“I bet you have to be very knowledgeable to work there. You have to know about so many things. About paint, and lumber, and plumbing and appliances. All the different kinds of screws and nuts and bolts? Am I right? They don’t pay you just for the work you do. They pay you for what you know. For your experience.”
“Go on.”
“It’s no different with me,” Keisha explained. “This is my livelihood. I have a gift, and I’m offering to use it to help you. But I don’t provide a service without some reward for my knowledge and experience. If you were to hire a private detective to assist you in locating your wife, you wouldn’t expect him to put in his time and use his experience without compensation.”
“Oh, of course not.”
“I’m pleased to hear you say that.”
“And what sort of money are we talking here, Ms. Ceylon?” he asked.
“One thousand dollars,” she said, not being the slightest bit shy about it.
His eyebrows went up. “You’re not serious.”
“I believe the sum is reasonable,” Keisha said.
He thought about it. “I’m not a rich man.”
“I understand,” she said. “I
’ve taken that into account.”
“So there’s a sliding scale? You take a look at the house and the kind of cars in the driveway, and if you see a Beemer you jack the price up? What the market will bear and all that?”
She started to get up once again. “I think I’ll just be on my way, Mr. Garfield, if that’s okay with—”
“How about this,” he said. “You give me a hint of what your vision’s all about, a little sneak peek, and if it sounds credible to me, then I’ll give you five hundred dollars. And if the information you have leads to my finding Ellie, I’ll pay you another five hundred.”
She considered his words a moment, then said, “I will tell you about a few of the initial flashes that have come to me. If you wish to hear more, how the images evolved, then I will tell you everything for the full amount of one thousand dollars.”
He let out a long sigh, wondering how this all might look to a third party. His wife is missing, and he’s going back and forth with this woman like he’s buying a new Toyota. But he still didn’t know what her game was, and he was wary, though it didn’t strike him that he had anything to lose by accepting the deal she was proposing.
“Okay,” he said.
“I’m very pleased,” she said. “Not just because we’ve reached a satisfactory arrangement, but because I do very much want to help you.”
“Yeah, yeah, fine.”
“Do you have something of your wife’s that I might be able to hold?”
“What for?”
“It helps.”
“I thought you’d already had your vision. I don’t get why you need something of Ellie’s to hold onto.”
“It’s all part of the process. Some of the fuzzier details in my vision may come into sharper focus if I’m in possession of something that belongs to the person, something that’s come into close contact with them.”
“What do you need?”
“An article of clothing would be best.”
“Like, her bathrobe or something?”
Keisha nodded. Garfield sighed, stood, and went upstairs. A moment later he was coming back down the stairs with a pink robe in his hands. It was faded and tattered from years of wear.
“Thank you,” Keisha said, placing the robe in her lap and laying both hands on it. She ran her fingertips over the flannel material and closed her eyes.
Several seconds went by without her saying a word. Finally Garfield interrupted her trance state and said, “You getting bad reception there? You want to go outside or something? Get more bars for your vision?”
Keisha’s eyes flashed open and she looked at him with something bordering on contempt. “Is it all a joke to you, Mr. Garfield? Your wife is gone, you have no idea whether something’s happened to her, and you joke?”
“I’m sorry. Go ahead, do your thing.”
She closed her eyes again, took a few seconds to get back into the mood. “I’m feeling some . . . tingling.”
“Tingling?”
“It’s a little bit like when the hairs go up on the back of your neck. That’s when I know I’m starting to sense something.”
“What? What are you sensing?”
Keisha opened her eyes. “This was what first came to me, when I started picking up something about Ellie’s predicament. Your wife, she’s . . .”
“She’s what?”
“She’s cold,” Keisha said. “Your wife is very, very cold.”
Nine
While Keisha was waiting to see whether he’d take the bait, thereby giving her a chance to reel him in, she was thinking about her starting point. Cast a wide net to begin with, then narrow the focus. Why not start with the weather?
It was winter, after all. Everybody was cold. Wherever Ellie Garfield was, it only stood to reason she’d be feeling chilled. Okay, maybe that wasn’t true. The night she disappeared, she could have steered her car south and headed straight to Florida. She could have been there in a day, and by now might be working on a pretty decent tan.
“What do you mean, cold?” Garfield asked. For the first time since she’d gotten here, he seemed intrigued. Drawn in.