Thirty-nine
Edie and Marcy arrived home in Hunterville three days later. They were exhausted and in desperate need of a good shower, and both, Edie suspected, a little thinner than when they’d set out.
Simon was waiting for them when they pulled in. He walked out to the car, and when Edie got out, he wrapped her in a big bear hug. “I’m so glad you are home,” he said. “I promise, I will never do it again.”
Edie was too tired to even roll her eyes.
Their haul had netted them twenty-two million dollars.
After they cut everyone in—Skinner and Todd, Trojan, Trixie, the chop shop guys—they were left with four million each.
Marcy’s share would come out of Edie’s cut.
Edie said she would keep Frances’s share until they figured out what to do with it.
Marcy asked Edie to keep her cut, too. “How am I going to explain that to Mom and Dad?” she asked.
It was a good question. So for now, Edie had the cash tucked away in her personal safe deposit box at the bank.
Edie and Marcy had not talked much on the way home. They were too spent and lost in their own thoughts about what had happened. But somewhere between Little Rock and Memphis, Edie finally asked Marcy about Rocco. “So,” she said. “The night of the heist.”
“What about it?”
“You were pretty upset with Rocco.”
Marcy sighed wearily and turned her face to the passenger window.
“Did something happen between you two?” Edie asked carefully.
“You mean, did I fall for the mark?” Marcy returned with a bit of sass.
“Sort of,” Edie admitted.
“No, Nana,” Marcy said, and folded her arms across her middle and looked forward again. “I’m not you.”
“Okay, ouch,” Edie said.
“It was more like … how dare he.”
Edie certainly understood that emotion.
“He’d been so nice to me, and I was really starting to think he wasn’t such a bad guy after all, you know? Like, maybe, I’d misunderstood him during the crypto investment thing.” She turned to Edie. “Like maybe it really had been a genuine mistake with the money.”
“Oh, Mar—”
“Because he was trying so hard to turn the casino into something that would make his family proud, and he was so kind, and he really liked me,” she said before Edie could speak.
“But when I saw him with that bimbo, I knew he was full of shit. He always had been and he always will be. The only difference is that his game has gotten better. That, or I’m so lame I’ll believe anything.
Probably both.” She glanced down at her lap.
“I should have just let it go. But I’ve never been able to let stuff like that go. I was just so mad.”
Oh goodness, the apples really did not fall far from the tree, did they? Edie reached across the console and patted Marcy’s knee. “I understand, love. Better than you will ever know.”
“Yeah, so I heard,” Marcy said, and smiled at Edie. “I’m really glad I got to know you, Nana.”
Edie’s heart swelled with love. “Me, too. But it’s our secret, kid.”
Marcy snorted. “Are you kidding? Dad would kill me.”
Yes, he would, because Edie had raised upstanding citizens.
They followed news of Frances. She’d been charged with robbery and assault.
Edie, Joan, and Irene had puzzled over the assault charge until it was finally revealed in some article that Frances had nailed Rocco in the nuts.
Edie couldn’t help but giggle at the image of Frances kicking him in the “scrotum,” as the media called it. Good for you, Franny.
The articles went on to say they were still looking for her accomplices. Which meant they had no clue.
One day, when Simon was away from the house, Edie went upstairs to the Cézanne painting and pulled it away from the wall.
In talking to Irene about this game she and Simon played, she’d mentioned that she used a computer program to generate five digits to try to break the code.
“My safe has six digits. You know, like the date of something,” Irene had said absently.
Edie wondered if it could be that simple—she’d been using the wrong number of digits all this time.
The first code she tried was the day she and Simon first met.
Nothing happened, which she should have known, because Simon would never remember that date.
She then tried the date of the birth of their first child, as they could both be surprisingly sentimental about their children.
She ran through all the kids’ birthdays, including the grandkids.
None worked. She tried her birthday. Then Simon’s.
And even one of their favorite dogs, Old Blue, who had passed away many years ago.
Nothing.
There was only one more date she could think of: their wedding date.
To her immense surprise, the door popped open.
Edie gasped. She peered inside. There were papers, stacks of cash, his mother’s diamond wedding ring, and there, on a little mound of velvet, the Pahlavi brooch.
There was also a Post-it note beside it.
Edie picked up the note. “If you cracked it, you keep it. Love, Simon.”
“Are you kidding me?” Edie whispered. She took out the brooch and looked at it. The emeralds were huge, the diamonds almost as big. It was gorgeous, something a queen should wear. She carefully put the brooch back in the safe. And the note. And then she closed the safe door.
She’d made her choice. Frankly, she’d made it many, many years ago. For better or worse.
Marjorie Cohen was convinced that what happened to her dear friend, Frances Deluca, was a severe case of dehydration.
As she explained to everyone at Silver Oak Towers, at this age, if one got dehydrated, one could become disoriented and delirious.
