Knit of the Living Dead

by Peggy Ehrhart

  “Mary has a son,” Nell said as Pamela and Bettina began to climb into Bettina’s car. “He’s grown up now, but still . . .”

  “They still love their mothers.” Bettina paused and met Nell’s gaze.

  “And our little town certainly doesn’t need another murder,” Nell added.

  * * *

  Tuesday morning’s Register didn’t announce any arrests in what it was calling the “Arborville Halloween bonfire murder”—so presumably, Detective Clayborn and his associates were still at work interviewing patrons of Dawn Filbert’s salon. Pamela wasn’t sure whether the previous day’s conversation with Mary Lyon had laid to rest her fears that the bonfire murderer would strike again—or heightened them.

  Mary had enemies, yes, but how bent on murder could the recipient of the bad reviews be? Or even the woman’s chivalrous husband? On the other hand, Pamela had once received a very frightening email from an author who figured out that Pamela was the editor who had given a thumbs-down to his article on the ecology of replacing caskets with funeral shrouds.

  Then there was the llama farmer Mary had mentioned. People could be very protective of their animals. Pamela was protective of her cats. In fact—she jumped from her chair and took up a pad of the notepaper that, along with address labels, arrived in the mail without ever being requested. Cat food, she wrote as the first item in what was to be the shopping list for the Co-Op Grocery errand on that day’s agenda.

  She tipped her wedding-china cup to drain the last few swallows of coffee that was now lukewarm, rinsed the cup and the plate that had held her toast, and headed upstairs to get dressed and start her day. Catrina followed at the heels of her mistress’s furry slippers.

  Ten minutes later, wearing jeans and the same sweater she’d been wearing since Sunday, Pamela sat down at her desk, welcomed Catrina onto her lap, and pressed the buttons that would bring her computer to life. There was no message from her boss at Fiber Craft and she didn’t expect one until she returned the work that had arrived the previous day. But there was an email from Penny, with a photo of her in her Halloween costume of a black velvet cape, scary makeup, and a witch’s peaked hat. That message made her smile, not least at the fact that the note accompanying it contained no further reference to Dawn Filbert’s murder.

  She opened the attachment from her boss’s Monday email labeled “String Skirt” and settled down to evaluate “The String Skirt as Puberty Marker in Bronze Age Cultures.”

  Chapter 6

  A scarecrow lounged in a chair on Roland DeCamp’s porch. The scarecrow’s body was a pair of jeans and a plaid flannel shirt stuffed with straw, and a battered felt hat topped his jack-o’-lantern head. En route to the DeCamps’ house, Pamela and Bettina had driven by other houses displaying acknowledgments of the holiday just past. Some homeowners’ shrubs had been encased in webs produced by giant spiders that now sat atop the shrubs looking fearsome. At other houses, phalanxes of skeletons paraded across yards that had sprouted tombstones. Elsewhere, bedsheets rippling in the wind suggested ghostly shapes.

  Roland and his wife, though childless themselves, lived in a neighborhood inhabited by numerous families with school-age children. Many of them were relative newcomers to Arborville, and the houses built on the land that the old-timers still called the Farm appealed to them because they were large and modern and had dependable plumbing and lots of closets. Arborville’s old-timers, however, considered their own old-time houses historic and charming, and had yet to forgive the latest generation of Van Ripers, a Dutch family that dated back to before Arborville was Arborville, for selling their family’s farm to developers.

  Melanie DeCamp welcomed Pamela and Bettina at the door. She was Roland’s wife, blond and elegant, not a member of Knit and Nibble but delighted that her husband had followed his doctor’s advice and taken up knitting to offset the stress of his job as a corporate lawyer. Melanie motioned them in, and they saw that they were evidently the last to arrive.

  Nell had settled into the substantial armchair Melanie always reserved for her—the other seating possibilities in the DeCamps’ sleek living room, a low-slung turquoise sofa and matching chair, required legs as well-exercised as Melanie’s own to rise from them once one was seated. Holly Perkins and Karen Dowling sat side by side on the sofa. They were both young marrieds and the best of friends, though Holly’s dramatic good looks and outsize personality made her as unlike her shy blond friend as any two people could be.

