Knit One, Die Two

by Peggy Ehrhart

  Officer Sanchez took the pipe from Pamela’s hand. “Is this true?” she asked Rue. Her voice was sharp, and Pamela was happy to see that she could be stern when the occasion called for it.

  “No,” Rue said. “They tried to kill me.”

  “She also arranged for the furniture collapse that killed Caralee Lorimer,” Pamela said. “Caralee’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  A siren whooped from the parking lot, then trailed off into a growl. Officer Sanchez shifted her gaze to the other officer, who was standing at attention near a brass floor lamp that had escaped being toppled. “Get an evidence bag,” she said. “A big one.”

  Rue lifted her arm, reaching toward a nearby chair, but cried out in pain halfway through the motion. The arm slipped back to her lap, and she cradled it with the other and groaned. “Something’s broken,” she said. “I’m sure.”

  The other officer returned, trailed by two EMTs and carrying a flat bag made of heavy yellow plastic. Officer Sanchez deposited the piece of pipe in the bag and zipped it up while the EMTs knelt by Rue. Pamela backed out into the hall where she stood off to the side while Craig described to the assembled Players how his errand in quest of Rue and the footstool had interrupted an attempted assault.

  One of the EMTs darted from the storage room, disappeared through the double doors, and returned pushing a stretcher on crisscrossed metal legs. Pamela’s last sight of Rue Wadsworth, except for the photographs that subsequently illustrated the report of her arrest in the Register, was of a tiny large-eyed creature fastened to a stretcher with wide straps and being wheeled to a waiting ambulance.

  “We’ll follow you guys to the hospital,” Officer Sanchez called as the EMT, who was the driver, climbed into the ambulance. “Don’t do anything with her till we get there.” She turned to Pamela and asked if she wanted to press charges against Rue for attempted assault, but Pamela said no. Rue would be adequately punished, she was sure.

  As Rue had surmised, the Players—being devoted to the theater—seemed determined to carry on with their rehearsal. Craig rummaged among the disorderly jumble of furniture, pulled out a footstool, and the whole crowd trooped back to the auditorium.

  There was still no sign that the Frasers had returned as Pamela made her way along the sidewalk to her own house.

  After such excitement, she wasn’t the least bit hungry, but it was nearly eight o’clock. Cooking a meal—even a simple one—would calm her down, she knew. Carrying out the familiar motions in her familiar kitchen would make the drama next door seem only a brief interruption in a normally placid, very placid, life. She’d make a cheese omelet, then she’d call Penny to let her know that there was genuinely nothing to worry about now.

  But she paused midway through counting out three eggs. The mother of Penny’s friend Lorie Hopkins was in the Players. Lorie would know very soon that Rue Wadsworth had been revealed that evening as the killer of both her own husband and Caralee Lorimer, and that Rue had then tried to kill Pamela Paterson. She’d better call Penny right now.

  As she lifted the phone, she heard heavy feet on the porch. Catrina, who had been dozing on one of the kitchen chairs, snapped to attention, her ears tilted in the direction of the sound. Pamela returned the phone to its resting place and ventured toward the entry. She hadn’t turned the porch light on when she got home, hoping to be undisturbed—at least until Bettina and Wilfred came home.

  As she stepped into the entry, the doorbell chimed. Could it be Detective Clayborn? He probably would have questions, and he’d certainly want to deliver a little homily about leaving police work to the police. Yes, she decided, it was probably Detective Clayborn. Nothing dangerous, certainly, since no murderers were any longer at large in Arborville.

  It was so dark outside that only a vague human outline was visible through the lace that curtained the oval window. She opened the door expecting to greet Detective Clayborn, with his melancholy eyes gazing at her from his homely face. But instead, she had to tilt her head back to greet Richard Larkin.

  “I . . . it’s you,” she stuttered. “You’re okay. I thought . . .” She paused and made a conscious effort to breathe. “I mean,” she said, “you didn’t come back when you said you would.”

  Something in his face changed, a tiny muscle tightening—or loosening, perhaps. His expression when she opened the door had been expectant. Now she wasn’t sure how to describe it. But he was studying her.

  “I didn’t mean to worry you,” he said suddenly. “I didn’t think you’d—”

  “Oh, no! I wasn’t. It was just that . . .” She backed away from the door.

