She had boiled a dozen eggs the night before. Now they were waiting in a bowl on the counter. She set out salt and pepper, powdered mustard, and tabasco sauce, then opened the refrigerator to retrieve the mayonnaise. As she lifted the jar from the shelf, she realized it felt very light, and when she looked inside she discovered that there was barely a tablespoon left. Penny must have been garnishing her lunchtime sandwiches quite liberally with mayonnaise.
Fortunately she’d decided to start on the deviled eggs early enough that she could fit in a walk to the Co-Op—and a little exercise would be a good idea anyway. But while she was exploring the refrigerator she took out a jar of pimento-stuffed green olives. Green olive halves with their little red pimento centers would be the perfect topping for deviled eggs on a Christmas Eve buffet table.
In the entry Pamela tugged on her heaviest jacket, wrapped a scarf around her neck, pulled a wooly hat down to her eyebrows, and slipped her hands into her warmest gloves. Canvas grocery bag in hand, she opened the front door and set off for the Co-Op. The wind was strong, and bitter, and brooding, dark gray clouds were massing at the edge of the no-color sky.
Blinking against the wind and with head bowed, she hurried along Arborville Avenue, barely glancing to the right or to the left. Soon she was passing Borough Hall, heading for the big intersection where traffic lights controlled the cars flowing north and south along Arborville Avenue and east and west to and from the George Washington Bridge ramps.
She raised her head to check whether the seconds counting down on the “Walk” signal would allow her to make the green light—or would she be doomed to freeze through a red light before she could plunge across the street and take shelter in the cozy environs of the Co-Op? The Arborville Avenue traffic had paused for a red light, and a green light invited pedestrians to cross, with fifteen seconds remaining. She sped up, blinking through the harsh wind. She was focused on the “Walk” signal and the seconds rapidly expiring, but then something else caught her attention.
A figure stood near the Co-Op, waiting to cross the busy street that ran east and west, a small figure wrapped in a dark coat and with hair hidden by a dark cap. But a bright touch enlivened the somber outfit—a red scarf. The wind was playing with its long tails, each of which sported three green stripes at the ends. Even from across Arborville Avenue, it was clear that one of the stripes was not quite the same shade of green as the others. The figure turned its head to display what was clearly the delicate profile of a young woman.
Pamela reached the corner and started across Arborville Avenue. At that same moment, the young woman in the dark coat and red scarf apparently lost patience with waiting for her light to change. She stepped off the curb, glanced in both directions, and scurried to the other side of the street. By the time Pamela reached the spot where the young woman had been standing, her quarry had darted along the side of the bank that anchored that corner and vanished around the back of the building.
Ignoring for the moment both the cold and her Co-Op errand, Pamela followed the path the young woman had taken, across the street and along the side of the bank. Behind the bank was a small parking lot that opened out into a larger lot used by patrons of Arborville’s shops and restaurants. The right-hand edge of the lot backed up against the yards of a few small houses that hadn’t yet fallen to developers of commercial property. Ragged fencing with gaps here and there marked that boundary, along with a few dumpsters that served the shops on the east side of Arborville Avenue.
The young woman was nowhere in sight.
* * *
As Pamela made her way down one of the Co-Op’s narrow aisles toward the section where mayonnaise could be found, she pondered what she had just seen. She also asked herself what she had planned to say if she had caught up with the young woman. Would the young woman have been able to vouch that, yes, Aaron had really found the scarf? And then he had given it to her? (And what would that mean in light of his interest in Penny?)
Or was there a more sinister explanation? The young woman had come by the scarf first, in a less benign manner than simply finding it. And she and Aaron were now sharing it. (Again, what were the implications of that for Penny?) And Aaron had merely said he found it because he didn’t want to give away the dark secret of how it actually came into the young woman’s possession.
Pamela was so occupied with these thoughts that she almost walked out of the Co-Op without claiming her mayonnaise or the change that the cashier tried to hand her.
