Dead Weight (26 page)

Berta shrugged. ‘Yes,’ she said, not too sure of herself. ‘To a city.’ She looked at me. ‘A big city. But not in Texas.’

‘It’ll come,’ Carolyn said.

Luna nodded, and continued. ‘Trisha said Rosie called her last year, said she needed money, and if Trisha wanted her to continue to keep quiet about what Ray did she was going to have to pay her $30,000.’

‘Oh my God! I did that?’ Rosie cried. ‘How awful!’

‘That’s a weird amount,’ I said. ‘$30,000. I mean, why not $50,000? Or $25,000?’

As if mesmerized, Rosie said, ‘$27,592.53.’

‘Pardon?’ I said.

Rosie looked up. ‘That’s the amount I needed,’ she said.

‘For what?’ Luna asked.

Rosie shook her head. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘OK,’ Luna said, sighing. ‘Anyway. Trisha said she agreed to meet her late that night by the old ball park in Codderville. When she got there, she saw Rosie walking along the road and says she couldn’t help herself. She professes she, excuse the expression, “just went nuts,” and ran her down, then zoomed off for home. Where I supposed she kissed her daughters and tucked them into bed.’

Luna doesn’t have much use for excuses. I can kind of see her point.

‘So,’ I said, taking up the story, ‘we know what happened after that. Did Trisha think Rosie was dead?’

‘She said she kept looking in the papers and never saw anything about a dead body, but just hoped she’d missed it,’ Luna sad. ‘Although, really, a dead body in Codderville? Front-page news.’

‘So how did she find out I was alive?’ Rosie asked.

‘The twelve-step groups,’ I said. ‘You showed up in her MADD group and, even though you’d colored your hair, wore glasses, and gained weight, she must have recognized you.’

Rosie nodded. ‘Not at first though. I’d been to, like, maybe two or three MADD meetings before the electric space heater in the bathtub incident,’ she said.

‘And what about that stupid attempt?’ I asked Luna. ‘What does Trisha have to say about that?’

‘She claims she had an extension cord and had it all plugged in nicely. She claims it’s all Rosie’s fault. Says she’s a witch and she can’t be killed.’

Rosie laughed and covered her mouth with her hands. Bringing them down, she said, ‘Well, that explains so much!’

We all had a nice laugh to relieve the tension, then I asked, ‘But why kill Kerry?’

‘She said Kerry called her at home the afternoon after you and Trisha visited her. She recognized Trisha as Patti then – whose full name by the way is Patricia Rene Thornton McClure. The first time she met Trisha when you called at her office she couldn’t see past her changed appearance – eighteen years is a long time. Anyway, Kerry asked her if she was Patti, then accused her of running down Rosie. Asked her what she wanted and why she was doing this. Trisha said she told Kerry she’d explain everything if Kerry would meet her at Kerry’s office late that afternoon. She said when she got there, Kerry was pacing up and down, wringing her hands, and she knew she was about to blow – her words, Ken,’ Luna said to Kerry’s husband, ‘and knew she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut. So, anyway—’

‘So she shot her,’ one of the twins said.

Ken put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. ‘At least we know now,’ he told his boys. ‘Your mom was trying to save a friend.’

‘Why would she trust her? I mean, jeez, Mom, you already thought she tried to kill Rosie!’ the boy said, raising his head as if to speak to the ceiling.

‘Your mom was a good woman,’ Rosie said. ‘If I’d known what she planned to do, Keith, I would have stopped her.’

‘No one’s blaming you, Berta – I mean, Rosie,’ Ken, Sr said.

‘Really, Rosie,’ Keith said, ‘none of this is your fault. Let’s be pragmatic,’ the boy said. ‘All this is that bitch Mrs McClure’s fault.’

‘Language!’ Ken, Sr said automatically.

Keith looked askance at his dad. ‘Really, Dad?
Really?
’

Ken shrugged. Ken, Jr, said, ‘But what about Uncle Mark? That was her, wasn’t it?’

