Knit Your Own Murder (4 page)

I
t
took Maddy a very few minutes to realize that no one was looking at her; everyone was focused on that fast-talking auction man. She pulled the bamboo knitting needles out of the bag and then the ball of dark blue merino wool. Was it darker than she remembered? No matter, it was just something to keep her hands busy while she and the others sat on display.

Ugh,
display
. What an awful label to put on a human being!

Like that strangely beautiful dragon on display in the glass case over there, gorgeous scales and delicate wings—and stupid face. What must Irene have been thinking? And what a peculiar name on the tag leaning against the case:
JABBERWOCK
, it read. What did that mean? Maddy had somehow never read
Through the Looking Glass. Jabberwock.
Perhaps it was an Asian fry pan talking nonsense?
Her lips quirked just a little in amusement. She was fond of elaborate puns.

But never mind, she was becoming too aware of the audience and the gibberish Mr. Irwin was shouting at them. She swiftly cast on twenty-one stitches. She was going to do the plaited basket stitch. It wasn't hard, but it took concentration. The result would be attractive, looking like the yarn was woven, two threads by two threads.

She started by knitting twice, then skipped the next stitch and put the right-hand needle behind the second stitch, knitting it but not taking it off the needle, instead bringing the right-hand needle around to the front and knitting it, then taking both stitches off. She continued like this until the last stitch, which she knitted, then turned to begin the next row. She purled two. Then, as before, she purled the second stitch behind the left needle, brought the needle around to purl the first stitch, then pulled both off.

The noise Max and his audience were making faded as her concentration increased.

It took a few rows for the pattern to become apparent, but there it was, perfect! She felt energized, and ignoring the racket going on in front of her, she fell to her task, her fingers moving deftly. In a short while she had nearly four inches of knitting completed.

Her hands began to move even more swiftly, and she went from warm satisfaction to pride to something like exultation. She could feel her heart beating rapidly, and her hands moved faster and faster.

The auctioneer's rapid chant and the eager shouts of the bidders, which she had been unable to completely ignore, now seemed only to increase her excitement. Her breath
came more rapidly, and her head started to ache. She began to make mistakes in her knitting as her concentration faltered. She took a big breath, trying to calm herself, but it didn't work.

Her fingers closed on the yarn, and her heart seemed about to explode in her chest. The pain in her head was unendurable. This was wrong, something was wrong. She tried to stand, to call for help, but all her joints were stiff, and her tongue would not obey. She fell, and darkness came over her.

M
ax's
fast chant and the audience's excited response kept everyone's attention from Maddy's distress. Not until she tried to rise and instead fell to the floor did a few notice and exclaim at her.

“What? What?” Max interrupted himself to look around and see her folded in her wool suit in front of her chair. “Hey, what the devil?” He started for her, then turned back to the audience. “Is there a doctor in the house?”

Meanwhile, Bershada ran to her, stooped, and tried to roll her onto her back. But Maddy was rigid, as if having a seizure. She was not breathing. Bershada was about to call for someone to dial 911 when she saw that more than half the audience had cell phones to their ears. And five people were running toward her. She was not surprised to hear three of them say they were doctors, one say she was an ER nurse, and one declare himself an emergency tech. In less than a
minute they had Maddy, now gone limp, flat on her back and were beginning CPR. Bershada got out of their way.

In less than eight minutes a police officer and an emergency crew arrived to the accompaniment of sirens. The techs took over the CPR. They fitted an oxygen mask to Maddy's face, scooped her onto a wheeled stretcher, and took her out.

Bershada conferred with Max while the audience talked among themselves. Finally, Max went to the lectern to bring order to the room.

“All right, all right, let's settle down!” he shouted. “Please, come to order! Come to order!” The audience slowly fell silent. “I am reasonably certain Ms. Maddy will be okay, even though she scared us all half to death just now,” he said. “Thanks be to the quick action taken by members of this audience to keep her going until help arrived. Let's give them a hand!” He started to clap and was enthusiastically joined by the audience.

