Read Online Fleur De Lies by Maddy Hunter - Free Book Online Page A

gasped. “The ship’s run out of food?”
    “No, no. I’m sure the ship’s not going to run out of anything. But the question you should be asking yourselves is … have you run out of time on our lovely planet? You need to be prepared for the end, ladies, and it’s never too soon to start, which is why it’s so important for you to think about advanced funeral planning.”
    Bobbi gaped at Woody, her mouth sagging open. “You’re jokin’, aren’t you, sugah?”
    “Advanced planning is no joke,” cautioned Woody. “In fact, with the cost of living on the rise, it makes good financial sense to pre-pay your funeral in today’s dollars rather than the inflated currency of tomorrow. We have payment plans to fit every budget, including a rather generous layaway plan where a client can—”
    “Mr. Jolly,” Victor interrupted, “I applaud your efforts to advertise your product. Being a businessman myself, I understand it behooves us to look at every situation as a marketing opportunity, but if you persist in hijacking the conversation to push your business model, I’ll have you removed from this table. Do I make myself clear?”
    Woody leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “I’d like to see you try.”
    Unh-oh . I hoped this didn’t escalate into a Mexican standoff. But at least there was no way it would turn into a pissing contest. Guys this old could barely provide urine samples.
    Krystal gave Woody a playful swat on his arm. “Us girls don’t wanna hear about no layaway plan at no funeral parlor, darlin’. Y’all need to target another age group.” She scanned the other tables for possibilities. “Like … anyone else in the room.”
    “You must have missed a recent nightly news segment,” I piped up, directing my comment at Krystal. “They posted the results of a decades’ long medical study that showed that today’s eighty- and ninety-year-olds are, by comparison, much healthier than the majority of today’s thirty-year-olds. So there’s a good possibility that most of the people in this room will end up living a lot longer than you will.”
    “I don’t think so.” She gave me a dismissive look. “Sounds like a bunch of liberal fiction to me.”
    Dawna furrowed her brow. “Is fiction the one that’s real or make believe? I can never remember.”
    “Why don’t you look it up in your thesaurus?” droned Virginia.
    “ Ewww-weee !” Krystal grabbed the edge of the table. “Can y’all feel that?” She suddenly looked a little woozy. “We’re pickin’ up speed. You know what that means?”
    “We’re going faster?” asked Jackie.
    “It means I better pop a pill before I embarrass myself.”
    Too late for that.
    “Krystal can get motion sick just standin’ in one place,” Bobbi explained, “so she’s gotta take some honkin’ big pills to help her walk without hurlin’. Don’t ya, sugah?”
    Krystal mined her pocketbook for a plastic pill container, flipped open the top, and popped a softgel the size of a dum dum bullet into her mouth, washing it down with a gulp of water.
    “How come my motion sickness pills don’t look like yours?” asked Woody. He removed a foil blister pack from his shirt pocket and slapped it on the table. “Mine look more like baby aspirin. Am I getting ripped off ? I keep telling the druggist I need something stronger, but he keeps selling me the same damn pills. Airplane turbulence really does me in, even after I’ve chewed a couple of the things. And the older I get, the worse it gets. If the river gets choppy, I’ll probably be holed up in my cabin ’til Paris.”
    “I buy all my drugs at the vitamin shop, hon, so I never have to deal with druggists giving me the wrong pills. I scan the shelves, read the labels, decide what I need, and buy it in economy-size, tamper-proof bottles. You wanna know the best thing for my kind of motion sickness? Ginger. In thousand-gram caplets.”
    “You don’t consult your