When the butter was ready, she used a pastry brush to dab it over the cobbler’s doughy covering until the dough shone. Then she sprinkled sugar over the whole surface until it resembled a bare field dusted with snow. She slipped the cobbler into the oven and set about gathering cups, saucers, and dessert plates from the cupboard where she kept her wedding china.
Bettina was the first to arrive, just in time to sigh with anticipation as Pamela transferred the cobbler, now a fragrant, bubbling masterpiece, from the oven to a trivet on the table. The pastry crust had turned a tawny gold, embellished with glistening patches of sugar. The rich peach juice, now a dark syrup, had seeped through in the spots where the crust was thin and around the edges, where it clung to the sides of the Pyrex dish.
Bettina was dressed for the fall evening too, in a pants and jacket ensemble fashioned of soft jersey the color of an eggplant. With it she wore her jade pendant earrings and a dramatic jade necklace.
“I have ice cream to go on top,” Pamela said. “And the cobbler will still be warm when I serve it.”
“Heavenly!” Bettina sighed again. “I can’t wait.”
“I have plenty of heavy cream too.” Pamela reached into the refrigerator and set a carton of cream on the table. “Some people might like that instead.”
“They might,” Bettina said, “but I’m in the ice cream camp.”
Pamela busied herself grinding beans for the coffee while Bettina set the stack of six dessert plates near the cobbler and lined up the cups and saucers in two neat rows. She added forks, spoons, and six lacy vintage napkins to the arrangement, along with a fancy silver-plated serving spoon for the cobbler. The doorbell chimed just as she was filling the cut-glass cream pitcher.
“I’ll get it,” Pamela said. She surveyed the table before she headed for the entry. “The sugar bowl is low.”
“I’m on it.” Bettina opened a cupboard.
* * *
Nell Bascomb greeted Pamela with a quick hand squeeze and a smile. “I know my hands are chilly,” she said. “It feels like fall out here.” Indeed, it smelled like fall too. The gust of air that had come in when Pamela opened the door carried with it a trace of fireplace smoke. “Roland is just behind me,” Nell added. “He’s checking to make sure the side he parked on is legal today.”
Roland’s voice came from halfway down the front walk. “Do they ever actually sweep Orchard Street?” he asked. “Or do they just come around to ticket the cars on the wrong side?”
Pamela was saved answering by Holly, who scurried up beside Roland just as he began to climb the porch steps. “I knew you were here when I saw your amazing car at the curb,” she said, and the porch light reached far enough to show that a dimple accompanied her wide smile. “It must be so much fun to drive.”
Roland paused and turned toward her. “I didn’t buy it for fun,” he said. “I bought it because it’s an excellent piece of engineering. Very dependable.” He continued his climb. Undaunted, Holly followed him.
“It could still be fun though,” she persisted, her smile undimmed.
Nell was lingering at the threshold. “Roland doesn’t do fun,” she said. Then, “How are you, dear? And where’s your sweet friend? She’s okay, I hope.”
“She’s fine and she’s on her way.” Pamela stepped back, and Nell, Holly, and Roland trooped inside. “I came right from the salon,” Holly added. “My five o’clock was late. She’s a good customer so I didn’t want to rush her.” She surveyed Pamela’s living room. “I could spend hours in here,” she said. “Just admiring all your amazing things.” The streak in her dark hair was turquoise tonight and her nails glittered with matching polish.
Roland took his usual spot at one end of the sofa and pulled his knitting project out of the briefcase he used in place of a knitting bag.
“It’s grown a lot!” Holly clapped her hands. “You’ll be done in plenty of time and your wife is going to love it.” The piece of knitting—apparently a sleeve, to judge by its shape—was considerably longer than it had been when Roland tucked his work back into his briefcase the previous week.
Roland looked up with a frown. “Of course it will be done. I calculated the total number of stitches in the finished garment and divided that number by the days remaining until December twenty-fifth. I knit for seventeen minutes every day to meet the daily quota. Extra on Tuesdays, of course.”
