Thirteen Diamonds

by Alan Cook

  THIRTEEN DIAMONDS

  by

  Alan Cook

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  “I strongly recommend this book to any mystery reader. You won't be disappointed.”

  —Sherry Benic for Mystery Lovers Corner

  “The writing is energetic and very funny, which is also a good way to describe Lillian.”

  —Robyn Glazer

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Alan Cook on Smashwords

  Thirteen Diamonds

  Copyright © 2000 by Alan L. Cook.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  BOOKS BY ALAN COOK

  Run into Trouble

  Gary Blanchard Mysteries:

  Honeymoon for Three

  The Hayloft: a 1950s mystery

  California Mystery:

  Hotline to Murder

  Lillian Morgan mysteries:

  Catch a Falling Knife

  Thirteen Diamonds

  Other fiction:

  Walking to Denver

  Nonfiction:

  Walking the World: Memories and Adventures

  History:

  Freedom’s Light: Quotations from History’s Champions of Freedom

  Poetry:

  The Saga of Bill the Hermit

  Dedication

  To Lura and Ellen, whose experiences while living in retirement communities inspired Thirteen Diamonds

  CHAPTER 1

  “Those napkins are going to catch on fire!”

  Twelve pairs of eyes turned toward the table against the wall where a candle flame used to keep the contents of a serving dish warm threatened a pile of paper napkins stacked on a nearby plate.

  As we watched, the napkins did catch on fire, sending a jet of flame and a spiral of smoke toward the high wooden ceiling of the recreation room.

  “I thought I put that candle out!” Dora, a small silver-haired lady whose back had been to the napkins, exclaimed. She sat closest to the fire. She jumped up from her chair and hopped the two steps to the table. Her gait reminded me of a bird, but she showed complete competence as she grabbed a pitcher of drinking water and poured it over the napkins, quickly extinguishing the blaze.

  The other eleven bridge players at the three card tables spontaneously applauded. Dora took a bow and said, tartly, “Now help me clean up this mess.”

  Two women sitting at her table got up and among the three of them they quickly sopped up the water from the wet table and the hardwood floor underneath, with paper towels. They disposed of the charred napkins and everything was neat and tidy again.

  A remnant of smoke odor hung in the air and reminded me of the fires that burned in the large stone fireplace at one end of the room during the winter. I started to deal the cards I had shuffled just before the crisis and said, “Well, I guess we've had our excitement for today. A false fire alarm, followed by an actual attempt to burn the place down. Something tells me they happened in the wrong order. Now can we play some bridge?”

  “Quit your grousing, Lillian, and bid,” the lady to my left, said.

  “Pass,” I said. “My cards are as dull as everything else around here. I wish something really exciting would happen.”

  “Cheer up,” Tess, my partner, said. She was slightly plumper than the average woman there, with a round, smiling face and every hair immaculately in place. Tess was my best friend at Silver Acres, a retirement community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She continued, “As a mathematician, you know you're not always going to get interesting cards.”

  A commotion started at the next table. A man named Gerald Weiss was making strange noises and pointing at his throat. Dora, who was a retired nurse, quickly got up from her chair again and asked, “Gerald, are you choking?”

  He nodded, unable to speak. Dora went behind his chair and wrapped her arms around him, making one hand into a fist. She pulled it sharply into his body below the rib cage, once, then again. At that point Gerald fell forward and his head hit the table with a thud. A woman sitting at the table screamed.

  “Help me get him onto the floor,” Dora said.

  Several people who had already stood up assisted her.

  “Call the clinic!” someone said in an urgent voice.

  “Call 911!”

  I carry a cellular phone in my purse; my son insists that I do. I pulled it out and asked, “What's the number of the clinic?” I had wanted excitement, but not this much. Be careful what you wish for.... Somebody told me the number; I punched it in and was quickly connected to the clinic, a part of Silver Acres. “One of our residents has collapsed in the recreation room,” I told the man who answered the phone.

  “He's not breathing!” Dora shouted.

  “He's not breathing,” I repeated.

  “We'll be right there,” he said, and hung up.

  I called 911. The operator promised that the paramedics would be dispatched immediately. I disconnected the phone and watched the proceedings. Dora had Gerald's mouth open and tried to clear his air passage. The other members of the Wednesday afternoon bridge club watched in shock, but nobody panicked. At our time of life, death was always a possibility.

  Others such as Dora were better able to handle medical emergencies than I could so I stayed seated at my table, half in horror, half philosophical. Tess came around the table and took my hand, holding it in a strong, trembling grip. She felt more comfortable showing her emotions than I did.

