Silent Knit, Deadly Knit

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “I’ll use one of those boxes you can buy at the post office to send this off to my boss,” Pamela said, picking up one of the wrapped loaves. “And the other will be delivered to the Nordlings in person.”

  * * *

  The visit to the Nordlings began with a festive holiday brunch and ended with hugs all around and good wishes to Penny for her coming semester at college. At the yarn shop, Penny picked out a blend of silk and merino wool in a delicate shade of lilac. The gift project was to be a loose tunic with flowing sleeves, worked in a complicated stitch that looked like lace. Pamela thought it seemed an old-fashioned style for a modern young woman, but she was looking forward to the challenge of trying a stitch unlike any she had done before.

  “The craft shop is right here,” Bettina said as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Let’s stop in and see how Nadine is doing on her own.”

  “I’ll take a walk down the block,” Penny said. “There’s a consignment shop that has designer things in Timberley. Laine and Sybil told me about it.”

  Nadine was not doing well. That was clear as soon as they entered the shop. The tiny woman was cowering in the shop’s farthest corner, peeking out from behind a huge construction seemingly formed from driftwood. “Oh,” she murmured in her tiny voice, blinking rapidly. “It’s you.” She edged around the jagged chunks of driftwood. “When I saw the door open, I wasn’t sure . . .”

  “Well, you poor thing!” Bettina bustled across the shop, narrowly missing a display of art pottery. “Here all on your own like this.” She turned briefly to give Pamela a rueful smile then pulled Nadine into a hug.

  “That man was here again,” Nadine said. “He said he was here last Monday, so now I know who it was that got Millicent so upset.” Bettina loosened the hug but Nadine clung to her, like a tiny colorless sparrow nearly lost in Bettina’s bright orange plumage.

  Nadine went on. “He was waiting outside when I came to open the shop. He said now that Millicent is dead he wondered if I’d be interested in carrying his work.” Bettina made eye contact with Pamela and her own eyes widened.

  Blinking frantically, Nadine clung even tighter to Bettina. “I was horrified,” she said, her voice squeaky. “I . . . I called him a ghoul and he got really angry and I told him I’d phone the police if he didn’t leave that instant.”

  “Did he?” Pamela and Bettina asked in unison.

  Nadine nodded. “He said he had to go anyway. He had another engagement.”

  Bettina’s eyes grew even wider and she let go of Nadine, nearly pushing her away. “And you didn’t think to find out more about him when you had the chance?” she asked, her pitch rising. Nadine crisscrossed her arms over her meager breast and lowered her chin as if she was trying to shrink even smaller.

  Pamela tried to keep her tone soothing. “Did he say anything else, anything at all that might make it possible to track him down? He could be the person who killed Millicent.”

  “Oh, dear.” Nadine raised a slender-fingered hand to her mouth. “Yes, you’re right. I should . . .” Her voice trailed off and she began to blink. “All I know is Millicent called him the tentacle man. The Haversack tentacle man. And something about colleges, like Wendelstaff? Or Collages? Or something . . .”

  * * *

  Penny was standing by the car when they came out. She flourished a small bag.

  “Good luck at the consignment shop?” Pamela asked, feeling cheerful again.

  “Cat toys,” Penny said with a grin. “There’s a pet shop a few doors down. Maybe they’ll leave the tree alone if they have toys of their own.”

  Bettina had her gloves off and her phone in hand before she even climbed into the passenger seat. Pamela looked at her curiously. Bettina wasn’t one of those people who couldn’t go ten minutes without communing with her mobile device.

  “You might as well start driving,” Bettina said in answer to the unspoken question. “Arborville and Haversack are both in the same direction.”

  As Pamela maneuvered her car out of the parking space and turned right and right again to head south, Bettina’s busy fingers danced about on the tiny keyboard. “College,” she murmured to herself. “Haversack college . . . craft . . . artist . . . collage . . . tentacle . . . Haversack collage . . .”

  “What’s she doing?” Penny asked from the back seat.

  “Someone wanted Millicent to carry his work at the shop,” Pamela said, “and he got angry when she refused.”

