Knit One, Die Two

by Peggy Ehrhart

  * * *

  After Bettina left, Pamela inventoried her cupboards. She certainly wasn’t hungry after a mid-morning snack of crumb cake, but the previous night’s dinner had consisted of a baked sweet potato, one chicken thigh remaining from a chicken she had roasted on Saturday, and a homegrown tomato. The grocery list fastened to the refrigerator door with a tiny magnetized mitten reminded her that she needed a loaf of the Co-Op’s special whole-grain bread, as well as butter and cat and kitten food. Catrina was eating several times a day to keep up with the demands of the six kittens she was nursing, and the kittens themselves were starting to sample solid food. As far as provisioning herself for the next few days’ meals went, she’d wait to see what looked good at the Co-Op.

  After retrieving several canvas bags from the closet in the entry—her canvas bag supply was an homage to Nell, who spoke frequently about the virtues of renouncing paper and plastic—she stepped onto the porch to collect the day’s mail. It consisted of a utility bill, a card offering one month of free lawn service, and a catalog featuring just the type of jewelry she would have worn if she was a jewelry person: stones that were pretty rather than precious and designs that evoked exotic lands.

  Scanning her own mail reminded her that she’d promised Richard Larkin to make sure no mail accumulated in his box while he was gone—the mail carrier could be a bit forgetful about whose mail was to be held and whose delivered. She darted around the hedge that separated her yard from his and peered toward the metal box fastened to his house’s shingled façade. Nothing was sticking out, and anyway he’d be back tomorrow.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but she wished Bettina would stop trying to play matchmaker. Yes, she’d once let slip that with Penny off to college and on her way to being independent, she might consider dating. But Richard Larkin, attractive as he was, might not be the right person. The shaggy hair that had originally marked him in her eyes as too bohemian had proven to be the effect of a temporarily demanding work schedule that left no time for a visit to the barber. But still, she wasn’t sure. Or maybe she just wasn’t really ready yet, despite the fact that even Penny had urged her to remedy her solitary state.

  Her own mail deposited on the mail table in her entry, she was on her way. Arborville’s walkability had attracted Pamela and her husband long ago when they were shopping for a house, and Pamela still did most of her errands on foot. Arborville’s tiny commercial district, with the Co-Op Grocery and an unpretentious collection of narrow storefronts, including Hyler’s Luncheonette, was only five blocks distant and the route was a pleasant one—up tree-lined Orchard Street and then left at the stately brick apartment building that faced Arborville Avenue. Pamela often detoured through the parking lot behind the apartment building, where a discreet wooden fence hid trash cans and whatever else the building’s inhabitants had recently discarded. One person’s trash truly was another’s treasure, and she had recently rescued an ornate picture frame that exactly suited an antique sampler she had found at a thrift shop.

  Today was a perfect mid-September day. Yards were still green, trees were still leafy, but the sun’s angle was no longer the direct blaze of midsummer, and the sidewalks were littered with acorns. Pamela took her time, and when she reached the Co-Op she dallied outside for a few more minutes. Besides supplying the inhabitants of Arborville with food, the Co-Op also supplied information. The large bulletin board next to the automatic door had only recently been supplemented by AccessArborville, the town’s listserv, and people still consulted the bulletin board for news about town events. Moreover, the bulletin board welcomed postings from anyone with anything to publicize.

  Pamela’s heart sank to discover that more than one person was offering kittens to good homes. Soon it would be time to find homes for Catrina’s lively brood, but how many kittens could a tiny town like Arborville absorb at once?

  Inside the market, Pamela selected a cart from the small collection waiting near the entrance and wheeled it toward the bakery counter, where a tempting assortment of loaves in various shapes and hues beckoned. She chose her favorite whole-grain, a gleaming oblong the color of toasted wheat, waited while it was sliced and bagged, and moved on to the cheese counter. There she hesitated between Gouda and cheddar, and finally came away with half a pound of each.

