The Nantucket Diet Murders Page 11

  Except for the lighted face of the clock on the South Tower, looming very large and near, Nantucket seemed to be at the small end of a telescope. Lights showed in tiny windows. Rooftops and chimneys were far below. A toy man and a toy dog, each wearing a doll-size sweater, appeared under a streetlight, then disappeared into the darkness of a side street. A couple, a man and woman thickly bundled in coats and hats, appeared, heading down toward Main Street, each of them carrying two large and obviously heavy suitcases. Mrs. Potter watched their slow, knee-bent progress.

  The harbor was black to the east, ringed by tiny pinpoints of light at the marina. Brant Point light flashed a miniature beacon of red at the entrance of the harbor.

  “I suppose the boat is on winter schedule,” Mrs. Potter remarked, pointing to the row of overhead lights at the Steamship Authority building on the northernmost of the town piers.

  Only one boat at this time of year, Gussie told her. It would be coming in about eight, in a couple of hours. Someday soon, she promised, they might walk down early in the morning and watch it leave.

  They agreed that it was always an event, greeting either the arrival or departure of what they both still occasionally called “the steamer.” The essential thing, when the boat was leaving, was to be at the Brant Point light, on the wooden walkway, waving and throwing kisses and waggling last frantic semaphores as the ship quickly turned and passed the point. Meanwhile, on shipboard, the departing ones were scrambling in purses and pockets for pennies to pitch overboard as the ship circled the small, squat lighthouse—an offering to the gods, in exchange for which one was promised a certain eventual safe return to the island.

  The lighted spires of the churches attracted Mrs. Potter’s bemused attention. Away to the north, that of the Congregational church, where the carillon was now ringing familiar vesper tunes. That of the Baptist church, nearby to the west, almost next door to Dee’s carriage house. That of the Unitarian church, the South Tower, its lighted clock face a giant moon almost in the room with them.

  When its weighty notes struck six, the two turned their gaze again to the houses below. There were lights in the front parlors of Helen’s brick house across the street, and as they watched, lights came on above the front door. A figure emerged and headed up Main Street, in the opposite direction of the suitcase-burdened couple, then disappeared in the darkness. “I think that was Lolly,” Mrs. Potter said. “That round tan hat and the tan raincoat. It certainly wasn’t Helen.”

  The angle was wrong to see if Mittie’s house was lighted. “I have a feeling she holes up in the back of the house these days to save on light bills,” Gussie said. “Leah’s house used to be dark at nights, but there are lights sometimes now, although we can’t see them from here, now she’s begun to perk herself up. Mary Lynne always draws her curtains at dusk. She says it’s too easy for passersby to look in, walking or driving down Orange Street. And we can’t see Beth’s house from here, either—too many other buildings in the way. Hers always looks so cozy and inviting at night when you walk by—the little panes of the windows, and her lovely old pine paneling in the firelight.”

  Mrs. Potter pursued the subject of looking in windows after dark. “I used to do it quite shamelessly,” she admitted. “Most Nantucket front rooms look as if they’d been set up for Act One in a period play, and in all my evenings of window-peeking I never saw a living soul. Nobody sitting reading, nobody walking across the room to poke the fire, so I really didn’t feel I was intruding. All I saw were mantels with Staffordshire dogs on either side and a family portrait in between, and a lot of dried-flower arrangements and beautiful old picture frames. What I liked best were the wonderful colors of painted woodwork in some houses, mustard or gray-blue or gray-green, against nearly white walls. Although I had some favorite parlor wallpapers, too, deep reds and blues and golds.”

  “Clearly, you must have spent a lot of time at this Peeping Tom business,” Gussie said severely. “I really don’t know how I’ve put up with your dreadful habits all these years.”

  Mrs. Potter declined to answer. She sipped her drink and wondered vaguely what two people had been doing walking down Main Street in January with suitcases, with no boat leaving for the mainland until morning. A small-town mind, she told herself. You can’t help thinking that everything is your business.

  “I think it’s too cold to go up on the roof walk, don’t you?” Gussie asked. “Shall we save that for another time?”

