A Fatal Yarn

by Peggy Ehrhart

  Richard Larkin greeted her with a dip of his shaggy blond head as the door swung back. “I’m not . . . um . . . disturbing you, I hope,” he said in the voice that had struck her the first time she heard it as . . . a very nice voice, somehow in keeping with his bony face and strong nose.

  “No, I’m—” Pamela stepped back to let him in but he remained standing on the porch, studying her in an intent way. For some reason, she suddenly needed to remind herself to breathe.

  His stern features relaxed, and she realized he was looking past her. She glanced over her shoulder. Ginger had wandered into the entry, curious about the visitor or perhaps just wondering where her dinner was.

  “You’re doing okay? With your cat?” Pamela asked, tilting her head to meet his eyes, which had shifted back to her. The previous fall he had adopted one of Catrina’s kittens.

  “Um?” His eyes widened in puzzlement as if he’d been lost in thought and the question had caught him off guard.

  “Your cat,” Pamela said.

  “Oh, yes. My cat.” He smiled and his features relaxed again, but he didn’t elaborate. He was studying the doormat now and seemed happy to remain on the porch, so Pamela stepped closer to the threshold, scouring her mind for a new topic of conversation.

  But before she could speak, he raised his head and said, all in a rush, “There’s a banquet, architects, the Saturday after Easter, in the city. They want to give me an award, and I was wondering—that is, if you’re free—if you’d like to come.” As he spoke, his eyes seemed imported from some whole other face, so ill did their vulnerable expression assort with his rugged features.

  “Oh, I—” Pamela broke off, distracted by the commotion in her chest. Like a speeded-up film, a whole scenario played itself out in her brain in less time than it took to draw a breath. “I—” Now the doormat claimed her interest too, and she pondered the complicated knots that had shaped jute into a waffle-like grid.

  “Thank you, but I just can’t,” she said at last, without looking up.

  “Yes, I see. Yes.” He turned, and was off.

  * * *

  The freshly ground coffee beans were waiting in the paper filter nestled into the filter cone atop the carafe, and the kettle was aboil, a slight wisp of steam already rising from its spout. On Pamela’s kitchen table, a wedding china platter held a generous portion of Co-Op crumb cake, carefully sliced into squares. Small wedding china plates, one on either side of the kitchen table, sat ready to receive them. Cups and saucers accompanied the plates, as well as forks, spoons, and napkins. The cut-glass sugar bowl had been topped up and the matching cream pitcher filled with the heavy cream that Bettina doted on.

  But when Bettina stepped into the kitchen, she scarcely glanced at the preparations for the morning’s coffee ritual.

  “I cannot believe the outrageous things people post on that listserv,” she announced, her fearsome scowl engraving a deep line between her brows. The scarlet tendrils of her hair quivered with irritation.

  “I know,” Pamela said. “I checked it after I got your email yesterday. The comments from those Diefenbach supporters were so annoying—and stupid—that I logged off after a few minutes.” She gave Bettina’s shoulder a comforting pat. “It’s best to just ignore it.”

  “I can’t,” Bettina sighed, still scowling. “I have to keep up with it for my job. It’s a way to keep track of what’s going on in town, what the Advocate should be looking into.” She sank heavily into her customary chair, as if defeated by the knowledge that Arborville harbored people capable of such hostility. She was dressed today for her babysitting duties, in a turquoise leggings and tunic ensemble set off by her bright red sneakers. Earrings fashioned from large glass beads, in the same bright red, dangled from her ears.

  Pamela’s attention was drawn to the stove by the frantic hooting of the kettle. For a moment the only sound was a faint trickle as the boiling water seeped through the ground beans and dripped into the carafe beneath. The process released the rich coffee fragrance and at once the cozy kitchen became even cozier.

  “I didn’t know about that rooster though,” Bettina said, sounding more like herself, perhaps calmed by the impending coffee and crumb cake. “I’m surprised people weren’t writing letters to the editor about it if they’ve been so bothered.”

