A Dark and Stormy Knit, page 9
“It certainly looks like pumpkin pie!” Holly exclaimed, brandishing her fork before taking a bite. “And it looks amazing!” She directed one of her most bewitching smiles at Wilfred, made all the more bewitching by her perfect teeth, glowing skin, and raven hair.
“It’s the season for pumpkin pie,” Nell observed. “Especially for the frugal people who display their Halloween pumpkins whole and then eat them.”
Nell herself did this, and her waste-not, want-not ethos extended to drying the pumpkin seeds and setting them out for the birds.
“I know it’s the season for pumpkin pie.” Wilfred chuckled. “And I’ll be gearing up for my Thanksgiving baking soon—but I thought it would be fun to try something a little different, something that still fits with the season, though.” He paused and gazed around with a look that seemed an invitation to partake.
Holly had continued to brandish her fork. Now the others joined her, and forks swooped in unison toward the sage-green plates with their pie-wedge triangles. Pamela was not the first to speak, concentrating instead on simply enjoying the smooth-textured custard, rich with eggs and cream, and hinting at a familiar flavor enhanced with a bit of spice.
“It’s sweet potato pie, isn’t it?” Nell looked up from her plate. “An old Southern treat, but I think it made its way north some time ago.”
Wilfred nodded and winked. “I make it just like my pumpkin pie, but with sweet potatoes baked or steamed and then mashed. It’s perfect for autumn, when there’s not much local fresh fruit, except for apples.”
“Yummy, yummy,” Holly said, and her opinion was echoed and elaborated upon by everyone else, even Roland. His enthusiasm was also evident in the fact that only a tidbit of crust remained on his plate.
As pie was disappearing from other plates, leaving only pastry crumbs and dabs of whipped cream on their sage-green pottery surfaces, conversation turned to other topics. Gayle was welcomed to the group, and she talked again about how much she had loved to knit as a girl.
“Where did you grow up?” Holly inquired in her sociable way.
“Oh, here,” Gayle said. “We lived on Linden, and I went away to college, but then I came back and got married and just stayed and stayed.”
“Who wouldn’t? Arborville is perfectly awesome. I don’t ever want to leave!” A smile that brought Holly’s dimple into play underscored her enthusiasm, and she added, “To think that you got to grow up here!”
“Arborville is a great town to raise children.” Bettina joined the conversation. She nodded toward Karen, across the coffee table from her. “Your little Lily is a fortunate child, and maybe she’ll stay and stay, like my Wilfred Jr., and you’ll have grandchildren, maybe even a granddaughter like my little sweetie. You should have seen her Halloween costume, a fairy princess, tiny and all in pink with wings and . . .”
Bettina had become quite breathless. She paused and inhaled deeply.
“It’s too bad the storm spoiled the festivities this year.” Holly’s smile faded. “I have such happy memories from years past.”
“The storm wasn’t the only thing that spoiled them.” Roland spoke as if no one else in the room was aware that the evening had also featured a murder. “But what can you expect when people are out running around disguised as who-knows-what? Of course someone who’s up to no good is going to take advantage.”
“My sister loved Halloween,” Gayle said, “but Heather’s gone now, long gone.” Her melancholy expression did her face no favors. Minus a smile, her mouth was a nondescript line and her eyes peered out beneath drooping eyelids.
She scanned the group from her perch in the armchair on loan from Bettina. “Does anyone know whether the police are making any progress?” She turned to Bettina, who was still sitting next to her in the chair from the dining room. “Has the Advocate heard anything from . . . what’s his name? Clayborn?”
Bettina had no news to offer, Pamela knew well, but before her friend could even communicate that fact, Nell leaned forward in the other armchair. Pamela knew what was coming, as did everyone except Gayle. Even Roland prepared to look abashed.
“A terrible thing has happened in our little town.” Nell’s pale eyes were stern in their nests of wrinkles. “We do not need to turn it into fodder for gossip, and because Bettina and Pamela, as well as Wilfred, were among the first to discover the tragic scene, we especially don’t need to ask them to revisit such a distressing episode.”
