A Fatal Yarn Read online

  Anticipating that her help might be needed when it was time for Bettina to rise from the sofa, Pamela climbed to her feet and offered her friend a hand. Melanie stood as well and the three proceeded toward the door. As they lingered for a moment in the hallway that led past the living room to the back of the house, there came the sound of toenails clicking on a wooden floor. In a moment they had been joined by the DeCamps’ dachshund, Ramona, her elongated chestnut body twitching with each wave of her gyrating tail.

  “Oh, dear,” Melanie sighed. “We’ve been neglecting her terribly.” She stooped toward the excited dog. “You want a walk, don’t you?” she cooed. “The backyard is fenced, so she can go out, but she really enjoys her jaunts around the neighborhood.”

  “No problems with Cuddles then?” Pamela asked. Ramona had long been a fixture in the DeCamp household, and when Roland suggested adopting one of Catrina’s kittens, Pamela had feared the dog would be an impediment.

  “No problems,” Melanie said. “They’re as happy together as . . . Roland and I.” She cast a fond glance toward her husband, who had resumed his nervous stroking.

  * * *

  “I’m not as confident of Clayborn’s abilities as I made out to Melanie,” Bettina said as she and Pamela settled themselves back into the Toyota. Melanie had emerged from the DeCamps’ large split-level house with Ramona on a leash and was heading down the walk that bisected her carefully landscaped front yard. The large tree on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street was marked with a red X.

  “I’m not too confident of them either,” Pamela agreed. “Poor Melanie.”

  “And Roland,” Bettina added.

  For such a pleasant little town, Arborville had had a startling number of murders. They weren’t the sorts of murders that arise from rampant crime or social ills. They were murders carried out by people who one would never imagine might do such a thing . . . but then they did. And Pamela had been surprised to discover that she—with the aid of Bettina—often made connections and saw patterns the police unaccountably overlooked. How she and Bettina could be smarter than the police, Pamela had no idea. Yet she and Bettina had solved a number of murders over the years.

  Bettina steered the Toyota back in the direction they had come, leaving the curving streets and the cul de sacs of The Farm behind and proceeding along blocks of the older houses that characterized most of Arborville’s housing stock. As they drove, they passed the sweater-wearing trees they had noticed earlier.

  Pamela realized she was frowning, hard, and staring at each of the colorful apparitions as Bettina cruised slowly by. Suddenly Bettina swerved to the curb and turned off the ignition. They were right across from the tree with the big red X that had made them suspect the sweaters were intended as more than decoration.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Bettina asked as Pamela turned, her forehead still marked by the ferocious frown.

  “I imagine I am.” Pamela nodded.

  “This knitting person is so committed to protecting these trees—” Bettina began.

  Pamela finished the thought, “—that she, or he, decided Diefenbach had to go.”

  “Diefenbach isn’t the only Arborist.” Bettina’s frown matched Pamela’s.

  Pamela nodded. “Some of the other Arborists are probably going around with cans of red spray paint marking trees. They could be in danger.”

  Bettina nodded too, then her expression turned mournful. “I hate to think that a knitter would murder people, even to rescue trees. Knitting is such a constructive pursuit.”

  “Maybe the tree-protecting knitter didn’t really intend to kill Diefenbach,” Pamela suggested. She went on, slowly, as if working the idea out as she spoke. “Diefenbach and the killer had been arguing. . . so the killer could have shown up at Diefenbach’s house merely to complain about the tree-removal plan. But then . . .”

  “Diefenbach was a very hot-headed person.” Excited by the idea Pamela was developing, Bettina spoke quickly.

  “He starts yelling.” Pamela frowned, as if imagining Diefenbach’s anger.

  “And the other person yells back,” Bettina frowned, caught up in the scene. “And then it escalates—”

  “And the other person picks up a heavy thing—” Pamela was speaking quickly now too.

  “I think that’s it.” Bettina settled back in her seat with a pleased smile. She twisted her key in the ignition and the Toyota’s engine grumbled back to life.

  “Turn around though,” Pamela said. “Let’s make sure there are really red X’s under those tree-sweaters.”

