Knitmare on Beech Street

Book 10: Knit & Nibble Mystery

by Peggy Ehrhart

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

Knit and Nibble member Pamela Paterson, and her best friend, Bettina, stumble on a body in a once grand Victorian house when they join a group welcoming new residents to Arborville—and must figure out if old secrets killed the new neighbor . . .

When Pamela, Bettina, and their friends show up at the Voorhees House to greet its new owner, they’re met with a most unwelcome sight: a dead body on the kitchen floor. Tassie Hunt just inherited the old Victorian, which had been occupied by a reclusive widow for many years and had a reputation for being haunted. But Tassie would have been unlikely to be spooked since her career involved debunking such paranormal phenomena.
 
Her demise sets off a new flurry of gossip and ghostly speculation in the New Jersey town, of course—and it’s tempting to think spirits were indeed involved considering there’s zero evidence so far of foul play. A nosy neighbor reports strange lights and sounds, and a man obsessed with the Victorian era starts photographing the place from the street. But it won’t take long before Pamela and Bettina are moving in on a killer . . .
 
Praise for Peggy Ehrhart and the Knit & Nibble Mysteries!

“This is one of the best in the series.” —Kirkus Reviews on Death of a Knit Wit
 
Knitting tips and delicious recipe included!

Release date: November 28, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Voorhees House did not face Beech Street. It had been built long before the Arborville neighborhood where it was located even was a neighborhood, and it had stood in solitary Victorian splendor oriented toward a rambling dirt road that no longer existed. Later, a developer had bought all the surrounding land, laid out modern streets named for trees (though his building project had involved the loss of many trees), and built the houses that were now its neighbors—all of which properly faced the new streets that their construction had necessitated.

Standing on the sidewalk that ran past Voorhees House, Pamela Paterson and Bettina Fraser were therefore contemplating the side of Voorhees House. The house was shabby now, but the clapboard siding, the fish-scale shingles, the turret, and the small stained-glass window testified to its former glory.

Bettina had no sooner spoken, saying, “They’ll be here soon, I’m sure,” than a car pulled up across the street and three women climbed out. “Such a thoughtful thing the ANGWY committee does,” she added, “welcoming new arrivals to the neighborhood.”

“I guess Arborville Newcomers’ Group Welcomes You is as good a name as any for the committee,” Pamela commented, “even if the acronym doesn’t sound all that cordial.” As associate editor of Fiber Craft magazine, Pamela was perhaps more attuned than most people to the subtleties of language. “Tassie Hunt, from what I’ve heard of her, doesn’t really strike me as the suburban type though. I hope she doesn’t find Arborville boring.”

“She’s a writer,” Bettina pointed out. “Maybe she’s looking for solitude.”

Snatches of conversation reached them as the women, led by Marlene Pepper, straggled across the street.

“I still can’t see why a young—well, young-ish—woman would want to move into this old place,” Faye Lamb was insisting, as if reiterating a topic she had already explored on the drive over.

“Well, she did inherit it,” Marlene said.

“She could sell it and buy something nice,” Faye responded, “nice and modern, a townhouse even, where other people take care of the grounds. Look at these weeds, not to mention that the house itself is falling apart.”

“Terrible eyesore,” Libby Kimble agreed. “My mother, bless her soul—she’s gone now—but our house is just around the corner, and she always took a detour rather than having to drive down Beech Street.”

“Oh!” Faye reached for Libby’s hand. “I did hear that your mother had passed. I’m so sorry!”

“Thank you!” Libby squeezed Faye’s hand and then released it. “I’m doing okay.”

They had arrived at the spot where Pamela and Bettina waited.

“Here we are,” Marlene announced, lifting high a basket adorned with ribbon and bearing a tag that read “Welcome to Arborville.” “No goodies though. She was adamant about that.”

“She was? I didn’t know.” Libby wrinkled her forehead.

“Adamant.” Bettina nodded. “She was thin, to judge by her book-jacket photo anyway. That’s the price you pay. No goodies—though, Pamela, how you can be such a terrific cook and still be so slender will always be a mystery. Being tall helps, I suppose.”

