The Nantucket Diet Murders (3 page)

“I’ll order for the rest of us,” Helen Latham said decisively, her glance around the table apparently assuring her that she was, as usual, to be the voice of the group. She spoke to the waitress. “We’ll choose our lunch from the salad bar, Jadine. No roll basket or butter on the table. And we’ll begin with a glass of freshly squeezed vegetable juice—whatever Peter has them turning out in the kitchen today.”

Turning to Mrs. Potter, she continued. “And you’ll go along with us, I’m sure, Genia?” The brisk tone, which had settled the issues—usually wisely—at so many island committee meetings, was still commanding. It surprised Mrs. Potter to hear it coming from this new and tiny doll. With affectionate amusement, she realized that Il Duce was still running the show.

A murmur came from Beth. She believed she
would
have just a small basket of the small hot breads with her lunch, and were there any little cinnamon rolls today?

A second murmur, and Mrs. Potter suggested another slight change. “The salad bar sounds perfect, Helen, and I can see from here how tempting it looks,” Mrs. Potter assured her, “but a January day needs more than vegetable juice to celebrate a reunion lunch, to my mind. Please change that to a dry martini—oil the rocks with a twist of lemon, right, Gussie?—for me and Mrs. Van Vleeck, Jadine. And what for the rest of you? Drinks are my treat today.”

“Oh, no, Genia. You have one—not for me, thanks.” Gussie’s voice was half regretful, but certain.

Helen spoke promptly. “We all know what Tony says about liquor.” The slightly heavy jaw and forehead, a bit too large now in the small face, were still forceful.

The others were in instant agreement. “We just couldn’t,” Mittie explained. “We’re
committed.”

“I’m not committed,” Beth put in cheerfully. “I’d like a frozen daiquiri. Not too sour please, Jadine. Peter knows how I like it. A drink is just what we need to celebrate Genia’s return to the fold.”

Mrs. Potter, who without Beth’s acceptance would have withdrawn her suggestion, now turned to Dee. “You’ll join us?”

Dee’s acceptance was as prompt as Beth’s had been, but Mrs. Potter felt slightly awkward in the face of the others’ stand. “It’s a cold day,” she said apologetically, realizing that it was actually rather warmer than usual for the season.

Leah’s small kitten face was downcast, as something seemed to prompt her to take up a familiar refrain. “These January days
are
gloomy,” she said. “I just can’t get used to going home to a big empty house without darling Fanwell there.” Her lips pursed and her rings and bracelets were silent.

Gussie glanced sideways at Leah with less than her usual ready compassion. She herself had been most recently widowed, and for a third time. All of the women at the table would be returning to houses in which they lived alone. Leah’s claim to special circumstances was, except for Gussie’s glance, rather blankly ignored.

Of all of them, only Helen Latham had a child at home, an only daughter in her mid-thirties, of whom, Mrs. Potter remembered, Lew used to say that she had an utterly forgettable face. She always had to prompt her husband with the name, and she herself often had to struggle to remember, not always quickly enough, that Laura Latham, Lolly, somewhat vague and seeming not overly bright, nearly invisible in her
mother’s admirable and forceful presence, was Helen’s daughter.

Of the entire group, Gussie Van Vleeck was the only one to have even temporary company at the moment—that of her old friend, Mrs. Potter. And Mrs. Potter, widowed herself since her days as a regular member of the lunching group, also lived alone, most of the time in a sprawling ranch house miles from her nearest neighbors.

Gussie’s regard of Leah softened as she caught a glimmer of amusement in the eyes of her guest, and she quickly suppressed a smile. As Mary Augusta Baines of Rye, New York, and Eugenia Andrews, fresh out of Harrington, Iowa, they had found the same small things funny from the day they had met in the halls of their freshman dormitory. Among these shared amusements—sometimes rueful ones—was the opinion that Leah was out to win the title of World’s Most Bereft Widow. There was the accord of concealed glee now in observing that Leah was still competing, still winning, even though she was out of mourning clothes at last and again wearing her pretty rings and bracelets.

A louder burst of laughter now came from the adjacent room. There was a brief round of clapping and more high-pitched shrieks of laughter.

“Softball girls in there, really whooping it up,” the waitress announced as she brought the drinks Mrs. Potter had ordered, and glasses of pale liquid, its color vaguely orange, for the rest. Another crescendo of laughter came from the private dining room.

