Knit One, Die Two

by Peggy Ehrhart

  Bettina watched as Pamela twisted the oven knob to OFF and transferred the cookie sheet from the oven to the stove top. She knew her way around Pamela’s kitchen as well as Pamela did herself, so she opened a drawer, pulled out a spatula, and transferred the three slices of cinnamon toast to the cutting board that Pamela held out. The edges of the bread were just the right shade of golden brown and the topping and butter had fused to form a sugary crust speckled with cinnamon flecks.

  Pamela sliced each piece in half, transferred the halves to a serving plate, and triumphantly placed it in the middle of the table. Bettina greeted the sight with a moan of pleasure and set about refilling the coffee cups. A pair of napkins completed preparations for the feast.

  “It’s perfect,” Bettina exclaimed after sampling a slice. “I haven’t had cinnamon toast for years.”

  “I make it for Penny sometimes,” Pamela said. “She still asks for it when she’s at home.” She bit into her own slice, savoring the butter-infused toast and the slight crunch of the sugary crust. She followed the bite with a sip of coffee—Pamela preferred hers black, and its bitterness was all the more appealing for the contrast with the sweet treat.

  “Will she be back before Thanksgiving?”

  “I don’t think so, and I do miss her. Early September to late November is a long stretch. Last year was even harder, since it was my first year having her away.” Pamela took another bite.

  “They do grow up.” As if to comfort herself, Bettina reached for a second slice of cinnamon toast. “Speaking of which . . .” A high-pitched meow drew their attention. The bold ginger female had wandered in from the back hallway and was gazing at them, her dark eyes large in her tiny heart-shaped face.

  “Catrina is a good mother. They’ll be ready to adopt in a month,” Pamela said. “There are two flyers on the Co-Op bulletin board right now offering kittens free to good homes and I’m going to have to get busy.”

  “We’ll take them,” Bettina said. “I offered when it . . . happened, and I meant it. It’s the least we can do. Wilfred still feels terrible.” She looked down and smiled as the kitten investigated her stylish green shoe.

  Catrina had been adopted the previous November, a tiny shivering stray. Pamela had planned of course to do the responsible thing, but she had scarcely imagined mating would be on the little creature’s mind for a very long while. Biology had taken its course, however, and the attractive ginger tom had come around in the spring. One day when Wilfred stood on the porch delivering a gift of heirloom tomatoes, Catrina had bolted out the front door and six kittens had been the result.

  “What would you even do with them?” Pamela said. “And what about Woofus?”

  “He’s afraid of his own shadow,” Bettina said with a laugh. “He won’t be a problem.”

  “Well,” Pamela said, “maybe one. But I can’t let you take them all.” She studied the ginger female. “Maybe I’ll keep one.” She smiled. “They are awfully cute.”

  “That’s the thing,” Bettina said. “Let them come out when Knit and Nibble meets here on Tuesday. I can just see Roland. He won’t be able to resist.” They both laughed at the thought of the buttoned-up corporate lawyer succumbing to the charms of a kitten.

  Chapter Seven

  When the last crumb of cinnamon toast had been eaten and the last drop of coffee drained from the cups, Pamela hurried upstairs to dress. She pulled on yesterday’s jeans and studied the small collection of tops that her closet offered, wishing briefly that clothes held as much interest for her as they did for her fashionable friend. But she quickly decided on a chambray work shirt, slipping her arms into it and buttoning it up without a moment’s further thought.

  An alarmed squirrel bolted off the porch as they stepped out the front door, leaving behind a half-eaten nut. Squirrels had been busy in the yard too. Pamela’s lawn was still the rich green of late summer, but dark pockmarks marred its surface, where busy paws had exposed the soil underneath.

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to bury nuts under the bushes?” Bettina said. “It must be tough to dig through grass roots.”

  “It’s difficult to know what they think,” Pamela said, “but there’s certainly plenty of food around for them this time of year.” Indeed, acorns littered the ground, golden brown and some still wearing their tiny darker caps. The acorns crunched underfoot as she and Bettina made their way down the front walk.

