Knit One, Die Two

by Peggy Ehrhart

  A gray-haired man in jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt appeared in the open doorway, a bulging trash bag in each hand. He crossed the asphalt, bouncing in time to the rock beat of the radio, and deposited the bags on a pile of similar bags.

  “It looks like they’re going ahead with the production,” Bettina said. “A lot of retired people are involved in the Players, and they can muster out any day of the week. Good thing too—yesterday this whole place was off limits.” She slid into a parking space, pushed her car door open, and started to climb out.

  “What are you doing?” Pamela said, reaching for Bettina’s arm. “Where are you going?”

  “To talk to them, of course.” Bettina reclaimed her arm. “How could we ask for a better chance to find out who knows what about Wadsworth’s murder?” She was standing on the asphalt now, leaning into the car to talk to Pamela.

  Pamela groaned. “I told you I promised Penny I wouldn’t get involved,” she said wearily.

  “But I didn’t,” Bettina said. “And look—how interesting. That piece of scenery is so convincing I’d think I was about to step right into Madame Defarge’s wine shop. Let’s go talk to the artist.”

  “You can go,” Pamela said, “but I’m keeping my promise to Penny.”

  Pamela stayed in the car, but she couldn’t avoid overhearing people’s voices as they shouted over the throbbing music. The storage room was evidently undergoing a major reorganization. The scenery painter was explaining to Bettina that space would never be found for the Tale of Two Cities sets unless some rigorous winnowing out was done.

  The man in the Rolling Stones T-shirt darted back through the double doors and reemerged carrying two more bulging trash bags. He was followed by another man tugging on a costume rack like the ones Pamela and Bettina had seen when they talked to Rue Wadsworth in the auditorium. In fact, it looked like one of those very racks. It held a row of long, drab-colored cotton dresses, the garments destined for the downtrodden masses, as Pamela recalled. The man tugged it through the doorway and past a cluster of wooden chairs, then paused for a minute, looked back at it with a frown, and gave it a mighty jerk.

  The rack swayed, the pipe along which the hangers were arranged dipped at one end, and the dresses slid onto the ground in a confused jumble of brown and gray. “Oh, blast!” he shouted to no one in particular. “Why can’t this blasted costume rack stay put together?” With the top pipe detached, the upright supports teetered and soon the entire rack lay in parts on the asphalt, tangled among the forlorn dresses.

  The man in the Rolling Stones T-shirt sauntered over and slapped the other man on the back. “Good work, buddy,” he said with a laugh.

  Meanwhile, Bettina had finished her conversation with the scenery painter and was daintily making her way back to the car in her high-heeled booties. She stopped, however, when she reached the collapsed costume rack.

  “At least they’re the costumes for the peasants,” she said to the man in the Rolling Stones T-shirt. “A little dirt will make them more realistic.”

  A few of the women had converged on the mess and were extracting the dresses one by one from the pile, reuniting them with their hangers, and draping them here and there on the chairs and tables. “Busy day,” one of them observed to Bettina. “All this work and rehearsal tonight. We persuaded Rue to carry on—valiant woman.”

  Bettina shuddered. “I’ll say so. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost my Wilfred.”

  “Oh, she adored Anthony, no question about that,” the other woman said. “She poured her heart and soul into those Christmas letters. But they were both devoted to the theater. He would have wanted the show to go on.”

  * * *

  “No sign of Richard yet,” Bettina observed, pulling into Pamela’s driveway. Pamela made a noncommittal sound and reached for the door handle. “Clayborn said he’d keep me posted on developments in the Wadsworth murder,” Bettina added as Pamela stepped from the car. “There’s still a few more days before the Advocate goes to press. It would be a nice coup for the Arborville Police Department if they could solve the case before this week’s issue.”

  “I hope they do,” Pamela said. “And I hope whoever did it confesses to killing Caralee too. Poor Margo—to have her niece’s death go unpunished like that. Somebody set that furniture up to collapse again and again until it finally did the job. We tried so hard to figure it out but we had to cross all those people off our list one by one.” It had occurred to her that morning that Caralee’s ex-husband and the replacement Madame Defarge could be crossed off too. What motive would they have for killing Anthony Wadsworth?