  Within three minutes a doctor and a nurse ran in, breathless, from the clinic, with a medical bag. The doctor took over from Dora. After a lightning fast examination of Gerald he said, “His windpipe's closed up. We'll have to do a tracheotomy. Adrenaline.”

  The nurse quickly and efficiently produced a needle and a small bottle from the bag. While the doctor drew the contents of the bottle into the needle and plunged it into Gerald's arm, the nurse pulled out a scalpel and a thin plastic tube, as well as disinfectant.

  At that point I stopped watching, as did most of the others. I don't watch emergency room shows on television either. The bridge players gathered in groups of two or three, talking in low voices. Soon the paramedics arrived, in uniform, with more medical bags. We overheard one of them say that Gerald's heart had stopped beating. When they brought out the paddles to attempt to restart his heart, Tess and I left the room. Not long afterward, Gerald was pronounced dead.

  Some of the stunned members of the bridge club, including Tess and I, continued to loiter in the corridor of the main building, even after they took Gerald's body away, as if we had nowhere else to go, but nobody suggested tha
t the bridge games be resumed. Even I had no interest in bridge. Wesley, the president of the bridge club and also of the residents' association, walked from one person to another, mouthing soothing words.

  Other people came and went, including Carol Grant, the executive director of Silver Acres, who talked softly to the doctor from the clinic. She had a good job, but its downside was that she lost most of her customers because they died.

  I have always had the desire to experience everything fully, so a kind of fascinated horror held me there. Tess and I talked about the uncertainties of life. After a while she calmed down and we strolled back into the recreation room. I looked at the cards still lying on Gerald's table and said, “I wonder what kind of a hand he was dealt.”

  Tess looked at me strangely and said, “What does it matter now?”

  “I don't know; I'm just curious.” I stepped over to his table. Nobody had touched anything since Gerald had collapsed. I gathered his cards, which were scattered; several were on the floor. As I put them together I saw only red suits on the cards that were face up.

  When I had all 13 in a stack I fanned them out. Then I gasped. “Tess, look at this!”

  Tess looked, then said, unbelievingly, “They're all diamonds!” She added, “Are you sure you have the right cards?”

  “Yes. The other three hands are in neat piles.” I picked up each of the other hands and looked at it. They were fairly normally distributed, except that all had voids in diamonds. One hand held seven spades.

  “Thirteen diamonds,” Tess said, shaking her head. “A dream hand. Maybe the shock of seeing it is what killed Gerald. Although I didn't know he had a weak heart. What are the odds against being dealt a hand like this?”

  “I actually tried to figure that out once,” I said, “but my calculator couldn't take such a small decimal so I gave up. I can tell you that the average bridge player will not be dealt 13 of any suit in a lifetime.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Two days later, as Tess and I walked into the comfortable office of Carol Grant, I thought what I often thought about Carol—that she was one of those super-competent women who effortlessly run organizations and/or families.

  In 50 years the whole developed world will be run by women. Women can already do all the things men can do except heavy lifting, and the need for that is rapidly disappearing in our society. Of course a few chosen men will still be needed for stud service, but the rest....

  Carol's hair was an undyed brown, longer than the average length of the female residents’, and she wore her skirts shorter, just above the knees. She more than held her own in the brains department with the intelligent and educated residents.

  “Hello, Lillian; hello, Tess,” Carol said, shaking hands with both of us. She seemed to know every resident by name, even though there were several hundred of us. She smiled and her face lit up, giving her a grownup prettiness, enhanced by her stylish glasses. “Please have a seat. Would you like coffee?”

  Tess declined but I accepted. I rarely turn down coffee. “Black, please.”

  Carol poured from a small coffee maker on the wooden credenza behind her large desk into a china cup and served it to me, complete with saucer and paper napkin.

  She said, “First, let me extend my condolences on the passing of Gerald. I know that both of you were at the bridge club meeting when it happened. Something like that is always a shock.”

  Tess nodded. “It was a terrible shock. We didn't know him that well, but he seemed to be in good health.”

  “So you weren't among the ladies vying for his attention,” Carol said with a smile.

  With the dearth of single males at Silver Acres and the plenitude of single females, the men usually had no trouble finding female companionship.

  “Nothing against Gerald or any other man at Silver Acres,” I said, “but why should those of us who were used to steak settle for hamburger?” I had been resigned to the single life for some years.

  Carol chuckled and said, “I'm going to get serious for a minute. And I need to ask you both a question. Did either of you know that Gerald had a food allergy?”

  That was news to me. I shook my head. So did Tess.

  “Gerald never mentioned to you that he had such an allergy? And nobody else did, either?”

  “As I said, we didn't know him very well,” Tess repeated. “We just played bridge with him.”

