By the time she found out, Jake was in more trouble than she’d ever imagined getting into, and her life was about to take one of those calamitous turns she and her friends were famous for.
Nine-year-old Jake Collins didn’t exactly look like a big-time criminal. In fact, Cassie thought her son looked an awful lot like a scared little boy as he sat across the desk from the sheriff, sneaker-clad feet swinging a good six inches off the floor, his glasses sliding down his freckled nose. When he pushed them up, she could see the tears in his blue eyes magnified by the thick lenses. It was hard to feel sorry for him, though, when he was the reason for the twisting knot in her stomach and for the uncharacteristically stern look on the sheriff’s face.
“What you’ve done is very serious,” Sheriff Joshua Cartwright said. “You understand that, don’t you?”
Jake’s head bobbed. “Yes, sir,” he whispered.
“It’s stealing,” the sheriff added.
Jake’s chin rose indignantly. “I didn’t steal nothing from those people.”
“You took their money and you didn’t send them the toys you promised,” Joshua said. “You made a deal and you didn’t keep your end of it. That’s the same as stealing.”
Cassie knew that the only reason the sheriff wasn’t being even harder on Jake was because of her boss. Earlene ran the diner where Cassie worked, and Joshua had been courting the woman for the past six months, ever since Earlene had worked up the courage to toss out her drunken, sleazebag husband. The sheriff spent a lot of time at the diner and knew that Earlene was as protective as a mother hen where Cassie and Jake were concerned.
In fact, even now Earlene was hovering outside, waiting to learn what had possessed Joshua to haul her favorite little boy down to his office. If she didn’t like the answer, Cassie had no doubt there would be hell for the sheriff to pay.
“How bad is it?” Cassie asked, dreading the answer. She didn’t have much in the way of savings at this time of year with the summer tourist season just starting. The total in her bank account was a few hundred dollars at most. That paltry sum was all that stood between them and financial disaster.
“Two thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars, plus some change,” the sheriff said, reading the total from a report in front of him.
Cassie gasped at the amount. “There has to be some mistake. Who in heaven’s name would send that much money to a boy they don’t even know?” she demanded.
“Not just one person. Dozens of them. They all bid on auctions that Jake put up on the internet. When the time came to send them the items, he didn’t.”
Cassie was flabbergasted. The internet was something she had absolutely no experience with. How on earth could her son know enough to use it to con people?
“I started getting calls last week from people claiming that a person in town was running a scam,” the sheriff continued. He shook his head. “When the first person gave me the name, I have to tell you, I almost fell off my chair. Just like you, I thought it had to be some mistake. When the calls kept coming, I couldn’t ignore it. I figured there had to be some truth to it. I checked down at the post office, and Louella confirmed that Jake had been cashing a lot of money orders. It didn’t occur to her to question why a kid his age was getting so much mail, all of it with money orders.”
Ignoring the dull ache in her chest, Cassie faced her son. “Then it’s true? You did do this?”
Defiance flashed briefly in his eyes, but then he lowered his head and whispered, “Yes, ma’am.”
Cassie stared at him. Jake was a smart kid. She knew that. She also understood that his troublemaking behavior was a bid for attention, just as hers had been years ago. But this took the occasional brawl at school or shoplifting a pack of gum to a whole new level. His behavior had gotten worse since she had refused to consider going to Winding River so he could spend some time with his grandmother.
“How did you even get access to the internet?” she asked him. “We don’t have a computer.”
“The school does,” he said defensively. “I get extra credit for using it.”
“Somehow I doubt they’d give a lot of credit for running cons on some auction site,” the sheriff said dryly. He glanced at Cassie. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing to keep a kid from putting something up for sale. Most sites rely on feedback from customers to keep the sellers honest. As I understand it, most of Jake’s auctions ran back-to-back within a day or two of each other, so by the time there was negative feedback, it was too late. He had the money. The auction site manager called this morning, following up on the complaints they had received, and looking for their cut, as well.”
“What kind of toys were you promising these people, Jake?” Cassie asked, still struggling to grasp the idea that strangers had actually sent her son over two thousand dollars. That was more than she earned in tips in several months.
“Just some stuff,” Jake mumbled.
“Baseball cards, Pokémon cards, rare Beanie Babies,” the sheriff said, reading from that same report. “Looks like he’d been watching the site. He knew exactly what items to list for sale, which ones would bring top dollar from kids and collectors.”
“And where is this money?” Cassie asked, imagining it squandered on who knew what.
“I’ve been saving it,” Jake explained, his studious little face suddenly intense. “For something real important.”
“Saving it?” she repeated, thinking of the little metal box that contained his most treasured possessions and those dollars that his grandmother sent. Had he been socking away that much cash in there? All of his friends knew about that box. Any one of them could steal the contents.
“Where?” she asked, praying he’d put it someplace more secure.
“In my box,” he said, confirming her worst fears.
“Oh, Jake.”
“It’s safe,” he insisted. “I hid it where nobody would ever find it.”
There was a dull throbbing behind Cassie’s eyes. She resisted the temptation to rub her temples, resisted even harder the desire to cry.
“But why would you do something like this?” she asked, still at a loss. “You had to know it was wrong. I just don’t understand. Why did you need so much money? Were you hoping to buy your own computer?”
He shook his head. “I did it for you, Mom.”
“Me?” she said, aghast. “Why?”
“So we could go back home for your reunion and maybe stay there for a really long time. I know you want to, even though you said you didn’t.” He regarded her with another touch of defiance. “Besides, I miss Grandma.”
“Oh, baby, I know you do,” Cassie said with a sigh. “So do I, but this...this was wrong. The sheriff is right. It was stealing.”
“It’s not like I took a whole lot from anybody,” he insisted stubbornly. “They just paid for some dumb old cards and toys. They probably would have lost ’em, anyway.”
“That’s not the point,” she said impatiently. “They paid you for them. You have to send every penny of the money back, unless you have the toys to make things right.”
She figured that was highly unlikely, since Jake spent his allowance on books, not toys. She met the sheriff’s gaze. “You have a list of all the people involved?”
“Right here. As far as I know, it’s complete.”
“If Jake