Page 35 of The Summer Request
Then money started disappearing. At first, it was only a few hundred here and there. She thought it was odd, and assumed the owners hadn’t had time to catch her up on their expenses. Then, in one week, nearly eight thousand dollars disappeared overnight.
Somehow, Lisa’s digital fingerprints were all over the transactions. She thought she was losing her mind, sleepwalking, or that she must’ve been hacked.
And boy, had she been. It took a bit of figuring, but she discovered that Neil had installed a keylogger on her computer. He saw every word she typed, every username, every password…
After the fallout, he promised to start going to Gamblers Anonymous meetings. He said he was going to get serious this time.
Was he going to say he didn’t have the time? That was a lie.
He hadn’t been able to keep a job in months, but apparently he had time to solicit money from Sierra.
They didn’t need her money. Yes, they’d drained their savings to cover the losses, but they still had enough coming in to cover their bills. Her company had graciously given her a severance package. That would last two more months, and Lisa had made sure she was the only one with access to the account.
She didn’t tell him about that, actually. Hopefully he hadn’t found out. He would throw a tantrum, crying and yelling, telling her she was being abusive and controlling.
She didn’t want to be controlling! But they needed to keep some money safe to pay the bills. Lisa had left him in control of his credit card. Now she was afraid to check the balance.
She called him one last time, and again got his voicemail.
A car honk rang out and Lisa looked up to see Val hanging out of the driver’s seat. “Hey, pretty lady! Need a ride?”
She laughed and shoved her phone into her pocket. She’d deal with Neil later. “Sure.”
“Hop in!”
They got back to the hotel and changed. Lisa snuck out to the lobby and managed to pay for a cup of coffee with her credit card. That was a relief. At least it was still working.
She called the bank and discovered Neil had managed to charge more than his three-thousand-dollar limit. She’d only allowed it to be that high in case of emergencies. Otherwise, she’d trust him with no more than five hundred.
But here they went.Anotherthree thousand dollars. Where was she going to get the money to pay for that?
She hated to freeze his card, but she didn’t know what else to do. It was sometimes the only way to get him to talk to her. She authorized the freeze and silenced her phone. No need to ruin the day with that.
She returned to the room as Val and Michelle were getting ready for the next stop on their itinerary: The Huntington. It was a library, a museum, and a botanical garden. Lisa had never heard of it, but apparently Justine adored it. She had loved walking the gardens and spending hours there.
They piled into the car and strolled into The Huntington as a jolly trio. Lisa was happy to be there and thought it sounded nice, but she figured a garden was a garden. She assumed they’d walk through and be done in twenty minutes.
She couldn’t have been more wrong. There were a hundred and thirty acres of gardens. Even Val stopped her campaign about the insurance policy to admire the beauty around them.
Lisa felt like an aristocrat, smelling the flowers and walking around in the long dress she’d saved for Los Angeles. There were sixteen gardens, all with different themes. Lisa’s favorite was the Japanese garden with its bonsai trees and ceremonial teahouse. Michelle, ever the biologist, loved the lily ponds, and Val favored the twelve hundred varieties in the rose garden.
Dinner was on the other side of town at a Somali restaurant, another of Justine’s favorites. It didn’t look fancy on the inside, and Lisa had no idea what she was ordering when she picked the “chicken and rice plate” as her meal.
Val mentioned Justine’s name and the owner asked where she’d been. They broke the bad news, and he looked genuinely sad. “One of the nicest ladies we ever had around here,” he said.
Wasn’t that the truth. Whether by association with Justine or just the normal operation of the restaurant, Lisa’s meal came out with enormous portions of rice, chicken and vegetables. Everything was spiced to perfection and drizzled with a heavenly sauce that tied it together beautifully.
Lisa was reminded of the time Justine had visited her two years prior. They’d decided to go apple picking north of the city, and Justine had gotten caught speeding. Somehow, despite being twenty-five over the limit, she managed to talk her way down to a warning.
Lisa had never seen anything like it. She could never get out of trouble, but Justine had this charm that people responded to. It wasn’t even that she was trying to get out of the ticket; she’d made the cop laugh so hard he told them to get out of his sight.
When they got up to leave, the restaurant owner stopped them. “Here,” he said, pushing a container into Val’s hands. “This was Justine’s favorite dessert. Take it. Enjoy. We will miss her.”
Lisa felt herself starting to lose it, so she excused herself to head outside.
The next morning, they got breakfast at a cute little café near the hotel. It was all going well until Michelle spotted Chloe through the window.
“Valerie,” Michelle said slowly, turning to her. “Did you neglect to tell us we’d be having another guest for breakfast?”
