The Nantucket Diet Murders by Virginia Rich Page B

suddenly almost as blue as in summer, when, rimmed with emerald grasses, they reflected warmer skies, of even deeper blue. The sight did not entirely block a disquieting thought, at the mention of husbands.
    Again remembering a glowing and triumphant young Gussie, saying, “I’ve just met the most wonderful man!” Mrs. Potter resolved to find out immediately how serious this Tony thing was, starting with the question of why Gussie hadn’t told her about him before.
    Gussie looked slightly embarrassed. “First, I was too busy taking care of Gordon,” she said, “and then when I began to realize that Tony was becoming important in my life, I thought it was just the diet, and how much better I was feeling. Now, I don’t know. Anyway, I really do want you to get to know him too, while you’re here.”
    Mrs. Potter knew her old friend to have been an unquestionably faithful and loving wife to her first two husbands, and at least a dutiful one to her third. Was Tony to become the fourth, and Gussie the second Countess Ferencz? She was not sure she liked the idea, without being at all sure of why.
    “Being a widow isn’t the worst fate in the world,” she heard herself saying. “I know your Tony is terribly attractive, but will you promise me something, Mary Augusta?”
    Gussie looked at her quizzically.
    “Promise me,” Mrs. Potter continued, “that if you ever do think of marrying again, you’ll take plenty of time to learn all about the man in question, whoever he is.”
    Gussie smiled amiable agreement. “I’ll let you help decide next time,” she said. “Maybe. All right,
probably.”
    This sounded very much as if there might be a next time. Mrs. Potter decided she had said enough for the moment. She also decided she now
really
wanted to know what Dee Ferencz had been talking about when she said her former husband was—what was it?—an unmitigated bastard?

9
    They walked as far as the traffic circle, from which the south road led to the airport and the Milestone Road started eastward toward ’Sconset. This, Mrs. Potter remembered clearly, branched northward along its way, leading to Monomoy, Shimmo, Shawkemo, Polpis, Pocomo Head, Wauwinet—that litany of Indian names on the southern rim of the harbor—all those now nearly deserted winter communities that would again be full of color and life in the summer season.
    “Let’s go back by way of Orange Street,” Gussie said, “at least as far as Mary Lynne’s. We might as well do the tour of where everyone’s living now, so you’ll really feel at home again.”
    Mrs. Potter was savoring every step of the way, a route as familiar to her as her daily Maine walks from the cottage to the post office in Northcutt’s Harbor, as familiar as the two-mile ranch road from headquarters down to the RFD mailbox on the county road in Arizona.
    Here, as a walker or bicycler or in a four-wheel car, she thought she knew almost every street, road, lane, pathway, or rutted road on the island. It’s like an old and much-loved book, she thought to herself. Open it anyplace and you know what came before and what’s going to follow. Put me downalmost anyplace on Nantucket, she thought, on clean winter-bare pathways or on green shady streets dappled with sunshine, and my eyes and feet are going to know where they are.
    As they passed Manny’s bakery, she grimaced at the CLOSED sign in the window, then returned to her musings about the island’s special enchantments. “After being away for a while, I just can’t get over it,” she told Gussie. “Other places have so many mixed-up styles—Spanish and Tudor and early-California bungalows and French Provincial suburban all in the same block. Here—well, there may be a few exceptions, but they’re just that,
exceptions
. There’s one clean pattern, and that’s the stamp the old Quaker builders left behind them. Simple lines, center chimneys, those heavy board framings for windows that still have their ledge of snow