Veil of Night by Linda Howard

automatically started making a pot of coffee; she was one of those who drank coffee almost nonstop all day. “And while I’m giving thanks to the Good Lord, I’ll throw in my heartfelt gratitude for air-conditioning, because the humidity is going to be unbearable. Are y’all drinking those god-awful smoothies again?”
    Peach—whose real name was Georgia, of course—scorned anything that even remotely resembled healthy eating, evidenced by the chocolate-filled Krispy Kreme doughnut she’d brought in. She had a cloud of bright red hair, slanted green eyes, and fifteen or twenty extra pounds that put her just the other side of lush. It was evidently a body type that was very popular with men, because she never lacked for dates, though it was fair to say her exuberant personality also had something to do with that. Madelyn was more low-key, but barely. The two of them together could work a room in a way that would turn any politician green with envy.
    “We are,” said Madelyn. “But when you drop dead at the age of sixty from a heart attack caused by sky-high cholesterol, I promise I won’t add insult to injury by toasting your poor stiff, cold body with a nutritious smoothie. Because you’re my friend, I’ll break out the good whiskey.”
    “Consider me comforted.” Peach took a bite of her doughnut, delicately licking the chocolate that oozed out. “But I’m going to be cremated, so you’d better toast me before I’m toasted, if you want to keep to that stiff, cold idea.”
    “You are not.”
    “Are not what?”
    “Going to be cremated. You’ve told me you want a lavish funeral with all your ex-lovers weeping over your beautiful body as you lie there in the casket, which, by the way, you said you wanted festooned with white lilies, though I think festooning is in poor taste for a funeral, with a bagpiper piping away and white horses pulling your gun-wagon thingie to the cemetery. You can’t be beautiful in a casket and be cremated. They’re kind of mutually exclusive.”
    “You don’t get a gun carriage,” Jaclyn said. “Heads of state get gun carriages. Think of the traffic nightmare. I’m pretty sure you’d have to have permission from the governor.”
    “Well, rain on my parade, why don’t you?” Peach grumbled. “You’d think the one time a person could have everything she wanted was at her own damn funeral. At least play the songs I want, okay?”
    “Sure,” Madelyn agreed, “as long as it isn’t ‘You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille.’”
    “Spoilsport. Okay, how about Floyd Cramer’s ‘Last Date’? Get it? Because it will be.”
    “You’re sick. Just sick . You won’t be here anyway, so what do you care? I’ll give you a perfectly lovely funeral, in keeping with Premier’s reputation and standards.”
    “You’re turning my funeral into an event? I don’t know whether to be flattered or pissed that you’d use my death to promote the business.”
    “Oh, honey, I promise you, your funeral will be an event. I’ll just have to make sure it’s a tasteful one.”
    “Speaking of taste … Jaclyn, sweetheart, you do know your Saturday wedding is a rolling disaster, don’t you?”
    Jaclyn looked up, her lips already twitching. “I began to get a glimmer of that when the bride insisted her eleven-month-old daughter, who isn’t the groom’s child by the way, be pulled down the aisle in a red wagon.” She couldn’t help laughing. The wedding was going to be hilarious, but as long as the couple was happy with the arrangements, her job was to make the wedding happen the way they wanted. Taste, or lack of it, wasn’t her call to make. “Diedra is thanking her lucky stars we have so much booked this week, so she can take one of the Saturday rehearsals instead of doing the wedding.”
    “I’ll be so glad when this week is over,” Madelyn said, looking at the schedule on the board. Because they were so booked for the week, they weren’t trying to slot in any