Irish Knit Murder

Book 9: Knit & Nibble Mystery

by Peggy Ehrhart

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

Peggy Ehrhart's eighth Knit and Nibble Mystery will appeal to fans of cozy mysteries, knitters, and other crafters. Perfect for fans of Betty Hecht, Sadie Hartwell, and Leslie Meier.



A member of a prominent New Jersey family has been found dead on St. Patrick's Day—and Pamela Paterson and her knitting club have a parade of suspects . . .



The Listers have been part of Arborville society for generations—though seventy-something Isobel Lister doesn't fit the role of upper-crust heiress. She's always been a colorful character, and her fun-loving spirit is on display at the senior center celebration as she performs some beloved Irish songs. But just minutes later, her body is found backstage.



It's hard to imagine who'd target a harmless old lady, and Pamela finds herself suspecting everyone. There's the Wiccan who thought St. Patrick wasn't so saintly; the woman upset about cultural appropriation who feels the commercialization of shamrocks is a sham; the two men Isobel was seeing, who could have been green with jealousy—and old friends and family who may have feared Isobel would spill their secrets. But Pamela's on the case, and that means for the killer, the jig will soon be up . . .

Release date: February 21, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Bettina Fraser’s amiable features usually radiated cheer, but at the moment her expression revealed that her feelings had been hurt.

“The Advocate may be a weekly,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the many conversations echoing in the large room, “but many people—most people—in Arborville appreciate a newspaper that focuses exclusively on their own town.”

“Of course they do.” Pamela Paterson reached an arm around her friend’s shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze. “I don’t see the County Register’s Marcy Brewer here to cover the senior center’s St. Patrick’s Day luncheon.”

“She wouldn’t come to a thing like this. She thinks she’s too important.” Bettina’s head drooped forward, and the scarlet tendrils of her carefully styled hair quivered. The scarlet coiffure offered a striking contrast to the bright Kelly green of her ensemble, a silky blouse and tailored wool pants in the same shade.

Pamela had overheard the offending comment too. A woman sitting at a nearby table had nudged her companion, pointed at Bettina, and remarked that she was a reporter for the Arborville Advocate—whereupon her companion had replied, making no effort to keep her voice down, “Oh, that silly thing. Nobody takes it seriously or even reads it.”

“Anyway,” Pamela added, with another squeeze, “they’re coming around with coffee and dessert now, and the entertainment is about to start.”

The luncheon menu had been a very appropriate corned beef and cabbage, with boiled potatoes and Irish soda bread still warm from the oven. As Pamela spoke, a server whisked away the plates bearing the luncheon remains, and a few moments later dishes of chocolate ice cream appeared, as well as a platter of cookies the shape and color of shamrocks. Another server circled the large table filling coffee cups.

Cheered by the sight of the cookies, the ice cream, and the steaming cup of coffee, Bettina seemed happy to nod and agree when a woman across the table, sixtyish and cheerful, began to praise Meg Norton, who had organized the event. “The volunteers from the high school too,” she added, “cooking and serving all this delicious food.”

“Too bad about the flower delivery though,” observed a gray-haired woman who had acknowledged the holiday by looping a bright green scarf around her neck.

“Flowers? I don’t see flowers.” This was uttered by a woman who had heretofore been focused more on her dessert than on the topic at hand.

“You don’t see them because they weren’t appropriate,” said the gray-haired woman. “Not appropriate at all!”

“What was wrong with them?” Bettina inquired, postponing the bite of cookie she was about to take.

“They were all white,” the gray-haired woman explained. “Lilies and things, mournful things, not like something for a party—and worst of all, there was a card that read ‘In deepest sympathy for your loss.’ Meg was horrified, but by the time she saw the card, the delivery man had gone.”

But that conversation was cut short when a lively run of notes drew their attention to the piano near the back wall of the room—Arborville’s spacious rec center had been pressed into service because the senior center was too small for an event like this. A man no less dashing for being well into middle age had just launched a melody that Pamela, after a moment of thought, recognized as “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

He paused after a few verses and swiveled around to acknowledge the sprinkling of applause with a nod. Then he advanced toward a microphone on a stand a few yards from the piano and flung an arm out toward a doorway in the back wall. Into the doorway stepped a statuesque woman smiling a bright, lipsticky smile. The undulating waves of her blonde hair evoked the Hollywood of decades past, but her sleek leggings and stiletto heels brought a more up-to-date glamour to the look. The ensemble was completed by a form-fitting green sweater in a shade that was more Day-Glo than Kelly.

“Isobel Lister!” the man exclaimed, arm still extended. “Let’s hear a big welcome for Arborville’s own Isobel Lister!”