Bettina had come out from the kitchen and settled on the sofa between Roland and Nell. Her own project, the elephant she was making for her new granddaughter, sat ready in her lap. But first she fingered the edge of the pink angora rectangle that hung from Roland’s needles. “This ribbing looks pretty good,” she said.
Roland clutched his needles tightly and jerked the piece of knitting out of Bettina’s grasp. “Of course the ribbing looks good,” he said. “Anyone who can read a knitting pattern and count to two can knit ribbing.”
Holly had pulled the footstool up to the end of the sofa where Nell sat. She had finished her first Knit and Nibble project, a bulky white jacket fashioned from yarn nearly as thick as rope, and was making an elephant for Nell to give the shelter children. She’d chosen a multicolored ombré yarn that gave the elephant a particularly flamboyant air.
Pamela’s knitting bag waited by the rummage sale chair with the carved wooden back and needlepoint seat, but she was still on her feet. She didn’t want to settle down until Karen arrived and everyone was present and accounted for. After a few minutes the doorbell chimed and she ushered Karen to the comfortable armchair.
“I don’t need to sit here,” Karen protested. “Where will you sit?”
“I’m fine.” Pamela lowered herself onto the rummage sale chair.
“You’re an expectant mother, dear,” Nell said. “Let us pamper you.”
Predictably, Karen blushed. Her slight body still gave only the tiniest hint of her pregnant state, but she let the roomy chair envelop her and pulled her needles from her knitting bag. From them hung several inches of knitting crafted from delicate white yarn in a pattern like fine lace.
For a few minutes, there was silence as people arranged their yarn just so and examined their projects to remind themselves which direction they were heading and whether they should be knitting or purling. But soon needles were dipping and rising as busy fingers looped strands of yarn and pulled them tight, and the only sound to be heard was a chorus of faint clicks.
Pamela had been spending her evenings reading Time and Time Again instead of knitting, and she was still working on the same ruby-red sleeve from the previous week. Pulling it out of her bag now, she remembered how Caralee had complimented her on the color, and she felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the young woman. It was true that Caralee hadn’t been very sociable, but being sociable didn’t always come that naturally to Pamela herself. And the targets Caralee had aimed at on her blog weren’t totally undeserving of her scorn.
As if reading her mind, Holly said, “I never really got a chance to talk to Caralee, but she seemed . . . interesting. Such a shame what happened.” Without her dimply smile, Holly scarcely looked like herself.
“Troubled, more like.” Nell shook her head sadly. “She wasn’t adjusting well to being back in a small town.”
“She just hadn’t relaxed into the pace of things. Of course, I loved it right away—the old houses, and the trees, and all the amazing people . . .” Holly beamed up at Nell.
Pamela had been searching for a way to bring up the coded names Wilfred had helped her and Bettina decipher in Caralee’s knitting project. Now she glanced over at Bettina, raising her brows in the subtlest of questioning expressions. Bettina caught her eye and gave a nearly imperceptible nod. The jade pendants at her ears bounced. Pamela was just about to open her mouth, but before she could get a word out, Bettina said, “She’d managed to make enemies though.”
“The police have declared Caralee’s death an accident,” Roland said firmly. “So enemies aren’t relevant because the person responsib
le is some fool who doesn’t know how to store furniture properly. There might be grounds for a lawsuit, however.”
Nell started in before Roland had finished, her voice overlapping his. “Bettina and Pamela”—she fixed Bettina with a stern gaze and then focused on Pamela—“you two are not going to get involved in this. I know you both think you’re the town detectives.” Her hands trembled and one of her needles slipped from her grasp, but she went on. “I never approved of that, even when there had clearly been a murder and the police were floundering around. And this time—let it be. Caralee died in a tragic accident. That’s all.” She picked up the errant needle, examined her knitting, and said, “Drat—I dropped a stitch.”
Pamela nodded, but she said, “We’re curious though—”
Roland cut her off. “What makes you think she had enemies? She never said much of anything, to me anyway.”