  “Tentacles!” Bettina shouted. Pamela gave a start, her hands twitched on the steering wheel, and the car swerved. She was grateful that they had left the traffic of Timberley’s commercial district behind and were on an unbusy section of County Road.

  “Tentacles?” Penny spoke up again. “I can see why she wasn’t interested in him.”

  “His name is Geoff Grimm,” Bettina explained. “This has to be the guy. Here’s what his website says:

  ‘Horror movies and comic books inspire Geoff’s fantastical monsters, and his own vision elaborates them into a world that wraps you in tentacles of wonder. Work is available for purchase in Geoff’s studio/gallery, open Monday through Friday from noon to five.’”

  Pamela laughed. “Sounds intense.”

  “He’s got some samples of his work up on his site.” Bettina held out her phone.

  “I’m driving,” Pamela said. “But anyway we’ll see them in person soon enough.”

  “I thought you’d say that.” Bettina turned to her friend with a satisfied smile. Then she consulted her phone again and read off a Haversack address.

  From the back seat, Penny spoke up. “I’ll look at them,” she said. Bettina passed the phone to her. The next sound they heard was “Ugh!”

  * * *

  Geoff Grimm’s studio/gallery was on a side street off what the residents of Haversack still called “downtown,” though its heyday had passed long ago when the first mall opened in the county. Shopping and dining possibilities now consisted mostly of pawnshops, discount stores, and restaurants with takeout counters and a few mismatched chairs and tables. A half-hearted attempt had been made to celebrate the season by garlanding the lampposts in tarnished tinsel.

  Pamela poked along for a few blocks, maneuvering around double-parked cars and erratic pedestrians until Bettina said, “Turn here.” Then, “It’s just a few doors down. Grab this parking space.” A meter had to be fed, then they walked past a storefront church and a shop whose window displayed a collection of dusty crystals. A sign offered psychic readings. The front window of Geoff Grimm’s studio/gallery was painted black.

  Just past the window was a faded wooden door with a hand-lettered sign that read GEOFF GRIMM GALLERY ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. For all her eagerness to follow up on the lead Nadine had given them, Bettina hung back when it came time to reach for the door handle. So it was Pamela who entered first.

  “Greetings, earthlings,” a deep voice intoned. “You have entered the realm of Geoff Grimm.” The words came from a skinny man sitting on a tall stool behind a drawing board, evidently at work on some kind of project. His eyes were large and dark. They seemed all the larger in that his skin was pale and his face so bony it was almost skeletal. His hair was jet black and fell in oily strands to his shoulders.

  What to say? They hadn’t discussed that. Obviously Did you kill Millicent Farthingale? wouldn’t be a good opening gambit. It was Penny who came to the rescue. She stepped boldly across the floor and bent toward the project on the drawing board. “It’s a collage,” she said. “Your website mentions that as a medium you work in.”

  “Why, yes.” His thin lips stretched into something like a smile. “It’s out of fashion now. But I’ve never been fashionable . . . so why not?” He turned to Penny. “Are you interested in art?”

  Penny nodded. “I sketch and paint a bit, and I took art history last semester. I’m home from college for Christmas, and I saw your website . . .” She bent closer. “You’re using newspaper,” she said, “just like the Dadaists.
”

  Pamela and Bettina had been creeping closer as this conversation unfolded. With one final step, Pamela reached her daughter’s side. What she saw laid out on the drawing board made her shudder and suppress a gasp. Bettina noticed the shudder and edged closer.

  Geoff Grimm was indeed using newspaper for his collage creation. In fact he was using the article that had appeared in the Register the day after Millicent’s murder, complete with the headline: “Timberley Woman Found Dead in Arborville Nature Preserve.”

  Trying to sound calm, Pamela said, “Millicent Farthingale owned the craft shop in Timberley. Is there some particular reason you’re using this article for your project?”

  Geoff Grimm sat up straighter and focused his large, dark eyes on Pamela, then on Bettina, then on Penny. “You would understand,” he said to Penny, and then concentrated his gaze once more on Pamela. “It’s art,” he intoned. “It’s not life. In my life, Millicent Farthingale rejected me. And that rejection hurt me. Then someone hurt her, and that became the substance of my art.” His eyes grew larger and darker. “And just this morning I was rejected again, in my life. So who knows what form that will take in my art? Got it?”

