Linwood Barclay - Never Saw It Coming

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.

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 remember everything he’d already said, laying traps for himself. So he’d keep it short, pretend to get all choked up and say, “That woman, Keisha, she’s the reason our little angel was brought home to us. I can’t even think what might have happened if she hadn’t been there for us.”

Oscar-worthy.

Life was never boring with Keisha, but son of a bitch, she’d really raised the bar this time. From what she’d had time to tell him as she did her striptease, she’d killed this guy in self-defense with a knitting needle in the eye.

Fucking eye, man. He could not get over that.

He couldn’t have predicted, when he’d moved in with Keisha, anything like this. He could see that it wasn’t going to be perfect, what with her having the kid and all, but he didn’t seem all that annoying at first, and Keisha was pretty awesome in the sack. She said she was taking precautions so he wouldn’t knock her up, not like when she’d had that thing eleven years ago with a soldier home on leave from Afghanistan who hung around Milford long enough to spread his seed. Then he was back on the plane to blow up some more Taliban. Keisha didn’t know whether he kept signing up for more tours because he really liked riding around in a tank in a hundred and twenty degrees, or because he didn’t want to face the fact that back home he was a father.

Matthew’d only met the man twice in nine years. Which was one more time than he’d sent home money. That one time, it had been for $123.43.

Keisha, however, was doubly devoted to the li’l fucker. Okay, maybe he wasn’t that bad a kid really, but the fact was, he was there. Kind of hard to have one’s needs met when there’s some twerp hanging around, playing Wii, asking to be taken to the mall, coming down with colds and expecting his mother to look after him. And lots of time she’d make his breakfast or a sandwich or take him a snack at bedtime, and she wouldn’t even think to ask Kirk if he’d like something too.