The Nantucket Diet Murders

by Virginia Rich

  “I don’t like all this talk about money,” Mittie said, busy now with the parsnip, her young eyes sad in the tanned, deeply lined small face. “There always used to be enough not to have to think about it, and now all that seems to be left is just two hunks of real estate. There’s the Shimmo house, which I can’t afford to run and can’t afford to give away and the children can’t and won’t even consider. And there’s this old house of Mummy and Daddy’s, which needs so much work I can’t even let myself think about the plumbing and wiring and insulating and painting. I found out how much all those things cost when I had the old carriage house made into an apartment, even though I did all the landscaping and planting myself. Heaven knows how much one of the regular landscape firms would have charged me for that part of it.”

  Mittie’s voice sounded shaky, and Mrs. Potter felt sudden guilt at her trespass on the private dignity of an old friend. “I’ll bring you a loaf of Portuguese bread to go with your stew when I get back from town,” she said quickly. “It smells delicious already and I know how grateful Dee must be to share your company and your cooking. Don’t bother to let me out. I know the way.”

  She turned back in an apologetic afterthought. “I just read an old mystery novel about garden poisons.,” she said. “You know all about gardens—I suppose nobody could have cyanide, prussic acid, these days?”

  Mittie remembered that the old gardener at home had things he’d never let the children touch. For herself, she believed in clearing out old garden leftovers, just as she’d throw out an old prescription in her medicine cabinet. She doubted very much that anyone would be so foolish as to keep any old illegal poisons around nowadays, or that they’d be very effective anyway. She was too much a professional to have any such thing herself.

  Across the street at Helen’s, the borders of boxwood and yew, the careful plantings of holly and cotoneaster, were in perfect winter order. Helen was just leaving the porticoed entry of the house, giving the heavy doorknob a quick check to be sure it was locked.

  Mrs. Potter quickly disclaimed any intent of coming to call, saying only that she hoped to stop by someday soon to admire the new garden room. This, a separate building with a small greenhouse now joining it to the main house, had been created within a carefully preserved outer shell. This once had been a small barn, as Mrs. Potter remembered it—a tool shed, in all likelihood, with room for a carriage and for horses to enter from the small street at the back of the property.

  “Have a quick look now,” Helen urged. “I’ve a few minutes before I’m due downtown to see Ozzie deBevereaux’s nephew. He’s here to distribute our files to everybody who was a client of Ozzie’s, as I’m sure Gussie knows. Mine all seem to be in order—I hope hers are.”

  As she spoke, she led Mrs. Potter across the paved brick walk of the small side garden, and taking a ring of keys from her basket, she unlocked the deep blue painted door.

  “Did I tell you there’s going to be a magazine feature about this?” she asked. “And one of the Boston papers wants to do a piece about ‘the queen of Nantucket society,’ if you can imagine anything so ridiculous. They even spoke of doing a profile about my executive talent. I told them to wait awhile on that one.”

  Before she could ask what Helen meant by that, Mrs. Potter was led into the garden room. The air was warm and moist. Bow windows, small-paned, were filled with flowering plants under special garden lighting. Shrubs like small trees grew in great tubs of oriental ceramic design on a floor of turquoise tiles. White wicker furniture, deeply cushioned in blues and greens, offered an invitation to sit and admire. Still, Mrs. Potter knew she must insist she’d return for that another day.

  “I don’t see how you manage to keep this so perfectly tended,” she said. “When I come back, you must tell me.”

  Helen’s earlier glow of pride dimmed slightly. “Of course, Walter and Elna did most of it,” she admitted. “Lolly can take over now, more or less, until I find new help. Certainly she ought to be able to manage the meals. TV dinners are fine as far as I’m concerned.”

  The thought of Walter and Elna seemed painful. “Can you believe their just walking out like that? After all these years? Everything seemed perfectly normal last Thursday afternoon—I think Lolly had just come home from her job—and then without a word of warning, they just up and quit.”

  “They must have had a reason,” Mrs. Potter said. It seemed suddenly important to her to find out what it was. “This couldn’t have been an easy decision for them.”