  Pamela joined her at the table with the carafe and carefully filled the waiting cups with the steaming brew. As Bettina measured sugar into her cup and then added cream until the pale liquid in her cup barely hinted at its origin, Pamela eased squares of crumb cake onto the plates.

  “The person with the chickens must be at the other end of town, up by where Roland lives or near the community gardens,” Pamela said. “I’ve certainly never heard a rooster here on Orchard Street.”

  Bettina had forked off a bite of crumb cake and was raising it to her mouth. “And that’s another thing.” The hand holding the fork paused. “The community gardens! What nonsense to say that the people who use community garden plots are vegetarian layabouts who grow marijuana on them! The Boston children are vegetarians and they’re hardly layabouts, and Marlene Pepper has had a community garden plot forever. She’s . . . well, she’s . . .”

  “A pillar of the community,” Pamela supplied.

  “Yes!” Bettina nodded, setting the tendrils of her scarlet hair in motion again. “A pillar of the community.”

  Pamela tried a sip of her coffee and decided it was still too hot to drink. She separated a bite of crumb cake from the substantial portion on her plate and conveyed it to her mouth. The cake was light and toothsome, and the crumb topping buttery and sugary with a hint of cinnamon.

  Bettina had now sampled her first bite as well. She hummed her appreciation and followed the bite with a swallow of coffee. “I think this crumb cake is my favorite thing the Co-Op bakery makes,” she said as she carved a second forkful from the square on her plate.

  For several minutes the two friends alternated between eating, sipping coffee, and chatting—mostly about the other offerings available at the Co-Op bakery counter. Ginger had ambled in from the entry. She was sniffing at Bettina’s jaunty sneaker and batting at the tails of the shoelaces. Bettina gave the cat a fond smile, then checked her watch. “Nine-thirty,” she commented. “I’m not due at Maxie and Wilfred Jr.’s yet, but you’ve got a tag sale to get to.”

  Pamela laughed. “I don’t have to be there the moment it starts,” she said—though it was true that sometimes the best treasures got snapped up by the early birds. “Please have another piece of crumb cake, and there’s plenty of coffee. I can warm the carafe up a bit.”

  Bettina served herself another portion of crumb cake and Pamela rose, transferred the carafe to the stove, and lit the burner under it. As she waited for the tiny bubbles that would signal the coffee was hot again, she remarked in an offhand way, “Richard Larkin invited me to an architecture thing, a banquet in the city.”

  Bettina’s fork clattered against her plate and she was on her feet in an instant. “We’ll go to the mall, this very afternoon!” Her eyes were bright with purpose. “You’ll need the perfect dress, something glamorous but elegant. Maybe blue. Deep blue, a kind of indigo. And shoes to go with, of course. And you can wear those sparkly dangly earrings I gave you for Christmas. And depending on the dress we pick out, we can go through my evening bags. I’m sure I have something that will be . . . just . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Pamela was aware that a frown had invaded her forehead.

  “I know you don’t like to think about clothes”— Bettina sounded somewhat chastened—“but for an occasion like this . . .”

  “I told him no,” Pamela said in a small voice.

  “You what!” Bettina’s voice soared to a pitch more suited to a startled animal. Ginger looked up in alarm and scurried from the room.

  “I told him no,” Pamela repeated.

  “Why on earth?” For the second time that morning, Bettina sank down into her chair looking defeated.
<
br />   Pamela used an oven mitt to carry the carafe back to the table. Temporarily ignoring Bettina’s question, she refilled both cups. Only after she had returned the carafe to the stove and settled back into her chair did she speak.

  “It sounded like an important event,” she said. “He’s being given an award.”

  “And so therefore you . . .” Bettina looked like she was about to cry.

  “People would think we were a couple,” Pamela said. “It sounded like the sort of thing you’d want your nearest and dearest to share with you.”

  “Maybe you are his nearest and dearest.” Now Bettina was regarding her with the same sympathetic expression Nell’s face sometimes wore—like a patient mother explaining something to a wayward daughter. “You know he’s interested in you. And at this point he knows you well enough that it’s not just a mindless crush. And you know him.”