‘She denies it,’ Luna said, ‘but her brother Ray said she knew he was coming to town because Ray told her. Mark had called him, thinking they could get together for drinks while he was in town for the funeral, and he mentioned it to Trisha – or Patti, or whatever. He said Patti had the hots for Mark back in the day, but Mark wasn’t into her. According to Ray, she confessed on the phone to him last night that she’d killed both Mark and Kerry. So,’ Luna said, ‘maybe she killed him because she thought that he, too, would recognize her, or because she’d waited a long time to get revenge for the rejection, or both.’

‘Trisha seemed so normal,’ I said. ‘I liked her.’

‘Me, too,’ Rosie said and touched my hand. ‘I’m sorry you lost a friend.’

‘Hey, Lieutenant Luna,’ one of the boys said, ‘could you give me and Ken here maybe fifteen minutes alone with this bitch?’

‘Almost wish I could,’ Luna said, giving Keith a sad smile. ‘The state would save a lot of money if I could just turn murderers over to their victims’ families.’

‘Then you’d get these serious church types who’d forgive them and let them go,’ Carolyn Gable said.

‘You’ve got a point,’ Luna said. ‘Anyway, although Codderville and Black Cat Ridge are only a few miles apart geographically, they’re a thousand miles apart economically. Maybe Trisha thought coming back to the area, but living in Black Cat Ridge, no one would recognize her. Bottle blonde-haired beauty married to a rich man – who would suspect the little girl whose Daddy drank himself to death? Who did she recognize first? No one until Rosie showed up out of the blue? Once Rosie came out in the open, it was almost impossible for Trisha to get to her, but since she came to believe that maybe Rosie really did have amnesia after she’d run her over, everything was OK. Then there’s Kerry and, the cherry on the top, Timothy Quartermyer was given the Black Cat Ridge parish and she began to believe again that it was all going to come out – that he would also recognize either her or Rosie, so she felt she had to kill him as well. When Trisha confessed to Ray last night, he knew it would only be a matter of time before she tried to do the same to Tim. He called her this afternoon to say it had to stop and that he wasn’t going to let her hurt anyone else. That’s when she rang Megan about her ‘emergency,’ picking her and the girls up on her way to the clinic to speak to Ray. But she was too late – he had already left to warn Tim.’

‘So we’re saying she’s a little nutso,’ Vera said.

‘No, now, don’t start with that defense!’ Luna said. ‘She’s as sane as you and me.’

‘What was Ray talking about with their dad?’ I asked.

‘I asked him about that,’ Luna said. ‘Ray said his dad was a heavy drinker, used to get Ray drunk when he was just a kid because he thought it was funny. And he sexually abused Trisha, according to Ray. She denies it, but it would explain why she was so determined to protect Ray. No one else knew about her past. As she said to Rosie, he was the only person she could really confide in.’

‘Maybe if she admitted it, it could help in her defense,’ I said.

‘Whose side are you on?’ Luna said.

‘On the side of truth and justice, always,’ I said.

MEGAN

I never did get that hundred dollars Mrs McClure promised me. I suppose she’ll need it for her defense. Her husband got her a lawyer, saying he couldn’t defend her because she was his wife. I thought only doctors had that rule. Anyway, he moved his kids to Austin where his practice is, so I’m not babysitting any more. Their house is on the market and there’s a Kerry Killian sign on it. Mr Killian gave up his part-time law practice and is now taking over Mrs Killian’s real estate company. Keith said he had to become a licensed realtor, but he passed the test with flying colors. Keith and I talk on the phone a lot, and we’ve met a couple of times at the pool. I think he approves of my swimsuit, if you know what I mean.

I never did see my fireman again. He was kind of old, I guess, but that’s all relative. I mean, say I’m fifteen now and he’s like thirty. When I’m thirty, he’ll be forty-five, which isn’t that much older, know what I mean? Once you hit thirty, you’re old no matter what, so what’s the difference?

