Barclay, Linwood Novel 08 - Never saw it coming

she took two hurried steps to the toilet, lifted the lid frantically, dropped to her knees and threw up. Three good heaves.
    She unrolled a couple of feet of toilet paper, dabbed her face, flushed the toilet, and allowed her body to collapse against the cold tiled wall.
    I nearly died.
    I killed a man.
    Her breathing was quick and shallow, and she wondered whether she might pass out.
Hold it together,
she thought. Suck it up. Kirk would get rid of the evidence, clean the car.
    She hoped to God he didn’t fuck it up. It wasn’t like she’d sent him to the store with a list of ingredients to make rocket fuel. He ought to be able to wash a car and get rid of a bag.
    Slowly she pulled herself to her feet and got into the shower. The hot water felt good hitting her skin. She poured some shampoo into her hand, washed her hair, rinsed, shampooed it again. Then a third time. By the time she picked up the soap to start on her body, the blood was washed away, but that didn’t stop her from nearly scrubbing herself raw.
    She stood under the water until it started to go cold. When there was no hot left, she turned off the taps, reached beyond the curtain for the towel, and dried herself off.
    Out of the shower, she studied her naked body in the mirror. She thought there was a tiny spot of blood on her right shoulder, rubbed it with the towel, realized it was a mole.
    She was confident she’d gotten every trace of Wendell Garfield off her.
    Still naked, she gathered up the towel and bathmat and walked it down to the basement, shoved everything into the washing machine, poured in some soap, and hit the start button.
    Back upstairs, she went into her room and dressed herself in fresh clothes. She found a blouse with a high collar, which she buttoned to the top to hide the bruises on her neck. Then she slowly walked the route between the front door and the bathroom, looking for any traces of blood. The newspaper seemed to have done the trick. She got some paper towel and Windex from underneath the kitchen sink and squirted the tiles inside the front door. She cleaned them three times, just to be sure, then flushed the paper towels, one at a time so as not to cause a clog, down the toilet.
    Then she thought, what about when she ran from the car to the house? It was such a short distance, she was confident no one had seen her. If anyone had, they’d surely have called the police. But there might be blood out there.
    She opened the door. The light snow that had fallen overnight had melted on the driveway and the path from it to the house, but everything was so wet, she didn’t think, even if some blood had somehow dripped from her clothes, that anyone would be able to find a trace of it out here.
    She went back inside, picked up her wallet by the sink, and rubbed it all over with several dampened tissues. Took out her driver’s license, Social Security card. Made sure everything was clean.
    Then she leaned against the bathroom counter, put her face in her hands, felt some relief slowly washing over her. She was done. So long as Kirk did as he was told, she was good.
    Time for a drink.
    As she entered the kitchen, the phone rang. It wasn’t a sound that normally made Keisha jump, but she nearly hit the ceiling on that first ring. She looked at the caller ID, but it came up as unknown.
    No one knows. No one knows anything about what happened. Certainly not yet.
    Keisha picked up. “Hello?”
    “Oh, hey, Keisha? It’s Chad and—”
    The health store owner in Bridgeport who needed her advice every time he met a new man. “Chad, I don’t have time today.”
    “But I met this guy, he came into the store, and I think we kind of clicked, and I found out his birth date and I’m not sure we’re compatible because I’m a Virgo and—”
    “Not today,” Keisha said and hung up.
    She opened the fridge. She needed something strong to drink but there was nothing in there but Kirk’s bottles of Bud. That would have to do. She plunked herself down in a chair, cracked open a bottle, and took a long swig.
    Never again, she told herself. Never again.
    The thing was, Keisha didn’t know what other line of work she was suited for. Sales? Working in a department store? Greeting people as they came into Walmart? Didn’t you have to be a hundred to do that? Yeah, she’d cleaned houses once in a while, but even that was never entirely honest work for Keisha Ceylon. She found it hard not to take a peek into the backs of dresser drawers,