The first step was to start the butter softening. She was doubling her recipe in order to produce four loaves at once, so her largest mixing bowl was called for, even larger than the caramel-colored bowl with the white stripes. A huge pale green bowl resided in a cupboard in the laundry room, brought out once a year for Christmas baking. She fetched that bowl and took the four butter quarters out of their box and unwrapped them. Then she held each butter quarter over the pale green bowl and whittled away at it with a knife, letting the butter chunks accumulate at the bottom of the bowl. Butter and sugar had to be creamed together for the recipe and smaller chunks would reach a consistency that her mixer could manage sooner than whole quarters would.
The next step was to blend the poppy seeds with milk. Pamela tugged at the bag’s zipper seal and the seal parted, releasing the rich, slightly nutty fragrance of the tiny, dark seeds. She measured two cups of seeds into a saucepan, added two cups of milk, and set the saucepan over a low flame. The seeds wanted to float, so she stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon to make sure they were all submerged. The milk wasn’t to boil—only nearly so. So Pamela watched the surface carefully. When the tiniest bit of steam began to rise from it and the tiniest bubbles formed around the edges of the saucepan, she turned the heat off and left the seeds and milk to sit. They were supposed to sit for an hour.
As she turned away from the stove, Pamela realized something was missing—the Christmas music that Christmas tasks required. The old LPs had been brought out for the tree-trimming. Now she stepped around into the living room, picked up the LP whose cover showed a festive but much faded Christmas wreath, slid out the glossy vinyl disk, and set it to spinning on the turntable.
The butter and seeds needed to sit a bit longer and email hadn’t been checked since that morning. Pamela’s boss seemed never to rest and liked her communications to be speedily acknowledged, even though the deadlines she gave were usually quite reasonable. So Pamela climbed the stairs as the lush sounds of a chorale singing “The Holly and the Ivy” surged from the speakers. On the second floor, the door to Penny’s room was still closed. Pamela hesitated for a moment but then continued on to her office.
Her inbox contained nothing of note, and ten minutes later she was back in the kitchen. It was time to butter and flour the pans for the poppy-seed cake—loaf pans, four of them. And once they were lined up on the kitchen table with an even dusting of white on sides and bottom, she turned on the oven, setting it to 350 degrees. It came on with a whoosh.
The recipe called for white flour or whole wheat flour or half of each. Pamela liked the poppy-seed cakes with half of each, so she sifted two cups of white and two cups of whole wheat into a small bowl, along with salt and baking powder, and set the bowl aside. Then she took out six eggs and proceeded to separate the yolks from the whites. She tapped each egg sharply on the side of another small bowl and eased the globe of yolk and the translucent white back and forth between the eggshell halves until all the white slithered into the bowl. The yolks, which had been left nestled in their half shells, were tipped into a third small bowl. She beat the whites until they were stiff and set them aside.
The chunks of butter in the pale green bowl were soft enough now to proceed with the recipe. She fit the beaters into her electric mixer and set to work. The mixer whirred and growled, the beaters clanked against the bowl’s sturdy earthenware surface, and gradually the chunks of butter became a yellow mass teased into waves and peaks by the action of the beaters. Sugar would be blended in next, and then egg yolks.
The recipe also allowed the cook leeway in the choice of sugars: white or brown or a combination of both. Pamela had made the cakes with both sugars in various proportions but liked the result best with half of each. Thus she filled a two-cup measure with white sugar and another with brown sugar (packed down, like the recipe said) and set them nearby.
She added the brown sugar, a little at a time, to the butter in the pale green bowl, mixing as she went. She followed with the white sugar. When the butter and the sugars had been blended smooth, she tipped the small bowl with the yolks over the large bowl and let one yolk slip out. The beaters captured it and spun orange streaks through the pale butter-sugar mixture. She tipped another yolk, and then another, and soon the small bowl was empty.
By this time it had been an hour since the poppy seeds were set to soaking in their warm milk bath. Pamela set the mixer aside for a moment and picked up the saucepan. Using a rubber spatula to capture every last one, Pamela coaxed the seeds, which now had absorbed much of the milk, into the pale green bowl, along with the remaining milk. She dribbled two teaspoons of vanilla over the dark pile of damp seeds and set to work again with the mixer.
