Knitty Gritty Murder, page 11
* * *
The sight that greeted Pamela when she descended the stairs a few hours later was unexpected, to say the least. For one thing, Penny had returned, sooner than Pamela had expected her, and was sitting in the middle of the living room floor. But most surprising, Penny was not alone. She was engaged in a teasing game, obviously enjoyable to both participants.
She held a wand to which was attached a long string culminating in a feather, and she was flicking the wand here and there, causing the feather to leap about as if it was alive. Chasing the feather, leaping over the stylized flowers and foliage that patterned the dark carpet, was a cat—a lithe and slender cat with a pale coat that darkened to sable on its tail, paws, ears, and elegantly angled muzzle.
“Precious!” Pamela exclaimed.
“Is that her name?” Penny looked up at her mother then dipped her head toward the cat, who was watching in amazement as the feather appeared to levitate of its own accord. “That’s a perfect name! She’s a real beauty.”
Precious turned her attention to Penny, who set the wand down, thus bringing the feather to rest. Penny held out a hand and Precious crept close, nuzzling the hand then creeping into the lap created by Penny’s cross-legged pose on the carpet.
“How on earth—?” Pamela ventured farther into the room.
“She was in here when I got home,” Penny said. “Sniffing around the cat climber. She must come up from the basement when she thinks nobody’s around, cats or people, to be afraid of.”
“But you’re around now and she’s not afraid of you.”
“No, you’re not, are you, Precious?” Penny addressed the cat and added a head scratch for good measure.
“Are you back for good?” Pamela crossed to the sofa and took a seat.
“A while.” Penny continued with the head scratch. Precious’s eyes narrowed until only a streak of opalescent blue was visible. “Aaron’s roommates are having a farewell party for him tonight and I’m invited, but that’s not till seven or so.”
“Do you feel like a trip to the yarn shop in Timberley?” Pamela asked. Timberley’s commercial district boasted such things as a florist, a cheese merchant, and a shop where a knitter could pay more for yarn than for a sweater from the fanciest store at the mall. “I want to make you a sweater for your birthday,” Pamela went on, “but I thought you could pick out the yarn and pattern, like we did at Christmas. And your job starts Monday so we should go today.”
Precious opened her eyes to study Pamela, but under the spell of the head scratch apparently decided she was safe on Penny’s lap.
“I’d love to, Mom.” Penny’s enthusiasm brightened her already bright eyes. “But”—she raised her free hand and held up a finger—“I want to be the knitter. Will you teach me?”
“Of course! That will be the present too—knitting lessons, whenever you want to start. But first we need the yarn.” Pamela stood up. “Shall we go?”
Penny lifted Precious from her lap and gently set her on the carpet, but as soon as Penny was on her feet Precious slipped around the corner and disappeared.
* * *
The trip to the yarn shop had been successful. Penny had been drawn right away to a sweater featured on the cover of a knitting magazine displayed with the other magazines and pattern books. The sweater, a roomy pullover worked in the garter stitch, seemed eminently doable for a first-time knitter, but its wide neckline and the absence of ribbing at cuffs and hem gave it a modern look. She had chosen a rustic yarn from Iceland, exactly the creamy color of the sheep who had been sheared to create it.
Now the magazine and the yarn sat on the coffee table. It would be fun to teach Penny to knit, and Pamela was happy her daughter was about to discover the joy of creating a garment from scratch—a theme that the author of The Future of Fashion Is Slow had returned to again and again. But as Pamela contemplated the opportunities for mother-daughter bonding that lay ahead, she realized she hadn’t solved the problem that had put the idea of a birthday sweater for Penny into her mind in the first place. She needed a new Knit and Nibble project. If Penny was going to be knitting her own sweater, what would Pamela bring to work on when Knit and Nibble met on Tuesday night?
In the kitchen, Pamela took two cans of fish medley from the cupboard and, in a fresh bowl, used a spoon to break one can’s worth into smaller morsels for Catrina and Ginger. She put half of the other can in a smaller bowl, filled another bowl with water, and tiptoed down the basement stairs to set both bowls in the open space near the entrance to the shadowy alcove where the furnace lurked.
