Katherine Hall Page - [Faith Fairchild Mystery 11] by The Body in the Moonlight

Author:The Body in the Moonlight
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-02-21T22:00:00+00:00

Murder had been in someone’s heart. Did Jared suspect someone? Someone close to Gwen?

By the end of the reading, Tom was almost shouting from the pulpit, like an avenging prophet of old.

“But thou, O God, shalt bring them down

into the pit of destruction;

bloody and deceitful men

shall not live out half their days.

But I will trust in thee.”

The last line was uttered so bitterly that a number of heads jerked up in surprise. Pix reached for Faith’s hand and gave it a hard squeeze. They stood to sing “I Cannot Think of Them As Dead,” and Faith was shivering under her thick coat. But not from the cold. Tom had been so passionate. So... so involved. His face was flushed.

It wasn’t an ordinary funeral.

There was a brief, almost hurried prayer. Then Jared came down from the choir loft and placed one perfect white rose on the coffin. It was over.

“You have to go to the reception,” Pix said.

“I know.” It wasn’t what Faith wanted to do at all. She wanted to go home, crawl under the covers, and try to sort out all the conflicting emotions she was feeling. Sorrow and fear predominated. It was unutterably sad. And horrible. And frightening. And threatening. Tom and Jared had left the sanctuary immediately. Tom and Jared, the chief mourners?

“I’ll take care of the kids. Go.” Pix gave her a gentle shove in the direction of the Parish Hall, where, Faith knew, a caterer—obviously not Have Faith, under the circumstances—had laid the New England equivalent of funeral baked meats: small white-bread sandwiches with anchovy paste, a millimeter of chicken or egg salad, and perhaps cucumber; trays of orange cheddar cheese cubes, Triscuits, and grapes; some butter cookies. And coffee, lots of coffee. She stopped at the ladies’ room to postpone the inevitable.

Even under the best conditions—the deceased age ninety-something, hale and hearty to a mercifully swift end—Faith hated funerals. And she’d had to attend an enormous number of them over the years. It went with the territory. Making her peace with death was something she planned to do in old age, and until then, she preferred not to think about it. Of course she knew she was going to die. It would be unnatural not to, and when she did, she wanted Ben, Amy, their spouses, her grandchildren, whoever was around, to display noisy, no-holding-back, proper grief. But the notion of this ultimate change from all she had been accustomed to was one she kept securely locked up, along with other dismal inevitables like cellulite and gray hair.

She sighed and made ready to leave the security of the toilet cubicle, which had been growing more and more attractive. She was about to open the door when she heard two women come in. They were talking. She recognized one as a cashier at the market; the other was someone Faith couldn’t identify.

“What a service! I don’t think I could have stood much more.”

“I know. Poor Jared. What will he do? His music will be a comfort to him—and his friends, but his life will never be the same.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.