Thirteen Diamonds

CHAPTER 3

As I drove out of the woods at the end of the mile-long, unpaved road, the expanse of the Morgan estate lay before me, with its green acres of neatly-mowed lawn. My son Albert had a sit-down mower and mowed the lawn himself when he couldn't convince anybody else, Tom Sawyer-like, of the pleasures of bouncing around and being deafened for several hours.

The purple of the flowering crepe myrtle bushes contrasted with the green of the lawn and the trees. Albert's small red barn completed an idyllic scene that any landscape artist would love to paint. But an artist I'm not.

Our family's regular Sunday dinner gave me an opportunity to enjoy my family for the afternoon-and then to go and live my own life. Today I also wanted to forget about Gerald Weiss choking while holding a perfect bridge hand. I resolved not to talk about it, even though I had been thinking about Gerald, against my will, and wondering what had really happened.

I parked my 15-year-old Mercedes beside Albert's pickup truck, near the garage of his modern two-story house, which was large enough to give shelter to many more people than one. My granddaughter Sandra's little red Toyota was already there-she had driven over from her nearby condo-as well as an unidentified fourth vehicle. I only knew that it didn't belong to Winston, my great grandson; he was one year old.

Albert's yellow Labrador retriever came bounding up to the car so I opened the door and released my own dog, a part-husky named King, who immediately ran off with him, glad of the opportunity to romp with her buddy. I had named King after the great lead dog of the fictional Sergeant Preston, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, even though she was a female. She had been fixed, so she wasn't going to produce any mixed-breed puppies.

Winston came toddling along the sidewalk from the front door, babbling words that only he understood. Since he had recently learned to walk, I was afraid he might fall on the concrete, but he navigated it with surprising ease.

I scooped him up-he was almost too heavy to scoop-and said, “Hello, Darling, how's my big boy?”

Winston had elevated my status at Silver Acres, where many of the residents were great grandparents. He babbled some more and showed me the ball he carried. He pointed to Sandra, who followed him. “Is that your mommy, Sweetie?” I asked him. I can talk to babies with the best of them. I gave Sandra a hug.

She said, “You look great, Gogi.”

She's a good liar. She called me Gogi when she first learned to speak, and it stuck. She's also a single mother, having divorced the no-good bum she married almost before the ink dried on the certificate. I warned her about him, but who listens to grandmothers.

I said, “Thanks, Honey, so do you.” At least I told the truth. Sandra had the family blond hair and blue eyes and still wore her hair long, down to her waist. “Summer vacation agrees with you,” I continued, seeing her tan legs below her shorts, shaped by her daily runs. “Would you like to help take in the pies and rolls?”

Sandra and Albert both liked to cook, thank goodness, so I usually contributed baked goods to our traditional Sunday dinner. The heavenly aroma of baking bread reminded me of my own little grandmother, who could turn out perfect loaves from the imperfect heat of an oven in a wood stove.

On our way to the front door, with Winston toddling ahead again, I asked, “Who else is here?”

“A colleague of Dad's from the university, a certain Dr. Maria Enriquez. She specializes in one of the sciences, as I understand it. Just so that you won't be surprised, she's a bit, uh…darker than we are. But she is gorgeous. Dad sure has good taste in women.”

“I don't care if she's chartreuse, as long as she's good to him.” Why is it that young people suspect all of us oldsters of being prejudiced? Albert was also single, making our family zero spouses for four generations, and he played the field. I wished nothing more for Albert and Sandra than that they become well married.

Upon entering the kitchen, hot with summer and cooking, I saw that we were having scallops. I searched my mind, trying to remember whether scallops were shellfish, but then told myself: Lillian, quit being silly. You aren't the one with the allergy to shellfish. Again I tried to banish the picture of a choking Gerald from my mind.

Dr. Enriquez was younger than Albert and casually dressed. She wore a tennis outfit-Albert was an avid tennis player-with a shirt that buttoned at the top; however, she had forgotten to button the buttons. But our dinners were casual. Pretty soon they might become clothing optional.

“Albert has told me so much about you, Mrs. Morgan,” Dr. Enriquez gushed, after he introduced us.

“Nothing good, I hope,” I said, glancing at him. I doubted that he was in the habit of talking about his mother to his girlfriends.

She continued, “I love your hair. What do you use?”

“She pours ink on it,” Albert said, probably jealous because his own hair was thinning. “That's what gives it the blue tint.”

“I don't want to look like everybody else at Silver Acres,” I said.

“Well I think it's beautiful,” Maria said. “And you're so slim. I need to get your secret.”

“You have to be thin to live long enough to get into a retirement community,” Albert said. “The fat ones die off too soon.”

Albert could stand to lose a few pounds. I said to Maria, “You obviously don't need any of my secrets.”

She bowed her head slightly and said, “Thank you.”

“Don't praise Mother too much,” Albert said. “She taught at Duke, you know, not UNC.”

Maria laughed. “I think we can forgive her that-especially since she mothered a UNC professor and grandmothered a UNC graduate. And I assume Winston will attend UNC.”

I didn't want to get into that discussion. Albert was a professor of history at the University of North Carolina. Duke and UNC, located in adjoining cities, are big rivals, especially on the basketball court. I said, “Both are great universities.”

