Knitty Gritty Murder, page 14
“Maybe a little,” Pamela said. “Just a little smudge. I don’t think anyone will notice, and we’ll be sitting down anyway.”
Once they were settled in one of the capacious booths, upholstered in burgundy Naugahyde, that gave Hyler’s Luncheonette its character, there was no need to worry that the smudge on Bettina’s pants, actually quite large, would be remarked.
They acknowledged their server’s welcome and accepted the oversize menus that were a Hyler’s institution. For a few minutes, Bettina was silent, and invisible behind the huge menu except for a few tendrils of scarlet hair peeking over the top.
When she spoke, it was to ask, “Can you remember if we had the tuna melts lately?”
From behind her own menu, Pamela responded, “Not for a while, and they are awfully good here.”
“We don’t always have to have the same thing.” Bettina lowered her menu.
“I want a tuna melt,” Pamela said, “and a vanilla shake.”
“Ready to order, ladies?” The server, a middle-aged woman who had worked at Hyler’s the whole time Pamela had lived in Arborville, it seemed, had appeared at the end of the booth.
“Two tuna melts.” Bettina handed her menu back. “And two vanilla shakes.”
“You don’t really think it was okay for him to be having an affair with Jenny, do you?” Pamela asked after the server had noted their orders and turned away.
“No.” Bettina shook her head. “But I believe he really loved her—too much to kill her, for whatever reason. And I can’t believe that, like we discussed, she could have been holding the affair over him and threatening to tell his wife. She wasn’t that kind of person and he’s a nice man. He special-ordered a replacement for a valve in our kitchen faucet last year when the sprayer wouldn’t work and the plumber couldn’t figure out what was wrong.”
“So we don’t care if he has an alibi for the night Jenny was killed—because he’s so nice?” Pamela hoped she didn’t sound scornful.
“We have other suspects,” Bettina said. “Lots of other suspects.” She raised a carefully manicured hand and began to count off on her fingers, beginning with her pinkie. “Calliope, Danielle—and remember she made sure to tell us she was home with her husband all Monday night, but then Wilfred said he was at the historical society. Why would she volunteer an alibi unless she was guilty? And—” Bettina moved on to the next finger, but Pamela interrupted her.
“Apparently Detective Clayborn doesn’t think any of the gardeners are guilty, including Johan Friendly.” Pamela tapped the finger Bettina had moved on to. “The murder weapon—”
It was Bettina’s turn to interrupt. “—was a knitting needle, and a rather specialized knitting needle at that, and I think we’d know if Dennis Cummings was a knitter. The Arborville knitters are kind of a tight-knit community.” Seemingly unaware of her pun, Bettina concluded with an emphatic headshake.
“His wife is a knitter, though.” Pamela offered a sympathetic half smile. It was obvious that Dennis’s distress had touched Bettina’s tender heart.
“Well, you’re not going to convince me that he used one of Claire’s knitting needles.”
Pamela reached across the table, tapped Bettina’s index finger, and said, “Claire Cummings.”
Bettina sighed and retracted her hand, burying both hands in her lap. At that moment the server delivered the milkshakes with a cheery “Tuna melts coming right up,” and Pamela was just as glad to set the topic of who killed Jenny Miller aside for the time being.
The milkshakes were a tempting sight, in their tall frosted glasses beaded with driblets of condensation. Bettina’s hands reappeared. With one she coaxed her milkshake closer and with the other she tilted the straw protruding from its crown of bubbly froth toward her lips.
Pamela hadn’t had a chance to sample her milkshake before her tuna melt arrived. It shared an oval platter with a small heap of fries and a portion of coleslaw in a fluted paper cup. The bread had been grilled to a perfect shade of golden brown, and between top and bottom slice layers of molten cheese framed a mayonnaise-y streak of tuna salad.
“Mmmm” was Bettina’s wordless report on her milkshake. She set the tall glass aside to focus on the contents of her own platter.
