Read Online Funeral Hotdish by Jana Bommersbach - Free Book Online

Gertie Bach was a cousin to her grandma, and Gertie was like a second mother to Amber. The girl had visited the folks’ house many times, and there was no debate that she could net a basketball. Joya expected to hear she’d broken her leg and couldn’t play on this year’s team.
    “What happened?” She shifted the phone from one hand to the other.
    “She’s dead.”
    The words hung like a sinker weight on a fishing line. Joya wasn’t sure she’d heard right.
    “Dead? What do you mean, dead?”
    “She overdosed on dope,” her father said—the man who always cut to the bottom line.
    “Amber was on dope?” Joya yelled into the phone.
    “She wasn’t ON dope, Ralph. She only took it once they said and she died. Friday night at a dance out on the Jacobson place. Her boyfriend’s still in a coma.”
    “WHAT?” None of this made sense. Kids don’t overdose on dope in Northville, North Dakota. They don’t die from taking something once; they don’t even take anything. They get drunk, maybe—okay, they probably get drunk—but that was as far as it would go. Besides, where would somebody in that little town get any dope? There certainly wasn’t a market there, and she’d never heard of a drug dealer who hung around where there wasn’t a profit.
    Dope in Northville? A hometown of garden trinkets, statutes of the Virgin Mary, wooden flower baskets, fiberglass deer, bowling balls covered with glass beads to make a “gazing ball.” A town filled with backyard gardens—tomatoes, beans, beets, cucumbers, cabbages the size of basketballs, zucchini as big as softball bats. She never, ever, thought of that town and saw a dirty drug dealer.
    “This doesn’t make any sense.” Her voice faltered.
    “The town is just devastated,” Maggie Bonner agreed. “The funeral’s Wednesday at St. Vincent’s. Our circle has the funeral dinner.”
    “I’ve got to call Gertie.” Joya knew the old woman would be shattered.
    “Oh, please do, but wait till after the funeral.”
    “Okay, I’ll call her next week. Give her a hug for me.” They were all so far away.
    “They’re doing the visitation at the high school. In the gym. Where she played basketball. I hope that wakes those kids up.” Ralph thought kicks to the gut were a good lesson for the teens of Northville.
    “Start at the beginning,” Joya begged. Maggie and Ralph, talking over one another, filled her in as best they could, but they really didn’t know much. They didn’t remember what kind of dope it had been.
    “What difference does it make? Dope is dope,” Ralph pronounced.
    “Where did it come from?” Joya wanted to know.
    Now Ralph was full of information. “It’s that Crabapple kid—he’s the pusher. You know, we went to the sheriff about him last year when we first heard he was pushing dope, but the sheriff didn’t do nothing. We’re waiting to see if he does anything now. He better.”
    “This is so sad,” Joya said. They all commiserated together about what a shame, what a loss.
    “Boy, I never thought I’d hear something like this out of Northville,” Joya declared.
    “Neither did I,” her father said.
    “What is this world coming to?” her mother wanted to know.
    “I hope they put that punk away,” Joya offered.
    “They better,” her dad said again.
    “I’m sure they’ll get him this time,” her mother declared.
    “Yeah, sure,” her father scoffed.
    As Joya hung up, she cringed at how ominous her father’s voice sounded. He had good reason to hate the sheriff before this, and now—oh, for Ralph Bonner to say “I told you so” when a pretty little girl was dead. That had to be killing him. He wasn’t the kind of man to let this lie. His lifelong buddies weren’t, either. The sheriff better take care of this because who knows what they’d do to him. Make him pay one way or another. See this crime was punished.
    But Joya’s heart wasn’t on revenge, it was on sadness for the loss of a sweet young girl who