Page 28 of Your Every Wish
“I’m going to need you to start at the beginning,” I say.
“I don’t have time to start at the beginning. I’m asking, no, I’m begging, which you should know is totally out of character for me, for thirty thousand dollars. And I swear I’ll pay you back as soon as we sell Cedar Pines.”
“First of all, I don’t have thirty thousand dollars. If I did, I’d have a beautiful apartment near the man I love, instead of having to commute nearly three hours to see him. I’ll help you figure this out, though. But before I do, I need you to tell me the whole story. Arrested? Jail? What did you do, Kennedy?”
“That’s the thing, I didn’t do anything.” She rests her head on the steering wheel and closes her eyes. “One of my clients believes I stole thirty thousand of his craps winnings.”
“Why would he believe that?”
“Because my mother did.”
I’m too stunned to respond, though I don’t know why. I work for a newspaper. Every day we report stories of crime—murder, assault, rape, robbery, embezzlement. As we say in the news biz, “If it bleeds it leads.” But I’m related to Kennedy, and by extension her mother, sort of. And we’re not the kind of family that steals. Although Willy might’ve been. But I never completely considered him a member of my family.
“Well, she needs to return the money,” I say.
“She doesn’t have it to return.”
“Then she’s the one who should go to the police. Or to your client. Or whoever. How did this happen, Kennedy? Please tell me she desperately needed the money for a heart transplant or something equally urgent.”
Kennedy sits up and turns to me. “Puerta Vallarta. She needed a trip to Puerta Vallarta with her boyfriend.” She lays her head down again. “I can’t let her take the fall.”
“Whynot? If she’s the one who stole the money . . .”
“Because she didn’t mean it. She thought Willy was leaving me . . . us . . . a bundle and that I could pay it back. I know what you’re thinking and it’s not like that. She’s not like that. She’s a good person. A good person who sometimes does stupid things.”
“Ya think? How is it that she even came into possession of your client’s winnings?” To say I’m confused is an understatement.
“She’s a bookkeeper at Caesars. It was my job to see to Mr. Sterling’s every need, including arranging a deposit of his winnings. It’s standard operating procedure for any casino host. I cash in his chips, give him a receipt, take the cash to the basement, fill out a form, and one of the bookkeepers is in charge of wiring the money to the bank of his choice. I’ve done it hundreds of times. This time, Mom was my bookkeeper.”
“And instead of depositing the money she kept it?”
Kennedy doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to.
I want to scream, What kind of mother does that?Not helpful, Emma. It seems the only thing that would be helpful at this point is thirty thousand dollars.
“Don’t you make a bunch of money doing what you do?” I say. “You’ve got to have some savings.”
“I make decent money but between paying half my mother’s rent and mine and all my other expenses, I live paycheck to paycheck. Like the rest of the country.”
“You don’t have any credit cards that you could take out a cash advance on?”
“Not with those kinds of balances. I tried to hock some jewelry, but no one would pay me anything close to thirty grand.”
“What about your car? It’s a BMW, they’re expensive.”
“I bought it used. The air conditioner is broken, and it has ninety thousand miles on it. I’d be lucky to get ten. Believe me, I looked it up on Kelley Blue Book.”
“Can you talk to the client, reason with him, tell him that you just came into an inheritance and that you’ll be able to come up with the money in a month or two? Or better yet, pay him back in installments. Maybe by then we could borrow against Cedar Pines or use some of the lot rent toward what your mother”—I emphasizemother—“owes him.”
“I’ve already tried that. It’s too late. Before we left, I got a message from a Las Vegas detective. I’m supposed to call him, which means they’re already looking for me.”
“Oh boy.” I let out a long sigh. “I’ll ask Dex for it.”
She does a double take. “You will? You would do that for me? I mean, you don’t even know me. How do you know I didn’t make the whole thing up, that this isn’t some ruse to rip you off?”
I shake my head. Only five minutes ago, she was begging me for the money. “Look, there’s no guarantee Dex will give it to us. I’ll have to tell him the truth and he’s not going to like it.” And Dex can be tight with his money. I guess that’s why he has it and I don’t. How many times has he told me I’m a spendthrift? But this is different. This is an emergency. “But he’s the only person I know with that kind of liquid cash, so it’s at least worth a try.”
“Thank you. I’ll pay every dime of it back, I swear.”
