“Father, please be with Linda as she makes her journey back home.” The priest was droning on and on, and it was obvious that he hadn’t known Lydia as he spoke about her in the most generic terms possible. Besides, she wasn’t a Christian, so I doubted that God would be guiding her anywhere. Even if God were, perchance, to waive the Christian-only requirement, it was way too late to accompany her. Her soul was wherever it had been going by now as she’d been dead for over a week.
The day was gloomy, which I felt appropriate for a funeral. The sky was drizzly, and there were clouds covering the sun. FunLand had been closed for the day out of respect for Lydia, and several of the employees were present at the funeral. Phillip, of course, with Antoinette at his side. It hadn’t taken her very long to switch her allegiances. By the way she was clutching his hand, I’d say that she had found herself another sugar daddy. Delia was there, too, which was sweet of her considering that Lydia hadn’t been very nice to her. Stephen was there as well, but Tommy, of course, was not. I didn’t know why I said of course as he was out on bail. Turned out that he had important connections who had expedited his release. He wasn’t allowed to return to FunLand, obviously, and I would have been exceedingly surprised if he’d shown up to the funeral. There were also others whom I didn’t know. I spotted the detectives trying to blend into the background, but they weren’t doing a very good job of it.
“You ok, Bet?” Rafe asked under his breath as the preacher kept preaching. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I scanned the crowd again, spotting Brian and Mrs. Rodriguez in the front row. While he was comporting himself beautifully, Mrs. Rodriguez was sobbing into a dainty hankie while clutching Brian’s arm. I couldn’t help but notice how lovely she looked in her mourning dress—black, demure, but fitted—even in her state of extreme distress. She was a beautiful woman, no two ways about it. She made me feel positively dowdy in my own mourning black. Even though I was wearing my best non-cocktail dress which was similar to Mrs. Rodriguez’s, I simply didn’t have the elegance she did in order to carry it off. At least I wasn’t wearing the stupid sling any more. I had one and a half functioning arms now, which was fifty percent better than what I had before. Being free of the sling made me feel better about not being as attractive as Mrs. Rodriguez, though I still felt frumpy.