by Molly Harper
No, no doubts. Margot could do this. It wasn’t as if she knew these people. She didn’t have to worry about what they thought of her handling of their grief. Hell, she’d gotten Miriam Schram through two “thank God the divorce is final” parties, including a custom piñata made to look like her soon to be ex-husband. Margot could handle funerals.
“How does that work, exactly?” she asked, watching as the trees became thicker and the roads seemed to get steeper. “The two businesses together. Don’t the bereaved bring down the festive vacation mood for the boaters? Aren’t the mourners offended by coolers and pool noodles being carted through the parking lot?”
“The way your grandpa Jack set up the parking lot, they come in through totally different entrances, plus the boaters tend to stick to the lake side of the building anyway. And people seem to like the novelty of it, the tradition. Knowing that yeah, today might suck and you’re going through something hard, but better days are coming, and eventually, you’re going to be back to living. And Frankie likes to think the funerals help remind the boaters not to be jackasses about wearin’ their life vests.”
“Does it?”
Duffy pulled a frown. “Not particularly. No.”
Duffy easily guided the truck around a bend in the road and a huge glittering blue-green lakefront came into view. For the first time in about a week, Margot’s smile was genuine. Lake Sackett seemed to be shaped like a fern, all irregular inlets with the occasional tiny island breaking up the glassy expanse of water. The water was teeming with sailboats and speedboats towing water-skiers and inner tubes full of screaming kids.
“Crowded,” Margot observed, searching the shoreline for resorts and hotels. But she could find only small clusters of cabins here and there along those oddly shaped bays.
“Nah, this is nothin’,” he said. “You should have seen it a few years ago, when the tourists were really flockin’ in. This is the dregs. It’s drivin’ Uncle Bob just about nuts. Him and the town council, they’re pullin’ out what little hair they’ve got left trying to figure out how to get them back.”
“Why? Where did they go?”
“Here we are.” Duffy ignored the question and nodded his head toward two stone columns that seemed to pop up from out of nowhere. The neatly masoned columns, each with McCREADY carved into the rock in bold letters, flanked a gravel drive nearly hidden by the thick trees.
“The old family compound,” Duffy said, steering the truck over bumps and craters in the drive as if they were nothing. Meanwhile, Margot bounced her head off the passenger-side window hard enough to make her teeth rattle. “McCreadys first cleared it as a homestead back in the 1840s. Barely held on to it over the years, to be honest. Turns out we’re good at fishing and burying people—we are not great at farming. It wasn’t lakefront back then, mind you. We were lucky that the water stopped short of the houses when they dammed up the river in the fifties to make the lake. A lot of people were ‘encouraged’ by the Corps of Engineers to move along. It’s made for what you might call a historically ingrained distrust of outsiders.”
“Oh, good.” The corners of Margot’s mouth tilted up, but by the time she’d finished forming the expression, it was enough to make Duffy recoil.
“Hey, now, you’re not an outsider. You’re a McCready. Even if people in town don’t know you, they’re gonna know you. Know what I mean?”
Margot drew back against her seat. This was a mistake. She needed to tell Duffy to turn the truck around and take her right back to the airport because there was no way she could plan funerals and be some sort of minor redneck celebrity.
And she was about to tell him just that when they drove over another rut and she whacked her head against the window again. She opened her eyes just as they topped a rise in the gravel. The trees seemed to melt away to reveal a chain of log cabins grouped along the lakeshore, centering around one large two-story cabin. Each one seemed to have its own personality while sticking to the rustic aesthetic. There was just enough space between so the occupants would have some privacy but still be able to shout for help when the bands of roving rednecks inevitably raided the countryside. Each cabin had flower boxes blooming with yellow and purple Johnny-jump-ups and trailing fuchsias. The cabins had obviously spread out, with new ones added over time, from a huge log structure with a wraparound porch and three-eaved windows springing from the roof. Each was recently painted and neatly kept, except for a slightly dingy-looking yellow cottage with a peeling green shingle roof at the end of the road.
Duffy eased the truck past the main house and parked in front of an adorable specimen with a bright blue door. He reached behind the seat to pick up her suitcase, but she opened the back door and grabbed it. “I’ve got it, thank you.”