  * * *

  Work awaited Pamela upstairs in her office. An email with ten attachments had been lurking in her Inbox when she checked her email that morning—nine submissions to evaluate and one accepted article to edit. She’d read three of the submissions before walking uptown to meet Bettina at Hyler’s, and had decided that “Missionary Influence on Native American Porcupine Quill Embroidery” was a definite yes. Now she removed Catrina from her computer keyboard and settled down for an afternoon of work, hoping that the remaining submissions would be compelling enough to take her mind completely off Caralee, Anthony Wadsworth, and Richard Larkin.

  Several hours later, a plaintive meow from the threshold of her office pulled her away from the computer screen. She was suddenly aware that the sky had darkened behind the curtains at her office windows and she had a crick in her neck.

  “Okay,” she said to Catrina. “Let’s go down and have some dinner.”

  As she and Catrina passed through the entry on the way to the kitchen, Pamela heard noises in the street—Players arriving for their evening rehearsal, no doubt. Certainly a dedicated bunch. Devoted to the theater, as the woman had said of Rue and Anthony Wadsworth that afternoon.

  A swirling, furry mass of ginger and black with wispy tails greeted Pamela’s feet as she stepped across the kitchen floor on the way to the cupboard where she kept the cat and kitten food. She got the kittens settled with their bowl of kitten food and began to scoop a few spoonfuls of Catrina’s food into her bowl. From outside came the sounds of Players hailing one another. It must be fun, she reflected—a lot of work, but fun. Otherwise who’d do it?

  She pondered this thought as she served Catrina her meal, and as she stood with one hand on the refrigerator door gazing into its brightly lit interior. There was still a bit of meatloaf left, or she could make an omelet with the new Co-Op cheddar. In the street a horn honked and a voice called out a cheerful greeting. More Players on their way to rehearsal, devoted to the theater.

  Pamela slammed the refrigerator closed. In a moment she was standing in the entry reaching for the knob on her front door. Through the lace that curtained the oval window, she could see headlights as a driver slowed to turn into the church driveway. Pamela had waited in the car that afternoon while Bettina circulated among the Players, chatting with them as they busied themselves tidying their storage room and constructing scenery. But she’d seen things, and heard things. Bettina had seen them and heard them too, but she hadn’t made the connection. Pamela would explain the connection, and Bettina could take it from there. She leaned close to the lace curtain and stared at Bettina’s house across the street. Wilfred’s car was gone and no lights were on. They were out somewhere together.

  Pamela sighed and almost headed back to the kitchen. But she understood it now, and maybe she wouldn’t really be breaking her promise to Penny. If you absolutely knew the answer and you could save the police a lot of effort, that wasn’t the same thing as sleuthing. She would just check one detail, and then she’d call Detective Clayborn, and everything would be wrapped up neatly. Like casting off at the end of a long and complicated knitting project.

  No Players remained on the sidewalk. Rehearsal must be just getting underway. Pamela hurried down her walk, turned left, and hurried past the church and down the church driveway. The parking lot was brightened by a light on a tall pole at one end, ma
king it clear that the Players had been busy after Pamela and Bettina left. The asphalt lot had been cleared of the miscellaneous furniture and the in-progress scenery. All that remained was a giant pile of bulging black plastic trash bags. Even the destroyed costume rack had been cleared away.

  She’d have to go inside.

  The double doors were closed, but the one she tried swung open easily. She crept along the hall that led to the auditorium, hearing a hubbub of voices but nothing that sounded yet like actors declaiming lines. Here was the storage room on the left, the door conveniently ajar and an overhead light illuminating all. The furniture arrangement still seemed haphazard, with tables and dressers stacked atop tables and dressers, and chairs tucked randomly here and there. Pamela didn’t recognize any of the items that had been arrayed on the asphalt that afternoon. Perhaps they were to be used in the current production and were now onstage or waiting in the wings.