  “They sounded absolutely crazy,” Helen said. “‘We won’t spend another night in a house doomed to self-destruction.’ That’s what Walter said, in that preacher voice of his.” She shrugged. “Well, you know how simpleminded and superstitious colored help can be. I suppose something about Lester’s death, all those years ago, set them off, although I can’t imagine what it could have been.”

  Mrs. Potter remonstrated. “Colored help! You’re talking about two people who have devoted themselves to you and your house and have looked after Lolly for nearly thirty years! The term in itself sounds insulting to most people, although it may not seem so to you. It’s certainly insulting to say they’re ignorant and superstitious!”

  Helen held her ground. “What would you call that kind of reason for quitting without notice?”

  “They always seemed warmhearted and dependable,” Mrs. Potter insisted. “I think you’re overreacting to the shock of having them quit, and saying things you don’t really mean.”

  Helen did not retreat. “You talk about insulting! Elna kept ranting on about how I’d better keep a watch on the booze. That was insulting! I ask you, Genia, did you ever know me to be a heavy drinker? I insisted we keep a supply of liquor on hand for guests and parties—it was up to Walter to be sure there was an adequate supply—but even before Tony came, I never drank anything by myself at home, the way you do. And Lolly can’t stand the stuff—she never even has a glass of wine.”

  Mrs. Potter did not intend to defend the before-dinner drink that had been her custom before she took up Gussie’s diet. She certainly wasn’t going to reveal that Lolly had a taste for vodka, if not for wine. Instead she tried again to speak up for Walter and Elna. “I don’t know what they were talking about,” she said, “but Lolly must know. She knew them better than anyone else.”

  “Oh, Lolly.” Helen dismissed any possible opinion her daughter might have had. “She hadn’t any idea. All I can tell you is that they marched in to see me, bags all packed, gave their notice, then walked right out the front door and out of the house,” Helen said bitterly. “And I have a suspicion they walked right into a job in New York the next day with summer people I know, which is the last straw. You don’t suppose Gussie could spare Teresa for me until I find a new couple, do you?” She looked at the watch on her impossibly thin wrist.

  Mrs. Potter declined to answer, quickly repeating instead that, she’d be back for a proper viewing of the room another day when they both had more time. How little Helen seems to notice Lolly, she thought. It never occurred to her that Elna’s warning about the liquor referred to anyone but herself. And she seems to have ignored whatever Lolly might have known or thought about Walter and Elna’s leaving.

  “Let’s walk together down Main Street,” she said as Helen checked the lock on the garden room door. “I’m on my way to see how the new little bakeshop is doing and to pick up a few loaves of Portuguese bread for Gussie and me, and for Mittie and Mary Lynne. Want some?”

  “Bread? Heavens, no!” Helen said, as if the word itself were unfamiliar to her. “But I do know about the new business Klaus Muller’s son has started. We knew his parents in St. Louis before Mrs. Muller died. Excellent firm. There was a time when I considered a joint venture—Latham and Muller—but Lester just couldn’t be pushed into any kind of expansion. Along with the watchbands, which were all he cared about, we made college rings and fraternity pins, and the Mullers had a furniture subsidiary that made college chairs. You know, the k
ind with an emblem decal, the ones everybody buys at their fifth reunion?”

  Mrs. Potter smiled, and Helen continued, her voice suddenly shaking with vehemence. “I could have made a tremendous thing out of Latham Jewelry and the Muller chair division. I don’t know how many other ideas I had that Lester refused to consider. I ran the business for a while, you know, after his death, but the old board of directors was equally impossible, and I finally decided to sell out and move here to stay.”

  Perhaps here was a clue as to why Lester Latham had taken his own life. Mrs. Potter had wondered in the past why that plump, serious, bespectacled little man could have killed himself, and in such a violent manner. He had seemed such a quiet, passionless person to have been under such obviously unbearable pressures. How hard it must be for his daughter, she thought again, to have that memory and also to realize how much like him she had always looked to be, even as a pale, plump, unsmiling baby.