When the seeds and vanilla had been thoroughly blended with the butter-sugar-egg-yolk mixture, and the whole now had a soupy consistency, she added the dry ingredients a half cup at a time, and beat the batter smooth. Then with the spatula she scooped the egg whites from their bowl, spread them on top of the batter like a moist white cloud, and gently folded them in.
As she worked, she noticed that something was different. She’d been humming along to one carol after another, but now she wasn’t—because the house had become silent and there was nothing to hum to. That was the problem with LPs! She rinsed her hands and wiped them on a dishcloth and a minute later was standing by the stereo in the living room turning the glossy black disk to side two. She returned to the kitchen to the strains of “Good King Wenceslaus.”
Filled with a double recipe of batter, the pale green bowl was too heavy to lift and tilt. Pamela used a giant soup ladle to portion the batter out into the four buttered and floured loaf pans, tipping the bowl at the end to coax out the last dribbles with the spatula. When the four loaf pans had been arranged on the middle shelf of the now-hot oven, Pamela set about cleaning up the inevitable mess that her project had created.
Twenty minutes later, the sounds of Christmas drifting in from the living room were augmented by an appeal to another of the five senses. The distinctive aroma of sugary, buttery things baking had begun to fill the kitchen. Pamela had just closed the dishwasher and was rinsing her hands again when Penny’s voice said, “They smell good, Mom.”
Pamela turned and studied her daughter’s face. What she saw there looked like contrition. “I made four of them,” she said. “Some are to give away, so I might make more.”
Penny had been standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the entry, but now she crossed to the kitchen table and picked up the Christmas-tree ornament that Pamela had discovered on the kitchen floor. “My mouse,” she said. “Why is it in here?”
“Ask Catrina.” Pamela smiled. “Or Ginger.”
“They put it here?” Penny wrinkled her nose in puzzlement.
“It was on the floor,” Pamela said. “I assume it didn’t wander in by itself.”
“How old was I when I made this?” Penny fingered the creature’s long felt tail.
“Second grade, I think.” Pamela’s gaze shifted from her daughter to the threshold between the kitchen and the back hall. “Uh-oh,” she said. “What do we have here?”
Standing in the doorway were Catrina and Ginger, the larger inky-black cat a few (cat-sized) paces ahead of the smaller butterscotch-striped kitten. Catrina edged farther into the room. Her amber eyes flickered back and forth between Pamela and Penny.
“You have been a bad cat,” Penny said, squatting before Catrina and displaying the pinecone mouse on an outstretched palm. “Very bad. And you know that.”
Catrina stared fixedly at the mouse. She flattened her supple body until her belly was barely an inch from the floor. Lingering off to the side, Ginger imitated her mother.
“You will not do this again.” Penny’s voice was stern. She shifted her attention a foot to the right and addressed Ginger. “And you neither. Do you understand?” Pamela bit her tongue to keep from laughing, but Ginger flattened her body even further and raised her eyes warily to Penny’s face.
“I suppose you’re hungry,” Pamela observed as they waited uncertainly in the doorway. She fetched a fresh can of cat food from the cupboard, opened it, and spooned a dinner-sized serving for two into a clean bowl. As she refilled their water bowl, they ventured across the floor with an occasional glance upwards, as if wanting to make sure that they were back in the good graces of at least one of their mistresses.
It was time to test the poppy-seed cakes for doneness, by sticking a wooden toothpick into them. Pamela slipped on an oven mitt, shook a toothpick from the toothpick box, and opened the oven door, squinting at the blast of hot air. She carefully slid out the middle shelf, heavy with its freight of baking goodies, and plunged the toothpick into the closest one. The toothpick came out clean. The tops of all the cakes were rounded and firm and a nice golden brown, but she tested the other three to make sure that different positions on the oven rack hadn’t affected the rate of baking. She grasped a potholder in the hand that wasn’t wearing the mitt and transferred the loaf pans, one at a time, to the stovetop, from whence the aroma of their baked sweetness filled the little kitchen.
