Adventures In Murder Chasing (Funeral Crashing #3) (5 page)

We got out of the car. Ethan took my hand and we walked into the funeral home. It was a busy night. There were four different wakes going on. Well, that made me feel a little bit better. It would make it easier for us to blend in with the other funeral goers. There were a lot of people milling around. We looked at the directory on the wall.

Room 1: Gonzalez

Room 2: Moretti

Room 3: Fulton

Room 4: Caldwell

"Room 3," I said and pulled Ethan down the hallway.

We walked quickly past the Funeral Home Director's office and I noticed that he wasn't inside. That wasn't good. It meant that he was milling around, maybe in one of the viewing rooms. I hoped it wasn't in Room 3. I tried not to think about it. We had to do this. We had to see if Gabe Fulton's death had happened under mysterious circumstances.

We passed the first two rooms and slowed down to enter Room 3. It was crowded. Gabe was so young that he was leaving a lot of people behind. Plus a few more were probably shocked enough that they came to the funeral out of morbid curiosity. That happened too. I scanned around the room for Layla, but I didn't see her. After we paid our respects to the deceased, we were going to have to take a closer look around. There were too many groups milling about and I couldn't see everyone clearly. We had a lot to do.

First things first, Ethan and I made our way up to the front and walked toward the casket to pay our respects. When we got close enough to see the body, I did a double take. I had done enough research on Gabe to know that he was not what looked to be an Italian or Greek man. The man in the coffin was young, but he was definitely not Gabe. Gabe, from his online photos, was blonde with pale skin. This guy was tan with olive skin and dark hair.

I looked over at a photo collage that stood next to the coffin. My eyes scanned it through twice. There was no Gabe in there either, just multitudes of photos of the olive skinned man. What was going on? My mind was reeling.

"How did you know Nico?" I heard a man from behind us ask.

I froze. Ethan gripped my hand in a vice grip. Who was Nico?

Ethan whispered in my ear, "I thought you said his name was Gabe."

I could barely hear Ethan with the cacophony of voices going off in my head, sounding the you've been caught alarm. The other half of the voices were yelling: who the heck is Nico? What is going on?

The man was looking at us, "Did you go to school with Nico?"

What was I supposed to say? Nico? Who's Nico? Oh, is that the dead guy in the casket? Oh my goodness...

"Yes, yes we did," I said before I thought about it, glad that the man had given me a reason to be at Nico's funeral. It was, after all, one of the main rules for funeral crashing, to know the answer to that very question. Now I just had to figure out who in the heck Nico was!

As my brain turned, I started to walk away from the coffin, dragging Ethan, and stopping our conversation with the man who had started talking to us, cold. I wanted to get out of this viewing room. My brain was finally functioning again. We were at the wrong wake! How could that have happened? I knew we had the right room according to the directory, but the names next to the viewing room numbers must have been wrong. The Funeral Home Director was not doing his job. Didn't he know how tacky it was to direct people to the wrong funeral when they were already upset? I was so going to fill out a complaint card, anonymously, of course. First, though, we had to get out of the viewing room.

To my dismay, the man I had started walking away from kept following us. I should have just apologized and said we were at the wrong funeral. What was wrong with me? That would have been the normal answer. If I hadn't been so worried about getting caught funeral crashing and arrested for it, I would have been honest. Now it was too late and regardless, we needed to go before we got caught in a lie. I didn't know anything about Nico. It would be easy to make a mistake.

"I'm Nico's father, Gino," the man following us said.

I turned around automatically. My brain was frozen again. I mean, we couldn't not give our condolences to the deceased's father. The guy was suffering a huge loss. It was so sad...even if we didn't know the deceased and were at the wrong funeral. Ethan followed my lead, although I noticed that he kept shooting glances at me, trying to catch my eye. I knew what he was thinking. If anyone could catch us lying, it would be Nico's father.

"Nice to meet you," I said focusing on Gino, instead of Ethan and putting a smile on my face even as my brain started whirling again.

