The Funeral Was Built Around One Deadly Lie

CHAPTER 2 - THE FALSE DEATH CERTIFICATE

Paramedics rushed my father to the hospital.

Police stopped Maria in the parking lot.

She insisted she had done nothing wrong.

"Charles attacked me," she claimed. "He became violent and collapsed."

The detective held up the black tape removed from my father's mouth.

"Did he tape himself?"

Maria asked for an attorney.

At the hospital, doctors discovered a powerful sedative in my father's blood.

The dosage could have slowed his breathing until an untrained person believed he was dead.

But he had never stopped breathing.

No hospital had examined him.

No ambulance had been called.

Maria had arranged a private funeral less than twelve hours after his supposed death.

The funeral director admitted she demanded a sealed coffin and immediate burial.

She provided a death certificate signed by Dr. Leonard Hall.

That was the name my father had whispered.

"We need to find him," I told the detective.

Dr. Hall's listed clinic was empty.

The telephone number had been disconnected.

His medical license number belonged to a retired pediatrician living in another state.

The man who signed my father's certificate was not a licensed doctor.

When my father regained consciousness, he could not speak clearly.

The drug had weakened him, and his throat was injured from struggling against the tape.

A nurse gave him a writing board.

His hand trembled as he wrote two words:

STUDY SAFE.

Then he added:

TRUST NOAH.

Noah Bennett was my father's attorney and closest friend.

He had handled our family's affairs for twenty years.

"He called me this morning," I said. "He told me Dad's will left everything to Maria."

My father's eyes filled with panic.

He shook his head violently.

"Noah changed the will," I whispered.

My father tapped the board.

Then he wrote another sentence.

Maria was not working alone.

The hospital door opened.

A nurse entered carrying flowers supposedly sent by Noah.

Hidden beneath the roses was a small glass bottle.

It contained the same sedative found in my father's blood.