  Holly and Karen greeted the newcomers and moved closer together to make room for Pamela and Bettina on the sofa. From her armchair, Nell spoke up with her own cheery hello and resumed extracting yarn, needles, and a partially finished stocking from her knitting bag. She had already embarked on her annual Christmas project—dozens of colorful stockings to be filled with treats and distributed to the children at the Haversack women’s shelter where she volunteered.

  As Pamela and Bettina settled themselves, Melanie cocked an ear toward the kitchen, as if responding to a summons that only she could hear. “You know he always wants to bake the Knit and Nibble goody himself,” she murmured, excused herself, and hurried toward the hall that led to the kitchen.

  “We’re all quite ourselves again after Saturday night?” Bettina surveyed the group, her eyes lingering on Holly. Pamela was glad Bettina’s question made it sound as if this was the first time they were meeting again since the adventure they all, except for Karen, had shared on Saturday night. There was no reason to alarm Holly—or timid little Karen—with suspicions about the bonfire murderer’s true target and thus the fact that the murderer might strike again.

  “A few good nights’ sleep did wonders,” Holly said with a smile that stopped just short of activating her dimple. “Desmond is quite himself as well.”

  But Karen wasn’t so upbeat. “I wasn’t even there,” she said with a delicate shudder, “and I’ve been having nightmares. When I saw the Register Sunday morning, I couldn’t believe I was reading about something that happened in my own little town—the town where Dave and I thought we could raise our dear baby Lily in safety.”

  Nell’s busy needles ceased moving and she raised her eyes from the stocking heel she was shaping. From the perturbed look she directed at Bettina, Pamela was sure a scolding was on its way. For all that she had been enlisted to help with the visit to Mary, Nell never approved of the lively discussions that community misfortunes often gave rise to, feeling that the impulse was more to titillate than to inform.

  But before she could say anything, Melanie stepped back into the living room. “He needs to keep an eye on his creation for about ten minutes, but he wants you to go ahead and start without him,” she said.

  The aroma of something rich and sugary baking had begun to drift into the living room from the direction of the kitchen.

  Bettina closed her eyes and sniffed, her brightly painted lips curving into a smile. “I’d say he’s come up with a winner,” she observed.

  Melanie ventured farther into the room. “It’s that ready-made cookie dough you buy at the grocery store,” she whispered, her carefully manicured fingers shaping a rectangular package. “In the refrigerator case, and you form it into cookies and bake them.” She smiled and held up a finger. “But don’t let on I told you.”

  Holly and Karen returned to their projects, which they had set aside during the brief discussion launched by Bettina’s question. Holly was making a stocking too. She was well past the heel and nearing the point at which the toe would be worked. She’d finished her ambitious color-block afghan a few weeks previously and had declared her intention to join Nell in the stocking project until inspired with an idea for her next creation. “Maybe Desmond would like a hand-knit sweater,” she had said, “but I’m not sure.” Karen’s project was, for a change, not a garment for her daughter Lily, who had been born the previous Christmas, but a baby blanket for a friend who was expecting her first child.

  Bettina’s knitting reposed on her lap, partly hidden by an
open magazine that contained the pattern for an ambitious Nordic-style sweater, navy blue with red ribbing and bands of snowflakes in red and white. It was destined for Wilfred and had been in progress for a year. She was frowning and tracing a line of the pattern with a finger as she murmured numbers to herself.

  Pamela herself was engaged in an ambitious project, a sweater she intended to give her mother for Christmas. She’d spent a few weeks paging through pattern books and knitting magazines while satisfying the need to keep her fingers busy by joining Nell in her previous do-good undertaking—hand-knit infant caps to be donated to hospitals. At last she had settled on a design for a loose A-line cardigan with wide sleeves, and large buttons marching down the front. She had splurged on cashmere yarn in a cornflower blue and planned to use vintage silver buttons she’d come across at a tag sale. The back and one of the fronts was complete, and she was partway through the other front.