Pamela had wondered if Penny would return to the kitchen after the errand to rehang the pinecone mouse. Perhaps her plan had been to retreat back upstairs and commune with her smartphone until she was summoned to dinner. But suddenly Penny was skipping back through the doorway asking, “What can I do, Mom?”
“Get the kale ready to cook?” Pamela suggested.
Soon Penny was standing at the sink, tearing the frilly dark green leaves into bite-sized pieces and dropping them into the plastic basket of Pamela’s salad spinner. At her side, Pamela measured brown rice and water into a saucepan. As she worked, she mulled over the conversation she wanted to have. When she felt she was ready, she said, “I trust you to do the sensible thing, you know.”
Penny’s hands paused in midair, a whole kale leaf with its exuberant ruffle in one, and the other empty. “As in not chasing strange men down Arborville Avenue?” she asked without turning her head.
“I was very worried.” Pamela addressed the saucepan. “He was wearing the scarf that Bettina gave Millicent Farthingale right before Millicent Farthingale was murdered.”
“That’s why I chased him,” Penny said. “It was a clue. But he turned out to be very nice.”
“And very cute.” Pamela felt her lips tighten in a disapproving way. Was she upset that her daughter had been so obviously attracted to an attractive man? Penny was a young woman, after all. Pamela made an effort to relax her lips. She turned to her daughter and smiled. “So I expect you to be sensible. I know I can trust you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Pamela’s boss had been busy before Pamela even rose from her bed. Now, at eight a.m. on Monday morning, and still in her robe and pajamas, Pamela checked her email to discover a message with ten attachments, already lurking in her inbox. No need to rush on these—I know it’s holiday time, the message read, but please evaluate them for publication and get them back to me before next Monday. Above the message, the titles of the attached documents appeared, each accompanied by a miniature Word icon. Pamela skimmed the list: something about embroidery, something about Etruscans, something about knitting, and many more somethings . . . But she had a week to read them, and today was a day for Christmas errands. Bettina was coming on the outing too, and would be arriving about eleven.
The first stop would be the Arborville post office, where Pamela would mail one of her poppy-seed cakes to her boss at Fiber Craft. Then a poppy-seed cake would be delivered to old family friends, the Nordlings, in Timberley. Michael Paterson and Jud Nordling had been friends and collaborators for years, and the Nordlings had kept in touch with Pamela and Penny ever since Michael’s death. While they were in Timberley, they planned to stop at the fancy Timberley yarn shop so Penny could choose the yarn for the sweater Pamela was going to make her.
Catrina had waited patiently in the hall while Pamela detoured into her office. When she emerged, the cat scurried toward the stairs, anticipating the morning breakfast ritual. Ginger was nowhere in sight, nor was there any sign of Penny—evidently both were still dozing in Penny’s bed. But Pamela and Catrina proceeded to the kitchen, where Pamela spooned a small serving of cat food into a clean bowl and set water boiling for coffee. While the water boiled, she darted out into the cold to collect the Register.
Back inside, she slid the newspaper from its plastic sleeve and spread it out on the table. A quick search of the first section and then the Local section turned up no articles about the murder case. But Bettina often met with Detective Clayborn on Monday mornings and Pamela hoped she might have something to report when she arrived.
The kettle began to whistle and Pamela put the newspaper aside and hastily ground the beans for coffee. While the boiling water was dripping through the freshly ground beans and a slice of whole-grain bread was toasting, Penny arrived with Ginger at her heels. Soon mother and daughter were sitting at the table sharing breakfast while Ginger took delicate bites from the kitten-sized serving of cat food Pamela had added to the communal bowl.
* * *
A few hours later, Pamela was sitting at her dining room table dressed in her winter uniform of jeans and one of her hand-knit sweaters. Today it was the Icelandic-style sweater she’d finished the previous winter. She’d taken the poppy-seed cakes from their loaf pans and wrapped each securely in aluminum foil. Now she was adding gift wrap to two of them. The first was almost finished. To complement the festive paper, with its shiny green holly leaves and bright red berries, she was adding red satin ribbon to the loaf-shaped parcel.
