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  The McCready Family Tree

  1

  FRANKIE MCCREADY DABBED one last touch of lipstick on Spud McArthur’s lower lip. Generally, she kept the makeup on her male clients a bit subtler than the treatment she gave the ladies. Families didn’t much care to know that Grandpa was going to his final resting place with a layer of Peachy Keen on his lips. But Spud had tangled with pancreatic cancer during the last months of his life, so Frankie was having to use every cream and powder at her disposal to restore his healthy appearance.

  In his final months Spud’s cheeks had become gaunt and his skin sallow. Frankie didn’t want that to be the last image his family had of him. They deserved to remember him as a ruddy-faced, energetic man, even if he’d been a bit of a jackass in life—particularly when it came to politics and his rabid support of University of Georgia’s football team.

  Spud’s condition reminded her uncomfortably of Uncle Junior, her mentor, her friend, who had suffered a similar death. Junior had been one of the best men she ever knew, and Frankie was blessed enough to know a wealth of good men. She hadn’t dated one yet, because she was related to most of them, and there were laws against that sort of thing.

  Frankie gave Spud’s prominent nose one last dusting of finishing powder and closed the lower portion of the casket lid. Spud’s family had ordered a small casket spray in Georgia Bulldogs black, white, and red, but it was waiting upstairs in the chapel. Her great-uncle, E.J.J., the head of the funeral operation at McCready Family Funeral Home and Bait Shop, preferred to add little touches like that at the last minute before visitations, so everything was perfect when the bereaved arrived. Mourners could fixate on tiny details, like a lapel bent out of shape or ceremony programs printed on the wrong shade of off-white paper, and in their grief get wet-possum mad at the “disrespect” to the deceased’s wishes. That’s when ugly scenes started, and when you became known as the funeral parlor that allowed knock-down, drag-out fights in the chapels, you started attracting the wrong sort of crowd.

  Frankie pushed the casket cart toward the elevator and pressed the button. “Good-bye, Mr. Spud. I will miss the boiled peanuts you made for Founders’ Day. I will not miss the way you added ‘the Bulldogs and anybody dumb enough not to root for the Bulldogs’ to the prayer list every Sunday. But Lake Sackett won’t be the same without you.”

  She gently rolled the casket into the waiting elevator car and elbow-nudged the button that would alert E.J.J. and her father, Bob, that Spud was coming up. As the elevator doors closed, she stripped off her gloves and stretched her aching back. Spud was her fourth customer that day. Autumn was always a busy time for funeral homes, particularly in towns like Lake Sackett where the population was heavily comprised of baby boomers, but this was getting ridiculous. They were going to have to hire her an assistant if things kept going at this rate. Even her father’s near-miraculous organizational skills were being pushed to their limit.

  Frankie was definitely looking forward to the end of the tourist season in a few weeks. Her cousin, Margot, had recently breathed new life into the town by organizing one of the best Founders’ Day festivals they’d ever seen, and the marina side of the business was still experiencing the ripple effect. Over the last week or so, thousands of people from across the Southeast had flocked to town to spend the last warm days of fall on Lake Sackett, shelling out for boat rentals, hotel rooms, food, beer. Most of the businesses in town expected to benefit from the boom somehow.

  It was embarrassing that something called the “water dump” had caused so many problems for Frankie’s hometown over the years. A few years before, some dipshit with the Army Corps of Engineers had messed up when calculating how much water needed to be released through the dam at Sackett Point and overestimated by a couple of million gallons—releasing about ten times the water they should have. Lake Sackett dropped to record lows, just in time for a two-year drought. No rain meant no water to replace what was lost.

  Less water meant less room on the lake for fishing boats and water sports. It meant more exposed, sunbaked shoreline, which made for some pretty depressing vistas. Depressing vistas meant fewer people renting cabins and buying groceries or visiting the fudge shop or the exotic jerky depot.

