“But Priscilla—”
“We’re done with her. I did what I promised, I did what I had to so she would eventually let us go. I held up my end of the bargain and now it’s her turn. We’re taking off. Tonight. She’s not going to follow us.”
“Where did you get this house?”
“It doesn’t matter, okay? The point is, it’s yours. Ours. This is where it’s all going to begin. A fresh start, finally. The life you’ve always wanted. I’ve made you wait long enough.”
He stood and picked up the bag with the cash box, looked around the dim room. “I think I’m actually going to miss this place,” he said. “Turns out I didn’t mind running a club. Even if it was just a front.” He held out his hand, and she took it and stood, too. “Car’s outside,” he said. “You’ll have to leave everything behind at the coach house, but I promise, what you need is in the car.”
“What about Betty?”
He smiled. “We’d never leave our girl behind. She’s in the supply room. Let’s go get her and then let’s hit the road. Are you with me?”
She smiled, kissed him, allowed the happiness, the hope, to edge in and elbow all the uncertainty and fear out of the way. “Of course I am,” she said. “Always.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
As the rest of the Priscilla’s Place residents looked on, Priscilla advanced toward Lucky; Betty started barking, and Sharon tried to grab the leash again. “I’m so sorry—I don’t know what’s with her tonight; she’s normally so gentle. But she sure seems to like you, Jean.”
“Easy, girl,” Lucky said. Betty immediately calmed and stood beside her, wagging her tail. Lucky longed to greet her dog properly, to kneel down and bury her face in the familiar auburn fur. But she needed to try to keep up the pretense, as weak as it now was, of never having seen this dog before in her life. “Is she a rescue?” she asked Priscilla, trying to keep her voice steady. “I must remind her of a previous owner.”
“She belongs to my son,” Priscilla said. “He went overseas for work. He needed someone to take care of his dog while he was away. You’re a dead ringer for his ex-girlfriend, you know. That must be it. She sees the similarity.”
“What a coincidence,” Lucky said weakly.
“Shall we head upstairs for that tea and chat, Jean?”
* * *
Priscilla’s apartment was decorated in rich fabrics and dark colors. In such a small space, it was cloying—and in stark contrast to the utilitarian sparseness downstairs. Priscilla closed and locked the door. Lucky knelt beside Betty and she licked Lucky’s face. Lucky looked up at Priscilla. “Why do you have my dog?”
Priscilla, ignoring her, crossed the room and lifted a piece of paper from her desk. “I had Nico, my bodyguard—you would have seen him on your way in—search your pod during dinner. All he could find was this, taped into a book.” It was the fake shopping list. Lucky could see the numbers there, and started repeating them in her head so she wouldn’t forget them. She should have memorized them before. She hoped it wasn’t too late. “Why would something like this be important enough to hide? Is it really a shopping list?”
Lucky recalled what her father had said about how important it was to pretend she had something Priscilla wanted. “Yes. It’s our code.”
“It has something to do with how you and Cary are supposed to find each other?”
“Yes.”
“He told you to use this? You two had a plan? You knew he was going to disappear?”
“Yes.”
Priscilla looked at Lucky for a long moment, then back down at the sheet.
“When did you establish this code? When you were in Vegas? Don’t look so shocked. I had you followed by the same private investigator for years. There is nothing I don’t know about you and my son. Now, how does this code work, exactly?” Priscilla was chipper, businesslike, acting as if she were simply have a collegial conversation about a mutual problem they needed to solve.
Come on, Lucky. Think of something. “Facebook,” she said. “I’m supposed to set up a profile under the name Doll Conovan, list my home city as Cincinnati and my interests as screenwriting and bird-watching. I make my profile public, and post a recipe for white bean and spinach rice on my wall.”
Priscilla walked over to her desk and opened up a rose-gold-colored laptop. “Doll Conovan. From his favorite movie. Of course. Okay. Come here. You can sit in my chair. There, I’ve got Facebook all cued up now. Make the profile.” Priscilla hovered behind her as she created the profile, and followed the steps she had just outlined. “Now what?”
“Now, I wait for him to add me as a friend and send me a message.”
“Yes, but what’s his profile going to be? How will you know for sure it’s him? You thought of that, didn’t you?”
Silence. Priscilla reached forward and snapped the laptop shut, put her hand on Lucky’s shoulder, and squeezed while Betty growled. “Or perhaps it’s time for you to stop this charade. It’s been fun watching you wriggle, but I’m getting bored. Come on, let’s go sit on the couch and have a proper talk.” Lucky closed her eyes for a moment, then walked over to the couch and sat. Betty trotted over and curled up at her feet, but Lucky didn’t feel protected by the dog’s presence anymore because she knew you were never safe around someone like Priscilla. That she never had been safe, as long as she was within Priscilla’s reach.
Priscilla crossed her legs and smiled at Lucky, leaned forward. “Should I ask Sharon to bring us some tea? You’re looking a little pale. In your condition, I do want to make sure you’re properly taken care of.”
“In my… condition?”
“Don’t try to hide it. I know about the baby.”