When the ribbon was arranged to her satisfaction, looped the long way around the loaf and then crisscrossed in the other direction, she tied a neat bow, snipped the ribbon ends on the diagonal so they wouldn’t ravel, and set the wrapped loaf aside. As she was smoothing paper around the second loaf, the doorbell chimed.
“I’ll get it, Mom,” Penny called and Pamela heard feet on the entry floor. Then came the sound of the door opening and a cheerful greeting, to which Penny responded equally cheerfully. A moment later Bettina rounded the corner from the living room, bundled in her pumpkin-colored coat and with a fetching turquoise beret hiding all but a flourish of scarlet bangs. She’d accented her hazel eyes with a bit of turquoise eye shadow. Penny was right behind her.
“I’m going up to change,” Penny said, and darted back the way she’d come.
Pamela held out the in-progress wrapping job. “I’ve got to finish this before we go out,” she explained. “But I think there’s coffee to reheat—Penny doesn’t drink much. Take your coat off and sit down for a few minutes. And do tell me what Detective Clayborn had to say.”
“I will,” Bettina said. “But first—I stopped in to see Karen on my way here.” Her face softened into a maternal smile. “What a sweet armful little Lily is! And Dave’s on his winter break from teaching. The timing couldn’t be better for welcoming a new baby home.”
Bettina draped the pumpkin-colored coat over a chair and headed for the kitchen. The refrigerator opened and closed and soon she joined Pamela at the dining room table, a cup of coffee in hand, creamed and sugared to her taste.
“Detective Clayborn.” She shook her head and sighed. “He was very dismissive, though he certainly hasn’t made any progress. I think they’re all just taking it easy because it’s Christmas and they don’t want to do any work.”
Pamela looked up from taping the holly wrapping paper around one end of the loaf. “Did you talk to him about Aaron?” she asked.
“I did.” Bettina nodded. “He insisted there’s nothing distinctive about a red scarf with green stripes at the ends, especially at Christmas. I told him that one of the green stripes wasn’t the same shade of green as the other stripes and he just looked at me.”
Pamela frowned. “But did you tell h
im that it has to be the scarf you gave Millicent because of the nature preserve connection? Aaron claims that he found it there—so he’s acknowledging that it’s Millicent’s scarf, though he’s certainly not going to admit that he found it because it was wrapped around the neck of the woman he had just killed.”
“He asked me what I thought Aaron’s motive might have been, and I had to admit I didn’t know.” Bettina took a sip of her coffee.
“He’s got a point,” Pamela said. She picked up the spool of red satin ribbon and began to loop ribbon around the second loaf. “Does he know about Coot?”
Bettina nodded. “Pierre told him. Clayborn talked to her. She doesn’t have an alibi but he doesn’t see why she’d have to kill Millicent if she thinks her DNA will prove her right to a share of her mother’s estate.”
“He’s got a point about that too.” Pamela nodded. “And he accepts Pierre’s alibi, so I suppose telling him everything we know about his carryings-on with Jeannette Thornton wouldn’t have done any good.”
She finished her wrapping job with a neat bow. “Those were our three leads,” she said, shaking her head mournfully.
“Millicent was a wonderful person.” Minus her customary smile, Bettina looked twenty years older. “And her shop was such a boon to local craftspeople.”
“I hate to think her murder might just go unsolved.” Pamela set the second loaf next to the first one.
“Such a loss.” Bettina’s voice quivered. “It will be a miracle if Nadine can keep the shop going.” She consoled herself with a long sip of coffee.
A cheery voice roused them from their gloom. “We can go any time,” Penny said as she bounced around the corner, wearing jeans and the turtleneck Pamela had knit for her when she went off to college. It was fashioned from ombre yarn that shaded from green to indigo to violet and back again, and her pretty face looked all the prettier, framed by the sweater’s high-rising neck and her dark curls.
Silent Knit, Deadly Knit Page 14