How in the world were we going to get away from the bereaved father? It would be super rude to just run away from him, even though that had been what we had been about to do. Ethan shook hands with Gino. I couldn't look at him.

"Nice to meet you, sir," Ethan said, acting totally normal and not like he was totally freaking out, which he so had to be. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"I just can't believe he's gone," Gino said, nodding. "We just saw him two weekends ago when he was home from school for his mother's birthday and then this happens and it's all over. I can't believe it."

I nodded. Ethan squirmed. I felt bad for Gino. I wondered what happened to Nico, but I couldn't ask. I was supposed to be a friend of his and thus should already be in the know. What had I gotten us into?

"It's really sad," I said simply.

"Come and meet the rest of the family," Gino said eagerly, "They'd all want to meet some of Nico's friends from school. I feel like we're getting to know more about him. We hadn't met that many of his college friends and now..."

"Um, we can't," I started to say, panicking.

"Please," Gino said and then looked so sad that I couldn't think of any reason not to follow him over to the rest of the family.

Well, of course, except for the fact that we didn't actually know anything about Nico and his death, we actually weren't college buddies, and we were really at the wrong funeral! I mean, seriously, why didn't we just say so in the first place? The funeral home was the one that had messed up the labels on the front directory! It was an honest mistake, even if we had been about to crash somebody else's funeral. Nobody else would have known that, but us.

"Okay," I said and started to follow Gino toward his family. I couldn't help it. The guy really wanted us to meet everyone else. I couldn't let him down.

"Kait, what are you doing?" Ethan whispered frantically in my ear. "We can't meet the rest of the family. We don't know Nico!"

I didn't know what to say to that. Ethan was totally right and yet, I didn't know how to get away from Gino, so I kept following Gino anyway. I mean, the man was going through such a horrible loss and our presence seemed to help a little. I couldn't help it! Ethan tried to catch my eye. I met his and gave him an I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but we have to do this look. Actually, I probably just confused him because he started pulling on my arm instead of just following along with what I was doing.

"Kait, we need to get out of here," Ethan whispered again and tugged my arm a little harder in the opposite direction of where Gino was leading us.

I moved forward anyway. I was on autopilot in that state when you don't know what to do, so all you do is keep doing what you've already started to do. Usually it meant that I did nothing and then whatever happened, happened. In this case, though, it meant that I continued to follow Gino toward his family. My brain was frozen with indecision, torn about meeting Gino's family and consoling them and running like mad from the funeral home to get away from this impending train wreck.

"Hey, what are you guys doing here?" A voice I recognized said from behind us.

Ethan and I stopped and turned to look at the person speaking. I wasn't sure if Gino stopped to wait for us or if he was already back with his family. It took me a second to figure out who the person standing in front of us was because it was so out of place to see him at a funeral. It was Troy, Ariel's Troy.

"Troy? What are you doing here?" I asked in shocked response instead of answering his question.

Troy studied me for a moment before he spoke. I saw him glance at my hair. I had almost forgotten that I had a wig on, but he didn't say anything, just looked at me curiously.

"I knew Nico from high school," Troy said. "I still saw him some weekends when he was home from college. So, what are you doing here? Wait. Do you think that..."

Troy stopped before he said it and looked around like he was afraid someone might be listening in on our conversation.

"No, no, no." I said. "We're actually at the wrong funeral, but Nico's dad stopped to talk to us and we sort of got roped into talking to him."

"Kait couldn't help herself," Ethan said, sarcastically, but he was smiling. Wow, he was cute when he smiled.

"Sorry," I smiled sarcastically back at him.

"So, you don't think Nico was..." Troy still couldn't say it. "Because it's really weird how he died."

"And how's that?" I asked. Yup, I really couldn't help myself.

"Well, they found Nico in his dorm room. A bookshelf fell on him and killed him," Troy said.

