The Nantucket Diet Murders

by Virginia Rich

  “I remember he had such a nice name,” Mary Lynne continued, still holding a dog under each arm. “This little girl is Sen-Sen, but I haven’t got the right name yet for brother.”

  “Sen-Sen?” Mrs. Potter asked. “You mean that pinhead-size dark stuff—licoricish and peppery—the bad boys used to chew to cover up the smell of cigarettes on their breath?”

  “Or moonshine,” Mary Lynne said wisely. “I think it sounds so oriental, don’t you? And spicy and lively? Just like her. But I can’t get the absolutely perfect right name for my boy. You and Gussie put your minds to it and help me think of one.”

  As Mary Lynne left with the small dogs, still noisy in their excitement, Mrs. Potter noticed that her toe gave a second small nudge to the box, with which it disappeared completely from sight beneath the skirted chair.

  The absolutely perfect name for little brother is obvious, she decided, but this is not the time to suggest it. I’m glad Mary Lynne didn’t mention it, and even more grateful that she didn’t offer me any. She was not sure whether the idea of a binge with Goo Goos was terribly funny or totally revolting.

  When Mary Lynne rejoined her a few seconds later, sharp complaints continued from the two little dogs somewhere in the back of the house.

  Ignoring them, Mrs. Potter issued a reassuring bulletin, as she had done with Helen over the phone the evening before. Beth was slightly under the weather, she said, but everyone felt sure that after a few days with Laurence and Paula in Providence, she soon would be fine again. As soon as she could, she began in a roundabout way to approach the subject of Mittie’s casual allusion earlier in the afternoon. She wanted to know about Tony’s being on the scene when Bo died.

  “Everyone’s so proud of you, Mary Lynne,” she began.

  “You mean the festival?” Mary Lynne asked. “You know just as well as you’re sitting here on my love seat, Genia Potter, that there’s no way in the world I could run that whole great big whoop-te-do by myself if every single soul on the island wasn’t helping me with it, night and day.”

  “I’m very sure not only that you could run the whole show very competently,” Mrs. Potter replied, “but that you’re actually doing so, in spite of all this modesty. Come on, Mary Lynne, don’t play helpless southern belle with me. We’ve known each other too long.”

  Mary Lynne’s wide smile pursed into a small grimace, the gesture of a child caught in an innocent prank.

  “I wasn’t thinking of the festival,” Mrs. Potter continued. “I know it will be a huge success again this year and that you know exactly what you’re doing, as you always do. I hope to be back for it. What I’m talking about is how you managed as you did in the sailboat when Bo was taken ill. Forgive me if it’s painful to talk about it, but ever since Gussie called to tell me last summer—was it August?—I’ve been marveling at how you were able to handle that big sloop alone and get back for help.”

  “You don’t want to hear that old story again, Genia,” Mary Lynne protested. “Honest to gracious goodness, everybody’s made too much of it. Bo had his attack when we were sailing, that’s what happened, when we were way up the harbor on the Coatue side, past the Five Fingers and just off Coskata. He was the one that was wonderful, not me.”

  “Gussie said all the other boats were out of hailing distance,” Mrs. Potter went on. “To think that the harbor was full of boats, as it would have been at that time of year, but none of them close enough to hear you call for help.” She was suddenly aware of how really awful it must have been.

  “It was just plain the worst thing that ever happened in my whole entire life,” Mary Lynne replied. “There was Bo sailing along, merry as a Tennessee cricket, saying how glad he was to get me to go out sailing with him, which, honestly Genia, I tried to get out of whenever I could. I’m not used to boats and usually I’m scared out of my mind and sick as a pup. But that day was bright and calm and he talked me into it.”

  “And then he was suddenly taken ill?” Mrs. Potter asked, shaken. She had come to find out how Tony Ferencz and Ozzie deBevereaux were involved in the rescue, but she knew that until now she had not fully understood Mary Lynne’s ordeal.