As she delivered Precious her breakfast the previous morning, that alcove had struck her as appealing to a creature seeking safety and privacy. A few bags destined for the thrift shop were stored elsewhere in the basement, and she had extracted an ancient blanket from one of them and arranged a bed back in the alcove’s shadows.
When she returned to the kitchen, the refrigerator door was open and Penny was peering inside.
“There’s lots more of the tenderloin,” Pamela said. “You have a party to go to and I have a review to finish writing, so why don’t I just make some sandwiches?”
The sandwiches, on whole-grain bread with mustard and mayonnaise, were assembled and dispatched, along with a quick tomato and cucumber salad. Penny was on her way then, in a fetching cotton dress from the 1950s that she’d found at her favorite thrift shop the summer before, and Pamela climbed the stairs to her study to finish her review.
* * *
On May 16th twenty-one years earlier, Pamela had awakened in this same bedroom, in this same bed, with the sunlight setting the white eyelet curtains aglow just like it was now. But her husband had lain beside her—and the curious twinges that had awakened her told her that this was the day her daughter would be born. Now, instead of her husband, she was sharing the bed with Catrina, and it was Catrina’s insistent kneading of the bedcovers in the region of Pamela’s breastbone that had caused her to open her eyes.
“Okay, okay,” she murmured and began to sit up. Catrina leapt to the floor and waited while Pamela tugged a robe over her pajamas and slid her feet into her slippers. Then she scampered ahead to precede her mistress down the stairs.
Pamela had no sooner stepped through the kitchen doorway than a streak of pale fur grazed her ankles and disappeared around the corner in the direction of the basement door.
“She’s getting used to Ginger,” Penny announced, her voice overlapping with Pamela’s “Happy birthday!” Penny was standing at the counter, spooning cat food into one of the large bowls that Catrina and Ginger shared as Ginger milled about below. “But she took one look at Catrina and that was that,” Penny went on. “I’ll take her breakfast down to her when I finish this.”
Once the cats had been fed, Pamela took over at the counter and set water boiling for coffee. As she arranged the paper filter in the filter cone atop the carafe and ground the coffee beans, she and Penny talked about their plans for the day. The birthday party the Frasers were hosting wasn’t till that evening.
Pamela had a cake to bake, and the pleasant weather demanded a walk. “But what about a knitting lesson?” she asked. “Do you want to start today? It’s officially your birthday now.”
“Could we?” Penny turned from the refrigerator, where she was retrieving the heavy cream.
“Sure,” Pamela said. “And what else will you do?”
“My job starts tomorrow”—Penny’s expression combined excitement and nervousness—“and I’ve barely looked at my work clothes since last August.”
Penny didn’t approach Bettina’s fashionista status, but under the influence of Richard Larkin’s daughters Laine and Sybil, she had discovered the delights of prowling thrift stores for one-of-a-kind vintage outfits. Pamela had nodded in agreement as the author of The Future of Fashion Is Slow saw signs of hope in the fact that Penny’s generation didn’t see “secondhand” as a negative.
“I’ll bet you’re looking forward to more shopping adventures with Laine and Sybil now that you’re home,” Pamela said. The kettle began to whistle then and she tilted it over the ground beans in the filter cone.
“They’re in San Francisco.” Penny stretched her pretty lips into grimace. “With their mother,” she added, “and Laine might not come back now that she’s graduated.” She filled the cut-glass cream pitcher and returned the cream to the refrigerator.
Penny would graduate next year, Pamela reflected, watching her daughter. She seemed so small, and so young—but she’d told Pamela more than once that she wasn’t going to be one of those children who moved back in with their parents when they finished college. She didn’t have a parent in San Francisco to draw her all the way across the country, but she’d go somewhere, even if only to Brooklyn.
Pamela tried to banish this gloomy prospect as she slipped two slices of whole-grain bread into the toaster. Penny was saying something about how much Sybil liked Jocelyn Bidwell, and Pamela tried to keep her expression neutral as she listened and nodded.