  Bettina glanced around and made a quick U-turn. Soon she and Pamela were standing next to a tree sporting a knitted sheath that covered its trunk from just about the height of a human’s waist to the height of a human’s shoulders. As Pamela had noticed when she paused to study the sweater that adorned her own tree, the knitter had used a wide variety of yarns—different colors, textures, and weights, as if drawing from a bin where odds and ends left from old projects had been stored.

  This tree’s sweater featured stripes of random widths, bright yellow neighboring deep violet, then very fuzzy chartreuse, then a smooth orange that looked like cashmere. The knitter had been skilled—no dropped stitches were evident—but also hurried. The yarn tails that remained where one color yielded to the next had been left to wave slightly in the spring breeze.

  Pamela grabbed hold of the knitted sheath at its bottom and began to roll and push it gently upwards, exposing the rough brown trunk that it hid. After about a foot of the hidden trunk had been revealed, she noticed a smear of red smudged across one of the ridges that formed the tree’s bark. She pushed the knitting farther up and the lower half of a red X came into view. Bettina leaned closer and traced the red smears with her fastidiously manicured fingernail.

  “It’s clear what these sweaters are intended to do,” Pamela said, easing the knitted sheath back into its original position as Bettina retracted her finger. “Now we just need a scissors.”

  Bettina jumped back, eyes and mouth wide open. “You’re not going to cut the sweater off, are you?” she demanded. “I feel bad about these trees being cut down too.”

  Pamela smiled at her friend. “I’m just going to cut off the tails,” she said soothingly, and reached for the few inches of violet yarn that dangled from the joint where a violet stripe gave way to fuzzy chartreuse. “We’ll collect as many tails as we can find, wherever the sweater is hiding a red X—and I suspect that will be all of them.”

  After a quick trip back to Orchard Street to pick up scissors and a large zip-lock bag, and collect five yarn samples in assorted colors, textures, and weights from the sweater on the tree right in front of Pamela’s house, Pamela and Bettina once again headed up the block toward Arborville Avenue. They paused to collect yarn samples from a tree in front of the stately brick apartment building at the corner, then turned left and began zigzagging down one cross street as far as County Road and up the next, across Arborville Avenue and up the hill. Every time they came to a tree wearing a sweater, Pamela jumped out of the Toyota and snipped off as many tails as she could find.

  When they returned to Orchard Street and Bettina pulled up in front of Pamela’s house, Pamela took charge of the zip-lock bag, now a puffy pillow stuffed with a kaleidoscope of yarn samples.

  “The next step is to visit the yarn shop in Timberley,” she said as she climbed out of the Toyota. “Tomorrow. Do you want to come?”

  “Of course!” Bettina said. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I have to cover a luncheon program at the senior center though, so how does two p.m. sound?”

  * * *

  It was Thursday morning. Pamela sat at her kitchen table finishing up her morning coffee and paging one last time through the Register. No follow-up articles on the murder of Bill Diefenbach had appeared, suggesting the police were happy with their arrest of Roland, which had featured prominently in the previous day’s
edition.

  Ginger was in a lively mood, batting a catnip mouse over the black and white tile floor. The catnip essence that had been its original attraction had faded long ago, but it had a long yarn tail that made a tantalizing target as the mouse skittered here and there. Catrina had eaten her breakfast and retreated to the entry in search of her favorite sunny spot.

  After a few minutes, Pamela folded the newspaper into a compact bundle, drained the last drops of coffee from her wedding china cup, and stood up. She rinsed the cup at the sink, proceeded to the entry where she stepped past Catrina to deposit the newspaper in the recycling basket, and headed up the stairs to dress.

  Unlike her fashionable friend, Pamela had little interest in clothes. And with a job that let her work from home most days, she had little reason to pay attention to fashion. Her customary uniform was jeans—with a simple cotton blouse and sandals in the summer, and a handknit sweater and loafers in the winter.