The woman took his place at the microphone after an inaudible but flirtatious exchange with him, and he returned to the piano. In a moment Isobel Lister’s amplified voice, husky but pleasant, rang out in celebration of “Whiskey in the Jar.” As she sang, she scanned the room, bestowing a teasing wink here and an insinuating smile there, particularly at the piano player. Meanwhile, the fingers of her right hand snapped in time to the rhythm, and her feet—impractical shoes notwithstanding—hopped about in a kind of jig.

The applause that followed the song was hearty and well-earned. When it had died down enough to make conversation possible, the gray-haired woman in the bright green scarf leaned forward.

“She’s over seventy, you know,” the woman said. “I don’t know how she does it. I couldn’t wear those shoes.”

But there wasn’t time to explore the topic further. After brushing her hand across her forehead and exclaiming, “Whew! That was fun,” Isobel turned toward her accompanist. “Hey, Mr. Piano Man,” she said, “how about ‘Molly Malone’?”

And she launched into a raucous version of that familiar tune, complete with a hint of Irish brogue.

Bettina had rummaged in her handbag for her phone as soon as Isobel started to sing. Now she left her seat and moved to the side of the room, where she could angle for good shots without obstructing other people’s views of the performance. Pamela found herself tapping her foot in time to the music, cookies and coffee forgotten. The women facing her across the table had rotated their chairs to face the makeshift stage. Pamela couldn’t see their expressions, but their bobbing heads suggested they were as caught up in the lively rhythms as was Pamela herself.

“Here’s a classic one,” Isobel said, as the applause for “Molly Malone” trailed off. Turning toward her accompanist, she added, “We’ll slow things down a bit . . . and try not to cry. ‘Danny Boy’!” She closed her eyes, tossed her head back, and sang the opening line, “Oh, Danny Boy . . .” with a hint of a smile, as if savoring some memory awakened by the song.

A hush fell over the room as Isobel’s husky voice lingered on each phrase of the song, with her accompanist supplying a gentle chord here and a delicate trill there. The respectful silence made the loud squeak coming from a chair near the edge of the room all the more startling. Heads swiveled in the direction of the squeak, eyes stared as a stern-looking elderly woman rose, seized her handbag and walking stick, and stalked from the room, but Isobel carried on. She seemed so caught up in the world evoked by the song as to be oblivious of her surroundings, unruly though an audience member might be.

“That was a sad one,” she declared as the last few notes of the song faded away, but before the applause began. When the applause died down and it was possible to be heard again, she said, “Let’s cheer things up with something fun. Shall we?” She glanced around the room as if inviting agreement. A few people nodded and she nodded back, smiling mischievously as her eyes continued to roam.

Then the roaming stopped and, as if addressing one particular person, a woman about Isobel’s own age sitting at a table near the front, she went on. “You know, we Arborville girls weren’t as goody-goody as some people thought. I could tell stories”—she looked into the distance and laughed—“but I won’t, just now at least.”

She nodded at her accompanist and offered him a mischievous smile. He played a few chords, but before she began to sing, she added, “This one isn’t really Irish—but it’s got clover. That’s the same thing as shamrocks, right?”

Bettina, by this time, had returned to her seat next to Pamela. As Isobel belted out the opening lines of “Roll Me Over in the Clover,” she grabbed Pamela’s arm and gave a delighted giggle. Then she reached for another shamrock cookie.

A few people began to laugh, and the heads that had bobbed to “Whiskey in the Jar” commenced bobbing again. But apparently not everyone was delighted with the choice of material. The woman Isobel had seemed to address before launching into the song slipped out of her seat, edged toward the side wall, and tiptoed quickly to the entrance.

The remainder of the concert was something of an anticlimax, though the audience members smiled, tapped their feet, and swayed back and forth as “The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls” gave way to “My Wild Irish Rose,” followed by “Erin Go Bragh,” “Mother Machree,” “Foggy Dew,” and “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”

It was coming up on one thirty when Isobel leaned toward the microphone and said, in her husky voice, “You’ve been a great audience and we’re going to wind things up now. But first”—she flung out an arm—“let me introduce this handsome guy at the piano. Nate Riddle!”

Then, with a saucy head-toss, she belted out the opening lines of “The Wild Rover.” Verse followed verse until, nearing the song’s conclusion, Isobel spread her arms wide. The tempo slowed and she lingered over the last few words as if plumbing them for every bit of meaning. The piano punctuated the end with a resounding chord, Isobel dipped forward in a dramatic bow, and the room echoed with the sound of applause.

After another bow, and a generous round of kisses blown to the audience and her accompanist, Isobel darted back through the doorway from which she had emerged.

“She’s really something,” Bettina declared when normal conversation was possible again. “‘Arborville’s own,’ the pianist said. It’s amazing that I’ve lived here all this time and I never came across her before. But I got some good photos for the Advocate.”

