Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

about the dog?” Billie folded the paper in half. She looked over at Alcatraz in the corner. He was curled up in his tail-chasing posture, dreaming doggie dreams. “Do you think Alcatraz would like a friend?”
    “He has a friend. Me. Dog’s best friend.”
    “I mean Rosie.”
    “I know you do. And no. Alcatraz likes the spotlight. He wouldn’t want to share it. Especially with a dog that has had her picture in the paper.”
    Billie was wearing a thin flannel robe and a pair of those old fuzzy slippers that used to be so popular. Maybe they still are. Hers were pink. Alcatraz had a pair as well, handed down from his godmother Billie. His
used
to be pink. If I ever want to hear my dog’s primal growl I simply insert one of those slippers between his teeth. Never fails.
    “The article says here that you had no comment,” Billie said. She looked up from the paper. “That sounds a tad sinister.”
    I shrugged. “I had nothing to add.” I’m sure that Jay Adams would simply say that he was being thorough in adding that fact that “Hitchcock Sewell, co-proprieter of the funeral home where the body was delivered, had no comment.” But I suspected he was also taking a little jab at me for my chorus of nopes.
    “I’m still not comfortable with our conducting this poor girl’s funeral,” Billie said. “It smacks of opportunism. It feels disrespectful somehow. Am I just being batty?”
    I looked across the table at the woman in the flannel robe and pink fuzzy slippers, dipping a Bordeaux cookie into her rum-laced tea. Batty? Come, come.
    I reminded her, “We didn’t lobby for the job. It was Kruk’s idea. The sister went along.”
    “Do you really think that the killer is going to be so foolish as to show up? Isn’t your detective friend asking for a bit much?”
    “When did he become my detective friend?”
    She ignored me. “If you killed someone, would you show up at their funeral?”
    “Kruk is figuring it a couple of ways. If Helen Waggoner knew her killer well, then he or she
has
to show up. Their absence would put the spotlight right on them. That’s one thought. Another thought is that whoever did it took the effort to bring the body to a funeral home, which would possibly suggest some level of compassion.”
    “Not killing her in the first place would suggest some level of compassion.”
    “Okay then. Remorse. Maybe something got out of hand, and the next thing you know someone shot her who really hadn’t intended to and then freaked out. I can buy the argument that a person with a guilty conscience would at least deliver the body to a funeral home. It doesn’t exactly make up for them killing the person. But it’s a gesture.”
    Billie made a gesture herself. Of dismissal. “They could turn themselves in.”
    “Sure. And they still might. That’s also part of Kruk’s thinking. Hold the funeral right where the killer dropped off the body, and maybe the killer will show up. Maybe he’ll attend the funeral and then turn himself in.”
    Billie nibbled at her Bordeaux. “I hope we don’t have a drama right in the middle of the service.” She picked up her teacup. “Shall we play for it?”
    I shook my head. I had already been thinking about this. “I’ll do it.”
    Billie’s cup was raised to her lips. She held it there and eyed me over its rim. “Oh?”
    “Yes. Oh.”
    “As you wish.”
    As a rule, Billie and I play a round of cribbage to determine which of us is going to prep the cadaver and be the front man for the funeral. Not always. Sometimes we have back-to-back-to-backs, and we simply divvy things up equitably and that’s that. But otherwise, we play for it. Billie taught me cribbage after my parents were hit by the beer truck and I had moved in to be raised by her and ugly Uncle Stu. She’s a good player and a good teacher. And I’m a good learner, so we’re pretty even. I’ve scoured antique shops all over the city and have come up with over a dozen different cribbage