Knit One, Die Two

by Peggy Ehrhart

  Chapter Seventeen

  A few minutes later Pamela was clicking on one of the many references that had come up when she keyed “Merrick Timmons Northern New Jersey” into the Google search box. “My, my, my,” she murmured as she scanned a year-old article from a weekly distributed in Haversack. The headline read SLUMLORD TIMMONS AGAIN EVADES DEMANDS FOR REPAIRS BY TENANT ADVOCATES.

  Other references yielded similar information. The Register had even included Merrick Timmons in a three-part series on the affordable housing shortage in Northern New Jersey. He was profiled as the worst of a bad lot—landlords who let their buildings deteriorate but were quick to evict tenants who fell even a month behind on rent. The series had run nearly five years ago, long before Merrick Timmons had moved to Arborville, and Pamela was certain he would just as soon prefer none of his new neighbors realized how he made his living. Arborville’s professional class lived well, but the town had an intellectual and artistic bent and a long tradition of social activism. Information about his life as a slumlord would have made terrific material for Caralee’s blog but would have been very damaging to a man putting on airs as a person of taste and refinement.

  Somewhat disgusted by what she had learned about Merrick Timmons, Pamela keyed Thomas Swinton’s name into the Google search box. His website was the first item to come up, suggesting he got a lot of web traffic. Clicking on “ThomasSwinton.com” led her to a page headed by his name, spelled out in an elaborate script. Beneath the heading was a photo of a middle-aged man with a luxuriant and well-groomed white beard sitting in front of an entire wall of books. “Please let me welcome you into my world,” read the caption, “and let me share with you the love of history that inspires my fiction.”

  He had written a lot of books, long books, and so very many that Pamela imagined he must have worked nonstop seven days a week for most of his adult life. She scrolled through page after page of dramatic book covers—his name becoming a larger and larger part of the design as the years went on—accompanied by glowing reviews.

  “Impressive,” she said to herself at last, “but something about him apparently didn’t impress Caralee.” She closed the browser and tackled the day’s assignment from Fiber Craft.

  By noon she was ready for a break, the sustenance provided by the breakfast toast and coffee long since exhausted. She’d have some lunch, and since the work her boss had sent wasn’t due back until Monday, she’d take a walk and do a bit of housework until Bettina arrived after her babysitting chore.

  A meatloaf sandwich would have been welcome, but the meatloaf hadn’t gotten made. She’d put the egg and the pound of ground beef back in the refrigerator before dashing across the street the previous evening. The potato, onion, and parsley—now somewhat wilted—still waited on the counter. She’d revisit that menu plan tonight, but meanwhile grilled cheese would have to do.

  As she set out her wooden cutting board and unwrapped the wedge of cheddar she’d picked up the day before, she recalled a scene in Time and Time Again. It took place in the kitchen of the Mittendorf House, in one of the time travel scenes, and she’d reflected while reading it that in some ways food preparation hadn’t changed all that much. In fact, she recalled that on her visit to the Mittendorf House several years ago, the long wooden table in the kitchen had featured an arrangement of realistic-looking food—eggs, potatoes, onions, and meat not all that different from the ingredients she’d laid out for her meatloaf. Of course, in place of an oven, there had been a grand fireplace that took up a whole wall.

  Thomas Swinton might be a bit full of himself, but his knowledge of history seemed genuine. She laughed aloud, remembering the phrase the Advocate had used in the headline for Bettina’s interview with him: “one of Arborville’s intellectual treasures.” So suppose he was the one who killed Caralee. What could she have latched on to? What would be the worst thing to happen to a writer who was also an intellectual treasure?

  * * *

  Invigorated by her walk, Pamela cleared the tile floors in the kitchen, back hallway, and laundry room of chairs, rag rugs, and cat- and kitten-food bowls, and litter box. She moved the comfortable bed where Catrina nursed her kittens and where they still slept to the top of the clothes dryer, assuring a few displaced kittens that the move was only temporary. She poured a dollop of pine-scented cleaning liquid into a plastic bucket, fetched her sponge mop from the utility closet, and applied herself to giving all three areas a thorough scrubbing, then a rinse. Upstairs, she flopped on her bed for a rest and lingered there until the doorbell’s chime summoned her down the stairs.

