Knitty Gritty Murder

Book 7: Knit & Nibble Mystery

by Peggy Ehrhart

Genres: Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries; Culinary Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

Pamela Paterson and the Knit and Nibble ladies have plenty of talents that don't revolve around yarn. But their penchant for patterns has led to a dangerous hobby they just can't quit—unraveling murders.



Most times of the year, the tight-knit community gardens in quaint Arborville, New Jersey, overflow with seasonal vegetables and herbs. But who planted the dead body? Farm-to-table enthusiast Jenny Miller had a cookbook in the works when she was suddenly found strangled by a circular knitting needle in her own plot. Now, the pressure is on Pamela and her neighbor Bettina as they weave together clues in search of the person who kept Jenny's renowned heirloom plants—and budding career—from growing. With suspects and victims cropping up like weeds, it'll take a whole lot more than green thumbs and creative minds this spring to entangle the crafty culprit . . .

Release date: March 30, 2021

Publisher: Kensington Cozies

Print pages: 290

Sample

Pamela Paterson was enjoying her coffee, her crumb cake, and the welcoming atmosphere of her best friend’s kitchen. She was not, however, enjoying the conversation.

“We agreed,” she said at last, “that you would never again bring up the topic of Richard Larkin.”

Bettina Fraser stopped in mid-sentence, and the cheer that usually animated her mobile features vanished. “I was just saying that Wilfred had a chat with Rick this morning about gardening,” she said. “It’s May and everyone’s thinking about their yards and Richard Larkin lives right across the street. Wilfred and I can hardly avoid him. I wasn’t saying anything about . . . you know . . .” Bettina shook her head sadly. “I’ve given up on that.”

Pamela sighed. “I know. It’s just . . .” She stared into her coffee mug.

Richard Larkin was a handsome single man who had bought the house next to Pamela’s a few years earlier. His interest in Pamela had been immediate and obvious, but despite Bettina’s encouragement and even Pamela’s own daughter’s approval, Pamela had resisted his overtures. No one, she believed, could replace the dear husband she’d lost in a tragic accident long ago.

As the ensuing silence threatened to become uncomfortable, Bettina leapt up from her chair. The sudden motion startled Woofus the shelter dog, who had been napping in his favorite spot, sprawled against the kitchen wall. He watched for a moment as Bettina leaned toward Pamela, then lowered his shaggy head and closed his eyes again.

“Let me warm up your coffee,” Bettina chirped, reaching for Pamela’s mug. “And I’m ready for another piece of crumb cake. How about you?”

Pamela had eaten barely half the piece already on her plate. She let Bettina take her mug and she picked up her fork and teased off a bite of crumb cake as if to acknowledge Bettina’s peacemaking gesture. “It’s delicious,” she said, “but I’m still working on this.”

Bettina carried Pamela’s mug and her own past the high counter that separated the eating area of her kitchen from the cooking area. “I’ll just warm the carafe a bit,” she murmured from the stove, and she returned a few minutes later with two steaming mugs.

“I don’t see how you can drink it black,” Bettina observed as she added a liberal amount of sugar to her own mug and followed with a generous dollop of heavy cream.

“Habit, I guess.” Pamela shrugged.

“That’s why you’re thin and I’m not.” The comment was more a statement of fact than a lament. Bettina wasn’t thin, and she wasn’t tall, but she loved clothes. Though she and Pamela lived in a small suburban town, Bettina’s wardrobe would have delighted even the most devoted fashionista. This morning she was wearing a stylish jumpsuit in crisp lavender cotton, accessorized with dangly earrings made from antique gold coins. The effect was striking with her scarlet hair, which she herself described as a color not found in nature. Pamela’s lack of interest in the clothes her tall, slim body could have displayed to such advantage was a constant mystery to her friend.

Bettina stirred her coffee and added a bit more cream, then helped herself to another square of crumb cake from the platter before her. But before she could take up her fork again, the doorbell chimed. Woofus raised his shaggy head and cast a troubled glance in Bettina’s direction.

“It’s okay, boy,” she cooed in a soothing voice as she rose and headed for the doorway that led to the dining room and the living room beyond. The next moment, her powers to soothe were put to a more demanding test.

Pamela heard the front door open, and from the living room came Bettina’s voice, tinged with alarm, saying, “Oh you poor dear! Whatever is the matter?”

The response was an indistinct high-pitched muddle followed by a pause. The words that followed the pause were, however, enunciated clearly: “And she was dead!”

