Knit One, Die Two

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “Harvest moon,” Wilfred sighed contentedly. “And fall is in the air.”

  “I’ll call Margo first thing tomorrow,” Bettina said. “We know what the connection between Caralee and Anthony Wadsworth was, but maybe Margo knows what was going on with Swinton, Varnish, and Timmons.”

  Back at home, Pamela set the peaches—already making the kitchen fragrant with their fruity sweetness—on the kitchen counter. No cats, large or small, were in sight. She tiptoed down the hallway and peeked in the laundry room door. In the dim light that reached from the kitchen, she could see the six kittens lined up along their mother’s side, hungrily nursing.

  Chapter Nine

  “I wore my walking shoes,” Bettina announced as Pamela swung the door back. “I knew you’d insist on walking.” Bettina was standing on the porch, her navy polka-dot shirtdress accessorized with a pair of festive red sneakers. Behind her, the sidewalk was crowded with Sunday morning churchgoers hurrying through the bright September morning.

  “I’m always up for a walk,” Pamela answered. “But where are we walking to?”

  Bettina started to step through the door but lingered on the porch and turned away to scan Richard Larkin’s driveway. “Not back yet, I see,” she commented as Pamela stood back to let her enter.

  “You said he wouldn’t be back till tomorrow,” Pamela said. She’d been pleased that she herself had avoided checking his driveway as she retrieved the Register a few hours earlier, and worked now to banish the thought of him from her mind.

  “I called Margo this morning.” Bettina veered off course to avoid a kitten. “I asked her what Caralee’s connection with Swinton, Varnish, and Timmons might be, and she didn’t have a clue. Caralee was very private.”

  They had reached the kitchen. Sections of the Register were still spread out on the table, but toast crumbs and an empty coffee cup showed that breakfast was over. “Do you want some coffee?” Pamela asked. “I can make more.”

  “Let’s wait till later.” Bettina raised both hands as if to fend off the idea of coffee—at least right away. “We might have things to talk about. We’re going to visit Beth Dalton.”

  “Caralee’s childhood friend?”

  Bettina nodded. “Margo said they’d renewed their friendship when Caralee moved back to Arborville—and if Caralee told her secrets to anybody, it would be to somebody she’d known since first grade.”

  * * *

  The walk to Beth Dalton’s took them along County Road, past the nature preserve that separated Arborville from the next town to the west. The trees were still lush with summer foliage, no red or yellow leaves yet to hint that soon there would be no leaves at all. They continued past the intersection where County Road met the street that led up to the library and the police station, and a few blocks later they reached the small complex of garden apartments where Beth Dalton lived.

  One-story brick buildings formed a U-shape around a patch of bright green lawn, which in turn surrounded a bed of marigolds and chrysanthemums in vivid shades of gold and maroon. A wreath twisted from hobby store vines and berries adorned Beth’s door, which opened before Bettina had even removed her finger from the bell.

  “I was expecting you,” Beth said. Were the words a greeting or a warning? At first Pamela wasn’t sure. Beth’s face hadn’t been designed to look serious. Framed by short, bouncy curls, it was round, with chubby cheeks and a wide mouth. But she wasn’t smiling, and her eyes were dull. “Margo told me you were coming,” she added.

  Bettina produced a sympathetic smile. “If you don’t feel like talking . . .” she began, and Pamela held her breath. Who else might be able to explain the names Caralee had coded into the piece of knitting?

  “I’ll talk.” Beth pulled the door open and Pamela exhaled. Seated on a pretty velvet love seat, with Beth facing them in a matching armchair, they listened as she described her long friendship with Caralee.

  “She did the things I wasn’t brave enough to do,” Beth said. “Going away to college while I lived at home and went to Wendelstaff, moving to the city and becoming an actress—and here I am teaching English at Arborville High. And getting married, to an actor—” She had grown excited as she talked, as if just listing Caralee’s adventures was a thrill. Now her voice dropped. “And then divorced. That was sad. But I don’t think he killed her.”

  Pamela and Bettina looked at each other. This was a possibility they hadn’t discussed.