  “I’m not much of a saltwater sailor myself,” she went on. “I grew up with canoes and rowboats and outboards, and some of us had small sailboats, but here I didn’t go out in our old Indian alone. The children did, but I know it meant using both arms and legs, right down to both big toes, to do it. It was like yours, I think—twenty-two feet, wood hull, Marconi rigged, with a centerboard? Anyway, the three of them were all such good sailors and so were their friends that usually all I had to do was enjoy myself and remember to duck when someone called ‘Ready about, hard alee!’ That, and to bring the sandwiches and Cokes. I’m sure I couldn’t have taken over and sailed it all by myself as you did.”

  “Yes, an Indian,” Mary Lynne said vaguely. “I gave it to the Yacht Club later and I don’t know what happened to it. Anyway, it had a little triangle sail in front—that’s called the jib, Genia—and a big triangle sail with a long stick across the bottom, and that stick is the boom.”

  “Yes, I know,” Mrs. Potter said.

  “And I knew about the centerboard,” Mary Lynne continued. “Bo pulled it up in shallow water that day, near shore, and then let it down again as soon as we were back where the water was deeper. He’d explained all this to me before, too, but honestly, I never paid a bit of attention. I just thought about other things and said, ‘Oh, I see.’ That day I was just riding along, and for the first time in my life, honest-to-goodness almost enjoying it.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Mrs. Potter urged, wondering how she might have acted in Mary Lynne’s place.

  As Mary Lynne spoke, she could visualize the far reaches of the harbor in summer, dancing blue in the sun, dotted with sails, and she heard Mary Lynne’s story as if it were taking place before her eyes.

  The big man, laughing and talking, at ease in his boat in the late morning sun, suddenly felt a pain in his neck and shoulder.

  “Come back and sit by me,” he asked his wife in a strained voice. “See if you can steer for a bit. I’ll tell you what to do.”

  He showed her how to pick a spot on the horizon and tried to explain how to hold the boat steady on course for it. “That’s it,” he said. “The Wauwinet House. It’s big enough to see.”

  The pain increased. “That’s good,” he encouraged her. “Just: hold her steady.”

  Then without speaking again he fell forward on his face, lying heavy and motionless on coiled lines and damp floorboards, dislocating a plastic bailing bucket, which rolled forward slowly, making a dull clatter.

  The woman dropped her grasp of the tiller and dropped to his side, but found herself unable to lift him or even to squeeze herself into the space directly beside his bulk and the centerboard. He did not answer when she spoke to him, her cries and entreaties increasing, unheeded.

  A flat paddle lay at her side, and she seized it and began to wave it aloft, shouting now for help to other sails in the distance. No one saw her or heard her.

  The breeze freshened and the big sail, now swinging free, threatened to knock her off her feet. She crawled back to the tiller, beneath the wildly careening boom, trying frantically to remember what she had been doing before, when she had been told to keep her eye on the big hotel across the harbor.

  Now the sloop regained headway and the swinging boom was no longer a danger as long as she held her course with the following wind. The man in the bottom of the boat was silent and motionless.

  The wind changed slightly and with a sickening thud the heavy boom now swung to the other side. She was only just able to duck as it passed her head. The boat seemed to be moving faster now in the water, and she desperately wished she knew how to make it slow down so that she could go back to the motionless figure, facedown, just beyond her feet.

  At last the beach of the summer hotel was ahead. The boat approached it rapidly, head on, until the woman heard and felt i
ts rough scraping on the sandy bottom in the shallow water. Again the boom went wild. The woman knew the boat would overturn, until she remembered how she had been shown to raise the centerboard. Then, at last, she saw too how to release the line to lower the straining, threatening sail.

  Mary Lynne took a deep breath, as if in an effort to regain her calm, and again the rich smell of chocolate and peanuts came across the space between her chair and the Victorian settee.

  “Sorry if I seem upset,” Mary Lynne apologized. “Of course, I get stirred up remembering all this again, but besides that I had some news this morning that makes a difference in my future plans. And beside that, I had an important appointment canceled for four o’clock, and that’s what’s really bothering me at the moment.”

  “What happened when you came ashore on the beach?” Mrs. Potter asked. Now she must concentrate on the information she had come for.