  “May I?” he asked, and waited until she nodded to step in. “I’m sorry it’s so late. I’ve been catching up at the office. I slept there last night. And I wanted to check in with my daughters.”

  So that explained the car that appeared and then disappeared again. Richard stood uncertainly at the edge of the carpet for a minute. “You want your mail,” Pamela said. “Of course. That’s why you’re here.” She backed up farther and waved toward the cardboard box under the mail table.

  He bent to pick it up and a kitten leapt out, one of the ginger ones. Richard laughed. “You have kittens.” He watched it scamper across the carpet.

  “They’re Catrina’s,” Pamela said. “The black stray I adopted. She had six of them last month.”

  “This little guy looks familiar,” he said. “Like a miniature version of a big tom that roams around the neighborhood.” He seemed more relaxed now that the kitten had provided a topic of conversation.

  Pamela corrected him. “It’s a she. And I have two more ginger females and three black males. Most of them are looking for homes.”

  He watched the ginger kitten, laughing again as it rolled onto its back, the merriment softening his strong features. He stooped again and scooped the cardboard box up with his large hands. “I could use a cat,” he said.

  “Really?” Pamela smiled and clasped her hands.

  “Really.” Richard was at the door now, but he paused on the threshold.

  “How was it,” Pamela found herself asking, “in Maine?”

  Richard seemed momentarily startled, as if he hadn’t expected she’d want to chat. “Good,” he said after a minute. “It feels weird to be back—back to designing buildings for rich people after a stint with Recycle, Renew. Up there, the people I work with are happy as long as their windows keep out the draft—even if they don’t all match.”

  “The kittens will be ready in about a month,” Pamela said.

  “I’ll . . .” He studied the floor for a minute. “I’ll be in touch then. About the kitten.”

  “Some are already reserved,” Pamela added, “but you can have your pick of the ones that aren’t.”

  Richard nodded, but still lingered on the threshold, eyes focused on the floor. “I know Penny’s away at school,” he said at last, “but Laine and Sybil are coming out Saturday for a welcome home barbecue. If the weather holds up, that is. I have some photos from Maine to show them—a regular travelogue.” He raised his eyes to Pamela’s face. “Maybe you’d like to see them too?”

  “I . . .” Now Pamela studied the floor. The ginger kitten darted into view and Richard laughed. Pamela watched as the laugh transformed his features again. “I would,” she said after a minute. “I’d like to come. I’ll bake something.”

  She returned to the kitchen to call Penny.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “You can read all about it in the Advocate this week,” Bettina announced. “Including my interview with our very own Pamela Paterson.”

  Pamela lowered her eyes modestly to her lap, where a skein of ruby-red yarn and the tunic’s second sleeve, nearly finished, rested. She and Bettina were sitting side by side on Holly’s streamlined ochre sofa. It was so long that there was room for Roland and Karen too.

  “What you did was very reckless,” Nell said from a love seat covered in an abstract floral print, bright orange and chartreuse. Her k
ind face looked more worried than angry. “And don’t think I don’t know about how you bribed Harold for information by offering him some of your peach cobbler. The evidence, in the form of a dirty plate and some crumpled foil, was lying right there on the kitchen counter when I got home from the women’s shelter. I suspect you’d like the plate back and I have it right here in my bag.”

  Pamela studied her knitting.

  “Well I think what she did was amazing.” Holly was perched on a chair with an angular chrome frame and a dark green leather seat and back. It and its twin faced the sofa, with the coffee table—a free-form slab of granite on spindly legs—in between. The room’s walls were a shadowy gray, and an eye-catching sunburst clock dominated one wall. “I am so impressed.”

  “And all’s well that ends well, as Wilfred might say,” Bettina observed.

  Nell clucked disapprovingly and launched a new stitch with a vigorous thrust of a knitting needle.

  “She saved the police a lot of effort,” Roland commented, looking up from a new section of the pink sweater, perhaps the back. “Now they can get back to doing what they do best—as little as possible.”

  “The Register interviewed you too,” Karen said, leaning around Roland so she could see Pamela. “You were in that article this morning.”

  Pamela nodded. “A reporter showed up last night, about nine, Marcy Brewer. She’s very energetic. Detective Clayborn was just leaving.”

