Silent Knit, Deadly Knit

by Peggy Ehrhart

  There were clues, and then there were clues. Pamela knew that. Lobbing clues willy-nilly at Detective Clayborn could result in no clues being taken seriously. Pamela knew that too, and Bettina’s reporter job for the Advocate had provided both Pamela and Bettina with insight into the police mind.

  Though Pamela now knew that a young man was wandering around Arborville wearing a scarf that could only have come from Millicent Farthingale’s neck, that knowledge depended on a personal acquaintance with the scarf in question. And Detective Clayborn—unaware that knitters recognize their own or their friends’ creations as readily as they recognize their own or their friends’ children—was unlikely to be impressed.

  So she didn’t hurry back the way she’d come and slip through the narrow passage between Hyler’s and the hair salon to reach the police station and report her discovery to Detective Clayborn. Instead, she crossed Arborville Avenue and made her way to the Co-Op. There she plucked a basket from the nest of baskets near the door and made a round of the market, adding to it parsnips and a huge waxed turnip, three pounds of oxtails, and two cans of cat food.

  She emerged from the Co-Op fifteen minutes later with a canvas shopping bag in each hand, eager to put the oxtails in the refrigerator and run across the street to tell Bettina about the scarf sighting. But as she stood at the corner waiting for the light to change, it suddenly appeared there might be more to report.

  She was admiring the way Borough Hall, the small brick building that served as Arborville’s administrative center, had been decorated for Christmas. The railings that flanked the half flight of steps leading to its entrance bore swags of greenery bound with wide red ribbons. Matching swags were draped around the door itself, which also sported a huge holly wreath trimmed with a red bow. Miniature Christmas trees twinkling with white lights flanked the door.

  A young man had climbed the steps. He paused and stood aside as the door began to open, then waited while an elderly couple stepped out. They moved slowly and he turned to gaze toward the street, unable for a moment to enter. And as he did, he added a touch of seasonal color to the holiday tableau—a bright red scarf with green stripes at the ends.

  Pamela stared, long enough to lose her chance to cross the street. She stepped off the curb but the “Don’t Cross” warning blinked in admonishment. She resigned herself to another wait, watching helplessly as, with a courtly nod to the elderly couple, her quarry disappeared through the wreath-bedecked door. He’d be somewhere in the building though. She resolved to track him down. As she waited for the light to change once again, she prepared mentally for the encounter.

  Penny had been a cooperative and obedient child, especially in the past six years, as if she realized that with Michael Paterson gone, she and her mother had only each other. But Pamela still had a mother’s instinct for the subtle signs of discomfort when an unexpected question required a quickly fabricated answer. When she located the young man, she would say, “Nice scarf! Do you mind if I ask where you got it?” And she’d watch his face carefully as he answered.

  When the “Don’t Cross” warning was replaced by the little striding figure that invited people to proceed on their way, Pamela stepped off the curb. She hurried to the other side of Arborville Avenue and thence up the steps and between the twinkling Christmas trees. Then she pushed open the door and entered Borough Hall.

  A long hallway, carpeted in nondescript gray, stretched to the back of the building. To the left of the hallway, a steep staircase led to a second floor. The hallway ran past counters where people could pay their tax bills or parking tickets, apply for permits for home-improvement projects or garage sales, or request “Resident Parking” decals for their cars. Postings on a large bulletin board announced upcoming deadlines and advised that Borough Hall would no longer be able to process passport renewals. Beyond the counters, doors opened off either side of the hallway.

  Pamela stopped at the first counter she came to. A chubby woman wearing dangling candy-cane earrings was sitting in front of a computer screen. Pamela asked her whether she’d noticed a young man in a red scarf.

  “Can’t say I did,” the woman said, looking at Pamela over the half-glasses perched on her nose.

  Pamela asked the same question at the other counters and got the same answer. Proceeding along the hallway, she peeked in each office but saw no sign of her quarry. She climbed the creaky stairs—Borough Hall was very old—but had no better luck on the second floor. All the while she was rehearsing in her mind Nice scarf! Do you mind if I ask where you got it? and various scenarios were playing themselves out.