  Two costume racks occupied the clear space in front of the furniture, both racks crammed with more garments than they were meant to hold, including the mournful brown and gray dresses destined for the downtrodden masses. Apparently the collapsed rack had not been put back into service. Rather, its contents had been squeezed onto these still-intact racks. But where had the collapsed rack gone? It hadn’t been waiting with the trash in the parking lot.

  Pamela stepped around the costume racks toward the furniture, scanning the spaces under the tables that made up part of the pile. Then, against the side wall, she spotted what she was looking for—an assortment of pipes, all that was left of the collapsed rack. There were four very long ones and two short ones with wheels. She picked up one of the short ones and the other short one became dislodged, clanging against the long pipes and sliding off the pile. Then two of the long pipes rolled toward her and clanged against each other.

  Pamela reached for the other short pipe and ducked behind the nearest costume rack. She examined the two short pipes closely. Whoever had constructed the costume racks had screwed metal fittings shaped like elbows onto the threads at each end of the short pipes. Then he had attached wheels to the elbows.

  Pamela examined the wheels, and the threading visible above the junctures where the elbows met the pipe ends. And that’s where she found what she’d suspected she’d find. Tangled around one of the wheels were a few strands of grayish hair. She tugged and a hair came loose, a strand about three inches long. She examined that end of the pipe more closely. The silvery sheen of the threads was highlighted by contrast. It was as if a dark fluid had been wiped off the pipe, but some had remained where a few lines of threading were visible at the joint with the elbow.

  She was so intent on her task that she didn’t realize Rue Wadsworth was watching her until Rue spoke.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “I’d ask you what you were doing”—Rue’s timid voice hinted at apology—“except I know.” Rue looked even more worn than when Pamela and Bettina had spoken with her as she labored over the costume for Lucie Manette, her eyes so large in her delicate face that she almost looked like a cartoon character. “I actually hated him,” she said. “He was a pretentious fool and I gave up my own career for him.” She sighed. “But first I loved him. He swept me off my feet, so glamorous, so bohemian, living with him in a basement apartment while he finished school and washing his shirts in the kitchen sink.”

  “You wanted to move to California,” Pamela said. Standing in her kitchen listening to the Players call to one another she’d remembered overhearing Rue talk to her friend at the reception after Caralee’s funeral. A tiny town, Rue had said. And she’d have him all to herself.

  “He promised. He said it would be this year.” Rue looked so mournful that Pamela almost felt sorry for her. “But then I knew it wouldn’t be this year, because he was already planning the Players’ schedule for next year, and the year after, and the year after.” Pamela nodded. “So I decided to take matters into my own hands,” Rue went on, “and scare the Players away. If nobody wanted to try out for his plays, there’d be no more Players. And we could move to California.” She gestured toward the pile of furniture and smiled faintly. “An accident waiting to happen.”

  “Why Caralee?” Pamela asked.

  “It could have been anybody . . . anybody at all. It was just supposed to scare people, make them think the Players had been cursed. I was going to invent other disasters too.” She drew in a long breath and shuddered. “I didn’t mean to kill her. And then it didn’t even scare anybody. They all hung around. And he didn’t cancel the production, even with somebody dead.” She laughed, but it was more like a snort. “Devoted to the theater.”

  “But you meant to kill your husband,” Pamela murmured.

  “Damn right!” Rue straightened her shoulders. “And I didn’t want to take any chances with furniture not landing where it was supposed to.” She smiled. “And now he’s gone.” Then the smile turned to a frown. “But there they are.” She gestured in the direction of the auditorium. “The show must go on. I didn’t think we’d need that ugly piece of knitting anymore. But I guess we . . . they . . . will.”

  Pamela extended the length of pipe she was holding. “Some of his hairs are tangled around this wheel, and his blood is in the threads. That’s pretty clear evidence for the police—”

  Rue interrupted her, suddenly lively. “I could still go to California!” She shouted it as if it had just occurred to her. “I could go without him. I just need”— she looked around frantically, then lunged for one of the long pipes lying against the wall—“to get rid of you.” She paused and cocked her head. “They’re rehearsing now. They’ve closed the door and they won’t hear anything.”