  Through the lace that curtained the oval window in the front door, she could make out Bettina’s vivid coif bobbing this way and that. She opened the door to be greeted by her friend’s back. Bettina was energetically scanning the yard. “No strange men that I can see,” she announced as she spun around. She grabbed Pamela’s hand. “Were you okay last night?” She had come right from her babysitting duties and was wearing dark blue leggings and a matching tunic with bright embroidered borders at hem, cuffs, and neckline.

  “Fine.” Pamela led her inside.

  “I smell pine,” Bettina commented as they walked through the entry. She was carrying a white bakery box.

  “Cleaning day,” Pamela said. “I scrubbed the kitchen floor. The kittens didn’t like the smell, or all the activity. I think most of them are still upstairs.”

  Bettina set the box on the kitchen table and glanced around. “It looks clean,” she commented. “What would you say to another apple turnover?” she asked. “A reward for your industry. I bought six yesterday.”

  “We’ll need coffee,” Pamela said. She set water on the stove to boil and poured beans into her coffee grinder.

  “I guess we have a motive for Wadsworth,” Bettina said as she reached two cups and saucers from the cupboard.

  “Too many suspects.” Pamela pressed down on the grinder’s top and the blades crunched into the beans, blotting out Bettina’s response.

  “I said,” Bettina repeated, “we’ll have to talk to him.”

  “I agree.” Pamela transferred the ground beans into the paper filter she’d placed in the plastic cone atop her carafe. “But wait till you hear what the Internet revealed about Merrick Timmons. I don’t know why we didn’t think of Googling him sooner.” She poured the now-boiling water over the ground beans and as the dark, spicy aroma of brewing coffee wafted from the counter, she described the articles about Merrick Timmons’s behavior as a landlord.

  “Wow!” Bettina looked up from the turnover she had just transferred to one of Pamela’s dessert plates. She had already filled the cut-glass cream pitcher and set out the sugar bowl. “And we know how he could have engineered the toppling furniture.”

  Pamela nodded. “Ben Skyler.” She removed the plastic cone and carried the carafe to the table. “But how could Caralee have gotten onto what Merrick Timmons was up to? Internet, obviously, but something would have had to put that seed in her mind—to research him in the first place. I can’t believe she set about trying to find compromising information on every single resident of Arborville.”

  “Hyler’s,” Bettina said. “Everybody goes there, and when you’re a server people hardly notice you—unless you mess up. I waited tables summers when I was in college. I couldn’t believe the things people talked about over meals. Not to mention what they’ll say on their cell phones now. Anywhere.”

  “So,” Pamela said, “two things to do.” She tilted the carafe and filled Bettina’s cup. “First, figure out a way to talk to Wadsworth, and what to ask him. We can’t just say, ‘Did you kill Caralee Lorimer.’ ” She filled her own cup. “Second, figure out whether Ben Skyler stayed at work later than usual that Wednesday night. He unlocked the storage room early because Rue Wadsworth wanted to work on costumes, then she left a bit after six. He told us he usually goes home at five. But if his plan was to carry out orders from Merrick Timmons and arrange things to crush Caralee, he would have been
lurking around when Rue left.”

  Bettina had already carved off a forkful of turnover, revealing the apple slices flecked with cinnamon within the tawny pastry shell. She nodded. “Rue might be over there now. Opening night is a week from today—at least according to the press release they sent the Advocate. She didn’t have much of a start with the costumes the last time we talked to her. I imagine it’s crunch time.” She lifted the forkful of turnover to her mouth. “We’ll give Caralee’s knitting project back to her. Pretend we think she needs it.”

  Pamela picked up her fork, and for a few minutes both concentrated on their turnovers and coffee. The natural sweetness of the apples had been supplemented with a goodly amount of sugar, creating a thick apple-y syrup that coated the tender apple slices.

