Page 102 of Your Every Wish
“That’s it, isn’t it, Misty?” I can barely breathe; my heart is racing so fast. “The dry stacks. It was right here in front of us all along. There’s the cedar tree, marking the spot.”
“Yep. It’s what I saw in my vision. It’s exactly what I saw. I just didn’t realize at the time that it was the stone wall. The golf bag is in Bent McCourtney’s wall.”
Emma
It’s Kennedy’s idea for me to come with her. She’s under the misguided impression that Bent McCourtney likes me better than her, which is preposterous. I’ve had no more than one conversation with the man in my entire life. While he was friendly enough, it’s not like we have a special bond. In fact, I get the impression he’s interested in Kennedy and this whole sparring thing they do is all for show. Or part of their mating ritual.
But his dogs definitely like me better than my half sister. Ever since we got here, they’re all over me, sniffing, sticking their snouts in my lap, begging for head scratches, which I happily oblige. Bent sends them upstairs with one command, “Go!”
His house is incredible. Views from every window, which are legion. And the finishes are so upscale that the place must’ve cost a fortune. Of course, he’s a builder, so he probably got a break on materials and labor.
We’re in the living room, sitting on the architectural but not-so-comfortable couches with great sightlines of the infinity pool. It appears he lives here alone with his dogs. He never uses the ever-present “we” that couples are prone to do and there are no pictures of him with anyone except an elderly couple, which I assume are his parents. And there’s also the way he acts around Kennedy, like he’s totally into her.
“Do either of you want a drink?” He looks from Kennedy to me, then at the built-in bar on the other side of the room. “I have a feeling I’m going to need one.”
We both decline and he sits across from us in a wood-and-leather sling chair that appears to be as uncomfortable as it is gorgeous.
He leans forward and puts his hands on his knees. “I figure this isn’t a social call, so what can I do you for?”
Kennedy and I exchange glances and I nudge my head at her that she should go first.
“We need to tear down your stone wall,” she says with the finesse of a bear. The bear that had been getting into everyone’s garbage at Cedar Pines, to be exact. Besides flinging trash far and wide, he (or she) had laid waste to Harry’s barbecue.
To Bent’s credit he doesn’t so much as flinch. “And why’s that?”
Kennedy meets my eye. We’d talked about this. Who to tell and who not to tell. A large fortune is probably buried in that wall. An unscrupulous person . . . well, who knows what ends someone would go to for that kind of money? I already feel the burden of it weighing down on me like a heavy coat.
I give her a small nod. We can’t very well ask Bent to let us destroy his wall without giving him a good reason.
Kennedy clears her throat and tells Bent the whole story. About how Willy hid the note in a book in the wall of his garage. How Azriel Sabag helped us crack the code. How Misty had visions of the golf bag, rocks, and stacks. That one earns an eye roll from Bent but he continues to listen anyway.
Kennedy tells him about the riddle and how Misty figured out that the golf bag is buried in the wall, where his cedar tree stands.
“I did have the rock wall built about the time your old man bought Cedar Pines Estates,” he says. “As long as you reimburse me to have the wall rebuilt, I’ll give you permission. Hell, I’ll help you take it down myself. I’m a descendant of Gold Rush Forty-niners and can’t resist a good treasure hunt. But I’ve got to tell you, the whole thing sounds iffy to me. I’m more inclined to agree with Emma. This was Willy Keil’s way of punking the FBI. And even if the money is there . . .” He stops to consider his words. “Let’s just put it this way: people usually deposit their money in a bank, not in a rock wall. Did you stop to consider that?”
In the nicest way possible, Bent is trying to tell us that even if we find money, it’s probably bad money, money either owed to the IRS or ill-gotten gains from, say, insider trading. Kennedy and I have discussed it ad nauseam. I even called Sam to ask him if the money could cause us legal troubles down the road. He gave me a lawyerly answer that didn’t really answer anything, just a lot of hypotheticals about what could or could not happen.
Liam thinks we should go to Mr. Townsend. Dex says that under no circumstances should we unearth the money. But Kennedy’s time is running out. And I’d be lying if I said the money wouldn’t make a difference. I could get my own place in the city, even though Dex wants us to move in together, which is really a dream come true. But it would still be nice to have the option of my own apartment. Even more important, we could make Cedar Pines shine again. Unmuck the pond, retile the pool, resurface the tennis courts, fix the leaky toilets, install new carpet in the clubhouse, put in working streetlights. Maybe even turn it into a destination, like the parks in Malibu and the Hamptons.
And then there are the wishes. Can we undo something that has been set into motion by a universal diviner? It’s already out there in the cosmos, like fairy dust in the wind. No way to stop it now.
“We’ve considered it,” I say. “And I guess we’ll cross that bridge if we do indeed find the money.” It was sort of the truth. There was still a lot left up for discussion. But until the money becomes a reality, agonizing over it seems premature.
* * *
And yet, for the next two days that’s all I do. I even imagine that we’re being watched. That this is somehow a test. A test of what? That is the part I’m not completely clear on.
“Did you call the lawyer?” Liam asks.
“Kennedy doesn’t want to. She thinks he’d be legally bound to tell us not to do it and then we’d be liable if we did because we’d been advised by an attorney not to. My mother’s boyfriend, Sam, also a lawyer, says she’s not wrong.”
“What did he say you should do?”
“I didn’t ask him because then we’d be liable if we didn’t listen. ”
He arches a dark brow. “That’s kind of convoluted reasoning, don’t you think?”
“Probably. What do you advise we do? Wait, don’t tell me.”