Pamela had been holding her coffee mug, just about to take a sip, when the doorbell chimed. Now she noticed that the jolt she’d received when she heard those words had roiled the coffee’s dark surface into a tiny tsunami. She set the mug down, lowered both hands to the table’s surface, and took a deep breath.

Bettina’s voice took over then, murmuring disjointed phrases having to do with sitting down and drinking coffee and explaining again what on earth had happened. In a moment, Bettina reappeared, leading the woman Pamela recognized as Marlene Pepper. Marlene was a fixture of the Arborville community, the same age and shape as Bettina, a genial woman who Pamela chatted with when her trips to the Co-Op for groceries overlapped with Marlene’s.

At the moment, though, Marlene barely resembled herself. Instead of the tidy pants outfits or suit skirts she was normally seen in, she was wearing a pair of dirt-stained and baggy jeans, topped with a dirt-stained flannel shirt, untucked. The smooth gray-blond hair that normally curved around her plump cheeks was in disarray, and instead of the placid cheer that suited her round face, her expression combined shock and grief. Her eyes had the red and watery look of someone who had recently cried and was likely to cry again.

Woofus stared at the newcomer for a second, seemed to decide she wasn’t a threat, and resumed his nap.

Bettina settled Marlene into a chair, paused to give her shoulders a gentle rub, then hurried toward the stove to fetch a mug of coffee.

“It’s nice and hot, and here’s cream and sugar,” she said as she set the mug in front of Marlene. She gestured at the cream pitcher and sugar bowl and hurried off again to fetch a spoon. “And there’s crumb cake from the Co-Op,” she added when she returned.

Marlene shook her head and left the coffee untouched. “I just keep seeing her,” she whispered, “stretched out on the ground, right across a row of tomato seedlings. And at first I just thought she’d fallen, so I bent down to ask if she was okay and to help her up. But she was . . .” Marlene shuddered. “Her eyes were wide open, just staring. And there was”—she shaped a lopsided circle with her hands—“one of those knitting things that’s like a loop of wire with two ends that look like knitting needles . . .” Her voice modulated into a wail. “It was around her neck.”

Marlene buried her face in her hands. Bettina rose from her chair and resumed rubbing Marlene’s shoulders, making comforting sounds.

“It’s just a blessing I found her before her mother did,” Marlene went on when she’d recovered a bit, though her cheeks were now slick with tears. “Jenny and Janice share the garden plot and they’re both . . . they were both. . . such early birds, up there digging away first thing in the morning.”

Bettina darted away again and returned with a fresh kitchen towel that she’d dampened at the sink. The damp towel and Bettina’s ministrations restored Marlene to something like her normal self, though with quavering voice and weepy eyes.

She explained that of course she’d called 911 immediately—thank goodness she had her phone with her—and the police had come and she’d been at the community gardens for the past two hours telling the same story to more than one officer and finally to Detective Clayborn. They’d put the yellow tape up and turned away everyone who showed up expecting to spend a pleasant few hours planting seeds and setting out seedlings from the garden center. And soon the news that the body of Jenny Miller had been found in her garden plot would be all over Arborville. That was for sure. And Bettina agreed.

“I wanted you to hear about it first,” Marlene explained, directing her words at Bettina, “since you write for the Advocate.” The Advocate was Arborville’s weekly newspaper. “People are going to blame the community garden program, and I’m the chair, and . . .” Marlene began to weep again and lowered her face into her hands.

By that evening the news was indeed all over town.

Bettina steered her faithful Toyota toward the curb in front of Holly Perkins’s house and she and Pamela climbed out only to be hailed by Nell Bascomb, arriving on foot from farther up the hill. They paused on the sidewalk as Nell hurried toward them, her white hair floating in the slight May-evening breeze.

“What a sad, sad thing!” Nell exclaimed, panting slightly. “And to happen at the community gardens, of all places, just when everything’s coming alive again.”

“Very sad,” Bettina and Pamela agreed in unison.

“I almost wondered if we should postpone our Knit and Nibble meeting tonight,” Nell said, shaking her head and gazing bleakly at nothing. “Because everyone will be so—”

“Upset,” Bettina supplied.

“Curious.” Nell finished her sentence. “And you know how I disapprove of the gossipy chatter that events like this give rise to.”

Arborville, New Jersey, was a pleasant town inhabited by pleasant people. Yet over the years a shocking number of murders had taken place within its borders.

Pamela touched Nell’s arm comfortingly. “I’m sure everyone will want to just focus on their knitting,” she said. “I know I do.”