  She’d noticed when she went out to fetch the newspaper that the unseasonable warm spell of the past few days had been blown away in the night by an encroaching cold front, so she took her cozy Icelandic-style sweater down from her closet shelf. It had been a very satisfying knitting project, created from undyed wool in natural brown and white, with a snowflake pattern around the neck and shoulders. Bettina would be coming after lunch and they would drive to Timberley, but the errand for the morning was a visit to the Co-Op Grocery to replenish her bare larder.

  The Co-Op errand would be carried out on foot. Arborville was small, and walkable. That had been part of its appeal long ago when Pamela and her husband were shopping for a house. With its old houses and sidewalks and big trees, Arborville had reminded them of the college town where they met and fell in love. They had bought an old house—a hundred-year-old house—and they had done their best to bring it back to its former glory, with its parquet floors and solid wood doors and elegant moldings. Pamela had raised her daughter Penny there after Michael Paterson was gone, wanting to preserve as many constants in Penny’s life as possible. Now Penny was at college and Pamela was alone in her big house, but she felt the presence of her beloved husband every day and was loathe to move.

  Back downstairs, Pamela took a jacket from the closet in the entry, along with several canvas bags, a gift from Nell. Nell was a devoted conservationist and made sure that her friends were all supplied with alternatives to paper and plastic.

  The day was indeed chilly, but Pamela’s walk up Orchard Street took her past many reminders that spring was springing: snowdrops and crocus clustered in sunny spots along the sidewalk, forsythia blazed yellow in yards, and a few small trees even displayed blush-pink blossoms against spindly branches. When she reached the stately brick apartment building at the corner, she detoured into the parking lot at the back of the building, where a length of wooden fencing hid the trash cans from the street. One person’s trash was truly another’s treasure and over the years Pamela had rescued a number of treasures cast off by the building’s residents. Nothing caught her eye on this particular day however.

  The Co-Op Grocery was about five blocks from Orchard Street. It anchored Arborville’s small commercial district at its southern end. Walking farther along Arborville Avenue, one came to such Arborville institutions as Hyler’s Luncheonette, When in Rome Pizza, and the Chinese takeout place, as well as banks, a hair salon, and a liquor store—all in narrow storefronts, some dressed up with awnings and many with apartments or offices above. But Pamela’s only business today was with the Co-Op, so she halted there.

  Many features of the Co-Op harkened back to an earlier time, like its narrow aisles, creaky wooden floors, and the bulletin board affixed to its façade. Since before the days of the internet (and Arborville’s own listserv: AccessArborville), the Co-Op bulletin board had kept the town up to date on the doings of the town council, the activities of the scouts, and programs at the Arborville Library. And anyone with an event to publicize was welcome to post a flyer.

  A small group of women were clustered around the bulletin board now, among them Bettina’s friend Marlene Pepper, a cheerful soul about Bettina’s age.

  “Such a shame,” Marlene was saying, “but it was only a matter of time.”

  Pamela glanced at the bulletin board, but she could see nothing that would provoke the tut-tutting and head-shaking that had afflicted the group.

  “She barely looked like herself toward the end there,” another said. “So skinny.”

  One item on the bulletin board did catch Pamela’s eye however. A flyer printed in a bold typeface on fuchsia paper announced:

  HUGE TAG SALE

  CONTENTS OF WHOLE HOUSE

  SATURDAY & SUNDAY

  APRIL 4 & 5—10 AM to 5 PM

  And the flyer went on to give an address on a street that paralleled Arborville Avenue a few blocks up the hill.

  Pamela leaned closer to make sure she’d seen the address correctly. Finding a treasure at a tag sale was nearly as exciting as finding a treasure abandoned behind the stately brick apartment building.

  “Did you know her?” Marlene asked suddenly, grabbing Pamela by the arm.

  “Who?” Pamela asked, puzzled.

  “Why Cassie Griswold, of course.” Marlene responded looking equally puzzled.

  Pamela loved her little town, and she tried to be sociable, but she’d never been one for the kind of sociability that involved knowing more about one’s neighbors than they sometimes knew about themselves.

