Chapter Seven
Lionel Dunes’s funeral, held beneath the somber gaze of the saints whose lives were commemorated in St. Willibrod’s impressive stained-glass windows, had been well-attended. Residents of Arborville, who knew him from his volunteer work at the church and elsewhere, had turned out in great numbers, as had his colleagues at the Timberley accounting firm where he had been a partner. His wife’s colleagues from Wendelstaff College had been present as well—and many of the students involved in the sustainable living project, including Amos Clark.
At the ancient cemetery overlooking the Hudson River from the crest of the Palisades, Pamela and Bettina had picked their way over the faded grass—Pamela in sensible shoes and Bettina in elegant black suede pumps—to the grave that was to receive Lionel Dunes. They had watched as his coffin was lowered into the ground, where he joined the ranks of those who, even before Arborville became Arborville, now slumbered for eternity.
Now they were back at St. Willibrod’s, in the modern appendage that was the church hall. Voices echoed off the walls and the polished floor, merging into an indistinct hum, as people greeted each other and coalesced into chatting groups.
Food was available, however—lots of food. It was laid out on long tables at the far end of the room, near the apron of the stage, whose burgundy velvet curtains were now closed. Chatting groups formed and re-formed as people peeled off to investigate the buffet offerings. Bill, standing off to the side of the tables, caught sight of Pamela and Bettina and offered a discreet salute.
“I’m certainly ready for lunch,” Bettina confided, “after hiking all over that cemetery in my good shoes. Shall we see what’s available?” She peered toward the buffet table.
She set off across the floor, but she had taken only a few steps before she was accosted by a woman Pamela recognized as Bettina’s friend, Marlene Pepper. Marlene was a pleasant, if talkative, woman about the same age and shape as Bettina—though she lacked Bettina’s fashion sense. Today she was wearing a nondescript but respectable navy-blue skirt suit, in contrast to Bettina’s chic black crepe coatdress accessorized with a triple-strand pearl necklace and dangling pearl earrings.
“Quite the impressive turnout,” Marlene commented. “Of course, he was a longtime fixture in the community.”
She nodded toward a slender middle-aged woman garbed in a simple black sheath. The woman was disengaging herself from another woman, who had just hugged her and was now peering intently into her face.
“That’s Aileen Conway,” Marlene added. “Otherwise known as Mrs. Lionel Dunes. Do you know her?”
“Uh, no.” Bettina raised a hand to her mouth. Her nail polish today was a tasteful natural shade. “Poor thing! What a shock she’s had!”
“All alone now.” Marlene shook her head mournfully. “They had no children, though of course there are her students”—Marlene paused a moment, then went on—“like him.”
“Him,” Pamela realized, was Amos Clark, in a suit, as she’d noticed at the funeral. He stepped out from a small group milling around near Aileen—there seemed to be no formal arrangement for anything like a receiving line—and hugged her too. A pair of young women emerged from the group, students, Pamela thought. Aileen bent toward them, seemingly enjoying the exchange as a tall redheaded man looked on sympathetically from his post against the wall.
“Have you been to the buffet?” Marlene asked, but then she noticed their empty hands and answered her own question, saying, “I guess not. Me neither, and I expect the food is really good.” She led the way to the far end of the room, edging through the crowd and talking all the while, to the effect that the catering had been entrusted to Lionel’s favorite restaurant in Timberley.
The buffet tables had been arranged so that people could serve themselves from either side, and stacks of plates, along with silverware wrapped in a white linen napkins, waited at both ends.
“A lot to do at short notice, to arrange an event like this,” Marlene concluded as they waited for a chance to step closer to the buffet. “But Aileen does know how to organize things, and Ted Stewart has been so helpful and such a comfort. Why, you’d almost think—”
But at that moment, Marlene took advantage of a break in the crowd to reach out and seize a plate and a bundle of silverware. Pamela and Bettina did likewise and began to edge along the table, where they first encountered trays of mini quiches with delicate fluted pastry edges. As Pamela studied the selection, voices drifted from across the table.
“I wonder if the sheep-shearing will go ahead on Saturday,” a woman mused to no one in particular.
