Page 40 of Your Every Wish

Or maybe he’d intended to come back here someday, dig up his loot, and ride off into the sunset a rich man. But those dreams died when he got his prognosis in prison. And for the first time in his life, he decided to do right by his daughters.

“Do you think the numbers are some sort of code to mark the location of where he buried the golf bag?” Kennedy grabs her phone and calls up the picture of the paper we found in Willy’s wall.

“There’s no telling,” Misty says. “I’m not getting anything on the numbers, but it’s related, I can feel it.”

Liam looks over Kennedy’s shoulder at the picture. “It doesn’t look like coordinates. But I’m only guessing here. I can do a little research.”

“Otherwise, it’ll be impossible, the proverbial needle in a haystack,” I say. Willy never lived here, so it’s not like there’s a trailer or a yard to search. It could be anywhere.

Even in death, Willy was wily.

* * *

For the next three days, we try to crack Willy’s code.

Both Liam and I scour the internet, researching every possible avenue: sports betting odds, horse races, baseball player jerseys, football player jerseys, golf statistics, Willy’s favorite roulette numbers, anything that has a number in it and has to do with gambling.

While I don’t see how that’s going to tell us where the golf bag is buried, Liam assures me that we’re merely looking for a hidden message disguised as something else.

We even try an online code cracker, which turns up nothing. I feel like a kid playing a video game.

Kennedy doesn’t have the patience for deciphering codes and wants to call in excavators to dig up the entire park.

That’s obviously not going to happen. I’m still not sold that the numbers mean anything having to do with where the golf bag has been hidden or if there’s a golf bag at all.

For all we know, Willy was working on a new algorithm for cards, craps, sports betting.

The paper was stuffed inside a book about gambling, after all.

The question comes down to: If he was simply perfecting his gambling strategy, why did he hide it in the wall?

Unless he was onto something so extraordinary he wanted to hide it from the public, which doesn’t make a lick of sense. But none of it does, really.

Except for Misty.

Originally, I took everything she said with a grain of salt.

But the fact that Dex is now calling me ten times a day, wanting to be with me all the time, can’t be a coincidence.

No, I chalk up his heightened interest in me to Misty.

It’s as if she slipped him an aphrodisiac because all of a sudden, he can’t get enough of me.

If it wasn’t for the stress of finding Willy’s money in time to pay off Kennedy’s debt (Madge’s debt, really), I would be deliriously happy. But here we are. No money, no answers, and no way to crack the code.

“I’m running out of ideas.” Liam sets our two coffees on the table. He’s managed to clear enough space for us to have room.

“How did you learn how to fix all this stuff?” I eye a hair dryer that’s been pushed to the other side of the table and wonder what’s wrong with it. It looks almost new.

“My dad. He was an electrician by trade and to bring in extra cash he would fix all the neighbors’ stuff—lamps, toasters, fans, pretty much anything anyone brought him.

Word spread and he had more work than he could handle, so I helped him after school.

I worked my way through college doing the same thing. ”

“But you do all this for free.” Besides replacing our broken window and checking our heater gratis, I know for a fact that Liam offers his skills to anyone at Cedar Pines who asks and never charges a dime. “What do you do for work? For money? Not to pry but are you independently wealthy?”

He laughs and for the first time I notice he has a slight dimple in his right cheek. It kills me, that dimple.

“Independently wealthy? Right. Let’s just say I’m between projects and leave it at that, okay?” All his previous humor is gone and in the nicest way possible he’s made it abundantly clear that I’ve breached a closed door and he doesn’t appreciate it, which only fuels my curiosity more.

I mean, you can’t get much more intimate than burglarizing a house together.

What’s wrong with wanting to know what my partner in crime does from nine to five?

After all, I’ve given him my entire 411, including how my late father was a deadbeat dad, a professional gambler, and a felon.

And how my half sister is accused of stealing thirty thousand dollars from her client.

In comparison, Liam’s choice of careers—or lack of one—seems like small potatoes.

“I think we should talk to Azriel.” Liam takes a long drink of his coffee.

“Come on, you don’t really believe he’s former Mossad, do you?

” I’d met him coming out of the men’s locker room last week, dragging a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shower clog.

In his lovely accent, he’d said hello and then promptly tripped over his own two feet.

If I hadn’t caught hold of his arm, he would’ve fallen on his face.

“Yep, I do.”

“Really? I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk to him. Then again, if there’s as much money in that golf bag as Misty has led us to believe, is it smart to spread the word?”

“We don’t have to tell him what we’re looking for, only that we’re trying to crack the code. He might have an idea what kind of cipher it is.”

“I’m game but I should probably talk to Kennedy about it first.”

He slides his cell phone to me and resumes drinking his coffee. I dig my own phone from the bottom of my purse and hit automatic dial. No answer, so I leave a message that we’re going over to Azriel’s to pump him for information. “Don’t worry, I won’t give anything away about the money.”

“Should we call him first or just drop in?” I ask Liam after disconnecting from Kennedy’s voicemail.

“Drop in.”

I get the impression that Liam and Azriel are fairly well acquainted. Friends even.

Liam goes to the kitchen and holds up the coffee pot. “You want a topper before we go?”

“I’m good.”

He pours the rest of the coffee into the sink and turns off the machine. “Let’s go, then.”

Azriel’s trailer is in a shady grove of pine trees not far from the pool.

