Page 25 of Your Every Wish

“Then why are we here? What are we looking for?”

“Cows,” she says, and I want to ask if she’s lost her mind.

“They’re everywhere, Kennedy.” We just passed a herd of about twenty lying under a mammoth oak tree.

“Bent owns this land. It’s where he keeps his cattle.”

“All of it?” Because it’s vast. Thousands and thousands of acres.

“I think so. Why else would the road be named McCourtney?”

Half the streets in San Francisco are named after the city’s founding families. It doesn’t mean they own them—or even live there.

“Okay. But that doesn’t answer why we’re here.”

“We’re just doing some reconnaissance, which is something I should’ve done in the first place. The man is so smug, so . . . full of himself. This time I won’t be unprepared.”

“Unprepared for what? Because I don’t want you negotiating with him. We’re not ready to sell, Kennedy. Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“We’ll come up with the money some other way. The fact of the matter is even if we sold Cedar Pines today, you wouldn’t get the money in time to make your deadline. So just forget about it as an avenue.”

She pulls into a turnout and kills the engine. Before us is a split-rail fence and pasture for as far as the eye can see. In the distance, at least a hundred cows graze on the hillside. Whether they’re Bent McCourtney’s cattle we’ll never know.

“How?” Kennedy breaks the silence. “How am I supposed to come up with that kind of money in less than three weeks?”

I don’t have the heart to tell her that I asked about a loan at the bank, hoping we could borrow against the park or take out a home equity line of credit.

The process is long and arduous, according to the teller.

Between the appraisal and submitting all our financials, including the bank scouring our credit scores, it would take at least thirty days.

And I’m not even sure Kennedy is still gainfully employed.

She says she’s on an extended vacation but what does that mean?

Clearly, she’d have to show proof of a job to get a loan.

I am plumb out of answers, so I sit in the car, silent. Hopefully, the universe will speak to us and come up with solutions to an impossible situation. I’m trying to keep the faith.

Kennedy starts the car, backs out of the turnout, and heads for home. We don’t speak the entire ride, both of us cognizant of all the things we’re not saying.

* * *

Misty is Kennedy’s idea. I’m on the record that it’s a waste of time.

Maybe Misty has the sight or maybe she makes it up as she goes as a ruse to increase her popularity at cocktail parties.

Who knows? What I do know, or what seems like the most likely scenario, is that Willy Keil died penniless.

No pot of gold at the end of his prison-stint rainbow.

But Kennedy is emphatic that our late father has a buried fortune somewhere, that Misty knows where it is, and when we find it, it’ll be the answer to all her prayers.

“The stuffed mushrooms look good,” Kennedy says.

“Close the oven door, you’re letting all the heat out.”

We’ve prepared a small feast of appetizers. Kennedy set the dining room table with a tablecloth she found in the linen closet and the hand-me down dishes from Ginger. It’s not Misty’s fine china and sterling silver but the table doesn’t look half bad.

“You can unwrap the deviled eggs,” I say and take the platter out of the refrigerator.

Kennedy carefully removes two layers of plastic wrap—I may have gone overboard—while I put the finishing touches on the cupcakes I baked for dessert.

“What about the sliders?” Kennedy asks.

“I’ll do those at the last minute. When you’re done with that, prepare the crudité platter. All the vegetables have been cut and are in baggies in the produce drawer. Dips are in the door.”

“Got it.”

We make a nice team. And if nothing else, our little impromptu gathering is the right way to reciprocate for Misty’s tea.

“When she gets here, just be casual. No pushing with the woo-woo stuff. Let’s wait until we get a couple of drinks in her,” Kennedy says. “I’ll handle the lemon martinis.”

“As you wish.” Okay, I’m back to the theory that this is nuts. “What do you think you’re going to get out of her? If you don’t believe she’s a witch, or whatever she professes to be, what’s the use?”

“She says she knows what the key goes to. My hunch is Willy told her something.”

“But she swears she never met Willy.”

Kennedy stops what’s she’s doing and puts her hands on her hips. “Do you believe everything people tell you?”

“No, I don’t.” I don’t bother to reiterate that this is a useless exercise. There is no money. If there were, Mr. Townsend would’ve known about it.

Misty arrives as I’m garnishing the sliders.