  “For someone as competent and knowledgeable as you are,” Mrs. Potter said, “I expect all you need from a lawyer is what Lew used to call having them sprinkle holy water on your tax returns.” They continued to walk down Main Street. “I suppose you used Ozzie to do that for you?”

  “He could be useful,” Helen said carelessly. “He put his name on my returns, and he registered the name for me for the Latham Foundation, but that’s something any lawyer can do in his sleep as long as nobody else has it.”

  Mrs. Potter tried to collect her wits. Helen setting up something called the Latham Foundation? For Tony? Not the Ferencz Institute, or whatever Mittie had called it?

  The appearance of Victor Sandys, coming out of the clothing store on their right, forestalled further questions. “Murray’s are having January sales,” he explained, justifying his armload of packages.

  Noting the new fur-lined storm coat he was wearing, one overlooked garment tag still sewn to a sleeve, the new pork-pie tweed hat, the rich cashmere muffler, and the discreet gleam of new heavy walking brogues, it was clear that not all of Victor’s purchases were those boxed and cradled in his protective arms.

  “Victor must have sold a book again at last, after all these years,” Helen remarked as the two women proceeded down the street, leaving Victor to transfer his bundles into what looked to be a new car parked around the corner. “I think he’s blowing his advance royalties, and if that car is his, he’s doing better for himself than he ever has before, for as long as I’ve known him.”

  Helen’s good-bye was lost in the small throng of shoppers in line in front of the bakeshop. Mrs. Potter waved as she left, then took her place behind the others, surrounded with the heady perfume of baking bread.

  “If it’s like this in January, what’ll it be when the summer people get here?” a stout woman was saying. Her companion seemed unperturbed. “Don’t shove,” she admonished someone behind her. “I can see the counter and there’s plenty today.”

  A third speaker joined. “If I didn’t know different, I’d say Manny was back. That bread’s some good, as good as Manny ever made—and they say it’s a young Kraut who’s the new baker, somewhere out there in the back of the store. Hard to figure out where there’d be room for it.”

  The stout woman answered. “All I know is he’s baking right this minute. You can smell it. Probably the only way they can keep the little place aired out is to have the ventilator right out on the street.”

  As the line grew shorter, there was a break in the press of afternoon bread-buyers, and Mrs. Potter finally found herself in the shop and for the moment the only customer.

  “Mary, it’s a smash hit!” she said. “Congratulations, both to you and to Hans! Mrs. Van Vleeck and I think his bread is just as wonderful as your Uncle Manny’s, and this merchandising idea of yours is a winner.”

  Mary Rezendes was glowing, her pale biscuit-colored skin faintly moist with excitement and the heat of the small room. “It’s such fun I can’t tell you!” she said. “Every night we call Uncle Manny in Fort Lauderdale, and he can’t believe how much bread We’re selling now. Hans says if our present sales continue, even at a slightly slower pace once the original novelty wears off, we can do even a little better than break even for the next few months, which was all we had hoped for. Then, with the Daffodil Festival in April, we’re going to begin real off-island promotion, and by summer Hans is convinced we’ll be big business! Isn’t it fantastic?”

  Remembering Gussie’s promise that they would learn to make Portuguese bread, and Hans’s assurance that he would be their teacher, Mrs. Potter again sent her compliments to the baker, whose work had been done hours earlier and at least eight blocks away. “We’ll give you time to get all this going,” she told Mary, “before we take you up on those lessons. We’ll wait until things settle down a bit for you.”

  And for me, too, she thought. “For now,” she said, “you’d better give me six loaves. Two each, one sliced and one not, in three separate bags, if that’s not a nuisance.” She looked at her watch. There would be time to take one bag to Mary Lynne with the hope of finding her home for a quick visit, then to deliver another as promised to Mittie’s door, although not time to buy a new colored leotard. She’d have to exercise in the old balbriggan pajamas another day.

  As the crusty round loaves went into bags, she was able to voice a question, even though it was one she had intended to dismiss. “You know chemistry, Mary,” she said. “I’ve read old mystery novels about cyanide being used in greenhouses once upon a time. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about it?”

