said she was snoring up a storm at the time, but so be it.
While Garfield was a skeptic, he was also willing to admit there might be forces at work out there he didn’t fully understand. Maybe some people really did have special sensitivities and could pick up things everyone else missed. Maybe this woman did have visions. How else could you explain that story about Nina, the little girl kidnapped by the neighbor?
So if she had this gift, and really had had a vision about Ellie, then she knew something.
The other scenario-a no less comforting one-was that this psychic thing was an act. A total sham. Complete and utter bullshit. A performance, to cover the fact that the information she had had come to her in a much less mystical way.
She had seen what happened. Not in a vision, but with her own eyes.
Garfield thought about that as he went into the kitchen for the three hundred in cash and his checkbook.
Suppose she had been there?
What if Keisha Ceylon had been at the lake that night? Maybe she lived in one of the cabins that lined the shore. On his way up there, Garfield had felt confident there wouldn’t be any witnesses. That stretch of the lake was taken up mostly with seasonal properties. This time of year, most of the cabins were boarded up. By the end of November, most everyone had turned off the water, poured antifreeze into the pipes, put out the mousetraps, spread around the mothballs, covered over the windows, and headed back to their comfortable homes in the city, no plans to return until spring.
But Garfield now had to consider the possibility that one of the cabins had been occupied. Maybe someone- Keisha-had been looking out the window that night and noticed a car with its lights turned off being driven out onto the new ice with only a thin layer of snow on it. That sliver of moon was all the light anyone would need to get an idea of what was going on.
Someone could have seen that car creep out there and stop. Then seen a man get out of the driver’s side with a broom in his hand, and watched as he attempted to sweep away the tire tracks as he made his way back to shore.
And then someone could have seen that same man stop and look back, waiting, waiting for the car to plunge through the thin ice.
Garfield shuddered at the memory. It had been agonizing. For a few moments there, standing out in the freezing cold, he was convinced the car was not going to drop through. That it would sit there, and still be there in the morning when the sun came up.
With his wife’s dead body still strapped into the passenger seat.
He’d been talking, earlier in the day, to some customers at the Home Depot, a couple of fellows who lived up that way, who’d said the lake was starting to freeze over pretty quickly, that you could already walk out on it, but it wasn’t thick enough to take any real weight yet. At least not for long.
He didn’t think much about it at the time. But the conversation came back to him later that night.
After it had happened. After she was dead.
When he needed a plan.
Maybe Keisha Ceylon had been there, at the lake. Been that someone watching from one of those cabins. When the story about his wife hit the news, she put it all together.
And now she’s here, shaking me down for money, he thought. Not quite blackmail. If she were that direct, if she were to say to him, “I saw what you did, and I’ll go to the police with what I know unless you pay me,” that would be taking quite a risk. For all she knew, he’d find a way to keep her quiet that didn’t involve money.
He’d just kill her.
But using this whole psychic shtick, that was pure genius. She knew enough to get him curious, to get him worried. Worried enough that he’d pay her to find out just how much she really knew. Then, once she had his money, she’d keep things vague enough so he’d always be left wondering. She’d never have to tip her hand. She’d never have to let on that she was there. But she’d leave him knowing that if she wanted to, she could put him away for the rest of his life.
Well, Keisha Ceylon wasn’t nearly as clever as she thought she was.
Wendell Garfield wasn’t interested in taking any chances.
Eleven
After her father dropped her off and she went up to her apartment, Melissa felt woozy. And nauseated.
She’d only been inside the door a minute when she had to run into the bathroom. She dropped to her knees in front of the toilet. Made it just in time.
She cleaned up and found herself looking in the mirror. “You look like shit,” she said. Her hair was dirty and stringy, and there were bags under eyes, not surprising, given how little sleep she’d had since Thursday night.
Melissa rested her hand on the top of her very pregnant belly, rubbed it, felt something move around beneath it. Then she felt her body begin to shake, her eyes moisten. All the crying she’d done in the last few days, she couldn’t believe she had any more tears in her, but they just kept on coming.
She wanted to crawl into bed and never wake up. Just get under the covers, pull them up over her head, and stay that way for ever. She didn’t want to ever have to face the world again.
It was all so terrible.
She couldn’t stop thinking about her mother, about her father, about Lester, about the baby, about how her life had spiraled totally out of control in the last year. How it didn’t look to her like it was going to get any better.
She thought about the press conference. About how strongly her father had felt she should not be a part of it.
“Don’t do this,” he’d told her. “Don’t put yourself through it. It’s not necessary. I can handle it.”
“No, I should do it.”
“Melissa, I’m telling you-”
“No, Dad, I have to do it. You can’t stop me.”
She recalled how he’d gripped her arm, how it almost hurt. How he’d looked into her eyes. “I’m telling you, it would be a mistake.”
“If I don’t do it,” she’d said, “people will think I don’t care.”
And so, reluctantly, he had relented. But he was very firm with her. “Let me do the talking. I don’t want you saying anything, you understand? You can cry all you want, but you’re not going to say one damn thing.”
So she hadn’t. She wasn’t sure she could have, anyway. Just as he’d guessed, she started bawling her eyes out. And those tears were the real deal. She hadn’t been able to stop. She was so incredibly sad. And not just sad.
She was scared.
She knew her father loved her very much. She believed that in her heart. But it didn’t give her comfort. Not now.
He’d told her what to say. He’d rehearsed it with her.
“Your mother went shopping and that’s all we know,” he’d said. “She went off like she always did. Anything could have happened. Maybe she ran off to be with another man, or-”
“Mom would never do that,” Melissa had said, sniffing. She wondered if she’d put a little too much emphasis on the word “Mom,” that maybe her father would pick something up in that. She’d seen him that one night, coming out of the Day’s Inn with some woman, getting into the car together. But she’d never said a thing to him, never let on that she knew what he’d been up to.
If he’d noticed anything in her tone, he didn’t show it. He was too preoccupied getting ready for the news conference. He kept drilling into her what her story was going to be when the police talked to her. Because the police were going to want to talk to her, she could be sure of that.
“-or maybe it’s that guy who’s been going around doing carjackings, maybe he did this. It could have been any number of things. The world is full of sick people. The police will have all sorts of theories, and if they never solve it, they never solve it.”
