The Stamford Pistachio Trail, Part VII

Summertime

It was another two years before Rosie returned to the Adlers´, a summer exchange in which she and Merri were together for a couple of weeks while Ronnie stayed with Andy in New Hampshire. Nana had since died, and other than Uncle Jerry’s study, the girls practically had the house to themselves.

Still, they were usually out in the warm sunshine and travelling about on their bikes. One day they actually rode all the way into downtown Stamford -- that budding metropolis of the Seventies. Rosie huffed and puffed as she pulled into the shady confines of a parking garage, nearly two minutes behind Merri, who, while waiting, timed the delay on her new Swiss sports watch.

They sat atop a retaining wall on the ground level and ate their lunch, which consisted of yogurt, raisins, and a one-pound bag of red pistachio nuts for dessert. They crunched the pale green nuts and dropped the shells from their red fingertips onto the grassy knoll below.

¨There's a body buried under this very garage,¨ Merri stated flatly.

¨So you say,¨ said Rosie.

¨So I know.¨

¨Why, did you put it there?¨

Merri smiled, and seemed to regard her cousin in a new light.

They soon jumped down, and set out on foot into the city, leaving a trail of shells the length of their journey.

Fin