Following Bettina’s lead, Pamela took a sip of her milkshake. Hyler’s milkshakes were legendary, made with real ice cream that had been made with real cream, sweet but not so sweet as to overpower the flavors of vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry that were the only three choices. She savored the creamy coolness with its hint of vanilla for a moment before swallowing, then picked up her fork and tackled the first half of her tuna melt.
They ate in silence for a bit. It was pleasant to disengage the mind, and not that difficult a task when assisted by the distraction of the meal. The grilled bread that enclosed the cheese and tuna salad was toasty and buttery, and the cheese retained its cheddar-y sharpness. The tuna salad, with its liberal admixture of mayonnaise, soothed the sharpness of the cheese, with the pickle relish in the tuna salad adding a sweet and sour note.
The fries and slaw were almost more than was needed, but the fries were irresistible, their crisp and salty exterior yielding to the tender mealiness of the interior.
“Will you come on an errand with me tomorrow?” Pamela asked after a time, looking up from a plate that still contained half a tuna melt, several fries, and the fluted paper cup of coleslaw.
“Have you thought of another suspect to interview?” Bettina’s fork, bearing a generous portion of coleslaw, paused halfway to her mouth.
“It’s not that kind of errand,” Pamela said. “It’s a trip to the yarn shop in Timberley.”
“I know Knit and Nibble is tomorrow night.” Bettina’s fork hovered in the air. “But I already have a project.” She raised the fork to her mouth and in a moment she was chewing.
“I know.” Pamela nodded. “But I don’t. I finished the striped sweater for Penny, and I was going to make her another one for her birthday. She picked out yarn and a pattern—but she wants to do the knitting herself. So I . . .” She displayed both hands, empty and with fingers spread, to dramatize the lack of a project to busy them.
“The coleslaw is very good,” Bettina announced after swallowing. “Aren’t you going to eat yours?”
“You can have it.” Pamela picked up the fluted paper cup and reached across the table to deposit it on Bettina’s platter. “So, about the yarn shop,” she went on. “What I’m thinking is that I’d like to make something for you.”
“Ohhh!” Bettina’s expression—mouth open, raised brows puckering her forehead—suggested that she was both delighted and touched. “That would be too too nice!” The open mouth formed a smile instead. “I would love that—and I’ll buy the yarn, of course.”
“No, no!” Pamela waved a hand. “I’ll buy the yarn. I get to have the fun of doing the project.”
“But I get to have the fun of wearing it.” Bettina leaned across the table. Her voice rose and a pair of women at a nearby table paused their conversation to stare.
After quite a bit more back and forth, with voices lowered, it was agreed that Pamela could buy the yarn if she really insisted, but that Bettina would definitely pay for lunch, as well as several lunches to come.
Pamela returned to her meal then, carving a bite from the second half of her tuna melt and following it with a sip of milkshake. Bettina had finished her own tuna melt, but she tackled Pamela’s cup of coleslaw, remarking again how good it was.
They chatted about Memorial Day, which was coming up in less than two weeks and which would be a very busy day for Bettina. Arborville marked the day with a parade down Arborville Avenue, followed by a ceremony in the parking lot behind the library, and she would be reporting on both events for the Advocate. Back at home, she and Wilfred would be hosting a barbecue for friends, including Pamela and Penny, and relatives.
Soon all that was left on their plates were a few fries and the fluted cups that had held the coleslaw. Pamela slurped up the last quarter inch of her shake, now thoroughly melted but still delicious.
Hyler’s had filled up with the usual lunchtime crowd while they were eating. It was the go-to lunch spot for people from the banks, Borough Hall, the library, the hair and nail salons, the real estate agency, the shops, and the various small businesses operated from the offices above the storefronts. Tables and booths were soon in short supply, and their server, who had been vigilant without seeming to hover, appeared the instant Pamela set her milkshake glass down.
“Check, ladies?” she asked as she stacked one oval platter atop the other.