  “I’m not sure what to think about Thomas Swinton,” she said as she speared all that remained of the turnover, a knob of crust from one of the corners. “I finished the book, and I researched him on the Internet, and nothing has jumped out at me. So . . . motive?” She shrugged. “And there’s no obvious way he’d have had access to the storage room either. But we can ask Rue if she saw him hanging around Wednesday evening . . . if she even knows who he is.”

  “We’re not canceling lunch tomorrow.” Bettina sounded truly upset. “He’s quite the gourmand. I interviewed him at four in the afternoon the last time and he served tea and éclairs.”

  * * *

  Rue had made progress with the costumes. Two of the wheeled clothes racks sat out on the polished floor of the auditorium. One held a row of long, full-skirted dresses in mournful shades of brown and gray, pale in spots, streaked darker in others, and creased as if they had been dampened and then let dry with no attention from an iron. The other held shapeless men’s jackets in the same sad condition. Rue was sitting in a chair near the doorway that led in from the hall, busy with a sewing project.

  “Suitable for the downtrodden masses, don’t you think?” Rue said, looking up from what she was doing. “No one in the audience will realize those dresses and jackets appeared in Carousel last year. Amazing what you can do with a few bottles of dye.” The sound that followed the comment must have been meant as a laugh but it sounded more like a yelp. Rue looked worn out, with dark circles like purplish bruises under her eyes. Pamela supposed the stress of supplying costumes for a large cast was taking a toll.

  Rue was working on another dress, but very different from the ones on the rack. It was made from a shiny cloth in a pretty shade of blue and was in the process of having a lacy trim added to its neckline. “Lucie Manette,” she said, standing and holding the dress up to be admired. “The actress will be here in half an hour for a fitting, so I’ve got to keep busy.” She sat back down and her needle resumed its steady in and out.

  “Very nice,” said Bettina, “and we won’t keep you. But we brought you something . . .” She nodded at Pamela and Pamela tugged Caralee’s knitting project from the Co-Op bag she’d tucked it into at Margo’s house.

  “That?” Rue looked at it curiously. “I gave that to you.”

  “But since the production is going forward despite Caralee’s death, we thought you’d want it back. Caralee put a lot of work into it—and it is the right color.”

  As Bettina was talking, Pamela edged down the hall and peeked inside the storage room. The jumble of furniture, scenery, and props had all been tucked away since the last time she and Bettina paid a call on Rue—and the arrangement seemed as precarious as she imagined it had been the night Caralee was killed. Clearly the theater group owned more—of just about everything—than the church storage room could comfortably accommodate. She stepped back through the doorway into the auditorium.

  Rue laughed again, or rather the strange yelp issued from her throat. “We won’t need it now,” she said firmly, then tucked a pleat into the strip of lace she was stitching into place, and stabbed through lace and fabric with her needle. She looked up to frown at Bettina.

  “I guess the replacement actress is a knitter then,” Bettina said cheerily. “That’s a stroke of luck. Do you suppose”—she bent toward Rue—“she’d like to join our group? New members are always welcome.”

  Pamela grimaced. It was clear that Rue was losing patience with them. She wasn’t nearly as chatty as usual. But they hadn’t managed to work the conversation around to the topic they’d hoped to discuss—Ben Skyler’s whereabouts on the evening Caralee was killed. Pamela surveyed the auditorium’s bare floor. “It looks like you got everything put away again,” she said. “That must have been quite a job.”

  “It was,” Rue said, in a tone that seemed intended to discourage further discussion.

  “Ben Skyler must be a great help to you,” Bettina commented. “My husband chats with him—we’re right across the street. He’s always busy at something. What would the church do without him?”

  “The church would do quite well, I’m sure, and he’s never done a lick of work for the Players.” Rue concentrated on her sewing as she spoke. “Not in my job description,” she added, in a surly growl apparently meant as a parody of Ben’s speech. “Employing him is pure charity, if you ask me. But”—she shrugged—“it’s a church. That’s what they do.”

  “You said he’s here every day till five,” Pamela said. “We were talking about the night Caralee died.”

  “He wasn’t here till five that day,” Rue said. “He unlocked the storage room for me at two, then took off. He said he had a job to do for Merrick Timmons. That’s what I mean. The church pays him for twice the number of hours he works.”

