Murder, She Knit Page 4

  The pile of mail was larger than usual. Sorting it at the kitchen table, she soon discovered why. The carrier, perhaps a sub unfamiliar with the route, had left mail for several of her neighbors, including someone named Richard Larkin at the address right next door. She wrote “Not at this address” on the envelopes that had gone astray and tucked them under the hinged cover of her mailbox. She gazed at the garbage scattered along the side of the neighboring house. Richard Larkin’s garbage. What could such an oblivious and inconsiderate person be like? Someone totally unaware of how civilized people lived? Flouting the normal conventions of daily life?

  She decided to get dressed.

  Pamela was standing at the kitchen counter making a sandwich when she glanced out the kitchen window and noticed someone heading along the sidewalk, just passing Richard Larkin’s house. The someone was a stocky, dark-haired woman wearing baggy jeans and a down jacket and carrying a large plastic bin. She looked familiar. It took Pamela a second to realize she had met the woman only that morning. It was Dorrie Morgan, Amy’s sister.

  She hesitated, uncertain whether to continue spreading mayonnaise or not, but she was starving. She was just layering slices of roast beef on her mayonnaise-covered whole-grain bread when the doorbell rang. She rinsed her hands, fingered the dish towel in a quick drying motion, and hurried through the entry.

  Dorrie Morgan entered without being invited, headed for the kitchen, and triumphantly set the plastic bin on the kitchen table. “Well,” she said, dusting off her hands, “I’ve found a home for one thing.” She glanced at Pamela. “At least I hope I have.”

  She flung the lid off the bin, and it bounced to the floor. Pamela got a glimpse of a confused jumble of yarn, knitting needles, and pattern books.

  “Amy’s knitting supplies,” Dorrie announced. “I hope you’ll take them.”

  Pamela opened her mouth, but all that came out was, “I . . . uh . . .”

  “The police are done up there already.” She nodded in the direction of Amy’s apartment building at the top of Pamela’s street. “Speedy. Now it’s time to clear all her stuff out. That’s my job. My parents can’t handle it. You don’t know anybody who’d like a pile of interior decorating books, do you? Or ten years’ worth of Architectural Digest?”

  Dorrie seemed awfully cheerful for someone whose sister had just been murdered. But Pamela reminded herself again that different people process grief differently. Perhaps this bustling energy was Dorrie’s attempt to keep herself from succumbing to the sorrow she really felt.

  “You wouldn’t have any extra food?” Dorrie said suddenly, her glance straying to the slices of bread on the counter, one piled with roast beef. “Amy didn’t eat much. The refrigerator’s bare, and I’ve been up there working all morning.”

  Pamela assembled the partly made sandwich, wrapped it in a napkin, handed it to Dorrie, and sent her on her way. Then she made another sandwich for herself.

  She was very curious about the contents of the plastic bin, always interested in paging through other people’s pattern books and seeing what kinds of yarn they had collected. But she had a looming deadline and four more articles to edit, so she retrieved the bin’s cover from the floor, clicked it resolutely into place, and ate her sandwich.

  Chapter Four

  It was already dark outside when Pamela rolled her desk chair back and raised her eyes from her computer screen. She arched her back and raised her arms in a welcome stretch, pleased with the amount of editing she’d been able to manage on so little sleep. She was just in the act of sending her day’s work off to Fiber Craft when a chime downstairs announced that she had a visitor. She hurried down the stairs, flipped on the porch light, and pushed aside the lace curtain over the door’s oval window. After the previous night, she certainly wasn’t going to open her front door to just anyone. But the eyes that peered back at her were the guileless hazel eyes of her friend and neighbor Bettina.

  Bettina slipped in, exclaiming, “That little cat ran away when she saw me climbing up the steps. I hope she doesn’t go hungry tonight.”

  “She’s become quite demanding,” Pamela said. “I’m sure she’ll let me know that she expects to be fed.”

  “But more important than the cat,” Bettina continued, scrutinizing Pamela’s face, “how are you? I had babysitting duty all afternoon with the Arborville grandchildren or I’d have been over much sooner. Did you sleep okay last night? Have you been eating?”

