Knit of the Living Dead

by Peggy Ehrhart

  They were barely settled and taking the first bite of their doughnuts when Bettina, uncharacteristically, reached into her purse and pulled out her smartphone. “I’m just too curious,” she said as her fingers danced over the little screen. After a few moments, she exclaimed, “Here it is!” She passed the smartphone to Harold, who glanced and nodded and handed it to Nell.

  “That is the blog post,” Nell said, handing the phone to Pamela.

  Laid out on what looked to be a bed covered with a smooth spread was a pink-and-white-striped dress. A scalloped overskirt in solid pink and a wide white organdy collar trimmed in lace gave it a charming old-fashioned look. Above the dress was perched a straw sunbonnet trimmed with a wide pink ribbon, and a shepherd’s crook lay alongside. Next to the dress was a lamb’s costume, like a long-sleeved, hooded jumpsuit sewn from a fleecy white fabric, with fleecy mittens attached to the ends of the sleeves. The hood featured ears. A separate mask lay atop the hood, a half mask, actually, with eyeholes and a lamb’s snout.

  * * *

  An hour later, Bettina swung into her driveway and parked her faithful Toyota next to Wilfred’s ancient but lovingly maintained Mercedes.

  “Well,” she said, turning to Pamela. “That was interesting. It certainly sounds like the killer could have been aiming for Mary.”

  “Could have been,” Pamela agreed. “With the blond wig and the sunbonnet—those hats really hide a person’s face from any angle except straight on. And it was dark. Anybody stalking Dawn Filbert to kill her would have had a hard time recognizing her. On the other hand, anybody who knew, or thought they knew, exactly what Mary’s costume was going to be . . .”

  “I’m talking to Clayborn tomorrow, for the Advocate,” Bettina said. “I’ll see if he has any new tidbits. By then, the police will have interviewed people in Dawn’s circle. Maybe there was a jealous boyfriend . . . or somebody who hated the way their hair turned out . . .”

  “I almost hope so.” Pamela reached for the door handle. “That would mean Dawn was the intended target and there won’t be any more murders.” She stepped out onto the asphalt of Bettina’s driveway, but then leaned back into the car. “I’m afraid there will be, though. That yarn around Dawn’s neck—I don’t think the plan was to leave it hanging loose. But then the killer got a good look at Dawn’s face and realized the woman in the Little Bo Peep costume wasn’t who he expected.”

  Bettina’s eyes got large and she raised her carefully manicured fingertips to her mouth. “Oh my,” she whispered. “And maybe he thought—hoped then—that he’d only knocked her out, and so he didn’t carry through with the strangling. I’ll point that out to Clayborn. And about the costume too.”

  “What time are you seeing Detective Clayborn?” Pamela asked, still leaning into the car.

  “Eleven.”

  “I’ll meet you at Hyler’s at twelve,” Pamela said.

  “You know I never say no to lunch at Hyler’s.” Bettina smiled and Pamela waved goodbye.

  * * *

  It was a bright fall day, made all the cheerier by the convivial parishioners lingering on the steps and sidewalk of the church next to Pamela’s house. They chatted and laughed and called to one another, as if unconcerned about the fact that Arborville’s town park had been the scene of a startling murder less than twenty-four hours before.

  Arborville was a charming small town, a town untouched by the social problems that afflict urban environments. But, curiously, Arborville had had its share of murders over the years. They weren’t committed by frightening people, but rather by ordinary people who one would never think could do such a thing—until they did. And even more curiously, Pamela and Bettina’s insights had frequently led them to solve murders that left the police baffled.

  * * *

  Pamela’s computer waited at the ready in her upstairs office, its keyboard warmed by the presence of a slumbering ginger cat. She’d checked her email first thing that morning, and now it took only a gentle click of the mouse to awaken the screen. She didn’t expect an email bringing work assignments on a Sunday—though her boss at Fiber Craft magazine seemed not to observe holidays or recognize weekends. But she suspected there would be an email from her daughter Penny. Penny’s college was in Massachusetts, but thanks to friends who emailed and texted, she often knew as much about the goings-on in Arborville as did her mother—or even more.