Gayle at first seemed taken aback, then vaguely defiant, perhaps bristling at the idea that she was being scolded. Wilfred half-rose from his chair and surveyed the coffee table.
“I see some empty mugs here,” he said, his ruddy good cheer in striking contrast to Gayle’s mood. “There’s plenty more coffee in the kitchen, though I’m afraid we ate all the pie. Eight people, eight slices.”
“And the slices were a perfect size,” Nell added, as if to smooth over with a compliment any ill will caused by her earlier statement, even if the compliment was not directed at Gayle.
Murmurs of “I’m fine” and “One mug was plenty” greeted Wilfred’s offer, but had anyone actually wanted a refill, the sight of Roland consulting his watch would have provoked second thoughts.
“It’s a quarter after eight,” he announced. “The coffee was delicious, but I, for one, have knitting to do.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Gayle glanced around nervously, like a person puzzled by the etiquette of an unfamiliar situation. She picked up her work and thrust the empty needle at random into the snarled clump of yarn dangling from its mate.
Bettina and Wilfred quickly cleared the coffee table and carried mugs and plates and the rest to the kitchen, along with Roland’s mug, plate, and fork from the hearth. Roland had returned to his knitting, which, judging from the four double-pointed needles he was employing, looked to be one of the sock projects he had been challenging himself with lately.
Pamela had taken a minute to hold her in-progress square against the finished one just to see how much remained to do before it too was a perfect square. She tucked the finished one back in her knitting bag and happened to glance toward Roland before launching a new row.
He had stopped knitting and was staring at Gayle, his shoulders hunched and his lean face tense. Bettina and Wilfred were still in the kitchen, and the two extra chairs fetched from the dining room were vacant. Roland set his work aside, arranging it neatly on the brick hearth. He rose, edged past the coffee table, and perched on the dining room chair closest to the armchair where Gayle sat.
“Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” he intoned, and Pamela smiled to herself, reflecting that Wilfred’s fondness for old sayings had spread even to Roland.
He held out a hand. Gayle looked startled, but when he wiggled his fingers in a beckoning gesture, she relinquished her project to his grasp. He studied the sad results of Gayle’s industry for a long moment, at one point turning it over to study the reverse side.
“In my opinion,” he said gravely, “we have very little recourse.” He might as well have been announcing to his corporate colleagues that chances of evading a threatened lawsuit were minimal. “Therefore,” he went on—but instead of completing the sentence, he substituted actions for words.
He extracted from the tangled clump of yarn the needle that Gayle had plunged into it, slid the clump off the other needle, and handed both needles to Gayle. Then he seized the strand of yarn that tethered the project to the skein at Gayle’s side. He tugged, and within seconds the clump of yarn had vanished. In its place was a long yarn tail, slightly crimped from having been subjected to Gayle’s efforts.
“Now what?” Gayle peered into Roland’s stern face.
“Now we start over.” He looped a slipknot near the end of the tail, thrust a needle through it, and looped a few more cast-on stitches. Handing the needle to Gayle, he said, “Try to make them even, and not too tight.”
At this point, Bettina returned to the living room. Amusement crinkled her eyes and turned up the corners of her mouth as she contemplated the scene that greeted her. Pamela was also smiling, and she and Bettina shared a glance as Bettina lowered herself into the chair vacated by Wilfred. Holly and Karen, at Pamela’s side on the sofa, had been neglecting their work as well, mesmerized by a glimpse at this unfamiliar side of Roland.
Once Gayle had cast on the number of stitches that Roland deemed enough for her project, still a scarf as she had declared earlier, he took the needles from her hands and demonstrated the basic knitting stitch. Pamela returned to her own work then, amused by the quiet murmurs coming from across the room as Roland inspected each row his pupil completed before allowing her to go on.
* * *
“I hope Gayle appreciated that,” Bettina said to Pamela as she closed her front door after waving good night to the other Knit and Nibblers. “She doesn’t know Roland the way we do, so maybe she just assumed he was that kind of guy.”