  “Rue Wadsworth certainly doesn’t look like a murderer,” Karen said. “At least judging from the photo in the Register.”

  “I didn’t realize it for a long time,” Pamela said, “but then it came to me that she had all the access anyone could want to that storage room. She could arrange and rearrange that pile of furniture to her heart’s content.”

  Bettina spoke up from her end of the sofa. “And she confessed to everything, the murder of Caralee and of her husband. I talked to Clayborn today.”

  “She must have been so unhappy . . . to do such desperate things.” Karen shook her head sadly. Despite her pregnancy just becoming evident, her fragile blondness still made her look like a child.

  Nell lowered her knitting into her lap and regarded the group with her faded blue eyes. “I’m not sure what punishment the justice system can offer beyond what she must already be suffering,” she said.

  “Nonsense!” Roland looked up, startled. “She committed a crime—two crimes really—and she has to pay her debt to society.”

  “I’m not saying she should be let go,” Nell protested. “I’m just . . . we can’t . . . life is more complicated than our laws would make it out to be.”

  “Mushy thinking!” Roland tossed his knitting aside. “Why have laws if they don’t mean anything?”

  Nell half rose. “Of course they mean something—”

  Roland half rose too, and glowered at Nell. “Well then, what do they mean?”

  Pamela felt a hand on her arm and turned to see Bettina grimacing. She patted Bettina’s hand and leaned forward. “Nell . . . Roland . . . please—”

  But Holly had leapt from her chair. “It’s just eight p.m.,” she cried, “and wait until you all see what we’re having for refreshments!” She looked around. “Any helpers?”

  “Yes!” Bettina pushed herself up from the sofa, grabbed Nell’s arm, and pulled her along as they followed Holly from the room.

  When Roland tossed his knitting aside it had landed in Karen’s lap. Now she picked up the sleeve, which hung from two needles with an ominous gap between them. “I think you may have dropped a few stitches,” she said, nudging one of the needles into an unattached loop.

  But Roland didn’t hear her. He cleared his throat and sat still for a minute. Then he turned to Pamela. “I’ve spoken to Melanie”—his voice was as formal as if he was launching a business proposal—“about adopting the cat.” He paused. “That is, if you’re still willing,” he added hastily. “Melanie doesn’t think introducing such a small creature to Ramona would create a problem.”

  “I wish we could adopt one,” Karen piped up in her meek voice, still holding Roland’s knitting. “They’re so cute, except with the baby coming, and Dave’s wool allergy, I’m afraid we’d end up giving it back. But Holly wants one, I know. She can’t wait to bring a kitten home.”

  Pamela had rested her knitting in her lap when Roland began talking. Now she touched the fingers of her left hand one by one. Index finger: Roland, one kitten. Middle finger: Holly, one kitten. Ring finger: Bettina, one kitten. Pinkie: Richard Larkin: one kitten. And—she touched her thumb: She’d keep the bold ginger female. That left only one kitten to find a home for. She smiled to herself. Things were looking up. And the delicious smell of caramelized sugar was drifting in from the next room.

  Bettina appeared in the wide opening between Holly’s living room and her dining room. “Holly has created a masterpiece,” she announced.

  Pamela, Roland, and Karen entered Holly’s dining room. In the center of her pale wood table with its Scandinavian-inspired lines sat a round platter containing a dome-shaped object covered in meringue coaxed into points and baked to a tawny gold.

  “It’s Baked Alaska,” Holly explained proudly as a chorus of ooohs and aaahs echoed around her. “It’s from this amazing 1950s cookbook I found at a garage sale.” She displayed a worn cookbook featuring a smiling 1950s housewife on the cover, complete with pearls, an apron, and a bright lipsticky smile.

  An elegant chrome coffeepot waited off to the side on Holly’s table, with a matching cream and sugar set and a squat pottery teapot. Heavy plastic cups, saucers, and plates in assorted pastels were marshaled nearby, along with a stack of fancy paper napkins. “EBay,” Holly commented as Pamela examined a cup. “It’s called Melmac. Awesome. I can’t believe someone wanted to get rid of it.”

  “Will your husband come out to share this treat?” Nell asked.

  “He’s at the salon,” Holly said. “We have a few late nights there.”

