Page 71 of A Lifetime in 30 Days
“So, while I wouldn’t change our first meet-cute or our reunion meet-cute at all, I’m hoping for more good times with you, Aden Granger. More getting to know each other, more exploring new feelings and expectations. I’m just looking forward to more.”
He maneuvered them until she was fully on top of him now, her legs straddling his hips, her breasts smushed against his chest while one of his arms remained tightly around her waist. The other moved up her back until his hand cupped the back of her head. She was thankful for the braids because the impromptu overnight stay had left her without her bonnet, and her hair out in curls would’ve surely been a mess by now.
“You can have as much as you want, Savannah. The world is yours, baby.Iam yours; take everything that makes your heart soar.”
It was him, she thought as she lowered her face to his. In this moment, it washewho made her heart soar. And she poured all those thoughts and emotions into the sweet and sultry kiss they fell into.
Chapter 22
September 3
They met in Jovani’s office instead of at the courthouse, since the motion-to-dismiss hearing had been canceled. The AUSA filed a voluntary dismissal after receiving a copy of Gail’s recorded statement from Saturday. The detectives had delivered it to his office an hour before the hearing in the judge’s chambers was scheduled to begin. But Jovani had asked her to meet in his office anyway.
“I just wanted to go over everything that I know now to assure you that this is in the past,” he said from where he was seated behind his desk.
Aden and Granny had both come to the meeting with her. To be honest, neither of them had let her out of their sight since Saturday night. In fact, they’d conspired to come up with a schedule where when he’d dropped her off at her house on Sunday afternoon, Granny was on duty until he’d returned late Sunday night. On Monday, they’d had a small impromptu cookout in Vanna’s backyard. Just her, Aden, and her crew, Frito included.
This morning, Aden and Granny had decided to tag-team her, but Vanna wasn’t upset. She was adjusting to letting both of them in, in a way she hadn’t before. Last night, she and Granny had had a long talk about Diane and about how they would work together now to make sure her mother had what she needed for whatever time she had left.She’d also let Aden call his guy for the security system. He was at the house now while Jack and his crew were there working.
“All the charges were dropped, though, right?” Granny asked from the guest chair she sat in to Vanna’s left.
Jovani nodded. “Yes, all of the charges against her are dropped.”
“What happened?” Aden asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I want to know how this happened. What did Caleb do to bring me into this?” It would be her final time allowing thoughts of this man to have priority in her mind, but at least she would finally have some of the answers she deserved.
“That’s the thing,” Jovani said. “I don’t think he intended to involve you in any way. At least, not from what the detectives have pieced together from all the statements they have now.”
Jovani opened a file and cleared his throat. “Caleb worked for the Lennox Casino as a cage cashier. Will Baylor was his shift supervisor, and El, or Elliot Joble, was another cashier they worked with. Together, the three of them concocted the scheme to embezzle money from the casino.”
Beside her, Aden shook his head. Vanna knew he was thinking that this sounded just like something Caleb would do. Something he wasn’t actually smart enough to do and have it done right.
“Six—or rather, seven—months ago now,” Jovani continued, “Caleb and El were responsible for balancing cash drawers and reconciling daily summaries of transactions at the casino. They manipulated the records so that a portion of the money from each shift was undocumented. The amount of that undocumented money was reported to Will, and he made sure that the undocumented money was put into casino money bags and tagged specifically before they were loaded onto the armored trucks for bank deposits.
“Will’s cousin Cordell—the guy still threatening to sue Granny for the twenty stitches he had to get thanks to Frito taking a bite out of him—was a driver for the armored-truck company contracted by the casino. El knew a couple of guys from around the way named Ninoand Sarge. They paid Nino and Sarge to rob the truck in one of the dead spots en route throughout the city. All Nino and Sarge took off the trucks were the tagged bags.”
“What?” Aden asked. “So what, did they report back to the casino if the money was undocumented?”
Jovani shrugged. “Apparently, the casino money wasn’t the only pickup on the truck’s route. But here’s the thing: nowhere in any of the statements from the actual players in this scheme was Vanna’s name mentioned. The guys only knew about her because Caleb talked about her during their downtime, but never in the details of planning the robberies. So there was no conspiracy for them to link her to.”
“Only the conspiracy between Caleb and his cohorts,” she said, feeling overwhelmed at hearing these details. “How had they thought they were going to get away with this?”
“They did get away with it,” Jovani said. “For a good while—six robberies, to be exact. But then, on this last one, three months ago, things quickly fell apart. Cordell failed a random drug test and wasn’t able to drive that day. So when Nino and Sarge pulled up to the truck, the new driver got spooked and started shooting. Nino was killed, and Sarge was wounded, but he got away. During the detectives’ investigation of the robbery, they noticed tagged bags weren’t logged in on the armored-truck log. That’s when they started to dig into Nino’s background and financials and connected him to a few other robberies where Sarge was his codefendant.
“They bust Sarge, and he cooperates to get a plea deal. He tells them that Cordell was in on the robberies, but by now Cordell is on the run.”
“So, wait, why didn’t Cordell just tell his cousin he wasn’t going to be on the truck that day?” Vanna asked.
“Will said he did, but by the time he got the text, it was too late to stop Sarge and Nino. But Caleb and El already had another few bags tagged for the next pickup, so Will told them to get the money out of the casino. That’s where their tech guy—Flynn, who was also the one to line up the dead spots for the truck heist—killed the feed within thecasino so they could get the money out,” Jovani said. Then he flipped over a few papers. “These statements are wild as hell. They get the money out of the casino, and Caleb takes control of it all, told them he had an account he could hide it in.”
“That damn credit union account,” Vanna whispered. “So did they kill Caleb—or was his death an accident?”
Jovani shrugged. “Medical examiner ruled it an accidental drowning because they had no indications that it was anything else. And Will and the rest of his crew are smart about one thing: none of them are voluntarily copping to a murder.”
“He was such a simple bastard,” Granny said with a shake of her head.
“So it was solely Gail’s doing to pull Vanna into this,” Aden said, residual anger adding a slight buzz to his tone.