“Jadine, didn’t you forget something?” Dee asked, with a flash of smile. “You know Peter likes to send a little pot of his special cheese with the cocktails.”

Nodding with apparent satisfaction at being reminded, the waitress rushed back with the complimentary specialty. Mrs. Potter watched Dee Ferencz top a crisp rye cracker with a quick, neat, and generous mound of the cheese-rum mixture. Dee’s entire lunch today, she realized, would be these cheese-spread crackers and probably several small hot
breads from Beth’s luncheon roll basket, along with the pot of tea she originally ordered.

As she sipped her own drink, Mrs. Potter tried to keep up with the surface play of conversation. She found that, being alone as much as she was now—and happily so, for the most part—she found it exhausting to follow so much talk at one time. Her mind sifted out snatches, much of it news Gussie had previously relayed by letter or telephone, hoping that her facial muscles were making appropriate responses and wondering vaguely why Gussie had not told her about this new diet celebrity who had come to the island. Her friends’ voices seemed higher in pitch, their speech more rapid, than she recalled.

“. . . died while we were sailing,” Mary Lynne was saying.

“. . . a heroine,” the others chorused proudly, “bringing in the boat all alone . . . too late, of course . . .”

This, she knew, was the story of Bo Heidecker’s fatal heart attack the previous summer.

“. . . naturally Mummy’s furniture has to be kept heated,” Mittie was explaining, “and the Shimmo house could be drained and closed . . .”

This meant Mittie must be living for the winter in the old family house on Main Street, above Gussie’s.

“Cottage Hospital . . . new president of the board . . .” That was Helen, Mussolini now reduced to a china doll. The others beamed.

“. . . plans for the Daffodil Festival in April . . .” That, it seemed, was again Mary Lynne. The others beamed again. “We’re so proud of her for not giving up the chairmanship after Bo’s death,” someone said.

“. . . have to say about six names—Paula, Clare, Ginny, Tricia, Annabel—before I remember which one . . .”

This apparently was part of a report on Higginson daughters and daughters-in-law, and there was a groan of sympathetic laughter.

“. . . told her we’d learn to bake Portuguese bread . . .”

That had been part of Gussie’s telephoned invitation, which had brought Mrs. Potter back for this midwinter visit.
The death of Gussie’s third husband, in late fall, had perhaps come as a liberation to them both—to Gordon from querulous invalidhood and to Gussie from several years of being tyrannized by his bad-tempered illness—the invitation had not been based on need for sympathy or support.

Years ago, Mrs. Potter had flown to Gussie’s side at the moment she learned that Gussie’s first husband, who was also Mrs. Potter’s favorite cousin, had been killed in a hunting accident. She had done so as well when Gussie’s second husband died of a heart attack in New York, sharing Gussie’s grief at the loss of the good man she had loved so greatly for so many years, and the father of her two children. Just as Gussie had come to be with her when Lew died.

This time they both—she and Gussie—had known without saying that it had not been necessary for her to come back to Nantucket when Gordon died, and that this January visit was purely for the pleasure of continuing their old friendship.

The mention of bread-baking had apparently caught Beth’s attention, and her response brought Mrs. Potter back from her thoughts. “Portuguese bread—marvelous!” Beth was saying, enthusiastically, then adding a note of doubt. “But Manny said he wouldn’t be back until May. I put a dozen loaves in the freezer before he closed, of course. I always do.”

The old town bakery was closed for the winter, everyone said. There was no way they could learn to make Portuguese bread, they said, and besides, who eats
bread?

Mrs. Potter smiled. “I do,” she said, “and you all know I’ve been trying to bake real Portuguese bread for years. I trust Gussie. If she says we’re going to make Portuguese bread, we
are.”

Thus, ignoring the rising decibels of laughter from the doorway of the private dining room, talk continued at the round table in the bay window.

“. . . so many things we share.” This was Leah’s voice, trailing into a familiar plaintive note. “Most of us past garden club presidents, nearly all of our husbands once commodores
of the Yacht Club . . . some happy memories, some tragic. . .”

There were husbands then, Mrs. Potter reflected. On Nantucket it was always summer then, and summer was always weekends. The harbor was always blue at midday, dotted with racing sails. The nights were always starlit, the surf always music on wide clean beaches.

There were picnics then, parents languorous by the firelight after a day in the sun; teen-agers clustering around a portable radio just out of range of the light, scuffling sand with bare feet as they taught each other the twist and the frug, dances they hadn’t learned at their proper off-island winter dancing classes.

