Never again, she told herself. Never again.
The thing was, Keisha didn’t know what other line of work she was suited for. Sales? Working in a department store? Greeting people as they came into Walmart? Didn’t you have to be a hundred to do that? Yeah, she’d cleaned houses once in a while, but even that was never entirely honest work for Keisha Ceylon. She found it hard not to take a peek into the backs of dresser drawers, in case there was something valuable stashed there, something she could help herself to that when the owner finally went to look for it, they’d have no idea when it actually went missing.
She wanted to blame her dead mother at times like this, but Keisha knew, in her heart, that she was an adult now and responsible for her choices. The good ones, like keeping Matthew and doing her best by him even when his father didn’t give a damn. And the bad ones, like getting taken in by Kirk’s charm, and now having to live with the consequences. But Jesus, her mother really was a piece of work, and Keisha felt entitled to lay at least some of the blame at her door.
The way they lived. Always moving from town to town, Marjorie surveying the local papers for obituaries to find men who’d recently lost their wives and just happening to show up on their doorstep, offering her services as a housekeeper, but not before putting on her lipstick, letting her hair fall down around her shoulders, and unbuttoning that top button on her blouse. “Your wife just died?” she’d say, with a hint of Alabama in her voice. “I had no idea I was troubling you at such a time. I’m just looking for some work to support myself and my daughter here, but I won’t trouble you a moment longer… What’s that? Why, I must confess, I wouldn’t mind a glass of lemonade.”
Marjorie’d worm her way into some lonely man’s heart just long enough to gain his trust, and access to his bank account.
And then they were off to the next town.
“Can’t we live in one place for a while?” Keisha’d ask her mom. “So I could go to school and make friends?”
The longest they stayed anywhere was when Marjorie got a job managing a rooming house in Middlebury where almost all the residents were elderly, living alone, and scraping by on their Social Security checks, out of which they paid the rent. Marjorie had been thinking of quitting-the owner, who lived down in Florida, didn’t pay her much to run the joint-but then one of the residents died in his sleep one night, and Marjorie had an epiphany. If she didn’t report poor old Garnett’s death, and got rid of his body, she could cash, and keep, his Social Security checks when they arrived each month. If she rented out the room to someone else, she could pocket the entire amount.
With Keisha’s help-the girl was now in her teens-Marjorie removed the body from the house late one night and buried it in the woods outside Middlebury. It was Keisha’s job to endorse the checks when they came-her mother, who had a very shaky hand, was very particular that the signature look just like Garnett’s, and made Keisha practice over and over again before actually signing the check.
Over the next six months, two more residents died. The scam expanded. Marjorie now had three Social Security checks coming in, plus her wage for managing the rooming house.
A pretty good living, until one day a woman dropped by, looking to reconnect with her long-lost uncle Garnett, and when she couldn’t find him, said she was heading to the police station to file a missing person report.
“Pack your bags,” Marjorie had whispered to her daughter the moment the woman left. “We’re leaving town in five minutes.”
The police never did catch up with her. When Marjorie died, of liver cancer, she’d never spent a single day in jail.
Keisha’d known it was wrong, but what was she supposed to do? Turn her mother in? Then what?
So maybe the cards were stacked against her when it came to making an honest buck, but today, well, today was one hell of a wakeup call. Surely there had to be something she could do-something legitimate-that employed her skills.
Politics, maybe.
She almost laughed. The thing was, what she’d been doing with all her variations on a theme was selling people outrageous notions. That she could help them talk to deceased relatives. That she could give them a glimpse of their future by reading the stars. That she could use her psychic gifts to help track down missing loved ones.
If she could sell people that kind of malarkey, how hard could cars be? Or insurance? Or carpeting?
Keisha told herself she could do it. She had to do it. Not for herself, but for Matthew.
She couldn’t be much of a mother from behind bars.
She had to turn over that proverbial new leaf. She had to rid herself of Kirk. But first, she had to get out of this current mess she’d gotten herself into. Then, she could start thinking about a new career. Get herself some new clothes. Less funky, more conservative. No parrot earrings. Maybe a different hairdo. A more professional look. And of course, she’d have to get some new business No. No no no no no.
She’d given him her business card. Wendell Garfield had tucked it into his shirt pocket.
Twenty
Kirk opened the passenger door of Keisha’s fifteen-year-old Korean shitbox and set the trash bag on the floor ahead of the seat. The vinyl upholstery was tan, so there was no trick to spotting the blood smears on the driver’s seat. He fetched a container of already dampened cloths in his truck-he had a full supply of automotive cleaning supplies tucked behind the seats-and used the first one to wipe down the handle on the driver’s door of Keisha’s car. Once he’d cleaned the grab handle on the inside of the door, he turned his attention to the seat. He went through a couple of dozen cloths, jamming them into the cracks and crevices of the cushioning. There wasn’t all that much blood, but he knew there wouldn’t have to be for the cops to nail Keisha. He didn’t just watch Family Feud. He knew stuff.
He found heavier concentrations of blood when he wiped down the steering wheel. Keisha’d had it all over her hands, of course. He took all the bloodied cloths and stuffed them into the bag, which had not yet been tied off. Once he was confident the car’s interior was not only wiped clean of blood, but cleaner than it had been since it left the showroom, he knotted the top of the bag with the built-in red ties and settled into the driver’s seat, still glistening from the wipes.
It struck him it might be a good idea to get the entire car washed while he was at it. There was one of those do-it-yourself places up on Route 1. He searched his pockets to confirm that he had enough coins. He’d get Keisha to pay him back later.
He drove the car into a wash bay. He had his choice of all of them. Hardly anyone was washing their cars when there’d been snow overnight and the streets were wet and slushy. He plunked in some quarters and trained the high-pressure hose on the driver’s side of the car. Back and forth along the door, just to be sure.
When he was finished, he got on the turnpike and headed west. At first, he was thinking he’d go as far as Westport, or maybe even Norwalk, but he hadn’t even gotten to Bridgeport when he started thinking this was a really dumb idea of Keisha’s. A bag of garbage was a bag of garbage, even when it was stuffed with a lot of bloody clothes. As long as he dumped it in with plenty of other bags, he didn’t see the sense in driving it halfway across the goddamn state. Any Dumpster ought to do.
So he got off at Seaview and went north, keeping his eye out for a strip mall that would have a garbage bin out back. He’d be able to ditch the trash, get back to Keisha’s house within the hour, and find out a little more about this mess she’d gotten herself into. God, she could be dumb sometimes.
Living with her, you just never knew what was going to happen. All sorts of weird folks dropping by, wanting Keisha to tell them whether to quit their jobs or get married or try to reach their dead cats so they could say hello, taking as gospel some mumbo-jumbo bullshit that Keisha just came up with out of her head. And, once in a while, when some kid got abducted or an Alzheimer’s patient wandered out of the nursing home, anxious relatives-at least those who believed in any of that other aforementioned nonsense-would ask for Keisha’s guidance.
People sure believed some strange shit.
Kirk did his part, playing the father whose missing daughter Keisha’d found based on a vision. He thought he did a good job at it, so long as the people didn’t ask too many questions. Once he started lying, he found it hard to
