HOLLY NADLER
508-274-2329
If I wanted to open a private investigations firm, say Chandler, Hammett and Nadler, I have the perfect espionage advantage — a bow window built over the top of Circuit — with a specialty in the handful of settings I look down upon, should anyone want any of them checked out.
There’s the doggy supply shop (yeah, like they think they’re fooling us), a storybook house and garden with impeccable crème-colored shingles, white trim accented with jigsaw scrollwork, and porch furniture and door hues of a grey-based lavender. A white picket fence and a trellis laden with bright blue morning glory frames a grass-and-brick-and-umbrella-ed courtyard where a friendly (to people) Gordon setter and a k iller (to dogs) Airedale romp and sprawl over the fence to keep in touch with whatever’s going on.
If anyone thinks that this Victorian-style Garden of Eden is housing a wicked ring of North Korean spies, talk to me.
An exquisite, upscale bed and bath boutique, diagonally across from me, is leaving the scene to make way for a yoga studio, and if any of this sounds sinister — something’s afoot here; I can see it through the haze of my Sherlockian pipe — again, ring my bell to discuss.
Beyond lies an adorable art gallery with a fetching, pale brown awning below a Juliet-sized balcony, and opening onto a lovely graveled yard. If anything nefarious is being hatched behind the rows of watercolor paintings, we need to look into this.
Down the block, if I plug my binoculars into my face, I can make out the doings of a real estate operation, a Thai joint, a pink building crammed with handsome, preppy clothes, and another pink palace housing an alleged and oh-so quaint B& B. Anything unspeakable could be going on behind these deceptively charming façades. If you have information, look me up and I’ll get the drop on these archcriminals.
Across the street lies one of the prettiest houses in town, and this in a town of prettier cottages than you’ll find in most of the rest of the world. Grey-shingled with tasteful white and deep ashen-purple trim, the home is wrapped by a porch of white wicker furniture with accents of that same ashen-purple. The garden is a paradise of hydrangeas, roses, impatiens and geraniums, the whole overarched by an ancient hollowed-out oak where squirrels show their faces on upper stories before dashing across telephone lines in a high-wire act that would mortify Elvira Madigan; that’s how good they are.
The master of the manor tosses out birdseed that ends up drawing all in-town wildlife. On a sunny fall day, you pass by coveys, gaggles, and parliaments of birds, interspersed with streaks of various-colored pelts, enough to make you think you wandered into a Snow White animation frame. Priceless. Still, who knows what lurks at the heart of darkness of so perfect a setting? Call or email or fax or friend me to find out if a white slave ring or a drug cartel or one of those posh 1950s Brit spy cabals lies behind this corner gem.
Maybe I went to sleep last night my normal, sane self and woke up in a Cynthia Riggs novel: A dead body waits out there somewhere within view of my bow window, and I’m the gal to hunt it down. A husband is cheating on the far side of Menemsha Pond? A forgery of crisp new Hamilton bills is working out of an old farmhouse basement on Chappaquiddick? Forget about it: I specialize, as we all do, in what’s happening directly beyond my windows.
Now on Nov. 1, will someone ring me up to remind me Halloween is over?
Halloween for the kiddos: A party at the Oak Bluffs Library on Saturday, Oct. 29 from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Trick or treat, costume parades, refreshments, a movie, and it’s free — who wouldn’t want to attend? For more info call 508-693-9433.
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