Pamela was just finishing up an ambitious project she’d started right at the new year—a sweater for her daughter, Penny, with the yarn and pattern chosen by Penny as a Christmas present. Penny would be arriving home from college for the summer in just a few days and Pamela hoped to have the sweater ready—though Penny would need to wait for cooler weather to wear it.

The three women started up the walk that led to Holly’s broad front porch. Her house, like most of the houses in Arborville, was old and charming, a wood-frame house with clapboard siding. Pamela rang the doorbell and in a moment the door swung back to reveal Holly, dressed in black leggings and a slouchy black shirt with a cowl neck, but she had added a perky cotton apron that would have suited a 1950s housewife.

“Come in, come in!” she greeted them, cordial but not quite her usual vivacious self.

Nell was the first to step over the threshold. As Bettina followed, a male voice called from partway down the walk, “One more coming!”

Pamela turned to see Roland DeCamp advancing toward the porch, dressed as usual in an expertly tailored pinstripe suit and carrying the elegant leather briefcase that he used in place of a knitting bag. She paused to greet him as he climbed the steps, and she smiled at the courtly gesture with which he waved her through the door.

The balmy May evening hadn’t required coats. With no need to divest themselves of outerwear, the knitters proceeded directly to Holly’s living room, where two people already occupied the streamlined ochre sofa that was the focal point of Holly’s midcentury modern décor. Tossed over the back of the sofa was the color-block afghan that had been Holly’s Knit and Nibble project for many months, a dramatic juxtaposition of squares and rectangles in shades of orange, turquoise, and green.

Karen Dowling looked up with a timid smile and seemed about to introduce the woman who was her sofa-mate, but Holly stepped forward quickly. “We have a visitor,” she said, “a potential new member.”

Pamela and Bettina looked at each other. Visitors were one thing, but a new member would have to be approved by the whole group. Was it wise to let this woman think she’d be welcome, only to turn her down later?

As Pamela’s mind, sometimes overactive, occupied itself with this worry, Holly went on. “Knitters,” she said, “meet Claire Cummings. She’s married to Dennis, from the hardware store—my home away from home.”

“Mine too,” Karen murmured.

Holly and Karen, and their respective husbands, were recent owners of old houses in need of renovation. They’d met while poring over paint chips at Arborville’s hardware store and become fast friends, despite their quite obvious differences. Holly was as outgoing as Karen was shy, and Holly’s vivid good looks, with her dark hair—which tonight sported a bright pink streak—and quick smile, offered a striking contrast to Karen’s pale blond prettiness.

Holly gestured in turn toward Nell, Bettina, Pamela, and Roland and listed their names, then added, “Sit down, everyone, please.”

Nell headed for one of the angular chairs that flanked the coffee table, but Holly took her arm and steered her toward a more comfortable choice, a love seat upholstered in fabric that featured abstract flowers rendered in shades of bright orange and chartreuse. Pamela joined Nell there, and Bettina and Roland ended up in the angular chairs as Holly took a seat on the sofa.

Karen had already been at work on her project when they entered. From its delicate apricot-colored yarn, it looked to be another garment for her daughter, Lily, who was now nearly one and a half. And after the introductions, Claire had gone back to studying a knitting magazine, apparently contemplating what to do next on the project waiting in her lap.

Wasting no time, Roland snapped open his briefcase and extracted an in-progress back, or front, and the skein of charcoal-gray yarn to which it was tethered by a long strand. Pamela was happy to join the other three in their industry.

The sweater for Penny was a simple crew-neck pullover made special by stripes in shades of pink, blue, pale green, and brown. The width of the stripes varied in a random way, from just a few knitted rows to several inches wide. Pamela was just finishing up the last sleeve, which featured a long stretch of pale blue at the shoulder interrupted by a narrow band of dark brown. She was switching from pale blue to dark brown when Holly’s voice disturbed her concentration.

“Such a shocking event in our little town,” Holly commented. “We’re all thinking about it, I know.”

Many people, though perhaps not all, were indeed thinking about it—because no sooner had Holly finished speaking than from either side of her on the sofa and from one of the angular chairs came words of agreement: from Karen a meek “So sad,” from Claire a more assertive “Terrible,” from Bettina an expansive “Marlene Pepper is in a frightful state.”

“Have you heard anything more than what the Register reported online?” Holly asked, leaning forward.

“I talked to Detective Clayborn this afternoon,” Bettina said as Nell closed her eyes and gave a resigned sigh.

“Jenny Miller was our tenant, you know,” Claire cut in. “She rented one of the apartments above the hardware store—a lovely person, such a shame.”