Bess and Ken have been hanging out some and we’ve talked about maybe double dating, but nobody drives and it’s so gross to have somebody’s parents drop you off somewhere. We’ve been thinking about maybe getting Graham to do it. Then Alicia can come along and it’ll be like a triple date. I mean, after all, it’s totally obvious to both me and Bess that she has a thing for big bro. She won’t admit it, but we know she does!

This whole thing with Mrs McClure has taught me a lesson: go with my first instinct. I knew something was up with her and that hairdresser business! Obviously, if a woman will lie about something as basic as beauty treatments, then she’d could do just about anything! Am I right?

My minivan was totaled. Oh, gee. What a shame. The insurance payout was a nice hefty down payment on an Audi A5 Cabriolet. Not a two-seater, but I love it. Totally and completely! I want to marry it. Willis says I can. Oh, and Willis. He’s home. He looks sort of rakish with only one earlobe. Vera is knitting him a pale pink ear cozy, but I doubt if he’ll ever wear it.

Good news on the Berta/Rosie front. She remembered that the ‘$27,592.53’ was how much she needed to keep the bank from foreclosing on her home. She just didn’t remember where her home was. So we ran some ads in the major papers of several large cities – not in Texas – with Rosie’s picture but no name. I put my cell phone number in the ads.

While we waited for responses, I drove Rosie out to where Ken and I had gone that day – to the location of the trailer Rosie had shared with her mother. I brought hedge clippers and a rake. When we got to the trailer, a funny thing happened.

A smile appeared on Rosie’s face. ‘Mama,’ she whispered.

‘What do you see?’ I asked her, my voice barely above a whisper.

‘We’re making Christmas decorations. We just wandered around outside and found stuff that would look pretty, and Mama bought some red construction paper. And we’re making wreaths and stuff.’ She laughed. ‘Mama was very talented. Very artistic. She worked at the dry cleaners in town. And when someone left something more than sixty days, she would bring it home and make me something – even if it was a man’s suit, she could turn it into something really pretty.’

‘This is a one-bedroom—’ I started. I guess, me being a woman who has plenty, that one bedroom had gotten to me.

‘We had twin beds and shared it, like sisters, Mama used to say. She was fourteen when she had me, so we were pretty close in age.’ Rosie looked at me. ‘I remember her,’ she said. She came to me and put her arms around me and hugged me close. ‘Thank you.’

The next week I got a call from a man named Ed Flushing. His wife Rosie had left back in November to come to Texas to get an inheritance, she said, that might be able to save their home. He didn’t know where in Texas because she never talked about her past, but he recognized her picture.

He and their kids came down from Chicago a couple of weeks after we put the ad in the paper, and everything began to fall in place for Rosie. And this was the kicker: Ed Flushing and both her son and daughter were redheads!

At one point she turned to me and whispered, ‘Don’t ever tell him I thought I wasn’t attracted to red-headed men, OK?’

I mimed locking my lips and throwing away the key.

Ed hadn’t been able to save their home, but did find another job – having been laid off led to the foreclosure – in a small town in southern Illinois.

‘I think you’ll like it,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of laid-back, and the schools are great. And there are three beauty shops there always looking for beauticians.’

‘Oh!’ Rosie said. ‘I’m a beautician?’

Ed laughed. ‘Yeah, you are.’

‘Mom, did you forget me?’ her daughter asked.

Rosie put her hands on either side of her daughter’s face. ‘For only a minute, darlin’. Only a minute.’

Rosie went back to Illinois with her family, but will have to come back to testify at Trisha’s trial. Trisha’s brother Ray pled guilty to manslaughter in the death of Rosie’s mother and has already gone to Huntsville, where the state prison is. I hear they have a good AA program there; I hope he takes advantage of it.

It’s going to be an interesting trial, as Trisha and her lawyer are pleading insanity, but with as many people as the district attorney will be calling – everybody involved – I don’t see how she can keep a straight face on that one.

We’ll see.