And Frances Deluca was notoriously dehydrated.
There was nothing else that could explain her being found with a bag of cash.
Marjorie and Ken had soldiered on to the cruise.
She’d been aboard the Solarium of the Seas for a day, and she already missed Fran.
She’d been so looking forward to this. Ken was a wonderful man, but his conversation bored her after so long.
How much fun this would have been had Fran and Stefon come!
She supposed Stefon had moved on given everything that happened.
She’d made reservations for the four of them tonight in one of the upscale restaurants before she’d found out about Fran. Well, she and Ken had to eat.
She arrived first, having left the cabin and Ken’s talking so she could have a moment of peace.
As she waited for Ken at the table, two women appeared.
One of them was tall and Black, wearing a sundress that showcased some amazingly muscular arms. The other was small and Asian.
“Oh, hello,” the Black woman said. She smiled as she pulled out a seat.
“You must be Marjorie. Franny sends her regards.”
Six weeks later, Aaron wheeled Frances to the sunroom of his house so she could see the bird feeders. Funny how it was when one got old—birds were suddenly interesting. Frances liked to watch them fighting for the seeds. “Thank you, honey,” Frances said. “I’m sorry I’m such a burden.”
“You’re not a burden, Mom.” Aaron deposited the family cat in her lap and took a seat next to her. “I’m just glad we were able to get you on house arrest until your trial.”
Frances snorted. Her trial was set for the following year.
“That was very kind of them.” She would never last that long and everyone knew it.
And her ankle monitor was hardly necessary, given her life expectancy of just weeks.
But the authorities were convinced she was going to rob a bank while she waited to die.
“I am eternally grateful to you and Jackie for taking me in, honey. Jail is not very comfortable, especially for someone in my condition.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I still don’t understand, Mom,” Aaron said. “What were you even doing there? You always taught me to be honest, and there you were, stealing a bag of cash. I’m just so … disappointed.”
Oh, how the parent-child relationship tables had turned. “I wish I could remember, Aaron, I really do. All I know is that one minute, I was in the casino, and the next, I was in a cop car. A stroke, perhaps?”
“Marjorie says you were probably severely dehydrated.”
“I probably was.”
“And why didn’t you tell me about the cancer? I would have come to Houston. I would have helped you. At the very least, I would have brought you here and maybe saved the family the embarrassment of having a grandmother arrested for stealing from a casino.”
Frances smiled. It was all she could muster these days. “Well, I wish they hadn’t caught me, too.”
“You know what I mean,” Aaron said. He stood up. “I’ve got to make some calls.” He arranged a blanket around her shoulders. “You’ll be okay out here?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ve got the cat and we both like the birds.
” She waited ’til Aaron went into the other room, then turned her attention to the feeders.
They were so busy, those birds. They reminded her of the girl gang.
She still giggled about what they’d done.
The money was not found, obviously. The robbery was blamed on a cyber-hack, traced to some place in Korea.
And there still were no clues as to who might have been behind it all, but the theory was China.
The only things they found were a burner phone, a Frank Sinatra mask, and an I heart Reading tote bag with some marijuana gummies inside.
The authorities had finally decided she was just a batty old broad wandering around during a power outage who helped herself to some cash and didn’t have anything to do with the heist itself. How could an old bag like her pull off something like that?
The casino was struggling. She’d learned that one night while surfing her phone. The loss of twenty-two million was a blow, but then the crypto operation crashed. That seemed to be more to do with mismanagement than anything else. No surprise there.
It was amazing to her that after she was put on home arrest, her belongings were handed back to her, including her burner phone. They hadn’t found anything useful on it. One day, she turned it on and texted on WhatsApp, Anyone out there?
That’s how she knew that Joan and Irene had made it onto the cruise after doctoring and using the tickets she’d sent them via email that last day.
That Marcy had gotten a job at a marketing firm.
And that Edie was setting up a charity targeting at-risk youth in her area.
Edie had also put Frances’s share of the spoils into a fund for Frances’s granddaughters.
Someday, Edie would figure out how to give it to them.
There was some chatter of getting together, but in the end, they decided against it. They didn’t want to give anyone any ideas about who might have helped Frances rob a casino.
The texts were almost as good.
Everything was okay after all. Frances considered that she had lived a good long life. She’d made amazing friends, had some wild adventures, had known the love of her life. And for one last amazing time, she’d experienced a high the biggest risk-takers could only imagine.
Her body hurt, and she felt herself growing weaker. She felt like she was done. Mission accomplished. Now, she was waiting for her next great adventure, which, judging by how much weaker she grew every day, would be here sooner than she thought anyone suspected.
Like Irene said, the waiting was the hardest part. But she would see Nick soon. Very soon.
The thought brought a smile to her lips.