  “Somebody was after her though.” Beth frowned and shook her head, setting her curls bouncing. “Somebody made sure that pile of stuff in the storage room was unbalanced enough that when she pulled out a chair it all came down.” Beth leaned forward. “It had happened before, you see. Twice before. Then the third time was . . .”

  Pamela nodded. “She told me about the other times too—and the first time was a close call. She fell and hit her head, and she got that awful bruise on her arm.”

  “But what can anybody do?” Beth asked plaintively. “The police just think it was an accident.”

  “Bettina is a reporter,” Pamela said. (Maybe it wasn’t necessary to specify that the paper Bettina reported for was the weekly throwaway.) “She works closely with the police.” Beth looked impressed. “Bettina has been known to drop a word here and there, when there’s a crime—point out details they might have overlooked.”

  Bettina nodded enthusiastically. “In fact,” she said, holding up her index finger and crossing her middle finger over it, “Detective Clayborn and I are like this.”

  “Caralee could have had enemies,” Beth said. “Margo told me about the names coded into that piece of knitting. Clever, and typical of her—so serious about her acting, getting into character by doing just what Madame Defarge does.”

  “And picturing their heads falling into a basket as the guillotine comes down.” Bettina shuddered. “But why those names?”

  “I don’t know,” Beth said, “except Wadsworth is the Arborville Players guy, of course. Maybe she thought he was a bad director. But Swinton, Varnish, and Timmons?” She shrugged. “Swinton is that writer. Varnish volunteers for everything in town. I’ve never heard of Timmons—but she hated people who were fake, not what they pretended to be. She hadn’t said anything about those four people on her blog though.”

  “Her blog?” Pamela had been lounging against the love seat back. Now she felt her back stiffen. “She had a blog?”

  Beth suppressed the beginnings of a smile. “You’ll find it if you search for ‘Back in the Burbs . . . and Remembering Why I Left.’ She started it when she moved back to Arborville.”

  * * *

  “She had a blog,” Bettina commented as she and Pamela set out along County Road.

  “But she didn’t talk about any of those four people specifically on the blog,” Pamela said musingly. “I can’t wait to take a look at it though. You don’t have to be anywhere in the next hour or so, do you?”

  Pamela and Bettina paused for a red light at the big intersection. Long ago, County Road had been little more than a dirt trail used by stagecoaches, people on horseback, and carts. An inn built of pink sandstone had served the needs of travelers at that intersection. Now it was a restaurant well known to gourmets from neighboring towns and featuring its own kitchen garden.

  “No plans at all,” Bettina said. “We’ll make some fresh coffee and look at ‘Back in the Burbs.’ ”

  “ ‘And Remembering Why I Left,’ ” Pamela supplied. She herself had lived in Manhattan early in her marriage, but she’d never felt that Arborville was an alien place. She and her husband had loved restoring their old house and putting down roots. Now, with him gone, she still felt his presence when she walked in the front door.

  “Caralee might not have talked about those men on the blog yet,” Bettina said, “but she could have scolded them in person.”

  “And hinted that they might soon see their ugliest secrets revealed to all and sundry on ‘Back in the Burbs,’ ” Pamela added. “We know she had no
trouble speaking her mind.”

  Bettina laughed. “She sure let Roland know what she thought of lawyers.”

  “So let’s suppose she knew something about Anthony Wadsworth . . . something that would have ruined his career . . . or his image—if it came out.” A landscaper’s truck rumbled by and Pamela raised her voice.

  “He certainly had access to the storage room,” Bettina agreed, raising her voice as well.

  “But only when it was unlocked,” Pamela said, “and he wouldn’t have been able to rearrange things after Tuesday’s rehearsal without calling attention to himself. The rearranging—whoever did it—had to happen Wednesday.”

  “The storage room was open all Wednesday afternoon because Rue was working on the costumes—”

  Pamela interrupted. “Wouldn’t she have noticed though? And asked him what he was doing? And then told the police after it turned out that Caralee had been killed?”

