The Nantucket Diet Murders (29 page)

There was no doubt in her mind now that Lolly was guilty, however much the girl might tell herself it was all a horrible accident. And no matter what had been the reason for the two poisoning deaths, she would never be able to forgive Lolly for what she had done with the old poison bottle.

She knew, from seeing the furtive drink Lolly had poured for herself at the beach shack picnic, that Lolly was clever in disguising her actions. She could have been just as clever in putting the blue bottle in Beth’s basket at the party. No one ever really noticed what Lolly was doing. The unbelievable part was Lolly’s quick, dark cunning in seeing the possibilities of the old bottle in the first place.

In spite of herself, her thoughts went back to Tony. There was no escaping one fact, no matter what Lolly had done. None of this had happened before Tony came to Nantucket. She heard Dee’s words again in her mind.
You’ll all be sorry
.

Now, as she and Gussie drank their morning juices, Gussie was still speaking happily of her pleasure in the threesome dinner party the evening before.

“Did I tell you what Tony’s decided as the name for the clinic?” she asked. “He told me just before he went home. It’s so perfect you’ll have to agree there’s no possible other choice. It’s going to be Eve, Nantucket. Just that—for his mother, of course. Don’t you love it? And he thinks now he might be in business by July at the latest, although that’s all he’d tell me about the details.”

Mrs. Potter was shaken. The man reads my mind, she thought. Or maybe I read his. In all honesty, she had to agree that: the name might be a good one, and certainly better than some of the others she’d been hearing. Eve, Nantucket would probably be a tremendous success, wherever on the island and with whosoever’s money Tony was going to get it set up in time for the Nantucket summer season.

Gussie continued her breakfast chatter. Helen had just called, she reported, and asked her to take one of the new volunteers along on her weekly Meals on Wheels rounds
today—one of the nice new widows on the island who had been among the tea party guests. So Genia could beg off, if she liked, or tag along.

Mrs. Potter elected to beg off. She needed time to think, and she said she would take a walk instead, and then have lunch ready when Gussie got back.

It was late morning when she returned from a long, fast walk, first to the Jetties to smell the salt air and watch the gulls and eventually to climb the winding stone-paved path to the Cliff Road. Delaying, she made a detour on her way back to Main Street, providing an excuse to send postcards later to the children, reminding them that they, too, had once been on Easy Street.

On her way home she passed the paper store. Its windows were blazoned with posters.
A NEW ROMANCE BY VICKI SANDS! EVEN BETTER THAN
Midnight Love!
EVEN SPICIER THAN
Secret Wife!

There was a blown-up jacket cover showing a young woman in a bikini, unaccountably depicted in a field of spring flowers, a shadowy male figure striding toward her out of the woods in the background.
DON
’
T MISS
Ravished!
VICKI SANDS
’
S LATEST ROMANCE WILL MELT YOUR VERY BONES WHEN YOU ENTER YOUR OWN PRIVATE WORLD
,
Ravished!

At least one question, although not on her list, was answered. Victor Sandys was raking it in as Vicki Sands. She wished that all of her answers were that simple. At least it would amuse Gussie to tell her about it. What was that old song they used to consider so naughty, and used to chant so cheerfully and innocently? “Violate me in violet time,” they would sing, with mock leers, “in the vilest manner you know.” Gussie might remember the rest of the words—she could not, at the moment.

Then before she returned to the house, she found herself walking with George Enderbridge. George’s route, she observed, often seemed to be from the church, then up Main Street, past Gussie’s, in the direction of Mittie’s house.

She remembered that George was a clergyman as well as a
retired headmaster. “I need some help,” she said impulsively. “Have you ever known a murderer?”

George seemed unsurprised, and his answer was definite. “Never one who really thought he was,” he said with conviction. “When I was starting out in the church, in a pretty seamy Boston neighborhood, I knew a few people who caused deaths, and they were, in fact, judged guilty of murder. None of them seemed to think he or she was a murderer, or admitted starting out with that intent.”

George teetered back and forth on his heels, considering the question. “The courts said they were murderers. They just thought they’d figured it wrong. They wanted to get even by hurting someone, but
not that much
. They thought they’d get someone out of the action temporarily, but
not for keeps
. All of them, now that I think about it, were honestly surprised once they saw that someone actually died.”