  Pamela sighed. “I like him.” In her mind a little voice said, people don’t get breathless and tonguetied the way you did when he came to the door because they merely like someone. “I’m just not ready to be part of a couple again. You give things up.”

  “But you gain so much . . .”

  “I know,” Pamela said. “I look at you and Wilfred, and Nell and Harold, and sometimes I wish . . .” She stared at her coffee cup, surprised to see that it was full once again, so distracted had she been by the thought of Richard Larkin’s invitation. What did she wish?

  She wished she could relive that morning when Michael Paterson left for work never suspecting he wasn’t to return that night. She wished she could call him back, could say, “Don’t go, just this one day. They’ll do okay without you.” She and Michael had been so close, so much a part of each other. How could that ever be replaced?

  Pamela looked back up. “Penny’s coming home this Friday,” she said brightly. “For spring break.”

  Bettina was already halfway across the porch when she turned. “There’s going to be a memorial reception billed as ‘Remembering Bill Diefenbach’ tomorrow at two in St. Willibrod’s church hall. I’m covering it for the paper—but you should come too. We might learn something useful.”

  Chapter 7

  After the door closed behind Bettina, Pamela returned to the kitchen, where she tidied up the dishes and tucked the remains of the crumb cake into a zip-lock bag. Then she collected her jacket and her purse and set off up Orchard Street.

  Midway to the corner, a bright spot on the sidewalk ahead caught her eye. When she reached it, she saw that it was a shiny dime. She stooped for it and slipped it into her pocket. Finding money on the ground meant good luck—though perhaps it was just Pamela’s innate frugality that wouldn’t let her leave a stray coin uncollected.

  The organizers of the tag sale at Cassie Griswold’s house had been very energetic in their advertising. In her four-block walk, Pamela passed several more flyers for the sale. They were affixed to trees and power poles, the kiosk where people waited for the bus, even the mail box at the corner of Cassie’s street, and they were identical to the one on the Co-Op bulletin board except for variations in the vivid paper they were printed on.

  Pamela would have known which house she was aiming for even without looking at the addresses, because halfway down Cassie’s block several cars were lined up along the curb on each side of the street. Clearly, many people had been attracted by the prospect of treasures to be found in a house that had been inhabited for nearly half a century by a couple as well off as an Arborvillian could want to be. Cassie’s husband had died two years previously. He had been a college professor who crossed the Hudson every day to teach at an institution considerably older and more prestigious than Wendelstaff College. Cassie, in the way of things for women of her generation, hadn’t sought to compete with her husband’s career, but had raised her children and done volunteer work.

  The house, like many in Arborville, resembled Pamela’s—a solid wood-frame house with clapboard siding, two stories plus an attic with little dormer windows beneath a peaked roof, and a wraparound porch. Six wooden steps led up to the porch, and a printed notice on the door said, “TAG SALE TODAY. COME IN.”

  Pamela stepped into a parquet-floored entry rather like her own. Off to the left—instead of the right, as in her house—was the living room. It was still furnished with a sofa, armchairs, lamp tables and a coffee table, each bearing a bit of masking tape with a price written on it, but extra tables had been set up. As best Pamela could tell, they bore china and crystal—perhaps the “good” dishes and glassware normally kept in a cupboard, as well as vases and figurines and curious carved objects that looked like souvenirs of travel to exotic places. But the room was so crowded, with people elbowing each other out of the way in their eagerness to inspect the items on display, that it was hard to see what was what.

  Could you tell, Pamela always wondered when she visited a tag sale after the owners of the house were gone, whether the people who lived in the house had been happy? You could study the possessions they had amassed, and even guess at their routines—ample table linens suggested they had enjoyed the ceremony of holiday dinners, for example. But was there any way to know whether the people who traveled up and down those stairs or gathered around that dining room table had spoken cheerfully to each other or with barely concealed contempt?

  “Welcome,” said a pleasant, elderly woman as Pamela retreated back into the entry. The woman was jacketless and wore a belt with a zippered pouch, suggesting that she was not a shopper but rather one of the people running the event.

  Pamela summoned her social smile. “Lots of goodies,” she commented.

