Barclay, Linwood Novel 08 - Never saw it coming

in case there was something valuable stashed there, something she could help herself to that when the owner finally went to look for it, they’d have no idea when it actually went missing.
    She wanted to blame her dead mother at times like this, but Keisha knew, in her heart, that she was an adult now and responsible for her choices. The good ones, like keeping Matthew and doing her best by him even when his father didn’t give a damn. And the bad ones, like getting taken in by Kirk’s charm, and now having to live with the consequences. But Jesus, her mother really was a piece of work, and Keisha felt entitled to lay at least some of the blame at her door.
    The way they lived. Always moving from town to town, Marjorie surveying the local papers for obituaries to find men who’d recently lost their wives and just happening to show up on their doorstep, offering her services as a housekeeper, but not before putting on her lipstick, letting her hair fall down around her shoulders, and unbuttoning that top button on her blouse. “Your wife just died?” she’d say, with a hint of Alabama in her voice. “I had no idea I was troubling you at such a time. I’m just looking for some work to support myself and my daughter here, but I won’t trouble you a moment longer . . . What’s that? Why, I must confess, I wouldn’t mind a glass of lemonade.”
    Marjorie’d worm her way into some lonely man’s heart just long enough to gain his trust, and access to his bank account.
    And then they were off to the next town.
    “Can’t we live in one place for a while?” Keisha’d ask her mom. “So I could go to school and make friends?”
    The longest they stayed anywhere was when Marjorie got a job managing a rooming house in Middlebury where almost all the residents were elderly, living alone, and scraping by on their Social Security checks, out of which they paid the rent. Marjorie had been thinking of quitting—the owner, who lived down in Florida, didn’t pay her much to run the joint—but then one of the residents died in his sleep one night, and Marjorie had an epiphany. If she didn’t report poor old Garnett’s death, and got rid of his body, she could cash, and keep, his Social Security checks when they arrived each month. If she rented out the room to someone else, she could pocket the entire amount.
    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.