling print of navy, bright pink, and turquoise. She’d accessorized it with turquoise wedge-heeled sandals that revealed bright pink toenails, and she’d accented her hazel eyes with turquoise shadow.