  He picked up a long strip of green paper that had been cut in undulations with a taper at one end, like a tentacle. With his other hand he reached for a glue stick. “You’re welcome to look around,” he said as he stroked the glue stick along the length of the tentacle.

  He was obviously very prolific. Paintings and collages covered every inch of the walls, from floor to ceiling. More were staged along the edges of the floor, leaning against one another in groups of five or six.

  The horror movie and comic book influences were obvious. Heroes in futuristic garb confronted giant creatures modeled on octopus or squid. Flailing tentacles wove complicated patterns against skies whose violent orange and purple tints hinted at apocalypse. Some of the heroes fended off the creatures with their bare hands, tying tentacles in knots. Others brandished swords, lopping off tentacles, which quickly sprouted tentacles of their own. But some of the heroes seemed to hail from a less fantastic world. They were dressed in camouflage hunting gear and they had been provided with rifles to vanquish their slithery foes.

  “These look quite realistic,” Penny observed. Pamela and Bettina had retreated to a spot near the door and were scanning the gallery’s offerings from there, but Penny was circling the small room, pausing to crane her neck upwards or stoop to examine a canvas leaning against the wall.

  “I sketch from life,” Geoff Grimm replied, without looking up from his intense gluing.

  “The creatures?” Penny asked. “Do you go to an aquarium?”

  “Not the creatures,” he said. “I do have an imagination, you know.” He leaned closer to his project and used a delicate finger to nudge something into place. “The rifles, of course. I sketch the rifles from life. So many little details, and I want to get them right.”

  Pamela and Bettina looked at each other, and Bettina said, “I think we should go now.”

  Geoff Grimm looked up from his work and mustered a disconcerting smile. “Thank you for dropping in,” he said, addressing his words to Penny. “I’m on Facebook. I have 698 followers. Maybe you’d like to follow me. It’s Geoff Grimm@TentacleMan.”

  Pamela pulled the door open and they stepped out into a gritty wind.

  “Merry Christmas,” Geoff Grimm called as the door closed behind them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Once back in the car, they sat in silence for a few moments. The sidewalk was livelier than it had been. People bundled in nondescript jackets and caps and carrying flat cardboard boxes and white plastic bags emerged from a small restaurant that advertised an “early-bird pizza and soda combo” and scurried off in various directions, squinting against the wind.

  Penny was the first to speak. “I thought he was kind of interesting,” she observed. “Weird, but interesting.”

  “He sketches rifles from life,” Bettina said. “So he must have access to rifles. Millicent was killed with a rifle.”

  Pamela nodded. “And that newspaper article! He cut it out and saved it and now he’s making it into a collage.”

  Penny’s voice came from the back seat. “It was art, Mom. He was making it into art.”

  Pamela sighed. “He had to explain it somehow.” Was speaking in italics catching? she asked herself, but she went on. “He didn’t expect people who knew Millicent to show up right while he had the article in front of him. So he thought fast—and that’s what he came up with.”

  “He really was making it into a collage,” Penny said.

  “But why that article? Maybe it was art . . . or something . . . but he could be making it to celebrate the fact that he murdered her.” Pamela twisted the key in the ignition and stepped on the gas. The engine rumbled to life.

  “I’m certainly going to tell Clayborn about Geoff Grimm,” Bettina said firmly. “First thing tomorrow.”

  When they got back home, Penny gave Catrina and Ginger their new toys. “After all,” she said, “they don’t know that Christmas is any different from any other day, so there’s no point in waiting.” One toy was a weighted ball with a cluster of feathers sprouting from it. The ball rocked from side to side, but always righted itself, with the cluster of feathers sticking straight up. The other was a yellow bird sewn from felt and filled with catnip. Catrina seized the catnip bird immediately. She rolled onto her back in the middle of the living room rug and writhed ecstatically as she used both front paws to rub it against her cheeks and then position it within range of her darting pink tongue.

