the lengths a father might go to, to help his daughter. He might have to go to jail, but maybe not for a long term.”
“Not as long as me.”
Wedmore smiled. “You might be right about that.”
Melissa even managed a smile herself. “You’re very nice. I’m glad you were the one I got to tell all this to.”
“Me too,” the detective said.
“I just hope you’re right, that they don’t send Dad away to jail for a long time. That wouldn’t be fair. He’s not that old a guy. He’s got a lot of time left.”
Seventeen
Keisha was not calling the police.
It didn’t matter that what she’d done was in self-defense. This was no premeditated murder. Wendell Garfield had tried to kill her, and if she hadn’t put that knitting needle into his brain, he’d have succeeded.
She knew that if she did go to the police, she might even be able to make a pretty good case for herself. She’d start by telling them that Garfield had murdered his wife. He’d put her body in a car and left it on a frozen lake and waited for it to drop through the ice. Then he’d tried to kill Keisha when she’d figured out what he’d done.
Well, sort of figured it out. She’d be the first to admit she’d got a bit lucky with the vision thing, although lucky didn’t exactly seem like the right word in this instance.
And while she hadn’t yet looked in a mirror, she knew from touching her neck that there were some very serious marks where Garfield had tightened that sash. If her story didn’t entirely convince the police, surely those marks across her throat would.
So, maybe, if she went to the cops, they’d buy her story.
But why take the chance?
If she did come forward, she’d have to explain what she was doing there. She was not optimistic that the police would take well to her story about seeing in one of her visions what had happened to Ellie Garfield. The first thing they’d want to know would be why, if she had information about a missing person, regardless of how she’d come by it, she hadn’t come straight to the police with it. Well, she’d tell them, the police were generally very dismissive of tips from psychics, so she liked to approach the family directly. And what, the police would then ask, might you have been expecting from Mr. Garfield in exchange for this information? There was no use telling them she wanted nothing for it. They had her number. She’d come to the attention of the police during the Archer business, and a couple of her customers unhappy with their horoscope readings had been to the cops to see whether there were grounds to lay fraud charges against her. (The cops had decided that if they were to take her to court over this, they’d also have to charge every newspaper in the country.)
Given that the police were already predisposed to think poorly of her, there was every reason to believe they’d come up with another version of the events that had transpired in the Garfield home. Maybe, instead of Keisha trying to shake him down, to run a con on him, they’d think she’d just tried to rob him instead. That she’d attacked him with the knitting needle when he’d tried to stop her. The police’d believe any kind of stupid story so long as it suited their purposes.
No, calling the cops was not an option. If she could keep her name out of this, all the better.
Besides, no one could place her at the house. There were no witnesses. She hadn’t told anyone she was coming here, except for Kirk, who was on standby in case she needed him for the Nina shtick. The Garfield house was on a street where the houses were well spaced out, and there was no house directly across the street. Odds were no one had seen her get out of her car and go into the house. If she could get back into her car unseen, she’d be all set.
Wendell Garfield sure wasn’t going to be talking.
Then she thought: Fingerprints.
She wondered what she’d touched. The robe, but it wouldn’t hold a fingerprint. Surely the cops couldn’t lift a print off the fabric of the chair.
She wiped down the coffee table, and any other surfaces she thought she might have touched. There was plenty of blood around, but none of it was hers, so she thought she’d be okay where DNA was concerned. Once she got home, she’d change out of these blood-soaked clothes and get rid of them.
Keisha believed she could ride this out. She could do it. She’d have to wear a scarf at her neck or high collars for a few weeks to hide the bruising, but otherwise she looked unharmed.
I am done with this shit.
This whole thing, it was a message, no doubt about it. Keisha had never been a particularly religious person, but this had all the hallmarks of a warning from the man upstairs. “Knock it off,” he was telling her.
She was going to knock it off.
“Lord, just let me walk out of here and I’m yours,” she said.
She took one last look at the room, at Garfield’s body, to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. She was good. She was as sure as she could be.
Keisha slipped out of the house, wiped down the door handle on her way. She was halfway to the car when she happened to reach up and touch her right ear.
There was nothing dangling from it.
She reached up and touched her left ear. The parrot earring was there. But the other one was gone.
“Oh God,” she said under her breath.
She didn’t see she had much choice but to go back into that house and find it.
She walked back to the door, stood there a moment, steeling herself, then, wrapping her hand with her coat, turned the knob and entered. She started by the chair where she’d been sitting. Patted around it, stuck her fingers down into the cushion cracks.
No luck.
She looked at the coffee table, scanned the carpets. The earring was nowhere to be seen.
There was only one place left to look.
Keisha got down on her knees next to the body, slipped her hands under it, and rolled it over, revealing a carpet soaked with the blood that had poured out of Garfield’s eye socket.
She spotted a small bump in the pool of blood. She stuck her fingers into it and lifted up her earring. The parrot looked like a seagull caught in a red oil spill. She wrapped the wet earring in some tissues from her purse, dropped it in, and went back out the front door.
Got in her car.
Got her keys out of her purse.
Keyed the ignition.
As she was driving away, looking ahead, she saw a police car turn the corner.
No no no no.
As it approached, Keisha wondered how visible the bloodstains splattered across the front of her dress were. Would the cop notice them as they passed each other? For once, she was grateful for the shitty defrosters on this car. Her view through the windshield was partially obscured by crystals of frost.
The distance between the two cars closed. Keisha could see two officers in the vehicle. A woman behind the wheel, a man riding shotgun.
Just look ahead, she told herself. Like you don’t care. Be cool.
The cars met.
As the police car slid past, Keisha was certain no one looked over. She kept her eyes front. Seconds later, she glanced in her rear-view mirror, expecting the patrol car’s brake lights to come on, for the car to turn around, to come after her.
Lights flashing.
But nothing happened. The police car continued up the street, even going past the Garfield house.
Keisha put on her blinker, turned left at the corner.
