Knit of the Living Dead

by Peggy Ehrhart

  After a few moments, she seemed to sense that she was being watched. She turned toward where Pamela was standing on the sidewalk in front of the house where she’d been taken for a missionary. Not sure how to interpret the look the woman was giving her, Pamela hesitated. She didn’t know how she herself would react if she came out into her yard to do some pruning and found a stranger staring at her.

  “What do you think?” the woman called suddenly. “Are they okay the way they are or do they look too shaggy?”

  “I like shrubs to look natural,” Pamela said, advancing along the sidewalk. “Not pruned into shapes a plant would never really have.”

  “I do too,” the woman said. “Are you new in the neighborhood? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

  “Actually I’m—” Pamela hesitated again. Bettina was such a better actress, and because Bettina genuinely was a reporter, this sleuthing errand wouldn’t even draw very heavily on her acting skills. But Pamela wasn’t sure she could sustain the ruse they’d concocted. She studied the shrubs for a moment, then her glance drifted to the woman’s porch, where a very convincing witch stood sentry next to the front door.

  “It looks like the residents of Angler Road take Halloween very seriously,” she commented. “Almost everybody has some kind of great decoration up.”

  The woman smiled. “It’s become quite competitive—like those people who cover their houses and yards with thousands of Christmas lights every year.”

  “Angler Road must get a lot of trick-or-treaters then,” Pamela said.

  “Do we ever! Our kids are all grown up now, with kids of their own, but we enjoy seeing the little neighbor kids in their costumes.” The woman indeed looked rather grandmotherly, with salt-and-pepper hair cut in a wash-and-wear style and a rounded figure.

  “Does everybody on the block get into the spirit of things?” Pamela asked, feeling encouraged at the direction the conversation was taking. “Buying candy for hundreds of children can get expensive.”

  “That it can!” The woman laughed. “But our kids always loved coming home with big bags full of goodies, so I can’t begrudge this new generation of goblins.” She laughed again, and then patted her stomach. “Of course, the challenge is buying just enough. My husband and I don’t need to be stuffing ourselves with the leftovers.”

  “Some people just turn off the lights when they run out.”

  “We had to do that this year.” The woman drooped her head in mock shame. “Word must have gotten around that Angler Road was the best place to trick-or-treat. The goblins kept coming and coming, and one by one houses went dark as people turned off their lights.” She gestured toward the Barrows’ house, with its parade of skeletons on the lawn. “Except for them. They don’t have kids yet, but they really enjoy the holiday. They lay in a huge supply of candy and both dress up in costumes. They were mummies this year—really hilarious. He came out on the porch and just stood there with a basket of candy. The kids were coming in streams.”

  Pamela glanced across the street and noticed Nell making her way up the Barrows’ front walk. She checked her watch. It was just noon, and when she shifted her gaze to Bettina’s car, she saw that Bettina had already finished her canvassing and was sitting behind the steering wheel.

  “I won’t keep you any longer,” she said, turning back to the woman she’d been chatting with. She couldn’t just go and join Bettina in the car though. That would make it obvious she wasn’t a new neighbor out for a stroll—especially when Nell joined them and they drove away. But that problem solved itself when the woman looked at her own watch and remarked that she’d done enough yard work for one day and it was time for lunch.

  “It was nice talking to you,” the woman said. “I’m Becky.”

  “I’m Pamela.” Pamela smiled and dipped her head.

  “See you around the neighborhood then,” Becky said. And with a wave, she gripped the edge of the bin and began to drag it back across the driveway.

  Pamela traveled several yards along the sidewalk, waiting until Becky had disappeared around the back of her house before she paused to look toward the Barrows’ house. Nell had reached the porch and was standing at the Barrows’ front door. She waited, perhaps hearing footsteps inside. But after a few minutes, she turned away, stepped off the porch, and headed toward the sidewalk.

  “I found something out,” Pamela announced as she climbed into the back seat of the Toyota.

