Thirteen Diamonds

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