When the toast popped up, she buttered it and joined her daughter at the table, jumping up again when she remembered that Penny liked jam with her toast.
* * *
The knitting lesson was set for three p.m. After breakfast, Pamela went upstairs to dress. Once she was dressed, she stopped by Penny’s room to watch for a few minutes as Penny began to transfer from her closet to her bed the colorful dresses and blouses and skirts that she’d assembled into her work outfits the previous summer. Then Pamela returned to the kitchen and opened Special Cakes for Special Occasions to the page she had marked the day before.
The champagne had to be heated, but not boiled, until only a cup remained from a whole bottle. And then it had to cool before anything else could happen. So that step would be the first.
As the champagne cooled in a Pyrex measuring cup, Pamela turned on the oven and set her favorite mixing bowl on the counter, the caramel-colored pottery one with three white stripes circling it near the rim. Near it she set a smaller matching bowl. Into that bowl she sifted flour, salt, and baking powder and then moved it out of the way. She blended butter and sugar in the larger bowl, added sour cream and vanilla, and beat in six egg whites.
She combined the floury mixture in the smaller bowl with the buttery and creamy mixture, frothy with egg whites, in the larger bowl and beat until the two were well combined. Finally she beat in milk and most of the boiled-down champagne and kept beating until the batter was smooth.
The cake would be a grand three layers, with a delicate angel-food texture. The cake pans had to be lined with parchment paper cut to fit, and the parchment paper buttered and the sides of the pans as well. Then she divided the batter among the three pans, using a rubber spatula to capture every last bit, and opened the oven door.
Leaning into the blast of heat, she carefully arranged all three pans on the same shelf, closed the oven door, and checked the clock. In less than half an hour they would be done. That was just enough time to prepare the strawberries.
Pamela freed them from their plastic mesh baskets and rinsed them in a colander. Some would be pureed as an ingredient for the filling that went between the layers, but others would remain whole to serve as decoration for the completed cake, so first she picked out the reddest, plumpest, and most symmetrical from the bounty in the colander and set them aside. She made sure too, that the delicate caps with their circlet of green petals were fresh and intact.
Then she used a sharp paring knife to remove the caps from a few handfuls of the remaining berries, sliced the berries in half, and whirled them briefly in her food processor. The result was a puree, faintly pink, and smooth except for the tiny darker seeds. The recipe said to run the puree through a sieve to make it even smoother, but Pamela never minded evidence that her kitchen creations had been made from real ingredients. She didn’t mind tomato seeds and skins in her homemade pasta sauce, or the fiber that remained around the orange segments in a fruit salad.
The cake layers would be done in a few minutes but they would have to cool before the cake could be assembled and iced. Pamela opened the oven door a crack to check on their progress. Their centers still looked soft so she closed the oven door again.
She transferred the puree from the food processor to a plastic container, snapped on the cover, and placed it in the refrigerator. Opening the refrigerator reminded her that the butter needed for the cake’s filling and icing would be easier to cream if it was room temperature, so she removed four sticks of butter and set them on the counter.
Stepping through the kitchen door and to the bottom of the stairs, she called, “I’m having a walk.”
“Okay,” Penny called back.
The cake layers were done now, as tested by a toothpick stuck into the center of each. They smelled fragrant and sugary and they’d risen to the very tops of their pans, smooth and pale but with a faint hint of toasty brown around the edges. Pamela set them on the stove top and turned off the oven, then she was on her way.
CHAPTER 13
May could be hot, too hot to walk just for pleasure, but this day was perfect. Pamela returned an hour later glad she’d made space in her schedule to stroll down Orchard Street instead of up and wander a bit in the nature preserve across County Road, the thoroughfare that marked the western boundary of Arborville.
She returned home to find Penny sitting on the sofa and staring raptly at a magazine open in her lap. She looked up only when Pamela greeted her, and she lifted the magazine to display the cover, which featured the sweater she proposed to make. She had been studying the pattern. But in lifting the magazine from her lap she revealed a surprise beneath it. Precious was curled into a comfortable oval with her eyes closed, her tail lapped neatly around her and tucked under her chin.