  In one, the one that made her heart come noisily alive in her chest, the young man in the red scarf replied, I know why you’re asking and I know who you are. You’re the mother of Penny Paterson, the Miss Nosy who was nosing around in the nature preserve last Monday afternoon. And if you both know what’s good for you, you’ll mind your own business.

  She retraced her steps along the second-floor hallway till she was back at the top of the steep staircase, grasped the bannister, and made her way down. The grocery bags were getting rather heavy. At the bottom of the stairs, she took a deep breath to gather her nerve. There was no back door to Borough Hall, though more modern construction would have demanded a fire exit. The young man in the red scarf had to leave sooner or later. She’d stand by the entrance. It was only a matter of time.

  And there was no reason to be afraid, she told herself. He didn’t look like a killer, and he probably came by the scarf in some totally innocent way. But tracing the scarf’s adventures between the time that Millicent wrapped it around her neck and the present could be useful—and revealing.

  “Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo!” The voice jolted her out of her reverie. The chubby woman with the candy-cane earrings was standing behind her counter, earrings bobbing as she waved at Pamela. Pamela looked up.

  “You were lost in thought there,” the woman said.

  Pamela blinked and laughed. “Yes,” she said. “I guess I was.”

  “He’s gone,” the woman said. “The red scarf. Headed down the stairs and out the door while you were back in the back there.” She nodded toward the offices farther down the hallway and set the earrings bobbing again.

  Pamela hurried back up the stairs, the grocery bags dangling from her hands. But nobody she encountered could—or would—tell her what the young man’s business might have been.

  Chapter Six

  “It’s the scarf I made for Millicent,” Bettina exclaimed. “It has to be. Red, with three green stripes at each end.”

  “That was it.” Pamela nodded. “Exactly. And one stripe was a different shade of green, where you ran out and had to use that leftover bit I had in my yarn basket.”

  “But if he’s the killer—” Bettina interrupted herself to shoo away Woofus, who was avidly sniffing at one of Pamela’s grocery bags. The shaggy creature looked up in alarm and slunk off toward the kitchen.

  “Oxtails,” Pamela observed, lifting the relevant bag. She had been so eager to tell her news, especially after the second sighting at Borough Hall, that she’d stopped off at Bettina’s without going home to put her groceries away, and she had begun to speak the minute Bettina opened her door. Now she was standing in Bettina’s living room.

  “If he’s the killer,” Bettina continued, “how could he be so brazen as to wear a scarf he snatched from his victim? It is a nice scarf, but still . . .”

  “I don’t know.” Pamela shook her head. “It’s all very puzzling.”

  “Come on back here.” Bettina took her friend’s arm and pulled her toward the arch that separated her living room from her dining room.

  When they reached the kitchen, Bettina stowed Pamela’s grocery bags on the counter, well out of the reach of Woofus. “I almost forgot,” she said suddenly. “I was so distracted talking about the scarf.” She paused dramatically. “Karen’s baby came—at three a.m.! I talked to Dave this morning. They knew they were having a little girl, and they had a na
me all picked out. Lily—so sweet!”

  “What happy news!” Pamela exclaimed. “And everyone’s well?” Bettina nodded. Pamela went on. “I was wondering, of course, after what Holly mentioned last night. But I didn’t want to disturb them too soon.”

  “Dave is on top of the world.” Bettina laughed. “He couldn’t stop talking.”

  “I’ll give them a call too,” Pamela said.

  “How about some lunch?” Bettina gestured toward the stove. “I’ll bet you haven’t eaten anything but a piece of toast all day. Wilfred made some of his five-alarm chili last night and I was just heating it up.”

  Pamela had noticed the tempting smell of beef infused with onions, cumin, and dried peppers the minute she stepped in the door, and she realized that she was indeed very hungry. And she had noticed that Bettina was wearing a protective apron over her ensemble, a soft wool shirtdress in a red-and-green plaid, complemented by festive red sneakers.

  Already waiting on the counter was a wooden cutting board holding a wedge of Swiss cheese, pale yellow and tunneled with holes, and a round loaf of crusty bread sprinkled with seeds.

