Once Gone (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1)

Chapter 26

Riley arrived at the parlor in Georgetown shortly before Marie's service was scheduled to begin. She dreaded funerals. To her, they were worse than arriving at a crime scene with a freshly murdered body. They always got inside her gut in some terrible way. Yet Riley felt she still owed something—she wasn't sure what—to Marie.

The funeral parlor had a facade of prefab brick panels and white columns on the front portico. She entered a carpeted, air-conditioned foyer that led into a hallway wallpapered in muted pastel colors gauged to be neither depressing nor cheery. The effect backfired on Riley, adding to her feeling of despair. She wondered why funeral homes couldn't just be the gloomy and uninviting places they really ought to be, like mausoleums or morgues, with none of this phony sanitization.

She passed several rooms, some with caskets and visitors, others empty, until she arrived where Marie's service was to be held. At the far end of the room she saw the open casket, made out of burnished wood with a long brass handle along the sides. Perhaps two dozen people had showed up, many of them seated, some of them mingling and whispering. Bland organ music was being pumped into the room. A small viewing line was passing the coffin.

She got in line and soon found herself standing beside the coffin, looking down at Marie. For all of Riley's mental preparation, it still gave her a jolt. Marie's face was unnaturally passive and serene, not twisted and agonized, as it had been when she was hanging from that light fixture. This face was not stressed and fearful, as it had been when they had talked in person. It seemed wrong. Actually, it seemed worse than wrong.

She quickly moved past the coffin, noticing a somewhat elderly couple sitting in the front row. She assumed that they were Marie's parents. They were flanked by a man and woman closer to Riley's age. She took them to be Marie's brother and sister. Riley reached back into memories of conversations with Marie and recalled that their names were Trevor and Shannon. She had no idea what Marie's parents' names were.

Riley thought of stopping to offer the family her condolences. But how would she introduce herself? As the woman who rescued Marie from captivity, only to find her corpse later? No, surely she was the last person they wanted to see right now. It was best to leave them to grieve in peace.

As she made her way to the back of the room, Riley realized that she didn't recognize a single person there. That seemed strange and terribly sad. After all their countless hours of video chatting and their single face-to-face meeting, they didn't have one friend in common.

But they did have one terrible enemy in common—the psychopath who had held them both. Was he here today? Riley knew that killers commonly visited the funerals and graves of victims. Deep down, as much as she owed it to Marie, she also had to admit that that was the real reason she had come here today. To find Peterson. It was also why she was carrying a concealed weapon—her personal Glock that she normally kept boxed in her car trunk.

As she walked toward the back of the room, she scanned the faces of those already seated. She had glimpsed Peterson's face in the glare of his torch, and she'd seen pictures of him. But she'd never gotten a really good look at him face to face. Would she recognize him?

Her heart pounded as she looked at all the faces suspiciously, searching for a murderer in each one. They all soon became a blur of grief-stricken faces, staring back puzzlingly at her.

Seeing no obvious suspects, Riley sat down in an aisle seat in the back row, separated from anyone else, where she could watch anyone who entered or exited.

A young minister stepped up to a podium. Riley knew that Marie hadn't been religious, so the minister must have been her family's idea. The stragglers sat down, and everybody became quiet.