  She picked up a long knife and carved out a wedge-shaped serving of the Baked Alaska. When it had been transferred to one of the Melmac plates, its construction became clear: an inner core of pale ice cream, a thick layer of chocolate cake, and then the meringue—and the whole baked just long enough to brown the meringue but not melt the ice cream.

  In the living room, the dramatic coffee table proved large enough to accommodate six plates and six cups and saucers. For a few minutes, no one spoke, enjoying the chill of the still-frozen ice cream, the rich chocolate sponge of the cake, and the cloudlike meringue with the sweet tease of slightly burned sugar.

  “Everything old is new again,” Nell commented as she lowered her fork to her empty plate. “Baked Alaska was all the fashion when Harold and I first set up house. This tastes just like I remember.”

  Bettina licked a last dab of ice cream from her fork.

  “I’m certainly glad it’s coming back,” she said. “I could eat it every night.” She poured coffee from the elegant chrome coffeepot, stirred in cream and sugar, and leaned back on the sofa.

  Nell set her teacup back on its plastic saucer. “We’re back to six people,” she observed.

  “No need to recruit another,” Roland said. “Six people is plenty.”

  “Six people is a good number,” Bettina agreed, glancing from face to face. “But I know there are many more knitters in Arborville. Marlene Pepper was telling me she’s just taken it up again. And the senior center hosts a crafts program. Some of those ladies are knitters.”

  “Would anyone even want to join?” Karen shivered. “After what happened to Caralee.”

  “That had nothing to do with the knitting club.” Roland’s tone was that of a lawyer chastising a lapse in logic. “However, I agree with Karen.” He went on, not noticing Karen’s look of surprise, his lean face serious. “I don’t believe we’d get any takers. Few people make decisions based on what’s rational.”

  “Pooh!” Nell puffed in disgust. “I give people more credit t
han that. No one’s going to believe they’re endangering their life by joining Knit and Nibble.”

  Karen set her cup down with a worried look. “But I”—she glanced around—“now I’m feeling a little bit nervous.”

  Roland snorted. “If you’re going to think like that, then we’re all tempting fate.”

  Karen’s eyes widened in alarm. Her hand strayed to the slight thickening at her waist. Nell reached over from the love seat, patted Karen’s arm, and directed a scowl in Roland’s direction.

  “Let’s all have more Baked Alaska!” Holly cried, jumping up from the chrome and leather chair. “There’s lots. Who’s for seconds? And Nell”—she smiled her dimply smile—“would you like to take a piece to Harold?”

  “Oh, no you don’t.” Nell returned the smile and the skin around her eyes crinkled. “I’m not sure what you have in mind, but he’s very susceptible to bribery.”

  “No bribery,” Holly said, laughing. “I’ll leave solving murders to Pamela.”

  KNIT

  Sachets: For Humans . . . and Cats

  These sachets are little knitted bags about three inches by six inches. You can fill them with dried flowers or herbs, like lavender (or catnip!), from your own garden, or with potpourri purchased in shops or online. You can also slip bars of fancy soap into them. Sachets of either sort can be used to give the contents of dresser drawers and linen closets a nice scent. Or, if you give bags containing soap as gifts, the recipient can take the soap out and use it.

  It’s fun to choose colors of yarn that echo the contents of your sachets, like lavender for lavender (duh!) or rosy pink for dried rose petals. If you fill your bags with fancy soap, you can match the bags to the color of the soap. And of course, the front and the back of the bag don’t have to be the same color.

  If you’re not a knitter, watching a video is a great way to master the basics of knitting. Just search the Internet for “How to knit” and you’ll have your choice of tutorials that show the process clearly, including how to cast on. This project can be made using the most basic knitting stitch, the garter stitch. For this stitch you knit every row, not worrying about “purl.” But the sachets look pretty worked in the stockinette stitch, the stitch you see, for example, in a typical sweater. To create the stockinette stitch, you knit one row, then purl going back the other direction, then knit, then purl, knit, purl, back and forth. Again, it’s easier to understand “purl” by watching a video, but essentially when you purl you’re creating the backside of “knit.” To knit, you insert the right-hand needle front to back through the loop of yarn on the left-hand needle. To purl, you insert the needle back to front.