  “That’s her house,” Marlene went on. “Seems a little rushed—to be clearing everything out so soon after her death. But I guess her daughter’s in a hurry to sell.”

  * * *

  Once inside the Co-Op, Pamela took a cart and steered it in the direction of the produce section. There she selected two cucumbers and a pint of cherry tomatoes in a little plastic box. Pamela grew her own tomatoes in the summer and savored the aroma and flavor of sun-warmed tomatoes fresh from her back yard. Winter tomatoes from the market didn’t taste like much of anything, but she’d discovered that the small ones weren’t as disappointing as the large ones that looked so appealing but weren’t. In the next aisle over, where the fruit was, she added three apples to her cart.

  When she reached the meat counter at the back of the store, she studied the offerings. A tempting array of roasts, chops, steaks, and poultry was available, much of it from local farms. Even after her husband was gone, Pamela had continued to cook proper meals for herself and her daughter. With Penny away at college, she still cooked real food for herself, most of the time, though she ate her solitary dinners at her kitchen table rather than in her dining room, and a chicken might last an entire week.

  A pot roast would be nice, she thought, especially with the weather suddenly feeling wintry again. She picked up a piece of chuck, three pounds, which really would last a week, then backtracked to the produce department for a few potatoes. In the canned goods section, she added three cans of cat food to the cart.

  The next stop was the cheese counter, with a tempting display that included huge golden rounds of cheddar, pale wedges of Swiss filigreed with holes, disk-like Goudas covered with red wax, little white pillows of chevre. After a few minutes of deliberation, she requested a half pound of Swiss and a half pound of the Co-Op’s special Vermont cheddar.

  Finally she maneuvered her way to the bakery counter. Fresh loaves—round, oblong, angular, and ranging in color from caramel to deepest mahogany—waited behind slanted glass. She requested her favorite whole-grain, waited for it to be sliced and slipped into a plastic bag, and nestled the bag into her cart.

  Soon she was on her way home, strolling south on Arborville Avenue, with a canvas grocery bag in each hand and her purse slung over her shoulder.

  Chapter 5

  At home, Pamela wrote the address of the tag sale down on a note pad that had recently arrived, unbidden, from a charitable group. Anticipating spring, the small sheets featured daffodils and bunnies. She fastened the note to
her refrigerator with her mitten magnet and set about putting her groceries away. As if Catrina and Ginger knew her shopping trip had included food for them, the cats milled about her feet, black fur interweaving with butterscotch in a complicated pattern.

  Bettina was coming at two for the visit to the Timberley yarn shop. It was barely eleven now, and not yet time for lunch. The morning’s email had brought two articles to be edited for Fiber Craft, due back by five p.m. Friday, but Pamela thought she might as well get started. The afternoon’s activities might extend beyond the yarn shop in Timberley, and she might find herself pressed for time.

  Upstairs in her office, she pushed the button that brought her computer to chirping and whirring life and was soon immersed in “Weeping Willow and Yew: Botanical Themes in Nineteenth-Century Mourning Samplers.” The article was captivating, dealing as it did with the notion that needlework was once a means of mourning the dead, and the illustrations of the samplers were charming. Designs featured graceful willows with branches drooping to the ground, stalwart yews, and sorrowful young woman draped over gravestones—all rendered in careful embroidery, once-bright colors muted by age. Pamela was so caught up in her work that only when her stomach informed her that it was past time to eat did she realize how late it had gotten. She commanded the computer to save her work, exited from Word, and clicked on “Shut down.”

  Grilled Vermont cheddar on fresh slices of whole-grain bread would be the perfect lunch, she decided on her way down the stairs, and ten minutes later she was sitting at her kitchen table teasing off the first bite of her grilled-cheese sandwich. The bread had been rendered just the right shade of toasty brown and it gleamed with a glaze of melted butter. The cheese had melted just enough to mark the seam between the top slice and the bottom slice of bread with a glossy golden stripe of oozing cheddar.

  A quarter of a sandwich still remained when the doorbell chimed. Pamela glanced up at the clock. It was nearly two. Hurrying to the entry, she opened the door to admit Bettina.