  As she knitted, enjoying the sensation of the extravagant yarn against her fingers, the smell of baking cookies had become more intense.

  “I think they’re done,” Bettina announced. She had been chatting with Karen about Lily’s latest doings, but now she swiveled her head in the direction of the kitchen. “I hope he’s paying attention,” she added.

  And, in fact, he was. A minute later, Roland emerged. “Welcome, everyone,” he said. “I apologize for my late entrance, but I was unavoidably detained.”

  Had he worn an apron for his cookie-baking? Pamela found herself wondering. He was dressed, as always, in a scrupulously tailored pinstripe suit, a starched white dress shirt, and a discreetly patterned, obviously expensive, tie.

  He strode across his living room’s luxuriant carpet, followed by a sleek black cat, and took his seat in the low-slung turquoise chair that matched the sofa. The elegant leather briefcase that served as his knitting bag sat ready at the chair’s side. As soon as he had settled into the chair, the cat leaped up beside him and snuggled against his thigh. The cat, Cuddles, had been adopted by Roland from the same litter that included Ginger.

  “Did you get many trick-or-treaters?” Holly inquired. “Or were all your neighbors at the parade and bonfire?”

  Roland looked up from the briefcase, which he’d hoisted onto his lap. “If by trick-or-treaters you mean the children asking for handouts of candy,” he said as he worked the latch, “they come around in the afternoon.” The briefcase top sprang open.

  “Ohhh!” Holly sounded genuinely heartbroken. “You don’t get to treat them then, and they’re so cute in their little costumes. Desmond and I miss most of them too, with our schedules at the salon.”

  Roland frowned. “I don’t see the point of it,” he said. He lifted a swath of knitting from the briefcase, along with the mate to the needle from which it hung, and a skein of camel-colored yarn.

  “But you have a scarecrow on your porch—and a very nice one too,” Bettina chimed in.

  “That’s Melanie’s doing.” Roland clicked his briefcase closed and lowered it back to its spot on the floor.

  “People enjoy Halloween,” Nell said, leaning forward from the depths of the armchair, “though I wish there was less emphasis on candy. Dressing up, however . . . it’s a chance for people to exercise their imaginations and become somebody they’re not.”

  “And dance around a fire like some kind of . . . of . . . barely civilized . . .”

  “Barbarians?” Nell suggested, the tilt of her lips hinting at a smile.

  “Yes!” Roland’s lean face was intense. “Barbarians.”

  “No one was dancing.” Holly’s tone was that of someone calmly correcting a factual error.

  “And you weren’t even there anyway.” Bettina’s tone was less calm.

  “I know they weren’t really dancing,” Roland snapped, sounding irritated that his description of the Halloween revelers had been taken literally. “But I didn’t have to be there to know what it was like. All these people out roaming around in the dark, and nobody looks like who they really are, and Arborville’s police force—which I support with my tax dollars—has to work overtime. And look what happened.”

  “Oh, Roland . . .” The hint of a smile vanished and Nell’s voice faltered. “That was a terrible, terrible thing, but it didn’t have anything to do with primal urges. Halloween is just fun for the children, as long as they don’t eat too much candy, and the community so enjoys the parade and bonfire.”

  Roland grunted and began to study his project. “You haven’t made much progress since last week,” Bettina commented from across the room.

  “I’ve made a lot of progress,” Roland said, raising his eyes from the rectangle of camel-colored knitting he was pondering. “This is the second sleeve. Last week I was working on the first sleeve.”

  Holly directed a dimply smile in his direction. “The second sleeve!” she exclaimed. “You’ve really been busy—and Melanie is going to love her sweater.”

  “She should,” Roland said. “She picked out the yarn and the pattern. But I haven’t been any busier than usual. I’m just very efficient.” He thrust his right-hand needle through the first stitch on his left-hand needle, caught up a twist of yarn with his right-hand forefinger, and soon was methodically creating a new row.

  “That’s a perfect color for her!” Holly wasn’t giving up easily in her effort to engage Roland in conversation. “Melanie is always so elegant.”

