Barclay, Linwood Novel 08 - Never saw it coming

seen her get out of her car and go into the house. If she could get back into her car unseen, she’d be all set.
    Wendell Garfield sure wasn’t going to be talking.
    Then she thought:
Fingerprints.
    She wondered what she’d touched. The robe, but it wouldn’t hold a fingerprint. Surely the cops couldn’t lift a print off the fabric of the chair.
    She wiped down the coffee table, and any other surfaces she thought she might have touched. There was plenty of blood around, but none of it was hers, so she thought she’d be okay where DNA was concerned. Once she got home, she’d change out of these blood-soaked clothes and get rid of them.
    Keisha believed she could ride this out. She could do it. She’d have to wear a scarf at her neck or high collars for a few weeks to hide the bruising, but otherwise she looked unharmed.
    I am done with this shit.
    This whole thing, it was a message, no doubt about it. Keisha had never been a particularly religious person, but this had all the hallmarks of a warning from the man upstairs. “Knock it off,” he was telling her.
    She was going to knock it off.
    “Lord, just let me walk out of here and I’m yours,” she said.
    She took one last look at the room, at Garfield’s body, to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. She was good. She was as sure as she could be.
    Keisha slipped out of the house, wiped down the door handle on her way. She was halfway to the car when she happened to reach up and touch her right ear.
    There was nothing dangling from it.
    She reached up and touched her left ear. The parrot earring was there. But the other one was gone.
    “Oh God,” she said under her breath.
    She didn’t see she had much choice but to go back into that house and find it.
    She walked back to the door, stood there a moment, steeling herself, then, wrapping her hand with her coat, turned the knob and entered. She started by the chair where she’d been sitting. Patted around it, stuck her fingers down into the cushion cracks.
    No luck.
    She looked at the coffee table, scanned the carpets. The earring was nowhere to be seen.
    There was only one place left to look.
    Keisha got down on her knees next to the body, slipped her hands under it, and rolled it over, revealing a carpet soaked with the blood that had poured out of Garfield’s eye socket.
    She spotted a small bump in the pool of blood. She stuck her fingers into it and lifted up her earring. The parrot looked like a seagull caught in a red oil spill. She wrapped the wet earring in some tissues from her purse, dropped it in, and went back out the front door.
    Got in her car.
    Got her keys out of her purse.
    Keyed the ignition.
    As she was driving away, looking ahead, she saw a police car turn the corner.
    No no no no.
    As it approached, Keisha wondered how visible the bloodstains splattered across the front of her dress were. Would the cop notice them as they passed each other? For once, she was grateful for the shitty defrosters on this car. Her view through the windshield was partially obscured by crystals of frost.
    The distance between the two cars closed. Keisha could see two officers in the vehicle. A woman behind the wheel, a man riding shotgun.
    Just look ahead, she told herself. Like you don’t care. Be cool.
    The cars met.
    As the police car slid past, Keisha was certain no one looked over. She kept her eyes front. Seconds later, she glanced in her rear-view mirror, expecting the patrol car’s brake lights to come on, for the car to turn around, to come after her.
    Lights flashing.
    But nothing happened. The police car continued up the street, even going past the Garfield house.
    Keisha put on her blinker, turned left at the corner.
    Home free.

Eighteen
    Rona Wedmore told dispatch she needed a couple of uniformed officers to accompany her to the Garfield house. One of their cars, she was informed, had just passed by that location. They’d return to the address and wait for Detective Wedmore’s arrival.
    It was possible Wendell Garfield would do as she asked, and come down to the station without protest, but you never knew, so it was good to have backup. While Garfield wasn’t going to be charged with murder, he was still in a peck of trouble. He’d covered up for his daughter, he’d moved his wife’s body and disposed of it, he’d misled investigators. Wedmore was even betting there was some kind of environmental pollution charge for dumping a vehicle in a lake, although that would seem to be the