Thirteen Diamonds Read online

  Joe chuckled and turned toward me, saying, “No, we're actually going to replace some of the heating ducts below the floor, but since I don't feel like crawling around down there I'm measuring up here. Something like the guy who loses his wallet in an alley but looks for it underneath a streetlight because the light is better there.”

  I fumbled for a riposte, but before I could come up with one the other bridge players began to arrive. Joe took his clipboard and tape measure and left; I hadn't even introduced myself.

  I went to work, assigning numbers to each partnership and giving them their schedules. Fortunately, Ida confirmed that she and Ellen were playing together. I gave her the number and schedule I had prearranged for them.

  My plan was to have the critical match-up occur in the middle of the session. It was easier to do then than at the beginning and I didn't think the timing mattered, especially since we weren't eating lunch first.

  When the time came, Harriet and I were already seated at the key table from the previous round. I occupied Gerald's chair and Harriet sat where she had been on the fatal day.

  I signaled Tess, who sat at another table, during the changeover and she started talking to Ellen to delay her for a minute. I had told her she could apologize to Ellen for my behavior at lunch on Monday, if she wanted to, but I couldn't hear what she actually said.

  As Ida ambled over to our table she headed toward the wrong chair. I said, “Ida, sit over here so you can legally shuffle this deck, since Ellen has been waylaid.” I dealt first, just as Gerald had done, and I wanted Ida to shuffle, just as she had done.

  Ida complied with my request. A minute later Ellen came over and sat down in her assigned seat and placed her purse in her lap. She didn't look at me. Ida finished shuffling the cards and placed the deck on the table to my left. At that point could she have created a diversion and switched the cards? Possibly. Although Ida was a bit clumsy and it was difficult to picture her doing anything that required sleight-of-hand. And if she had accomplished the switch, Gerald would have had to deal the cards without Ellen cutting the deck, which was unlikely.

  I picked up the deck and placed it on the table to my right, inviting Ellen to cut. She cut the cards neatly and efficiently. I had always admired her dexterity, as demonstrated by the smoothness of her shuffling technique. As she cut I heard a voice in my mind call out: “Those napkins are going to catch on fire!”

  That's what somebody from this table had yelled just before Gerald had started choking—just before the hand had been dealt. I was sure of the timing because I, as the dealer at another table, had been about to deal the first hand, also. And I was 95 percent sure Ellen had been the yeller.

  As I picked up the deck I reviewed the situation: Ellen sat facing the table where the lunch had been served. She was also the farthest person from the table in the room. The warning had focused the attention of everybody in the room on the table—and away from Ellen.

  I could picture her sliding the deck into the purse on her lap and replacing it with another deck, using both hands in one quick movement. She had the kind of deftness that would have made it easy for her. And during the momentary confusion nobody would have noticed.

  Ellen had been sending a signal to Gerald. She was telling him that trouble was going to follow, just as it had that time long ago when Gerald had been dealt 13 diamonds. To be specific, Ellen was telling Gerald that she was his killer! As soon as he started to choke it must have become clear to him—but by that time it was too late for him to do anything about it.

  “Lillian, are you in a fog? Come on, deal the cards. We don't have all afternoon.”

  Ida's booming voice brought me back to the present and I sheepishly did as she requested. I stole a glance at Ellen sitting there, so calm, being very careful to ignore me, knowing I harbored bad thoughts about her. Yes, she had the kind of temperament that allowed her to do something like that and not have it bother her afterward.

  I finished dealing the hand and for a brief moment I wondered if history was going to repeat itself. I knew it was foolish because I had set up this reenactment, but what would happen if I picked up my cards and found 13 diamonds. I would probably have a heart attack right on the spot.

  I very carefully turned over my cards and found, to my great relief, an ordinary hand with only three diamonds, all below the jack. In fact, the hand was so ordinary that I couldn't even bid with it. In disgust I said, “Pass.”