“He does like things to be done right—” A sudden burst of laughter interrupted the thought and then Pamela went on. “Do you think he’ll sit up late tonight knitting, checking his watch to make sure he’s putting in exactly the amount of time he lost while helping Gayle?”
“I can see him doing that.” Bettina laughed too. “We’ll have to notice how much further along the current sock is when we get together next Tuesday. We never did decide if he really wears those hand-knit socks he makes, did we?”
“Maybe on weekends,” Pamela said.
She’d been standing near the door too, bidding people good night. Now she leaned over to pick up her knitting bag from the sofa and prepared to make her own departure, while Bettina fetched her jacket from the closet.
“Before I leave, though”—Pamela paused in the act of buttoning her jacket—“that memorial reception is tomorrow. I think we agreed that it might be interesting to go . . .”
“You convinced me.” Bettina nodded. “It’s at two. Who’s driving?”
“I’ll drive,” Pamela said. “Come over at one. Even if it takes more than an hour to get there and park, it’s probably kind of a drop-in thing. We might learn more if it’s already in full swing when we get there.”
CHAPTER 8
Bettina’s ensemble stood out amid the crowd that had gathered to honor the memory of Mel Wordwoman. Most of the attendees, who were all women, wore jeans or casual pants, and the neutral colors and simple cuts of the garments seemed more a strategy to avoid attracting male attention than an acknowledgment that the gathering had been occasioned by a death. Even Adrienne had chosen a pantsuit in an inconspicuous heathery tone.
Bettina, however, had taken from her closet her chic black crepe coatdress. A triple strand of pearls filled in the neckline and pearl earrings dangled from her earlobes. On her feet were black suede pumps with impractically high heels.
Adrienne had reserved Rodeo’s party room for the event. It was reached by walking through the restaurant proper, a warren of small rooms crowded with mismatched tables and chairs. Paintings of all sorts, as if collected from many sources over many decades, decorated the low-ceilinged walls, completing the bohemian effect. At least half the tables were occupied, as people chatted over the remains of lunches served on simple cafeteria-style dinnerware.
The party room was more spacious, and it looked out on a busy Village street through narrow floor-to-ceiling windows in wooden frames. A long table held bowls of guacamole and baskets of corn chips. From a bar along the back wall a server, the only man in the room, dispensed drinks, which seemed to be limited to red or white wine, various soft drinks, and beer.
Adrienne noticed them when they walked in, waved from a post near the windows, and gestured toward the bar.
“We should get something,” Pamela whispered to Bettina, “so it looks like we’re here to mingle. And then we should mingle, and the only person we know is Adrienne, so . . .”
Some minutes later, glasses of soda in hand, Pamela and Bettina edged through the crowd till they reached the cluster of people who had collected around the event’s hostess. The conversation underway was lively enough that acknowledging Adrienne with a nod and listening with an amiable expression on one’s face seemed sufficient. Perhaps introductions would be forthcoming later. For now, it appeared that the focus of interest was a member of Mel’s circle named Blair Tyler.
“I’m not saying I’m glad she’s not here,” said a dark-haired woman. “I’m just saying it’s interesting that she’s not here.”
Adrienne had taken a few steps back, accosted by a new arrival who wanted her ear. With a glance in Adrienne’s direction, as if to make sure her attention was really elsewhere, another woman leaned toward the dark-haired woman.
“Maybe Blair was afraid she wouldn’t be able to act sad.” Her tone was mischievous.
“Now, now, now,” the dark-haired woman responded, but a small smile crept across her unlipsticked lips.
“I thought Blair had a point,” the other woman said. “We don’t need to reject men out of hand just because they can be a distraction. They might bring a valuable perspective to the group. I mean, if we’re trying to understand Shakespeare . . . he was a man, after all.”
“Yes.” The dark-haired woman nodded sharply, and a crease appeared between her untended brows. “And he excluded women from the Globe Theatre to the point that the female roles were acted by male actors. Mel believed turnabout was fair play, and I agree.”