Penny raised a finger to her lips to signal shhh, but the damage had been done. The cat stirred, looked up at Penny, then at Pamela, and made up her mind. She slithered to the floor and crept across the carpet to take refuge under the comfortable armchair beside the fireplace.
“Are you ready for your knitting lesson now?” Pamela asked. There was plenty of time to finish the cake before they were due at the Frasers.
Penny nodded.
“How about a bit of lunch first?” The walk had awakened Pamela’s appetite and it was past noon already.
* * *
When they returned to the living room half an hour later, Precious was crouched beneath the arch that separated the living room from the dining room. She watched them, her blue eyes opalescent in the light reflected from the big windows behind the sofa, as they took their seats.
“Now,” Pamela said, “the first thing we have to do is roll the yarn into manageable balls.”
Like much natural yarn from small producers, the Icelandic yarn they’d bought for the sweater came in the form of hanks—yarn looped around and around and around and twisted into a coil. The hanks that would become the sweater lay in a heap on the coffee table now, resembling large, fuzzy, cream-colored crullers. A knitter starting with her raw material in hanks had to roll it into balls or risk creating a tangled mess as she tugged it from the coiled hank.
Pamela demonstrated for Penny the pose she was to assume—hands extended, flat and facing each other with about eighteen inches between them. She uncoiled a hank and slipped the thick loop of yarn over Penny’s hands so Penny’s hands were holding it taut. Then she found the spot where the beginning and end of the long looped strand had been tied in a loose knot, untied the knot, and holding one end began to unloop the yarn.
She started by wrapping the end of the strand around a finger, slipped the tiny coil off, wrapped more yarn around it, and wrapped and wrapped and wrapped until only a few turns of yarn remained draped around Penny’s hands and the ball she was creating had grown large.
“We only need one ball to start,” she said. “And then we’ll—ooops!”
The ball had become so large that it slipped from her hands and bounced onto the floor, where it rolled across the carpet trailing the long strand that led back to Penny’s hands. Suddenly Precious struck, lunging from her post under the arch to fling herself on the rolling ball of yarn. Mother and daughter looked at one another, each face mirroring the other’s disbelief and merriment.
“She needs a toy,” Pamela said. “Of course, then Precious will feel welcome in her new home.” She rose from the sofa and tiptoed toward the stairs so as not to alarm Precious. In the attic was a large plastic bin filled with odds and ends of yarn left from years of knitting projects.
In the dusty shadows of the attic, she sorted through balls and partial skeins and little orphan twists of yarn in colors and textures of all sorts. Perhaps some aromatic hint of its natural origins still infused the ball of yarn that had tempted Precious to venture from the edge of the dining room. Several years ago Pamela had bought a batch of Icelandic wool for a project of her own, an Icelandic-style sweater with a snowflake pattern worked in natural brown and white wool. A largish ball of the white wool that had formed the snowflakes still remained.
While she was rummaging in her yarn bin, it occurred to her that knitting needles would be crucial if Penny was to have a knitting lesson. From the large assortment of needles accumulated over the years, she picked out a pair in the size that she recalled the pattern requiring.
When Pamela reached the bottom of the stairs, Precious was batting the ball of yarn here and there, chasing it and pouncing on it with apparent delight. Penny still held the end of the long strand that was gradually growing longer as the ball unwound.
“Pssst!” Pamela whispered from where she stood. Precious froze and looked up, her large sable-colored ears tilted forward. Pamela lobbed the substitute ball of yarn across the carpet. It bounced a few times, and Precious watched it as it began to roll toward the coffee table, one delicate paw still restraining her other prey.
The new ball of yarn came to rest at Penny’s feet. She nudged it back the way it had come, whereupon Precious abandoned the ball of yarn that had first claimed her interest. As the cat threw herself on her new toy, Penny quietly stood up and reclaimed the other ball. Precious was so intent on her new prey that she didn’t even notice.
