Dead Weight (16 page)

I touched her hand with mine. ‘You
are
a nice person. You’ve been nothing but polite and generous the entire time I’ve known you. I don’t think you can be that way now, if you weren’t already that way.
And
, we don’t know that you killed your mother! Remember that!’

Berta sighed. ‘I know, but I just feel really bad about it, so maybe I did do it?’

‘Maybe you feel bad about it because she was your mother and you just found out she’s dead.’

‘Oh!’ she said, looking up. She smiled. ‘That could be it! I’m going through grief!’

‘Exactly!’ I said.

Ken came in the door from the garage. ‘Found ’em!’ he said, carrying in a box. ‘I thought I knew where she kept her high school memorabilia.’

He set the box down on the coffee table and we all stood to look into it. There were four blue yearbooks with white trim, ‘The Lion’s Roar’ imprinted in different ways on each book. I know the Codderville High School football team is called the Lions.

‘Does that ring any bells? The Lions?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. Ken pulled out all four books. ‘If Berta, I mean Rosalee, stopped going to school in 1993, that would have been her and Kerry’s sophomore year.’ He opened the front flap of each book, and, although they had been autographed profusely, each book had ‘Kerry Metcalf – Freshman,’ or ‘Sophomore’ or ‘Junior,’ etc., carefully printed in the upper left-hand corner of the inside cover. Even at fourteen, Kerry had been meticulous. He pulled out the sophomore book and flipped to the photos of the sophomores. We found Rosalee Bunch fairly early, being a ‘B’ and all. She had very light blonde hair, a pixie face, big hazel eyes, and a smile full of braces. The picture had been signed, ‘Rosie B.’

‘That’s me?’ Berta said.

‘That’s what it says,’ Ken said. He smiled at her. ‘You were adorable.’

‘Let’s look at Kerry!’ Berta said, grinning.

He flipped over to the ‘M’s’. Kerry Metcalf had the same dark hair, the same bangs, and the same ponytail. Strangely enough, she had a different nose. Ken’s face turned pink. ‘Ah, Kerry never told anyone about that. She was embarrassed she’d done it.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with her nose!’ Berta said, touching the nose in the picture.

‘I don’t see anything wrong either, but she did it nonetheless,’ Ken said.

Then we decided to read the autographs and on the back inside cover, we found Rosalee Bunch’s inscription. ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, you make me drink another beer and I’ll puke all over you!’ Signed, ‘Rosie B.’

‘Uh oh,’ Berta said. ‘We shouldn’t have been drinking at that age!’

‘Probably not,’ I agreed, thinking of my three girls who’d just finished their sophomore year.

‘I don’t understand why she didn’t tell you who you were,’ Ken said. ‘That’s just not like Kerry to do something like that.’

‘Because she knew about my mother, of course,’ Berta/Rosalee said. ‘She didn’t think I could handle it right now. She was waiting for me to remember, probably.’

Of course, I thought to myself. Absolutely no ulterior motive on Kerry’s part. Or maybe that was true.

We went through the freshman yearbook and found a much younger Rosalee and a much younger Kerry. And this younger Kerry had short dark hair and no bangs. But by sophomore year she’d found the do of her lifetime. Later on down the road, I’d like to get a look at Ken and Kerry’s wedding picture. I just had to know if she wore her hair in a ponytail on her wedding day.

At the bottom of the box were a bunch of photos banded together with a scrunchy. ‘Ooo, pictures!’ Berta said, picking them up.

She took off the scrunchy, looked at a picture, and handed it to me. I looked at it, then passed it over to Ken, who sat on the other side of Berta. The first photo was of Kerry and a boy a few years younger, whom Ken identified as her younger brother, Mark. In this and some of the subsequent pics, her hair was not in a ponytail – thus, it appeared these were taken before her sophomore year of high school. There were several pictures of the two of them, and a few more of them with what appeared to be an older sister, and an older couple Ken identified as their parents.

‘Where’s Mark now?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Last I heard he was somewhere in Central America. Belize, I think. Strangely enough, I’ve never met him.’

