hear Mark's knock on the door.
He opened it with perfect timing just as Sandra stepped out of the bathroom, naked as a newborn babe. To say that both of them were surprised is understating the case by several orders of magnitude. I quickly told Tess I'd talk to her later and hung up the phone. Mark and Sandra stared at each other as if turned to stone. Mark got a full- frontal view of Sandra, as they say in movie ratings, and what he saw was exquisite.
Finally, the tableau ended. Mark mumbled an apology and stumbled out the door. Sandra turned and hightailed it back into the bathroom. When he was gone she crept out again, wrapped in a wayward towel. The redness in her face was not just from the hot water of the shower.
“I'll never be able to face him again!” she cried, dramatically, accenting her words with appropriate arm gestures.
“Why not?” I asked. “You did a good job of facing him just now.”
“Gogi, this isn't funny! We've only had one date.”
“But that one date influenced him to come all the way across country to see you. And he certainly did-see you, that is. This will help to speed up your romance like nothing else. Men are very visual beings, you know, and you are certainly worth looking at.”
Wrong thing to say.
“Men are animals.”
I did get her calmed down after a while. She got dressed and went out with Mark, which was the original plan, while I babysat with Winston. She said she would be back at 11. I glanced at my bedside clock when she tiptoed in. It showed ten minutes after one.
CHAPTER 14
“Lillian, when are we going to play some nim?” Mark asked as we ate breakfast at a cafe.
He and Sandra were both very jovial this morning, so I guessed their date had gone well the night before. Winston was jovial too, banging his hands on the tray of his highchair.
“What's nim?” I asked, eating a spoonful of oatmeal flavored with brown sugar.
“That's the game you beat me at in the bar. Remind me never to try to put anything over on you again.”
I laughed. “I saw it played in a movie long ago, but I didn't know the name of it. Listen, if you two will drop me off at the house of Gerald's grandniece, then you can take the car and do some sightseeing.”
Unspoken was that they also had to take Winston. It wouldn't hurt to see up front how Mark reacted to having a baby around. That might determine whether he and Sandra would have more than just a holiday romance.
“I'd like to take Sandy and Winston to the San Diego Zoo,” Mark said. “It's one of the best zoos in the country, and I think Winston will like the animals. I lived in Los Angeles when I was young and I loved to come here.”
April Snow, Gerald's grandniece, lived in a house near the ocean in Pacific Beach, north of Mission Bay. When I had talked to her on the phone from home she said she worked a flexible schedule that enabled her to take every other Friday off. This was one of the off Fridays.
Pacific Beach is a typical beach community, with a mixture of apartment buildings and small houses, sometimes on the same block. Many of the houses date back to post-World War II days and look like boxes. Overgrown with shrubbery, including birds of paradise and bougainvillea, the yards could use a good trimming. Ancient palm trees tower over everything, casting off fronds on windy days, to add to the feeling of clutter.
April opened her door a few seconds after I rang the bell. I introduced myself and Mark, who had come up the walk with me from the car to see for himself that she wasn't an ogre. Satisfied in that regard, he excused himself and left to take Sandra and Winston to the zoo.
April invited me in with a quick smile. She must be in her mid-twenties, with the kind of petite body that most women would kill for. She wore jeans and a T-shirt with an inscription proclaiming, “Southpaws do it left- handed.”
“Have a seat, Mrs. Morgan,” April said, pointing to a faded blue sofa. “I'm making some herb tea; would you like a cup?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said. I usually drink coffee but I figured herb tea wouldn't kill me. April disappeared into what I assumed was the kitchen while I looked around at older furniture, suitable for someone at least twice April's age. On a coffee table sat an issue of a surfing magazine; this led me to believe that she didn't live alone and that the other resident might be male.
I was surprised that a young woman like April could afford to live in a house so close to the ocean, however small. As one got closer to the water, real estate values rose on an ever-steepening curve, which became vertical at the beach. Which led me to wonder just who her roommate was.
If she supported the place herself she must have a good job. What did she do? A personal computer sat on what was probably the dinner table, with some fish swimming across the screen, but since everybody owned computers that didn't help.
April returned, carrying a tray with two cups filled with hot water and an assortment of tea bags. I glanced at her hands as she put down the tray; she wasn't wearing any rings. I picked a container labeled peppermint, extracted the tea bag and dunked it in my cup.
“The last time I saw Uncle Gerry was two years ago,” April said, offering me milk and sugar, which I declined. She continually brushed her red hair back from her freckled face. Was her complexion suited to suntan country? “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.”