  Bettina was patting at her hair, which had strayed from its careful pouf despite the stillness of the day. “I wish I’d worn a hat,” she said, tilting her head to catch her reflection in the rearview mirror. “But that’s not as important as”—she swiveled in her seat to regard Pamela—“what did you find out?”

  “Let’s collect Nell and then drive a few blocks up the street before we pool our discoveries,” Pamela said. “The woman who lives right over there”—she pointed toward the house with the exuberant shrubbery—“thinks she was just chatting with a new neighbor having a stroll and she might come back outside.”

  Nell arrived and settled into the passenger seat, commenting “No luck!” as she pulled the door closed.

  Bettina twisted her key in the ignition and the Toyota came to life with a grumble that turned into a purr. They passed more of the tidy split-level houses, and when they reached a little park, Bettina nosed toward the curb and turned off the engine.

  “Nobody was home,” Nell said. “I even tried the Barrows—though if they, or he, or she, or whoever came to the door, had said they were in Meadowside on Halloween night, I’m not sure that would have counted as a real alibi.”

  “I think they really were here though.” Pamela leaned forward from her perch in the back seat. She recounted her conversation with the woman who had introduced herself as Becky.

  “The last people on the block to run out of candy,” Nell murmured, “not that children need all the candy they collect. But Dawn can’t have been killed later than eight or eight thirty, because the bonfire hadn’t been going too long before her body was found.”

  “The Barrows were certainly in Meadowside Halloween night, not in Arborville killing Dawn Filbert,” Pamela said. “And from what Becky told me, it sounds like they wouldn’t miss Halloween on Angler Road for anything. Not only do they make sure they won’t run out of candy—they both dress up. This year they were mummies.”

  “They sound like nice people,” Bettina chimed in. “I can’t believe Stuart Barrow really threatened Mary the way she said. Their neighbors love them—at least the ones I talked to. And they love Barbara’s knitting patterns and know all about that snotty Mary Lyon, who looked down her nose at knitting patterns ordinary people can understand—though it’s a pity she was murdered.”

  “So,” Bettina sighed, “I guess we found out something—but do we have any suspects left now?” She twisted her key in the ignition once again and they were on their way. “I, for one, could use some lunch,” she commented as they cruised toward the intersection where they’d make the turn to head back to Arborville.

  From Arborville Avenue, Bettina veered up the hill toward the Palisades and Nell’s house. Harold was outside raking leaves and waved as Bettina pulled over and stopped. Nell got out and motioned him over to the car, and they made their arrangements for the funeral and memorial reception the next day, with Harold offering to drive.

  The Toyota was halfway down the block when Pamela heard a voice calling, “Stop! Wait! Stop!” She twisted around to look out the window—she was still riding in the back seat—and saw Nell running after them, her gray coat billowing out behind her.

  “It’s Nell!” Pamela tapped Bettina on the shoulder. “She wants to tell us something!”

  Bettina swerved to the curb and rolled down the window.

  “I just thought of something!” Nell’s face was pink with exertion. The words squeezed out in a breathless pant. She took a deep breath and then another.

  “What?” Bettina stuck out her head. Pamela�
��s view was of her friend’s profile, frozen in an attitude of alarmed puzzlement.

  “If the Barrows were both dressed as mummies”—Nell paused for a ragged breath—“how would anyone know they were really themselves?”

  * * *

  The drive from Nell’s house to Pamela’s was just long enough for the implications of Nell’s question to sink in. As Bettina pulled into Pamela’s driveway, driver and passenger both spoke.

  “A mummy costume would be perfect for creating a fake alibi,” Bettina exclaimed, her eyes bright. “Totally wrapped up from head to foot.”

  Pamela’s comment was more measured. “They would have had to enlist accomplices,” she observed, staring straight ahead without exactly focusing on anything. “It would be very clever though, almost the perfect crime. Your neighbors think you’re at home dressed like mummies and giving out candy—but you’re over in the next town killing someone.”

  “You’d have to really trust the people you recruited to be you,” Bettina said.