  The economics of it all had crept up slowly. At first, people just made do with less. They weren’t able to repaint their stores or refurbish their rental cabins, which gave the town a shabby, weathered look. Fewer people rented those motel rooms and cabins, because who wants to take their family to a shabby, weathered motel for a weekend? Tourists booked their holidays in towns where the water was abundant and the locals seemed less desperate. So now Lake Sackett was feeling the full financial brunt of multiple slow seasons. Businesses and restaurants were closing all over town. Families that had lived there for generations had moved away to find work.

  McCready’s funeral business wasn’t entirely immune to this downturn. People still died whether they were poor or rich; it was just a question of how much they spent on their way out. But the marina side of the business had definitely taken a hit. Fewer tourists meant less bait and tackle being sold, less food moving through the Snack Shack, less gas being pumped. Fewer charters meant Cousin Duffy and Aunt Donna had more time on their hands, which could prove dangerous. She could only hope Margot’s efforts turned it around.

  Sighing, Frankie shrugged out of her lab coat and hung it on her hook, next to the one labeled UNCLE JUNIOR. It had been more than five years and she couldn’t bear to get rid of his lab coat. No one in the family really came down to her domain, so it was a little quirk she could keep to herself.

  It took a considerable amount of stubbornness and effort to maintain a private life in a family as big and “involved” as the McCreadys. But Frankie managed it by sneaking away to Atlanta for weekends, blowing off steam with drinks and dancing and other age-appropriate activities that reminded her she was alive. Just a few days ago, she’d met some friends from an online group for Pacific Rim fans and ended up at a nightclub in an old restored opera house in midtown. Her family loved her, but they didn’t need to know that she’d ground the night away with a complete stranger and then gone back to his apartment. Or that she’d waited for him to fall asleep and then Ubered back to her car, because she was not big on awkward morning-after conversations.

  And now she was thinking about sex in her workspace, which was a bit of a squicky gray zone, professionally speaking.

  Frankie slung her heavy bag over her shoulder and took the stairs two at a time, a skill she had mastered even in her clunky purple wedge sandals. Her mother, Leslie, appeared at the top of the stairs, her faded ginger hair frizzled around her head in a backlit corona like Our Lady of the Snack Shack. She grinned down at her daughter. “Hey, honey, I was just about to pop by and see if you needed any dinner. I’ve got a pork shoulder in the Crock-Pot at home, but if you need somethin’ now, I can whip up some chicken right quick.”

  Frankie quirked her petal-bright lips, giving her mama a skeptical smirk.

  “Oh, yes, I’m starvin’,” Frankie moaned dramatically, clutching her middle. “I used a considerable amount of energy trying to digest the enormous lunch you fed me today.”

  “Well, honey, you’re on your feet all day and need to keep y
our strength up,” Leslie said, shaking her head as she wrapped an arm around her daughter. “Besides, your dad said this was a real busy day today. You needed a break,” Leslie sniffed.

  Frankie shook her head. She loved her parents dearly, but they were one step away from shoving Frankie into one of those giant hamster balls for fear she might hurt herself tying her shoes. They weren’t helicopter parents. That would imply they simply hovered, as opposed to being attached to her back.

  “I needed elastic pants after eating that triple-decker turkey sandwich,” Frankie told her.

  “It had lettuce and tomato, it was practically a salad,” Leslie argued, making Frankie snicker.

  Reaching the top of the steps, they walked through the open “dog run” area between the funeral chapel and the office.

  “You know the doctor said he’d like to see you put on a couple more pounds . . .” Leslie’s voice trailed off as a thick, high-pitched grating sound caught her attention from the direction of the lake.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked Frankie. “It sounds like an outboard motor, but really far away.”

  Suddenly, the noise was replaced by the hum of a vacuum cleaner. Frankie and her mother followed the sound down the concrete steps to the docks. They spotted Cousin Duffy standing in the open doorway of Jack’s Tackle and Stuff with a Shop-Vac, frantically swiping it across the shop floor.