  Mrs. Potter nodded quick agreement. She remembered this final ascent on sunny days in the past. From the glassed-in security of the cupola room, a narrow flight of steps, scarcely more than a ladder with a knotted rope handrail, led still farther upward. There, a skylight could be raised to allow access to an open wooden platform on the very rooftop, a full five stories above the street.

  In the January dark, the thought of being at that height, with only a low balustrade between watcher and wind, seemed not only too chilly but a little frightening. They were up quite far enough where they were, she declared.

  Gussie sipped her iced mineral water; Mrs. Potter sipped her iced martini, wishing she had remembered to add a twist of lemon peel when she filled the covered jar. “Do you miss having a drink before dinner?” she suddenly asked. “I think I would—I usually do, have one, that is, even when I’m alone.”

  “After the first few days I sort of forgot about it,” Gussie said. “And then once I began to see what Tony’s program was doing for me, as well as knowing how furious he’d be if I had any”—she straightened her back as they sat side by side on the bench, and looked down at her slim, trousered legs—”it really didn’t seem much of a hardship.”

  Mrs. Potter looked down at her own legs, which she might have considered fairly slim until she compared them with those of her old roommate. She poured the last of the drink in her glass back into the small jar, screwed the lid firmly shut, and smiled brightly.

  14

  Friday’s dawn was gray, the skies lighted only by the white skirl of a seagull’s wings overhead, the early morning quiet broken by his raucous cat-cry as he circled the town in search of a scavenger’s breakfast.

  Indoors, in the big kitchen at the rear of the white house, Gussie Van Vleeck and Genia Potter were sitting down to their breakfast. Privately, the latter decided that they might just as well have been standing up.

  Earlier, as hostess and guest had met in the kitchen and shared an early pot of tea, Gussie had inquired (grudgingly, Mrs. Potter told her, your heart’s clearly not in it) about breakfast preferences. She suggested several possibilities: bacon and French toast, apple pancakes, hot cereal with raisins. Mrs. Potter, resisting memories of Gussie’s apple pancakes, which were made with sour cream, and rather like small, sugar-sprinkled omelets, had replied that she’d like exactly what Gussie regularly had for her own breakfast these days.

  The glass of pale liquid now before her was the answer. Prettily set on a bright flowered Quimper plate, it also seemed to be the complete answer. She took a tentative swallow, and, as she had done in sampling Gussie’s carrot juice the day before at lunch, she pronounced it delicious. It was at least drinkable.

  “Carrots again, I’m sure,” she said judiciously, “but some other flavors. Parsley? Watercress? Apple? Surely not parsnip?”

  “You’re a very good detective,” Gussie told her. “You’re right on everything but the apple. I tossed in a ripe Cornice pear, the last of a Christmas gift box, and I thought the parsnip was a real inspiration. Like it?”

  Absolutely inspired, Mrs. Potter assured her hastily, taking another swallow.

  “Carrots to cleanse the liver,” Gussie intoned, “and you ought to pay attention to that, Genia. Gin is really very hard on the liver. Celery for organic salts, and these are much better for you than table salt, although I forget why. Parsnips for fingernails—wonderful for that brittleness. Parsley and watercress for vitamin C—very potent, both of them. Green pepper for your skin and hair. The pear because it was ripe a
nd needed to be used up. I have Tony’s chart of all this on the wall in the pantry, just over the juice-extracting machine, so you can study it later and get all the special properties of things straight in your mind. The important thing is to know what you need, and that’s what Tony is able to determine for each of us, and then of course to extract the fresh juices just before you drink them.”

  “Please show me how it’s done, right after breakfast,” Mrs. Potter said meekly, aware that “right after breakfast” would be any minute now. How long could it take to drink one glass of juice, no matter how complicated its flavors and chemical balance?

  “We’re running a risk with this, you know,” Gussie told her. “What I need and what you need may be entirely different. I’m just going to have to persuade Tony to take you on as a client. Now come see the new pantry setup.”

  Mrs. Potter was impressed with the shining stainless steel extractor, the separate pantry refrigerator for storing special fruits and vegetables, the separate small sink that had been installed there. She was pleased to learn that the ivy-covered garden compost box profited from the fibrous residues. She then went upstairs to dress for the day, which she was told would include a walk downtown, Gussie’s weekly visit to the hairdresser, and, of course, a first purchase of Portuguese bread to celebrate the official opening of the new bakeshop.

