Free The Death of Perry Many Paws by Deborah Benjamin Page A

thawed some frozen strawberries and mixed them into yogurt, sprinkling a little granola on top for a side dish. That stretched my culinary skills about as far as they could stretch without breaking.
    I had half an hour before anyone came home so I took my knitting into the library, lit the fire in the fireplace and settled into my leather chair to knit and think. Knitting is a very relaxing pastime as long as you are knitting something you are familiar with and you don’t have to count stitches. I was making a large tote bag that I would eventually felt by boiling and agitating the wool. Right now, pre-felting, it was huge, almost like an afghan lying across my lap, and it was cozyto work on when it was cold. I felt calm for the first time all day. Occasionally I held it up, trying to picture how small it would get after felting and trying to figure out when I should stop knitting. The last one I’d made had been three feet tall before I felted it and was strong enough to carry a six-pack of soda, a couple of books, my purse and other miscellaneous things I threw in. It was so strong I could fill it until I could barely pick it up and hoist it on my shoulder and it still hung tough. As long as you didn’t throw a set of steak knives in there it could carry anything.
    The thought of steak knives slicing through the felted wool pushed my thoughts back to Uncle Franklin. It was probably easier to shove a sharp letter opener into an old man’s body than through felted wool. Now that was a pleasant thought. I wondered if I’d ever be able to go longer than thirty minutes without thinking about his murder. If there was resolution, if I could understand who and why, it would be easier to have closure and move on. Right now it was a huge gaping unresolved mystery, like a pond of quicksand that was beginning to suck my friends in. Ryan’s bloody shirt. Syra’s mysterious mother. Cam’s family. Like Alice I was becoming curiouser and curiouser.
    I thought about calling Diane to see if she mentioned anything about the policeman and whether she seemed as obsessed with him as Grace thought she was. Diane was a very stable person but she was also stretched thin dealing with her parents and five children, three of them still at home. I could see how a woman could become sucked dry by her family and need something special just for herself. What I couldn’t see was someone like Diane, whose life revolved around her family, jeopardizing their welfare for an affair. You don’t devote yourself to something and then turn around and risk losing it all to get some relief. I could see her taking a vacation by herself or with her friends. Or maybe taking a college class. Or Tai Chi. Possiblyhorseback riding. But not an affair. That was not how Diane dealt with life.
    I heard Cam and Grace in the front hall commenting on the great smell coming from the kitchen. Those of us with dubious culinary skills have to savor our praise when we can. When I felt they had peaked in their olfactory compliments, I went to greet them, hoping tonight’s dinner would be more serene than last night’s.
    Cam had had a lot of interesting adventures at work. He was a good storyteller and even incidents that were only mildly amusing seemed more exciting when he told them. Grace actually laughed and seemed to enjoy herself. By dessert, Cam’s one-man show was starting to wind down and over coffee and chocolate cake we lapsed into more serious issues. I told Grace and Cam about my trip to the cottage with Syra and how I had shown her the photo and gotten no reaction from her.
    “Since Syra never talks about her parents or her childhood, we have no idea if she and her mother are still in contact or whether she’s even still alive. Maybe Syra hasn’t seen her for so long that she is just sort of a vague memory,” Grace suggested. She accepted a second piece of chocolate cake but refused another scoop of ice cream. “It could be that she never saw a picture of