“It has to,” another woman chimed in. “The poor things get very hot during the summer, and summer will be here before we know it.”
Pamela added a mini quiche from the tray labeled “Crabmeat Quiche” to her plate.
“Not a moment too soon,” came another voice, though subsequent fragments of dialogue indicated that the focus was still on sheep. Voices chimed in, as Pamela moved along the table selecting smoked salmon with capers on pumpernickel, a stuffed mushroom cap, a grilled jumbo shrimp on a skewer . . .
“Icelandic sweaters make great souvenirs . . . they wear like iron,” someone murmured.
“New Zealand wool . . .”
“Shetland Islands . . .”
She had reached the cheese platter, where the Stilton beckoned. Now someone was talking about lambswool. Pamela settled a few crackers next to the bit of Stilton on her plate.
“Lambswool pillows,” came a voice. “Really love mine—also those pelts. They make great rugs.”
“So soft . . . pillows, and the pelts. That lanolin smell is nice once you get used to it.”
“Look at those shrimp!” a voice cut in, a louder voice, and more familiar than those drifting from across the table. It came from Bettina, who edged next to Pamela and picked up a shrimp skewer. “Would it be horrible if I took more than one?” she inquired of Pamela.
Before Pamela could answer, a man who had just helped himself to two shrimp, accessing the platter from the other side of the table, said, “Go ahead! You only live once.”
One of the woman who had been discussing lambswool spoke up to say, “Not if you’re allergic to shellfish.”
As Pamela moved along the table, pausing at an appealing tray of crudités, overlapping voices across the table chimed in with cautionary tales about marine creatures of all sorts.
“No meatballs.” Bettina turned to survey the buffet when they reached the end of the last table. “Usually these catered events have meatballs.”
“Lots of other things, though.” Pamela laughed. “I don’t think we’ll go hungry.”
Beverages were on offer too, dispensed from bars set up on either side of the room. But Pamela and Bettina addressed themselves first to the contents of their plates. Pamela didn’t mind eating while standing up, but even with a finger-food buffet like this one, a hand was required to hold the plate while the other hand conveyed food to the mouth, leaving no extra hand to manage a glass.
Once they had nibbled their way through the mini quiches and the smoked salmon on pumpernickel and the skewered shrimp and the rest, Pamela and Bettina relinquished their empty plates to a server circulating with a tray. Feeling more sociable with a glass of wine rather than the encumbrance of a plate, Pamela was happy to chat when Marlene Pepper reappeared.
Soon a small cluster of people had formed, drawn by the presence of Marlene, who seemed to know everyone in Arborville. The fact that servers were now offering trays of petit-fours made it unnecessary to move from the spot. Listening more than talking was Pamela’s usual habit in a crowd, and she realized she was quite enjoying the cheerful buzz of conversation—more cheerful than one might expect, given the occasion.
She confided this thought to Bettina after Marlene and her friends had taken their leave and the room had begun empty.
“Hardly anybody here was all that close to him,” Bettina said, “and even his widow seems cheerful.” She nodded toward where Aileen Conway still stood near the double doors that led out to Arborville Avenue.
Aileen was smiling as she shook hands with a man whose well-cut suit suggested he might be a colleague from Lionel Dunes’s accounting practice. The man who had earlier been lingering near the wall stepped forward and shook the man’s hand too.
Pamela and Bettina were approaching the doors, and it seemed only polite to speak to Aileen on their way out.
“I’m Bettina Fraser,” Bettina said, “and I’m so sorry about your loss.” She adjusted her features to harmonize with her words and offered her hand.
“Aileen Conway.” Aileen accepted the hand. “Very kind of you to come.”
“Ted Stewart,” the man who had been lingering near the wall chimed in with his name, as did Pamela with hers.
Hands were shaken all around, and Pamela and Bettina made their way through the heavy doors, past the church, and around the corner to where Bettina’s faithful Toyota waited in the parking lot.
