I knew. “Did you confront Gerald?” I asked.
“Of course. He had the audacity to claim that Max's contribution hadn't been that great. He said Max was getting half of the royalties and that I should be satisfied with that.”
“But none of the credit,” I said.
“I should have sued him, of course, but I didn't have the heart-or the time-or the energy. When he received his Nobel Prize I wouldn't go to the dinner at the University honoring him and I never did congratulate him.”
“I'm curious about one thing,” Tess said. “How did you and Gerald both end up at Silver Acres?”
Ellen laughed, shortly. “I see now that I made a mistake. Gerald came here first, after his wife died. I was still working, still putting kids through school. After Michael, the last one, graduated from dental school I told them, “Okay, you're on your own.” I stayed in our house for a few more years, but it was too big, too lonesome.
“Believe it or not, one of the reasons I came here was because Gerald picked it. Whatever else I can say about him, he always did his homework, so I figured that if he had selected Silver Acres it must be a good place. I thought I could put the past behind me and coexist with him.”
“And play bridge with him just the way you used to,” I said.
Ellen smiled a grim smile. “I suppose so.”
“Was Gerald the one who was dealt the hand of 13 diamonds you saw once before?”
“I'm sorry?” Ellen looked blank.
“You told me that you had seen a hand of 13 diamonds dealt once before, a long time ago.”
“Not me. You must be thinking of somebody else.”
All right, play that game, I thought. I had another point to make. I said, “Back when Max and Gerald were working together, you must have invited each other over for dinner.” Ellen's expression became guarded so I continued, quickly, “So you obviously knew about his allergy to shellfish.”
Ellen pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. “I have to go,” she said, coldly. “Thank you for lunch.” She marched past us and out the door, without looking back.
Tess watched the door close behind her and then got up and retrieved her yellow pad. She riffled through several pages, stopped at one and said, “When you talked to Ellen on the croquet course she told you that she didn't know about Gerald's allergy to shellfish because they weren't close friends.”
I said, “I think we're seeing a pattern of lying here.”
CHAPTER 17
“Thank you for inviting me, Lillian,” Mark said as he and Sandra and I lined up to be seated in the Silver Acres dining room. “This place looks very elegant.”
Elegant may have been too strong a word, but the food was nourishing and there were tablecloths on the tables. I figured Mark was a starving student, even though he had somehow managed to scrounge together enough money to fly to San Diego, and so any place where he could get a free meal would look elegant to him.
I hoped that Sandra could see past his current penury, because of course after he obtained his graduate degree his earning power would be substantial. I liked Mark, even though Sandra still seemed to have reservations about him.
Winston had been entrusted to Grampa Albert for a few hours. Albert made a good grandfather and enjoyed his time together with Winston, but like me he wanted to be able to love him and then leave him with his mother.
I asked the student waitress to seat us in a corner. My reasoning was that we would be able to look at other diners without being obvious about it. We read our menus and carried on light conversation while I scanned the dining room with one eye.
After I saw two of the people I was looking for come in with separate groups, I figured it was time for us to go to he salad bar. I led us by way of the table where Ida had just been seated with another lady, who I didn't know.
“Hello, Ida,” I said, breezily, as we came to her table. “I hope we'll see you at bridge club tomorrow.” I had volunteered to be Wesley's assistant with the bridge club, and one of my jobs was to count how many people would be attending each meeting so that we would know how many tables we would have and whether the number of players was divisible by four.
Ida responded affirmatively, and I said, “I'd like you to meet my granddaughter, Sandra and her boyfriend, Mark.” Both of them shook hands with Ida, who then introduced us to her dinner partner, whose name I didn't quite catch.
From there we went on to a table where Dora was sitting with two other women. I went through the same process with Dora, who said that she would be attending bridge club. Then the three of us continued to the salad bar, filled our plates and returned to our table. I noticed that Mark filled his plate to overflowing. During the meals he had eaten with us in San Diego he had not stinted on food.
As we dove into our salads Mark shook his head. “The first one is too big,” he said, “and the second is too little.”
“I thought we all looked alike to you,” I teased.
He grinned and said, “I'm never going to live that down, am I?”
Well, if Mark hadn't delivered the lobster to Ida or Dora, could he have delivered it to Harriet or Ellen? Their body sizes were both between those of Ida and Dora. Neither had yet made an appearance in the dining room.
During the main course our conversation turned to Gerald's bridge hand of 13 diamonds. When I explained to Mark that it had been a fraud and wondered out loud how the decks could have been switched, he said, “In addition to my other dubious talents, I'm somewhat of a magician and have practiced sleight-of-hand. Maybe we can figure out how it was done. Tell me the exact sequence of events in dealing a bridge hand.”
“The dealer deals all the cards, one at a time, starting with the person to his left and moving clockwise around the table.”
“His left or her left,” Sandra said. She still worried about sexist pronouns.
“Before that,” Mark said. “Where does the dealer get the cards?”
I had to think about that. “Ordinarily, the cards are shuffled by the player to the dealer's left, who then places the deck on the table at the dealer's left hand. The dealerperson picks up the cards and offers them to the person on his/her right to cut. After the cards are cut the dealer deals them.”
Mark got a chuckle out of my phrasing, even if Sandra didn't. He said, “So three people actually handle the cards before the deal. And I believe you said this was the first deal of the afternoon so the cards must have just been taken out of a box.”
“Actually, the cards were sitting on the table already. Wesley, our president, took the decks out of the box when he set up the tables.”
“But they were shuffled afterward, so that eliminates Wesley from the picture. Since this was the first hand, the activities you just mentioned: shuffle, cut and deal must have happened one right after another, bang-bang-bang.”
“True.”
Mark scratched his head. “Gerald was the dealer. Tell me who was sitting to the left and right of Gerald.”
“Ida sat on his left and Ellen, whom you haven't met yet, sat on his right.”
“Two ladies. Actually, in a case like this it would have been easier for one of the two other than the dealer to make the switch. And the fact that they are ladies actually gives them an advantage.”
“I don't see why being ladies gives them an advantage,” Sandra said.
“Because ladies carry purses. In addition, Gerald, as the dealer, would have attention focused on him while he was dealing, making it difficult for him to dispose of the switched deck. Here is a possible scenario: One of the two ladies, either the shuffler or the cutter, has another deck and a purse sitting in her lap. At the crucial moment she creates a diversion, directing people's attention away from her, sweeps the deck from the table into her purse and substitutes the other deck, all in the blink of an eye if she's been practicing.”