  She maneuvered the cart into the produce section, where a row of bins piled high with greens of every sort faced bins of squash and root vegetables across a narrow wood-floored aisle. She added a head of romaine to her cart and moved on to collect a bundle of carrots and a bunch of celery. A special display at the end of the aisle featured sweet corn, still in its husks, and billed as “New Jersey’s Own.” Pamela couldn’t resist, and piled six ears into her cart. A display of local apples occupied the corresponding spot across the way. She picked out four, rusty red with golden streaks.

  Farther down the fruit aisle, neighboring bins offered peaches, plums, and apricots. September was the last chance for good peaches, local peaches that tasted the way peaches were supposed to taste. Pamela pushed her cart a few yards farther and cupped a peach in her hand. It was pale gold, velvety, with a rosy blush. It wasn’t soft yet, but she knew peaches were happy to ripen off the tree. A bowl of peaches on the kitchen counter could perfume a kitchen for a few days and then turn into a pie—or a cobbler. In fact peach cobbler was exactly what she planned to make the following Tuesday when Knit and Nibble met at her house. She’d wait a few days to buy the peaches though.

  The question of dinner for the next few nights still needed to be addressed, and she couldn’t forget the cat and kitten food and butter. A quick detour through the canned goods section allowed her to cross the first two items off her list, and she picked up a pound of butter on her way through the dairy aisle. At the meat counter she studied the offerings. The Co-Op had good meat, much of it from local farms, but it was hard to be inspired when cooking for one.

  A package of smoked ham hocks caught her eye—not the most exciting perhaps, compared to the marbled steaks, dainty lamb chops, and racks of baby back ribs, but Pamela loved making bean soup. And she liked her meals to reflect the seasons. A salad was the perfect dinner at the end of a long summer day, but by mid-September a steaming bowl of soup, ladled from a pot that had simmered on the stove all afternoon, would be most welcome. And she could cook today and have a week’s worth of meals. She added the ham hocks to her cart.

  * * *

  Pamela was happy to set down the two canvas bags, laden with groceries and heavier than she’d expected them to be, when she stepped up onto her porch. Inside the house, she was greeted by six hungry kittens and their equally hungry mother. She freshened their communal water dish and spooned cat food into a bowl for Catrina and kitten food into the large bowl the kittens shared—though their first ventures with solid food had involved climbing into the bowl.

  When the groceries were stowed away, she toasted a slice of the fresh whole-grain bread and ate it with a few slices of Gouda, finishing the meal off with an apple. It was only one p.m. She’d work her way through two of the articles that waited upstairs on her computer, then take a break and get the soup started.

  At four p.m. Pamela was back in the kitchen, studying the dried beans in the jars she had lined up on the counter. The beans ranged in color from white to deepest maroon, with a jar of speckled pinto beans at the end. She poured from this jar and that until she’d filled a two-cup measure. In a large heavy pot on the stove, chopped onion, carrots, and celery were already softening in a few tablespoons of olive oil, and sprigs of parsley and thyme from the herb pots on the back porch waited on the counter. When the beans, water, and a ham hock had been added to the pot and all was on its way to a low simmer, she returned to her office and article number three, “Victorian Needlework in the Victoria and Albert Museum.”

  Pamela worked until six-thirty, when the tempting aroma of bean soup summoned her down to the kitchen. The ham hock had simmered among the beans and other vegetables
as she edited her way through the Victorian needlework article and “The Role of Weaving in Modern Mayan Culture.” It was time to extract it from the pot and trim off the now-tender bits of ham. She scooped it out onto a cutting board and set to work with her favorite paring knife.

  But after a few minutes she paused in her task, letting her knife rest. It was unusual to hear sirens on this block of Orchard Street, or any block of Orchard Street in fact. Emergency vehicles sometimes sped along Arborville’s main artery, Arborville Avenue, at the top of the hill, or busy County Road, at the bottom. But this siren was close and drawing closer. She set the knife down and quickly washed her greasy fingers at the sink.

  Outside it was still daylight, but the sky behind the church steeple was reddening. A man and a woman were standing on the sidewalk in front of the church. They were looking eagerly up the street, but the expressions on their faces suggested that whatever they were waiting for wasn’t connected with a happy event. The siren had become so loud now that when Pamela turned to look in the direction they were looking she wasn’t surprised to see a police car only a few houses away and bearing down on them. Pamela blinked as the lights on its roof flashed in sequence, left to right and back again, like so many flashbulbs.