Lucky felt sick. Priscilla had had them followed, but more than that, she must have had the private investigator go through their garbage, maybe even tap their phones. Lucky struggled to smile, as if the idea of this baby were still the one bright spot in her life. But all she could picture was some stranger pulling a positive pregnancy test out of her garbage bin and bringing it to Priscilla.
“You’ve been pregnant for… almost three months now? You should be starting to show soon.”
Lucky let her hands creep down to her flat abdomen, pushed her stomach out slightly. It was painful to pretend the baby was still there, painful to even think about the little dream, the big idea, a golden ticket floating in a sea inside her. But she knew she had to. If Priscilla believed she was still pregnant with Cary’s child, Lucky had something she wanted. And that was a powerful thing. Priscilla was a con artist and a criminal, but she couldn’t kill her own grandchild. There is nothing I don’t know about you and my son, Priscilla had said. You could have someone followed by a private investigator and see most things—but not what was going on under the surface. The heartaches and losses that happened when you were alone would never be public knowledge. Blood on a bathroom floor was not something a detective sitting outside your house could easily uncover.
“This must be tough,” Priscilla was saying, her voice now dripping with fake empathy. “You have no idea where my son is, and you’re on the run, pregnant. Your future is very uncertain.”
Lucky pressed her lips together and nodded.
Priscilla reached forward and poured water from a carafe on the coffee table in front of them. “Here. Drink this. You should stay hydrated.” Lucky accepted the water but didn’t drink.
“To answer your earlier question, he brought me the dog last month. Because I asked him to.” She poured herself some water and took a sip. “There, you see? It’s not poisoned. You can have some of yours now.” She laughed. “Oh, Lucky. The expression on your face. Anyway, the dog was collateral.”
“Collateral for?”
“The money he was laundering for me through his restaurant. Oh, come on, you really had no idea?” She laughed again. “You really thought Cary’s big dream was to be a restaurateur? He told me you didn’t know—but I think until this moment I didn’t believe it. It makes sense, thou
gh, that you weren’t aware of what he was really doing. Because if you did know, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?”
Priscilla leaned toward Lucky. “The people I work for, the people Cary was in turn working for, are ruthless.” Lucky looked closely at her. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought Priscilla seemed afraid now. Then her expression cleared and she was cool and confident again. “If you had any idea about that, I’m sure you would have kept yourself hidden. I know you think I’m the height of evil, but I’m not. You can trust me to tell you when you are in danger. And you are. I’m probably the only person in the world you can trust right now—”
“I will never trust you.”
“—and the heartbreaking truth is that Cary is probably dead, okay? They probably beat him and left him for dead in the desert, those terrible, terrible people.” Her hand fluttered up to her chest, and she blinked, hard and fast. Were those real tears there? Crocodile tears? Lucky tried to process what Priscilla had just said, but it didn’t feel real at all. Cary, beaten and dead? Tears gathered behind her eyes, too, but she refused to let them fall in front of Priscilla.
“Are you sure?” she whispered.
“I tried to protect him. It’s why I asked him for the dog. When I discovered you were pregnant, I was afraid he was going to do something stupid. Like try to run away with you, start a family somewhere he thought I couldn’t find him. I told him to do one last job for me, and that I’d come and take the dog as collateral. He loved Betty. And so did you. Stupidly, I thought it would be enough to keep you two in one place, for a while at least. But he simply took the money he was cleaning for my associates and—well, I’m not sure, exactly. He hid it somewhere, with all the rest of the money you were stealing in your Ponzi scheme. Tell me, where were you two planning to go, exactly?”
“Grenada,” Lucky lied, blinking the last of her unshed tears over Cary away. Her heart was starting to pound and her fingers were starting to tingle. She needed to get out of there. But how?
“I see. And that’s why you had purchased plane tickets to Dominica?” Her voice was steely now. She was leaning so close Lucky could see the blood vessels in her eyes, smell her breath. “Stop lying to me. It’s over. You can’t hide anything from me now. We’re talking about a lot of money. And I need to find it. Or else. Do you know where it is?”
“I swear to you, I don’t.”
“Millions of dollars. And he never mentioned it?”
“Never.”
“If that money doesn’t surface soon, someone else is going to die. And in your case”—she glanced down at Lucky’s stomach—“two people will die. I care about this child, but I’m not going to sacrifice myself for it. I don’t want anything more than to survive. If you’re to survive as well, we need to work together to find the money Cary was hiding. And we need to be completely honest with each other about everything we know.” This was so familiar; she could almost hear Cary’s voice saying the same thing: We can lie to other people, but never to each other.
“I swear, I don’t know anything about the money. I was under the impression Cary took everything and ran.”
Priscilla picked up the receipt on the table and held it up. “Let’s start here. What is this list really? What does it unlock, and what are you hiding?”
“It’s a code for a storage locker back in Boise. I couldn’t bear to let it all go. I had a feeling something was going to happen—I knew Cary wasn’t telling me everything. So I put some items from the house that were of value—a few paintings we had, some jewelry, electronics—into the locker. Just in case I needed to pawn them.”
