Drop Dead Sexy

When the last of the “reserved” benches had emptied, I followed the crowd out the chapel door into the sunshine. After supervising the loading of the casket into the hearse, I turned to the deceased’s wife. I forced a sympathetic smile to my face. While friends and family had wept unabashedly, Felicia Brown had remained an ice queen. Moreover, her grief had been pretty much extinct over the last few days, and in its place, she’d been one of the most demanding bitches I’d had to deal with in a long time. She wanted the VIP treatment despite having pulled all the cheapskate punches like wanting a low-end casket while she stood draped in diamonds.

“It’s time for you to get into the car.” I motioned to the black Lincoln sedan that we provided to escort the next of kin. Regardless of what had happened over the last few days, I afforded her the same warmth and kindness as I would to an actually bereaved family member. After all, in times like these a kind word was worth a million, even to an asshole. Of course, silently I was saying, “Bye, Felicia.” in my head.

Felicia nodded in agreement and turned to the crowd behind her. “Jerry, why don’t you ride with me?” she asked the tall, Silver Fox of a man who was standing next to her.

I motioned for Todd, one of our attendants, to open the back door of the car. The sound of a growl behind me caused me to jump out of my skin. Since I knew Motown, the neighborhood stray Pit Bull I’d adopted and often brought to work with me, was upstairs in the family quarters, I had to wonder what wild animal had come out of the woods. When I whirled around, I saw Felicia’s oldest son, Gregg, wearing a venomous look. “Oh, that’s just rich. It isn’t enough you were fucking Jerry while my father was on life support, but now you want him to ride in the car with you on the way to bury him!”

As an incredulous hush fell over the mourners, I drew my shoulders back preparing myself for the potential verbal assault to come. After all, this wasn’t my first time at the rodeo, so to speak. I was pretty much a pro at handling scenes like this. There were many times I’d witnessed the old adage that death brings out the worst in people. It brings out the claws that’s for sure.

After she cast a glance over the crowd, Felicia fidgeted nervously with the collar of her designer suit. “Why, Gregg, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Gregg rolled his eyes. “Like hell you don’t. I don’t guess you remember the other times either,” he spat.

The impeccable reserve slowly slid from Felicia’s face and was replaced by thinly veiled anger. “Don’t you dare make a scene at your father’s funeral!” she hissed back at Gregg. When she realized what she had done, she quickly recovered to give a weak smile to the other mourners.

“Me make a scene? You’re the one acting like the grief-stricken wife when all you’ve ever done is be unfaithful,” Gregg countered.

Sensing this was about to get even uglier, I tried stepping between them to diffuse the situation. “Why don’t we proceed on to the cemetery?” I suggested. My gaze landed on the face of Felicia’s younger son standing begrudgingly beside his brother. “Mark, why don’t you ride with your mother?”

Gregg snorted contemptuously. “Sure, pick Mark. He was always Dad’s favorite. Hell, he’s everyone’s favorite.” A hateful gleam burned in his green eyes. “Well, I’m setting the record straight now. Mark’s not even my father’s son!”

Gasps of astonishment rippled through the crowd while Felicia’s face turned pasty white. Raising her eyes to the shocked faces around her, she said, “I’m sorry everyone. Gregg’s just so grief-stricken he doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

“So upset my ass. I’m not too upset to know that Jim, our very own UPS man, is Mark’s father,” he countered.

The crowd turned with astonished eyes to the back of the crowd where Jim the UPS man stood. When he lowered his eyes to the pavement in defeat, it was all the confirmation anyone needed. The crowd turned their gaze back to Felicia and Gregg.

Suddenly Mark lunged at Gregg. “You bastard! How dare you?” He swung a fist into Gregg’s face and then in his abdomen. Gregg collapsed onto the pavement, his nose pouring with blood.

Mark stood over him. “It’s not enough that you had to screw my ex-wife to make me jealous, but now you have to embarrass me in front of all of these people.”

I had just opened my mouth to once again plead with them to stop when Mr. Brown’s best friend stepped forward. “You boys stop this right now. I can’t believe you’d do this at your own father’s funeral.”

Mark reluctantly helped Gregg to his feet as they both stood to face their accuser. “Like you have any room to be talking, Ed,” Gregg grumbled, as he held his head back to stop his bleeding nose.

Ed’s face paled slightly as his hands went to fiddle with his tie. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mark shook his head. “You honestly have the gall to come here when everyone knows that you were sleeping with my father,” he countered.

At the accusation that not only was the deceased man’s wife a notorious adulterer, his youngest son was not biologically his, but he was a bisexual, one woman in the crowd fainted and the rest were left in hushed astonishment.

All the color drained from Ed’s face. “How did you know?”.