  Pamela transferred Ginger to her lap, clicked to open her email page, and clicked again to open the new message from Penny Paterson.

  “Mom,” the message read. “I slept late and now I am sending this to tell you I just found out what happened last night because lots of people on campus are from towns not that far from Arborville. I hope you and Bettina are not going to get involved in any way like you do sometimes if there’s something to do with knitting.”

  Pamela thought for a minute as she scratched Ginger between the ears. Then she responded. “You do not need to worry,” she wrote. “There’s no connection between that poor young woman Dawn Filbert and Knit and Nibble and I’m sure the police will have everything figured out in no time. Love, Mom.”

  Chapter 4

  In contrast to the previous morning, Pamela’s routine on Monday proceeded undisturbed. After feeding Catrina and Ginger, she started water boiling on the stove for her coffee. Then she fetched the Register from her front walk, slipped it from its plastic sleeve, and set it on the kitchen table. She returned the coffee she’d ground the previous day to her carafe’s filter cone and slipped a slice of whole-grain bread into her toaster. While she waited for the water to boil and the bread to toast, she unfolded the Register and scanned the front page.

  Thankfully, there was no follow-up to the story of the Arborville murder on that page. She set Part 1 aside to reveal the next section. Stories involving events in the county’s many small towns often started out as front-page news if they were dramatic enough but then migrated to the Local section. As she had suspected, the Register’s Marcy Brewer had been busy. Her byline appeared on a long article that mentioned Pamela and Bettina by name as “two of the first people to happen upon the gruesome murder scene.” But the article didn’t add anything to what Pamela already knew of the event or of the police response. Perhaps Bettina would have new information, however, after her meeting that morning with Detective Clayborn.

  The kettle’s whistle summoned Pamela to the counter, where she poured boiling water through the grounds waiting in the filter cone. Just as she finished, her toast popped up. From the cupboard where she kept her wedding china, she took out a cup, a saucer, and a plate. Pamela didn’t see the point in having nice things if one were to leave them behind, barely used, after one was gone. So she always drank her morning coffee and ate her morning toast from delicate porcelain garlanded with roses.

  Then, settled back at the table, she paged through the Register until nothing was left of the toast but a few crumbs and the carafe had been drained.

  * * *

  Pamela’s workday had begun even before she descended the stairs to her kitchen. She’d gone almost directly from bed to her office, where she’d watched as six emails arrived. A few were from friends, one offered coupons from the hobby shop, one informed her that her credit card statement was waiting to be downloaded—and one came bearing five attachments. That one had been from her boss at Fiber Craft.

  Now, fed and dressed and with her bed made, she revisited that email. “Please read and evaluate the attached submissions,” her boss had written, “and advise me by Thursday at the latest whether you think they are suitable for publication.”

  Pamela’s job as associate editor for Fiber Craft allowed her to work from home most days, a feature she’d appreciated when she was raising Penny and then especially after her architect husband was killed in a construction accident and she was left to raise her daughter alone. Her responsibilities included evaluating articles for publication and then copyediting the ones her editor chose, with occasional trips to the city for
meetings.

  She opened the first of the attachments, each marked with a stylized paper clip, that stretched across the top of her boss’s email, and she was soon immersed in “The Feminist Collective Biennale: Subverting the Patriarchy One Stitch at a Time.” Two more articles later, it was time to meet Bettina at Hyler’s.

  With a light jacket added to her uniform of jeans and sweater, Pamela strolled up Orchard Street, past sturdy wood-frame houses that resembled her own. Though fall had been lovely so far, with the afternoon sun still warm despite its autumnal angle, the air had a golden tinge and leaves had begun to turn. Halfway up the block, one particular tree glowed a luminous scarlet.

