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.
While 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.