A Fatal Yarn

Book 5: Knit & Nibble Mystery

by Peggy Ehrhart

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Pamela Paterson and her Knit and Nibble club must clear the name of one of their knitters when he's accused of murdering the mayor . . .

The trees in Arborville, New Jersey, have started sporting sweaters. Part of the trend of public knitting art? Not exactly. An anonymous activist has been wrapping trunks in yarn to cover red X's that mark certain trees for removal by the town so they don't interfere with power lines. When the town's mayor—who supports cutting down the trees—is murdered, Pamela wonders if the tree hugger committed homicide to prevent arborcide. A knitter is arrested, but it's one of Knit and Nibble's own—the harmless Rolland DeCamp, who was seen arguing with the mayor. Pamela is sure the police are barking up the wrong tree. With the help of her reporter friend Bettina, she branches off on her own investigation to root out the real killer . . .

Release date: March 31, 2020

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

If you were going to give a tree a sweater, wouldn’t you do it in the fall—not in the spring when days were warming and nature was coming back to life? Yet the first thing Pamela Paterson had noticed when she stepped outside to collect the newspaper that morning was the swath of knitting wrapped around the trunk of the tree occupying the strip of land between the sidewalk and the street. It was fashioned from yarn in an eye-catching assortment of textures and colors—red, orange, green, purple, and more—and even featured buttons and buttonholes.

Now she paused to study it again in the twilight. Her day had been busy, so busy that she’d missed her usual walk. As associate editor of Fiber Craft magazine, Pamela enjoyed the fact that she could work from home most days. But some days that work—evaluating articles for publication and then editing the ones chosen—kept her at her computer from after breakfast to dinner time and beyond. And only the occasional email from her daughter, who was away at college, provided a break.

Today she’d dispatched the edited version of “Depression-Era Style: Frugal Fashion for the Home Knitter” off to her boss at Fiber Craft just in time to warm up a quick dinner of leftover stew and set off for that evening’s meeting of the Arborville knitting club, nicknamed Knit and Nibble. This evening Pamela’s neighbor and best friend, Bettina Fraser, was hosting the group, so Pamela had only to cross the street.

So immersed had Pamela been in her editorial duties that she was initially nonplussed by Bettina’s greeting. She’d no sooner stepped into the Frasers’ welcoming living room than Bettina announced, “I’m sorry he’s dead, of course, but the timing couldn’t be better for this week’s issue of the Advocate. Clayborn is squeezing me in for a meeting tomorrow morning.” Clayborn was Arborville’s lone police detective and Bettina was the chief reporter for the town’s weekly newspaper.

“What? Who?” Pamela stared at her friend, who was in bright pink tonight—a jersey wrap dress that accented her ample curves. She’d accessorized it with matching kitten heels and her favorite coral and gold earrings. The effect was striking with her scarlet hair.

“Mayor Diefenbach, of course,” Bettina said. “Haven’t you seen any news today?”

“Nose to the grindstone.” Pamela shrugged. “I had a mountain of work for the magazine.” Bettina’s words sank in and Pamela felt herself frown. “What on earth happened to him?” she asked

Bettina started to answer but was distracted by the doorbell. As she headed for the door, Pamela settled onto Bettina’s comfy sage-green sofa. Punkin the cat, who was stretched languidly along the back of the sofa, raised her head briefly then resumed her nap. Woofus the shelter dog peered nervously from the edge of the dining room.

Bettina pulled back the door and Holly Perkins stepped in, followed by Karen Dowling. They were the two youngest members of the group and fast friends, despite their considerable differences. “That’s quite a dramatic story for you, Bettina,” Holly said by way of greeting. “A murder, right here in little Arborville.” Her dark eyes widened dramatically, but given the topic she suppressed her usual smile, with its dimple and flash of perfect teeth.

“Murder?” Pamela half-rose from the sofa. “You didn’t say he was murdered!”

“Clunked right on the head—” Holly began.

Bettina finished the thought: “—in his own kitchen.”