  “You would.” Pamela nodded. “We have to think about this—but we can’t cross the Barrows off our list of suspects yet.”

  “They are our list of suspects,” Bettina pointed out. “Unless you want to retract your opinion that Germaine couldn’t be the murderer.”

  Pamela reached for the door handle. Then she paused and raised an admonitory finger. “One of them could have been the mummy while the other was in Arborville committing the murder. That woman I talked to didn’t say whether she ever saw two mummies at once.”

  “So we definitely won’t cross them off,” Bettina said. “I’d invite you across the street for lunch, but I’m babysitting for the Arborville grandchildren this afternoon and I’ve got to grab a quick bite and change my clothes.”

  Pamela climbed the steps to her porch, retrieved her mail from the mailbox, and unlocked her front door. The sunny spot where Catrina took her morning naps on the carpet in the entry had vanished as the sun climbed toward midday. So there was no one to greet Pamela as she stepped inside. She shed her jacket and purse and, in a few moments, was studying the contents of her refrigerator.

  She’d brought home a chicken from the Co-Op on Tuesday and roasted it with rosemary from the pot on her back porch. It had provided Wednesday’s dinner as well, and would return again tonight. Pamela had always cooked real dinners, even after only she and her daughter were left. With Penny away at college, she still cooked real dinners—though a chicken could last a week, and its carcass could launch a pot of soup.

  There was plenty of whole-grain bread left from Tuesday’s fresh loaf, and plenty of the Co-Op’s special Vermont cheddar. A piece of toast with a few slices of cheese and a fried egg on top would be a perfect lunch, she decided.

  As she tended the egg in her small frying pan, watching as the white turned from translucent to opaque, she pondered again the question Nell had posed. Checking with neighbors to find out whether the Barrows had been at home Halloween night had seemed like such a good idea. But costumes, of course! Halloween was all about costumes. What better night to carry out evil deeds?

  What was it Roland had said? People out roaming around in the dark, and nobody looks like who they really are? Maybe Halloween wasn’t such a benign holiday after all.

  Upstairs, Pamela awakened her computer monitor from its sleep. She’d expected to spend the morning evaluating the last two articles from the batch her boss had sent on Monday. But then Bettina and Nell had arrived and the sleuthing errand to Meadowside had been hatched, and now it was nearly one thirty.

  She reopened the file she’d been working on that morning. Soon, she was immersed once more in the world of the Raramuri people of Chihuahua and their elaborate dresses, introduced by European missionaries in the 1600s but now cherished as a part of the Raramuris’ own ethnic identity.

  Chapter 12

  “I wonder what Mary would have thought of her funeral,” Pamela commented as Harold Bascomb maneuvered his Audi toward the exit of the church parking lot. The funeral had been held at St. Peter Martyr, an imposing Gothic-style edifice not far from the Wendelstaff campus.

  “Some of the remembrances were awfully sentimental,” Bettina said. “I kept imagining the coffin lid flipping open and Mary popping out with a sarcastic comment.”

  From the front seat, Harold snickered, but Nell twisted around to focus her kindly gaze on the passengers in the back seat. “Funerals are for the living,” she observed, “not the dead. If those words comforted Mary’s survivors, they served their purpose.”

  “Is anybody more familiar with the Wendelstaff campus than I am?” Harold asked. They’d already reached the campus’s northern edge, where a vast parking lot stretched from the road they were traveling on to the bank of the Haversack River.

  “There must be parking closer to the faculty club,” Bettina said. “I hope so anyway. I’m not wearing my sneakers.” In fact, she was wearing an elegant pair of slender-heeled pumps in a deep shade of purple. Her purple gloves, purple beret, stylish lavender coat, and violet and fuchsia cashmere scarf completed the ensemble.

  “The faculty club is in the student union building,” Pamela said. She visited the campus occasionally for craft-related events. “And the student union building is behind the quadrangle, near the river. There’s a smaller lot after you pass the main part of the campus.”