Five minutes later they were proceeding single file down the narrow passageway that led from Arborville Avenue to the parking lot, shared by the library and police department, where Bettina’s faithful Toyota waited. En route back to Orchard Street, they agreed that ten a.m. would be just the right time for their trip to the Timberley yarn shop.
* * *
At home, Pamela brought her mail in and filed a few bills, then she climbed the stairs to her office. The computer came alive with beeps and chirps and soon she was watching her email arrive. The only significant message was one from her boss at Fiber Craft, and the stylized paperclip that marked its appearance in her inbox indicated that it was delivering work.
Yes, the message brought with it three attachments. The email itself simply read “I agree that ‘Paisley Power’ deserves publication. Please copy-edit it and the other two and get them back to me by 5 p.m. Thursday.” Ranged across the top of the email, each with stylized paperclip and Word logo, were “Adam Delved,” “Laundry Basket,” and “Paisley Power.”
Pamela opened the first one, whose full title turned out to be “When Adam Delved and Eve Span: Gendering Labor.” Soon she was immersed in a discussion of the English peasant revolt of 1381, whose rallying cry was “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”
A logical question, she reflected, posed in an era when people pictured Adam and Eve busy after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden with lives that paralleled their own: Adam with his shovel and Eve with her spindle or spinning wheel, and the division of labor between the sexes already firmly established. Never mind that cloth-making would have had a long way to go, given that their garb when they left Eden consisted of fig leaves.
The author focused, however, on what the rhyme revealed about medieval attitudes, and the illustrations, drawn from period texts, were fascinating in their depiction of spinning techniques of the time.
So caught up had she been in the text that Pamela felt obliged to go through the article a second and then a third time to make sure she had caught every deviation from Fiber Craft’s style and every British usage, like colour for color, that needed to be changed. (The author was a British academic.)
She was surprised, then, to hear the front door open and realize that it had gotten to be six p.m. She quickly saved her work and stepped out into the hall. Apparently she had been so absorbed that she’d been oblivious to mild reminders from Catrina and Ginger that dinnertime was nigh. Both were sitting just outside her office door looking at her reproachfully. Preceded by the cats, she hurried downstairs to greet Penny.
“Mom!” Penny was standing in the entry, looking as fresh as if she hadn’t ridden the bus to and from the city and put in a full day’s work since morning. In fact, she was positively glowing. “Guess what!” Penny exclaimed.
With hungry cats weaving about her ankles, Pamela beckoned Penny to follow her into the kitchen. There she opened a can of seafood medley as Penny revealed the source of her excitement.
“An internship! In the decorating department!” she gushed. “Not yet, because they have somebody for this summer. But they want me for next summer, and then after the summer it could turn into a real job, and”—she paused, eyes bright, to take a breath—“it would be so much fun, decorating people’s houses with beautiful, beautiful things. I would just love it!”
After receiving a congratulatory hug, Penny left the kitchen and headed for the stairs. She was back in an instant, however.
“Precious,” she said. “We have to give Precious her dinner.”
Pamela would have remembered, but with Penny there to do the chore, she could busy herself staging the leftover pork tenderloin and scalloped potatoes to warm in the oven.
Once the salad was made and the leftovers heating, she stepped into the living room to find Penny knitting, with Precious curled up at her side. The Icelandic yarn she was working with was nearly the same color as the parts of Precious that weren’t affected by the enzymes that accounted for the sable tint of her face, feet, and tail.
CHAPTER 16
“He’s trying to evade me,” Bettina announced from the porch.
“Who?” Pamela pulled the door back as Bettina swept in, dressed for the summery day in bright yellow pants and a print shirt featuring sunflowers.
“Clayborn!” Bettina’s lips, sporting deep orange lipstick today, twisted into a disgusted knot. “I was supposed to meet with him first thing this morning for an update on the case—though I doubt he has more to report, and that’s why he’s evading me. Now he’s scheduled me for tomorrow at ten-thirty. But I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“By the way,” she added as Pamela reached for her purse and keys, “that was more than ‘just a little smudge’ on the back of my pants yesterday. I want to drop them at the cleaners on our way through town, and I hope they can get it out. That bag of salt wasn’t very comfortable either.”