  When Pamela and her husband had been shopping for a house all that long time ago, they’d been attracted by Arborville’s smallness and its charm. Most houses were two stories tall, with attics above and basements below and wide porches where people might have sat to drink lemonade in summers a hundred years ago, when the houses were new. The town’s commercial district, with the Co-Op Grocery anchoring it at one end, was only five blocks from Pamela’s house. There, quaint storefronts dating from the early 1900s, some with awnings and some without, offered most goods and services that any Arbor villian might need—including lunch at Hyler’s Luncheonette.

  At the upper corner of Orchard Street, Pamela detoured into the parking lot behind the stately brick apartment building that faced Arborville Avenue. A discreet wooden fence hid the building’s trash cans, as well as discards that wouldn’t fit in the cans. Pamela loved the treasures she discovered at tag sales and thrift stores—her wedding china was nearly her only treasure she’d acquired new. But even more exciting was a treasure that cost no money at all. Recently, a peek behind the wooden fence had yielded a framed sketch of a young woman in an eighteenth-century gown.

  Bettina stood up and waved from a booth along the wall as soon as Pamela stepped through Hyler’s heavy glass door. The booths, with their high-backed benches upholstered in burgundy Naugahyde, offered the chance for a quieter meal than did the worn wooden tables that crowded the center of the room, especially between noon and one p.m. on a weekday. That was when the restaurant buzzed with conversation as Arborville’s bankers and Realtors and insurance agents, as well as the people who staffed Borough Hall, took their lunch breaks.

  Bettina had dressed for her meeting with Detective Clayborn in a stylish pantsuit, lightweight wool in a rich shade of amber. The floppy bow of a silk blouse, in a plaid fabric that contrasted amber with deep red and cream, was visible at the neck, and she’d added antique amber and silver earrings to complete her ensemble.

  She’d been chatting with a server Pamela had noticed in Hyler’s before, a meek-looking young woman with fair, straight hair pulled back into a low ponytail. The young woman greeted Pamela and waited as she slid into the booth across from Bettina. Then she held out the oversize menus that were a Hyler’s trademark. As she did so, her left hand, which had been hidden by her right as she cradled the menus, became visible.

  As far as Pamela could see, it was a perfectly ordinary left hand, with well-groomed nails painted a pretty shade of coral. But Bettina stared at the hand and gasped. So distracted that she didn’t even reach for the menu, she exclaimed, “Your beautiful ring! Where is it?”

  “Oh . . . I . . .” The young woman set Bettina’s menu on the table before her. She shrugged and twisted her delicate features into a sad smile. “We’re not getting married after all.”

  “You poor dear girl! Whatever happened?” Bettina asked.

  From anyone else such prying, except from a close confidante, would have merited a curt “None of your business.” But Bettina was such a sympathetic soul, her mobile face so reflective of the genuine concern she felt when she encountered people burdened by sorrow, that the young woman sank onto the edge of the bench occupied by Pamela.

  Her head tipped forward and she sighed. “He’s down in Princeton and I’m up here . . .” Her voice thinned and then trailed off.

  Bettina reached out and grasped the young woman’s hands. “Princeton’s not so very far away,” she said, her expression both concerned and hopeful.

  “It’s a different world,” the young woman said. She blinked a few times. Pamela, observing her in profile, noticed a tear escaping from her eye. “He’s a graduate student and I’m working my way through County Community College two courses at a time.”

  “So he broke it off?” Bettina’s concern had given way to indignation. “Then you’re well rid of him!”

  “It wasn’t really him.” The tears were flowing now. Bettina released one of the young woman’s hands and used her own newly free hand to offer the paper napkin that made up part of her place setting. The young woman dabbed her eyes and the words “It was—” squeezed out of a constricted throat.

  “Felicity?” A figure had appeared at the edge of the booth, the middle-aged woman who had worked at Hyler’s forever. She was carrying a bundle of menus. “It’s the lunch-hour rush,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  Her tone of voice and the expression on her face suggested a scolding, but her face softened as she looked more closely at the young woman. She shifted the menus to the crook of one arm and laid her other hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “You get off to the restroom and wash your face, sweetheart,” she said. She watched, shaking her head, as the young woman threaded her way among the tables.