Ethan shot me a look. Oh dear. Ethan knew me too well. I shouldn't. Oh boy. I couldn't help it. I had to know more.

"Really? A bookshelf?" I asked. "That's very strange."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ethan shake his head wearily. I focused back on Troy. He was watching me.

"I know," Troy said. "Super weird."

"We shouldn't talk about this here," Ethan whispered. "Nico's relatives might not be too big on us investigating something that's supposed to be an accident."

Ethan was right. I had forgotten where we were in the heat of the moment and the thought of a second potential murder mystery. I automatically looked toward the relatives and saw that Gino was looking over at us, standing with his family, waiting. He was definitely within earshot. I was starting to be a loudmouth. I mean, I was never as quiet as Suzie, but I wasn't usually a loudmouth that had to worry about being overheard. Oh no. My face was going red. I hated being pale sometimes.

I did my best to ignore my mortification, hoped nobody had heard us, and then I looked at Troy and whispered, "Are you up for pie in like an hour or so?"

"Sure. I like pie," Troy said, like that was the best suggestion ever. "Where?"

There was a great pie place across the street from another funeral home. It was called The Pie Shop and they were open twenty four seven, so we could stay and talk as long as we liked. Plus they had good pie and food, I guess, although I usually just had pie. I gave Troy the details.

"Okay," I said after I was done explaining how to get to the Pie Shop. "Then go ahead and pay your respects. We'll see you there in like an hour or so? We still have another funeral to go to. You can text me if you're running late. We'll wait for you, so don't rush or anything. Say goodbye to Nico and all that. It's really important to say goodbye. Um..."

"Wait? You're going to another funeral?" Troy asked.

"Well, I told you we were at the wrong funeral..." I started, feeling defensive.

Still, logistically, I couldn't blame Troy for being incredulous. I couldn't believe it myself. I was investigating two cases in one night. I hadn't expected that turn of events.

"We'll explain everything over pie," Ethan said, shaking his head in a you don't want to know gesture.

"Okay," Troy said looking from Ethan to me curiously.

"And, um, if while you're saying goodbye to Nico, if you could notice if there's anybody interesting here from Nico's life, that might be helpful," I said. "Take notes if you have to."

I was serious, but I think Troy thought I was kidding. Seriously, it could be important to the case. I didn't say anything, though. I had talked enough. I almost wished we could stay longer and scout out the funeral and meet some of the potential suspects in Nico's case, except it wasn't quite a case yet and Suzie was waiting for us in another part of the funeral home for another case. I suddenly felt a little stressed. It was overwhelming to be investigating two cases at once. Should Ethan and I stay longer? How did the police conduct multiple investigations? Then again, maybe they weren't doing it all in the same night and they also probably didn't still have a mound of homework to do once they got home.

Troy nodded, smiling, "Okay. I'll keep my ears open. See you in an hour or so, then."

"And, I mean," I said, suddenly feeling bad. I hoped that Troy knew I didn't want him to put the case in front of his friend's memorial, "Like I said, make sure you say goodbye to Nico. That's more important overall. Really. Seriously."

"Thanks," Troy said and unexpectedly grabbed my hand, looking me in the eye. There was only us for a moment as Troy stared into my eyes, "It's okay. You guys can go. I'll be fine. I'll see you guys later."

Troy let my hand go and Ethan immediately grabbed it. It only occurred to me at that moment to wonder where Ariel was at in Troy's moment of need. Shouldn't she be with him at his friend's funeral?

Troy had already walked away from us, leaving Ethan and I alone. Ethan was tugging at my hand, but I couldn't help but watch Troy as he walked up to Nico's casket. He stopped and looked in at Nico. Troy had seemed so normal a second ago, but I saw his shoulders slump. I couldn't see his face, but I could only imagine how he felt. He had lost a friend. My heart went out to him. Troy put his hand on the coffin still staring at Nico. I almost stepped toward him, suddenly wanting to give him a hug. Ariel really should have been with Troy to hold his hand.