  “Lots,” the woman agreed. “And it all has to go—soon. Are you looking for anything in particular?”

  “Not really,” Pamela said, “but I can’t resist a tag sale. And I just live a couple of blocks away.”

  “You must have known Cassie then,” the woman said. “Such a shame, her dying. She just got weaker and weaker, and nobody could figure out what the problem was.”

  “Are you a friend?” Pamela asked. She’d noticed in her tag sale adventures that people often contracted with professionals to run their tag sales when the goal was to empty a house as fast as possible.

  The woman nodded. “A very old friend.” She glanced toward the doorway that Pamela knew, from the layout of her own house, led to the kitchen. “Haven’s in there, Cassie’s daughter. She’s trying to do what she can but she’s quite overwhelmed. And Cassie’s son lives on the West Coast. He came out for the funeral but he had to get back for his work.”

  The woman was distracted then as one of the shoppers approached with a crystal wineglass in each hand, and Pamela wandered into the kitchen.

  The kitchen table and counters were piled with items for sale—pots, pans, skillets, griddles, bowls, muffin tins and cookie sheets, utensils in jumbled heaps. In addition, several cupboard doors were open to reveal canned goods, bottles of vinegar and soy sauce, boxes of pasta and rice, bags of dried beans, and jars and jars of jam, the latter crowded onto a shelf that bore a sign reading NOT FOR SALE. But the room was empty of people except for a tall slender woman in her forties. Haven, Pamela surmised. She could have been Pamela’s double with her straight dark hair, large dark eyes, and features that didn’t need cosmetics to make them attractive.

  An interesting blue-speckled pottery mixing bowl caught Pamela’s attention. It was a smaller version of one she’d found in an antique shop at the Jersey Shore. But her eye was also drawn to the unusual pullover sweater Haven was wearing. It had been knit in a color-block effect. The front and what Pamela could see of the back were divided into large squares in contrasting colors—red, blue, yellow, and black, and each sleeve was a different color, one green and one orange.

  “You must be a knitter!” Pamela exclaimed. She couldn’t imagine how such a sweater could come into being if not as an original creation of its wearer.

  Haven smiled and glanced down at the sweater. “I did make this sweater,” she said.
“People usually guess that.” She looked back up. “Are you a knitter?”

  Pamela nodded. She tugged back the two sides of her jacket to reveal the Icelandic-style sweater with the snowflakes that she’d put on again that morning.

  “Nice!” Haven smiled again. Then she added, “There’s yarn. Tons of it. Mom was a bit of a hoarder.” Haven gestured around the room. Cassie had indeed acquired things in multiples. There were a least six muffin tins among the items on the counter, and open doors on cupboards below the counter revealed three more, as well as four crock pots and a stack of cast-iron griddles and skillets. “It made her good at her job, I guess,” Haven added. “Her volunteer job. Mom was the town archivist for Arborville.”

  “I’m sorry that you lost your mother,” Pamela said, feeling a twinge in her throat at the thought that she herself would lose her mother one day.

  “Thank you.” Fine lines that showed her age had appeared as Haven’s smile subsided. “She was a good mother.”

  “She liked jam.” Pamela nodded toward the collection of jam in the upper cupboard.

  The smile returned. “Actually most of those were a gift. It’s apricot, home-made as you can see by the labels, and it was really more than she could use—especially because she sort of lost her appetite when she got sick. She was always trying to give it away, in fact.”

  Haven pointed toward a second door in the kitchen, not the one Pamela had entered. Based on the similarity of this house to hers, she suspected the dining room was beyond.

  “The yarn’s all out here,” Haven said. “We’re bringing stuff down from upstairs. I don’t like to think of people pawing through my mom’s drawers.”

  She led Pamela into what indeed was the dining room. Spread out on a grand table, with an elegant chandelier above, was enough yarn to stock a small yarn shop—whole skeins with the labels still on them, partial skeins, random balls of different sizes, in every color imaginable. And there were knitted creations too, sweaters, mittens, scarves, and socks. Several women were clustered at one end of the table examining the offerings and making piles of their selections.