Bettina herself wasn’t thin, or tall, but her interest in fashion was acute and her scarlet hair—a color she admitted was unknown in nature—added considerable panache to her ensembles. She had dressed for the June morning in a chartreuse linen sheath accessorized with kitten heels in bright yellow patent and a necklace and earrings of Murano glass beads in shades that evoked a kaleidoscope.

Two of the women who had joined them resembled Bettina in size and shape, though not in style, dressed as they were in comfortable cotton pants and shirts. Marlene Pepper, like Bettina, was in her fifties and Faye Lamb was perhaps a generation older. Libby Kimble was older too, but slender to the point of being almost frail, with pale skin and colorless hair. Light eyes looked out from behind glasses whose rims were colorless as well. Her outfit, like those of the other women, seemed chosen for comfort.

“So—we’re all ready”—Marlene looked around brightly—“and I guess the front door is around here?” She took a few steps to the right, murmuring, “Such an odd thing, a sideways house.”

A narrow concrete path led from the sidewalk to a set of steps that seemed to have been added more recently to the end of the long porch—added, perhaps, when the new street plan left the house with its curious orientation. Marlene led the way, followed by Bettina and the others, with Pamela bringing up the rear.

The wooden porch floor was worn and creaky, and the railing, with its delicate spindles, was sadly faded. The door reminded Pamela of her own, with its oval window and graceful carved flourishes, though her house was not as old as this one.

Marlene aimed a finger at the doorbell and pressed, and a faint ring echoed behind the door. No hastening footsteps could be heard, however, even though Tassie had been quite aware that the committee was due that morning.

“Upstairs perhaps,” Bettina observed, “and she didn’t hear the bell. This house is huge.”

Marlene rang again, pressing several times, and ding ding ding echoed inside. Still there was no response.

“Sometimes back doors have doorbells too,” Pamela suggested.

She led the way down the steps, down the narrow concrete path, and along the sidewalk, until they reached another concrete path. From this path, steps led up to another porch, smaller and with a plainer railing, onto which the back door opened.

Saying “I’ll try again,” Marlene hefted the gift basket and headed up the steps. As she pressed the doorbell, the rest of the group joined her on the porch one by one, with Pamela again bringing up the rear.

Marlene turned away after a few minutes and much enthusiastic pressing of the doorbell. “No answer,” she murmured. “And I was sure ANGWY was clear about the date and time.”

She shrugged, edged past the others, and started down the steps. Bettina, however, stepped closer to the door and tipped her head to peer at the doorframe. “I’m not sure it’s closed all the way,” she said and gave the door a tentative push.

The door swung open easily. After a shrug and a glance at the other women, Bettina raised a stylishly shod foot and stepped over the threshold.

“Tassie?” Her voice rang out with a cheerful lilt. “Hello? It’s the ANGWY committee.”

She disappeared inside, but a moment later she was back in the doorway. Her cheer had vanished, leaving her face a wan canvas that made her careful makeup appear garish.

“Pamela?” she quavered, bobbing this way and that to locate Pamela at the back of the small group. “Pamela. . . you . . . we . . . need to . . .” She swallowed. “There’s been . . .”

The other three women stepped aside, clearing a path to where Bettina stood. Ignoring her heart’s sudden lurch, Pamela took a few quick steps and joined her friend in the doorway. Bettina backed up against the door, anchoring it in a fully open position, and Pamela slipped past her into the kitchen.

A woman lay sprawled on the ancient linoleum, a slender blond woman wearing a light cotton robe printed with small flowers in shades of blue and lilac. There was no blood, nor any sign of injury that Pamela could see.

She stood rooted to the spot for a long moment, her hand raised to her chest as if to guard against the possibility that her heart’s intense leaping might actually propel it from her body.

“Is something wrong in there?” came a voice from the porch.

But before either Pamela or Bettina could answer, Marlene Pepper stepped into the kitchen. “Oh,” she said. It was more a choking sound than a word. “Oh,” she repeated. “I guess that’s why Tassie didn’t . . .”