Sitting next to Karen and Holly on the sofa, Claire seemed the average between them, though more than a decade older. Neither as fair and retiring as Karen nor as vivid and outgoing as Holly, she was a pleasant-looking, medium-sized woman with soft brown hair worn in a casual style.

She rummaged in her knitting bag and pulled out a circular knitting needle, like a length of flexible wire twisted into a loop, with ends like conventional knitting needles. “Was that really true—what the Register said about the murder weapon?” She tugged at the ends to tighten the loop, then grimaced, and said, “I guess you could choke someone with it.”

“It was,” Bettina said, “but Clayborn’s not planning to interview all the knitters in town, though he did ask me if circular needles are common.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Holly smiled, but too faintly to evoke her usual dimple.

“However, he has been talking to the other gardeners,” Bettina added.

“Resentments simmering in the garden plots?” Roland spoke up suddenly. “I’ve never thought the community gardens were a good idea. People are all for socialistic ideas like sharing public land for free until they actually do it.”

Nell stirred and opened her eyes, which had been closed ever since Bettina first spoke. “The community garden program has been going for decades,” she declared. “This . . . horrible event . . . could have happened anywhere.”

“But it happened in one of the garden plots.” Roland set his knitting down, obviously warming to his topic.

“The community gardens enable people who don’t have land of their own to grow their own fresh vegetables,” Nell said firmly.

“And Jenny was writing that book,” Claire chimed in. “Grow, Cook, Eat, all about healthy food and growing your own.”

“Does Detective Clayborn think one of the other gardeners did it?” Karen whispered, her pale eyes wide.

“No suspects yet,” Bettina said, “but of course he wanted to find out if anyone saw or heard anything.”

“And did they?” Roland asked.

“Apparently not.” Bettina shook her head and her earrings swayed from side to side. “A few people were still working in their plots at sundown and no one saw or heard anything suspicious. But the murder seems to have happened at the garden plot—because there was evidence of a struggle. Some of the tomato seedlings had been uprooted.”

“She was still at work past sundown, then? And the killer somehow knew she’d be there?” Holly leaned forward again.

Bettina nodded, and her earrings swayed from front to back. “It happened sometime after sundown but before Marlene Pepper showed up the next morning. Clayborn said the ME might be able to give a more specific time, though it makes sense she wouldn’t have kept working once it really got dark.” Bettina twisted her brightly painted lips into a rueful smile. “It’s just a blessing, like Marlene said, that Jenny’s mother wasn’t the one to find her.”

“A blessing,” Claire agreed. “They shared the plot, but Jenny liked the idea of living on her own. What twenty-something wants to have to tell Mom where she’s going and what she’s doing all the time? And she was supporting herself quite well, working for that local caterer.”

“Poor Janice!” Absent the good cheer that so suited her features, Bettina scarcely resembled herself. “Losing a child . . . I just can’t imagine . . .”

“Do you think it was a random killing?” Holly’s large eyes grew larger. “Or could Jenny have had an enemy?”

Claire gasped. “A jilted boyfriend, perhaps! She was so very pretty, beautiful even—”

Sitting next to her, Pamela had sensed Nell growing more and more restless. Now Nell lowered her knitting to her lap and half rose. “This is not constructive,” she said sternly. Her faded eyes, which were usually kind, had become stern too, and she shifted her gaze from Bettina to Holly to Claire and back to Bettina.

It was hard to tell which of them appeared more chastened, but Claire resumed studying her knitting magazine and Bettina made a great show of picking up her needles, from which dangled the beginnings of something fashioned from taupe-colored yarn, and launching a new stitch. Nell lowered herself back onto the love seat and returned to her knitting, which Pamela recognized as one of her do-good projects.

When Nell wasn’t knitting winter scarves for the Guatemalan day laborers, infant caps for the hospital, or Christmas stockings for those forgotten by Santa, she created knitted animals for the children at the women’s shelter in Haversack. At the moment she was working on what Pamela recognized as an oval that would form the body of an elephant, wrought from fuzzy lavender yarn.

For a time there was silence, not a companionable silence but an awkward silence, during which Pamela considered and rejected several conversational gambits. The others were presumably doing the same, searching for just the right fresh, interesting idea to replace the grim topic of Jenny’s murder.

It was Holly who spoke first. “It’s getting to feel so summery,” she observed, looking brightly from person to person.

It was not the freshest idea or the most interesting, but it would serve. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, as Bettina’s husband, Wilfred, would say.

“Yes, indeed,” Roland said. “Good point”—his lean face was as intense as if he was seconding an opinion expressed by one o. . .