“You have trust issues in relation to your luggage, huh?” Duffy observed.
“I don’t mean any offense,” she told him. “I just . . . This is so sad, but I don’t have much left in the world. I sold a lot of my things before the move.”
Duffy grinned. “Well, this place is all yours. It’s one of the newer additions, used to be my sister’s until she and Carl got married.”
He opened the cabin door and ushered her through. The cabin was basically an overgrown dollhouse, like one of those trendy tiny homes without the pretentious storage solutions. There was one room divided into kitchen and living space, with one bedroom off to the left. A folding privacy screen, painted like the green mountains surrounding the lake, separated the bathroom from the bedroom. Margot got a look at the fairly new soaking tub, with its handheld showerhead but no shower curtain. She suspected it had been chosen because it was the only thing that would fit into the tiny plumbing footprint. “That is going to be an adjustment.”
At this point, she was just glad there was a functioning toilet. A few of the things she’d shipped here were already arranged around the cabin. Some of her clothes hung in the wardrobe.
Her Northwestern mugs were washed and ready on the counter of the kitchenette.
“Tootie put the linens and towels out for ya. You should be all set.” Duffy backed toward the door. “Well, I’ll leave you to your unpacking. Get plenty of sleep tonight. You’ll start your training first thing tomorrow. No worries. Bob’s real patient. Hardly ever gets ruffled, not even when both of Curtis Taggerty’s wives showed up to make his arrangements.”
“Ex-wife versus current wife drama?” Margot asked with a yawn.
“No, they were both his current wives,” Duffy said, shaking his head. “They just didn’t know it.”
“I would give that the reaction it deserves if I wasn’t so tired,” Margot said as she hung her suit bag in the tiny closet. Some- how, leaving a few things in her suitcase helped her feel like this wasn’t a long-term situation, like she could throw her stuff in her bag at any time and use her open-ended ticket back to Chicago. “Also, I’ve meant to ask: what grown adult woman allows people to call her ‘Tootie’?”
Duffy snorted, his big blue eyes twinkling. “Her real name is Eloise. When she was little, she took these tap-dancing lessons and that was one of the songs they learned the basics to. ‘A tootie- tah, a tootie-tah, a tootie-tah-tah.’ And she would just drive her whole family nuts, tapping up and down the hallway, up and down the stairs, up and down the sidewalk. ‘A tootie-tah, a tootie- tah, a tootie-tah-tah.’ They started calling her ‘Tootie’ to try to tease her out of it. But she’s so stubborn, the name-calling just made her do it more. And eventually the name just stuck. Heck, we don’t even call her ‘grandma.’ She’s always been Tootie.”
“Well, when your name is Tootie, what other qualifiers do you need?”
“That about covers it,” Duffy said. “The spare key’s on your nightstand there. And if you hear something that sounds like two rocks being banged together, don’t panic. It’s mostly harmless, just . . . don’t go outside on your own. Really, it would be better if you just waited for one of us to come get you in the morning.”
“Okay,” Margot s
aid, flopping down onto the mattress, making the springs squeal. The sheets smelled freshly laundered, that airy clean scent that came only from drying on a line in the sun. She’d smelled it once that she could remember, when her mother’s Whirlpool dryer broke down and the appliance store took two whole days to deliver an upgraded replacement. The blue-and-green quilt was handmade, she could tell from the irregularity of the fabrics and the stitching. And she tried not to be touched that these strangers had taken the time to make her bed with sun-bleached sheets and an heirloom coverlet, but she was.
Her great-aunt had put a much-loved quilt on her bed, but her father hadn’t even bothered to pick her up at the airport. That helped squelch the warm fuzzy feeling spreading across her chest. He didn’t want to see her. After all this time, when he finally had the chance, he still didn’t want to see her. Why did that hurt so much? She was a grown woman. She didn’t need her “real” daddy to hug her and kiss her boo-boos. So why did the rejection leave an acidic burn that made her rub the heel of her hand against her sternum in the search for a deep breath?
Eyes watering with exhaustion and unshed tears, Margot buried her face into her pillow and inhaled the spring-fresh smell of linens dried in the sun.