There were family Christmas photos, then, finally, pictures of Kerry and her friends, Rosalee Bunch always front and center. From freshman year (Kerry with short hair) through sophomore year (Rosalee present in the pictures), the pictures were all of the same people mostly. Kerry and Rosalee, three boys (one of them Mark, Kerry’s brother), and a younger girl, apparently the same age as Mark. The other two boys were Kerry and Rosalee’s age, and appeared to be romantically involved with the girls, at least if the pictures could be trusted. Kerry and a dark-haired boy kissing on the couch while the crowd apparently cheered them on, Rosalee on the lap of a red-headed boy.

Berta frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her.

‘Well,’ she said, still studying the picture of herself and the red-headed boy, ‘I don’t find red-headed men attractive.’ She looked up at me. ‘Would that change?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Ken?’

He shrugged too. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘He may not have been your boyfriend,’ he added. ‘He may have just been a friend and you were sitting on his lap as a joke or something.’

Berta was nodding before he had all his words out. ‘Exactly!’ she said. ‘I was thinking the same thing.’

‘Who’s the boy with Kerry?’ I asked.

‘I never knew his name. Her big love, though,’ Ken said. ‘She rarely talked about him. I think they had a really bad break-up.’

We finished the batch of pictures and started going through papers at the bottom of the box. Surprise, surprise. Kerry Metcalf Killian was a straight-A student. There were report cards, tests, and book reports, each with a big red A on the front, and words like ‘excellent,’ ‘very astute,’ and even one that said ‘masterful.’

‘I’m not surprised Kerry was so smart!’ Berta said. ‘She struck me as super smart.’

‘Oh, yes, she was,’ Ken said. ‘She should have gone to law school, but she decided I should go and she’d work to support me, then she’d start having babies and I could work to support her.’ Ken beamed. ‘And that’s just what we did!’

Berta beamed back at him. I was beginning to understand the attraction between these two: they were co-presidents of the Kerry Killian Fan Club.

I needed someone to bounce ideas off. It certainly wasn’t these two. As far as they were concerned, Kerry Killian could do no wrong. I was beginning to think Kerry had a hidden agenda when it came to helping Berta/Rosalee. Why didn’t Kerry tell Rosalee who she was? Why befriend her and hide her for all those months? My usual sounding board, Willis, was out of the question. I couldn’t go to Luna to talk it out – she, of course, didn’t want me involved in this. My former partner-in-crime, Trisha McClure, was having an affair with my husband—

Stop it, I told myself. Trisha’s not having an affair with Willis. I just made that whole thing up. She and Tom seemed very happy. The only proof I have that Trisha’s having an affair is that she didn’t go to the hairdresser like she told Megan. And even that might not be true. Megan could have missed something. Maybe her salon has a tanning booth and she’s doing it so slowly Megan didn’t notice the darkening. Of course with the drought currently upon us, and so many days of one-hundred-plus degrees, all you had to do was stand outside for five minutes and you’d have a South Beach tan.

And to take this whole thing another step, what proof do I have that Willis is having an affair? Proof, hell, I don’t even really have suspicion! He’s done nothing to make me feel he’s having an affair. This has all been my own paranoia. On the other hand, why leave me now? He’s had plenty of opportunity to leave me. This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve gotten involved in a murder.

Stop it! I told myself, more sternly this time. The question is: should I use Trisha as a sounding board?

I tuned back into Berta and Ken who were telling stories of the wondrousness of Kerry Killian. I said, ‘Let’s get off that subject for a minute. Let’s try something: Berta, go sit in that chair opposite mine.’ She did so. ‘Sit up straight, hands in your lap, eyes closed.’ She did so. ‘Now, deep, even breaths. In and out, in and out. Slowly. OK, I’m going to ask you questions about Rosalee Bunch, and you’re going to tell me everything you remember.’

Berta opened her eyes. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ she asked.

Well, it was worth a shot.

MEGAN

Mrs Mc had called and said she needed me to babysit. Mom was gone so I left her a note on the refrigerator telling her where I was. Which was more polite than she was – she was gone and there was no note anywhere! She expects us to do all these things that she demands, and yet she does none of them! And we’re supposed to respect that?

So anyway, I went over there, book in hand. I had no more plans of sneaking through Mrs Mc’s bedroom, or anywhere else in her house. I was totally scandalized by her affair. I couldn’t figure out who would have an affair with her, nor could I figure out why she would do it.