  As Bettina stood at the stove tending the chili with a long-handled wooden spoon, Pamela transferred two of Bettina’s sage-green bowls from the cupboard to the counter and opened the silverware drawer.

  “Oh, dear,” Bettina moaned. “I’d forgotten about Millicent for a minute, but now looking at those bowls . . .” She sighed and the hand wielding the spoon was momentarily still. “They’re from her shop.” She watched as Pamela lifted two spoons from the drawer. “Napkins are in the drawer below,” she said. Then she sighed again as Pamela retrieved two linen napkins with bright embroidery at the edges. “And those are from her shop too.”

  “My boss at Fiber Craft sent an email about Millicent’s death,” Pamela said as she patted Bettina’s shoulder. “Losing her really is a blow to the craftspeople who sold their work there. My boss doesn’t have much hope that Nadine will be able to keep the shop going—and she doesn’t have much confidence in the abilities of the Arborville police.”

  “Well, I’m going to tell Clayborn that someone wearing Millicent’s scarf is wandering around Arborville.” Bettina gave the chili an energetic stir as if to emphasize the point. “If that isn’t a clue, I don’t know what is.”

  “I wasn’t sure if we should,” Pamela said hesitantly. “He might just say lots of people have red scarves with green stripes at the ends.”

  “Not with stripes that aren’t all the same color of green.” Bettina tapped the spoon on the side of the pot to knock off a few clinging beans and picked up a silvery ladle. Soon they were seated at her well-scrubbed pine table with bowls of steaming chili in front of them. Bettina carved thick slices from the crusty loaf of bread and gestured to Pamela to take one. “And have some of this cheese,” she urged, turning her attentions to the imposing wedge of Swiss.

  Woofus had retired to his habitual spot in the corner and was napping, flopped on his side with his legs stretched out at right angles to his body and his tail a shaggy extension of his backbone. Pamela buttered her bread and added a slice of cheese. Bettina did likewise and they were enjoying their first spoonfuls of the tempting chili when a small commotion drew their attention to the corner where Woofus reposed. With a startled whimper, he lifted his head and retracted his legs and tail, no more the image of blissful slumber.

  The source of his distress was a lively ginger-colored kitten. She hadn’t abandoned her interest in his tail even though it was now protectively lodged between his back legs. She was nudging it with a tiny paw as Woofus inched away from her, regarding her with alarm.

  “It’s going to take him a while to realize Punkin can’t hurt him,” Bettina said with a laugh. “She, on the other hand, has taken to us—especially Wilfred—as if she’s known us all her life.”

  “She sort of has.” Pamela echoed the laugh. “How’s Midnight doing with Wilfred Jr.’s boys?”

  “Oh, dear.” A slight wrinkle appeared between Bettina’s brows. “I was going to mention it . . . The boys might be allergic!”

  “I guess this is their first exposure to a kitten.” Pamela’s lips twisted in sympathy.

  “They’re getting rashes. Itching.” As if to comfort herself, Bettina cut another slice of bread and buttered it liberally.

  “I’d understand if they have to return Midnight,” Pamela said. “Allergies can be very unpleasant.”

  “Oh—we’d take him.” Bettina smiled suddenly. “The more the merrier. We always had dogs when the boys were growing up, but never a kitten. I don’t know why—Punkin is just a doll. And she’d have her brother to keep her company.”

  They turned back to their chili.

  * * *

  Packages waited on the porch when Pamela crossed the street to her own house half an hour later. She took the canvas bags containing the groceries to the kitchen and stowed the oxtails in the refrigerator. Catrina and Ginger prowled around her feet as if they knew the trip to the Co-Op had involved fetching cat food, and she promised them lunch would be forthcoming in a moment.

  Ginger was eating regular cat food now, but more often than Catrina’s morning and evening schedule. Keeping Catrina from sneaking bites of her daughter’s meals was hopeless, so Pamela had settled on serving three small meals and letting the cats share.

  She returned to the porch to fetch the packages, a small cardboard box and a larger one, and as she carried them inside Penny came down the stairs.

  “From Grandma and Grandpa Paterson,” Pamela said, holding out the smaller box. “And”—she consulted the mailing label on the larger box—“from my parents.”