* * *
The next morning found Pamela, still in pajamas and robe and holding that day’s Register, lingering on her front walk rather than hurrying back into her house with her usual dispatch. The headline had been joltingly visible through the plastic sleeve that encased the newspaper, and she’d slipped the newspaper from its sleeve to double-check the wording.
POLICE NEAR ARREST IN DUNES CASE, she read, the letters sharper but no different from what she’d glimpsed through the plastic. The article, under Marcy Brewer’s byline, cited Arborville Detective Lucas Clayborn to the effect that sufficient evidence had now been gathered to definitively identify the murderer—though the murderer was not identified in the article.
Back inside, Pamela turned off the flame under the kettle, which was hooting frantically, and poured the steaming water through the freshly ground coffee waiting in the filter cone atop her carafe. She lowered a slice of whole-grain bread into her toaster, buttered it when it popped up, and settled at her kitchen table to absorb Marcy Brewer’s report in more detail.
There was not, however, much detail to be absorbed, and Bettina confirmed that fact when she arrived an hour later. By then, Pamela had read the rest of the Register, including a feature in the food section suggesting uses for all the cabbage that didn’t get cooked and eaten on St. Patrick’s Day. She had also dressed and made her bed and checked for email that had appeared since her first-thing-in-the-morning visit to her computer.
Wordless and grimacing, Bettina stepped over the threshold, her manner at odds with the bright yellow of her stylish trench coat, which was fashioned from a fabric that resembled patent leather. In her hand she held not a white bakery box but a compactly folded newspaper encased in a flimsy plastic sleeve.
“He’s just delivering them now,” she said. “It’s a wonder anyone pays any attention to the Advocate, given that the carriers can’t be counted on even to always get it to them by Friday, let alone in time for them to read it with their morning coffee.”
She punctuated that thought with a disgusted snort, and Catrina looked up from her nap in the sunny spot that appeared mornings on the entry carpet.
“Not that it makes any difference. A weekly can’t compete with a daily—I know that and I accept it.” She held up the newspaper. “And here’s my report of the murder, woefully out of date compared to what Marcy Brewer wheedled out of Clayborn, and I’ve just been with him and he didn’t tell me anything new at all.”
Pamela slipped her arm around Bettina’s shoulders and gently guided her through the doorway into the kitchen. Bettina deposited the Advocate on the kitchen table next to the still-spread-out Register and returned to the entry to shed her coat.
Meanwhile, Pamela refilled the kettle and set it to boil. When Bettina reappeared, the sound of coffee beans clattering in the grinder made conversation impossible for a few moments, but when the clattering subsided, Pamela spoke.
“I imagine Marcy did wheedle,” she said as she fit a paper filter into her carafe’s plastic filter cone, “and Detective Clayborn felt like he had to give her something because she can be very persistent—and he wants to save face. What he gave her isn’t much, though.”
“It’s not?”
Pamela poured the freshly ground coffee into the filter and turned to face Bettina, who had taken her customary seat at the little table.
“ ‘Police near arrest’?” Pamela laughed. “How near is ‘near’? And ‘sufficient evidence,’ but no specifics?”
“I feel better.” Bettina folded the Register and set it aside, along with the Advocate. “I know you don’t keep goodies around, but will you make toast?”
“Of course,” Pamela said, “and you know where the cream is.”
The kettle began to whistle, and Pamela resumed her coffee making, adding the boiling water to the filter cone. A gurgling drip signaled that the water had begun its journey through the grounds. Soon the tantalizing aroma of brewing coffee was joined by that of toasting whole-grain bread, and soon after that, Pamela and Bettina sat facing each other at the little table with coffee and toast at hand. Bettina’s toast, reposing on a wedding-china plate, had been garnished with not only butter but also a dark swath of blueberry jam.
“What if Clayborn really did have someone in mind when he told Marcy that the police were nearing arrest?” Bettina asked. The toast, along with the coffee transformed by sugar and cream into the pale and sweet concoction she preferred, had lifted her spirits. “Who do you think it would be?”
Pamela reached for her own cup of coffee, sipped, and let its caffeine-laden bitterness do its work for a few moments.
“Shiloh or the cook who made the milkshake seem the most likely prospects, but their motives just seem so obscure.”