  “Well, Uncle Manny’s older brother used to be a gardener on the island, years ago,” Mary said, “and I’m sure he told me potassium cyanide was used fairly commonly then. Of course, it was tricky to handle and you had to know what you were doing.”

  “I suppose it’s illegal now?” Mrs. Potter asked. “I mean, it really is deadly poison, isn’t it?”

  Mary made an effort to speak as a Radcliffe honors graduate. “Oh, yes, it’s deadly,” she said. “The Food and Drug people outlawed it for general use years ago. I remember it’s used commercially in electroplating metals and in photography, but I’m sure only with the strictest kind of controls.”

  Another customer entered the shop before Mrs. Potter could ask Mary Rezendes about old containers and how long old poisons remained lethal. She wondered, as she left the shop, how many dangerous and now illegal substances might be in her own garden cupboard at the ranch. DDT—could there be any of that left, on the back of a shelf? And what was it they had once used to sprinkle the gravel of the parking area to kill the hardy desert weeds? She had a sinking feeling that its other name might be Agent Orange. What was the only thing really effective against the Arizona ant colonies that made great barren circles around their central burrows, big enough to be seen from a plane thousands of feet in the air? That stuff was also a killer for the ferocious small red ants whose bites could be a stab of fire under your pants leg, just above your boot top. Chlordane, that’s what it was. She knew there was still some of that around, even though they could no longer buy it. Was dieldrin off or on the approved list? Malathion? Her own shelves would not date back to days of prussic acid, but they still might hold a threat she hadn’t ever really worried about.

  Her reflections had led her down Orange Street to Mary Lynne’s handsomely columned white house, another well-preserved mansion from the island’s whaling past.

  A quick yapping of small dogs responded to her rap on the brass knocker. Mary Lynne’s surprised greeting, “Why, hello there, Genia!” as she answered the door, carried powerfully, unmistakably, almost overwhelmingly, a breath of chocolate and peanuts.

  23

  We all go off our diets once in a while, Mrs. Potter thought as she presented her gift of Portuguese bread, aware of Mary Lynne’s split second of delay before her invitation to come in. It’s a fact of life. No matter how well we’re doing, we slip now and again—possibly because of an unresolved problem, anger, anxiety, sometimes it seems out of pure
perversity.

  If Mary Lynne was eating what she thought—the Goo Goo Clusters of her Tennessee youth—she was probably reacting to temporary stress, perhaps the responsibility of the new island tradition of the spring Daffodil Festival.

  Once at Mary Lynne’s urging in the past, Mrs. Potter had eaten a Goo Goo, a mound of chocolate, peanuts, caramel, and marshmallow apparently beloved by all who grew up south of the Mason-Dixon Line. She calculated the depth of Mary Lynne’s probable remorse tomorrow, as she followed her into the high-ceilinged parlor, noting again how much weight she had lost and how lightly she moved.

  To keep herself at this slim weight, Mary Lynne, a woman of medium height, not given to active sports, was likely to have a maintenance calorie limit, to be generous, of not more than fifteen hundred calories. It wouldn’t take many Goo Goos to blow that sky-high.

  Mary Lynne led her to a curved Victorian love seat, and as she did so, Mrs. Potter noticed that by a slight nudge of the toe she had at the same time pushed a flat box, lying on the floor, under the skirt of a yellow damask-covered wing chair.

  Two small dogs, yapping rather crossly, rushed back and forth across the room, first glaring at her with unconcealed dislike, then back to sniff, questioningly, at the base of the yellow chair.

  “You’ll have to forgive my babies,” Mary Lynne said quickly, picking up a small multicolored dog under each arm. “You haven’t learned your party manners yet, have you, lambies? Mother’s going to put you in your pretty bedroom now, and we’ll have us a good little romp later. ’Scuse me a minute, Genia, honey? Incidentally, whatever happened to that beautiful Weimaraner of yours?”

  Mrs. Potter was able only to murmur, “He’s dead now,” in a tone that invited no further inquiry.