It’s a gorgeous spot. Private and lushly green, like his own little forest. His mobile home, an older model doublewide, has seen better days, though.

The siding is starting to rust, and his tiny porch is hanging by a thread.

The inside isn’t much better and smells like Bengay.

He invites us to make ourselves at home on his recliner couch, which has a compartment for cold drinks and cup holders. Very convenient.

“You want Turkish coffee?” He pours coffee thick as mud from a small copper pot into a miniature glass.

Both Liam and I pass, but it does smell good.

“At least have some locum or dates.” He puts down plates of jelly candy and dried fruit on the coffee table.

I snag a piece of sugared candy and pop it in my mouth. “Wow, so good.”

He bobs his head and grins.

“We have a puzzle we’re trying to solve,” Liam says. “We were hoping you could help.”

Something unspoken passes between the two of them and again Azriel bobs his head. “Show me what you have.”

I show him my phone with the picture of Willy’s numbers. Azriel takes the phone from me to study the photograph.

“What is this?” he says.

“It belonged to Emma’s late father. We found it in his house. We wondered what all the numbers meant.”

“Why a photo? You don’t have the original?”

“Not here, not with us, no. It was just a white sheet of typing paper with those numbers.” Liam locks eyes with me for a second, then says, “Emma’s father was a professional gambler. We think he may have used some kind of gambling algorithm to send her a message.”

“Why didn’t he just pick up the phone?”

Liam cuts me a look.

“My father was convicted of insider trading and died in prison of cancer. We think he did this”—I point to the phone—“before he was arrested. Like he might’ve been aware that the FBI was closing in on him and he wanted to leave a message to us.

We found it tucked in a book behind a wall in his garage. ”

Azriel studies the photo again, then hands me back the phone.

“My father was legendary in the gambling world and quite successful. He spent a lot of time researching and experimenting with computer analysis and algorithms for betting. Those numbers could simply be that. But the fact that it was so carefully hidden . . . It seems like he didn’t want anyone to find what he was working on. ”

Azriel rises and disappears down the hallway only to return a few moments later with a pad of paper and pencil. He drags a chair to a folding table in the corner of the room. It’s piled so high with papers there’s hardly any workspace but he pushes a few notebooks to the side and starts scribbling.

“Do you need the picture with the numbers?” I start to get up to bring my phone to him, but Liam shakes his head and mouths, “He’s memorized them.”

Really? He saw them for, like, thirty seconds. I crane my neck to see what he’s doing but can’t make out much. The room is silent except for the soft swishing of Azriel’s pencil brushing against paper.

I want to ask if he’s really former Mossad but am not sure about the etiquette on such things.

And something tells me Liam wouldn’t approve.

I pop another jelly candy in my mouth. I’m definitely a person who eats my nerves.

Plus, the candy is beyond delicious, sweet with a flavor that tastes like roses.

“You say you found this in a book?” Azriel says.

“Uh-huh.” It’s my chance to see what he’s been writing all this time.

I bring him my phone again and show him the snapshot.

“This. The note was tucked next to the copyright page.” I show him a snapshot of the open book and the piece of paper.

It was my idea to record the scene exactly how we found it in case we had questions later (hey, I watch a lot of CSI ).

“You don’t have this book?”

“No, we put it back in the wall with the note the same way it was before we opened it up.”

“Why?” He cuts me a look, then says, “Never mind. Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. I need the book.”

“Why?” At the time, Liam, Kennedy, and I assumed the book was immaterial, just a container for the note so it wouldn’t slip down the wall.

“Because I’m almost certain this is a book cipher.

” He waves his fingers at me to come closer.

“See this number?” When I nod, he says, “It likely corresponds to a page in the book. This number here tells you the paragraph, this number the word. String them together and you have a message. You say your father was a good gambler?”

“Not a good gambler, a brilliant gambler. One of the most successful in the history of gambling.”

“No offense to the dead, but he was stupid. If I’m right, which I’m confident I am, it would’ve taken the FBI less than ten minutes to figure this out. It took me five because I’m smarter.” He holds up the paper he’s been making notes on and grins.

“So, what you’re saying is we need the book to get our message,” Liam says.

“You need the book. Without it, you’ve got nothing.”

“That’s impossible,” I say. “We have no way of getting back in the house. By now it’s been auctioned off in an asset forfeiture sale.”

“Let me see the picture again.”

I once again bring up the photo of the note with the numbers.

“Not that one. The one with the book.”

I tap on my photo gallery and bring up the one with the book. The Sports Gambling Bible .

Azriel flips open a laptop, taps a few keys, and the next thing I know, I’m looking at the book on Amazon. Duh.

“Make sure before you buy it that it’s the same edition and the same publishing date. Different editions might use different page numbers.”

“Thank you, Azriel. This is amazing.”

Liam and I take the long way back to his trailer.

Both of us need air after sitting in Azriel’s stuffy double-wide.

And truthfully, I think we’re both sort of bowled over by how quickly Azriel unraveled the mystery of the numbers.

It seems simple now but without him, none of us would’ve ever guessed it in a million years.

Without even thinking about it, I slip my hand into Liam’s, threading my fingers through his. And we walk like that the rest of the way home. We are that much closer to discovering the golf bag, the money, and everything we ever wanted, including Dex.

So why is it that I’m suddenly having buyer’s remorse?