  “I had a roast beef sandwich. Come on in.” Pamela turned and headed for the kitchen.

  “I can’t stay long,” Bettina said, following her through the entry. “Wilfred’s back from fishing, and then I’ve got to do some writing for the Advocate. That was my morning, covering a program at the library for the senior citizens. Some local author is teaching them how to write memoirs. And of course I talked to the police about last night.”

  Pamela slid into one of the wooden chairs that flanked the kitchen table. “Anything interesting?” she asked in voice that suddenly felt quavery.

  Bettina took the other chair. “They’ve been busy little beavers. Clayborn’s been talking to everybody he can find, and that industrious county medical examiner has already done the autopsy. She’s a woman, you know. Very competent. But Clayborn has no leads whatsoever, and there’s no way to pinpoint the time of death exactly. Obviously it happened after dark though. And before other people started showing up for the meeting.”

  “It would have been Amy’s first meeting,” Pamela said, “and she probably wanted to make sure she wasn’t late, even though she lived in that apartment building right up the street.” A sudden thought occurred to her. “But wait—couldn’t she have been killed somewhere else and then the killer brought the body here? The church parking lot goes all the way around the church, and in the back, the hedge is the only thing between the parking lot and my yard. Her body wouldn’t have had to be carried in from the curb. The killer could have driven into the lot and pushed the body through the hedge.”

  “She was killed here,” Bettina said. “They found blood all along the hedge, and scuff marks as if she was knocked down in the yard and then dragged.”

  “Killed right in front of my house . . .” Pamela put her hands to her face and regarded Bettina over her fingertips.

  “Looks like.” Bettina nodded.

  “This is just terrible,” Pamela said suddenly. Her day at the computer had distracted her so that for long stretches she’d forgotten all about the previous night. But now, as she talked to Bettina, the realization of what she’d been through less than twenty-four hours earlier made her sag in her chair. Bettina reached for Pamela’s hand, cradling it in both of her own. “It was my fault,” Pamela sighed. She left her hand in Bettina’s comforting grip but lowered her head to the table and rested her forehead on her other arm. “If I hadn’t invited Amy to join Knit and Nibble, she’d never have come here, and she’d still be alive.”

  Bettina stroked her hand. “Don’t tell yourself that. You had no way of knowing what would happen. If someone was after her, they were after her.”

  Pamela looked up. “No leads at all? What about the knitting needle she was killed with? Wouldn’t there have been fingerprints? Especially on a metal needle like that.”

  “I thought about fingerprints,” Bettina said, “and so did they. But they said the knitting needle was too skinny to get enough of a print to be useful.”

  “What if they never figure out who did it?”

  “I have an idea,” Bettina said. “But I’m not sure if I should mention it. I didn’t say anything to Clayborn.”

  “Karen Dowling?” Pamela whispered.

  “The missing metal needles,” Bettina whispered back. “And she got so flustered when she couldn’t find them—or maybe she just pretended she didn’t know where they were.”

  “But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. A sweet little person like that?”

  Bettina shrugged and widened her eyes. “Maybe she’s not so swee
t.”

  “Her husband teaches at Wendelstaff,” Pamela said. “Amy was having some problems there. She hinted at it when I first ran into her up at the Co-Op. She seemed stressed. And today her sister—”

  Bettina looked puzzled.

  “Oh, we got started talking about other things and I forgot to tell you,” Pamela said. She described her conversation with Dorrie Morgan after Dorrie crawled out of the hedge, and then Dorrie’s return with the plastic bin of knitting supplies. “And speaking of that—”

  Pamela bounced up from the chair, suddenly energized, and fetched the plastic bin from where she’d stashed it on top of her washing machine.

  “What interesting goodies.” Bettina lifted out a skein of soft, fine yarn in a subtle, glowing shade of gold. “Feel this.” She stroked the yarn and offered the skein to Pamela.

  “Wow—I’ve never seen anything like this,” Pamela said. “It’s gorgeous.” She stroked it too, relishing the smooth silkiness under her fingers. “And it’s apparently mystery yarn.” The skein had become separated from its identifying label, if it had ever even had one.