  “What in the world?” Leslie tilted her head. But whether she was confused by outdoor vacuuming or the sight of Duffy doing housework, Frankie had no idea.

  “I need some help here!” Duffy shouted, his sweaty red-gold curls plastered to his head.

  Leslie and Frankie ran to the bait shop, stepping over hundreds of bait crickets as they stampeded down the wooden planks. Even over the rumble of the vacuum, they could hear the chirping of the crickets. Frankie looked inside the darkened interior of the bait shop and saw that the walls and floors seemed to be writhing, waves of tiny black-brown insects bouncing off every surface.

  “Some jackass opened my bait-cricket cage and all of my bugs got loose!” Duffy cried.

  Frankie grabbed a broom and started sweeping the little critters into a five-gallon bucket. Leslie ran to the other prong of the three-way dock to close the doors and windows to the Snack Shack, preventing a biblical invasion of her culinary kingdom.

  Duffy and Frankie started methodically gathering as many of the crickets as they could, returning them to the wire-mesh bait cage.

  “Who would do somethin’ like that?” Leslie wondered as she jogged back into the bait shop.

  Duffy carefully emptied the Shop-Vac into the wire cage. “Probably some tourist pissed off that he didn’t catch his limit. I had a charter client threaten to sue me this week because he went the whole morning without catching a mackerel.”

  “Aw, bless his heart. Did you explain to him that a mackerel is a saltwater fish and he was an idiot?” Frankie asked.

  “You know, I tried, but somehow it just didn’t get through to him,” Duffy said. “As it is, I just lost another client scheduled for a sunset charter. He walked in, took one look at the bugs, and ran. I guess losin’ control of my shop to a bunch of invertebrates probably doesn’t put me in the most professional light.”

  Frankie gave him a small side hug. This was part of the problem with having a customer service job. Even when the customers were enormous shit heels, you weren’t allowed to slap them. There was a reason Frankie didn’t work with living people.

  “This is why we can’t have nice things,” she said with a sigh.

  2

  FOR THE NEXT hour, Frankie, Duffy, and Leslie worked to set the bait shop to rights. By the time they were done, Frankie’s back and neck were slick with sweat and her bright blue hair was soaked through. And she was pretty sure she had a rogue cricket creeping under her Attack on Titan T-shirt.

  “I’m gonna find the jackass who did this and introduce them to the business end of an embalming needle,” Frankie grumbled, wiping her forehead with her sleeve.

  “I’m gonna find the jackass who did this and introduce them to my anchor and some duct tape,” Duffy said, offering Frankie an ice-cold bottle of water from the bait shop cooler.

  “I’m gonna find that so-and-so who did this and I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna. . . . introduce them to . . .” Leslie frowned as she tried to find a threat suitable for the situation.

  “It’s okay, Mama,” Frankie assured her. “You can’t help it that you’re basically a Disney princess on the wrong side of forty.”

  “Smart mouth.” Leslie swatted at Frankie with the dish towel she’d been using to wipe down Duffy’s counter. “Also, y’all owe the swear jar fifty cents.”

  “Hold still, you’re gonna disturb the cartoon mice who sing backup for your power ballad,” Frankie told her, dodging her mother’s snapping cloth. Leslie increased the frequency of her towel-slapping and Frankie howled with laughter, diving behind the counter.

  This was how E.J.J. found them, sweating, cackling, and covered in cricket bits. E.J.J. cleared his throat pointedly, bringing the laughter to an abrupt halt. Leslie hid the cloth behind her back while Frankie, biting her lip to prevent further giggles from escaping, scooted around the counter.

  How did her great-uncle-slash-boss manage to look so cool and crisp in a three-piece suit in the lingering autumn heat and humidity? And manage to look so exasperated and yet amused all at once?

  E.J.J. gestured to the tall, barrel-chested man standing next to him. The newcomer was wearing a navy collared shirt and khakis ironed with military precision. He had dark-blond hair and had aviator sunglasses perched on high, sharp cheekbones and a slightly crooked, almost Roman nose. The nose didn’t quite match up with the high forehead and square chin. But somehow the overall effect was very pleasant and seemed oddly familiar to Frankie.

