Drop Dead Divas by Virginia Brown

Author:Virginia Brown [Brown, Virginia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

CHAPTER 14

Funerals are really for the living, I’ve decided over the years. The dead aren’t actually there to appreciate how many people dress up and show up, except maybe in spirit. Nor are they there to hear the eulogies spoken on their behalf.

That can be a good thing.

It turns out that Roland “Race” Champion wasn’t a frequent church-goer. Nor was his family. In fact, it was doubtful any of them had seen the inside of a church except for funerals in their entire lives. So the minister who was drafted to perform the services had to separate gossip from fact and try to come up with a polite, gracious speech about how wonderful a man had been taken away far too young from the bosom of his loving family.

Ministers are probably grossly underpaid.

It would have made more sense to me to just have the funeral home take care of all those details and have the service in their own chapel, but I wasn’t consulted. And apparently there was some kind of scheduling conflict at the Ashland Methodist church, so the services were to be conducted graveside in the Ashland cemetery on School Street.

A long, solemn procession of cars filed behind the black hearse as it rolled up and down the hilly highway between Holly Springs and Ashland. The twenty miles had never seemed quite so far. I sat up front with Bitty—sans pug—and Rayna and Gaynelle sat in the back.

“Where will the wake be held?” Rayna wondered aloud, and I turned to look at her.

“If you’re referring to the gathering after the funeral, I hope you don’t expect me to go there.”

“Why not? If you’re going to the funeral, you might as well get to eat some good food later.”

“That’s only if you know who’s doing the cooking,” I said.

“Trinket, remember where we live. Since the Champions don’t really belong to a church, I can almost guarantee you there will be Baptist and Methodist ladies’ societies trying to outdo each other with covered dishes and desserts.”

I reflected a moment, then nodded. “That’s probably true. Then it depends on where the wake is being held as to whether or not I go.”

Rayna and Gaynelle both nodded understanding. At least once in our lives I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves at someone’s house for an after-funeral gathering that included family pets walking on counters, tables, and the stove, and hosts of insects lined up greedily at food platters. There are bathrooms in this world so dirty that I prefer to go outside behind a bush rather than risk my bare behind on a toilet seat occupied by hordes of bacteria. In fact, I prefer an old-fashioned outhouse to some of the bathrooms I’ve been unfortunate enough to see in my lifetime. It’s enough to scar people forever.

At any rate, with the matter of the wake settled, we discussed odds and ends of gossip rather than what was really on our minds. The motive for Race’s murder still hung in the air like a giant question mark.

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