Barclay, Linwood Novel 08 - Never saw it coming

life to be ruined, you know? He’s a really good dad. He said the police would just think Mom ran away, or maybe she got killed by that carjacker guy, but they’d never really know what happened because they’d never be able to find Mom or her car. And if the police didn’t know what happened, they couldn’t really charge anyone.”
    She shook her head. “He’s going to be so mad at me. Because he did all this to protect me, and now . . . well, here I am. But I just . . . I can’t do it. I feel bad about what I did. I really loved my mom.”
    Wedmore reached out and touched her hand. “Of course you did.”
    “Is my dad going to be in a lot of trouble?”
    “Well, I’d have to say yes. But with the right lawyer, and a sympathetic jury . . . A lot of them will understand the lengths a father might go to, to help his daughter. He might have to go to jail, but maybe not for a long term.”
    “Not as long as me.”
    Wedmore smiled. “You might be right about that.”
    Melissa even managed a smile herself. “You’re very nice. I’m glad you were the one I got to tell all this to.”
    “Me too,” the detective said.
    “I just hope you’re right, that they don’t send Dad away to jail for a long time. That wouldn’t be fair. He’s not that old a guy. He’s got a lot of time left.”

Seventeen
    Keisha was not calling the police.
    It didn’t matter that what she’d done was in self-defense. This was no premeditated murder. Wendell Garfield had tried to kill her, and if she hadn’t put that knitting needle into his brain, he’d have succeeded.
    She knew that if she did go to the police, she might even be able to make a pretty good case for herself. She’d start by telling them that Garfield had murdered his wife. He’d put her body in a car and left it on a frozen lake and waited for it to drop through the ice. Then he’d tried to kill Keisha when she’d figured out what he’d done.
    Well, sort of figured it out. She’d be the first to admit she’d got a bit lucky with the vision thing, although lucky didn’t exactly seem like the right word in this instance.
    And while she hadn’t yet looked in a mirror, she knew from touching her neck that there were some very serious marks where Garfield had tightened that sash. If her story didn’t entirely convince the police, surely those marks across her throat would.
    So, maybe, if she went to the cops, they’d buy her story.
    But why take the chance?
    If she did come forward, she’d have to explain what she was doing there. She was not optimistic that the police would take well to her story about seeing in one of her visions what had happened to Ellie Garfield. The first thing they’d want to know would be why, if she had information about a missing person, regardless of how she’d come by it, she hadn’t come straight to the police with it. Well, she’d tell them, the police were generally very dismissive of tips from psychics, so she liked to approach the family directly. And what, the police would then ask, might you have been expecting from Mr. Garfield in exchange for this information? There was no use telling them she wanted nothing for it. They had her number. She’d come to the attention of the police during the Archer business, and a couple of her customers unhappy with their horoscope readings had been to the cops to see whether there were grounds to lay fraud charges against her. (The cops had decided that if they were to take her to court over this, they’d also have to charge every newspaper in the country.)
    Given that the police were already predisposed to think poorly of her, there was every reason to believe they’d come up with another version of the events that had transpired in the Garfield home. Maybe, instead of Keisha trying to shake him down, to run a con on him, they’d think she’d just tried to rob him instead. That she’d attacked him with the knitting needle when he’d tried to stop her. The police’d believe any kind of stupid story so long as it suited their purposes.
    No, calling the cops was not an option. If she could keep her name out of this, all the better.
    Besides, no one could place her at the house. There were no witnesses. She hadn’t told anyone she was coming here, except for Kirk, who was on standby in case she needed him for the Nina shtick. The Garfield house was on a street where the houses were well spaced out, and there was no house directly across the street. Odds were no one had