The Nantucket Diet Murders by Virginia Rich

are still halfway green—did you notice?”
    Broken shells crunched underfoot. A gull stalked away as they approached, a scallop shell in his beak, glaring back at them over his shoulder.
    They looked out across the water, now a milky turquoise, toward the houses at Shimmo and Monomoy on the southern rim of the harbor.
    “There’s Mittie’s house,” Mrs. Potter observed. “What a view she has of the harbor from that hilltop of hers.”
    “I think she told you she’s moved into town for the winter,” Gussie said. “It’s nice having her nearby, but I think she misses her gardens out there, and that beautiful house. The problem is money—we’re afraid she may be having a little trouble.”
    Mrs. Potter remembered the Main Street house very well from visits when Mittie’s parents had been alive. She could not help wondering if it also wasn’t pretty expensive to keep up, maybe as much as the house at Shimmo. It undoubtedly cost a great deal to heat and a fortune to have repainted every few years.
    “At least she has a nice stretch of lawn for an eventualgarden behind the house,” Gussie said, “if she sells the Shimmo place. Her ace in the hole was going to be the rental of the apartment over the old carriage house in the back of the property. It’s really charming, and it should bring a nice amount for a summer rental. The living room looks out over the lawn between it and her parents’ house, remember? The property goes all the way through the block, so Mittie’s on Main Street and Dee’s at the back. The apartment is almost across from Ozzie’s house—I’m sure you know the place.”
    Mrs. Potter remembered very well, but the reference to Dee was puzzling. “I thought Dee had a tiny place on Milk Street, or was it Vestal?” she said. “She’s living in Mittie’s carriage house? I can’t see that’s going to help Mittie’s financial picture, Dee being as, well, hard up—I almost said penurious—as she always seems to be.”
    That was the problem, Gussie explained as the two walked around the marina. “Mittie has always taken having money as a matter of course, so when Dee had to leave her little rented place, she invited her to move in for the winter. And now I think she’s embarrassed to suggest that Dee pay her any rent, and she has the expense of extra utilities, and she’s probably agonizing over telling Dee that she wants to let the agents line up a good profitable summer rental for her.”
    “I can’t believe it!” Mrs. Potter exclaimed. “Mittie is always so sure of herself. I can’t imagine that she won’t simply tell Dee the whole thing: that she can’t afford to keep her on as a nonpaying guest, and that she needs and expects the several thousand dollars—four or five at the least, maybe ten, the way things are going now—that some nice summer people would pay for the place for the season.”
    “Mittie does seem totally assured, socially,” Gussie said. “It’s just that talking about money is something she can’t do. Or maybe her pride keeps her from admitting she made a too hasty invitation and that she regrets it. To Mittie, that would be the worst possible manners.”
    The two had made their way around the pattern of the wharves of the marina. “Shall we step it out a little and go allthe way to the circle?” Mrs. Potter asked. “There’ll never be a prettier day, and we’re both dressed for it.”
    They walked briskly, delighting in the blue of the harbor as the sun rose higher in its restricted southern arc of New England winter. Meanwhile, Mittie’s move into town had reminded Gussie of another one of the group of women who lunched together weekly. “It’s quite different for Helen, of course,” she said. “In money problems, I mean. She’s spent a fortune on that house and, recently, on her new garden-room addition. She and Lester used to come summers years ago to that big house they rented on the Cliff, remember? And then we were all so proud of