The Nantucket Diet Murders by Virginia Rich Read Free Book Online Page B

he’s very firm about not drinking, not for any of us.”
    “Which brings me back to why haven’t you told me about Tony before,” Mrs. Potter began, when the continuing voice from the television altered in pitch and volume, announcing the start of the local island news.
    “Edith Rosborough, secretary to the well-known Nantucket attorney Mr. Oscar deBevereaux, died early this afternoon at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital,” the voice told them as the picture on the screen showed a large white building.
    “Miss Rosborough celebrated a birthday lunch today in company with members of the Nantucket Ladies Softball League, of which she is president. Apparently choking on a morsel of food, she was rushed unconscious to the hospital from the Scrimshaw Inn, where the birthday luncheon took place. A hospital spokesperson says that an allergic reaction may have caused the strangulation.”
    The two women stared at the blurred screen, then at each other, in compassionate and shocked disbelief. “Oh
no
, “Gussie exclaimed. “They were having
such
a wonderful time, the bunch of them.”
    “Ozzie will be shattered,” Mrs. Potter thought to say. “Shouldn’t we call him? Or shall we go over? It’s just a step.”
    “Let’s wait until morning,” Gussie decided. “The poor guy is in terrible shape these days. Let’s just hope he’s sitting in his hot bath now, as he says he always does at the end of the day to ease his joints, and then popping into his warm bed, poor old dear.”

6
    Mrs. Potter awoke, on the first day of her return to Nantucket, rested and happy. She stretched, catlike, in the canopied bed. Faint light in the windows told her that January dawn was approaching the island, and the muffled sound of an early truck on the cobblestones told her it had snowed in the night. She snuggled down again in smooth, fragrant old linen sheets, beneath a silk-covered down comforter.
    At last she reached with a toe for the slippers beside her bed and slid out of the luxurious cocoon of the guest room bed. She crossed the room, her step soundless on the old oriental scatter rugs spaced on the polished, wide-planked floor. She splashed water on her face and brushed her teeth at the enormous marble washstand in the big bathroom and put on a warm pink robe.
    Quietly she descended the wide stairway, its cushioned carpeting soundless under her feet, one hand on the smooth mahogany stair rail to assure her safe passage toward the pale light showing through heavy leaded-glass sidelights flanking the big solid front door.
    Familiar with every inch of her old friend’s house, Mrs. Potter now doubled back past the long low chest in the hall,glad to see that it still bore the huge Chinese vase and the heavy brass candlesticks she remembered, as she headed for the kitchen at the back of the house.
    Outside in front, Mrs. Potter knew, was an imposing facade, presenting a double set of granite steps to the cobble-stoned street. Their twin curves of iron railing ended in shining globes of polished brass, matching the gleam of the heavy knocker on the door above.
    She also knew that Gussie’s first question on interviewing a prospective new cleaning woman was “How do you feel about brass?” Once a week, summer and winter, someone had to polish these glories of an earlier age. Gussie occasionally had to remind a reluctant helper, “It has to be done; there are just you and me; you might as well know which of us I elect for the job.” It would have been unthinkable for Gussie to let the brasses, indoors or out, become dull and neglected, even if she herself sometimes proved to be the only one to do the polishing.
    “I shouldn’t be allowed to live in this house if I don’t intend to keep it up,” Gussie always said. “I love it, and also it’s kind of a public trust, in a funny way. Theo felt the same way about it from the first, and we decided that if we couldn’t afford to take care of the place, we shouldn’t buy