Karen, a delicate blonde with a diffident manner, shuddered.

The evening was warm for the end of March, and the door still stood open as this conversation took place. So there was no need for Nell Bascomb to ring. She simply stepped into the doorway with a cheerful greeting, her white hair floating in a cloud around her face. But her cheer faded as Bettina continued speaking. “Then he fell, hit his head on the edge of his counter, and again on his tile floor. One or both of those bumps are probably what killed him, Clayborn said, though there’s been no autopsy yet.”

“This is sad news for our little town,” Nell said. “Harold came home from the Co-Op Grocery today and reported that everyone he ran into was buzzing about it, wondering what will become of Diefenbach’s ambitious plans for the town.” She put a comforting arm around Karen. “Shall we sit down and get to work? There’s nothing like knitting to soothe the spirits.”

Their jackets stowed in the closet, she and Karen made their way to the sofa, where they settled in beside Pamela, who had already extracted her project from her knitting bag. It was to be a gift for her daughter Penny, a lacy tunic in a delicate shade of lilac. Penny had picked out the pattern and the yarn—a silk and merino wool blend—at Christmas, and the tunic had been Pamela’s Knit and Nibble project ever since. Bettina and Holly lingered at the door looking out toward the yard, and a moment later Roland DeCamp stepped over the threshold.

“I believe I’m the last one,” he said, scanning the room, and he pulled the door closed behind him.

“Take an armchair, Roland, please.” Bettina gestured toward the armchairs that faced the sofa across a long coffee table. “And you too, Holly.”

“No, no, no.” Roland waved his free hand in a dismissive gesture. In his other he carried the impressive leather briefcase in which he stored his knitting. “You ladies, please have the armchairs. I’ll be fine with one of these cushions on the hearth.” A row of bright cushions lined up on Bettina’s hearth complemented the sage-green and tan color scheme of her living room.

He strode toward the fireplace and perched on a cushion, looking somewhat incongruous in the flawlessly tailored pinstripe suit and aggressively starched shirt that marked him as a high-powered corporate lawyer.

Holly had pulled out her knitting needles and was casting on with fuzzy yarn in a vibrant shade of green, but once everyone was settled, she broke the silence. “What were Bill Diefenbach’s plans for the town?” she asked. “Desmond and I spend so much time at work in Meadowside, we know more about town politics there than right here in Arborville where we live.”

Roland and Nell spoke at once. Their voices overlapped, with Roland observing, “Excellent ideas. Just the leader Arborville needed,” while Nell commented, “Horribly distressing. No sense of what makes Arborville Arborville.”

“Well!” Holly laughed and the dimple appeared. “You first, Nell.”

Nell surveyed the group with her faded blue eyes. The hands holding her knitting needles trembled slightly. “I’ll grant he gave a lot of his time to the town, heading up the Arborists and serving on the town council for years and years, and then taking on the job of mayor. But he wanted to sell the community gardens to a developer. The community gardens serve a valuable purpose, especially for people who live in apartments. And Arborville doesn’t need more development.”

Roland was leaning forward, his lean face intense and his knitting forgotten for the moment. “Of course it does,” he said. “My property taxes go up every year, and everybody likes the things their taxes pay for, like the schools and the police and road repair—though I’m still waiting for the broken curb in front of my house to be fixed. More development means more people to share the tax burden.”

“The developer wanted to get that land rezoned for a high rise!” Nell was leaning forward too, her expression more sad than intense. “Can you imagine a high rise, looming over a residential neighborhood? And with commercial space at street level? Arborville doesn’t have adequate parking for its existing shops.”

“That could be easily remedied.” Roland’s tone suggested the parking problem simply hadn’t been addressed by anyone with common sense. “A multilevel garage would solve the problem.”

Nell’s face tightened and her voice took on a scolding edge. “A multilevel garage would completely destroy the small-town feel of Arborville’s shopping district—and it would encourage people to use their cars when they could just as easily walk.”