* * *
Back at her kitchen counter, Pamela reapplied herself to the deviled-egg project. The first steps would be freeing the eggs from their shells, slicing each egg in half, and removing the cooked yolks. She took a medium-sized bowl from the cupboard and set it nearby to receive the yolks. Then she picked up an egg and tapped it on the counter, turning it this way and that, until the whole shell was patterned with fine cracks. She pried at one crack until the shell began to peel away from the glistening hard-cooked white and then pulled the rest of the shell off in a few jagged pieces.
After all twelve eggs were peeled, Pamela cut each in half lengthwise, revealing the golden rounds of the yolks. She held each egg half over the medium-sized bowl and squeezed gently to pop the half yolk out. When the twenty-four yolk halves lay in a heap at the bottom of the bowl, she mashed them with a fork, adding mayonnaise until the mixture became a smooth golden paste. She flavored it with salt, pepper, powdered mustard, and a dash of tabasco sauce, tasting as she went.
After many years of making deviled eggs, she had only recently discovered that the secret to returning the mashed and flavored yolks to the whites in an elegant swirl was to use a cookie press. She had spooned most of the yolk mixture into the cookie press’s cylinder and was using a rubber spatula to collect the last bits of it from the bowl when she was interrupted by the doorbell.
It wouldn’t be Penny, she told herself as she balanced the spatula across the top of the bowl, because Penny had her own key—though if the date had been only for lunch, Penny should be home soon. But as she reached the entry, she immediately recognized her caller, even through the lace that curtained the oval window in the front door. Bettina’s bright pumpkin-colored coat stood out against the bleakness of the wintry afternoon.
“I have a million things to do to get ready for the party”—Bettina started speaking as soon as Pamela opened the door—“though Wilfred, bless his heart, has been as busy as a bee all day.” She stepped inside, slipped off her coat, and explained. “I had to let you know about my meeting with Clayborn.”
“I’m making the eggs,” Pamela said by way of greeting. “Come on back in the kitchen.”
Bettina’s voice followed her as she led the way. “He wasn’t very interested in Geoff Grimm—at first.” Bettina stressed the last two words as if foreshadowing a dramatic revelation to come. They reached the kitchen. Pamela stood near the counter but didn’t pick up the waiting spatula. “He said tentacles are not a recognized murder weapon outside of horror movies and comic books.” Bettina twisted her brightly painted lips into a zigzag shape signaling annoyance and went on. “I said ‘I know that, but Geoff Grimm is a very weird and sinister person.’”
Pamela frowned. “Detective Clayborn probably has a point about tentacles. I think octopuses are really rather intelligent and benign creatures. But it wasn’t just the tentacles that made Geoff Grimm so sinister. It was the newspaper clipping—and then he said he sketches rifles from life. So he must own at least one rifle. And he admitted he was angry and hurt that Millicent wouldn’t carry his creations in her shop.”
“I told him about all that,” Bettina said, “and that’s when he got interested. Of course he wanted to know how we happened to be visiting Geoff Grimm. I explained that we’d dropped by the shop to talk to Nadine and she’d told us the person who got Millicent so upset the morning she was killed had come back. He didn’t like it that we tracked Geoff Grimm down on our own. But he said he’d interview Nadine about her convers
ation with him and follow up if it seemed warranted.”
“I should certainly think it will seem warranted.” Pamela nodded sternly. “But here it is Christmas Eve, and tomorrow’s Christmas, and so I suppose nothing will happen. And meanwhile Nadine could be in danger from Tentacle Man.”
“I’ll call her,” Bettina said. “I’ll tell her to be sure to lock her doors and windows.”
Pamela had been so caught up in what Bettina had to say that she’d forgotten she had something of her own to report. Bettina started for the entry, again invoking the party details that awaited, but Pamela’s voice called her back. “I saw the scarf again,” she said.
Bettina turned “On that young man? Aaron?”
“No.” Pamela shook her head. “Penny went out to lunch with him and he showed up wearing no scarf at all.”
Bettina’s lips parted and she opened her eyes so wide Pamela could see white around the irises. “You let her go out with him?” Bettina’s voice rose through several notes of the scale. “And he came here? So he knows where you live?”
Catrina and Ginger, who had been milling about in the kitchen as Pamela worked on the eggs, scurried toward the back hallway.
