Dead in the Water (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 1) by Phyllis A. Humphrey Page B

forget how to do it."
    To my surprise, Elizabeth didn't laugh at that, or even smile. Instead, I thought I saw a painful grimace flash across her face. Then, before I could find a nonintrusive way to ask her about it, she announced our arrival into the city and pointed out some local landmarks. I took that as a sign she didn't want to pursue the topic.
    I'd been a child the year my parents brought me to England, and after showing me the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London—complete with gruesome stories of intrigue, torture, and death—they dropped me off at Mason Hall for that summer-long visit while they toured Europe alone. I didn't remember much of that brief trip to the city, so I found myself enjoying doing it all again with Elizabeth. We looked at the Crown Jewels then walked through Hyde Park where autumn leaves had begun to fall. I enjoyed seeing Parliament and Big Ben because I loved to look at buildings that had been around for a few thousand years. At home, city council members voted to tear down anything older than they were.
    While we had lunch in a chintz-and-ruffles tearoom near Harrods, I asked her about a revolving restaurant I'd heard about on the top of the post office tower. "A strange place for a restaurant, isn't it?"
    "I remember that, but it isn't there anymore. Some years ago, the IRA threatened once too many times to bomb the post office, so they closed the restaurant."
    "What a shame. I looked forward to going there."
    "That's not all that's changed since then. Money's different too. We went to the decimal system, worse luck."
    "I thought that happened a long time ago."
    "Seems like yesterday." Her voice took on a hard edge. "I hate that we don't have shillings, crowns, and guineas anymore. Not just the coins but the words are gone. They'd been part of our language for hundreds of years."
    "But isn't the decimal system easier?"
    "Not to anyone who grew up with the other."
    I understood what she meant, and I cringed mentally. The metric system is easier too, but we Americans still clung to inches and feet, rather than switching to meters, grams, and all the rest. And, no, we will probably not have done so by the next century in case you were going to ask.
    "We have pounds and pence now," Elizabeth went on. "And they say, 'P' for pence, like 'that'll be two P.'"
    I couldn't help smiling. "It sounds a little vulgar."
    Again, Elizabeth didn't laugh at my feeble attempt at humor. "And you can't make brass rubbings from the original figures in Westminster Abbey anymore. They've made some replicas, and you can rub those, but it's not the same."
    Her pessimistic demeanor had returned, and I began to wonder if more lay behind her negative attitude than a few new rules. Did her divorce leave her bitter? I was having a difficult time adjusting to being discarded for a newer version myself. Did she have the same problem? Or did she hate change? Change is difficult at best. Lately it challenged at the speed of light. Okay, I had a cell phone, and I used a computer, and I liked e-mail. But now I faced chat rooms on the internet to say nothing of spam. Besides, I didn't want to pay my bills electronically. I felt as if my money were disappearing into the ether. Except for that, I managed to embrace all the new technology.
    If Elizabeth had visited California years ago and then went over there today, she'd notice those changes too. Yes, the Golden Gate Bridge still stood above San Francisco Bay, and Los Angeles still had stars imbedded in sidewalks, and a venerable movie theatre contained movie stars' footprints in concrete. Yes, we had more skyscrapers, more freeways, more cars, more traffic. Also more people, and most of the additional millions were Asian or Hispanic. Whites were now a minority, at least in California. Except in the movies, I rarely saw blonde or red hair, or eyes of blue or green.
    I relinquished my musings in time to notice Elizabeth's frown had laid siege to