Max let it go on until it just started to fade. “Okay!” he shouted. “All right! Now, are we ready to get back to business?”

“Yeah! Yes! Okay! Carry on!” cheered members of the audience, and the rest applauded.

“We were taking bids on this magnificent leopard. Ho, who's got the money, I got forty, forty, forty, how about fifty, I want fifty, how about fifty, I got forty, you gimme fifty, I got forty, forty—”

“Sixty!” shouted the man who hadn't gotten the elephant.

“Here you go, sixty, sixty, I got sixty, gimme eighty—”

“Eighty!” called a woman dressed all in yellow.

“Eighty-five!” shouted the man.

“Ho! Eighty-five, now I got eighty-five, can I get a hundred, can I get—”

“One hundred!” came the call from the back of the room.

“Whoo!” cheered someone.

“One hundred!” shouted Max. “One hundred, a hundred, a hundred, now looking for a hundred and fifty, one hundred fifty, got a hundred, looking for one hundred fifty—”

“A hundred and fifty!” cried the woman in yellow.

“Yes!” cheered someone.

“One fifty, got one fifty, got one fifty, do I hear two? Two hundred, two hundred, one seventy-five, I got one fifty, one fifty, can I have one seventy five, one seventy five? One fifty, one fifty, lookin' for one seventy-five, one seventy-five.”

But he looked in vain. “Can I get one sixty, one sixty, one sixty, I got one fifty, got one fifty, got one fifty, looking for one sixty, one sixty. All in, all done? One fifty, all done?”

“Two hundred!” called the man in the back of the room.

“Two fifty!” the woman in yellow responded instantly.

“Yowser!” shouted someone—the same someone who'd cheered before. It sounded suspiciously like Godwin, sitting in the row facing the audience with the other champion knitters.

“Yo! Two fifty, two fifty, I got two fifty, how about three, do I hear three, three hundred, two fifty, two fifty, two fifty, do I hear two seventy-five, two seventy-five, I got two fifty, two fifty, lookin' for two seventy-five, two fifty, two fifty—” There was a brief pause. “Two fifty, all done, all in? Two fifty, I got two fifty. All in, all done? Sold! Two
hundred and fifty dollars! Paddle number forty-seven. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!”

The audience applauded. Bershada made a note.

Max's assistant picked up the knit fruit bat, saw what it was, and dropped it, pulling her hands up and back in disgust.

“No, no!” called someone. “Let's see it!”

“Yeah, bring it!”

“What is it?” asked someone else.

“Lemme see,” ordered Max, and his assistant very gingerly picked it up by one wing, her face reflecting her reluctance.

“Hey, lookit this!” Max shouted, holding it up. He adjusted his grip so each hand was holding a wing and it was spread wide.

“Ewwwww!” went half the audience. The other half laughed, and someone called, “One dollar!”

“Two dollars!” said someone else.

“Seven dollars!” said a third, and they were off. With Max urging them on, Phil's fruit bat sold for seventy-five dollars.

The auction, back in full swing, continued for another hour. At the end, Irene Potter's amazing dragon was brought forward.

“Five hundred!” shouted someone before Max could say anything, and the bidding built swiftly from there until the creature finally topped out at five thousand seven hundred dollars.

“D
ead?”
murmured Betsy. “Oh, but she can't be! They did CPR right away, and the emergency people got here quickly—she can't be dead!”

Betsy was standing in the parking lot beside her car. Jill had seen her, waved to get her attention, and now was standing close to her, talking in a low voice.

“She was dead on the gurney,” said Jill. “You know how nowadays they can bring the freshly dead back to life, at least for a little while—well, not in this case. There was no obvious cause, so they'll do an autopsy.”

“I thought it was a stroke.”

“Did you, Doctor Devonshire?”

Betsy blushed and shrugged. “Just a layman's opinion.”

“Probably as good as mine.”

