Thirteen Diamonds

“After I finished college,” she continued, “I flew to the east coast for some job interviews and visited him at Silver Acres.  He seemed to be quite happy there.”
    “I believe he was,” I said. “I know this is a personal question, but were you surprised that you were included in his will?”
    “I was zapped. I had never given it a thought. It was...very nice of him.”
    “You are the only person in his will.”
    “I believe my older brother and I are Uncle Gerry's only living relatives. He is ten years older than I am and lives in Boston.”
    “Your parents...?”
    “They're both dead. My mother died when I was young. My father died four years ago when I was in college. I inherited this house from them. Uncle Gerry's money will help me do some much-needed maintenance. And maybe bring the furniture up to date.” She waved her arm to encompass the room.
    “What kind of work do you do?”
    “I'm a computer programmer; actually, I'm called a software engineer, but it's the same thing.”
    “I've read that those jobs pay very well.”
    April smiled an infectious smile. “They do. Listen.” She bounced up from where she had been sitting on the edge of a chair. “I need to run some errands. Would you like to come with me? We can talk about Uncle Gerry on the way.”
    Why not?  I didn't bother to point out that I hadn't finished my tea yet. The one-car garage held that enigma, a sport utility vehicle. Why everybody liked them I didn't know since most of them were driven primarily to work and they got poor gas mileage. I was good, however, and didn't ask her whether she had actually used the four-wheel-drive or driven it off a paved road.
    April drove briskly and I was glad I had my seatbelt fastened. When another car cut in front of her, forcing her to slam on her brakes, she swore at the driver and then apologized to me.
    “You should thank him,” I said. “He's paying you a compliment.”
    “Huh?”
    “Look at it this way. When he made you take action to avoid him he put his life in your hands. So in effect he's saying that he trusts that you are a good driver.”
    April laughed. “I'll remember that next time I feel like plowing into somebody.”
    Between stops at the dry cleaners, the bank, the supermarket and assorted other places, we carried on a running conversation about Gerald. I told her all I knew about Gerald's life at Silver Acres.
    April said, “I was 20 when Uncle Gerry moved to North Carolina. Before that, I had lived close to him all my life. My mother was his niece. Although I don't have much memory of her I suspect that he looked at her as the daughter he never had. When she died he transferred his affection to me. He was always doing things for me, buying me things. He even helped pay for my college education. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised about his will.
    “I wanted to go back for his memorial service, but the company I work for didn't consider him a close enough relative to give me time off and the airlines weren't too keen on giving me a bereavement fare, either.”
    April parked and dashed into a store. She did everything at top speed, including talking. When she returned I asked, “Do you play bridge?”
    “Yes. In fact Uncle Gerry taught me how to play.” She giggled. “I played a lot in college—when I should have been studying.”
    I told her about the hand Gerald held when he died.
    “Thirteen diamonds!  Wow, that's fantastic.  I never had a hand like that.”
    “Neither have I.”
    I was about to tell her that the hand had been a fraud and lead in to the possibility that Gerald had been murdered—she seemed to have a level head on her shoulders and I thought she could take it—when she said, “You know, Uncle Gerry was dealt a hand like that once before.”
    I was immediately all ears. “Thirteen diamonds?”
    “Yes. It was a long time ago, before I was born. But he used to talk about it all the time. And the strange thing was, he considered it to be bad luck, not good luck.”
    “Why was that?”
    “Because the man who was his partner when he got the hand was killed in an auto accident two days later.”
    “Did he ever tell you the name of the man who was killed?”
    “If he ever mentioned it, I have forgotten it.”
    “How about any of the other people he was playing with that night.”
    April shook her head as she drove through a light that had turned pink.
    I told her about my theory concerning Gerald's death, hoping that it