“Penny’s in college now,” Pamela said. “I have to trust her to be sensible.” She tried to sound confident, but she could feel her forehead puckering with worry.
“I guess I can’t trust you to be sensible though.” Bettina tightened her lips into a firm line.
“Do you want to hear about the scarf?” Pamela asked. Maybe talking about the most recent sighting of the scarf would help sort out whether the scarf had anything to do with who was guilty of killing Millicent.
Bettina nodded, though it was clear she was still upset. Cat and kitten had ventured back and were prowling around Pamela’s feet.
“A young woman was wearing it this time,” Pamela said. “An attractive young woman in a dark coat. She was waiting to cross at the intersection where the Co-Op is and I was on the other side of the street, and before I—” Pamela stopped because her eyes had shifted from Bettina’s face to the doorway. Penny was standing a little behind Bettina, staring at Pamela with a tragic expression on her face. They hadn’t heard her come in, but she had apparently overheard the last minute or two of their conversation.
“How was your date?” Pamela asked, feeling a twinge in her throat at Penny’s distress.
Penny seemed to droop. “He’s very nice,” she said. “At least I thought he was.” She turned away and a moment later they heard her feet on the stairs.
“A womanizer, I suppose.” Bettina’s irritation with Pamela had found a new object. “Playing with Penny’s feelings, and sharing his clothes with another girl. And who knows what else? Shameful. But at least Penny came home safe.”
“Maybe the scarf is actually the young woman’s,” Pamela said. “I mean, she came by it somehow and his story about finding it in the nature preserve is just that—a story.”
Bettina shrugged and twisted her lips into a zigzag again. “What would that mean?” she asked.
Pamela echoed the shrug. “I don’t know,” she said.
Bettina turned and stepped toward the entry. Pamela followed her. As Bettina slipped back into the pumpkin-colored coat, she mustered a smile. “Richard Larkin isn’t a womanizer,” she observed. “So I hope you will wear something attractive to the party tonight—Christmassy and special, and some sparkly earrings, and for heaven’s sake put on some makeup for a change.”
After she had seen Bettina on her way, Pamela resumed her deviled-egg project. She eased the last dabs of the mashed egg-yolk mixture from the spatula into the cylinder of the cookie press, screwed the top on the cylinder, and pumped the lever to fill each egg-white half with a graceful swirl of golden yellow. She divided the completed eggs between the two deviled-egg platters, nestling each into one of the oval hollows around the rim. Then she spooned twelve olives from the jar of pimento-stuffed olives, cut each in half crosswise, and topped each egg with a festive touch of red and green. When all was complete, she covered each platter with plastic wrap and slid the platters into the refrigerator.
She decided that since she was doing kitchen things, she might as well arrange the poppy-seed cake on a platter for the party. Two of the loaves remained. She’d keep one for holiday nibbling at home, but she freed the other from its foil and set it on a wooden cutting board. She fetched a platter of her wedding china from the cupboard and set it nearby. The butter, whole-wheat flour, and brown sugar in the recipe made the poppy-seed cake very dense and rich, so small portions were in order. She cut careful, narrow slices and then cut each in half, down the middle. Finally, she arranged the slices on the platter in overlapping rows. She covered the platter with plastic wrap but left it out on the counter.
Bettina had invited everyone for seven, and it was only three p.m. Eight articles of the ten that had arrived the previous morning still remained to be read. She had until Sunday night to do them, but Pamela hated to waste time. So she climbed the stairs to her office.
En route, however, she paused outside Penny’s bedroom. The door was closed. No sound emerged from within, so Penny wasn’t crying. Nor was she on the phone with a friend lamenting the fact that her new romantic interest apparently already had a young woman in his life. On an impulse, Pamela tapped on Penny’s door.
A little voice replied, “Come in, Mom.”
Penny was lying on her bed. “What will you wear tonight?” Pamela asked brightly.
Penny sat up, a faint smile taking the place of her dour expression. “You sound like Bettina,” Penny said. “You didn’t really come in here to ask me that, did you?”