  “She is?” Roland looked up with a puzzled frown. He thought for a minute as the frown deepened, then he said, “Yes, elegant. I suppose she is,” and resumed his knitting.

  Holly sighed, laughed to herself, and gathered her knitting to migrate across the room and crouch by the side of Nell’s armchair. Soon the two of them were conferring about the steps involved in shaping the toe of Holly’s in-progress stocking.

  Next to Pamela, Bettina and Karen were comparing notes on babies—though the baby in question for Bettina was her Boston granddaughter. Pamela was happy to knit in silence for a bit, and grateful Roland’s mention of Dawn Filbert’s murder hadn’t given rise to a more extended discussion.

  Fifteen minutes passed. Holly had returned to her spot on the sofa and resumed her work on the stocking. Bettina had broken off her conversation with Karen to switch from the red yarn with which she’d been knitting ribbing to the navy-blue yarn of the sweater’s body. The silence that had descended on the group was broken when Roland, consulting the impressive watch normally concealed by his aggressively starched shirt cuff, announced, “It’s ten minutes to eight. I must excuse myself to prepare the coffee and tea.”

  He slowly rose from the turquoise chair, making sure not to alarm the cat cuddled against his thigh, set his knitting in the spot he had vacated, and headed toward the hall that led to the kitchen. Soon the aroma of brewing coffee began to drift in from that direction. Pamela was nearing the end of a row, and when she reached it she set her knitting aside. She was about to venture to the kitchen and offer to help carry things when Roland reappeared carrying a sleek pewter tray, which he set on the coffee table.

  It held five steaming cups of coffee with their saucers and two empty cup-and-saucer sets. The cups and saucers were made of pale porcelain, unadorned, but all the more impressive in their elegant simplicity.

  “Tea is coming,” Roland explained, and hurried back toward the kitchen, this time followed by the black cat.

  “We can help,” Bettina called after him and started to rise. But Melanie had joined them.

  She waved Bettina back onto the sofa and said, “He likes to do it himself. He’s so proud of being in the group and he enjoys these meetings so much.”

  In the armchair, Nell suppressed a quizzical expression.

  Roland returned bearing another tray, which he set next to the first one on the coffee table, aligning it so both were exactly parallel.

  “Oh my goodness, Roland!” Holly exclaimed. “You got into the spirit of Halloween after all! These are just too cute!”

  Besides a porcela
in teapot and the cream-and-sugar set that matched the cups and saucers, as well as spoons and small napkins, the second tray held a heaping plate of cookies. They were chocolaty rounds studded with candy corn.

  “They look divine!” Bettina reached for one. “What a clever idea! Chocolate and candy corn.”

  Roland had taken his seat and been joined by the black cat, which was once again cuddled against his thigh. A tiny close-lipped smile appeared as he absorbed Holly and Bettina’s praise, but instead of looking at them, he looked at the carpet. “Well”—he cleared his throat—“I knew you’d all expect something . . . something seasonal, and so I . . . it just seemed . . . candy corn . . . is so . . .”

  “So Halloween!” Nell said with a triumphant laugh.

  “I can’t imagine a better combination!” Bettina reached for a cookie and then a napkin, tasted the cookie, and pronounced it divine.

  “Plates!” Roland exclaimed, springing to his feet and startling the black cat. He lunged toward the hall that led to the kitchen. Crockery rattled and a cupboard door banged shut, then he was back with a stack of small plates from the same delicate porcelain set. He placed them on the coffee table next to the plate of cookies and returned to his chair, calming the black cat with a gentle pat.

  Melanie, standing behind her husband with her hands on his shoulders, smiled at the group, seemingly delighted by Roland’s success as a host.

  But he glanced around the room and suddenly leaped up, startling the black cat again, as well as Melanie. He turned back for a moment to stroke the animal, which looked up at him trustingly, then seized the porcelain teapot. He poured two cups of tea and placed one on the coffee table within reach of Karen. He carried the other to Nell and set it on the small table next to the substantial armchair that was always reserved for her.

  “Now,”—Roland glanced around again—“does everyone have everything they need?”