With a sly smile, Bettina pulled from her knitting bag the homely product of Caralee’s industry, lumpy and gray, still attached to one of her needles. “Morse code,” she said. “Wilfred figured it out. Caralee was getting into character, and just like Madame Defarge she was coding people’s names into her knitting.”
Pamela took over. “In the story, Madame Defarge lists the names of aristocrats who are destined for the guillotine. Evil people who she thinks deserve to die.” She wouldn’t tell them about the blog, at least not yet. Caralee had made it clear enough to the group in person what she thought of Arborville.
Roland set his pink angora sleeve aside and tugged the piece of gray knitting from Bettina’s lap. He studied it intently. “I do see patterns,” he announced. “It’s not just careless knitting.” He looked up. “Clever work on Wilfred’s part. So who are these enemies?”
“One of them is Anthony Wadsworth.” Pamela shrugged. “Artistic differences?”
“Then there’s Thomas Swinton,” Bettina chimed in. “The writer.”
“Time and Time Again.” Nell nodded. “Harold read it. I can’t see why Caralee would object to Thomas Swinton.”
“How about Merrick Timmons?” Pamela asked.
“Rachelle Timmons! Trophy wife!” Holly laughed. “They just moved to Arborville last spring. Grandest house in town, at least according to Rachelle. She’s a client at the salon. Big tipper!” Flashing her turquoise nails, Holly put her hands over her mouth as if to stifle what she was about to say next. It came out anyway, accompanied by another laugh. “She’s hardly older than me. Has to be number two. Or three. Or even four.”
“It’s the old Foster house,” Nell said. “Way up at the top of the Palisades, with a view looking over the Hudson. It was the summer home of a publishing baron, back before the George Washington Bridge was built. People came over by ferry. Harold knows about it from the historical society.”
Roland consulted the swath of knitting he’d now pulled over onto his lap. “I see four separate sections here, the lumpy sections,” he observed. “I guess that’s the Morse code. You named Wadsworth, Swinton, and Timmons. Who’s the fourth aristocrat?”
Bettina and Pamela spoke at once. “Kent Varnish.”
“I don’t know him personally,” Nell said, “but he’s very involved in the community. “He’s the president of Hands Across Arborville, and he’s in the Arborville Arborists, and he’s head of the church council at St. Willibrod’s, a member of the Chamber of Commerce of course, and who knows what else?” She paused, a bit breathless. “I don’t see what anyone could find to object to about Kent Varnish.”
“He sounds busy,” Bettina commented.
“I think we should stick to our knitting,” Nell said, still seeming a bit agitated. “There’s no point in dwelling on that poor young woman’s death when there are other—” She paused and her eyes strayed toward the entry, where they lingered. The lines between her brows smoothed out and her lips curved into a smile. She went on, “Other more cheerful . . . and what do we have here?”
Two kittens tumbled into the room, two of the ginger females. They were followed, cautiously, by one of the black males, the smallest kitten in the litter. The ginger females had been stalking one another, and the tumbling had been the result of a pounce that went awry. Now one lay on her back, fending off the batting paws and teasing nips of the other, while the black male watched them from the edge of the carpet.
“Oh, aren’t these just the most awesome!” Holly had tossed her knitting aside and slid from the footstool to the floor. She looked up at Pamela, her eyes shining with admiration. “I knew you’d had them . . . and now here they are. Just amazing!”
“I can’t take total credit,” Pamela said. “It was actually Catrina’s doing.”
Holly held out a palm and the ginger females left off their sparring to investigate. Karen leaned forward in the armchair and held out a timid hand as well.
“What are you going to do with them?” Roland asked, in the same tones one might use to inquire about plans for some curious acquisition.
“I’ll keep one,” Pamela said. “Catrina needs company.”
From the direction of the kitchen there came a squeal, then another one of the black males came tearing around the corner. He slid across the stretch of uncarpeted floor between the entry and the living room and dove under the footstool. He was followed by the other ginger female, the bold one, who had quickly established her rule over her siblings. Happy that she had vanquished him, she joined her sisters in their play.