Faye Lamb joined them then. She took in the scene with a glance and whimpered, “What should we do? I’ve never . . .” Her eyes roamed the room, with its worn counters and out-of-date appliances. Suddenly she gasped, a sharp intake of breath that seemed loud against the shocked silence. “She was poisoned,” Faye breathed, aiming a trembling finger at a spot between the sink and the refrigerator.

That spot was occupied by a pie, blueberry to judge by the purplish syrup oozing from the haphazard slashes—steam vents—carved into the top crust.

“Nobody’s eaten any,” Bettina observed, still a bit tremulous. “It’s a whole pie. She’d have to have eaten some to have been poisoned.”

“And she doesn’t eat sweets, anyway.” Marlene had joined the conversation. “So . . .”

“Why is it here then?” Bettina left her position against the door, which stayed open nonetheless, and crossed the floor to examine the pie. She bent close, then raised her head. “It looks homemade,” she declared.

“Someone must have brought the pie,” Marlene said. “Tassie wasn’t alone then.” She scrutinized the body on the floor with the same intensity Bettina had directed at the pie. “No injuries though, not obvious anyway. She looks like she’s asleep.” As if it had just occurred to her, she added, “I guess we should call the police.”

“Of course we should call the police!” Bettina seemed a bit recovered from her shock—and had perhaps concluded that she was the likely person to take charge, given that she reported on police doings (and all else that happened in Arborville) for the town’s weekly newspaper.

She extracted her phone from the depths of her chic handbag—yellow patent, to match her shoes. Her carefully manicured fingers fluttered over its screen for a few seconds, then she looked up. “Done,” she announced, with a decisive head shake that set the scarlet tendrils of her hair vibrating.

Faye Lamb, meanwhile, had strayed toward the doorway that led from the kitchen to the next room. “There wouldn’t be any harm, would there, if we . . .” She left off, directed a hopeful glance at Bettina, and continued. “. . . if we sat down in there? I’m feeling a little shaky.”

Indeed, above the collar of her neatly pressed shirt and framed by a tidy gray-brown bob, Faye’s expression was bleak, and her hand grasped the doorframe with a grip that seemed desperate.

“I don’t see the harm,” Marlene said before Bettina could answer. She swept forward and slipped her free arm around Faye’s waist. In her other hand she still carried the welcome basket.

Libby followed, and Bettina and Pamela. Within a minute or two, all five women had taken seats at the long table that dominated the room.

“Dining room, I guess,” Marlene observed as she surveyed their new surroundings.

It was quite obviously the dining room, though rendered gloomy by the heavy velvet drapes that cloaked the bay windows. The long table, which could have accommodated a dozen people, was made of highly polished mahogany, as were the chairs that surrounded it. Their graceful curves and ornately carved backs echoed the table’s design. Dark wooden moldings outlined the windows and doorframes and edged the walls at floor and ceiling. The walls were papered in a rich, deep burgundy enlivened with creamy arabesques shaped from delicate flower garlands. Up above, that motif was enlarged in a frieze that bordered the ceiling.

“Spooky.” Faye shuddered. “I couldn’t eat in a room like this. No wonder they say Voorhees House is haunted.”

“Edith Voorhees survived here alone all those years without the ghosts getting her,” Marlene said.

“I guess Tassie was a relative?” Faye glanced from Marlene to Bettina and back.

“Must have been.” Bettina joined the conversation. “She can’t have been Edith’s daughter though—Edith Voorhees was ancient.”

Ninety-six, to be precise. The Arborville Advocate had carried the obituary, written by Bettina, and then the house had sat empty for a year. Unconsciously, Pamela ran a finger over the table’s surface and lifted the finger close to examine it in the gloom. No dust. Tassie, or more likely someone hired for the purpose, must have spent days making the house even somewhat habitable before she moved in. Pamela herself found the décor lovely—her own house was furnished with vintage treasures rescued from thrift shops and rummage sales—but the appeal to someone like Tassie, or at least like what she imagined Tassie to have been, was something of a mystery.

These ruminations were interrupted by a piercing siren. It subsided into a resentful yowl, indicating that a police car had slowed and then stopped somewhere nearby.

Bettina was on her feet in an instant. She dashed through the doorway that led to the kitchen, leaving the other four women to regard each other in the gloom.