  Pamela stepped over to where the dresses for the downtrodden masses hung and lifted a hanger off the rack to study one of the garments. “It seems very authentic,” she observed. “Very historical.” Then, as if the thought had been triggered by what she had just said, she added, “Has Thomas Swinton ever been involved with the Players? A production like this would seem right up his alley.”

  “Who?” Rue looked up from her sewing, her brows raised in puzzlement.

  “Thomas Swinton,” Pamela repeated. “The writer.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Rue said briskly. “And now I really have to get back to work.”

  * * *

  Bettina waited until they were out on the sidewalk to speak. Then she clapped her hands and said, “I’m not sure what that information about Ben means, but you were clever—working Thomas Swinton in.”

  Pamela nodded. “It occurred to me right while we were talking to Rue. The Players could have been the connection between Swinton and Caralee. Let’s say he came in as a consultant—assuming Anthony Wadsworth would admit that anyone else could be helpful—” They both laughed.

  Bettina finished the thought. “In matters of the theater,” she concluded, her voice parodying Wadsworth’s British accent. “So Swinton is there at a rehearsal and he says something or does something that makes Caralee decide he’s good fodder for her blog. And not being the most diplomatic person on earth—”

  Pamela took up the idea. “She says something or does something to let him know she thinks he’s a complete fool.”

  Bettina nodded. “But Rue wouldn’t have told us that.”

  Pamela nodded back. “She’d be loyal to the group.”

  “Undoubtedly.” By now they had reached Pamela’s front walk. “I’ll call for you at a quarter to twelve tomorrow for our lunch date with Swinton,” she said. “Wear something nice, and we’re not walking.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The apple turnover had provided a very substantial afternoon snack, so hunger wasn’t the stimulus that turned Pamela’s thoughts to dinner. Those thoughts were motivated by the recollection that a pound of ground beef still waited to be transformed into meatloaf. In the kitchen, she set the oven at 350 degrees, fed Catrina and the kittens, scrubbed the baking potato thoroughly and poked it several times with a fork, and set about chopping onions with her chef’s knife. As she chopped, she turned away and blinked as the sharp onion burned her eyes.
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  The parsley she’d harvested the previous evening was wilted but would certainly serve for meatloaf. When the onions were finished, she chopped the parsley, then tore the heels from last week’s loaf of whole-grain bread into bits and used the chef’s knife to render them into even smaller bits. As she worked, the sky visible through the kitchen window darkened. Handling the parsley brought to mind the adventure of the previous evening—the man (maybe Craig Belknap!) snooping around her yard—and her flight across the street to spend the rest of the evening with Bettina and Wilfred. She’d returned home to sleep in her own bed, uneventfully, but she wondered whether she should be nervous now.

  Soon the caramel-colored bowl with white stripes near the rim held the compact oval of ground meat, garnished with the chopped onions, the bits of whole-grain bread, and a dusting of green parsley flecks. She sprinkled a teaspoon of salt over the bowl’s contents and added several grindings of pepper. The catsup bottle waited nearby, but the next step was to crack an egg over the whole. With a wooden spoon, she broke up the yolk, which was the brilliant orange of a tiny sun on the verge of setting, added a dollop of catsup, and then mixed and mixed until all the ingredients had been merged into a marbled pinkish blend studded with pale onion bits. She smoothed it into the loaf pan and slid it onto the oven rack, with the potato tucked nearby.

  * * *

  Time and Time Again sat on the mail table waiting to go back to Bettina. Glad to be knitting again, Pamela lounged on the sofa with her project. As she’d neared the end of the first sleeve for the elegant ruby-red tunic with the cutout shoulders, she’d debated whether to alter the pattern so she wouldn’t be baring her shoulders when she wore it. Pamela wasn’t an overly modest person, but she was sensible. And a wool garment that didn’t protect the wearer’s shoulders from the chill didn’t seem sensible. But she’d decided to follow the pattern as it was written and see how she liked the result. The sleeves could always be changed later. The model wearing the garment in the pattern book looked very pleased to be sporting such a chic design.