  “I suppose you sent them flowers,” she remarked later as they were walking down the street.

  “Of course,” Gussie answered, “although they may have to hang them from the ceiling in that tiny shop. I’ve become very fond of these two young people, through Teresa. It’s hard to believe she’s Mary’s grandmother and yet certainly ten years younger than we are. Just got an earlier start in marriage and the family business, I guess. We’ll leave the bakeshop for our last stop, on the way home,”

  The two were heading north on Federal Street from the paper store corner when a familiar figure emerged from the double doors of the post office. Arnold Sallanger, a black Astrakhan cap set jauntily above his generous nose, was stuffing mail into the pockets of his worn tweed topcoat. “Genia, you’re looking good! Finest kind!” Arnold’s brown eyes were bright behind horn-rimmed spectacles. He seized the ends of Mrs. Potter’s long woolen scarf in a jovial pretense of pulling her face toward his own.

  And feeling fit, she assured him. “You seem to be thriving on hard work yourself,” she said. “At first I thought all your old patients were going to a new doctor—Count Ferencz, whom I met the first day I got back—but I’m glad to know you’re still looking after all of us.”

  “I didn’t do so well for our old friend Ozzie Wednesday night,” he said, his eyes and mouth sobering. “Thought I’d stop in that evening to break the news about his secretary’s death—poor kid, we were too late to save her after that severely allergic reaction—and I found the old ambulance-chaser dead of a heart attack. At least I’m calling it a heart attack for the records—it was that, of course, but I think the whole system was ready to go. We’re going to miss him—the cribbage crowd, the Wharf Rats Club. To say nothing of losing a first-rate lawyer.”

  As he stepped aside to let them proceed, he spoke to Gussie. “Cocktail party still on for tomorrow?” he asked. “Hope you didn’t cancel it on Ozzie’s account. He wouldn’t have liked that.”

  “What’s that you’re saying?” asked another man coming out of the post office and carrying a large padded mailing envelope. “Talking about Gussie’s cocktail party?” Slightly testy, Victor Sandys acknowledged the presence of the two women with a brisk wave of his free hand. “Hi there, Genia, Gussie. Sorry I can’t stay to chat now, but I’ll see you both tomorrow. Galley proofs from my publisher just came and I can’t spare a minute for you now.”

  “Isn’t that great?” Gussie remarked as the two continued across the street toward the great white pillars of the Atheneum, the Nantucket library. “Victor must have a new book coming out, after all these years when we thought he’d given up writing. Should we have asked him what it’s to be?”

  “One never knows with authors,” Mrs. Potter said. “I’m told there are some things you must never ask, like what they’re working on now, or how many copies sold of their last book. I think that’s considered as bad as asking a rancher how many cattle he has, which, in case you didn’t: know, is considered very bad mariners in Arizona.”

  “He’ll tell us tomorrow if he wants us to know,” Gussie said. “Victor’s not exactly modest about his achievements. I think one reason he’s been grumpy and dull in the last few years was because he couldn’t tell you what the critics failed to see in his last book anymore, it was so long ago. That, and being a little deaf, and too vain to get a hearing aid.”

  “Whatever it is, we’ll each have to buy several copies and have him sign them and then figure out who to give them to,” Mrs. Potter said. “I just hope I can figure out what it’s about. As I recall, he’s strong on flashbacks, so you never know which member of which generation is dreaming, or talking in his sleep, or engaged in an actual present-day ongoing orgy of some kind.”

  The two smiled in tolerant agreement. “I wonder who his publisher is?” Mrs. Potter continued. “Did you get a look at the mailing label? I did, although I had a feeling Victor didn’t want me to see it, so maybe it’s one of those vanity press places and he’s had to pay to get it published. I think the name was Harlan, or something a little longer, anyway one I never heard of.”

  “I doubt very much that Victor could afford to pay to have a book published,” Gussie told her, “although he looked pretty natty today, didn’t he? That new brass-buttoned pea jacket coat and the plaid wool trousers? And that black Greek sailor’s cap—wasn’t that something? I’m sure he wears it hoping people will think Nat Benchley willed it to him.”

