Knit of the Living Dead - Peggy Ehrhart A Knit & Nibble Mystery

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      “He?” Pamela raised her brows.

      “Clayborn always calls killers he.” Bettina reached for the sandwich half.

      But Pamela wasn’t ready to resume eating yet, though she leaned toward the straw protruding from the tall glass that contained the vanilla milkshake and sipped a long sip. Fortified by the cool, creamy sweetness, she went on.

      “You told him Mary put a photo of the costume on her website? So anybody who visited The Lyon and the Lamb would know to look for Bo Peep at the bonfire if they wanted to kill her?” Bettina nodded, chewing. “And that it was just a last-minute thing that Dawn ended up in the Bo Peep costume and Mary was the sheep?”

      Bettina swallowed and nodded. “Everything. I told him everything,” she said. “He pointed out that The Lyon and the Lamb might not have the following that we imagine—especially among killers.”

      “Well, he does think they’re all men.” Pamela cocked an eyebrow and laughed a tiny laugh. She plucked the frilled toothpick from the other half of her sandwich and picked up the sandwich. Mayonnaise was the ideal accompaniment, she reflected as she bit into it. Anything more would disturb the perfect balance of the rye bread, Swiss, and ham.

      For a bit, there was silence again as they alternated bites of sandwich with forkfuls of slaw and nibbles of pickle. But when the plates were bare except for a few crumbs and the empty paper cups that had held the slaw, Pamela spoke again. She’d just remembered the most curious aspect of the crime scene.

      “What about the strands of yarn around Dawn’s neck?” she asked suddenly. “Did you bring that up? It was like the killer had a plan, like he meant to tie them, but then didn’t.”

      Bettina looked up from the glass that had contained her milkshake. She’d just used the straw to slurp the last few drops. “Of course I brought it up,” she said, her good-natured expression softening the impatience implied by the words. “I’m as curious about that as you are.”

      “And what did he say?”

      Bettina twisted her lips into a disgusted zigzag. “He said once the killer realized that the blow to the head had killed her, he realized he didn’t need to strangle her.”

      “Did Detective Clayborn have any idea about why the weapon of choice—even if the killer didn’t follow through with the strangling—was yarn?” Pamela asked as the server approached.

      “I didn’t ask him.” Bettina looked slightly defeated. “You and I didn’t talk about that.” She glanced up and requested the check, and the server gathered plates, tableware, and glasses and carried them away all in one trip.

      “You know what we have to do next, don’t you?” Pamela said.

      “What?”

      “We have to talk to Nell again.” Pamela leaned across the worn wooden table and lowered her voice. “Her neighbor is in danger. I’m convinced the person who killed Dawn thought the woman in the Bo Peep costume was Mary Lyon.”

      “Nell gets upset when she thinks we’re getting involved in things better left to the police,” Bettina said.

      “We’ll just have to convince her that this is really important. Mary’s life is in danger and Detective Clayborn isn’t going to do anything about it.”

      Chapter 5

      “I know you walked here,” Bettina said as they stepped out onto the sidewalk, “but I’m not walking up that hill to the Palisades, especially in these shoes.” She extended a foot to display, below the hem of her chic pants, a suede pump in a dramatic shade of burgundy. “Anyway, my car is by the police station.”

      Pamela followed her friend through the narrow passage between Hyler’s and the hair salon that offered a shortcut from Arborville Avenue to the town park, the police station, and the library. Yellow garlands of crime-scene tape still warned that the stand of trees where Dawn’s body had been found was off-limits. And a charred circle at the left edge of the park marked the spot where the bonfire had blazed. Soon it would be raked and covered with topsoil, and grass seed would be sown in the spring.

      Pamela and Bettina climbed into Bettina’s faithful Toyota, and a few minutes later they were turning onto the hillside block where Nell and Harold lived. The neighborhood that Arborvillians called the Palisades was so named because the east half of Arborville was built on the slope formed by the backside of the cliffs that overlooked the Hudson River. Nell and Harold’s substantial house was built of stones, rugged natural stones cleverly fitted together in no apparent pattern. A flight of steps that curved through thickly planted azaleas and rhododendrons led to its front door.

      Bettina pulled up to the curb and parked, but there was no need to mount the steps to greet at least one of the Bascombs. Harold was standing in his driveway wielding a bamboo rake.

      “The leaves are really starting to fall now,” he said by way of greeting after they had climbed out of the car. Dried leaves like crumpled bits of brown paper littered the driveway and sidewalk. “Nell sent me out to tidy up.”

      “She’s at home then?” Bettina offered a genial smile. Pamela smiled too, not the social smile she produced when she thought the occasion demanded a smile, but a genuine expression of the great fondness she felt for Harold.

      “Two visits in two days?” Harold’s answering smile was teasing. “And yesterday’s visit, as I recall, touched on the fact that our neighbor, Mary Lyon”—he nodded toward the house across the street—“had implied on her blog that she would be present at the Arborville Halloween celebration wearing a Little Bo Peep costume that turned up instead on a murder victim.”

      The smile became more teasing as Harold went on. “I know,” he said, “that Arborville’s finest, under the guidance of the redoubtable Lucas Clayborn, are doing the very best they can to solve this crime. But something tells me that in certain circles his efforts are seen as falling short. Particularly because there’s what might be construed as a yarn connection here.”

      “Can you read Nell’s mind too?” Pamela asked with a laugh.

      Harold laughed in response and he flourished the rake. “Not well enough to know that the driveway and sidewalk needed raking before she told me.”

      As they started toward the steps that led to the front door, he added, “She doesn’t approve of your sleuthing, you know. But I do.”

      * * *

      Nell met them at the door looking rather cheflike, in a white canvas bib apron that covered the front of her chambray work shirt and reached past her knees.

      “Hello,” she said. “What brings you two up here today?”

      “We have something to discuss with you,” Pamela said.

      Nell had a look that was both probing and kind, a slight widening of her faded blue eyes coupled with a softening of her lips. She aimed the look at Pamela and then at Bettina. “Sounds important,” she observed. “I’ve got something on the stove. Come on back in here.”

      They followed her down the long hall to the kitchen. There, one glance made it obvious that an ambitious project was underway. A huge cookie sheet occupied the table. In the center of the cookie sheet was a mountain of pumpkin innards, the flat oval seeds tangled in the strands of fiber as in a moist net. On Nell’s avocado-green stove, a large pot sat atop a burner turned high. The steam escaping from under its cover and the low, rumbling sounds suggested that intense cooking was taking place inside.

      “The Halloween pumpkin,” Nell explained. “We don’t carve it—it’s just as festive whole. And when the flesh is cooked”—she gestured toward the burbling pot—“it goes into the freezer and comes back out next month for pumpkin pie. Waste not, want not, as your Wilfred would say.”

      “And the seeds?” Bettina asked.

      “I clean them off

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