“I have to ask you some questions, Melissa,” Wedmore said.
But the girl continued to weep, and it was ten minutes before Wedmore could get her back into the chair in the interrogation room. Instead of facing her from across the table, she brought her own chair around next to Melissa’s and allowed the girl to hold onto her hands.
“Someone killed him?” Melissa asked disbelievingly. “Are you sure?”
Wedmore thought back to what she’d seen. “Yes,” she said with certainty. “What haven’t you told me, Melissa? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’ve told you everything, I swear.”
“Who would want to hurt your father?”
“No one. Nobody.”
“Did someone else help you, Melissa? Was there a third person involved in getting your mother, and the car, up to the lake?”
“No, I’m telling you, it was just me and Dad. And he didn’t even hurt Mom. That was me, that was all me.”
“What about the man who’s the father of your child?”
“Lester?”
“That’s right. Did he and your father get along? Is it possible they could have had some kind of argument?”
“My parents liked Lester,” Melissa said. “They were mad at me because I didn’t want to marry him.” She put her face in her hands again and wept.
Wedmore sighed, and got up.
This was the damnedest thing she’d dealt with in a while.
She was just leaving the interrogation room when her phone buzzed. It was a text, from Joy.
It read: “Got something. Call me.”
Twenty-two
Keisha tried to think how she would explain it.
Because she would have to explain it. There was no doubt in her mind. The police would eventually find Wendell Garfield, if they hadn’t already, and sooner or later they’d discover her business card, tucked into his shirt pocket.
If the card had been anywhere else-in a drawer, in his wallet, even-it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Over time, everyone collects lots of business cards. You find them in your car, your coat pocket, pinned to bulletin boards.
But a card that’s been tucked into a shirt, well, that’s a card that has to have been acquired, or at the very least referred to, very recently. Assuming that Wendell Garfield did not wear the same, unlaundered shirt for days or weeks on end, it would be reasonable for the police to assume he’d acquired, or been looking at, that card in the last couple of days. Since his wife had gone missing.
And how did most people acquire cards? From the people whose name was on them.
It was just a matter of time before the police would be at Keisha’s door, asking whether she’d met with Wendell Garfield. When was this meeting? Where was it held? What was its purpose and who had initiated it?
What would she tell them?
“I have no idea how he got that card.”
That’s what she would tell them.
It might be a hard story to stick to, but now that Kirk had gotten rid of everything else linking her to the Garfield house, she believed she could ride it out.
She’d tell them that she often left her cards pinned to noticeboards in grocery stores. Sometimes she’d leave a few out on tables at craft shows and community center events. She’d distribute them to random people she might meet waiting in a checkout line, or at a bus stop.
The cards were out there, she’d say. Who knows where he might have gotten one?
Maybe he’d come across one weeks ago, put it in a drawer, and after his wife disappeared, he went hunting for it, thinking maybe a psychic could assist him in ways the police had not. He’d found the card and slipped it into his shirt, and probably would have called her if he hadn’t ended up with a knitting needle in his brain.
Of course, only Keisha knew it would have made no sense for Garfield to engage the services of a psychic to find his wife. He knew all about his wife’s fate. But the police didn’t know that, did they? So far as they were aware, Wendell Garfield was still a distraught husband desperate for his wife’s return. Maybe the police would even start working on the theory that whoever got rid of Ellie-at some point they’d conclude that she was the victim of foul play, even if they never found her body at the bottom of that lake-was the same person who’d killed her husband.
That would make sense, right?
And really, what did her business card have to do with all that?
It’s just a card.
She tried to tell herself not to worry about it. Play dumb, stonewall, act perplexed. However he came into possession of her card, it wasn’t her responsibility to explain it.
The phone rang.
Keisha looked at it but did not move. Probably Chad calling back, or some other needy client. Let it go to message, which it would do after five rings. The ringing stopped, and Keisha waited for the light to flash to indicate a message had indeed been left, but the light never flashed.
Just as well, she thought.
There was a loud rattling at the front door, then the sound of it opening. Keisha jumped almost as much as she had the first time the phone had rung.
Who the hell was this? Wasn’t it too soon for Kirk to be back?
“Hey, babe!” he called out.
Keisha met him in the hall. “What are you doing here?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Where did you go? Where’d you get rid of it?”
“It’s all taken care of,” he said, waving his hand dismissively.
“Okay, but where?”
“I did what you asked, okay? It’s done.” He tried to get past her to go into the kitchen, but she laid her palm on his chest.
“I told you to take it to Darien or someplace far. You didn’t go that far, did you? You’re back too soon.”
“Well shit, that was just a stupid idea you had. I mean, the main thing is, don’t dump it in your backyard, right? Just because you don’t want to put it out in front of your house on pickup day doesn’t mean you got to drive it to hell and back.”
Keisha shook her head angrily. “Where did you toss it?”
He waved her off. “Look, you owe me some money. I had some expenses, at the car wash. Used every quarter I had.”
“Where did you ditch the bag?” It came out more like a scream than a question.
“Jesus, don’t get your panties in a knot. Almost all the way to Bridgeport,” he said.
“What did I tell you?”
“I heard what you said, but once I was out there, I had decisions to make. I saw a good spot behind this strip of stores so that was where I left it.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “I swear to God. Did you at least shove it way down into the Dumpster with a bunch of other bags?”
Kirk hesitated.
“What?” Keisha asked.
He shrugged. “Pretty much.”