  Pamela edged backward until she felt a piece of furniture poking her in the back. Rue advanced toward her, waving the four-foot length of pipe. Rue was actually quite strong for such a delicate-looking little thing. She swung the pipe and it crashed against something wooden near Pamela’s shoulder. Pamela ducked, but flourished the short pipe she held, hoping to intercept Rue’s next swing.

  Then from the hall came a male voice. “Hey, Rue,” the voice called, “did you find that footstool yet.” A minute later Craig Belknap appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on?” he asked, his pleasant face looking more amused than alarmed. “Fencing practice?”

  “She killed Caralee,” Pamela exclaimed. “And then she killed her husband.” Rue flailed at Pamela with the piece of pipe again.

  “Mrs. W. knocked off Mr. W!” Craig exclaimed with an incredulous laugh.

  Momentarily distracted by Craig’s mockery, Rue froze. Pamela darted around her, tugged Craig out into the hall, and pulled the storage room door shut. “Dial nine-one-one,” she instructed him. “Quick!”

  Craig dug his phone out of his back pocket as Pamela held on to the storage room doorknob, straining to keep the door shut fast. But there was no need to strain, or even hold the knob. After a few seconds there came from within the storage room a terrible crash.

  “What’s taking so long, Craig?” a woman’s voice called from the end of the hall. It was the young woman who had taken over the role of Madame Defarge. She strode briskly toward Pamela and Craig, noticed Pamela and said, “Why are you here?”

  “There’s been a complication,” Pamela responded, turning the knob and giving the door a cautious nudge. From a distance a faint siren reached their ears, like a steady whine. Pamela gave the door another nudge and it swung all the way back. The overhead light revealed a sprawl of furniture nearly covering the whole floor. The costume racks had been set rolling and were now huddled in the corner next to the doorway.

  Voices in the hall suggested more of the Players had become curious about the whereabouts of Rue and Craig. And the siren’s rising volume and pitch suggested it was drawing closer.

  Pamela studied the scene before her as Craig stood at her elbow uttering soft curses. A hand was visible, emerging from a gap between a toppled dresser and a table lying on its side. Rue had swung her
length of pipe just as Pamela scurried past her. The pipe must have connected with something in the furniture pile and launched an avalanche. Another dresser, precariously balanced, bridged the gap through which Rue’s hand protruded. The siren rose to an almost deafening scream, then abruptly went silent. In the silence a tiny voice moaned, “Help.”

  “She’s alive!” Pamela and Craig spoke in unison, Craig turning and repeating the words to the sizable group that now stood bunched in the hall.

  One of the doors that led to the parking lot flew open and two officers in uniform dashed through it. One of them was Officer Sanchez, the woman officer with the sweet, heart-shaped face and dark hair tidied into a neat twist. “She’s still alive,” Craig said. “We need an ambulance.”

  Suddenly the storage room was crowded with people, hefting chairs, tables, and dressers this way and that. Pamela took charge of the costume racks, guiding each one through the door and out of the way to make room for the furniture that was rapidly being removed from Rue Wadsworth. Within a few minutes, an assortment of chairs had been relocated to the hall and a table with a dresser on top of it had taken the place of the costume racks in the front corner of the storage room. The new Madame Defarge was sitting on the floor by Rue, who had been helped to a sitting position and was leaning against the dresser that had nearly crushed her.

  “They tried to kill me,” Rue announced, directing her comment to Officer Sanchez. “They did this”—she gestured feebly at the disordered room—“on purpose to kill me.”

  “Not quite,” Pamela said. She had tossed the incriminating piece of pipe onto the pile with the others as she hurried to escape from Rue. Now she stooped toward the pile and retrieved it. “Rue Wadsworth killed her husband,” she explained. “This piece of pipe from one of her costume racks was the blunt instrument that caused his contusions. His blood is still on it, in the threads. And a few of his hairs are tangled around this wheel.”