1 Chapter 1

Monday. I’m at the kitchen counter, waiting for the Keurig brewer to fill up my coffee mug, when my phone beeps with an incoming text. Since it’s barely seven in the morning and I’m still dressed in lounge pants and a T-shirt, my phone is laying on the table in the dining room, well out of reach.

For half a second I debate going to get it—anyone texting me this early has to have a pretty good reason—then hot java starts to trickle into my mug. The text can wait a little longer. Let me have my first cup of coffee, at least.

I mean, geez, it isn’t like it’s a matter of life or death.

Another chime signals a second text as I stir sugar and milk into my mug. Under my breath, I mutter, “Alright already.”

It’s someone from work, most likely, one of the interns or whoever was on call last night. They thought it’d be another uneventful shift, I’m sure, and now suddenly, an hour before the rest of us come into work, it isn’t. True, business isn’t exactly booming in the small town of Ashbury, which may only be a half hour’s drive south of the state capital but at times feels like a world away. Here’s a newsflash, though, something the interns and new employees always learn the hard way—the hours on our door may say eight to five, but sometimes we have to work around the clock. It’s the nature of the job. Either you deal with it or you don’t, but you can’t ask the clients not to bother you after hours.

When my phone beeps for the third time, though, I begin to get a little pissed. “Seriously?” I ask the empty room around me. “Do I have to do everything?”

I thought being the boss meant I could delegate, but I guess no one else wants to think for themselves this early, either.

With mug in hand, I head into the dining room and take a seat at the table, where my bagel waits, slathered with cream cheese. Riley’s bowl sits abandoned in front of the chair nearest to mine; it’s still half-full of milk because she refuses to drink it after she eats all the cereal. Yet the empty cup beside it proves she willdrink milk—she just doesn’t like the way it tastes after the cereal’s been in it, or so she says. She’s six, so I don’t bother arguing with her about things like that. It doesn’t make sense to me, but if she can rationalize it to herself, fine.

What isn’tfine is that she’s gone upstairs to get dressed and didn’t take her bowl and cup into the kitchen first. I’m not putting them in the sink for her, she knows that. I have half a mind to call her down, make her do it now before I forget, too, when I notice the string of texts on the lock screen of my phone. Damn.It’s way too early to start this day yet.

Pulling the phone towards me, I enter my key code and glance through the texts. They’re from work, as I thought. The first is from my secretary Molly Hunter, or as Riley calls her, Miss MollyMissMolly is a good fifteen years my senior, a round, jolly woman who’s buried two husbands already and is hard at work on number three, to hear her tell it. Once I jokingly asked, “Isn’t he afraid of your track record?”

To which she winked and replied, “We all have to go sometime. Rog likes dating a woman in the business, so to speak. Says it makes him feel like he has one foot through the gates already.”

Or one foot in the coffin, take your pick. Wisely I kept thatcomment to myself.

Her text is a no-nonsense, just the facts message she sent to both me and our intern Taylor Smithson. Which explains all the other messages, since Taylor might be fresh out of college but the guy doesn’t know how to notreply to everyone in a group text. I’ll have to mention it to him again later, because I don’t need to read all the back and forth that goes on.

Especially when it only makes me question whether or not he’s cut out for this gig.

Molly’s text reads, Home removal requested at 233 Lakeside Ave. Natural death.

I nod as I sip my coffee. Okay, so far, so good. Many people will call 911 when a loved one passes away. Even if the caller says the person has passed, an ambulance is usually dispatched just in case. The police follow to make sure the death was a natural one. Natural means there isn’t anything suspicious about it, such as an elderly person or someone who was ill. Most of what we deal with are natural deaths—this is Ashbury, after all. I can count the number of homicides I’ve been called out to on one hand and still have fingers left over, and I’ve been in the business for twenty years.