  Bettina rummaged among the contents of the bin and brought up three more skeins of what was clearly the same unusual yarn. But each of these was circled by a wide band of paper with the words “That Bedford Shop” printed on it in curly letters. Pamela examined a label more closely. Smaller letters identified “That Bedford Shop” as a “Purveyor of All Things Natural” and gave its location as “Brooklyn, NY,” but otherwise the label was strikingly uninformative.

  Bettina returned to the bin. “That’s all there is of that yarn,” she said, “but she had a good collection of knitting needles.” A handful of needles clattered onto the table, including a set of wooden ones big enough to handle yarn the thickness of rope. A few needles rolled onto the floor, where they chimed against Pamela’s glazed tile floor.

  “And—hello—what’s this?” Bettina flourished a small bright yellow card. “‘Dorrie Morgan,’” she read. “‘Fantasies.’” And she read off an address in Haversack.

  Pamela reached for it. “It must be her business card,” she said. “I guess she wanted me to be able to get in touch.” She studied the card. “This address is right near one of my favorite thrift stores—Railroad Avenue, that street that runs along the tracks. Kind of a seedy area.” She looked up. “I wonder what the fantasies are.”

  “To each his own.” Bettina pulled up a few balls of yarn in random colors and then lifted out a magazine-sized booklet. Its cover featured a wholesome-looking woman wearing a red turtleneck sweater and posing under a tree with red and yellow leaves. Her satisfied smile implied that she herself was responsible for the sweater’s existence. The words “Classic Patterns” were printed across the tree’s upper branches.

  Pamela picked up the booklet and began to page through it. “These really are classic,” she said, displaying a page that showed a handsome middle-aged man wearing a V-necked cardigan and petting a cocker spaniel. She turned the page to reveal a picture of a young woman in a 1950s-style sweater set and a pleated plaid skirt. “Complicated pattern,” she murmured, skimming the written instructions and flipping the page for the continuation.

  Bettina had gotten up and was standing at Pamela’s shoulder. “Whoa,” she said. “How cute!” In the white space left where the instructions ended was a delicate drawing in black ink. The drawing showed another young woman, not model-pretty like the woman in the photo, but rendered in charming detail—detail that was almost photographic. Amy had been a talented artist. Below the drawing were a few lines of writing in the bold hand that Pamela recognized as Amy’s. (Of course someone as artistic as Amy would show her flair in her handwriting as well.) Bettina read them aloud. “‘Perfect fit. I hope she thinks of her cousin every time she wears it.’”

  “Let’s see what else is in here,” Pamela said as successive pages showed variations on the sweater theme—a woman’s V-neck, a shrug, a sleeveless shell. She paused when she turned a page to find another sketch and comment, this one showing an elderly woman in a dressy sweater with a lacy pattern knit into it, an exact replica in black ink of the sweater in the photo on the previous page. “For Grandma Rogers,” the comment read. “A big hit—Christmas 2015.”

  “Is it all sweaters?” Bettina asked.

  “Looks like.” Pamela turned more pages. “And it looks like those were the only two she made. Or at least the only two she gave as gifts and then recorded.”

  Bettina leaned past Pamela to peer into the bin. She lifted out a few more skeins of yarn, not the mysteriously glowing Brooklyn yarn, but ordinary yarn with a label Pamela recognized from the hobby shop. Then she lifted out another pattern booklet.

  “Socks!” Pamela exclaimed, as Bettina lowered the booklet to the table. “Challenging. Let’s see if she made any of these.”

  They both leaned over the table as Pamela slowly turned the pages of the booklet. The patterns seemed arranged in the order of their difficulty, starting with a basic one-color sock. Each was illustrated with a colorful photo of feet posed to show off the socks to best effect.

  “Making socks seems like an awful lot of work,” Bettina said, running a finger down a page filled with the coded instructions for a pair of socks with a contrasting band at the top, “considering how cheaply you can buy them. I think I’ll stick with crocheting baby blankets.”

  “Mostly people do it for the challenge and the fun,” Pamela said. “It’s fascinating when you realize you’ve just created a heel.”