  ***

  If I could prove that Ellen had switched the decks, maybe I could get her to confess to Gerald's murder. To obtain proof, I needed the help of somebody with certain skills. Mark might be that person. I called him when I got back to my apartment and, fortunately, caught him in. After I gave him a short explanation of what I wanted to do, he agreed enthusiastically. We made a date to meet for lunch the next day at my place.

  A few minutes later my phone rang. I picked it up and said hello. A female voice said, “Hi, Mrs. Morgan, this is April.”

  April? April, May, June…oh, April from San Diego. “Hello, April, how are you?”

  “Fine. I'm in Raleigh.”

  Raleigh—only a few miles along Interstate 40 from Chapel Hill. “What in the world are you doing in Raleigh?”

  “I had to fly out here in a hurry to solve a problem for one of our best customers. I got it solved today and I just have to go in tomorrow morning for a couple of hours for a briefing session. Then I'll have some time to kill before my afternoon flight back to San Diego. I'd like to see you and find out how your investigation is going.”

  “Can you come for lunch? Oh...do you have a car?”

  “Yes to both questions.”

  I gave her directions to my place and hung up the phone. Only then did I remember that Mark was coming for lunch too. And Sandra was attending a teacher's conference for a few days. I hoped I wasn't making trouble for her.

  CHAPTER 19

  April arrived first, sparkling and pretty in a very short skirt and a translucent blouse. Even if she had known that Mark was going to be here she couldn't have dressed in a way more certain to attract his attention.

  She gave me a big hug and said, “I love your apartment. And something smells marvelous. I'm famished.”

  “It's called welfare soup,” I said. “The name isn't elegant but it's nourishing. I put everything into it but the kitchen sink, including lots of vegetables, rice and ground beef, so if you're hungry it should fill a crack.” I was making it primarily for Mark, because he was always hungry.

  When I told her that Mark would be joining us she said, “Great!” but I had the feeling she would have reacted the same way to Sandra. I filled her in on my suspicions concerning Ellen while she helped me in the kitchen. When she bent over to take an apple pie out of the oven I had to admit that her legs were almost as good as Sandra's. I remembered that she said she skated on in-line skates along the San Diego beaches.

  Mark arrived, looking he-manly, in a T-shirt and shorts. He appeared delighted to see April and enfolded her in a bear hug. The knot that had started in my stomach tightened, and I had to remind myself that this was the hugging generation.

  Lunch was a disaster. Not from a food perspective. Both Mark and April ate several bowls of the soup and asked for more. They matched each other, bowl for bowl, while gazing into each other's eyes, reminding me of the eating scene in the sixties movie, Tom Jones.

  They carried on a giddy conversation and a strange phenomenon occurred. I have a skylight that the maintenance people put in my ceiling; it directs the sun's rays into my dining area, making it much brighter than it used to be. April sat in a location where these rays shone right through her blouse, highlighting her bra.

  I tried to dismiss this from my stomach, telling myself that bra ads appeared daily in the newspaper, but then I noticed a spot on her bra that looked like a mole. This was not the bra—this was April's breast. And then I saw her nipple. The sun had penetrated her bra and the effect was terrifying.

  Wh
ile the ache in my gut grew, I wondered whether I should tell April to move or tuck a napkin into her blouse, but I couldn't bring myself to block Mark's enjoyment of the situation—he wasn't just gazing into her eyes—and April's pleasure at having his full attention.

  Of course Mark had to have two pieces of pie. Finally, I got up to clear the table and the two rose to help. I said to Mark, “Maybe we should put off what I talked about doing.” I was having second thoughts.

  It took him a moment to return his thinking to the original purpose of our get-together. He said, “No, tell me more about what you had in mind.”

  I hesitated, looking at April, but she said, “If it's something to do with Uncle Gerry, I'd like to be in on it.”

  I briefly outlined my plan. They didn't back out so we left my apartment and walked to where we could see the croquet course. Ellen and her teammate were warming up for a game, just as I had thought. I had checked the schedule the day before.