  “She’s his biggest fan,” Bettina said. “Apparently those Christmas letters she sends are one long celebration of Anthony Wadsworth. And besides, any woman would want to protect her husband. I certainly would.”

  Pamela smiled at the notion of Wilfred as a criminal, then she furrowed her brow. “Whatever Caralee knew about Anthony Wadsworth would have had to be terrible for him to be that desperate to silence her—and to kill her like that, especially. The publicity from this incident certainly can’t be good for the Arborville Players.”

  * * *

  Catrina had taken refuge upstairs from the demands of her brood. She was lounging on Pamela’s computer keyboard and looked up lazily as Pamela and Bettina entered the room.

  “Down you go,” Pamela said as she gently transferred Catrina to the floor. Bettina pulled an extra chair up to Pamela’s desk, welcomed Catrina onto her lap, and gave her a welcome head scratch as Pamela summoned her computer to life.

  Soon they were contemplating photographs of their own pleasant suburb—except the photographs had been selected and manipulated to rob it of its pleasantness. Not only had the scenes been chosen to support the idea that a person of culture and intelligence would not want to live in Arborville, but the photographs themselves had been drained of color and subtly distorted to create the effect of a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

  The first blog entry was dated July 15—not long after Caralee had left her husband and her life in Manhattan and moved in with her aunt. A few words explained her change of residence, and a photograph showed a stretch of Arborville Avenue, including the façade of the Co-Op Grocery. But in the foreground of the shot was a Co-Op customer, a chubby woman in a pair of unflattering shorts. From a shopping cart heaped high with Co-Op bags, she was loading groceries into the back of a giant SUV.

  “Oh, dear,” Bettina sighed. “I think that’s Marlene Pepper, though it’s hard to tell with whatever Caralee did to make everything look so ugly.” She sighed again. “It’s true that people buy more food than they should be eating and drive cars that are bigger than they need to be . . . but we all have our faults. And Marlene Pepper is really a very nice person.” She studied the image and added, “I would never wear those shorts.”

  “Caralee could be mean,” Pamela said, “but we knew that.” She scrolled down to the next entry, dated July 31. The text simply read “No comment needed.” Below the text was a photograph.

  “That looks like St. Willibrod’s parking lot,” Bettina said, leaning forward. “I never realized so many of St. Willibrod’s parishioners drove luxury cars.” Caralee had angled the shot to capture a row of cars that included two Audis, three BMWs, a Mercedes, and a Lexus, as well as the week’s sermon topic. The marquee that occupied a neighboring patch of grass read BLESSED ARE THE POOR.

  A subsequent post included a photo that captured a group of students loitering in front of Arborville High. All were transfixed by their mobile devices except for the girl who was putting on lipstick. A sign read WELCOME BACK, SCHOLARS!

  As the next entry scrolled into place on the screen, Bettina asked, “Did she post this one after she met Roland?” Caralee had photographed one of the oversize houses in the development Arborvillians still referred to as “The Farm.” Twenty years earlier the Van Ripers had sold their ancestral farmland to a developer. The developer had divided it into lots and erected houses more noteworthy for their square footage than their aesthetic appeal. Roland DeCamp and his wife, Melanie, had bought a house there when they moved to Arborville.

  “I do like my hundred-year-old house better,” Pamela said. “Not everybody who lives in Arborville has bad taste.”

  Bettina shrugged. “She was looking for things to disapprove of. So what did she disapprove of about those four men?”

  “There’s one more,” Pamela said. “September seventh—just a week before Caralee was killed.” She scrolled down. There was no picture this time, just a few words: “All that glitters is not really an intellectual treasure. Stay tuned for details.”

  Pamela heard a sharp intake of breath. “Thomas Swinton,” Bettina said. “ ‘One of Arborville’s Intellectual Treasures.’ That was the headline the Advocate used for my interview with him last year.”

  “She won’t be supplying any details now.” Pamela clicked to close the blog. “But I wonder what she was going to say. And did he kill her to keep her from saying it?”

  “I’ll interview him again,” Bettina said. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find out if he knew Caralee—and where he was last Wednesday night between six and seven. The last time I interviewed him he seemed more interested in talking about himself than about the book. And he’s so vain I’m sure he’ll be happy to do a repeat.”