“It’s the twenty-first century now,” Roland said with a laugh. “Arborville needs to keep up with the times.”

“That was Bill Diefenbach’s view.” Nell shook her head sadly. “And apparently a majority of voters agreed with him, a narrow majority.”

“Enough of a majority for him to win”—Roland was scowling now—“and a good thing. How many people does that land serve as community gardens? Twenty or thirty?” He laughed again. “Taxes on a high rise with commercial space would lighten the tax burden for everybody who lives in this town.”

Nell’s faded blue eyes brightened. “The community gardens serve a valuable purpose for people who don’t have yards of their own. Home-grown food is healthy and economical and—”

Roland half rose and his knitting slipped from his lap. “They don’t have yards of their own because they made poor choices in life. If they wanted to own their own land, they should have worked harder. It’s not my responsibility to subsidize—”

Nell cut him off, her voice rising to a pitch Pamela had seldom heard from her gentle friend. “We are all each other’s responsibility,” Nell said as she tossed her knitting aside and pulled herself up from the sofa. Karen, sitting next to her, stared in alarm and Punkin the cat leapt from the sofa’s back to its arm, from there to the floor, and scurried toward the dining room.

Suddenly Bettina was on her feet too, gazing back and forth from Nell to Roland with her eyes wide and her lips, bright pink to match her dress, stretched into a grimace. She was about to speak when from the dining room came a hearty “Is everyone present and accounted for?” Wilfred Fraser appeared in the arch that separated the dining room from the living room, an apron tied over the bib overalls that had been his customary garb since his retirement.

“Dear wife!” he exclaimed, his ruddy face beaming. “Why didn’t you let me know?” He surveyed the group, as if unaware that anything was amiss, but Pamela caught a subtle wink as he glanced in her direction. “Tea, as usual, Nell? And Karen?” Looking somewhat chastened, Nell sank back onto the sofa with a nod. “And coffee for everyone else? Roland?” Roland nodded too, cleared his throat, and lowered himself onto his cushion. He retrieved his knitting from the floor and began to examine it more intently than perhaps strictly necessary.

“I’ll get things started then,” Wilfred said, and headed back toward the kitchen with a cheerful wave.

Looking relieved, Bettina sat back down. “He was baking all afternoon,” she said. “He does so look forward to having an audience for his pies.”

“Ohh, I can hardly wait! What kind is it?” Holly exclaimed, even more animated than usual, as if to do her part in restoring cheer to the group.

“Shoo fly,” Bettina said. “Perhaps it will sweeten us all up a bit.” Roland, totally absorbed in his knitting, didn’t notice the glance she aimed in his direction.

But Pamela did. A fresh topic was definitely in order—and in fact the interesting development she’d come prepared to discuss had been driven completely from her mind by the revelation of Bill Diefenbach’s murder. Now she summoned it back.

“My tree has a sweater,” she said.

“So does mine,” Holly chimed in. “And one of Karen’s trees has one too.” From across the room, Karen met her friend’s gaze and nodded. “What on earth can be going on?”

“It’s a group,” Bettina said. “The Yarnvaders. I was working on the story for the Advocate before this Diefenbach thing happened. A few people had already posted about it on AccessArborville. They wake up in the morning and discover their trees have sweaters. It’s knitters that are doing it, obviously, and they’re doing strange things like that everywhere—even in Russia. In Los Angeles they covered an entire building with a giant sweater. I found some things on the internet.”

Roland looked up with a frown, started to speak but then evidently thought better of it and returned to his knitting.

“It seems wasteful,” Nell observed. “When there are people who could use sweaters. Who are these knitters, anyway?” Nell herself devoted her knitting to worthy causes—currently knitted caps to donate to hospitals for newborns.

“No one knows,” Bettina said. “The members are all sworn to secrecy. Some of us could be Yarnvaders for all the rest of us know.”