He looked mildly disappointed when Mrs. Potter thanked him and asked nothing further. Then, with a vague smile, apparently feeling that he had performed his priestly office, and, as always, accepting of the foibles of his friends and parishioners, he went on up the street.

At lunch in the kitchen, somewhat later, Mrs. Potter’s only mention of her morning’s encounters was that of the bone-dissolving secret world of
Ravished
, by Vicki Sands.

“We’ll have a new Barbara Cartland in our midst!” Gussie exclaimed. “Victor will dress like a peacock, not that he hasn’t begun to already, and he’ll give interviews to adoring young reporters as he lolls about in bed until noon, and he may even get a hearing aid and start to be fun again, after all these years of moping.”

She tasted her soup. “This is
good!”
she proclaimed.
“Sopa de ajo!
The last time I had it was with Jules in Mexico years ago. Marvelous for a winter day on Nantucket!”

Mrs. Potter’s hasty lunch inspiration had been garlic soup, slightly altered from the original Mexican recipe (not that she remembered this exactly) to fit limitations of time and calories. With no time to simmer a rich beef broth, she had begun with two bouillon cubes and two cups of water in a shallow
skillet. With the flat blade of a heavy knife, she whacked four fat garlic cloves into instant shedding of their papery skins, whacked them soundly again into total submission, then finished them with brisk, brief chopping. Garlic soup was not for the fainthearted.

As the minced garlic simmered in the broth, she reminded herself to look up on Tony’s chart in the pantry what garlic was good for. Everything, probably—old folklore claimed miracles for it. The chart would probably just say that it reactivated the spleen, or something equally uninteresting.

The Mexican recipe called for a generous amount of shredded Gruyère or Swiss cheese. She found neither in Gussie’s refrigerator, but in their stead she measured out a careful half-cup of shredded low-fat mozzarella—far less than the expected quantity, she was sure.

Just before she called Gussie to the table for lunch, she very gently slid two eggs into the simmering broth, and at the same time put two slices of Portuguese bread in the toaster. When the eggs were softly poached, she transferred each, with the hot broth, into a heavy heated pottery soup bowl, and divided the shredded cheese over them. Each bowl was quickly topped with a round of the toasted bread, virtuously uncheesed and unbuttered.

The two smiled happily at each other as they savored each spoonful—the texture of the long strands of melting cheese, the firm egg white, the richness released by the soft-cooked egg yolk, the broth-soaked goodness of the firm toasted bread, the heady aroma of garlic.

“Let’s see how this adds up,” Mrs. Potter said, reaching for a fresh yellow pad, one of which was by now to be found at hand in the kitchen and the library as well as on her bedside table in the guest room upstairs. “Broth, hardly enough to count, six calories apiece for bouillon cubes, I think. Garlic—did you ever see a calorie chart listing garlic? Let’s say a little less than a half of a small onion, which is fifty. Let’s say twenty, shall we—ten apiece? Cheese, a quarter-cup each, maybe three-quarters of an ounce. Oh, let’s make it an ounce and say a hundred calories.”

“Large egg, eighty calories,” Gussie added. “I’d say seventy-five for that slice of Portuguese toast. I get a total of two hundred and seventy-one, do you?”

“My feeling is that we could divide a Temple orange for dessert,” Mrs. Potter offered, “and still feel reasonably holy.”

“We’ll reek of garlic for the rest of the day,” Gussie said comfortably. “I’m glad Tony’s not coming for dinner tonight. He called, did I tell you?”

Not only had he phoned with thanks for a delightful evening, but he wanted Gussie to know how happy he was to have begun to know her dear Eugenie. “In fact,” Gussie said, “since he seemed so receptive and I knew you wanted to get your own diet program, I made a date for you to see him this afternoon at the Scrim. Aren’t you pleased?”

I’m going to dress just as I would for an afternoon walk, Mrs. Potter told herself. Ordinarily if she had a doctor’s appointment, she’d make sure to wear a dress she could slip out of easily without disarranging her hair. And, she thought guiltily, a rather pretty slip underneath, preferably of a nice color other than white, so she’d feel more in command of the situation once she undressed.