  “The boat just coasted right up on the sand,” Mary Lynne concluded her story, “and I started screaming for help. And you won’t believe it, but Tony Ferencz was the first one out of the hotel, and everyone said how providential that was, with his medical knowledge, so that if anything could have been done for Bo, there wouldn’t have been any delay. But of course he was already gone. I’m sure he died instantly.”

  “He was dead, then, by the time you came ashore,” Mrs. Potter repeated sadly. “You know how sorry we all were, Mary Lynne. I’ve written you several times and I want to say it again now. But until today I hadn’t really been able to imagine what a terrible ordeal you’d gone through.”

  Mary Lynne’s voice took on a touch of indignation. “Ozzie deBevereaux was there, too. He and that secretary of his came rushing down from the veranda, and he was worse than no help at all. He just kept hopping up and down and saying, ‘Get that man away from him!’ and ‘Call a doctor, Edie!’ and trying to push in beside Tony. As if he knew anything about it!

  “The comforting part about that,” she continued, “was that somebody told Peter later on that Ozzie had been yelling at Tony, practically accusing him of not knowing what to do for Bo, and Peter was wonderful. He told everybody he didn’t know what Ozzie must have been thinking of.”

  The old clock ticking on the mantel showed three forty-five. “Gussie’s expecting me,” Mrs. Potter said reluctantly. “She’s a stickler for exercise time. I hope you enjoy the Portuguese bread, but give it away if it’s any threat to that diet of yours. You really look beautiful at that weight, and you’re a great advertisement for Tony, just as Gussie is.”

  Mary Lynne sounded uncertain. “I’ve been hoping Tony’s program and treatments could help a lot more people in the future,” she said as Mrs. Potter reached the door. “I thought it would be simply marvelous if we all could help him set up a world-famous center for beauty and rejuvenation here on the island. He plans to call it ‘Daffodil House’! Isn’t that perfect?”

  Mary Lynne’s brush of cheeks, saying good-bye, was scented with chocolate and peanuts, and Mrs. Potter left wondering whether it might have been the awareness of trust limitations on spending, the cancellation of the four o’clock appointment, or a combination of both, that had been the reason she had gone off her diet.

  One more brief encounter, this by chance, was to provide speculation for even more yellow-pad notes later on. As Mrs. Potter hurried across her shortcut path to the church parking lot and came out on Fair Street, she found Leah leaving the church.

  “I wish we could chat a minute,” Mrs. Potter said, “but I’ve got to get home. May I stop in for a cup of tea someday soon? I’d love to have a visit, just the two of us.”

  Leah seemed flushed and in some way embarrassed.

  “I don’t mean to be a nuisance,” Mrs. Potter said easily. “Just give me a ring some day.”

  Leah was quick to insist her eagerness for just such a chat, but she still seemed ill at ease. In what seemed an irrepressible burst of confidence, she explained that she, too, was in a hurry.

  “Tony’s expecting me at the Scrim at four,” she said. “He just called and said he had found himself free, and that he’s going to begin a new series of treatments for me. Don’t you say a word about this to Gussie or anybody, will you? He’d be furious if he knew I even mentioned it.”

  Leah’s retreating back as she hurried down the street looked very young. She was wearing leather boots to the knee, and above these her pleated wool skirt swung as jauntily as a teen-ager’s below her dark reefer.

  She looks and sounds like a woman on her way to a lovers’ tryst instead of an appointment with a diet doctor, Mrs. Potter found herself thinking. Leah—the world’s greatest widow? Leah, with new green sparkle in her eyes and a swing in her step?

  Since she was thinking of him, it came as only a small surprise to have Gussie speaking of Tony when she returned to the house.

  “I asked him to join us for dinner, just the three of us,” Gussie was saying. “You know I’m dying to have you two know each other better, and I certainly don’t want you to go on believing bad things about him just because of a dubious story about Ozzie deBevereaux’s daughter all those years ago.”

  “What time is he coming?” Mrs. Potter asked, tired after her afternoon rounds, thinking that if she was going to exercise a half hour every day, she’d rather do it in the morning than at four in the afternoon, and wondering if she really wanted to see Tony Ferencz this evening.

  “Oh, he’s not,” Gussie said, with obvious disappointment. “I said I asked him. But he’s tied up with a business appointment this afternoon at four and he felt it might go on into the evening, so we made it for tomorrow night instead.”