“What will they do?” Faye whispered.

“Look around,” Marlene said, “and then ask questions.”

They were silent then, but the air seemed heavy—weighed down by the women’s unspoken thoughts, perhaps, or by the house’s own particular history.

Bettina’s voice broke the silence, her words reaching them from beyond the kitchen doorway. “She was lying on the floor just like this when we walked in.” Responding to a question Pamela couldn’t hear, Bettina went on, sounding a bit more excited. “No,” she said. “I don’t have a key. The door was unlatched, almost open really. I just gave it a little push. I didn’t force it. And she was expecting us—or would have been . . . if she was still alive. The ANGWY committee was delivering a welcome basket.”

Pamela rose and peeked through the doorway. Bettina had turned a distressing shade of pink, though the officers who had responded to the 911 call were among Arborville’s least intimidating (not that anyone on Arborville’s police force could actually be described as intimidating): Officer Sanchez, with her sweet heart-shaped face, and boyish Officer Anders.

Officer Sanchez, holding a small notepad and a pen, was focused on Bettina. Officer Anders had dropped to one knee next to Tassie’s body and was peering closely at her face. He looked up and addressed Officer Sanchez. “Call Clayborn?” he inquired.

Officer Sanchez nodded. Then she caught sight of Pamela. “And the two of you are the committee?” she said.

“No.” Bettina shook her head, setting her dangling earrings in motion. “We’re not actually even on the committee. We just came along . . . well, I came because Tassie—the new resident—had sent the Advocate some material about her forthcoming book. She is . . . was . . . a writer.” Bettina paused and took a deep breath. “The committee is in here.” She took a step toward the doorway, and Pamela edged to the side as Bettina neared the threshold.

The committee members were on their feet, standing uncertainly near the doorway as if expecting to be asked to leave. But Officer Sanchez, who had followed Bettina into the room, waved them back.

“Be seated. Please be seated,” she said, and watched while they all returned to their chairs, with Marlene and Faye and Libby exchanging nervous glances. “Detective Clayborn is on the way,” Officer Sanchez explained when they were settled. “He’ll talk to each of you individually.”

She returned to the kitchen, and Pamela heard Officer Anders say something that sounded like, “Seems to be natural causes.”

“Clayborn should take a look though, and he’ll probably want the crime scene unit from the county,” Officer Sanchez responded. “She does appear to have been a young, healthy woman.”

They all stared at each other again, in a silence that was so intense it was like a physical presence. Five minutes passed, and then five more, before overlapping voices coming from the kitchen included a new, deeper, voice, suggesting that Detective Clayborn had arrived. After a brief conference with the officers, he stepped through the doorway and entered the dining room.

Dour as he was, he brought with him a welcome energy that lightened the atmosphere, though the expression on his homely face was as unremarkable as his nondescript sports jacket.

“I’m Detective Lucas Clayborn from the Arborville Police,” he said, still on his feet and shifting his gaze slowly from one woman to another. A slight tightening around his eyes when he reached Pamela and Bettina was the only hint that, in their case, the introduction was unnecessary. Bettina, of course, talked to him frequently in connection with her reporting for the Advocate, and—curiously—this was not the first or even the second crime scene she and Pamela had stumbled upon. More curiously still, the clues that enabled the police to identify and arrest the town’s evildoers were sometimes provided by Pamela’s and Bettina’s sleuthing.

“I’ll be talking to each of you individually,” Detective Clayborn went on. He extracted a small notepad and a pen from somewhere inside his sports jacket and focused on Libby, who was sitting in the chair closest to the head of the table. “Name?”

He flourished the pen, and she responded “Libby Kimble” in a faint and tentative voice.

After he’d written down everyone’s name, including Bettina’s and Pamela’s, he nodded sharply, as if to himself, and gestured toward a doorway beyond the far end of the table. From where she sat, Pamela’s view through the doorway was of forest-green walls, a swath of burgundy velvet draping a window, and part of a stiff-looking sofa upholstered in similar dark tones.

“This way, please, Ms. Kimble,” he said, escorting Libby through the doorway and closing the door behind them.

