Tom arrives in California to stay with Al and Kitty, who make him very welcome--although he is inexplicably scared of their cat. In the middle of the night he is awakened by a Skype from Monkey, who reports that Bea has lost her job. At the weekend Al and Kitty hold a barbecue, inviting other cousins, the married Rick and Julie, and the rather strange Dave, who claims to have a vestigial tail and a Peruvian wife who has gone missing. Dave tells Tom that Charles Chadwick fled to England in the aftermath of the American Civil War--possibly because he was an accomplice to the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
—don @ minifie-1