  Pamela’s parents lived in the Midwest, where Pamela grew up, and some years Christmas involved a trip to their house and a grand reunion with relatives of all sorts. But this year her parents had announced that they would be cruising in the Caribbean, a winter vacation that had been greeted by Pamela and her siblings as long overdue and well-deserved.

  “The Christmas-tree lot will be open Friday night and all weekend,” Pamela said. “And we’ll just leave these boxes here”—she slid them under the mail table—“until we have it all up and decorated.” Penny nodded. “And I’m making oxtail stew tonight. And Wilfred Jr.’s boys might be allergic to Midnight.”

  That wasn’t quite all the news, but she didn’t see that any good would come of telling Penny that she’d seen someone wearing Millicent’s scarf.

  Penny nodded again. “I’m going to Lorie’s,” she said. “But I’ll be back for dinner.” She opened the closet and took out the violet jacket. Pamela watched as she adjusted the violet scarf at her neck. Lorie Hopkins lived above Arborville Avenue, nowhere near the nature preserve, and nowhere near the commercial district where the young man wearing Millicent’s scarf had been making his rounds.

  “It gets dark at four thirty now,” Pamela said. “Try to come back by then.”

  Upstairs, Pamela checked her email to find that a message from her boss at Fiber Craft had arrived while she was out. “Re-creating Traditional Turkish Weaving Techniques” and “Memorializing the Departed: The (Hair) Art of Victorian Mourning Brooches” were back, along with a third article, “The Mud Cloth Trade and Women’s Textile Collectives in Mali.” She was to edit them and return them by the next evening.

  Pamela set to work without wasting a minute. The next day would be busy—she had a funeral to attend in Timberley, followed by a luncheon reception at the Carroll Inn.

  * * *

  “Pierre is handling his grief well,” Pamela said as Wilfred piloted his ancient Mercedes into the parking lot of the Carroll Inn.

  “I’d say so!” Bettina nodded. A hint of disapproval crept into her voice. “He didn’t seem sad at all during the funeral. And when we were at the graveyard he was positively grinning.” She leaned forward to address Wilfred—she and Pamela were riding in the back seat while Penny sat up front. “Don’t park too far from the entrance. I’m not wearing my w
alking shoes.”

  “Your wish is my command, dear wife,” Wilfred said cheerfully and turned into the closest open spot.

  They climbed out of the car and started toward the main entrance of the Carroll Inn. Wilfred led the way in a smart woolen overcoat dating from his preretirement days. Bettina held his arm as she navigated the asphalt in slender-heeled pumps whose deep purple hue complemented her lavender coat. Both were bare-headed, Wilfred’s white hair contrasting with Bettina’s vivid scarlet coif. Suddenly Bettina whispered “Oops” and tugged Wilfred to a stop. Pamela and Penny halted too.

  “I don’t know if we should go in yet,” she said, nodding toward a BMW in a far corner of the lot. “Maybe we’re too early—that looks like Pierre.”

  “How can you tell from here?” Pamela asked. All that was visible through the driver’s-side window was the back of a man’s head.

  “That’s his car.” She nodded again. “Didn’t you notice him getting out of it at the graveyard?”

  “Fancy car for a part-time lecturer,” Pamela observed.

  “Millicent bought it for him.” Bettina continued looking at the BMW. “She wasn’t exactly a sugar mama, but he was quite a bit younger.”

  “Collecting his thoughts perhaps—before he faces the crowd again,” Pamela said, taking a tentative step toward the entrance of the Carroll Inn. “Whether or not he’s as sad as he should be, this has to be a stressful experience for him.” Bettina seemed not to hear. She still gripped Wilfred’s arm and now she seized Pamela’s with her other hand.

  The driver of the BMW leaned back in his seat, revealing himself to be, indeed, Pierre. The BMW’s door opened and Pierre stepped out. “I think we can go now,” Bettina said. “He’s coming in.”

  They all turned away, but as they climbed the steps to the inn’s double doors, painted a glossy white, Penny spoke up in a hesitant voice. “I think there was someone else in the car.”