  The expression on the stranger’s handsome face was not amused or exasperated. He mostly looked alarmed.

  “There was a cricket stampede,” Duffy said, before pinching his lips together.

  “Sure there was.” E.J.J. cleared his throat to cover his laugh. “Y’all, this is the interim sheriff, Eric Linden. He’s takin’ over for Sheriff Rainey, gettin’ sworn in on Friday. Frankie, your dad thought he should come by to meet the county coroner.”

  The new sheriff took off the aviators and Frankie’s jaw dropped. She could have sworn he’d said his name was Derek, but that club had been really loud.

  The new sheriff was the hookup she’d Ubered away from without so much as a “Thanks for the naked memories.”

  For the first time in her life, she realized how it felt to experience panic and mortification in front of her family members. “Derek’s” apartment had been sparsely furnished and filled with boxes, but she’d assumed that he was a lonely guy who had just moved in and was looking for company. How in the hell was she supposed to know that he was moving to her town?

  “Nice to meet you.” Soon-to-be-Sheriff Linden reached toward Duffy for a manly handshake. Duffy frowned and shook the man’s hand.

  “Actually, my cousin is the coroner. I’m just the bait guy.”

  “You’re the coroner,” the sheriff rasped, turning toward Frankie. “The one I’m going to be workin’ with.”

  “The one and only in these parts. I’m Frankie McCready.”

  “Unbelievable,” Eric muttered.

  “Don’t worry, Sheriff,” she said, her voice so sweet it bordered on saccharine. “You’re not the first person to have trouble seeing me as a competent professional, and you won’t be the last. But I can present you with a pretty impressive list of credentials and certifications, if it makes you feel better.”

  Eric did not laugh. Instead, he glanced at E.J.J. and cleared his throat. “I was hoping we could sit down and go over some procedures for search and rescue, transport of remains, on-call status, that sort of thing.”

  “Um, sure,” she said, gesturing toward the funeral home. “We can go to my office, where the air-condi
tioning is downright arctic.”

  “No!” he yelped.

  Frankie jerked back from him. Eric’s cheeks flushed. She squinted at him as if she could now detect some underlying crazy she might have missed in her sex-induced haze.

  “Uh, actually, I was hopin’ I could grab something to eat while we talk,” Eric said, nodding at the Snack Shack. “It’s been a long day and Mr. McCready said you have the best fried chicken in town.”

  If this guy socially flailed any harder, Frankie was going to get whiplash. She didn’t have the heart to tell him her mama had closed the snack stand and cleaned up for the day. She put her arm around Leslie’s thin shoulders. “Well, anything deep-fried, Mama’s the master.”

  “Oh, that’s your mama?” Eric glanced back and forth between Leslie’s low-key, earthy beauty and Frankie’s aggressively colorful appearance. And somehow, he looked even more uncomfortable, which was quite the trick.

  “Leslie’s my mama and Duffy’s my cousin,” Frankie explained in a tone that was probably a little condescending. “E.J.J. is my great-uncle, but really my honorary grandfather. My daddy runs the office side of the funeral home. Uncle Stan drives the hearse. Duffy’s mama runs the bait shop with him and books fishin’ charters. We’re a real family operation.”

  E.J.J. clapped a hand on Eric’s shoulder, which made him startle a bit. “So, you’re gonna have to be careful callin’ for a ‘Mr. McCready.’ You’re bound to get more people answerin’ than you want. Might as well switch to a first-name basis now.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a funeral home and bait shop before,” Eric said as Frankie led him down the dock toward the snack stand. Leslie followed at their heels, and if Frankie knew her mother, Leslie was trying to mentally calculate how long it would take her to warm up the fryer and cook enough chicken to fill Eric up so he’d stop being so damn skittish.