Adventures In Murder Chasing (Funeral Crashing #3) by Milda Harris

just had bad luck and it gave out. So, yeah, natural causes. He was at home with them when it happened. He wasn't murdered."
    "Oh, okay," I said and nodded, but in my head my mind was racing and I was having a hard time focusing on what Suzie was telling me.
    Life was really strange sometimes. The funeral we had set out to go to didn't have anything to investigate after all, but the one we stumbled upon, sounded like it did. Gabe was just like Anne's sister. Natural causes. It was hard to believe it, but I had to let it seep into my brain. Gabe had a pre-existing condition and it had killed him. I didn't want to give up on the Gabe case, but it really didn't sound like there was anything to investigate since natural causes at his age wasn't murder. It was just bad luck and that was really sad. Nobody that young should die at all.
    So, onto Nico it seemed. Yeah, life was really weird sometimes. Or did I just want to chase another murder? Still, I mean, Nico's death sounded really strange and we had already made plans to meet Troy. Should we cancel? We couldn't. We had to follow through now. It was serendipity that we had stumbled upon a real murder. Or was it real? Did I just want it to be real? Maybe it was an accident? Not natural causes, of course, but bad luck? I felt confused. How did I really feel? Was everyone going to think I was crazy? Usually I didn't care what people thought. I was a funeral crasher after all and pretty much everyone looked down on that. Still, was it crazy that I was jumping from one potential murder to another?
    I looked at Ethan and Suzie and Kyle. They were already talking about something else. They could just do that. I wanted to get up, pay my heartfelt respects to Gabe and his family and then run out of the funeral and start investigating Nico's death. How did I feel about that? Funeral jumping, murder chasing?
    I guess I did like the whole investigating thing. I had to admit to that. I knew Ethan wasn't super thrilled that I liked it, but I couldn't help it. He was the one that started that spark in my brain. I had never even thought about investigating anything before we started hanging out. Maybe it was my calling. Maybe funeral chasing wasn't a bad thing. Truthfully, it suddenly occurred to me that if I was really interested in this whole murder investigating thing, crashing funerals was actually a really good way to hear about people's suspicious deaths. I mean, it was a way to hear about potential cases besides the overt murder cases that made headlines in the news. Obituaries mostly never went into detail about how the person died, but at a funeral, it was such common knowledge, that if it was shocking, someone was sure to be gossiping about it.
    So what if I became a funeral chaser? What did that mean? Would Ethan not like me anymore? What would Kyle and Suzie think? Ariel even? Wow, I suddenly cared what other people thought. It had crept up on me. I didn't notice. I hadn't cared since my mom died and Ariel and I had stopped being friends, but now suddenly I did. Weird, weird, weird.
    "Kait? Kait?" Ethan said.
    I was startled into paying attention, mid freak out, but I tried to appear calm. "Oh. Sorry. Just thinking."
    "It's okay," Ethan smiled at me and took my hand. "I was just telling Kyle and Suzie about Nico."
    "Oh," I said, looking carefully at them, seeing if they were indeed passing judgment like I feared they would, but they just looked normal - like Kyle and Suzie. Huh. Yeah, I had to ask, "Okay. What do you guys think?"
    "Sounds strange," Suzie said.
    "Definitely see what Troy says," Kyle added.
    "It could be foul play," Suzie said doing her best imitation of an old school detective.
    I nodded. I peered more closely at them trying to see if they were thinking anything underneath all that being normal and nice. Did they think I was crazy for chasing another funeral? I looked at Ethan. He shrugged. Suzie and Kyle were looking at me. I felt weird. I mean, how could they be so