  Ben was hard at work, sweeping the slate path that led from the church steps to the sidewalk. Bettina greeted him with a cheerful “Hello.”

  He looked up with a start, collected himself, and replied, “Morning, ladies.” He was a shaggy, bearded man dressed in dark-green pants and a matching shirt.

  Pamela was racking her brain for a way to introduce the topic they’d come to inquire about, wishing she and Bettina had worked out a strategy before leaving her kitchen. She hated nosiness, and bringing up the recent tragedy by asking pointed questions about the storage room that had been its setting seemed the very definition of that trait. But as soon as Bettina started to speak, she realized that her own presence was scarcely necessary.

  “You look busy,” Bettina said, accompanying the comment with an encouraging smile. “Lots to do around here, I’ll bet.”

  “You’re right about that,” Ben said, thrusting his shoulders back as if trying to work out a kink. “I gotta finish the cleanup out here, then go in and vacuum the church, put the hymn books where they’re supposed to be, and scrub up the kitchen so it’s nice for the fellowship ladies to make the coffee after the service tomorrow morning.”

  “Things are back to normal then? After the . . . accident.”

  “Normal as they ever get.”

  “Wilfred and I knew something was going on Wednesday night, of course, with all the police and the ambulance . . .” Bettina opened her eyes wide. “Were you here? When it happened?” Her voice conveyed a mixture of awe and flattery.

  “Nope,” Ben said. “And I didn’t have nothin’ to tell the cops or that reporter lady from the Register. Wish I had, but I’m outta here by five every night.”

  “Somebody else must lock up then,” Bettina said. “Nights when the Players rehearse or people use the meeting rooms. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, except for the main doors that go out to the parking lot.”

  “They keep that storage room locked,” Ben said, “the room where they keep all the scenery and junk.”

  “But that’s where that young woman . . .” Bettina raised her fingers to her lips as if to silence herself.

  “I unlock it.” Ben pushed a few acorns off the path with the toe of his shoe. “I unlock it at five and then I go home. It locks again if you set the lock and pull it closed. So they can do whatever they want after I leave. The main doors are unlocked all day because people are coming and going. The last people out at night—the Players or whoever’s using one of the meeting rooms—are supposed to set the lock on those doors too.”

  He grasped the broom handle with both hands and swooshed a few dead leaves into a small pile. “The storage room’s open now though,” he said. “Rue Wadsworth’s been here on and off, going through stuff to use for that show they’re doing, Tales from a City or whatever it’s called. And they dragged a lot of their junk out into the auditorium. Guess they don’t want to take any more chances having it squash people.”

  * * *

  “Quite the mess, isn’t it? I can see that’s what you’re thinking.” Rue Wadsworth began speaking as soon as Pamela and Bettina stepped through the door of the auditorium, a spacious room with a high, beamed ceiling and a well-waxed floor of blond wood. At the far end was the stage, its red-velvet curtain drawn closed.

  Rue was holding a man’s coat that looked like something George Washington would have worn, but she dropped it in her lap to wave toward the jumble of furniture and scenery piled at random around the room. Hangers crowded tightly together on a long clothes rack held colorful dresses, most with long, full skirts and elaborat
e sleeves. More clothing spilled out of an open trunk. Additional trunks and clothes racks were lined up along the wall.

  In fact, it was quite a mess. Pamela marveled that the painted backdrops, chairs, tables, dressers, bedsteads, and even pots and pans—not to mention the clothes racks and the trunks—had all come out of the storage room. She wondered for a moment whether, with so much jammed into so little space, the collapse that killed Caralee might truly have been an accident. But no, there were Caralee’s words to contradict that idea. She had said that after the first furniture collapse she and some of the other Players had made sure the piles of furniture were stable.

  As Pamela ruminated, Rue had been talking, rambling on in her soft voice about costumes for the upcoming production. Bettina was listening attentively, or at least making a good show of it, and Pamela tuned back in to hear “. . . Carousel. We did it the season before last. Not the right era, of course, but at least the dresses are long.” Rue tugged at the dress closest to her on the rack. “Not the right color either—I see the downtrodden masses mostly in gray, but what can you do? Limited budget, and Mr. W. gets such ambitious ideas. He’s a dear man, though, and so talented . . . and anyway, where was I? Maybe I can dye them.”