  We didn't get very close because I didn't want Ellen to see me; we veered around the main building and over to the area where Ellen's apartment was located. Not a soul was in sight as we walked up to her door. I rang the bell, but I knew nobody was there.

  Mark opened the bag he carried and said, “When I worked for a locksmith, we sometimes got calls from people who had locked themselves out of their cars, or, occasionally, their houses. When I took a look at your lock I could see that the locks here aren't complicated.”

  He pulled several thin pieces of metal out of his bag and started playing with the lock. April and I acted as shields so that anybody in the vicinity wouldn't see what he was doing and I kept an eagle eye out for just such a person. I was very nervous, knowing that if we were caught I would be thrown out of Silver Acres and Mark and April would be arrested for breaking and entering, but they treated the whole thing as a prank.

  I was amazed at how fast Mark opened the door. I think I had been secretly hoping he'd fail. I said, “Thanks, Mark. Now you kids get out of here so I don't drag you down with me.”

  “No way,” April said. “Gerry was my uncle so I've got a bigger interest in this than you do. I'm going in.”

  “How would it look if we deserted you now?” Mark asked, grinning. “When I worked with an electrician, he did most of his work without turning off the power because he said it saved time. But it also made the job more exciting. That's the way to live life—keep it hot.”

  They both went into the apartment so I had to follow them. We were keeping it hot, all right. “We're looking for a deck of cards,” I said. “If Ellen was the one who switched the decks, she may still have the original deck.”

  Ellen kept her apartment neat, as one would expect of a schoolteacher. A corkboard adorned one wall, with family pictures on it. The pictures were perfectly lined up and fastened to the board with colored pins. All the pins penetrated the board at exactly the same angle, like tipsy soldiers in formation.

  I saw her purse on an end table by her couch; it was an obvious place to look but my pass through its contents produced nothing. April headed for the bedroom; Mark checked the closets. Fortunately, the apartments are small enough so they don't have a lot of hiding places. In ten minutes we had pretty much eliminated all of them.

  We met back in the living room, having even covered the kitchen and bathroom. “I guess that's it,” I said, nervously. “We'd better leave.” I went to the door and surveyed the neighborhood; it was still clear.

  “What's that?” April asked, pointing to a trap door in the ceiling.

  “There's a crawl space between the roof and the ceiling,” I explained.

  “Can it be used for storage?” Mark asked.

  “Well, yes, I guess so, but it's difficult to get to, especially for us old folks.”

  “I can reach it standing on this chair,” Mark said, dragging one of the wood-frame dining chairs to a spot underneath the door.

  “No, Mark,” I said, “don't stand on the chair. It looks wobbly. You'll break your neck, or the chair, or both. Besides, you won't be high enough to look into the crawl space.”

  “But the chair is stable enough for Mark to sit on,” April said. “With him providing a solid base I can safely climb onto his shoulders.”

  “What?” I cried. “April, don't!”

  But Mark had already sat in the chair and April took off her shoes and stepped up onto his thighs, with her hands on his shoulders. The bottom of her skirt was about at Mark's eye-level and inches from his face. Didn't girls have any modesty anymore? I hoped she was at least wearing underwear.

  “It's okay,” April said. “I was a cheerleader in high school.”

  That explained some things.

  “Grab my ankles,” April said to Mark, who had already done so, partly in self-defense. “When I count to three lift me up onto your shoulders.”

  Just like that. But Mark was big and strong and April probably didn't weigh more than 110 pounds. April helped by simultaneously pushing off with her feet against Mark's thighs and her hands against his shoulders. Of course Mark had to look up as he raised her above his head and I didn't want to know what he saw.

  April couldn't stand up all the way because the ceiling intervened, but she managed to raise the door to the crawl space and then stand up, with her head above the ceiling.

  As she stood in this precarious position, she lowered her head and said, “It's dark up there. I saw a flashlight in the headboard of the bed.”

