Mourning Glory by Warren Adler

Jerusalem station in heaven accepting arrivals?
    In front of the auditorium was a closed coffin and on a
small stage behind it was a lectern. The men wore funny little black hats
stamped with the name of the funeral parlor. In the first row, she noted a
group of sniffling and red-eyed mourners of both sexes, who, she assumed, were
the immediate family.
    Was this what Mrs. Burns had meant when she advised her to
read the obituaries? Somehow Grace had interpreted this to mean that one made
the initial "contact" at the funeral parlor, simply appearing,
becoming visible to the ... she hesitated as her mind searched for an appropriate
definition. Target? Pigeon? Victim? Mark?
    Studying the group in the front row, she could not pick out
anyone who might fit the profile suggested by Mrs. Burns of a distinguished,
very rich Jewish gentleman. She felt a hysterical giggle crawl up her chest and
knew she did not have the restraint to hold it back. Pressing her hand to her
mouth, she felt the sound emerge despite her valiant effort to stifle it.
    "I know. I know," the woman next to her
whispered. "Molly Farber was the salt of the earth. Charitable? Nobody was
more charitable. She will be sorely missed by all of us."
    Grace nodded, her hands hiding much of her face, making
sounds that were open to the woman's interpretation of stifled sobbing. She
took deep breaths to get herself under control. It was, she knew, less a giggle
of humor than a kind of hysterical comment on the events transpiring before her
eyes.
    Again, she surveyed the all-important first row. Still, she
couldn't find anyone who might fill the bill according to Mrs. Burns's suggestion,
although she could sense the logic in what, on the surface, was a serviceable
but bizarre idea.
    If one bought into Mrs. Burns's weird premise—and, so far,
Grace was still eons away from a true believer—the ritual of the funeral
offered a kind of preview, an opportunity for observation that was a lot more
efficient than a blind date. She could get a good look at the prospect, study
him under fire, even, if the size of the funeral was any measure, assess his
standing in the community and, perhaps, his financial status. Was it not
logical to assume that the more the widower grieved, the more compelling his
need to assuage his loss?
    Mrs. Burns hadn't invented the idea. It was a generally
accepted pop-psychology hypothesis that a widower who was happily married was
more likely to seek to replicate such a situation. Now, how had she come to
such knowledge? Television talk shows, newspapers, comments on the radio, bits
and pieces of trivia from somewhere out there in the glutted information
firmament? Was this insight or bullshit, she wondered, suddenly questioning the
powerful desperation that had driven her to this place.
    When the gloomy musical background sound ceased, a man rose
to the lectern. He was youngish, wearing one of those funny black hats, and he
spoke in what seemed like a carefully practiced, mournful cadence, offering the
assemblage a picture of a woman who had devoted her life to husband and
children and who had managed to live to the ripe old age of ninety.
    Wrong place, wrong range, Grace realized suddenly. Perhaps
she should have chosen the Schwartz funeral. She felt the hysterical giggle
begin again. This time, she fished quickly for a tissue and used it to press
against her lips and muffle the sound.
    She could never do this, she told herself. It would be
impossible for her to be so calculating and cynical. How could she live with
herself? She wished she could get up and leave. The words of the man behind the
lectern lost all meaning as she delved deeper into her thoughts, rebuking
herself for giving in to such cynicism.
    But as she debated the question in her mind, she realized
how detached she really was from these proceedings. I am not here to do
evil, she assured herself as the logic of the idea began to grow in her
mind. It wasn't as if she would be causing