  “What’s his book like?”

  “Weird.” Bettina stood up. “Some of the characters have been alive for centuries. I didn’t read the whole thing, but I’ve got it at home. Come on over and I’ll dig it out.”

  Catrina had wandered away when Bettina became more interested in studying the computer screen than in scratching her head. But as they stepped into the hall she met them. She twined her lithe body around Pamela’s ankle, then looked up and showed her teeth as a demanding meow escaped from her throat.

  “Six children to feed, and they’re getting bigger by the day,” Pamela said. “No wonder she’s hungry.”

  “My offer still stands—when they’re ready to be adopted.” Bettina smiled down at the cat. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a little furry thing at home.”

  “We-e-ell.” Pamela drew the word out. “Maybe one, if you think Woofus could deal with it. But I can’t let you adopt all six, even if Wilfred does feel responsible for their very existence.”

  “Six kittens would be a handful, and then they’d grow up and we’d have six cats,” Bettina said thoughtfully. “But how about my other idea? Bring them out when Knit and Nibble comes on Tuesday. Very few people can resist a kitten.”

  “We can ask them about the mystery men too,” Pamela said. “Maybe somebody in Knit and Nibble knows more about Thomas Swinton and the rest than we do.”

  “I doubt if Holly or Karen would be helpful,” Bettina said, “and Nell is definitely not a gossip. Roland is in his own world. But no harm in trying.”

  * * *

  Pamela studied the book’s dust jacket. Superimposed over an indistinct image that suggested urban ruin, gigantic letters announced the title: Time and Time Again, and letters even more gigantic identified the author: Thomas Swinton. Smaller letters revealed that the book was “a sprawling novel set in a dystopian New Jersey.”

  “It starts in the future,” Bettina said. “Then it goes back to when the Lenni Lenape lived here, before the Europeans came. A big part takes place during the Revolutionary War. That’s as far as I got, but people keep being reborn.”

  They were standing in the cozy den Bettina had created for Wilfred from the bedroom that had been their oldest son’s. Bookshelves filled one wall, and an antique oak desk and a comfy armchair with a matching footstool completed the furnishings
. Old maps in frames that echoed their age hung here and there, with ornate script spelling out place names bestowed when New Jersey was still an English colony.

  “Wilfred mentioned that some scenes take place in the Mittendorf House.” Pamela opened to a spot about halfway through and found herself looking at page 276. Thomas Swinton had written a very long book.

  “I’ll call Swinton tomorrow morning and ask for another interview,” Bettina said.

  “Give me a few days to read this.” Pamela leafed a bit farther on and skimmed a paragraph. A character was heading off to the Civil War. “My knitting will have to take a back seat for a while.”

  “Does it look that good?” Bettina seemed surprised.

  “I don’t know yet,” Pamela said. “But I’m coming with you when you talk to him again. You can say I’m a huge fan.”

  A delicious smell was drifting up the stairs. Then Wilfred entered the room, an apron tied over his bib overalls. “I found some of my homemade chili in the freezer,” he announced. “Who’s ready for lunch?” He glanced at the copy of Time and Time Again, which Pamela still held open in her hands. “Are you going to read that?”

  “I’m thinking of it. Did you?”

  Wilfred wrinkled his nose. “Some of the guys at the historical society said the Revolutionary War parts were very convincing, but the time travel thing put me off. I’d rather read real history anyway. He who does not study the past is condemned to repeat it.”

  They proceeded down the stairs. Woofus looked up in alarm when he saw Pamela and retreated from his perch on the sofa to take refuge behind it.

  “Poor dog,” Bettina said. “He has flashbacks to the days before he was rescued by the shelter.”

  In the kitchen, Pamela and Bettina took seats at the pine table, which Wilfred had set with three deep bowls from Bettina’s set of craft-shop pottery. A basket of sliced sourdough bread from the Co-Op bakery waited in the middle of the table, along with a wooden cutting board that held a wedge of the well-aged Stilton that was Bettina’s favorite.