  The police car swerved toward the curb as it neared Pamela’s house and then coasted to a stop in front of the church. The doors swung open and two officers leapt out as if jointly responding to an internal command of “Ready, set, go!”

  “This way,” the woman called from the sidewalk. She motioned the officers to follow and she headed toward the driveway that led to the church parking lot. The man who had been waiting with her joined the procession, and the four—the officers in their dark-blue uniforms with the heavy leather gun belts and stiff visored caps, and the man and woman in jeans and T-shirts—disappeared around the side of the church.

  Pamela stood uncertainly in her yard. She was tempted to follow the procession toward the parking lot and whatever it was that had seemed serious enough to summon the police. But she knew that the sensible choice would be to go back inside, finish cutting off the ham bits, and add them to the nearly ready bean soup. Then a third alternative presented itself.

  She was just turning toward her house where the sensible choice in the form of the ham hock and the bean soup awaited, when from across the street came Bettina’s voice. She turned back to see Bettina scurrying toward her, with Wilfred several paces behind. Bettina was still wearing the chic wrap dress she had started the day in. Wilfred, judging from his apron, was evidently in charge of the evening meal.

  “What could be happening?” Bettina panted. “We heard the siren but we couldn’t imagine it was on its way to Orchard Street.”

  Wilfred joined them. “Most unusual,” he said. “The church, of all places.”

  “Rehearsal,” Bettina observed. “The Players are here tonight. I saw Caralee arriving when I opened the door for a UPS delivery a little while ago.”

  “Uh-oh!” Wilfred held up a finger and closed his eyes. He frowned as if straining to make out a sound. “More sirens.” He opened his eyes. Pamela heard them too. This time they were coming from both directions.

  At nearly the same moment, another police car appeared at the top of the hill, and an ambulance swung around the corner from County Road. The competing sirens intertwined in a discordant competition of wails and howls, growing so loud that the sound was almost a physical presence. With a few last resentful growls, both vehicles nudged into spots at the curb and were silent.

  EMTs in dark pants and white shirts hurried from the ambulance toward the church parking lot, followed by another police officer and a man in a sports jacket and slacks.

  “There’s Detective Clayborn,” Bettina said. “Whatever’s going on, I’ll be getting the details from him for the Advocate.”

  “This doesn’t look good,” Wilfred said. Concern had banished the genial expression he usually wore and he seemed almost a stranger. Bettina reached for his arm and he tugged her to his side.

  Chapter Four

  Now a small group of people appeared in the church driveway, herded along by two of the uniformed officers until they reached the sidewalk. “Here come the Players,” Bettina said, nodding toward an older woman in a colorful long skirt, a man in jeans, and several younger women. “But I wonder who those guys are.” A second group, walking a few yards behind the Players, consisted of four older men sporting summery business-casual ensembles of khaki pants and polo shirts.

  “Those are some of the Arborville Arborists,” Wilfred said. “It’s a volunteer group that looks after the town’s shade trees. I guess they use one of the church’s meeting rooms. They’ve been after me to join since I retired, but I’d rather hang out with the historical society.”

  Brief interviews were apparently on the agenda, the officers pulling out notebooks and each taking one person aside. Pamela made out a few words from the nearest pair, a woman officer and the older woman in the colorful long skirt. “Nothing helpful, I’m sure,” the older woman was saying, “. . . in the auditorium. . . heard screaming . . . didn’t see anything, either before or after.”

  After a few minutes, she was dismissed and, after waving to a few of the people waiting to be interviewed, started up the sidewalk, her skirt swaying around her legs.

  Bettina detached herself from Wilfred and intercepted the woman, Pamela following along. “What on earth has happened?” Bettina asked. Then, as if to explain her interest, she gestured toward her house across the street and added, “We’re neighbors.”

  “A terrible thing,” the woman announced as dramatically as if she was reading from a script. “A beautiful young woman has been crushed in a freakish accident.”