The teasing aroma of freshly brewed coffee had been growing stronger and stronger as they spoke, along with the aroma of something richly sugary baking. Pamela worked steadily on her knitting, enjoying the way the lacy pattern with its filigreed shells took shape as row followed row. Tucked between her and Nell on the sofa, Karen was engrossed in a lacy pattern of her own, in pink. The Dowlings’ first child, Lily, had been born at Christmas. Many tiny knitted garments had been prepared for her arrival and Pamela was sure Lily would be supplied for years to come with the fruits of her mother’s artistry. Across from Pamela, Bettina had relaxed back into her project, a Nordic-style sweater for Wilfred—which Bettina, not the fastest knitter, had said just might be finished in time for next Christmas.

The sugary aroma had become almost unbearably tempting—sweet to be sure, but with an interesting darker undertone—when Roland spoke up from his perch on the hearth. Consulting the impressive watch that had been revealed when he pushed back his aggressively starched shirt cuff, he intoned, “Exactly eight p.m. and I believe it’s time—”

“For refreshments.” Wilfred stepped into the arch that separated the dining room from the living room and completed the thought.

“I can help,” Holly said. “I’ve never seen shoo fly pie before. Or tasted it.” She rested knitting needles with an inch-long swath of vibrant green suspended from them on the arm of her chair and jumped to her feet. Bettina started to rise too, but Holly urged her to stay put and hurried out looking as excited as if experiencing shoo fly pie had been a life-long dream.

“I haven’t either,” Pamela said, and followed Holly toward the dining room and thence into the Frasers’ spacious kitchen.

Woofus was sprawled in his favorite corner when they entered. He raised his head in alarm and trotted to Wilfred’s side. The shaggy beast reached Wilfred’s thigh, but he cowered against his master, trembling visibly.

“The poor fellow,” Wilfred sighed. “He’s gotten so much better than when we first brought him home from the shelter, but I guess he’ll always be nervous.”

“Some people just are.” Sympathy replaced excitement on Holly’s expressive face. “And dogs,” she added. Then excitement returned. “Oh! Is this it?” She stepped toward the high counter that separated the cooking area of the Frasers’ kitchen from the eating area, with its well-scrubbed antique pine table and four chairs.

The pie—which had been the source of the tantalizing aroma—was a magnificent creation. An elegantly fluted crust, flaky and golden brown, framed a filling that was lustrous in spots and so dark it was nearly black, while other spots resembled the granulated topping of crumb cake.

“Molasses,” Wilfred supplied. “That’s the main ingredient, and brown sugar. But it’s sometimes called shoo fly cake, because the brown sugar is mixed with flour and shortening and layered in.” He gazed at his creation fondly. “It’s still warm. That’s the best way to serve it, with whipped cream.”

Next to it on the counter sat a pottery bowl cradling a gleaming drift of whipped cream, and seven of Bettina’s sage-green plates, dessert-size, were stacked nearby. Near the stove, a carafe with a plastic cone balanced on top held freshly made coffee, and on the stove was a steaming tea kettle. Mugs for coffee and tea had been staged on the pine table. A rustic wooden tray held colorful cloth napkins, forks and spoons, and a sugar bowl and cream pitcher.

“I’ll watch you cut the first slice,” Pamela said. “Then I’ll take the tray to the coffee table and come back to pour coffee and do tea.”

Wilfred picked up a large knife and aimed it right at the center of the pie. With two long strokes he carved out a wedge and used a pie server to transfer it to a plate. The dark syrupy filling oozed onto the sage-green plate, blurring the wedge’s neat geometry.

Holly was gazing back and forth from Wilfred’s face to the pie. “That is just too amazing,” she cooed. “You are an awesome cook.”

Wilfred laughed. “You can catch more flies with a spoonful of sugar than with a barrel of vinegar—but we’ll see. The proof of the pudding—or pie, in this case—is in the eating.” He prepared to cut another slice, then paused. “It’s an Amish recipe,” he said. “Bettina and I first tasted it on a trip to Pennsylvania. I think the Amish invented it long ago for times of the year when no fresh fruit was in season for pies.”