  She picked up the coat lying in her lap and sighed. “Hopeless. Not the right collar at all. I’m going to have to make the noblemen’s costumes from scratch . . . sewing and sewing. That’s my life these days.” She tossed the coat on the floor and leaned over to tug a garment loose from the tangled mass hanging over the rim of the open trunk. “What do you think?” She held up a shapeless blouse the color and texture of burlap. “Madame Defarge?” She squinted at the blouse. “The new Madame Defarge, of course. Such a pretty girl, much prettier than Caralee, and she’ll be much better in the role. Not that Madame Defarge is supposed to be pretty . . . just drab . . . really, and this blouse could work.” She stood up and reached toward one of the other clothes racks for a hanger. “I’ve never seen anybody as thrilled about anything as when Mr. W. told her she was the new Madame Defarge.” Rue maneuvered the blouse onto the hanger and stepped back toward the clothes rack. “Blast, blast, blast,” she muttered as she struggled to free up space for the blouse among the profusion of dresses.

  The clothes racks seemed homemade creations, built from lengths of sturdy pipe like one would find in a plumbing supply shop. Perhaps the Players numbered a plumber among their members. In each rack, four long pieces of pipe formed a sturdy square. A short piece set crosswise at each of the lower corners formed the rack’s base. The pipes were connected to one another with fittings that also seemed to have come from a plumbing supply shop, and wheels fastened to the ends of the short pieces of pipe made the racks moveable.

  At last Rue gave up and draped the blouse, hanger and all, over the top of the rack. In the sudden silence, Pamela glanced at Bettina, willing her friend to jump in with something—anything—that might steer the conversation in some useful direction. But Rue was off again. “I think I really will dye them,” she said. She reached for the dress at the end of the rack, tugged its hanger off the crossbar, and held the dress up. It was bright yellow, with a flouncy skirt, a narrow bodice, and long tight sleeves with puffs at the shoulders.

  “If it was dark gray . . .” Rue said. “And I’ll perform surgery on the sleeves—get rid of those puffs and then add a shawl in some dark color. Quite the Tale of Two Cities look, wouldn’t you say?” Pamela and Bettina both murmured agreement. “So that solves that problem,” Rue went on, “but there’s no rest for the wicked.”

  Rue turned away and struggled briefly to fit the dress back in among the others that crowded the rack, before giving up and draping it next to the blouse destined for Madame Defarge. “No rest for the wicked indeed,” she repeated, and Pamela and Bettina exchanged despairing looks. But then, without prompting, Rue segued into the very topic they were longing to discuss.

  “First day I’ve been able to get back to this,” she said. Her gesture, which began with a finger pointed at the open trunk and then swept along the clothes rack with the colorful dresses, suggested she meant the costume project. “After . . . you know. Such a to-do, the police and all. No thought of canceling the production for Mr. W. though. The show must go on. But Mr. W. insisted everything be cleared out of the storage room before anybody set foot in there again. So thoughtful. ‘And I don’t want you going in there, Mrs. W.’—that’s what he said to me, dear man. But I don’t know what will happen if the church wants to use the auditorium for something besides the Players before we get things organized.”

  “You were here during the day last Wednesday then? Before it happened?” Bettina cut in.

  “No rest for the wicked,” Rue said. “Going through those trunks.” She pointed at the trunks lined up along the wall. “All this stuff was still in the storage room then, of course. And what a wasted afternoon—all modern clothes. Nothing usable at all. Then I went home, a little after six like I always do, to get dinner for Mr. W. Hamburgers it was. He’s easy to cook for. His mind is on his art. But when we came back for rehearsal—and learned what had just happened. I can tell you, I shuddered when I realized I was in and out of that room all afternoon, with that pile of furniture just waiting... But don’t I sound selfish! Poor Caralee, of course, that’s the tragedy.”

