Whiskey Rebellion (Romantic Mystery/Comedy) Book 1 (Addison Holmes Mysteries)

because if it didn’t it meant your brain was bleeding on the inside.
    I was good to go.
    My hair was wet and plastered around my head, and a brilliant idea popped into my brain. I needed bangs. Bangs would solve all of my problems. They’d give me a new look and cover my massive lump. Problem solved.
    I snipped at a few strands of hair and was satisfied I’d achieved my new look. I did a full makeup job and blow-dried my hair. The bruise was still showing after all that work, but there wasn’t much else I could do.
    I winced as I heard a deep rumble of thunder loud enough to rattle the panes in my windows. I heard a crash of glass and went searching through the apartment until I found the broken shards on the floor of my bedroom. The thunder had rattled a few panes right out of the window, so there was a gaping hole in my bedroom, though it did bring in a nice breeze.
    “Great. Don’t you know I don’t have time for this today?” I asked God. Not that he was probably going to help me out since I hadn’t vis ited him in a while.
    I swept up the glass and taped a garbage bag over the hole with duct tape. While I was in clean ing mode, I made my bed, vacuumed the floor and put the cans of beets, salmon and sauerkraut in alphabetical order in my pantry. They were the same cans that had been there since I’d moved in, and I’d already decided I’d leave them to be demolished with the rest of the building when I moved out. But that was no reason not to be tidy. Or perhaps I was stalling.
    At ten o’clock I dug through my closet until I found my funeral suit. It was the same black suit I’d worn to my father’s funeral and overwhelming sadness took hold of me so quickly that I shoved it back in the closet and looked for something else.
    The only other black dress I had in my closet was a 1950’s wool day dress with a flared skirt and thin black belt. I’d found it on the clearance rack at Neiman’s for a quarter of its original price, but it still had the tags on it because there was never a good time to wear wool in Georgia. As soon as the fabric got wet I was going to feel like I was being suffocated by a wooly mammoth, but I pulled it off the hanger anyway.
    I skipped the pantyh ose, slipped on a pair of three-inch strappy sandals, grabbed a pink rain slicker and shoved a bunch of Kleenex in the coat pockets.
    I parked my car in the parking lot and slogged my way up to the doors of The Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church behind all the other mourners. Funerals were attended by all in Whiskey Bayou. All the businesses closed except for the Good Luck Café, and that was only because they had to be prepared for the onslaught of mourners that would hit the tiny restaurant after the burial.
    The church was packed to its full capacity by the time I found a seat on a back pew. Both balconies were filled and the choir loft was crammed with singers in white robes. Mr. Butler’s casket was mahogany and draped with a white cloth, and the casket was closed to keep the guests from having an up close and personal look at what a body looked like after an autopsy.
    Mr. Butler’s family walked in a procession from the back of the church to the front pews reserved for family. I didn’t recognize any of them because Mr. Butler had been a transfer from a Savannah high school several years before, and he’d kept his Savannah residence instead of moving to Whiskey Bayou. There was a younger version of Mr. Butler at the end of the procession, which I assumed had to be a younger brother. He had the same sandy colored hair and slight build.
    Unfortunately, genetics hadn’t been kind to the Butler brothers because they all looked like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, and after seeing their mother lead the procession down the aisle it was very obvious that her boys got their looks from her.
    The youngest brother turned as he passed my pew and gave me a look of such startling hatred that I sucked in a breath and flushed in embarrassment as the people sitting around me began to titter nervously. I slunk back in my seat and wished I’d worn one of those big black hats with the netting on them.
    “We are here to today to celebrate the life of Bernard Ulysses Basil Butler.”
    I took out a Kleenex and covered my face so no one would see my smile. How could anyone name a poor, helpless baby that?
    I kneeled and sat and sang and kneeled some more with the rest of the mourners. I didn’t even start crying until the woman next to me