Party Crashers

tragedy."
    Jolie nodded, biting into her lip.
    Sammy patted her arm. "Jolie, I have a little confession to make."
    At the sound of Sammy's "cajoling" voice, a red flag raised in Jolie's mind. "Confession?"
    Sammy looked contrite. "Gary called me at the office a little while after you all started seeing each other and asked me to broker a deal. He wanted to buy a condo that he'd been renting for a couple of years." She gave a little laugh. "He said it was going to be a surprise and he didn't want you to know about it, but he wanted you to get the commission for the sale."
    Her stomach gurgled. "So you forged my name on the contract?"
    She nodded and winced. "And that was wrong, but Gary was adamant that he wanted you to have the money." She lifted her manicured hands in the air. "I thought he was getting ready to propose and that the two of you would live there. Since I couldn't cut you a commission check without you knowing the source, I tried to give you the money in little spurts, but you simply wouldn't take it."
    Jolie wet her lips. "That's why you were trying to give me money Saturday morning?"
    "Yes. I felt terrible that you'd left the agency before I could get you to take it." She laid her ice-cold hand over Jolie's—or maybe it only felt cold because her wounded hand felt feverish. "Jolie, I just wanted you to know the entire story from my point of view."
    "In case anyone asks me?"
    The woman's smile was poignant. "Yes."
    Salyers had been asking questions about the property—was Sammy telling the truth, or covering her tracks? Jolie gave her a noncommittal smile. "I appreciate your concern. And about the money that was taken at the party—"
    "It's forgotten," Sammy said emphatically. "It's just money, and it was recovered. This memorial service is a good reminder that life is short, and we can't be consumed by material things."
    Said the woman with a room in her home dedicated to crystal dollhouses.
    But with her own emotional receptors misfiring, Jolie couldn't decide if the woman was a big fraud, or if kindness was just so foreign to Sammy that she hadn't gotten the knack of it yet.
    The funeral director, a pear-shaped, slump-shouldered man with glasses on the tip of his nose, walked into the doorway and signaled that it was time for the service to begin. Sammy patted Jolie's hand, then settled herself in a back pew.
    Jolie conjured up a smile for the handful who had gathered for the service and lowered herself to the front pew. The funeral director meandered to the front of the room and flipped a switch. Organ music wafted in from the speakers—a sickly sweet melody meant to wring the emotion out of the most stoic observer.
    A cell phone rang, piercing the mood. Jolie pivoted her head to see Detective Salyers reaching into her pocket and ducking out of the pew. She hurried out of the room, and Jolie couldn't be irritated. The woman had come because of her and had other emergencies to attend.
    The song finished playing and another song began, this one more mournful than the last. When she looked at Gary's chalky profile, she was overwhelmed with helplessness, assailed with thoughts that things might have ended differently if she'd simply started the car and driven off while he was in the backseat.
    Another cell phone rang, and Jolie turned her head to see Sammy jump up and run out, reaching into her purse. Another lead, another sale. Jolie couldn't figure out Sammy, but deep down, she thought the woman was too dim to be truly dangerous.
    She looked back to the casket and sighed. What-ifs plagued her and she felt torn because she didn't entirely trust Gary. Had he been sleeping with Sammy? Had he been sleeping with Janet LeMon? Selling cocaine to the men who used the condo as their getaway? All of those things were hard to reconcile to the gentle, laughing man she'd known, but what if Gary had only let her see the side of him he wanted to reveal? Was that why he hadn't wanted her to meet his friends, so she wouldn't see the smarmy side?
    At the end of the second song, the funeral director made his way to the front of the chapel to a small podium and began to read the seventy-five-word obituary he'd asked her to write. "Gary Hogan—"
    "Hagan," Jolie corrected.
    He squinted over the podium at her. "Huh?"
    "It's 'Hagan,' with an 'a.'"
    He pointed to the paper. "This says 'Hogan.'"
    Another cell phone rang. Jolie turned her head to see Hannah sidling out with her phone to her ear. Jolie turned back with a