I mean, Mr Mc seemed nice enough, and he was certainly good-looking enough, so why would she be messing around on him? Maybe he beat her, I thought. Or gambled! Ooo, or maybe he was a secret drinker! I saw this made-for-Lifetime movie one time about this guy who was a secret drinker— Probably not a good time to go into that.

Anyway, I got to Mrs Mc’s house, knocked and went in. The girls were on the floor playing with Barbies. Personally, I like Barbies. My mother wouldn’t let Bess and me play with them because she thought they gave girls a poor body image (I don’t understand why – I’d love to have a body like Barbie’s!), so now both Bess and I play with them whenever we get the chance. I love her feet! Don’t you wish you had feet built to go straight into high heels? That would be so cool!

I sat down with the girls and they loaned me a Barbie. I was only halfway finished taking her clothes off to change her into an evening gown, when Mrs Mc came out of her room heading for the front door.

‘I’m off to the hairdresser,’ she said, and was out the door.

Well, if this woman was having an affair, she was piss-poor at hiding it, that’s all I can say. I was going to watch for Mom’s car and call her as soon as she got home. No way was Mrs Mc
not
up to something!

After leaving Ken’s house, having accomplished little more than finding out how long Kerry Killian had had her most recent hairstyle, I went straight to Trisha’s house, going so far as to pull into her driveway instead of my own. I had no time to be crossing streets!

I rang the doorbell and opened the door at the same time. My daughter Megan was half-standing when I moved across the threshold.

‘What are you doing here?’ we said in unison.

Megan made it all the way up, jumped over the girls, and grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the kitchen. Trisha’s kitchen was a standard issue builder’s kitchen from the early 1980s. What they call a galley kitchen – longish, and so narrow two people would not be able to stand side by side in it.

Megan said, ‘Guess where Mrs Mc is?’

‘At the hairdressers,’ I answered.

She put her index finger to her nose, a move we all learned watching a DVD of
The Sting
. ‘On the money!’ she said.

OK, maybe her second tan? Even I wasn’t buying this, and I actually wanted to. I didn’t want a friend with secrets. Not right now. Right now I needed an honest friend with no complications. I had enough complications for both of us. Again, as so often in the last ten or so years, I wished for Terry Lester, Bess’s birth mom, my best friend. My God, we could have torn this place up, the two of us. People with murderous intentions would run screaming for the hills if Terry and I were on the case.

Funny, I thought, not in a ‘ha ha’ way but in an ‘oh shit’ way, Terry and her family were the first dead bodies I’d ever found. And even then Willis was reluctant to get involved. But he finally did, involved enough to save the lives of the kids and me.

I moved into Trisha’s living room and sat down as far away from her daughters as possible. Megan sat down with the girls, occasionally looking over at me with a questioning look. I didn’t know what to tell her. If Trisha was telling Tom the same thing she told Megan and me, then he was either very stupid or not listening. And not listening can get you cuckolded in a New York minute.

I sat there for two hours, going through everything I knew about Berta’s case, and everything that had happened since the day Trisha and I went to Berta’s ‘memorial.’

I now understood the twelve-step programs. In a way it was a sort of wacky genius. If amnesia is caused by a knock on the head and an emotional trauma, go find out which emotional trauma caused it. The thing was, even with all the twelve-step programs, we still didn’t know what the emotional trauma was. The knock on the head presumably came from the hit-and-run. But what was the trauma? What had happened to Rosalee Bunch that had caused her mind to retreat? If Berta was any indicator, Rosalee Bunch was a nice woman. Slightly timid, afraid of her own shadow, and loyal to her friends. Why would she kill her mother? I needed to talk to Luna – that was the only way I’d be able to get ahold of any history of child abuse or neglect. There had to be a reason Rosalee hurt her mother, if, in fact, she had. And what if she hadn’t? Then someone else had set the fire – thrown those matches at the leaking propane tank. Was that what this was all about? Had Rosalee seen the person who caused the explosion and could identify him or her? Then why wait so long to do it? Rosalee had been gone since the night it happened. Luna had said there had been a search for her, thinking she might be hurt, but they found nothing – no sign of her. According to Rosalee’s file, still in a box in evidence, they’d finally decided she was, as they say in police-speak, ‘a person of interest.’ Was that the reason? She finally comes home and the killer is afraid she’s back for him, so he tries to kill her by running over her in a car? Then throwing an electric space heater in the tub with her? But it had been months between the two incidents.