“Yes,” Maria said. “With distinguished professors. Helping to improve the world.”

“Another center of great universities is Boston,” I said, “with Harvard and MIT, among others. And yet, with all their brains they haven't been able to make the roads of Boston driveable.”

I saw Albert frown, a signal that I was being too free with my opinions, so I shut up. We sat down to eat, three blonds, a brunette and a bluehead.

I had kept my promise to myself not to talk about Silver Acres, when Albert said to me, “I understand there was some excitement at your bridge club last week. I heard a man choked to death.”

Sandra and Maria gasped. Where had Albert heard that? Once a bomb has been dropped people don't go quietly on about their business so I had to explain about poor Gerald Weiss. After they calmed down I gave a short lecture on what I had learned about food allergies.

“My girlfriend gets hives from eating peanuts,” Sandra said, but I've never heard of anybody dying from a food allergy.”

“The human body-in fact, all animal bodies-are marvelous things,” Maria said, “but sometimes the body's defense mechanisms go overboard in defending against perceived predators and destroy what they are trying to protect.”

I couldn't have said it better myself. I mentioned that Gerald had been holding a bridge hand of 13 diamonds when he died.

“That's like winning the lottery,” Sandra said, “except that it doesn't pay as well.”

“In fact,” I said, “the odds against being dealt 13 diamonds are much greater than the odds against winning a lottery, where you have to pick, say, six numbers out of 51. With the bridge hand you have to pick 13 correctly out of 52.”

“No wonder I've never been dealt more than eight cards of one suit,” Albert said. “Of course I've never played the lottery because a professor friend of mine wrote a book showing that the expected return from playing the lottery is much worse than what you get in Las Vegas.”

“If the odds against being dealt 13 of one suit are prohibitive,” I said, “what do you think the odds are against being dealt a perfect hand and then promptly dying?”

“Maybe not so great because of the shock factor,” Albert joked.

“I'm serious. Everybody seems to have dismissed this, but I think it bears looking into.”

“Looking into for what reason?” Maria asked.

“Leave it alone, Mother,” Albert said, showing alarm. “The reason you're in a retirement community is because you're retired. When you're retired you're supposed to have fun: play bridge, play croquet, chat with your friends…”

“All that is boring, boring, boring. I need some mental stimulation.”

“What do you think may have happened, Mrs. Morgan?” Maria asked.

“Don't egg her on,” Albert said.

“Daaad,” Sandra said. “I'd like to hear, too.”

Winston added a series of dadas from his highchair.

“Well, of course I don't know what happened,” I said, “but I think there may be more to this than meets the eye. Suppose somebody at Silver Acres did know about Gerald's allergy to shellfish. Suppose that person had it in for Gerald…”

“What motive could there be?” Sandra asked.

“Well, as you know, single men are at a premium at Silver Acres. Gerald did have his groupies, and as nearly as I could tell he played the field, not settling on just one. Perhaps Susie Smith decided he wasn't paying enough attention to her, and if she couldn't have him no one else could either. The shellfish was well disguised. Maybe it was made that way on purpose.”

“Sounds weak,” Albert said.

“Jealousy weak?” Maria said, her eyes wide. “Jealousy is one of the most violent emotions. In Mexico many people have been murdered by men-and women, in jealous rages.” She looked meaningfully at Albert, but he busily speared a scallop with his fork.

“What about the 13 diamonds?” Sandra asked.

“Well…” I hesitated.

At that moment the microwave timer sounded and Winston, who was very microwave-oriented, pointed to it. This distraction gave me a few seconds to think while Sandra pulled my rolls out and served them. Then she asked me about the 13 diamonds again.

“Maybe the deal was fixed. Maybe they were a signal of some kind,” is all I could come up with.

“Then there would have to be at least two people involved,” Albert said. “Besides, it was too late. He had already eaten the shellfish.”

“I'll have to think about it.”

“I admit, the idea of murder intrigues me,” Albert continued. “Historically, poisoning has been a favorite way of killing rulers. And feeding a person something they're allergic to is a sophisticated form of poisoning. In Italy, the Borgias were always poisoning people. But you keep out of it. Remember your high blood pressure.”

“My blood pressure is under control. And what if I'm right?”

“Then tell the proper authorities.”

“I have nothing concrete to tell them.”

“Then forget about it.”

After dinner, everybody pitched in to wash the dishes. Albert called me into the living room while this activity proceeded and said, “Mother, I wanted to let you know that I'm going to the modern dance recital with Carol Grant next Saturday night.”

I raised my eyebrows. “When did you ask her?”

“Friday afternoon.”

That's how Albert had heard about Gerald. He had talked to Carol after Tess and I did. Albert had first met Carol when we were looking at retirement communities a number of years before. She had been married then but her husband had died of some rare disease. Recently, Albert had come to a reception at Silver Acres and I remembered he had chatted with Carol briefly. But he hadn't indicated any interest in her, at least not to me. And of course there was Maria.

Before I could say what I was thinking, Albert said, “Maria is just a friend-a tennis partner.”

I wondered if Maria knew that. But I liked Carol and felt that she and Albert would be a good match. It wasn't politically expedient to actually say that, so I said, “I hope you two have fun together.”