Barclay, Linwood Novel 08 - Never saw it coming

woman her money back and never see her again. She’d very nearly done it, too.
    Gail got out of the car. A Milford police cruiser pulled up. Wedmore spoke to the driver, then looked at Keisha and waited. Reluctantly, Keisha moved from the Jag to the police car, Wedmore holding the door for her, saying, “I’ll drop by and see you a little later.”
    Keisha felt the dread envelop her like a cold, wet sleeping bag.
    * * *
    Kirk’s truck wasn’t in the driveway when the police dropped Keisha at her house. She bristled. He’d promised he’d be here for when Matthew got home from school, which he would be in the next few minutes, unless the boy went to his friend Brendan’s house.
    Only yesterday she’d been thinking she had to get that man out of her life. Now she’d bound herself to Kirk even more tightly by enlisting his help today. She’d lost all her leverage. How did you kick someone out when he knew you’d killed a man? Sure, they were in this together, up to a point. Kirk had helped her cover things up, destroyed evidence. But she was betting he could walk into the Milford police station and cut himself a deal if he was willing to roll on her.
    So he was more than an accomplice. He was a potential liability. How would he hold up to an interrogation by Detective Wedmore? She seemed to have a pretty good grasp on what had happened at the Garfield house. She was guessing, of course, but Keisha had been too, when she was relating her “vision” to Wendell Garfield, and look how close she’d gotten.
    As worried as Keisha was about getting caught, about what would happen to her, there was a greater concern underlying all of this.
    What would happen to Matthew?
    If the police took her away, if they charged her with murder, if she failed to persuade a jury that she’d acted in self-defense, and was sent to prison, what would happen to her boy?
    Here she was, cursing her mother on the one hand, and repeating the pattern she’d set on the other. Raising a child while living on the edges of the law, you had to know that one day it could all blow up in your face. But Keisha’d never considered her crimes as serious as those her mother committed. She didn’t hide bodies and steal Social Security checks. She wheedled money out of people, but it was always their choice, ultimately. The people she conned had to know, at some level, that they were being taken advantage of. They knew what was going on, and they didn’t mind.
    Keisha never expected anyone to die.
    What about Caroline? she wondered. Her cousin, in San Francisco? Would she take in Matthew, if it came to that?
    Caroline, whose mother was Keisha’s mother’s sister, was a nice, decent woman. She had an honest job as a concierge at the Ritz-Carlton, and a husband named Earl who drove for FedEx. They had three children. Two girls, twelve and fifteen, and a son, seven. Good, hard-working people.
    So decent, in fact, that they had little to do with Keisha. She was the family’s shame, the one who was raised by the family’s previous embarrassment, the one who made her living in a sketchy way, the one who got knocked up by a soldier who’d rather do another tour in Iraq than be a father.
    But no matter how much Caroline might look down her nose at her cousin, she never took it out on Matthew. Even though she didn’t see her second cousin often, she never forgot to phone him on his birthday, or send him a small present at Christmas. This past year, she even mailed him some chocolate eggs at Easter.
    Matthew’d be better off with Caroline and Earl, Keisha thought, even if I don’t get arrested.
    No, no, that wasn’t true. For all her faults, Keisha believed she was a good mother. She loved her son more than anything in the world, and he loved her. As long as it was possible for them to be together, they would be.
    Should she call her cousin? Keisha contemplated phoning Caroline, telling her something had come up, she might have to send Matthew out there for a few days. Once he was there, if the police did pick her up, Caroline would hold onto him. She’d do the right thing. She was that kind of person.
    These thoughts ran through Keisha’s mind as she unlocked the front door of her rented house and walked into the living room. Saw Kirk’s unfinished beer and half-eaten Twinkie on the coffee table.
    She looked at the clock. Any moment now, Matthew would be home.
    Outside, she heard a car door slam. Seconds later, the front door opened and