Until her head popped up from the pillow. “Duffy! What do you mean ‘mostly harmless?' . . . Duffy!”
***
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Ain't She a Peach excerpt
Praise for the Southern Eclectic Series
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“Another round of hilarity and romance in Harper’s second Southern Eclectic novel.” (–RT Book Reviews on Ain’t She a Peach)
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"Molly Harper is back in all her snarky glory with Ain’t She a Peach, her second laugh-out-loud full-length book in the Southern Eclectic series." (Harlequin Junkies on Ain't She a Peach)
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“Harper infuses merriment…into her laid-back [Southern Eclectic] series.” (Publishers Weekly on Ain't She a Peach)
Chapter 1
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FRANKIE McCREADY CAREFULLY dusted Maybelline blush in Light Rose on the curve of Eula Buckinerny’s cheek.
“Now, Miss Eula, I know you’ve never been one for makeup. You’ve always been blessed with such a nice complexion, you’ve never needed it,” Frankie murmured over the strains of the Mount Olive Gospel Singers’ rendition of “How Great Thou Art.” She liked to play her customers’ favorite music in the background while she made them up, so they would feel at home. “But every now and again, a girl needs some help from a good foundation and blush.
“Do ya think I wake up every morning with this fabulous Elizabeth Taylor lash already in place?” Frankie gestured to her own carefully framed violet-blue eyes. “No, this is the result of a steady hand and some indecently expensive mascara that I splurge on every six months. But don’t tell my mama. You know her. She gets downright indignant at the idea of spendin’ more than ten dollars on anything you’re just going to wash off your face every night.”
Frankie studied her makeup kit and chose a lip color that, while just a bit pinker than beige, was still more risqué than anything Miss Eula had ever worn, even at the annual Sackett County Homemaker Society Awards Dinner. She painted a thin, careful coat across Eula’s lips. “This will be our little secret.”
Frankie dipped a smaller brush in a dark brown contouring powder called Hot Chocolate that would give Eula’s features shadow and dimension. After a few strokes, Frankie leaned back and admired her handiwork.
“There. You look beautiful. And I really think that lipstick pops with your pretty pink suit. Trudy Darnell will spend the month trying to figure out how ya managed to go out looking better than her, even in your casket.”
Smiling down at Eula one last time, Frankie bowed her head in a solemn gesture of farewell. She closed the frosted pink casket lid just as a loud knock sounded on the mortuary room door. “Frankie! Is it all clear?”
“Sure, Margot, I’m all finished up with Miss Eula.” Frankie’s cousin stuck her blond head through the door.
Margot Cary was just as sleek and polished as she’d been the day she stepped off the plane from Chicago a few months ago to take what was supposed to be a temporary job at the McCready Family Funeral Home and Bait Shop. And while her slick designer suits were still very much out of place in semirural Georgia, Frankie and the rest of the McCreadys were working like ants on a discarded Blow Pop to make her feel like part of the family.
“You comin’ in?” Frankie asked. “Nope.”
Frankie snorted. Her cousin took no crap from the local PTA-based social terrorists, but she was still pretty creeped out by the concept of embalming. Frankie tried not to judge. After all, she was creeped out by the concept of gluten-free cupcakes and juice cleanses.
“Sheriff Linden is here for you, Frankie,” Margot said, training her eyes on a spot over Frankie’s shoulder, away from the form of Benjoe Watts, lying under a pristine white sheet on table two. “They’re bringing in Bobby Wayne Patterson.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.” Frankie sighed, frowning deeply. “Yeah, my dad said that y’all—you all had been expecting this one for a while,” Margot said, clearing her throat.
Frankie’s momentary sadness over Bobby Wayne gave way to warm internal fuzziness over her cousin’s casual use of my dad, something that wouldn’t have happened just a few weeks before. After a lifetime of separation from the whole family, Margot wasn’t quite ready to call Stan McCready “Daddy.” But the two were able to stay in the same room and make pleasant conversation on a regular basis, which was a considerable improvement over when Margot had arrived.
Also, Margot had started to say “y’all,” which made Frankie perversely proud.
