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Clifford: “At least I’ll die happy.”

Jake just shook his head.

Grandma: “I’ll be at your funeral.”

Clifford: “Oh, listen, I need to go. Sara’s choking on her slushie.”

The call went dead.

I stiffened and looked over at them. “She’s choking on herslushie? That’s…weird.”

Grandma shrugged. “Everything is weird.”

EIGHTEEN

I debated attendingSara Murphy’s funeral.

In the end I went, hobbling on crutches, because it felt like the end point needed to my story with the high school It girl turned wanna-be actress turned murderer.

I took a seat in the back of the funeral home between Alyssa and Grandma. Jake had to work so he wasn’t with us. Not that he needed to be. He didn’t exactly have warm feelings toward the woman who had tried to kill me with theatrical lighting.

“I can’t believe she hit her head on the toilet and died,” Alyssa murmured to me. “Like woof. What a lousy way to go out.”

“Once she realized she’d sipped from the wrong slushie she went to make herself throw up and slipped on the polished granite floors.”

“That’s what I call karma,” Grandma said. “Tried to kill Clifford, wound up killing herself.”

James’s ghost took a seat next to Grandma. He turned to her and spoke. “Definitely karma.”

“See? You can rest easy now,” Grandma told him.

His eyes widened in that way ghosts always did when they finally caught the attention of the living. “You can see me?”

“Sure can, James. Thanks for being so nice whenever I saw you at the senior center. You’re a good man.”

“Thank you. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now though.”

“I think it will sort itself out. You won’t be stuck hanging around.” She patted his ghostly knee.

“Thank you.” He gave her a smile and stood up and walked away.

Clifford was standing in front by the casket, looking remarkably unconcerned about having buried a girlfriend and a wife just a few weeks apart from each other. He had a beer in his hand.

Sara’s parents looked stunned and were not shedding any tears. Some of our high school classmates were there, including the guy Alyssa had recently dated. She’d gotten a great deal of pleasure out of telling him she was recently married.

Which again, I didn’t think she really was, but she and Lawson were still dating and I wasn’t going to begrudge her petty revenge with a high school bully.

I had chosen to wear a flowing black dress in a nod to Sara’s over the top look at Mary’s funeral. “I guess she actually was a pretty good actress,” I said. “She had me fooled for a minute.”

“You were ready to jet off to Cabo with her on a girls’ weekend,” Alyssa said. “I’d say she had you fooled.”

“She had me fooled too,” Anne barked, dropping down into the seat James had vacated. “I can usually read people better than that. It was the passing out and the throwing up when she stabbed Clifford. That seemed real.”

“Maybe it was. Some people don’t like blood.”

“That’s why women usually chose poison as their weapon of choice,” Grandma said. “It’s not so personal.”

“I’d say dosing someone with antifreeze is pretty personal,” Alyssa said wryly.