“I’ll just bet you do. And whatever you know, whatever you think you know, it’s got nothing to do with visions or communicating with the dead or goddamn tea leaves for that matter. Whatever you know, you found out some other way.”
“I assure you, I-”
“Give me my wife’s robe. I don’t want you touching it any more.”
Keisha handed it to him. It certainly appeared she was done here.
“Thank you,” he said, gathering it up into a ball.
Keisha reached down for her purse, set it into her lap, made sure it was zipped tight at the top, and started to stand.
Garfield said, “No, don’t go yet.”
“I can’t see what possible point there would be in staying any longer, Mr. Garfield. I can tell that you view me as some kind of con artist. I’ve been at this long enough to know when my talents are being mocked. That’s how some people react, that what I do is a sham, and if that’s your conclusion, then I’m happy to be on my way.” Thinking, Don’t ask for the check back, you son of a bitch. You’ll have to dig into my purse to get it.
“Did I offend you? Oh, I’m very sorry if I did that.”
“You just accused me of having someone standing by to-to lie to you about my successes. Wouldn’t you expect me to take offense at that?”
He was still pacing, still fondling the robe, doing something with it, like it was a mound of clay he was shaping into something. Keisha watched as he took a few steps one way, then the other. It struck her that this was how he formed his thoughts, by making these little journeys around the room.
“You are very clever, I have to give you that,” he said.
Keisha said nothing. She was starting to get an inkling of what was going on. She should have caught on a little sooner.
“Very, very clever,” he said, stepping over to one of the living room windows, peering through the slats of the blinds to get a look at the street. This put him off to one side and slightly behind Keisha, and she had to twist around in her chair to see him. “I’d like to apologize. Forget what I just said. Why don’t you carry on, let me hear some more about your vision.”
“Mr. Garfield, I’m not sure-”
“No, no, please, go on.”
Keisha put her purse back down on the carpet and rested her hands by her thighs on the seat cushion. “Would you like me start again with the ice, or move on to something else?”
“Why don’t you just say whatever comes into your head.”
Keisha had a bad feeling. She’d never dealt with anyone like this before. Garfield was all over the map. At one point, he’d lost interest in what she had to say, then wanted her to leave, and now he seemed to be having a change of heart, asking her to tell him more.
He didn’t care what she had to say, but he didn’t want her to leave.
Something was very wrong here. She thought she had it figured out.
It’s him. He did it.
It explained everything. Keisha wanted to kick herself for not realizing it sooner. She’d been at this long enough, of course, to know that when a wife was murdered-or went missing-the husband was always a prime suspect. It wasn’t very often people were killed by strangers. They were killed by people they knew. Wives were killed by husbands. Husbands were killed by wives.
The man had moved away from the window, and was taking a route behind Keisha’s chair. She was going to have to turn around to keep her eye on him.
“On second thought, sure, tell me about the ice.”
What threw her off was the televised news conference. She’d figured, first of all, that if the police strongly suspected that Garfield had offed his wife, they’d never have let him go before the cameras. Would they? She had to admit, he was good. Those tears looked real. The way he took his pregnant daughter into his arms to comfort her, that was pretty darn convincing, too.
Not that it had never occurred to Keisha that the people she preyed upon could be something other than innocent. Guilty people often made the best targets. They could be so eager to prove they were as much in the dark as everyone else that they leapt at the chance to pay to hear what she had to say.
Telling themselves, I look so innocent. A real murderer would never pay a psychic for help, right?
Maybe that explained why Garfield, at first, had agreed to listen to her. But something had happened during their conversation. The ground had shifted. He’d grown increasingly anxious. Had she actually hit on something? By accident?
Was it when she said his wife was cold? When she said something about the car being off the road? Had those comments been close enough to the truth to make Garfield think she actually knew what had happened?
It was time to bail. Maybe-and she couldn’t believe she was even thinking of this-even give him back his money. Say something like, “You know what? Whatever vision I may have had, it’s gone. I’m not picking up anything. The signals have faded. The flashes, they’re over. So I think the best thing to do would be for me to return your money and I’ll just be on my-”
But just then, a flash of pink before her eyes. Not a vision this time, though. It was the sash, from the robe.
And now Garfield was looping it around her neck and drawing it tight.
Thirteen
Milford police detective Rona Wedmore identified herself at the Home Depot customer service counter and explained that she was investigating the disappearance of Eleanor Garfield, wife of one of their employees.
“We wanted to talk to any of the people Mr. Garfield works with, and see if they can help us in any way,” Rona said.
A short round woman in an orange apron said, “Oh yeah?”
“We’re thinking, maybe Mrs. Garfield knows or is friends with some of her husband’s co-workers.”
“I don’t think she really knows anyone who works here,” the woman said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met her, don’t think I’ve even seen her in the store, although we all feel just terrible about what’s happened, you know. We feel real bad for Wendell. What a horrible thing, you know?”
Rona looked at the woman’s name tag. “You think you probably know Mr. Garfield as well as anyone around here, Sylvia?”
The woman shrugged. “I know him okay.” She leaned across the counter so she wouldn’t have to raise her voice. “But I guess, if you want the one who knows him best, you should probably talk to Laci.”
“Laci?”
“Laci Harmon,” Sylvia said, nodding knowingly.
“Are Ms. Harmon and Mr. Garfield friends, Sylvia?”
“Well, I don’t want to be sayin’ nothin’ that’s going to cause anyone any trouble,” Sylvia said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothin’, nothin’ at all. I’m just sayin’ that if you want to talk to someone who knows Wendell, you know, pretty intimately, she’d be the one to talk to.” She put exactly the right emphasis on the word, hitting it not too hard, but just hard enough.
“I see,” Detective Wedmore said. “Do you know if she’s here now?”
“She is. You could probably find her over in ’lectrical or maybe lighting fixtures.”
“Which way’s that?”
Rona wandered in the direction Sylvia had pointed. She only found customers in the aisle displaying electrical parts, but there was a woman stocking shelves under an array of lit light fixtures. Wedmore could feel the collective heat of them overhead.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you Laci Harmon?”
The woman turned with a start. Wedmore put her in her mid-forties, about a hundred and sixty pounds. Nicely round in the right places, and a little too round in the wrong ones. She had brown hair that hung straight down, wore no makeup, and looked at Wedmore through a pair of oversized black-rimmed glasses.
“Yes?”
Wedmore showed her ID. “I’m trying to find out what happened to Eleanor Garfield.”
“Oh!” the woman said. “Ellie! It’s a horrible thing.”