  Where was she headed? I asked, “Did a food allergy have something to do with his death?”

  “Yes,” Carol said. “That's why I'm going to talk to all the people who knew Gerald, especially those who were present when he died. The coroner's office did an autopsy because Dr. Wacker from our clinic found that his windpipe had closed up, a symptom often related to food allergies. His body also showed other reactions, which suggested food allergies. They brought on the heart attack that actually killed him.”

  “What could cause your windpipe to close up?” Tess asked, putting her hand to her throat and making gagging noises. Tess is somewhat of a hypochondriac.

  “That, of course, is the question. Lunch was served at the bridge club, as you know. Gerald's stomach contained some of the food. They analyzed the contents of the serving dish. Among other things, it contained shellfish. It appears that Gerald was highly allergic to shellfish and it caused the membrane surrounding his trachea, or windpipe, to swell, closing it off. He couldn't breathe.”

  “What a horrible way to die!” Tess exclaimed.

  “You say it was shellfish?” I said. “It looked and tasted like a tuna casserole to me.”

  “It fooled me, too,” Tess said.

  “Unfortunately, it also fooled Gerald,” Carol said.

  “How do you know the shellfish got him?” I asked.

  “You probably remember that when you applied to live here you had to fill out some questionnaires.”

  “Reams of questionnaires,” I said. “It was almost as bad as doing income tax.”

  Carol smiled. “Some of the information requested is about your medical history. And one of the questions is about allergies. Gerald stated that he was allergic to shellfish. He didn't say that it was a life-threatening allergy, but since we always have a menu for the food served in the dining room it would have been easy for him to avoid shellfish there.”

  “But your staff did not prepare the lunch,” Tess said.

  The bridge club had its own lunch committee.

  “At least you won't be sued,” I said.

  “Probably not, but it's just so frustrating,” Carol said, showing emotion for the first time by snapping the pencil she always played with. “It could have been prevented. And I feel guilty that this happened in my territory.”

  “It's not your fault, Carol,” Tess said, soothingly. “Don't take it personally.”

  “So, have you found anybody who knew about Gerald's allergy to shellfish?” I asked.

  “You're the first people I've asked. But I intend to question all the members of the lunch committee. In fact, I'm going to talk to everybody who knew him. We're convinced it was an accident, but I just want to make sure there aren't any loose ends.”

  “It's just rotten bad luck,” Tess said. “An act of God.” She considered. “But I would think that Gerald would certainly have asked what the dish contained.”

  “He probably didn't even think about it, since it looked like a tuna casserole,” Carol said. “I saw the leftovers and it sure would have fooled me.”

  “But you don't have a life-threatening allergy,” I said. “In a case like Gerald's, even a probability of one in a thousand isn't good enough. You have to eliminate all risk to be safe.”

  “Lillian was a professor of mathematics at Duke,” Tess said.

  “I know,” Carol said, and I was sure she did. “By the way, Gerald was also a college professor.”

  “Where did he teach?” I asked.

  “The University of California at San Diego. It's in La Jolla, right on the beach. He was a professor of economics. In fact,
he won a Nobel Prize.”

  “Whew!” I breathed. I had never dreamed of winning a prize like that.

  “I read about it,” Tess said. “Recently. I think it was in Time Magazine. We have so many accomplished people here it must have slipped my mind. The article said it was the 25th anniversary of his prize and the subject is more pertinent today than ever.”

  “What did he win the Nobel for?” I asked.

  “Something to do with money...”

  “Well, of course there's a cash award that goes with the prize.”

  “No, I mean he wrote about money. Currencies. And with the instability in the world's currency markets, that's why his work is important today.” Tess sometimes fooled people. She was smart for having been “just” a housewife.

  “I hope somebody has the answer,” Carol said. “After what some of the third-world countries have gone through, recently, with their currencies depreciating so much as to be almost worthless.”

  There was a knock on the open door; Carol raised her eyes and said, “Come in.”

  I recognized the good-looking man who strode into the office as Joe Turner, whose title was something like Facilities Manager. He said, “Excuse me, Ladies. I have to get this requisition signed by the boss-lady or we may find ourselves with a backed-up sewer system.” He nodded to Tess, but not to me. What did she have that I didn't have?

  His bare arm muscles rippled as he gave Carol the document. She glanced at it briefly, signed it and returned it to him. He pivoted on a large work-shoe-clad foot and strode out of the office, leaving an aura of masculinity behind. He was one of the men who will be expendable in 50 years. I'm glad I won't be around to see it.

  “Now that is what I call a hunk,” I said.

  “Lillian!” Tess said.

  “I agree with you,” Carol said, smiling. “Why do you think I hired him?”