“Maybe Clayborn uncovered a motive, for one or the other.” Bettina gazed at Pamela over the rose-garlanded rim of her coffee cup. She sipped and lowered the cup. “Maybe that’s the evidence he told Marcy had been gathered.”
“Shiloh links to Amos, and vice versa,” Pamela said. “Detective Clayborn must have figured out that they’re a couple.”
“And Amos was leading the sheep that provided the distraction right before the poisoned milkshake was delivered to Lionel Dunes.”
“Too, too complicated.” Bettina shook her head, setting her earrings to bobbing. They were Murano glass, large beads that juxtaposed a kaleidoscope of colors to striking effect.
“Too, too complicated,” Pamela agreed. “But we’ll go to the sheep-shearing tomorrow and see what we can see.”
“And hear.” Bettina nodded again. “Besides, I have to be there anyway because I’m covering it for the Advocate.”
With that issue settled, both concentrated on their coffee and toast, and when the conversation started up again, the pansies now brightening Pamela’s front porch were the focus.
“Wilfred is going to the garden center tomorrow,” Bettina said, after expressing her admiration for Pamela’s pansies, “and then we’ll have ours.” She celebrated that thought with a bite of toast and a sip of coffee, adding, after she had swallowed, “Spring really is just around the corner.”
* * *
Half an hour later, Bettina stood in the entry slipping back into her cheerful coat. But before she took her leave, she stepped over to the little table where Pamela set her mail, both incoming and outgoing.
“What’s this?” she asked as she picked up a catalog. On its cover, along with a discreetly blurred image of a nude female body, were the words “Your Sensuous Self.”
“It’s addressed to someone a few houses down,” Pamela said with a laugh. “The mail carrier gets confused sometimes.”
Bettina paged through the catalog. “Candles,” she murmured, “scented oils.” She looked up and whispered, “Lingerie.” She flipped through a few more pages. “Cozy pillows . . . to make your love nest even more cozy.” She turned a page, “And lots of other . . . sensuous . . . things.” She closed the catalog. “My goodness!”
“I’m going to put it back out for him to pick up,” Pamela said and held out a hand.
The catalog was returned to the little table, and Bettina set off, pausing on the threshold to say, “I hope Pete knows that he’s invited tomorrow night.”
“Yes, yes,” Pamela assured her and added a hug.
Work for the magazine awaited upstairs: the article on molas to copyedit and the revised “Sheep to Shawl” to evaluate. “Molas” was interesting, Pamela recalled, and it would be a pleasure to study the delightful illustrations once again. “Sheep to Shawl” had already been rejected once, but the author, a docent at a reconstructed colonial village in Connecticut, was nothing if not persistent. Pamela decided to start with “Sheep to Shawl,” whose full title was still “Sheep to Shawl: Shearing, Spinning, and Weaving History in a Reconstructed Colonial Village.”
Her original rejection had pointed out that the article focused too much on visitors to the village, especially ill-behaved students on field trips, and not enough on Colonial-era wool production. The author had taken that criticism to heart. The new version of the article went into great detail about the shearing, sorting, washing, picking, carding, spinning, and weaving that transformed the wool garment nature had given the sheep into garments that could be worn by humans.
A long excursus was devoted to lanolin, still used as an ingredient in modern products like lipstick and skin creams, and definitely not wasted in colonial times. It was extracted from the newly sheared fleece, the author explained, by boiling the fleece for several hours in large pots of water. This was done outdoors over open fires at the colonial village. The water was then cooled and the lanolin skimmed off the top. A photo showed a bowl of lanolin looking for all the world like a scoop of expensive face cream.
“Readers of Fiber Craft will find most of this relevant now,” Pamela wrote in her evaluation, “but I suggest that, since lanolin is tangential to Fiber Craft’s focus, the description of how it’s produced be trimmed considerably.”
The next few hours, after a break for lunch, were devoted to copyediting “Molas.” When that task was finished, Pamela rolled her chair back from her desk, closed her eyes, and raised her arms above her head in a most luxurious stretch.