Irish Knit Murder by Peggy Ehrhart

Author:Peggy Ehrhart [Ehrhart, Peggy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2022-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Pamela did not go directly home. Halfway down Orchard Street she veered right instead of left and rang Bettina’s doorbell. Bettina answered still dressed in her robe and slippers, as Woofus lurked in the background glancing apprehensively toward the open door.

“Are you okay?” Bettina’s glance was apprehensive too. “Has something happened?”

Pamela wondered if her expression portended bad news—it was true she had been thinking hard about the curious incident she had witnessed in the Co-Op produce department. Perhaps she was frowning. She made a conscious effort to relax her brow and smiled.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve just been to the Co-Op.”

“Obviously.” Bettina nodded toward the canvas totes. “And your bags look heavy. Come on in—there’s still coffee. Some Co-Op doughnuts too.”

“Just coffee would be great.” Pamela followed her to the kitchen and set the bags on one of the chairs surrounding the scrubbed pine table. She settled herself into another.

“You have a fan,” she said as Bettina set a steaming mug of coffee in front of her. “Somebody who loves the Advocate and especially loves your writing.”

“Well, thank you!” Bettina reclaimed her spot, marked by a half-finished mug of coffee and a few sections of the Register. “Nothing new about the case,” she remarked as she folded them and pushed them aside. She turned her attention back to Pamela. “And you detoured over here to tell me that? So sweet—especially after the mean thing that woman at the luncheon said.”

“That’s not the only thing I wanted to tell you though.” Pamela took a sip of coffee.

“Oh?”

They were interrupted by the arrival of Woofus, who headed directly for the chair that held the canvas totes and began sniffing at the one that contained the fish and sausage. Pamela sprang up and moved the bags to the high counter.

“Tilapia and Italian sausage,” she explained as she returned to her chair. “Anyway . . .” She took another sip of coffee and then described the encounter between the woman who slipped out of the luncheon after Isobel seemed to speak directly to her and the woman in the beret who claimed to recognize her as a long-ago friend of Isobel’s.

“The woman in the beret identified her as ‘Cheryl Radcliff,’ ” Pamela concluded, “and then accosted me at the bakery counter to insist that the other woman really was Cheryl Radcliff (or at least that had been her birth name), though she denied it vigorously.”

“Hmm.” Bettina’s lips tightened into a meditative knot.

“She obviously doesn’t want the connection with Isobel to come out. From what the woman in the beret said, it sounded like all three of them grew up in Arborville. Cheryl has been away for a long while and just came back, like Meg told us. But she didn’t realize Isobel had come back too.”

“That makes sense. And at the concert, Isobel recognizes her and then says she could tell stories about the Arborville girls not being as goody-goody as everyone thought. So she—Cheryl—thinks, ‘Oh no. Those things I got up to in high school aren’t going to be a secret anymore .

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