Read Online Dead Weight by Susan Rogers Cooper - Free Book Online

Luna asked Berta.
    Berta shook her head and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t tell Kerry about the memorial service. I did all that myself. She put a For Sale sign in my yard to make it look like I’d moved. She thought that would be enough. But I knew they wouldn’t leave me alone until they thought I was dead.’
    ‘Who is “they?”’ Luna asked.
    But I interrupted. ‘How did you do all that? Your memorial service?’
    Luna shot me another look, but Berta perked up a bit and began to talk. ‘Oh, it was easy! I called the church and told them about my friend who died here but was from out of town and wanted a memorial service here as well. And they said sure and I sent them a check. And then I just ordered flowers and had handouts made. Then I emailed all the groups, except one who I had to call. I disguised my voice.’
    ‘Why did they have conflicting stories of how you died?’ I asked.
    Berta had the grace to blush. ‘Well, I got kind of bored with the whole thing and so I got a little inventive.’
    ‘I’ll say,’ I said, laughing. ‘Being dragged by a car—’
    ‘Enough!’ Luna fairly shouted. ‘You said someone tried to kill you. Who was it?’
    Berta lifted her head again where it had drifted back to stare at the table top, and looked at Luna. ‘I don’t know,’ she said succinctly.
    ‘You don’t know?’ Luna repeated.
    ‘No, I don’t know.’
    ‘Why don’t you know?’ Luna asked.
    ‘Why don’t I know?’ Berta repeated. She looked totally confused. Then she said, with a little aggression, ‘Because I don’t! Jeez!’
    The powers that be took that moment to turn the lights back on. We all blinked at the bright light. And, for the first time, I noticed Willis was staring straight at me.
    ‘What?’ I said. OK, also a little aggressively.
    ‘You just do whatever you want whenever you want to do it, don’t you?’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean a thing to you what I say or what I want.’
    ‘You’re not the boss of me,’ I said.
    ‘OK,’ Luna said, ‘you kids need to let the grown-ups talk now.’
    I glared at her.
    ‘Why do you think someone is trying to kill you?’ Luna asked Berta.
    ‘Did you see my bathroom?’ Berta asked, more aggressively.
    ‘Besides that. Did you steal something from someone? Witness a crime? Sleep with someone’s husband? Threaten to tell a lover’s wife on him? What did you do that would make someone else try to kill you?’
    Berta shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
    Luna sighed. ‘Did you steal something?’ she asked slowly.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Witness a crime?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Sleep with someone’s husband?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Luna literally threw up her arms. ‘What the hell does that mean? How can you not know if you stole something, or witnessed something?’
    There was a taut silence that was finally broken when Berta said, ‘Because I don’t know anything. I don’t even know my own name.’
    The story went something like this: Berta woke up in Codderville Memorial Hospital last October. A nurse saw she was awake and sent for the doctor. The doctor was dealing with an emergency and it took him over an hour to get to her. During that hour Berta managed to find out where she was and realized that she knew only one thing about herself – that she was in deep doo-doo. She didn’t know from whence the doo-doo was coming, only that it was. And she knew she couldn’t trust anyone. So when the doctor told her that she didn’t have any I.D. on her and they needed to know her name, she noted the following: the doctor’s name was Robert Simms and he was wearing a Harris tweed jacket. Voila , Berta Harris. She made up an out-of-town address and said she couldn’t remember her social security number. They told her she’d been found unconscious on the side of the road. She had two broken fingers, bruises and abrasions, and a cut on the back of her head that needed four stitches. Dr