Page 83 of Your Every Wish
I’m starting to wonder if Misty might be a lush.
Kennedy catches my gaze and rolls her eyes. Liam tucks one of the throw pillows behind his head and stretches his legs out. They’re long and lean. They’re good legs.
“All right,” Misty says and then lets out a long-suffering sigh before turning to Kennedy. “After you left, I was getting ready for bed.” It’s the first time I notice that she’s in pajamas. Flannel ones covered in multicolored teapots. How had I missed that? “And on a lark, I took another look at the picture you emailed me. It was like the first time. Complete nothingness. Just a piece of paper with some numbers.”
She takes another sip of wine. “I stared at it for some time. But stillnada. I put my phone down and brushed my teeth and washed my face. Told myself to let it go, not to push it. That it will either happen on its own or it won’t. I was just about to turn in for the night when something told me to look at the picture again. This time, I took it with me into bed and got under the covers and did my breathing. Then I called the picture up and let myself focus. Really focus. And that’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?” Kennedy leans closer to Misty, who’s sitting across from her in an overstuffed chair.
“The golf bag. It’s here.”
“What do you mean it’s here? I thought it was in La Jolla, somewhere in Willy’s house. That’s what you originally said.” I’m starting to think that Misty is leading us on a wild-goose chase. Why would Willy leave his golf bag here? There’s no evidence that he’s ever stepped foot in the place. Misty herself said she’d never met him.
“I never definitively said the bag was in Willy’s house. I said it was in the stacks. Look, I’m as surprised as you are. But it’s here. I can feel it in every fiber of my being.”
“What are the stacks? And what do the numbers on the paper we found mean? How do they link the bag to Cedar Pines? It doesn’t make any sense.” Kennedy is as skeptical as I am, I can hear it in her voice, which is tinged with anger. Not at Misty—well, maybe at Misty for jerking us around—but more than likely at the situation itself.
“I don’t know. I’m not getting anything from the numbers. But the bag is here. I saw it clear as day.”
“Where?” Kennedy says. “He didn’t even live here, for God’s sake.”
“Ungrateful much?” Misty hisses.
Liam sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles. “Everyone needs to calm down. Misty, go over it again. Tell us exactly what you saw. Take your time.” He pins Kennedy with a warning glance. “No one is in a rush. Just lay it out for us, every detail you can remember.”
“I saw it. The golf bag. It’s black and white with red trim and has the monogramWBKengraved on the top.”
“B? What’s theBfor?” Kennedy wants to know.
“Bradford. It’s Willy’s middle name,” I say. “Go ahead.”
“The bag was leaning up against a cedar tree next to a shovel. Then I saw the Cedar Pines Estates sign at the entrance near the highway. It was the same way when I found Roman. Images came to me in pieces. Little dribs and drabs of information. ”
“Are these visions telling you that the golf bag is buried under the Cedar Pines sign?” Kennedy is bouncing her leg up and down, making the couch shake.
“Not necessarily. It could be, or the sign is simply a message that it’s here in Cedar Pines. Anywhere in Cedar Pines.”
“That’s helpful,” Kennedy says. “Eighty-six acres to search with no clue where to start.”
Misty glares at her.
“Nothing about this makes sense,” I say. “Why here? Why not a bank? Or if Willy was concerned about the feds seizing his money, why not a safe-deposit box?”
“Banks and safe-deposit boxes leave trails. If Willy was trying to hide money from the law that’s the last place he would stash it,” Liam says. “It makes perfect sense that he would bury it here. Why else would he have purchased Cedar Pines in the first place? It’s not like it’s a terribly good investment. Piss poor, if you ask me. But it’s the last place anyone would look for hidden contraband.”
Kennedy is nodding as if she’s having an epiphany. “Especially if he bought the park under a fake name.”
“Eventually, the feds would figure it out,” Liam says. “In this day and age, it’s nearly impossible to hide assets. But it would definitely buy him, or his heirs, time.”
“You think that’s why he left us the park?” I ask, Liam’s theory taking root. As convoluted as it is, there’s a ring of practicality to it. And it sounds like Willy. He was a schemer, a gambler, and a crook. And buying a run-down trailer park to hide your millions has the hallmarks of all three characteristics. How he ever thought we’d figure it out is the sketchy part.
Or maybe he’d intended to come back here someday, dig up his loot, and ride off into the sunset a rich man. But those dreams died when he got his prognosis in prison. And for the first time in his life, he decided to do right by his daughters.
“Do you think the numbers are some sort of code to mark the location of where he buried the golf bag?” Kennedy grabs her phone and calls up the picture of the paper we found in Willy’s wall.
“There’s no telling,” Misty says. “I’m not getting anything on the numbers, but it’s related, I can feel it.”
Liam looks over Kennedy’s shoulder at the picture. “It doesn’t look like coordinates. But I’m only guessing here. I can do a little research.”