  They had nearly reached the end of the booklet, with no evidence that Amy had ventured into the realm of sock-making. But on the very last page, suddenly there was Amy’s bold handwriting again. “Love’s labor’s lost!!! Never again!!!” The words filled the margin above a photo of an elegant pair of argyle socks, the pattern divided into variously colored diamonds intersected by lines that formed diamonds of their own.

  “Argyles,” Pamela whispered, barely able to keep the awe out of her voice. “That’s the hardest pattern in the world to knit. You have to have separate bobbins, one for each color, and you have to count stitches like mad to make everything come out even.”

  “She must have really loved the guy,” Bettina said. “At least for a while. I wonder what happened.” Pamela turned the page, curious whether they’d find a sketch of the heartthrob who’d inspired so much knitting effort—and so much disappointment. But in the white space after the instructions left off was only a repetition of those sad words: “Never again!!!!”

  They stacked the pattern books back in the bin, added the heap of needles from the table and the stray needles from the floor, and piled all the yarn on top.

  Bettina glanced at the clock and sighed, “Look at the time. I’ve got to get started on dinner. Do you want to eat with us? If it’s Wednesday, it must be meatloaf.” Bettina had a repertoire of seven dishes, though the week’s schedule was occasionally interrupted when Wilfred was in the mood to make his special chili.

  “I’m fading,” Pamela said. “I’ll have some more roast beef and go to bed early.”

  “You’re sure?” She squeezed Pamela’s hand. “I’m just across the street if you need anything.”

  Pamela led Bettina into the entry but paused halfway to the door. “Catrina might be out there,” she said. “Just let me check so we don’t scare her away.”

  She crept further, knelt, and pushed the lace curtain aside. There was no sign of the cat, but something white was sticking out from under the edge of the doormat. It looked like a folded piece of paper. Normally she’d dismiss a flyer left on the porch as an offer for chimney-sweeping or gutter-cleaning. But now she felt her throat tighten.

  “Something’s out there,” she called to Bettina, still on her knees.

  “What?” Bettina hurried to her side.

  “Under the doormat. I’ll get it.” She grabbed the doorknob, pulled herself to her feet, and stepped out onto the porch, trying to dismiss the idea that a piece of pape
r under the doormat could represent a threat. A few seconds later she and Bettina were studying the paper at the kitchen table.

  The message appeared to have been written in haste, with a not-too-sharp pencil. “Hope you can read this,” it said. “Wanted to let you know the funeral is tomorrow at eleven a.m., Maple Branch Presbyterian. Parents are hosting a reception afterward.” It was signed, “Her sister, Dorrie.”

  “Weird to just leave a note,” Bettina said.

  “She’s kind of weird,” Pamela said. “But I’m glad to know about the funeral.” She folded the paper and tucked it near her calendar.

  Catrina was cowering against the porch railing when Pamela stepped onto the porch to bid Bettina goodnight. Pamela fed her, fed herself, and went to bed.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning found Pamela sitting at her kitchen table finishing up her usual breakfast of coffee and toast. Normally she would have been reading the County Register, but the paper remained tightly folded and encased in its flimsy plastic bag. Today wasn’t a normal, leisurely morning. Pamela had a funeral to attend.

  She swallowed the last few inches of coffee, gave the cup a quick rinse, and headed upstairs to study the contents of her closet. She’d given away her special-occasion suit because she couldn’t bear to put it on again after her husband’s funeral, and her wardrobe reflected the fact that she lived in a small New Jersey town and had a job she could do at home. A few pairs of slacks were intermingled with her wardrobe staple, jeans. And a few jackets hung side by side with casual shirts of cotton or flannel. None of the shirts looked very crisp, however, so she pulled a brown wool turtleneck, one of her few store-bought sweaters, from the closet’s upper shelf. Brown slacks would be okay, she thought, and one of the jackets was a sedate brown and black stripe. She recalled buying it long ago for a job interview.

  In the bathroom, she studied her hair. Too long to hang loose at a funeral, she decided, and gathered it into a wide barrette at the nape of her neck. She added a bit of lipstick and a pair of silver earrings.