The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery by Virginia Nancy; Rich Pickard Read Free Book Online Page B

for me?”
    “I’d be happy to have something to do, Genia.”
    It was a gracious way to say yes, she thought. David Graham had the exquisite manners of a gentleman of another era, and she found it pleasant to be the object of them. And then he surprised her by turning back to say, “It’s really kind of you to include me, Genia. I get lonely, don’t you, living alone for so long? Or will I just get used to it after a while?”
    Her heart went out to him, this sad-eyed man who had buried so recently the woman everyone said he had adored. Gently, she told him, “It’s hard at first. But one does adjust, David. It even becomes possible to be happy.”
    “Difficult to believe.”
    “I know it is.”
    He smiled briefly, painfully, and went into her living room.
    Thoughtfully, remembering her own slow healing after Lew died, Genia carried the roses back to the kitchen to trim their stems under water and place them in a vase. She got back to the front door just in time to greet Harrison and Lindsay Wright, who arrived bearing “Eye of the Storm” wine and a recipe for “Blue Suede Soup.”
    “Suede certainly is a secret ingredient,” Genia joked with them. They looked young and prosperous and wrapped up in each other, she thought. Lindsay was tall and thin as a model, with long straight blond hair; Harrison was shorter, not conventionally handsome, but attractive in a nice, ordinary kind of way that inspired trust. With Lindsay so light of complexion, and he so much darker, they made a striking couple. They greeted her with light embraces.
    “It’s really creamed blueberry soup,” Lindsay confided to her. “We used to have to go out and pick blueberries till our fingers bled. My mom fixed them every which way, from pancakes to jam. The only way she could get us to eat them like this was to tell us that Elvis Presley invented it and named it after the song ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ ”
    “You had a very wise and funny mother,” Genia observed.
    Lindsay looked surprised. “I guess so.”
    Upon reading the label on the bottle they had handed her Genia inquired, “Eye of the Storm?”
    “It’s from the Sakonnet Vineyards over near Little Compton,” Harrison told her. She thought his voice could melt snow. “Some red and white grapes got accidentally mixed up during a hurricane, and they produced this blush wine. That’s how it got its name.”
    “What a wonderful story, and perfect for a weatherman!” She glanced over his shoulder. “Did you order this rain?”
    “Everybody blames me,” he replied, with good humor. “If you think this is something, wait until later this week.”
    “Are you saying I should batten down my hatches?”
    “What are hatches, anyway?” his wife asked.
    “In nautical terms, it’s the cover over a deck opening,” her husband explained, as promptly as if he had opened a dictionary and read the definition there. “That’s where we get the saying, ‘batten down the hatches.’ ”
    Lindsay beamed at her hostess. “Isn’t he something? Can’t you just see him on the Today show, saying things like that?”
    Genia smiled. “Is that where you’d like to be, Harrison, on national television?”
    “That’s where Lindsay thinks I should go,” he said, “but I kind of like living right here where I can look out a window and actually see the weather. In New York, how would I know which way the wind was blowing?”
    Lindsay gave him an affectionate shove. “Oh, you. Who needs weather, when you’ve got all those instruments?”
    Harrison burst out laughing. “Who needs me, if we don’t have weather?”
    Lindsay grabbed his arm and leaned into him lovingly, while looking at Genia. “Isn’t he sweet? I’m telling you, he’s bound for big things.”
    Harrison only smiled and rolled his eyes up to indicate forbearance.
    “Is Stanley here yet?” Lindsay asked casually.
    Genia told her, “No. I am hoping somebody has seen him. You didn’t?”
    They told her they had not