Holly picked up the large spoon that had been staged next to the bowl of whipped cream.

“Go ahead.” Wilfred smiled. “And I’ll keep slicing.”

Pamela returned to find an assembly line in progress. Four plates containing pie wedges topped with drifts of whipped cream were lined up along the counter, and Holly was waiting with her spoon poised over the whipped cream bowl as Wilfred slipped a fifth slice onto a plate.

“Tiny ones for Nell and Roland,” Pamela said. “Nell said she can tell just by the aroma that it’s loaded with sugar. And neither one wants anything on top.”

“I’ll cut this one in half for them then.” Wilfred plied his knife on the slice he had just served and transferred a sliver to a fresh plate. “None of the slices are very big though—with one pie for seven people. And I only put in a tiny bit of sugar when I whipped the cream. But to each his own.”

Pamela slipped behind the counter, removed the plastic drip cone from the top of the carafe, and bore the carafe to the pine table. Tea bags waited in two of the sage-green mugs. Before she poured the coffee, she returned to the stove to fetch the kettle. Wilfred had turned off the burner under the kettle while Pamela was delivering the tray to the coffee table, but the wisps of steam drifting up from its spout showed that the water was just right to set tea steeping. Once the tea was in progress, she filled the remaining mugs with coffee.

Pamela and Holly set out for the living room together, Pamela bearing the mugs of tea for Nell and Karen, and Holly with two slices of shoo fly pie—a little one bare of whipped cream for Nell and the other for Karen.

Nell leaned forward to receive her tea with one hand and her pie with the other. “This looks just right,” she said, “though really people don’t need to eat any sugar at all.” She lowered mug and plate to the coffee table.

Across from her Bettina laughed. “Don’t need, perhaps. But what’s the harm in a special treat now and then? And Wilfred so enjoys his baking.”

Karen studied her own piece of pie as if wondering whether she’d be able to manage such a hearty serving.

“Go ahead,” Bettina urged as Karen blushed. “You’re a nursing mother—eating for two.”

After a few more trips, everyone had pie, coffee had been delivered to the coffee-drinkers, Pamela and Holly had resumed their seats, and Wilfred had joined Roland on the hearth.

“Perfectly amazing,” Holly pronounced as she lowered her fork to her plate after her first bite. She closed her eyes and curved her pretty lips into a blissful smile.

Pamela had to agree. The whipped cream, smooth and cool and barely sugared at all, was the perfect complement for the pie filling, dense and warm and achingly sweet, but with an elusive slightly metallic flavor. And the flaky crust set off the contrast to perfection.

Even Roland was impressed. “Excellent work,” he commented, turning to Wilfred. “Very skillfully done.”

For a few minutes, there was no sound but the click of forks against plates and the occasional moan of pleasure, even from Nell. Then Bettina asked Karen how she and Dave were adjusting to parenthood, and soon separate conversations had popped up here and there. Pamela and her neighbors on the sofa, Karen and Nell, were chatting about the early signs of spring appearing in their yards—daffodils!—while Holly enthused to Bettina about the latter’s good fortune in having a husband who was such an amazing cook, and Wilfred and Roland talked about cars.

Suddenly, however, all conversation came to a halt when the doorbell rang.

“Who on earth could that be at this time of night?” Bettina said, pulling herself out of her armchair. Wilfred rose too, and stood poised near the fireplace as Bettina stepped toward the door.

She reached for the knob, pulled the door open, and took a few steps back. From where Pamela sat on the sofa, she could see Bettina’s face only in profile. But even in profile it was clear her eyes were wide and her mouth agape.

“Of . . . of course,” Bettina said in a voice that barely resembled her own. “Yes, he’s here . . . but what . . . ?”

Wilfred by this time had reached his wife’s side and slipped a comforting hand around her waist. From the porch came indistinct voices that nonetheless sounded authoritative. Then Wilfred turned back toward the living room. “Roland?” he said. “You’re wanted outside.”

Looking more irritated than curious, Roland bounded up from t. . .