  There's nothing like planning ahead. “I'll get it,” I said, moving as fast as I could toward the bedroom. I didn't want this gymnastics exhibition to continue any longer than necessary. I returned and handed the flashlight to April, whose head disappeared into the crawl space.

  Mark looked as if he was enjoying the situation; he adjusted his body to April's weight changes as she turned to look around her, and glanced up to check her...uh, stability.

  After far too long a time for my mental and physical health, April lowered her head and said in a disappointed voice, “There's nothing up here except dust.”

  She handed me the flashlight and replaced the door. When she ducked her head below the ceiling she slipped and came down off Mark's shoulders. Mark lost his grip on her ankles and his hands slid up her legs and underneath her skirt as he tried to get a hold, while she fell into his lap.

  Her momentum carried them both off the chair and onto the floor, with Mark on top. April hit with a resounding thud. I gasped and feared the worst for her, but after the shock of the impact wore off, she laughed! Mark seemed to be all right, too. He slowly disentangled himself from her.

  April was wearing panties, but they were so skimpy that I wondered why she bothered. She had a tattoo on her upper thigh; I couldn't make out what it was.

  As she raised her head to get up, she said, “There's something under the couch.” She crawled over to it, reached out her hand and retrieved a deck of cards. She triumphantly handed it to me and said, “See, it was worth it.”

  “Is that the deck?” Mark asked.

  “It looks like the ones we play with,” I said, after a quick inspection. “I'll check with Wesley to make sure.”

  “But even if it is, that's only circumstantial evidence. She might have bought those cards herself.”

  “But Wesley buys his at a mail-order house, and I suspect the odds of anybody else doing that here at Silver Acres are slim.”

  “Something like the odds against getting dealt 13 diamonds?” April asked. She was now on her feet and bouncing around as if nothing had happened.

  “Not quite that bad,” I said. “Let's get out of here.” Then I took a look at the chair, which had fallen over along with the gymnasts. It had a cracked leg. We weren't going to get away with this, after all.

  “We'll take it with us,” Mark said. “We can get it fixed and return it to Ellen anonymously.”

  “I don't mind taking the cards,” I said, “because she'd never dare complain about those, but the chair...”

  “We
can't leave it because she might not see the crack and she might try to sit in it. I know a furniture repair place. I'll take it there.”

  “But she'll miss it for sure...”

  “One of the chairs to this set is being stored in the back of the closet to save room,” Mark said. “If we bring it out it will take her a while to figure out that one is missing—maybe long enough to allow us time to get it fixed.” He went into the closet and brought out the extra chair.

  Mark had too much sense for someone his age. And too much integrity. When he mentioned the chair in the closet, my first thought was just to switch chairs and not take the broken one with us, but I found I couldn't suggest that in front of him. He picked up the broken chair and we left, hoping that if Ellen found her chair missing she wouldn't suspect me. We took a circuitous route to my apartment, but it probably wasn't necessary. Doesn't everybody carry a chair around with them?

  ***

  “Lillian, I need to explain something to you.” Mark shifted his gaze from April's car to me as it rounded the curve and disappeared from sight. She was on her way to the Raleigh/Durham Airport to fly back to San Diego.

  “I'm the one who should do the explaining,” I said. “Why I jeopardized you two kids for the sake of a deck of cards. Now I wish I hadn't.”

  “No; you had to do it. I know the feeling because I'm like that. And you're tightening the noose on Ellen, however circumstantial your evidence.”

  “I may never have enough to go to the police. I may just have to satisfy myself that I know she killed Gerald.”

  “Perhaps. But what I want to explain to you is about April. April is pretty and smart and...sexy, and I enjoy her company, but...”

  “I don't blame you. She's a lovely girl.”

  “Yes, but what I'm trying to say is, although I enjoy the company of women, looking at them, flirting with them, and hope I still will when I'm 60...”

  “I hope you still will when you're 80.”