Many shamrock cookies remained on the platter in the middle of the table, and servers were circulating with fresh pots of coffee. Soon chatter and laughter had replaced the sounds of Isobel’s voice and the accompanying piano. Bettina had been drawn into conversation by the woman sitting on the other side of her and Pamela was content to drink her coffee and nibble on a shamrock cookie—just a simple butter cookie, really, with buttercream icing tinted green, but the shamrock shape made it festive and fun.

“Will she come back out, I wonder,” inquired the gray-haired woman with the bright green scarf from across the table. She and the others who had turned their chairs around when Isobel began to sing were now facing the table again. “She was sitting up there during the lunch”—the woman pointed at a table close to the piano—“next to the piano player.”

“She certainly earned her coffee and cookies,” said the cheerful sixtyish woman sitting next to her. “And I’ll bet a few people would even like her autograph.”

“Yes,” the gray-haired woman laughed, “her adoring public. And she’s certainly not shy. So where is she?”

The same question seemed to have occurred to Meg Norton, the event organizer. Looking past the heads of the women facing her across the table, Pamela watched as Meg, a pleasant-looking woman in her sixties, with undemanding features and well-groomed hair tinted an inconspicuous shade of brown, made her way toward the door in the back wall.

She was gone no more than two or three minutes. When she emerged, she was still alone, but she no longer resembled herself.

Her expression evoked the cover graphics of a pulp paperback: a desperate woman with forehead creased, eyes wide, and mouth distended as if frozen in mid-scream. Meg did not scream, however. Instead, she clapped her hands, like a schoolmarm calling for order. Due more, perhaps, to the expression on her face than to the handclap, the room fell suddenly silent. It was as if a plug had been pulled on the laughter and chatter.

“Isobel is dead!” Meg announced. “She’s just . . . dead!”

Instantly, Bettina was on her feet. She snatched up her phone and launched herself toward the doorway where Meg stood.

“Where are you going?” called a voice as she passed.

“I’m a reporter,” she replied, slowing down only briefly. “Bettina Fraser from the Arborville Advocate.”

Suddenly the festive room was no longer festive. No one spoke, not even in shocked whispers directed to tablemates. The fanciful decor—featuring giant shamrocks with leaves the size of dinner plates, tissue honeycomb rainbows, papier-mâché leprechauns, and pots of foil-wrapped chocolate “coins”—seemed a puzzling mockery of the mood that had descended over the gathering. Even the cheery ensembles, which included green sports jackets for some of the men, now appeared out of place.

Without quite thinking about what she was doing, Pamela leapt from her seat and followed Bettina as she wove between tables, nearly catching up with her as they approached Meg, who still stood in the same spot from which she had made her announcement. But instead of speaking to Meg, Bettina veered around her and swerved into the hallway that led to the back entrance of the rec center. Pamela reached her friend’s side just as Bettina screeched to a halt in the doorway of the office that had been pressed into service as a green room.

Bettina lifted her phone, steadied it with both hands, and aimed it at the body of Isobel Lister, who was sprawled across the office’s linoleum floor with her eyes staring sightlessly at the acoustic tile ceiling. The desk chair and a coat rack had been tipped over, and Isobel’s long blonde hair was in disarray, suggesting that her current state was the result of a vigorous struggle.

Pamela was about to speak—saying what, she wasn’t sure—but her attention was drawn to something visible beyond the windows in the heavy double doors further along the hallway. She stepped away from Bettina’s side, leaving her focused on her task, and approached the double doors. They opened onto a small patio, beyond which was the parking lot that served the police station and the library.

Wanting to get a better look, she pushed one of the doors open and leaned outside. A van with the words “Beauteous Blooms of Timberley” lettered on the side in an elegant script was parked at the edge of the lot closest to where she stood. The driver’s head swiveled toward her (the door had made a scraping sound as it opened), then swiveled back to face straight ahead. The van’s engine awakened with a snarl and the van sped toward the parking lot’s exit.

A voice from behind Pamela was calling Bettina’s name. Pamela turned to see that Meg had gathered her wits and was putting her organizational talents to use, albeit in a situation she had probably never imagined.

“Bettina,” she repeated, “I’ve called the police, and they should be here momentarily. I’m sure they would want the crime scene left just as it is.” She directed her gaze toward Pamela, who had pulled the heavy door shut with a clang but was still standing near it. “Pamela! No one should be back here. Let’s all return to our tables.”

Two officers had already arrived by the time Pamela and Bettina slipped into their seats. Pamela recognized both officers, Officer Sanchez—Arborville’s only female police officer—with her sweet heart-shaped face, and Officer Anders, trying to disguise his gentle boyishness by frowning.