  “Did you lock the storage room when you went home for dinner?” Pamela asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “Oh, no. Can’t do that.” She tightened her lips and shook her head decisively. “We wouldn’t get back in till Ben opened it the next day. No, the room was open, just waiting for Caralee to come and get the chairs out, like she always does.” She paused, with a short intake of breath. “Like she always did, I should say.”

  “So somebody could have gone into the storage room between the time you left and Caralee came . . .” Pamela didn’t mean to sound accusing, but she was excited about what she and Bettina were learning.

  Rue looked up, alarmed. Her huge eyes were open so wide Pamela could see white around the irises, making her seem almost cartoonlike, with her pointed chin and pixyish hairstyle. “You don’t think somebody did that on purpose, do you?” she said, jumping to her feet. “Made sure the furniture would fall when Caralee pulled out the chairs?” She seemed almost comical in her blustering. “I can assure you—no one in this group would ever do anything like that—we all . . . we all . . . love each other.”

  The pretense of casual conversation had clearly been abandoned. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, Pamela said to herself. Then she said, to Rue, “Caralee and Craig Belknap had a huge argument the night before the . . . accident,” struggling mightily to avoid giving ironic emphasis to the final word.

  “Oh, really?” Rue twisted her lips in a parody of a smile. “Well, I wouldn’t know because I have better things to do with my time than eavesdrop.” She went on, “And anyway, the night the accident happened, I was here till after six. I didn’t see hide nor hair of Craig Belknap, and why would he show up at all? We weren’t working on his scenes.”

  * * *

  “We learned something,” Pamela said as she and Bettina headed down the church driveway toward the sidewalk. Ben was still outside, trimming dead branches out of the unruly shrubbery that bordered the slate path. He waved and they waved back.

  “It was useful,” Bettina agreed. “I wonder what she thinks of us though.”

  “Nosy busybodies, probably. I hope she doesn’t tell Craig Belknap about this conversation. It would only reinforce the impression he got when I was quizzing him at the reception.”

  “Do we still suspect him?” Bettina asked, pausing.

  “He went tearing out of Hyler’s well before his shift ended,” Pamela said, grabbing the pinkie of her left hand with the thumb and forefinger of her right. She counted through the remaining fingers as she spoke. “He won’t say where he was going. Rue went home a little after six, leaving the storage room unlocked. Caralee showed up a bit before seve
n, pulled out the chairs, and was crushed. Therefore”—she held up her thumb—“we have a brief window when somebody, maybe Craig, could have done whatever he wanted to do to make sure that pile of stuff would tumble over on top of Caralee.”

  “They weren’t rehearsing his scenes that night,” Bettina said.

  “That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been at the church earlier.” Pamela shook her head sadly. “That would be why he went dashing out of Hyler’s. Except why would he have to leave Hyler’s so early? Beth said it was five. He couldn’t do what he wanted to do while Rue was there, and she said she always goes home after six to cook. And arguing with somebody doesn’t mean that you want to kill them. Especially if you’re in love with them.”

  “True,” Bettina agreed. “But why is he being so secretive about where he was Wednesday night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bettina’s eyes strayed toward her own house. “Now where is he going?” she said. Wilfred was climbing into his ancient Mercedes carrying Caralee’s knitting project. She shrugged. “See you tonight at six?” She stepped toward the curb. “Wilfred wants to squeeze in at least one more barbecue before fall is really upon us. And I’m going up to the Co-Op right now to buy a quart of that good deli potato salad.”

  “I have corn!” Pamela said suddenly. “I bought it last Wednesday and haven’t done anything with it yet. I’ll bring that, and my own tomatoes. It’s the tail end of the crop but I’ve still got a few. And what about dessert?”

  “Brownies from the Co-Op. I’m glad you reminded me.” And Bettina was off, a flash of lime green and stripes, hurrying across the street.

  Pamela continued along the sidewalk to her own house, unable to help noticing that Richard Larkin’s driveway was still empty. But Bettina was probably right. Richard must have decided to prolong his stay in Maine by a few days and come back in time to start the work week fresh on Monday morning—not that she cared, she insisted to herself. She climbed the steps to her porch, collected her mail from the box, and stepped inside.