“Nobody at Hyler’s noticed,” Pamela said comfortingly. “I’m sure.”
* * *
Once the white linen pants were dropped off along Arborville Avenue, Pamela cut over to County Road. For two centuries or more, County Road had served the inhabitants of northern New Jersey, connecting farmers with their markets in the small towns along its route, even when it was little more than a dirt trail and its traffic consisted of carts drawn by horses. Now it connected Arborville and towns to the south with Timberley and towns to the north, the per capita income rising the farther north one traveled.
The stylish blond woman who was the yarn shop’s proprietress nodded in greeting as they entered, but she was busy with another customer, a middle-aged man. Pamela and Bettina were happy to browse, enjoying the experience of being in a room whose walls consisted of shelves and cubbies piled with yarn of all colors and textures.
“Pick anything you like,” Pamela urged as Bettina paused near a display of yarn identified as NEW—FROM AUSTRALIA. The texture was delicate and the colors were muted tones that suggested natural dyes. Bettina fingered a skein in a shade of blue that evoked the pale but intense blue of a periwinkle.
“This is just beautiful.” She sighed. “Do you think . . . ?”
“Of course.” Pamela smiled, picked up the skein, and counted all the others in that shade. “Plenty for almost anything, I think,” she said. “Now, to find a pattern.”
A rack near the counter held knitting magazines and pattern books. As Bettina paged through an issue of a magazine that featured the most avant-garde designs, Pamela absentmindedly watched as the shop’s proprietress slipped five skeins of dark green yarn into a bag, along with two sets of knitting needles, and handed it to the middle-aged man, along with a page apparently torn from a magazine.
“This should be all you need for your project,” she said, “and if you have an unused skein you can return it. Dye lots don’t always match if you have to buy more later. So it’s better to buy too much at the start.”
With thanks, the man was on his way. As the door closed behind him, the woman smiled. “They always say it’s for their wives,” she commented. “I don’t know why they should be embarrassed. Sailors used to knit.”
Pamela nodded. She had once read an article on that very topic for Fiber Craft. And of course there was Roland.
From the direction of the magazine and book rack Bettina’s voice claimed her attention then. “What would you think of this?” she asked, holding the magazine open to a page that showed a lissome fair-haired model wearing a wide-necked sweater that dipped off one slender shoulder. It had been worked in a shade of blue similar to the yarn that had caught Bettina’s eye.
The sleeves tapered, from wide at the shoulders to narrow at the wrists, and the sweater tapered too, fitting snugly but without ribbing around the model’s slender hips. The stitch the pattern used created an interesting pucker texture.
Bettina handed the magazine to Pamela, who took it and studied the pattern’s description. “Seersucker stitch,” she murmured, then said to Bettina, “Sure! It will keep me busy for many Knit and Nibbles, it should be finished by the time the weather gets chilly again, and it will be a chance to learn a new stitch. The sweater will look great on you besides.”
Bettina certainly didn’t resemble the lissome model, but she wore her clothes with great flair. Pamela was sure her friend would show the sweater to fine advantage.
* * *
Pamela’s afternoon had been busy. Bettina had stopped in for a bit when they returned to Orchard Street and they had rolled one of the skeins, a hank really, of the Australian yarn into a manageable ball so Pamela could launch the new project that evening.
When Bettina left, Pamela had walked to the Co-Op to stock up on food for the week. With Penny home and providing an audience for her cooking, Pamela looked forward to revisiting recipes that she never made just for herself.
She had spent an hour at her computer working on “Paisley Power,” and then braised chicken thighs with tomatoes and green olives, to be served with brown rice. The brown rice was ready just as Penny arrived home from the city and they’d had a pleasant meal and chatted about Penny’s day and Pamela’s new knitting project.