  “A pile of furniture in the storage room?” Pamela whispered, barely breathing.

  The woman shifted her gaze to Pamela. “Why, yes,” she said, “exactly that.”

  “Caralee Lorimer?” Pamela whispered, holding her breath this time.

  The woman’s eyes grew large and she drew in a long breath. She regarded Pamela as if she wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or alarmed. “How did you know?” she said at last.

  “I just—” Pamela shrugged uncomfortably. “I just . . . had a feeling. I knew she was at the rehearsal. She is . . . was . . . in our knitting group. You said ‘a beautiful . . .’ ” Pamela waved her hand, hoping the gesture would substitute for finishing the thought. She had been gradually backing up and realized that she was now standing on the grass. Bettina and Wilfred were staring at her too but they seemed very far away. Or was it just that dusk had begun to fall as the sun sank lower and everything was becoming indistinct?

  She felt a bit light-headed and willed herself to breathe deeply. Suddenly Bettina was at her side. “You were starting to sway,” Bettina whispered, looking a bit shaky herself. She slipped an arm around Pamela’s waist. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Goodnight, I guess,” the woman from the Arborville Players said, now just looking puzzled. She continued on her way up the sidewalk, and Wilfred followed Pamela and Bettina into Pamela’s house.

  “You just sit right down,” Bettina said as they entered Pamela’s kitchen, where the ham hock, ham bits, and knife still waited on the counter. Pamela obeyed, taking a seat at her kitchen table. “And you drink some water.” Bettina filled a glass at the sink and slipped it into Pamela’s waiting hand. She took a long swallow. “And now,” Bettina said, perching on another chair, “you tell me how you knew it was Caralee.”

  As Pamela described the conversation she’d had with Caralee the previous night, Bettina tightened her lips and shook her head sadly. “We’ll see what the police have to say when I talk to Clayborn—I’m sure there’s time to get an article in this week’s Advocate.” She shook her head again and her eyes looked mournful. “Margo will be devastated,” she said. “She was like a second mother to Caralee. I suppose the police will notify her—maybe they already have.”

  Wilfred had wandered fro
m the kitchen, dodging kittens on the way, as soon as Pamela finished describing why she had suspected the victim of the furniture collapse was Caralee. Now he returned.

  “A big van is out there,” he said. “It’s from the county. And the ambulance is still at the curb.”

  “That’s the crime-scene unit,” Bettina said, familiar with details of police work from her job with the Advocate. “Arborville is too small to have its own. And they probably want to get photographs of all the details before they . . . they . . . take the body away.” Her voice broke, and the final words came out as a muffled wail.

  “Dear, dear wife.” Wilfred stepped behind her and squeezed her shoulders. She raised her hands to his.

  Husbands could be such a comfort, Pamela reflected. The initial shock she’d felt was giving way to a tight throat and moist eyelids. She blinked a few times and a tear overflowed onto her cheek. Friends were a comfort too, she told herself, gazing across the table at Wilfred and Bettina.

  “We must eat something,” Wilfred declared. “There’s nothing we can do to help anyone right now, and we’ll all feel better with some food in our stomachs.” He stepped to the stove, where he lifted the lid of the heavy pot where the bean soup had simmered. “This looks like bean soup,” he said, and lit the burner under the pot. “And the rest of this ham needs to be chopped up and added to it. But first—” And more quickly than one would think a portly man in his mid-sixties could move, he darted through the door. From the entry, they heard his gentle voice say, “Out of the way, kittens. Mind my feet.” The front door opened and closed.

  “I don’t know what he’s up to,” Bettina said, rising and wiping her eyes with her fingers. “But I see a loaf of Co-Op bread on your counter.”

  “There’s cheese in the refrigerator,” Pamela said. “I bought two kinds.”

  Bettina set to work slicing bread and cheese and arranging the result on Pamela’s wooden cheese board. As she worked, she talked—half to herself. “I’ll call Margo tomorrow,” she murmured. “There will be a funeral. Maybe she’ll need help arranging. Such a tragic thing to happen in our little town.”