LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 2

      Stepping into the fluorescent brightness of the library from a night lit only by moonlight and dancing flames had been a shock to the eyes. Now Pamela sat blinking at one of the library’s long tables. The festive mood had fled, the costumes, wigs, and makeup that had turned her fellow Arborvillians into fanciful revelers seemed garish under the fluorescent lights, and she was wondering what had become of Nell.

      The police station shared a parking lot with the park and the library. Gus had only to run twenty yards to summon an officer to the little stand of woods where the body in the Bo Peep costume lay. Then, within minutes, a police bullhorn had directed everyone in the park to proceed to the library, which had been hastily opened for the occasion. A second officer had joined the first near the body, and Pamela and Bettina had answered enough basic questions to establish they weren’t the people who had first come upon the body and had only been drawn into the stand of trees by a panicked scream. Then they had been dismissed and told to join the muttering crowd trooping across the parking lot. But Nell had been instructed to remain behind, along with the quivering young couple who had happened upon the body.

      The revelers had been directed into the library’s main room upstairs, with the overflow shunted into the large community room downstairs. The children’s library, which was also downstairs, had been set aside for police interviews, which were now in the process of being conducted.

      “Those poor young kids!” Bettina said from the chair across the table from Pamela in the upstairs room. “They won’t forget this Halloween for a long time.” She still wore the jaunty red yarn wig and that, plus the circles of rouge she’d added to her usual makeup, made her woeful eyes and downturned mouth seem more playacting than the genuine concern they reflected.

      Seated next to her, Wilfred squeezed his wife’s arm through the flowery cotton of her puffy sleeve. He had removed his wig to reveal his thick white hair, and his air of genial sympathy made him a familiar and comforting presence.

      Harold Bascomb had been talking to Wilfred when the bullhorn’s announcement boomed over the park. Now he sat next to Pamela, still wrapped in the long cape that had made him a convincing vampire. He had apparently pocketed his vampire teeth as he and Wilfred climbed the library steps together. Like his wife, Nell, he was in his eighties, but he was rangy and vigorous, with an energy that belied his thatch of white hair.

      “Nell’s fine, I’m sure,” Pamela said. “The police will want to talk more to me and Bettina—and to everyone who was in the park tonight. But Nell recognized the body, or thought she did—though there was a hat over the face. So they’d want to confirm that it’s really Mary Lyon before they do anything else.”

      Bettina nodded. “Clayborn is probably on his way—if he’s not already out there—and the crime scene van from the county.” Bettina reported on the doings of the Arborville police, as well as nearly everything else that happened in Arborville, for the Arborville Advocate. The Advocate was the town’s weekly newspaper, characterized by both its fans and its detractors as the town’s source for “all the news that fits.”

      “Mary Lyon.” Harold shook his head sadly. “She and Nell weren’t all that close, but Mary lived right across the street. Mary wrote that blog, The Lyon and the Lamb: Adventures in Woolgathering.”

      Pamela knew the blog, which often touched on knitting-related topics. During a chat on the sidewalk in front of the Co-Op Grocery, she’d once invited Mary to join Knit and Nibble. Mary had protested that she didn’t have time, and Pamela—who had regretted the invitation the moment it popped out of her mouth—had been just as glad. Mary could be prickly, and with Roland DeCamp as a member, Knit and Nibble already had its share of prickliness.

      Harold, meanwhile, had stood up and was scanning the room. Every seat at every table was full, as well as the comfortable armchairs along the windows and the little stools in front of the computer monitors. People were chatting quietly, or napping with their heads on their folded arms, or staring at their mobile devices—apparently even princess and demon costumes included pockets. Some had shed the most dramatic parts of their costumes. A Big Bad Wolf simply looked like a mild young man with a mop of blond hair wearing a furry set of long underwear, his head, with its long snout and terrifying teeth, resting on the floor next to his armchair.

      “Do you see her anywhere?” Bettina asked, tilting her head upward.

      “Nell would have found us, I’m sure,” Harold said. “We’re not far from the door.” He swiveled his neck and continued scanning. “I’m looking for Brainard,” he explained. “Mary’s husband.”

      Pamela heard herself gasp, a quick intake of breath like a backward sigh. She hadn’t thought of that. Mary and her husband would no doubt have come out to the parade and bonfire together. What fun would it be to come alone? So where had he been when her venture into the little stand of trees led to her death? And where was he now? And did he know what had happened to his wife?

      “Here you all are,” said a voice behind Pamela, a voice that seemed unfamiliar. But Bettina’s expression had cheered and she was mustering a version of her usual smile for the newcomer. Pamela twisted in her chair and recognized Holly Perkins. Holly was another member of Knit and Nibble, but not quite her buoyant self under the stress of the current circumstances—thus the fact that her voice had been drained of its habitual enthusiasm.

      Holly was one of the youngest members of the knitting club, in her twenties. She and her husband, Desmond, owned a hair salon in Meadowside. For Halloween, she’d used her expertise with hair to create a stunning Bride of Frankenstein coiffure that sprang up from her forehead in rippling waves, accented with white streaks at the temples.

      “Have you been here the whole time?” Pamela asked as Holly circled the table to sink into the chair Wilfred had vacated for her.

      Holly pointed toward the ranks of shelves that filled a wide alcove near the library’s entrance. “Both of us. We ended up back there, in a row of study desks against the wall. Desmond fell asleep with his head on a desk—he can sleep anywhere.” She leaned forward. “Somebody said there’s a body? And the police are questioning everyone who was at the bonfire?”

      Bettina nodded. “Some kids, teenage kids, found it back in those trees along the edge of the park. They were looking for a private spot to make out, I expect, and certainly didn’t expect to come upon a dead person. The girl started

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