The rest of the funeral had gone to KFC, which left Connor and I in the cemetery staring at the headstone of our beloved friend. "Skins," as we called him had always been a great friend. A little off sometimes, borderline stupid, but always there for us.

"I just didn't know his name was Seymour Buttoux." Connor finally spoke above the shared silence. "With a name like I that, I would have..."

"That's not even- just save it." Connor and Skins had one major thing in common, they didn't think before they spoke.

"I just mean, I would have changed it as well." He continued on, putting his hands in the pockets of his black wool coat.

We stared at the grave for a while longer, remembering our friend that we met in college. Just days ago, we had been cracking cold ones. Now, he was six-feet under.

"Hey, did you hear that he was too big for the casket so they had to chop a couple feet off?" I asked him. I heard that in the bathroom of the funeral home from one of Skins' former flames.

"Don't make jokes like that. If I can't bring up his name, then you can't say that."

"So, cause of death has yet to be announced." I told him. A light lit across Connor's face.

"You know, you should...uh.Take matters into your own hands."

"I'm not going to investigate the death of my own friend. That is wrong, it is not going to happen!"

Connor let out a sigh of frustration. His breath appearing in the cold air like smoke. "Do it, do it for us. Do it for Skins. He would want this!"

Actually, Skins probably would want his friends to investigate his death. He would have been flattered by the attention. But as a criminal investigator, it was also wrong to abuse my profession.

"Look, I can't do that. But... but... I could pay the coroner a visit. He owes me a favor for something."

You would have thought it was Christmas Day because Connor looked like a kid ready to open presents. "I'm just dying to know how he kicked the bucket."

***

A couple weeks had passed before I wandered into the coroner's office looking for that coroner that owed me a favor. Except, he was actually just an intern under the coroner. And he was my ex-boyfriend.

Nick was sitting on a gurney eating gummy worms while listening to Rush Limbaugh.

"Is that sanitary?" I asked him, sitting down so I could kick up my heels on a table.

Nick shrugged his shoulders. "No, but my blood sugar is running low." He had been using that excuse for everything.

"You know that I know that you aren't diabetic, right?" Nick rolled his eyes at my commentary. "But anyways, I need a favor."

"I knew this day would come. I knew it. Throw it at me." He leaned back and looked at the ceiling, he had owed me favor for a very long time.

"I need a cause of death for Seymour Buttoux."

Nick must have thought I was joking because he choked on the neon, opaque worms. He might have been really choking but he was my ex-boyfriend, so I crossed my arms and waited for him to stop goofing off.

"Okay, thanks for helping me not die. But are you joking!?" He asked me after he caught his breath.

I nodded my head. "It's Skins, okay? We didn't know that was his real name."

Nick jumped off the gurney with a strange type of positivity. He hummed to himself as he flipped through files of autopsies.

"You know they had to chop a couple feet off?" Nick asked me not looking up from the files.

"Yeah, everyone keeps saying that." I shouldn't have been laughing but I was. Nick finally pulled out the correct file and skimmed over it for a second.

"Did you know he had one kidney?" He asked me with a hard, seriousness.

"Sold it for the Camaro, remember?"

He looked at me with a face of doubt, and then pulled his serious gaze back and continued scanning through the file until he jumped with excitement.

"Here it is!" He announced before freezing in place.

Maybe it was cancer? Had he been keeping a secret from us? Was it kidney disease?

"Tell me! I want to see!" I grabbed at the file to find the truth. I had to know that Skins had not died from something serious.

Nick turned to me, a laugh was trying to crack across his hardened face. And then he spoke the words of our friends death.

"He overdosed on Viagra."