Today, she reminded herself, her visit to Tony Ferencz was not an appointment with a doctor, and she had no intention of undressing, for any reason at all. She would dress for a blustery afternoon, and in so doing would encase herself in as many hard-to-take-off garments as possible.

Over underclothes, she put on a blue jersey turtleneck pullover, and added a pair of ribbed wool knee socks over her usual sleek panty hose. She put on zippered wool pants, gratified to see there was no slight crosswise wrinkle below the waistband in the back, the telltale sign of their being too tight. She added a leather belt with an intricate buckle, ordinarily a little bothersome in its fastening. Over all of this she put on a heavy ribbed sweater, its dark blue matching the trousers. And as an afterthought, she further enclosed her already swathed neck with a firmly tied blue-and-white silk
scarf. She put her wool-stockinged feet into sturdy walking shoes and knotted the laces.

On her head she pulled down a firm white wool beret. And, as she left the house, she added her well-zipped, buttoned, and belted storm coat.

As if the garlic soup were not enough protection, she thought. The man is not going to try to seduce you. Still, one might as well present as many defenses as possible, and he might have had garlic for lunch as well.

The day, although blowy, did not justify such warm armor, she found, as she walked to the Scrimshaw in the early afternoon. The ground was still unfrozen to her footsteps as she crossed a bit of soft turf. The only chill she felt was an inner one, the memory of the previous evening.

Today she would be seeing Tony in one of the two small upstairs suites at the Scrimshaw. Peter would possibly be in the other, his own quarters, next door. Jadine and Jimmy, maybe even very late luncheon guests, would be below in the kitchen and dining room. And yet again today she admitted to herself the combination of fear and fascination she had felt from the first time she met Tony Ferencz. She fought an impulse to turn and flee as she went up the small stairway. Each stair tread showed a hooked rug pattern of a different island motif—a sailboat, a windmill, a bicycle, a sea gull, a spouting whale.

Tony was standing at the open door of his sitting room. “Naughty Eugenie,” he said as he took both of her gloved hands. “You have now decided I did not intend to push you off the roof? And that I may not be such a big bad wolf, after all? Let’s forget all that nonsense and concentrate on you.”

The small room was almost too full of crewel-covered chairs. There was a well polished Governor Winthrop desk of near museum distinction, a long pine settee, a number of cushioned footstools. The pine floor planks, gleaming with age and wax, were nearly covered with more hooked rugs, like that of the stairway runner, in soft faded colors and primitive island designs. It was the coziest and least threatening
situation Mrs. Potter could imagine, and it was also very warm.

She allowed Tony to take her heavy coat, and seated herself, choosing a wing chair that appeared to be well barricaded with candle stand pine tables and footstools.

“It seems I’m here as a client,” she said, with a new rush of courage and determination. “You’ve worked wonders with all of my friends, and I’m sure I’d be foolish if I didn’t see what you could do for me.”

Tony looked at her appraisingly. “Naturally, your own special diet first,” he murmured. “Of course. We shall have to see just what it is that your system needs.”

In answer to what must have been a momentary flash of panic in her face, Tony continued, his voice quiet and matter-of-fact, his gaze drifting past her to the window, then back to the small fire on the hearth. “There will be tests for this later, naturally, and laboratory reports from my staff, but nothing of the sort today. In fact, there will be no general examination of any kind today.”

Mrs. Potter relaxed slightly.

“I have found, however, that my clinical experience permits me to make many valid preliminary findings based on a superficial examination of the hands.” Tony’s voice was entirely professional now, and impersonal. Without moving from his own wing chair opposite, he leaned forward and stretched out a long arm and a finely shaped long-fingered hand. “First, the left,” he instructed her, his voice casual and yet authoritative.

There was nothing alarming about his touch. Actually, Mrs. Potter thought, as she felt his fingers moving her own finger joints, pressing and testing the cushions of her palm, and as she saw him studying the texture of her fingernails and the skin over her knuckles, this is really quite interesting.

Her right hand followed, and the examination seemed partly gentle massage as Tony’s hands manipulated her own. It felt good—in no way a threat, no suggestion of intimacy.