“Are you okay?” Pamela studied her daughter’s face.
“Yes, I’m okay.” Penny sat up straighter and wiggled backwards until she was leaning against her headboard. “It was silly of me to think that one conversation at Hyler’s and one lunch date meant anything serious.”
“But you like him,” Pamela said.
“He’s nice, Mom.” Penny’s voice became more assertive. “And he’s smart. He goes to Wendelstaff. He’s majoring in political science. We ate at a Mexican restaurant in Haversack and he spoke to the waiter in Spanish.”
Pamela took a few steps and sat on the edge of the bed. “What was he doing in Arborville on Sunday?” she asked.
“He lives here.” Penny nodded. “Arborville isn’t that far from Wendelstaff. He lives in one of those houses behind the big parking lot.”
“It’s just a scarf. It doesn’t necessarily mean what we think it means. And anyway, you’ll be back at college and he’ll be here and . . .” Pamela’s voice trailed off.
“I’m going to wear the red dress you bought me for that Christmas party when I was still in high school,” Penny said.
“And my black high heels?”
Penny smiled, for real this time. “Do you mind?”
* * *
In her office, Pamela read two more of the Fiber Craft submissions. She gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up to “Waste Not, Want Not: Repurposing Fast Fashion,” but she hesitated over “Knitting as Meditation.” The premise was certainly valid. She often found herself transported to a state of near bliss by the rhythmic motions of her knitting needles and the soothing caress of yarn against her fingers. But the article included very little about knitting and a great deal about meditating. She pondered the form her rejection should take, though she realized that her boss wouldn’t necessarily relay it to the author verbatim. Finally she wrote a brief note suggesting that the author might revise and resubmit.
As she clicked on Save to store the file, she heard Penny’s voice at the door. Then the doorknob turned and the door opened a crack. “Are we going to eat?” Penny said.
“Meatloaf sandwiches.” Pamela clicked on Exit and watched as Word vanished from her computer screen and a display of icons took its place. She swiveled her desk chair around to face the door. “There will be plenty of munchies and goodies at the party, b
ut I don’t think we want to go with empty stomachs.” She stood up. “And I’m sure the cats are ready for their dinner.”
* * *
An hour later Pamela stared into the long mirror on the inside of her closet door. An unfamiliar version of herself stared back at her, a tall, slim woman with shoulder-length dark hair wearing a glamorous red tunic. True, the black pants with which the tunic had been paired were quite pedestrian—not nearly as sleek as the tunic deserved. But the tunic itself was stunning, and flattering in the extreme. The rich ruby red made Pamela’s skin glow and her eyes seem dark and mysterious. The high neck called attention to the pleasing angles of her face. The long sleeves that nevertheless left her shoulders bare were illogical, of course, but they emphasized her graceful slenderness.
She’d bought the yarn for the tunic at the fancy yarn shop in Timberley the previous June and it had been her knitting project through the summer and fall. The yarn—and the pattern—had been suggested by the yarn shop’s owner. Pamela had carried her purchases back to her car in a kind of daze, not sure how she had been persuaded into such an extravagant project. “A charming look for après-ski,” the woman had said, as if Pamela moved in circles for which that was a wardrobe category. “Or holiday parties,” the woman had added.
Well, she was dressing for a holiday party. Pamela hated waste, and if she wasn’t going to wear the tunic now, when would she? But the sparkly earrings Bettina had recommended? And makeup? Simple silver orbs and a bit of lipstick were the best she could do.
Chapter Sixteen
Bettina’s porch light beckoned from across Orchard Street, and the festive wreath that had marked the season since the beginning of December. The still, cold air hinted at snow to come. Pamela had considered just tossing on her warmest jacket—after all, the journey would last two or three minutes at most. But in deference to the occasion she had pulled her good coat from the closet. She set off down her front walk with a long-legged stride, but Penny’s advance was slowed by the high heels. Pamela lingered at the curb and they crossed the street side by side, caught in the headlights of a car nosing into a spot in front of Bettina’s house. Pamela was carrying the two platters of deviled eggs and Penny the platter of poppy-seed cake.
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