It’s my mother’s special recipe: ground beef, egg, onions, Panko, and those little Hawaiian rolls.

I finish them off with mayo, mustard, ketchup, a mini slice of tomato, and pickle relish and hold the whole thing together with a deli toothpick.

Even Dex likes them and he’s hyper picky about his food.

“This is very sweet of you girls,” Misty says and gives both of us a peck on the cheek.

She’s dressed in a cream pair of elastic-waist ankle pants, a bright orange floral sweater set, and matching espadrilles. If she’s a witch, she’s the least witchy witch one can imagine.

“Cocktail?” Kennedy pushes a martini into her hand.

“This looks delicious.”

Wait until she gets a taste. Kennedy put enough gin in the drink to waste an elephant. Misty’s only 130 pounds wet.

“It’s not as fancy as your amazing spread,” I say, “but everything is homemade. And we got the veggies at the farmers’ market near Main Street.”

“Everything looks fabulous, dear.” She appraises the small buffet we set up on the counter.

“Shall we dig in?” I hand her a plate and motion for her to go first.

After piling our plates with goodies, we take our seats at the dining table, an oval teak number with six cane chairs, another item we inherited from Ginger.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask Misty about the former park manager when she spontaneously offers, “She was a pain in the ass.”

“Who was?” Kennedy asks, confused. “Did I miss something?”

“Ginger, the woman who lived here before us,” I say and lock eyes with Misty. “She died of a heart attack.”

“In here? Oh my God.”

Misty touches Kennedy’s hand. “In her golf cart, dear. Harry tried to save her, but unfortunately it was her time.”

For some bizarre reason the image of Ginger’s golf cart pops into my head. If no one claimed her belongings, what happened to it?

“It’s in the storage shed, dear.”

I do a double take. Did I say that out loud? No, of course I didn’t.

“What’s in the shed?” Kennedy asks.

“Ginger’s golf cart,” I say, and turn to Misty. “Are you reading my mind?”

“Not intentionally. But your thoughts are overwhelmingly loud today.”

Without a word, Kennedy gets up and walks to the front door.

“Where are you going?”

“To the shed.”

It’s a storage building behind our trailer.

Too small to be a garage but large enough for bikes and lawn mowers and Costco toilet paper.

And if Misty’s correct, there’s enough room in there for a golf cart.

I’ve never been inside because honestly the structure looks ready to be condemned, and I’m guessing it’s filled with lizards.

Kennedy returns a few minutes later. “It’s there.”

The fact that the golf cart is there is not the point. Half the residents at Cedar Pines Estates are probably aware that the buggy was stashed there after Ginger’s untimely death. What’s astonishing is that Misty could hear what I was thinking.

“Can you always do that, read people’s minds?” I ask her.

“Not always and not everyone. But I can with you girls.”

“Me too? Okay, what am I thinking?” Kennedy closes her eyes in concentration.

“I’m not a trained monkey,” Misty says.

“Of course you’re not. Kennedy didn’t mean to be rude.

But it is kind of . . . well, hard to believe.

” I mean, it isn’t out of the realm of possibilities that Misty merely guessed what I was thinking.

It’s logical that while we’re sitting at Ginger’s old table, thoughts of the deceased woman would flash in my head.

Or while we’re talking about her dying in her golf cart, I would wonder where the golf cart is.

Misty could simply be an extremely intuitive person.

“How long have you been able to read minds? And if I’m prying feel free to tell me to shut up,” I say.

Misty smiles. “Since I was a teenager. And you’re not prying. I have a unique skill and it only stands to reason that you would be curious about it.”

“How did it start?” I push the plate of deviled eggs toward her and help myself to a second one.

“With my teachers in school. One in particular.

She was a nasty piece of work, always judging and jumping to conclusions about students she knew nothing about.

For example, Calico Sterling. She was convinced Calico would run off to some ‘godforsaken city’ and become a stripper because her mother worked in a pool hall and let Calico wear revealing clothes to school.

As it turned out, Calico did run off to a big city and later won a Nobel Prize in physics for discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe.

“For much of my youth it came and went. But by the time I went to college, I could not only hear what people were thinking, I could also see things.”

“Like what kind of things?” Kennedy says.