“Could you tell my dad that Miss Eula’s coming up on the elevator?” Frankie asked. “All prettied up and ready for her party.”
“Will do,” Margot said, the corners of her slick coral lips lifting. “Your mom left your lunch in my office and said to remind you that you have to eat at some point. I believe the exact phrase she used was ‘No excuses or I’ll give her a whooping, just like when she was little.’ ”
“She’s all talk. I never got whoopin’s.”
“I’d still eat the freaking sandwich, if I were you,” Margot told her. “Your mother is a culinary genius, and bacon is her medium of artistic expression.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Frankie said, rolling the closed pink casket toward the elevator that led to the west chapel. She called after Margot, who was already halfway up the stairs to the funeral home proper. “Remind Daddy that Miss Eula ordered a full spray of white roses! She wanted them in place for her visitation. And she wanted to make sure Trudy Darnell saw them. She actually wrote it in her preplanned funeral paper- work: ‘Make sure Trudy Darnell sees me covered in white roses.’ They had a long-standin’ feud over some pie-related incident at the 1964 county fair.”
“The roses are already here. I’ll place them myself,” Margot promised from the stairwell. “Also, for the record, I did not expect the old church ladies to be this cutthroat. It’s like Game of Thrones with less nudity and more denture cream.”
“Just be grateful for the ‘less nudity,’ ” Frankie yelled. “Trust me when I say that I am.”
Frankie snickered and then heard Margot say, “She’s ready to see you, Sheriff,” before click-clacking her way up the stairs on her scary ice-pick heels. Frankie had no idea how Margot walked in those things, much less did stairs.
Frankie turned to see a tall man in a dark green Sackett County Sheriff ’s Department uniform duck through the door. She kept her lip from curling in disdain, but it was a near thing. “Sheriff.”
Blessed with a thick head of dark-blond hair and eyes the color of new moss, Eric Linden wasn’t handsome in the classical sense. Frankie knew enough about bone structure to see that his sharp cheekbones and slightly crooked Roman nose didn’t quite coordinate with his high forehead and square
chin. His lips were oddly full and opened over white, but certainly not orthodontia-perfect, teeth. His top canines in particular were slightly off-kilter, which shouldn’t have been charming but somehow was.
And damn, did that man know how to fill out a uniform. The fit of Eric’s shirt alone was enough to make Frankie more than a little self-conscious. She liked to think that her sense of style made up for her own pale, under-toned physique. For instance, today’s ensemble of a black tunic over tights printed with galaxies and comets lent her a certain air of quirky elegance. It would help her self-esteem considerably if she didn’t turn to lady jelly in a lab coat every time she made eye contact with those big green eyes of his, while he seemed to remain unaffected. He was supposed to have been a fun highlight to an outstanding “self-care” weekend—a highlight she would never have to see again. But here she was, enduring regular awkward interactions with a guy who seemed to think she was some heartless sex marauder, all because she hadn’t stuck around for postcoital pancakes a few weeks before.
“Ms. McCready,” he drawled, his eyes catching on Mr. Watts. He seemed to blanch, and his speech faltered for a second. “I—Y—Your cousin was supposed to tell you Bobby Wayne Patterson is coming in. I think it’s a possible homicide. Since you’re the county coroner, I need you to give him the full workup before I can send him along to the state crime lab.”
Jesus Herbert Christ. Not this again.
Eric Linden seemed to think that anybody who didn’t die in intensive care surrounded by a circle of great-great-grandchildren was the victim of foul play. This was the second body he’d brought in as a “possible homicide” in the couple of weeks since he had taken over for the recently retired Sheriff Rainey. The first was Len Huffman, a poor tourist from Ohio who’d had no idea how to operate a fishing boat near a dam and ended up drowning. Sheriff Linden had insisted the boater’s pretty and much younger wife had something to do with his untimely demise and refused to release the body to the family until he had evidence. While Frankie could see the motive in a woman forced to spend her precious vacation driving to Georgia for fishing, ultimately overconfidence and poor boatsmanship were the only killers in this case. It took Frankie’s autopsy report, a statement from the bass boat’s manufacturer, and affidavits from the man’s sons regarding his poor swimming skills to convince Sheriff Linden.