‘Ellie tried to phone the father a few times,’ Garfield said. ‘But whenever she called his house, she got his mother.’ The man frowned. ‘Ellie was very upset about the whole situation.’
Keisha thought she might be picking up something else here. ‘Ellie was upset.’ ‘Whenever she called.’ Wendell had started using the past tense when talking about Ellie. Had Garfield already given up on finding his wife? Was he already thinking she was dead?
Keisha told herself she was reading too much into the comments. Garfield was talking about incidents that had happened in the past. So speaking of his wife in the past tense made sense, at least in this context.
‘Do you think that maybe Lester is involved in my wife’s disappearance?’ he asked her.
She liked the fact that Wendell was starting to ask her questions. As if she might actually have answers. The hook was firmly set now. He wasn’t going to get away. It would be easy to start making him think that way, that maybe his wife had run into Lester and things had turned bad.
However, if Keisha went down that route, it might confirm suspicions that she guessed Garfield already had about her. He might be thinking that she was steering her vision whatever way he led her. She could come back to this later. It was best to go in another direction now and throw him something unexpected.
‘The car,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I keep seeing something about the car.’
‘Which car? Lester’s car?’
‘No, your wife’s car. A Nissan.’
‘That’s right. A 2007. It’s silver. What about the car?’
Keisha closed her eyes again. She took her hands off Ellie’s robe that was still in her lap and rubbed her forehead. ‘It’s … The car’s not on the road.’
Garfield said nothing.
‘It’s definitely not on the road. It’s … it’s …’
Garfield seemed to be holding his breath. ‘It’s what?’ he asked, suddenly impatient. ‘If it’s not on the road, then where the hell is it?’
Keisha took her fingers away from her head, opened her eyes, and looked the man squarely in the eye.
‘I think this is where we have to talk about my fee, Mr Garfield. I believe I’m closing in on something, and it’s going to require all my powers of concentration. I don’t want to be distracted by wondering whether you’re going to do the right thing.’
He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and over his teeth.
‘You’ll take a cheque?’
Seven
Wendell
When Keisha had talked about Ellie being so very cold, he had to admit it had thrown him. However, when she hadn’t gone into specifics, he decided it didn’t mean anything. It was winter. It was cold. Big deal. It didn’t mean the woman was a geniune psychic. She had about as much talent at communicating with the missing and the dead as that weather lady on the six o’clock news did in predicting whether it was going to rain tomorrow.
But then she had mentioned the car. Why had she suddenly wanted to talk about the car? Then she said it was ‘definitely not on the road’.
She was right about that.
That car was at the bottom of a lake. No one was going to find it, not for a very, very long time, if ever. The water had to be forty or fifty feet deep there, he bet. It was probably already covered over with ice. It had gotten even colder since Thursday night. It’d be spring before there was a chance of anyone finding it, and even then the odds seemed pretty remote. Someone would have to be diving, right there, to come across it. Even if some fishermen snagged on to it with their lines, it wasn’t as if the car was going to float to the surface like an old boot. They’d have to cut their line and put on a new hook.
How could Keisha Ceylon know the car was not on the road?
It could be a lucky guess, as simple as that. But what if it wasn’t?
If it wasn’t, Garfield saw two possibilities.
One possibility was that this woman actually had the gift of second sight. He’d never bought into this kind of thing before, but who knew? Maybe some people really were born with special powers. Maybe this woman did have visions. How else could you explain that story about Nina, the little girl kidnapped by the neighbour?
So if Keisha had this gift, and she really had a vision about Ellie, then she knew something.
The second possibility – which was no more comforting – was that this psychic thing was an act, a total sham. It was just complete and utter rubbish. She had put on a performance, to cover the fact that, although she had information, it had come to her in a much less mystical way.
She had seen what happened, not in a vision, but with her own eyes.