Pamela was the second-to-last person to be summoned through the doorway, leaving Bettina alone at the long table. The room she entered had evidently been the living room of the Voorhees House.

Seated on the sofa facing Detective Clayborn, who was in a stiff chair upholstered in the same dark fabric, she could see the entry with, to the left, the door whose doorbell had been so ineffective in summoning the house’s occupant. To the right, stairs rose to the second floor against a wood-paneled wall enlivened by a stained-glass window that turned sunlight into dim rays of red, blue, and gold.

The room was clean. As she’d surmised in the dining room, a great deal of effort must have gone into making the house habitable before Tassie moved in, given that its previous occupant—for decades—had been an eccentric recluse, and the house had then sat empty for a year. But it was very shabby. The carpet was threadbare, the upholstery was worn, the drapes were faded, and the fireplace’s marble mantel was chipped and stained.

The kitchen had clearly been updated at some point in the twentieth century—perhaps in the 1940s, when Edith would have come to the house as a young bride. But the other rooms Pamela had seen seemed almost to have retained the décor that furnished them when the house was new.

“Now then . . .” Detective Clayborn interrupted Pamela’s musings. “What was your purpose in visiting Voorhees House this morning?”

Pamela repeated the explanation Bettina had given Officer Sanchez, about the committee’s welcoming mission and Bettina’s journalistic interest. And she added that she and Bettina were friends—at which Detective Clayborn seemed to suppress a resigned sigh—and Bettina had invited her to come along.

“No, I did not see the body right away,” she answered in response to Detective Clayborn’s next question. “Bettina was the first to enter the kitchen.”

“Did you or anyone else touch or move anything after you entered the kitchen?” Detective Clayborn asked.

“No . . . no.” Pamela shook her head. “Bettina looked at the pie . . .” Not sure whether Detective Clayborn had noticed the pie, she clarified. “The blueberry pie on the counter?” He nodded. “In fact, she looked very closely, but she didn’t touch it.”

“Was there some reason Ms. Fraser was particularly interested in the pie?”

“Well, it was a pie”—Pamela suppressed a smile as she pictured her and Bettina’s mutual friend Holly Perkins adding, Duh!—“but actually,” she went on, “the committee was wondering why a pie was there at all because Tassie had made it clear that she didn’t welcome edible gifts, especially sweet ones.”

Detective Clayborn bent toward his little notepad and wrote furiously for a minute.

“And then Ms. Fraser called nine-one-one, and you all went into the dining room?”

“Faye Lamb was feeling shaky, and there weren’t enough chairs in the kitchen,” Pamela said. “We thought it would be okay—better than having her faint.”

Detective Clayborn tipped his head in a businesslike nod, his homely face expressionless. “That’s all.” He nodded again. “Please ask Ms. Fraser to join me in here.”

Officer Anders was stationed in the kitchen near where Tassie Hunt still lay on the floor in her summery cotton robe. He gestured for Pamela to make a wide circle around the body and then opened the back door and ushered her onto the porch. She would wait for Bettina, of course—they had come together in Bettina’s car.

But when she reached the street, she realized she would not be waiting alone. Marlene was perched on a folding chair on the sidewalk. The chair, Pamela learned, had been thoughtfully provided by a neighbor.

“Very nice woman.” Marlene pointed toward the house to the right of Voorhees House. “Of course, she was awfully interested in what was going on.” Marlene waved at a small, older woman sitting on that house’s front porch.

And, as if to reward that interest, a huge silver van turned onto Beech Street. On its side was the logo of the county sheriff’s department. The van slowed as it neared Voorhees House.

“Libby and Faye are at Libby’s house,” Marlene said. “They walked. Like she said, Libby lives just around the corner on Catalpa. She’s making coffee and tea, and we’re all invited to join them there when Detective Clayborn is through with Bettina. Libby and Faye are both very rattled.”

Pamela was longing to get back to her own comfortable house, but Marlene stood up, as if to present her case from a more commanding position. “Please do come.” She grasped Pamela’s hand. “I know Bettina will be willing—she’s such a sympathetic soul.”

So. . .