  * * *

  The next day Pamela was in her office finishing up a note recommending “Seventeen Ways of Looking at a Poppy: Stylized Flowers in Ukrainian Folk Embroidery” for publication. She was thinking about going downstairs for lunch when Penny knocked at the door. Pamela called “Come in,” and Penny stepped into the room. She was wearing her usual jeans, topped with the golden-yellow sweater Pamela had knit for her the previous Christmas. It wasn’t an unusual outfit, but she had finished it off with a scarf that blended gold, green, and blue in an abstract design, and the chic knot that anchored the scarf in place looked like the result of considerable calculation. She was also wearing earrings, small opal pendants that had been a birthday gift from Bettina.

  “You’re quite dressed up for a day lazing around at home with your mother,” Pamela commented. “Shall we have some lunch?”

  Penny smiled and seemed to blush. “I have a date for lunch,” she said.

  Pamela swiveled her desk chair around to face her daughter. “With Lorie Hopkins? It’s great that you’re getting to see so much of her.”

  The blush intensified. “It’s a date, Mom, as in with a guy.”

  “Anyone I know?” Pamela asked.

  “Okay . . .” Penny looked away, and then she turned back toward Pamela and met her mother’s gaze. “It’s Aaron,” she said.

  Pamela forced herself to pause before she spoke. In raising Penny she’d always depended on the content of her words to make her point, not the volume at which they were uttered. At last she said, calmly, she hoped, “We talked about it maybe not being a good idea to cultivate that friendship.”

  “He found the scarf, Mom.” Penny did not speak calmly. “He didn’t kill Millicent Farthingale.”

  “But, Penny”—Pamela half rose from her chair and the chair responded with a squeak—“you promised me.”

  “You said you trusted me to be sensible,” Penny said. “In my mind going to lunch with Aaron is sensible.”

  From downstairs came the sound of the doorbell chiming. Pamela groaned. “You told him where we live?”

  “He wanted to pick me up.” Penny smiled and blushed again. “He’s very gentlemanly.” She turned to go out into the hall.

  “I’m coming down too.” Pamela stood up. “Don’t go anywhere where it’s just the two of you alone,” she said firmly. “And be back by the time it gets dark,
if not sooner. And remember, we have Bettina’s party tonight.”

  By the time Pamela reached the bottom of the stairs, Aaron had just stepped over the threshold, bundled up against the cold but minus the red scarf with green stripes. He wasn’t too tall, Pamela noted—she’d only ever seen him sitting down or from a distance. But he had the confident manner of someone who knew he was attractive, with his blue eyes and his cheekbones and his expressive mouth. He greeted Pamela pleasantly, calling her “Mrs. Paterson,” and then helped Penny on with her jacket.

  Pamela stood in the doorway and watched him lead her daughter toward the car he’d been climbing into at the Aardvark Alliance Christmas-tree lot. She watched until the car pulled away from the curb, then she closed the door.

  Mothers have to set their daughters free at some point, she told herself. Penny was sensible, and she was probably right about Aaron. He found the scarf and thought it was too nice to abandon to the elements. And no obvious motive for Aaron wanting to kill Millicent had come to light.

  At least Penny hadn’t accepted a lunch date with Geoff Grimm, Pamela reflected. He’d seemed interested in Penny too, and why wouldn’t he be? She was a pretty young woman and she’d acted interested in his art.

  This thought caused Pamela’s heart to give an extra thump. With her interest in the arts, who knew what kinds of men Penny was meeting in college? Artists and strange bohemian men, and Penny was so sweet and innocent . . . Oh, dear. But Pamela had deviled eggs to make for Bettina’s party. Cooking would take her mind off things, and soon Penny would be home. It was only a lunch date. Pamela had a quick bite to eat and fed cat and kitten. Then it was time to work on the eggs.

  Pamela went first to the cupboard in her laundry room where she kept her collection of deviled-egg platters. Her favorites were the ones whose decoration linked them to the very purpose for which they were designed. She selected one made of glazed green pottery on which a pleased hen surveyed an oversized egg, and another, a cream-colored one, that featured a whole cluster of hens with plumage rendered in a riotous assortment of colors.