A voice called, harsh and alarmed, “Hey! Hey, anyone!” Jill and Betsy whirled to look toward the church hall,
where Max was standing shouting at them. “Hey! Is there a doctor still around?”

“What's the matter?” called Jill, starting for him, Betsy on her heels.

“We got a man sick in here!”

Jill went through the door into the hall. Betsy stopped to ask, “Who is it? What do you mean, sick?”

“Sick to his stomach, big headache. He's sitting on the floor. I don't know who it is. He was helping pick up after the auction.”

Betsy put her fingers to her lips. Connor had volunteered to stay and help put things away.

A woman, white-haired, thin, short, put her hands on Betsy's shoulders. “Excuse me, let me by, I'm a doctor.” She had been one of those who had rushed to help Maddy.

Betsy hastily stepped into the hall. “Sorry,” she said, “sorry.”

Without replying, the woman hurried by her.

Betsy followed, half afraid of what she was going to discover. To her dismay, it
was
Connor, sitting bent forward on the floor in front of the row of chairs where the honorees had been placed. His face was red, distorted by pain. Jill and another woman were standing nearby, and the woman doctor was kneeling beside him, with one arm around his shoulders and the other taking his pulse. There was a towel across his knees, another under his feet.

As Betsy watched, he picked up the towel from his lap and wiped his face with it. She ran to him. “What's the matter? What happened?” she asked.

“Dunno,” said Connor, forcing the words out. “I was
folding the chairs,” he gestured to his right, where half the row had been folded and leaned against the wall. “Saw someone's knitting . . .” He stopped to retch, then wiped his mouth with the towel. “God, my head!”

Betsy looked around and saw the knitting, about seven inches of plaited basket weave stitch in dark blue. She recognized the yarn; it was Maddy's. She picked it up. Maddy had been about halfway across a row. The last two or three rows were a mess, hardly recognizable as a pattern.

“Look at this, Jill,” she said, holding out the knitting. “I think Maddy did have a stroke.”

“Maybe, maybe,” said Jill, who was still focused on Connor and the doctor.

Betsy picked up the ball and wound the yarn onto it, following the unspooled yarn to the bag under a chair, and stuffed the ball and knitting into it. The fingers of her right hand felt odd, and she rubbed them with her thumb. “Oof,” she said. Her heart was beating fast. “Oof,” she said again, and put her hand to her forehead, which had begun to ache.

Connor said, “I was winding the yarn back on the ball, which had rolled away, and all of a sudden I got this headache.”

“Jill,” said Betsy, dropping Maddy's bag. “Jill!”

Jill started at the sound of her friend's voice. “What is it?” she said. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Here, Betsy, come with me.”

She helped Betsy get to her feet and hustled her off to the restroom, so she could wash her hands. Then she had Betsy wash them again. And again.

“Wow,” said Betsy. “Wow.” She splashed cold water on
her face, which was very pink, and dried it and her hands with paper towels. Her hands felt normal, but her pulse still seemed a bit rapid.

“What happened?” asked Jill. “What were you doing when you started feeling like this?”

“All I did was pick up Maddy's knitting and wrap loose yarn around the ball and put it in the bag. Then my fingers started tingling and my heart started beating a hundred miles an hour.”

“Did you touch anything else? Drink something?”

“Nuh-uh. Wow. Whew! But I'm feeling better now. How's Connor? Can we get back to Connor?”

“Sure, let's do that.”

When they came out of the restroom, they saw Connor, over his objections, being walked out to an emergency vehicle by the doctor. “I'm all right,” he kept saying, “See? I'm feeling much better now.”

But his face was still red, and he was walking with a stiff gait unlike his usual smooth one.

“Wait a minute,” called Jill, and she ran to the bright green canvas bag into which Betsy had pushed Maddy's needlework. She picked it up carefully by its string handle. She brought it to the doctor, hanging it over her fingers, and said, “Maddy is dead, Connor is sick, and Betsy had a bad reaction, all because the three of them handled the contents of this bag. Give it to someone who can tell us what the problem with it is.”