  Soon, Harold had pulled into the smaller lot, which had a section marked “Visitors,” and eased the Audi into an empty space. Around them, other people were climbing out of cars, most of them recognizable as fellow mourners by outfits more formal than those of the backpack-laden students milling about here and there.

  Pamela guided her companions along a route that meandered past ivy-covered buildings, emerging at one end of the campus’s central quadrangle. The quadrangle was a grassy expanse, still green, and crisscrossed with paths traversed by hurrying students. One of the paths led to the Wendelstaff student union building, whose modern design marked it as one of the college’s newer structures.

  A sign on a stand right inside the entrance read “Lyon-Covington Reception,” and an arrow pointed to the left. They proceeded along a hallway until they could go no farther and had to turn left again. Once they turned, an open door beckoned and a muted hubbub within suggested they’d reached their destination.

  Looking rather at loose ends, but professorial in a tweed jacket, Brainard Covington stood apart from his guests, some of whom were investigating the buffet table and some of whom had equipped themselves with glasses of wine and formed small conversational groups.

  The room featured floor-to-ceiling windows in the back wall, and the view was of the grassy slope leading down to the Haversack River and the river itself. On this bright day, the river looked its best. The water, murky at times, instead reflected the clear blue of the sky. And the tide was high—the Haversack eventually reached the ocean and thus was tidal—and so the detritus that sometimes marred its banks was submerged.

  Brainard arranged his handsome features into a smile when he caught sight of the Bascombs, perhaps grateful for the soothing presence of his elderly neighbors. His handsomeness—characterized by deep-set eyes of the darkest brown, a classic profile, and a sensitive mouth—was of the sort enhanced by seriousness, and as if he realized this, the smile rapidly faded. He wasn’t a large man. In the shoes she thought of as her funeral pumps, Pamela was as tall as he.

  Nell advanced first, clasped Brainard’s hand, and murmured a few words of comfort. Harold followed her, adding a gentle hand on Brainard’s shoulder to the handclasp and murmured words he offered. Pamela and Bettina hovered in the background until Nell stepped aside and ushered them forward.

  “You met Pamela Paterson and Bettina Fraser the other day,” she explained. “They’re fellow Arborvillians.” Brainard nodded.

  “I’m so sorry about Mary,” Pamela said. “I know her blog will be missed,” she added, after searching her mind for an appropriate comment.

  “We’
re all knitters.” Bettina reached out a comforting hand. “I hope you’re doing okay . . . after such a shocking event.”

  Pamela studied Brainard’s face as Bettina spoke. She and Bettina had considered the possibility that Brainard himself might have killed his wife—despite an alibi that Detective Clayborn had evidently accepted—and she was searching for some hint in his expression that contradicted his apparent grief. As he absorbed Bettina’s words, his brow contracted and his eyes seemed to focus on something invisible a few feet ahead of him.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “It was shocking.” After a few moments, he spoke again. “There’s a coatroom,” he exclaimed suddenly, as if recalled to his duties as host.

  Nell began to unbutton her faithful gray wool coat.

  “It’s right over there.” Brainard pointed to a door, slightly ajar, near the door through which they had entered. “And then”—he gestured vaguely toward the buffet table, which was parallel with the windows that looked out on the river view—“there’s food, some kind of food. And people. Some other people from Arborville are here. And my son is here . . . somewhere.” He squinted in the direction of a small knot of people clustered at the end of the buffet table where the wine was being served. “Obviously, not standing next to his father where he should be.”

  Bettina wasn’t as resistant to being labeled nosy as Pamela was, and the seclusion of the coatroom offered a good opportunity for her to query Nell about the family dynamic Brainard’s comment had hinted at.

  As she divested herself of the lavender coat to display a form-fitting jersey dress in the same deep purple as her shoes, Bettina turned to Nell. “I guess Brainard and his son don’t get along very well,” she said.

  “Hercules is a lovely young man.” Nell handed her coat to Harold, who was standing at the ready with a coat hanger. “And he’s following in Brainard’s footsteps.”