Exempting herself from her suggestion that all three of them return to their tables, Meg met them at the room’s entrance. A subdued hum of conversation had replaced the silence that followed her grim announcement, making it impossible to hear what she was telling the officers or how they were responding. But she gestured toward the doorway in the back wall and soon the small procession—Meg in a pea-green pantsuit and the officers in navy blue—was making its way across the polished floor.

“The next thing that will happen is that Clayborn will come,” Bettina said, addressing her comment not to Pamela but to their tablemates. Pamela herself was quite aware that, after examining the crime scene to determine that it really was a crime scene, the uniformed officers who responded to the 911 call would summon Arborville’s chief, and only, detective.

It was a curious fact that, idyllic a town as Arborville was, murders were not unknown to its small police department—murders carried out by nice people, people one would have thought were the very last people to ever do such horrible things. And more curious still, Pamela seemed often to be at hand when the murders were discovered—or sometimes to actually stumble upon the bodies herself. With a talent for noticing things overlooked by others, she sometimes realized the identity of a killer even before the police did.

Meg accompanied the two officers as far as the door leading to the back hallway and the crime scene beyond. Apparently being told by Officer Sanchez not to follow them any further, she lingered near the door, keeping a vigilant eye on the luncheon guests, perhaps having been tasked with making sure no one left.

Five minutes passed. Then Officer Sanchez appeared in the doorway and spoke briefly to Meg. Meg clapped her hands, the buzz of conversation ceased, and Officer Sanchez announced, in a firmer voice than one would have suspected from her sweet heart-shaped face, that everyone was to remain and the police would be taking statements.

At that moment, Detective Clayborn arrived, moving purposefully across the polished floor in his nondescript sports jacket. The expression on his homely face was nondescript as well, save for the slight tightening around the eyes that Pamela had come to recognize as signaling curiosity.

As soon as Bettina turned into her driveway, the front door of the Frasers’ house opened and a portly man wearing a plaid shirt and bib overalls stepped onto the porch, accompanied by a shaggy dog that was nearly half as tall as he was. The man hurried down the walk that led from the porch to the driveway, followed by the dog, reaching Bettina’s faithful Toyota just as she emerged.

“Dear, dear wife!” exclaimed the man, who was Bettina’s husband, Wilfred. “It’s nearly five p.m. Woofus and I have been so worried—though I know St. Patrick’s Day celebrations can be quite lively.” He bent to study Bettina’s face. As if responding to an unspoken signal, he held out his arms and Bettina sagged into an embrace.

“Pamela”—Wilfred gazed across the Toyota’s roof to address her—“what on earth has happened?”

Though not included in the hug, Pamela felt nearly as comforted as if Wilfred’s arms surrounded her as well. His genial presence, and even that of the timid but solicitous dog—who was at that moment sniffing her foot—soothed the chaos unleashed in her mind the moment Meg made her startling announcement.

“Isobel Lister is dead.” Pamela sensed that her expression was bleak, and once the words sank in, Wilfred’s face mirrored that bleakness.

“How tragic!” he exclaimed. “She was such a lively person, and not that old—though we’re all getting up there.” Wilfred himself was approaching seventy, and he referred to Bettina as his child bride.

Bettina stirred against his chest and a muffled voice, or more like a wail, emerged from the region of the overalls’ bib: “She was murdered, Wilfred. She didn’t just . . . die.”

“We must all go inside,” Wilfred declared, “and sit down.”

As if he understood his master’s words, Woofus led the way, and soon the three humans were sitting around the scrubbed pine table in the Frasers’ spacious kitchen, while Woofus occupied his favorite spot against the wall. To make the little gathering complete, Punkin the ginger cat soon crept in to nestle against Woofus’s shaggy flank.

The kitchen offered consolations beyond a cozy atmosphere and comfortable chairs. From the direction of the stove came the aroma of simmering corned beef, traceable to a large two-handled pot on a back burner. It blended with the aroma of something sweet and bread-like, with a hint of caraway seeds, emanating from the oven.

“I suspect,” Wilfred said, noticing the new arrivals appreciating the significance of the aromas, “that the corned beef dinner I’ve planned won’t be the first corned beef you’ve eaten today.”

“That was the luncheon menu.” Bettina leaned over and squeezed her husband’s hand. “But what else could they serve for St. Patrick’s Day, really? And not everyone in the seniors’ group has a spouse who’s as talented a cook as you! A lot of them probably even live alone and were just as glad to have their main meal at lunchtime.” The catch in her throat as she spoke suggested that, despite her seeming focus on the mundane, she was still tremulous from that afternoon’s events.

Wilfred had been happy to take over cooking duties when he retired—as well as setting aside his suits for bib overalls—and Bettina had been happy to relinquish kitchen duties. She had been a willing but uninspired cook, serving the same seven meals, in the same order, week in and week out for most of her married life.

“It smells delicious,” Pamela said, “and I could eat corned beef every . . .