“Hello?”
“Keisha, it’s Gail.”
“Oh. Yes, Gail?”
“That lady detective? She got me all confused.”
Keisha closed her eyes tiredly. “Yeah. About my card.”
“That’s right!”
“She was here a few minutes ago.”
“I told her you’d given me one of your cards, and that somewhere along the line I must have passed it on to Wendell, but then she started asking me when this all came up, and I told her you mentioned it to me this morning, and-”
“I know, I know.”
“And the other thing I called about,” Gail said hesitantly, “was if, since you got back home, was, you know, if…”
“If something comes to me,” Keisha said, “I’ll call you immediately.”
“Okay, that’s fine. Listen, I have to go. There’s family to call, I’m going to have to get in touch with the funeral home and-”
“Gail, I have to go.”
Keisha replaced the receiver in its cradle and was about to turn away when the phone rang again, so quickly it made her jump.
She snatched up the receiver before the first ring had finished and said, “Gail, please, I can’t talk-”
“Hey,” Kirk said. “It’s me.”
You told my son I was going to get rid of him.
They were the first words that came into her head, but what she said aloud was, “What?”
“I got good news.”
She found that hard to believe, but summoned the energy to ask what it was just the same.
“I went back.”
“Back where?”
“I got the bag. The right bag. I parked next door again, snuck over, opened the bin when there was no one around, and got it. I peeked inside, saw the clothes, made sure, right? I figured, that bitch cop, when she saw the pizza, she might start sniffing around at pizza places all over, you know, and-”
“Tell me you’re not bringing it home.”
“Jeez, Keesh, I’m not an idiot. I already got rid of it. In a Dumpster out back of a different plaza blocks away. And no one saw me this time. That’s good, right?”
“Yeah,” she said weakly, afraid to feel encouraged. “That’s good.”
It was, she conceded to herself, welcome news. If the police didn’t find the clothes, and if they didn’t turn up any blood in the house or the car, she might-just might-get through this.
So long as they didn’t show up at the door in the next five seconds to search the house.
“So, whaddya say now about a little celebration tonight? You me and the li’l fucker?”
The brief sense of relief she’d felt was displaced by hatred and contempt.
“We’ll see,” she said.
“Be home in a bit.” He ended the call.
“Finally,” she said, and strode out of her bedroom. She was swinging open the door of the cabinet below the bathroom sink when she was interrupted again.
This time, a knock at the door.
“No,” she said. “Please no.”
It seemed too soon for Wedmore to have returned with a warrant and a forensics team, but Keisha imagined the police could move quickly when they wanted to.
She swung open the door, expecting the worst.
And in a way, that was what she got. But it was not Rona Wedmore standing there on the front step, grinning at her.
It was Justin.
Parked at the curb was his stepfather’s Range Rover, but there was so sign of Dwayne Taggart.
“Hey,” Justin said. “I figured out another way to make a little more money, and I wanted to tell you about it.”
Thirty-one
“Not a good time, Justin,” Keisha said, blocking the door. The kid had always given her the creeps, but there was something about the grin on his face now that was particularly unsettling.
“Oh, I really think you’re going to want to hear this,” he said, his hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hunched, trying to fight off the cold in nothing more than a light sports jacket and sneakers. “Let me come in and I’ll tell you about it.”
“No,” she said, barring the door.
“Seriously? You don’t even know what I’ve got to say.”
“Justin, go away.”
“You look really stressed out, Keisha. Everything okay?” There was nothing in his expression that suggested empathy. He looked-was this possible? — mischievous.
“I haven’t had a very good day,” she said.
“I’ll just bet you haven’t.”
She was starting to close the door on him when he said that, and she stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying, I bet you’ve had a pretty stressful day.”
She tried to read him, figure out what his game was. “You got something you want to say?”
“It’s kind of cold out here,” he said, on the verge of shivering. Reluctantly, she opened the door and allowed him in. He took his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together. “I shoulda worn something warmer. But I really hate big coats and boots and all that. Makes you feel like you’re smothering.”
“Why are you here?” Keisha said, closing the door.
“Like I said, I got this idea to make more money.” He offered an apologetic smile. “Actually, it’s an idea for me to make more money. But even so, I think you’re going to want to hear it.”
She waited.
“So, you gonna invite me into the living room or anything?”
“No.”
He looked hurt, then made a quick recovery. “Okay, so, this morning, when I dropped by, as I was leaving, you were watching the news about the guy whose wife went missing on Thursday. There was that press conference, with his daughter, getting all weepy and stuff? You remember?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
That grin. “I knew you would. And I was thinking, that’s your thing. Like with the Archers. I could tell your interest was, what’s the word, piqued. And you know, so was mine. I thought it would be cool to see how you work your magic.”
No.
“Remember I said we should work together? How I would like to job-shadow you, like we used to do in high school? And you basically said to piss off?” He shook his head. “That never really works with me. I’m not real good at following instructions. It’s what all my teachers said, even Mr. Archer.”
“What did you do, Justin?”
“Okay, so, Dwayne-still a big fan of yours, by the way, for finding me, and even my mom can’t get her head around how you did it-drove me over here this morning, right, and on the way back home I said, hey Dwayne, my man, would it be okay if I borrowed the car for a while? Just to drive around and clear my head? Because for the