Priscilla looked down at the sheet of paper, silent and thoughtful. “All right, then,” she said. “We’ll go to Boise together and you can show me, just so I can confirm you’re telling the truth.” She stood and walked to her desk, picked up a day planner. “On Friday, we’ll take a little drive, just the two of us,” she said, marking it down. “I’ll tell Sharon I’m taking you to stay with some family we’ve discovered who want to help you.” She put down the book. “Meantime, if you change your mind and decide to tell me what this code really opens, I’ll be all ears. Now, go to bed. And take that disgusting dog with you.”
2004
BOISE, IDAHO
The first year, Lucky worked hard. She took investment courses online, got four different certifications, and started her own small investment and accounting firm—the office of which was located above the garage of their Tudor revival in Boise’s North End, near Camel’s Back Park. She slowly started managing the accounts for small businesses and building individual clients’ investment portfolios. She became known for providing consistent returns, but nothing flashy.
Things were starting to feel secure. Everything was perfect: their new life; their house, with its peaked turret and wraparound porch. While Lucky worked, Cary puttered around the garage, or went for jogs, or rode his mountain bike in the park. He cooked, he cleaned, he insisted he was happy, too. “I’m your househusband,” he would tell her with a smile. “I love it, I swear.” But she could tell he was bored. Sometimes she would come in at lunch and he would be playing video games or asleep on the couch. They didn’t have any friends because not making friends had become a habit. So Cary was on his own most of the time.
“Maybe we should have a baby,” Lucky said one night, and the moment the words were out she knew she wanted this badly. She had never imagined arriving at a place where being so settled, where starting a family, would be possible. But she was there, the life she had dreamed of within reach.
“Anytime you want,” Cary said with a casual grin. “I’d love to have a family with you.”
One night, when she came in after work, there was a real estate brochure on the kitchen table. “What’s this?” she said, setting down the leather briefcase Cary had given her for her last birthday—the perfect gift, even if she was just toting papers between the garage and the house.
Cary poured her a glass of wine and handed it to her. “I saw this restaurant on Thirteenth Street closed down and for sale. I just started dreaming, standing out there on the sidewalk. So I went in, and the real estate agent showed me around.”
Lucky took a sip of her wine. “Why would you want to look at a restaurant?”
He pulled out a chair and sat. He pushed the flyer across the table. “What do you think? Isn’t it perfect?”
“Perfect for what? I didn’t realize you wanted to get back into hospitality. Things are just starting to get going with my business. I’m not sure we have the money for a down payment for something like this just yet.”
“I get that, babe. I do.” He stood to serve the risotto he had prepared, placed a steaming bowl in front of her, and sat again. “But the thing is… I need to get back in the game. You know that, because you know me.”
“But I thought, maybe a baby…”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “This would give me something to do. I liked running the club, back in San Fran. I didn’t expect to, but I did. I miss it. And—well, you know you could have a down payment on a property pretty easily, if you did things differently.”
Lucky frowned. “Differently how?” she asked, even though she knew exactly what he meant. “Listen, I’ll go look at the property with you. And then we can see if there’s anything we can figure out.”
In the end, they bought the restaurant—and went deep into debt starting it up. Over the next several months, Cary grew frustrated and stressed. He was no longer the happy-go-lucky, slightly bored guy he had become when they moved to Boise. He was at the restaurant late almost every night. He had insisted it would make him happy, but it did the opposite. Lucky knew it was probably selfish, but she found herself missing the quiet days when he was always home, waiting for her to come in from her office above the garage. The restaurant, the fact that they were both now working so hard, had seemed to drive a wedge between them.
“I need more money. I need to expand the patio so I can compe
te with the other restaurants on the street.”
“We don’t have it. We’ve already poured so much into this venture.”
“Venture? This is important to me, don’t you see? We could borrow the money from one of your investment accounts,” he said. “We’ll put it back in, once I earn it back… which I will. Come on, you’ve been telling me how much money some of these new clients of yours have. They aren’t going to come to you looking for their investment funds anytime soon. I promise, we won’t do it again. Just this once. It’ll be so easy.”
There was no actual harm being done, Lucky kept telling herself. The dividends would still be paid, people who wanted to take their money out to retire could still have it; there was no shortage of money in the corporate account to cover payouts. No one was suffering. No one was getting hurt.
But it didn’t happen just once. It was never going to happen just once. Lucky had been reluctant at first, but stealing felt so natural. She barely thought about it. And Cary was happier. He began to relax. Everything started to fall back into place again—except that, after a year of trying, she still hadn’t gotten pregnant.
Lucky and Cary went to a doctor and found out Lucky had endometriosis and blocked fallopian tubes; in vitro fertilization was their only option. But it was expensive: tens of thousands of dollars for the treatments and medications.
And so Lucky borrowed more from the investment accounts. Twice, she and Cary tried in vitro, and twice, the implantation failed. Lucky stopped recognizing herself when she looked in the mirror. She was tired and drawn. The hormone shots made her emotional, crying one moment, elated the next.
“If it’s making you miserable, maybe we should stop,” Cary implored one night.
“I’m not miserable!” Lucky shouted. “And I can’t give up now. I just need to relax and work less.” But that was impossible. They were in too much debt.
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