“Five of them?” Roland said, with obvious distaste.
“Actually,” Pamela said, “there are six. There’s another black one.”
Holly rocked back on her heels. “Will you . . . let people adopt them?”
Bettina’s eyes grew wide. She gave Pamela a nod and a satisfied smile and mouthed, “Bingo!”
“Why, yes.” Pamela tried not to sound too eager. She had five kittens to find homes for, and people were always more interested in things that weren’t too easy to get. “They’re not quite ready to leave their mother yet, but when the time comes . . .”
“That would be awesome!” The ginger female who had been the first to sniff Holly’s fingers had now climbed onto her thigh and was busily kneading the fabric of her jeans, purring as Holly scratched between her ears.
“They are hard to resist.” Nell’s knitting rested in her lap and she watched as the male who had hidden under the footstool crept warily out, only to retreat when the bold ginger female lunged at him. Pamela imagined the same tender expression on Nell’s face as she watched her own children play.
“Are you interested, Nell?” she said.
“Oh, dear”—sadness replaced the tender expression on Nell’s face—“Harold and I are too old to start over with a kitten. It would outlive us.”
“No!” Holly looked stricken. “You’ll live to be a hundred, at least.” She reached for Nell’s hand.
Nell shrugged. “One has to be realistic. Harold and I have had a wonderful life. And we have a few years left, I’m sure. But a new kitten . . .”
Karen gazed at Nell from the depths of the armchair. “Don’t talk like that,” she said, sounding ready to cry. Her face was flushed and she was blinking, wiping at one eye with a delicate hand. “What would Knit and Nibble do without Nell?”
At that, Bettina was on her feet. “I think it’s time for peach cobbler,” she announced. “Any takers?”
Pamela bounced up from the rummage sale chair, and the two friends hurried to the kitchen.
The ground coffee beans waited in the filter atop the carafe, and tea leaves had already been measured into a graceful thrift store teapot with climbing roses meandering over its china surface. Pamela started water boiling in the kettle as Bettina set the dessert plates out side by side.
“I’ll carry things,” Holly said from the doorway. She caught sight of the cobbler and crossed over to the table. “You are an amazing cook, Pamela,” she said. “It’s almost too pretty to cut into.”
But Bettina plunged the serving spoon into the
cobbler, carving out a scoop that included both baked peach slices and pastry topping, golden brown with a glittering sprinkle of baked-on sugar. She gently deposited it on one of the dessert plates. The fragrance of peaches and sugar was almost intoxicating.
“There’s a choice of cream or ice cream,” Bettina said. “Holly, will you go take orders?”
Pamela turned away from the counter. “There will be cream and sugar on the coffee table, so people can add their own cream if that’s what they prefer. But they should let us know if they want ice cream.” The kettle began to whistle and Pamela focused on pouring boiling water over the ground coffee in the paper filter. Once that was done, and the bitter aroma of brewing coffee began to compete with the sweet aroma of the cobbler, she filled the kettle and set it boiling again for the tea.
Bettina continued to serve the cobbler, and soon each plate held a piece of the pastry topping, like a ragged-edged free-form biscuit, tucked next to a generous scoop of the tawny fruit, gleaming with its rich syrup.
Holly was back. “Cream for Nell, ice cream for Karen—and me, and Roland wants his plain.” She reached for the cut-glass cream pitcher and sugar bowl. “I’ll take these out,” she said, “and I’ll be back to deliver cobbler.”
By the time Pamela entered the living room with four cups of coffee on a tray, the kittens had all retreated, perhaps disconcerted by the hustle and bustle of refreshments being served. The plates of cobbler had all been delivered, four with crests of vanilla ice cream forming milky rivulets as it melted onto the still-warm cobbler. Nell and Karen had their tea. Pamela tugged the rummage sale chair nearer to the coffee table and settled down to taste her handiwork.
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