  “It’s hard to be young,” she commented. “Felicity Winkle is as nice as they come and that boyfriend’s father is a real—” She paused, as if censoring herself, and raised her eyebrows. “Now then”—she turned back to Pamela and Bettina—“how about ham and Swiss on rye? That’s today’s special.” They both nodded. “And it looks like you need a fresh napkin,” the server observed. “I’ll hand these menus around and then I’ll be back to take your order.”

  They chatted for a few minutes about the encounter they had just had with the young woman who they now knew as Felicity Winkle. “I earned money for college waiting tables during the summer,” Bettina said at last. “It’s nothing to look down on—unless somebody’s a complete snob.”

  “I guess the boyfriend’s father is.” Pamela shrugged.

  Then the server returned with her order pad and recorded their request for two ham and cheese on rye and two vanilla milkshakes.

  When the server was gone, Pamela leaned across the table. “So—what did Detective Clayborn say?” she asked.

  “They’ve been busy,” Bettina reported, “and they plan to be busier. They’re interviewing everybody who’s been in Dawn’s salon for the past six months. When an appointment is booked, the person taking the booking makes a note of the client’s phone number, which is handy for the cops.”

  “They don’t really think Dawn was killed by a customer who thought Dawn had ruined her hair, do they?” A tiny laugh accompanied Pamela’s question.

  “Not exactly,” Bettina said. “But women tell their hairdressers all kinds of things, and vice versa. So talking to Dawn’s clients wouldn’t be such a far-fetched approach—if the killer was really aiming for Dawn.”

  A vanilla milkshake appeared on the paper mat in front of Pamela and a voice said, “Wasn’t that a shame! Such a shocking story!” The voice belonged to the middle-aged server who had taken over from Felicity. She went on, seemingly encouraged by Bettina’s nod. “Have you been past the salon? It’s closed, of course, but people are leaving flowers on the sidewalk outside. She had a very devoted clientele.”

  When the server was gone again, Bettina pulled her milkshake closer. She shifted the straw, which protruded from the frothy crest atop the tall glass, to a more convenient tilt. Then she took a long sip. “Delicious!” she pronounced. Her bright lipstick left an imprint on the straw.

  “They’ve already interviewed Dawn’s family,” Bettina said, returning to the topic at hand. “Sisters and like that—she’d never been married. And friends, and old boyfriends, and—”

  Pamela interrupted,
“But we’re pretty sure the killer wasn’t really aiming for Dawn.”

  “We’re pretty sure—”

  Pamela was typically a model conversationalist, letting others have their say without getting impatient. But this wasn’t a typical conversation.

  She interrupted again. “Did you tell Detective Clayborn about the Bo Peep costume?”

  “Well, duh! Of course I told him, and he—”

  This third interruption was from the sandwiches. They arrived on cream-colored oval plates, accompanied by slender pickle spears and coleslaw in little pleated paper cups. The sandwiches themselves were oval too, but sliced in half, the rye bread light brown and studded with caraway seeds. The gap between the bottom slice of bread and the top slice revealed the rich pink of ham piled high, topped with a generous layer of Swiss cheese. Frilled toothpicks steadied the impressive constructions. After she settled the plates into place, the server slipped a fresh napkin beside Bettina’s.

  The revelation of Detective Clayborn’s response was postponed as Bettina and Pamela each removed a toothpick from a sandwich half. Bettina took the first bite. Pamela smiled at her friend’s look of astonished pleasure and sampled her own sandwich half. It was delicious, the hint of exotic caraway in the rye bread and the buttery nutlike Swiss balancing the sweet smokiness of the unctuous ham. And after a few bites of sandwich, the crisp taste of the pickle offered the perfect contrast.

  They ate in silence for a time, punctuated only by appreciative hums. Then, as Bettina was removing the toothpick from her second sandwich half, Pamela returned to the topic they’d been discussing when the sandwiches arrived.