There were husbands then. An album of snapshots flashed through her mind. Jules Berner, basking in Gussie’s admiration, shaking himself like a slightly grizzled water dog after swimming the harbor from Coatue to Abram’s Point. Bo Heidecker awarding bright pennants to prizewinning juniors at the Yacht Club. Les Latham, pale, plump, and serious, cackling in unwonted hilarity in a bright-flowered shirt at a beach club luau. Ab Leland with Mittie and their two blond sons at St. Paul’s, their voices clear and true, the music and words so familiar—a tribute to compulsory chapel at the best prep schools—that they scarcely glanced down at their hymnals.

There was Fan Carpenter, the night Gussie gave him the nickname, from then on known to everyone except Leah as “Fannypatter.” There was Jim Higginson whirling and pivoting Beth on the dance floor in a spirited foxtrot that turned into an unabashed tour de force jitterbug finale. Beer and Bloody Marys and gin and tonic; husbands, weekends, and laughter. Lew, with one arm thrown across her shoulder, driving home in the honeysuckle-scented darkness, in the old blue convertible.

Mrs. Potter roused herself as Leah repeated her words, “So many memories . . .”

“We know, Leah,” Dee reminded her briskly. “We’re all
women alone. Only some of us are more alone than others, aren’t we?”

Gentle interior rumbling, reminder of the hours since her early breakfast, directed Mrs. Potter’s attention to the salad bar. Taking up one long wall of the paneled, low-ceilinged room, it was flanked on both sides with plant stands and hanging baskets bearing a profusion of exuberantly thriving green plants. Philodendrons, ivies of many kinds, many-hued begonias, peperomias, dieffenbachias, sansevierias, bright pots of impatiens and nasturtiums, plus the soft pink and strong green foliage of the holiday poinsettias, all glowing under softly focused light.

As she gazed, the owner of the inn came toward them from the kitchen and bent quickly to kiss her cheek. “Potter, old dear, how wonderful to have you back!” Peter Benson exclaimed. “We’ve missed you! I adore my girls—how would I exist without you all?—and now the circle is complete again! How long will you be here?”

Before she could answer, he continued rapidly. “Now let’s see, may I give a little dinner for you soon? No, let’s make it a Sunday breakfast at the beach shack instead, shall we? You love picnics, Potter, and winter ones are the best. No sand, no bugs, everything cozy by the fire.” He turned to the others. “Now all of you promise to come help celebrate Potter’s return. You hear me, guys? Nobody says no to this party!”

“Nobody ever says
no
to any of your invitations, Peter,” Mrs. Potter said. “Are we free Sunday, Gussie? I’d love it.”

Gussie’s assent seemed to be taken for granted as Peter spun Mrs. Potter around to a view of the dining room.

“Did you see what we’re doing?” he demanded. “Those are fresh herbs growing in that hydroponic tank by the salad bar—can you believe it? Even in the restaurant on top of the World Trade Center in New York there isn’t anything better. Some good places grow their own herbs this way in the kitchen, or so they tell you, but mine are right out here where you can feast your eyes as well as your greedy little tummies. Edible decor, my darlings!”

“You know Tony really inspired the idea,” Leah put in.

“Now, Carpenter,” Peter replied promptly, “Tony is staying here at the inn for the winter, as you all well know, and I’m the most loyal fan he’s got around here, but nobody knows what’s good for you better than old Uncle Peter. I spent more than two thousand dollars for that herb garden tank, and the idea was mine.”

He turned to Gussie. “So what do you say, Van Vleeck? Is it a party for Sunday, say one o’clock at the shack?”

As Peter bent, affectionate, brotherly, to kiss Mrs. Potter a second time, she thought, as she often had before, that Peter treated them all like little boys—like eager, active little schoolboys, to be gently teased and chivied and ordered about. It was his special magic that he only ordered them to do those things that would prove to be fun (and often good for them as well), and he went to a great deal of trouble to arrange his amusements for them.

Peter left to return to the kitchen, but his path was momentarily blocked by a plump, scurrying figure in a tan gabardine raincoat and matching small-brimmed round hat, carrying a large shapeless bag over one shoulder. The pair made an awkward two-step, dodging from left to right, until Peter stepped firmly aside, propelling the newcomer gently into the private dining room, where the shrieks of laughter and applause were steadily increasing.