“I still think Blair had a point.” The first woman spoke again. She was attractive and petite, with her blond hair styled in a no-nonsense bowl cut. “I respected Mel—she certainly was a role model for women in academia—but I wasn’t opposed to admitting men, even if just as a know-the-enemy move.”
“We’d have to change the name if we let them in,” the dark-haired woman said. “It wouldn’t make very much sense to call ourselves Shakespeare’s Rib with men as members.” She focused on Pamela for a moment and then turned back to the blond woman. “And what about the Womanifesto? Wasn’t the whole point that it’s not a Manifesto?’
Without waiting for the blond woman to answer, she addressed Pamela. “You don’t look familiar.” Her glance strayed to Bettina and then she focused on Pamela again. “Are you new to Shakespeare’s Rib? Where do you teach? And who’s your friend?”
“Bettina Fraser,” Bettina said as she extended her hand, apparently not bothered by the fact that the dark-haired woman seemed to consider Pamela more worthy of her attention. “And this is Pamela Paterson and neither of us teach anywhere. We’re neighbors of Adrienne’s.”
The dark-haired woman peered at them and said, “So you didn’t actually know Mel, then?”
Almost simultaneously, the blond woman accepted Bettina’s hand, smiled, and murmured, “I’m Zoe Zander.”
“Natalie Gidding,” the dark-haired woman added belatedly.
The many conversations going on around the room had blended individual utterances into a cheerful—curiously cheerful, given the nature of the event—hubbub. But suddenly, in a lull, one voice rose above the rest.
From near the bar came the words, “Well, well, well . . . look who’s here!”
Eyes turned, not to the bar but to the doorway, and in the doorway there appeared a striking woman. She was tall and willowy, with strawberry-blond hair that cascaded past her shoulders. Her outfit, like the outfits of most of the other guests, was simple to the point of austerity, but the components looked expensive: a camel hair coat that she removed to reveal well-fitting pants and a silky shirt, both the color of rich cream.
“Who’s that?” Bettina asked, addressing no one in particular. The answer was forthcoming anyway.
“So Blair came after all.” It was the dark-haired woman, Natalie Gidding, who spoke.
Pamela and Bettina were forgotten then, as a few people broke off from a neighboring conversational group and clustered around Natalie and Zoe.
“Is she in charge now?” someone asked, twisting her head to aim a glance toward the new arrival.
“There were only two candidates for president,” Natalie pointed out, holding up a ring-less hand with two fingers extended.
“If one of them dies before the vote is taken, does that mean the other one automatically wins?” someone else inquired, a much younger woman, bespectacled and with the manner of an earnest graduate student. “That doesn’t seem exactly fair.”
“May I remind you”—the dark-haired woman took a deep breath and straightened her back, as if recalling a stressful event—“that none of the other eligible people wanted to run.”
“The president has to have a PhD in one of the humanities, and people who have already served can’t run again,” the blond woman, Zoe, whispered, seemingly for the benefit of the much younger woman. Speaking louder, she went on, “It’s a ton of work, but Mel was really committed to the cause, and she was editing Bicycle Fish too. Who will do that now?” She shrugged and looked around.
Blair, the new arrival, had joined a group nearer the door, and that group had slowly migrated toward the table with the guacamole and corn chips, although sometime while Pamela and Bettina had been occupied overhearing conversations, more offerings had been added. Now, in occasional glimpses made possible by people edging forward and then stepping away bearing plates of food, Pamela could see long pans of enchiladas, bowls of yellow rice, bowls of deep red beans in thick sauce, and plates of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers.
Never one to pass up an interesting dining possibility, Bettina took a few steps in the direction of the long table, but Pamela lingered, curious about the fate of Bicycle Fish.
“Blair will probably want to take that over too.” Someone spoke up from the fringes of the group, an older woman with a stern expression, wearing an ancient gray wool suit. “It will be the beginning of the end, if you ask me. Who knows what articles she’ll approve for publication, given her views on . . . our oppressors? Losing Mel was a great blow to this organization.”