  “That’s fine,” Mrs. Potter said, with what: she hoped was not obvious relief. “You and I were up too late last night worrying about Beth. Let’s make this Health Night, shall we, and go to bed early? I challenge you to one game of cribbage after dinner. Loser runs the dishwasher and turns off the lights.”

  She knew she couldn’t wait to get back to those yellow pages, and there was nothing in today’s notes that she could possibly share with Gussie.

  One of these, she knew, would have to do with Tony’s possibly prolonged business appointment. She now knew that he was, in various ways, playing the field, although Helen and Gussie appeared to hold top priority. This made him seem less and less a suitable candidate for Gussie’s fourth husband.

  Another note, even more serious, would be how she could make sure Tony had not withheld lifesaving emergency treatment from Bo, even though Peter, who must have known Ozzie very well, had assured everyone that Ozzie’s apparent suspicions were not to be taken seriously.

  She wanted to write down Walter’s doom-filled reason for leaving and Elna’s parting admonition about liquor, with an added note of how little Helen knew about her daughter.

  She wanted to ponder whether anyone would murder a trust officer for refusal to let her give away property that represented her only security.

  It seemed a lot to think about until she reminded herself of Beth.

  24

  At breakfast the next morning—fresh juice of celery and carrot, with the usual handful of parsley added, and today for a special fillip, raw turnip, its small crest of top leaves included—Gussie returned to the subject of Beth’s sudden deep depression and alarmingly erratic behavior.

  “I’m going to call Paula and Laurence as soon as I think they’ll be up,” she said. “Certainly seven thirty can’t be too early. They have young children and Laurence is a hardworking lawyer. He probably gets to his office by nine.”

  The report was brief. Beth was still resting quietly at the hospital and the doctor preferred that she not have visitors for a few more days. Whether that sounded bad or good, it was hard to tell.

  Listening, Mrs. Potter sipped a second cup of breakfast tea, which she found restorative while her system absorbed the calcium Gussie assured her the turnip juice was pouring into her teeth and bones.

  “I think we should go to the science libra
ry this afternoon and check Beth’s notes on poisonous plants,” Gussie said, Beth still on her mind.

  “There are probably a lot of others,” Mrs. Potter prophesied soberly.

  Earlier she had reexamined the crumpled pages of Beth’s notes. “These look pretty detailed and complete once you get them all laid out,” she said. “Still, you’re probably right about more research. If it suits your morning plans, I think I’ll go out for a bit now.” She headed for the back hall coatrack. “Be back to go to the library with you later. I’ll have lunch out before then and give you a rest.”

  “Fine,” Gussie called back cheerfully from the library. “Ozzie’s nephew is on the island to distribute his clients’ files, and he’s coming with mine at eleven. Meantime I’ll organize things for dinner when Tony comes tonight. Don’t forget your diet, and I expect a full report on everything you eat and drink. Shall we count on doing the library about two thirty?”

  Arnold Sallanger first, Mrs. Potter decided as she started out into the January sunshine, only slightly muted by a fine white film overhead between island and sky. He used to have morning office hours after his hospital rounds. If Jenny Spicer is still his office nurse and receptionist, maybe she’ll squeeze me in for a quick few minutes with him, just to say hello.

  A very pregnant young woman was coming out of the small neat brick building, whose doorway plaque was engraved in script with the name A. R. Sallanger, M.D.

  “Mrs. Potter!” Jenny greeted her with affectionate surprise as she entered the small waiting room. Jenny’s hug and kiss were warming, and Mrs. Potter thought how much this happy, energetic little woman, no longer young, contributed to Arnold Sallanger’s practice of medicine. Maybe some people only need that hug and kiss to feel better, she thought, and maybe Arnold is the one doctor in the world with enough humor and humility to admit the possibility.

  “Doctor’s still at the hospital,” Jenny told her. “Seems to be baby season. I’m trying to persuade him to bring in a partner, a young OB. This day-and-night stuff is too much at his age. Not that he’s old,” she amended hastily, “any more than I am. But all these new young Navy wives on the island are keeping him busier than one man ought to be.”