  “Or maybe he thinks he looks like William Buckley,” Mrs. Potter offered. “Either way it probably makes him feel rather dashing.”

  They went up the broad wooden library steps. Gussie had several books to drop off and a stack of new mysteries reserved to pick up. Mrs. Potter exchanged affectionate greetings with the two librarians, longtime friends. Then, leaving, they found Leah studying the recent best-seller shelves in the center corridor. She quickly put back the book she had held in her hands. “Just trash,” she assured them. “Just trash. Nothing you two would want to read. See you tomorrow at your house, Gussie. Cocktails at five?”

  “I wish I knew what she was trying to keep us from seeing,” Mrs. Potter said as they left. “From the pastel book jackets, I think our Leah was browsing in the section one might call Romance.”

  “The world’s greatest widow? Don’t be silly,” Gussie told her good-naturedly. “Although, as I said yesterday, our dear bereaved Leah has certainly perked up, and it’s a great relief that we don’t have to hear much anymore about how absolutely wonderful her darling Fanwell was and what a positively idyllic life they had together. Maybe they did, for all I know, but as soon as anyone tells me she has a perfect marriage I’m immediately convinced it’s nothing of the sort.”

  The hairdresser’s small waterfront shop was only a few blocks away. As they entered, Helen Latham’s voice filled the room, its midwestern accent harsh with emotion.

  “. . . simply walked out, after all these years,” she was saying bitterly as the last rollers were put in her hair. “I don’t know what got into them. The whole thing is insane!”

  Seeing Gussie and Mrs. Potter, Helen turned in the chair. “Walter and Elna have quit,” she told them, her tone almost challenging. “After twenty-eight years. Since we lived in Chicago. Can you believe it? I thought they were devoted to Lolly, at least.”

  Larry made comforting noises as he led her toward the dryer. Mrs. Potter and Gussie had no opportunity for questions or sympathy as Helen continued, even as the plastic dryer hood descended over her head. “. . . packed up and left just like that, and they refused to say why, or even discuss it. Finally I told them the next boat wasn’t until morning, and even that di
dn’t faze them. They just said several incomprehensible things, which couldn’t be considered reasons by anybody in their right mind, and then they walked out. Period.”

  Larry, muscular, his forearms tattooed, his chest hairy at the opening of his blue sport shirt (the husbands’ name for him had been Hairy Larry, Mrs. Potter remembered, a double play on words), beckoned Gussie to the chair, “Wonder where they spent the night?” he said, “Maybe in the steamship waiting room. I’ve known a few people to get away with that.”

  Mrs. Potter remembered two faraway bundled figures, each carrying heavy suitcases, seen as at the far end of the telescope from the cupola window.

  Gussie discouraged further discussion of Helen’s domestic problems with a quick question about a slight trim. Just a tiny bit taken off. She showed him exactly where. A lift of her eyebrow in the mirror told Mrs. Potter, now seated behind her in a cushioned wicker chair and about to open a magazine, that the two of them would take up the subject later.

  Mrs. Potter, surprised but not exactly shaken by the news that Walter and Elna had given notice, now found herself even more unmoved by spring fashions in the pages of Éclat. Dee has a more interesting life selling island real estate, she thought, than making decisions about photographers and models and all these crazy, unwearable clothes.

  Her eyes wandered to Helen’s lightship basket, close to her feet as she sat reading The Hospital Manager, a periodical she had obviously brought with her, and making quick, decisive notes in a small looseleaf notebook.

  Helen’s strong jaw and high forehead, slightly out of scale above her match-thin body, were accentuated by the plastic helmet of the dryer encapsulating her rollered head. Helen’s basket was dark with age and old varnish, the color of old saddle leather, as was her own, and Gussie’s, now on the floor beside the shampoo chair. Each had a different carving of ivory on its teakwood lid, beneath the rigid, swinging handle. Gussie’s was a spouting whale; her own, a flight of seagulls, each a kind of armorial bearing instantly recognizable to its owner and her friends. Helen’s had an ivory panel nearly covering the large oval lid, its scrimshaw design a carefully etched drawing of the front of her house.