Page 1 of My Killer Blind Date

Chapter One

I’m filling out the Release Form to retrieve the body from the St Anthony’s Hospital morgue when my phone dings. Lodging the pen between my teeth, I set the clipboard down on the hospital mortician’s desk and pull the phone out of my back pocket.

‘Sorry,’ I mouth to the mortician sitting at the bar-height desk across from me – Jeff – who doesn’t even glance up from his typing.

It’s Georgina.

Aaaahhhh!!! Margot!!!! Ready for your big date?????

It takes me a second to process all that punctuation. And then it hits me.

Big date.

Oh … shit.

My stomach drops.

Totally!!!!! I type back, my fingers shaking, though I’m not sure how much of the adrenaline can be attributed to forgetting something so important, and how much to the prospect of having to go out. In public. With a man I’ve never met.

I add a few party emojis for good measure, because that seems like something a well-adjusted person might do, and hit send.

Hopefully, all those exclamation points and confetti images will put George off the scent, because she cannot know that I completely forgot it was tonight. She’s been talking about setting me up for months, chipping away at my defenses in her cheerfully persistent way until I finally caved last week.

‘He’s a friend of Arjun’s,’ she said in the gushy in-love voice, as if of course all the good qualities of Arjun – her fiancé – would also be present in his friends. ‘And you know how it hurts me to see you living alone when Arjun and I are so happy, especially after—’ Then she pursed her perennially moist lips and made a pained face.

Zoe. That’s what she had been about to say. My closest friend – more sister than friend. George and Zoe never got along, but of course George has been completely sympathetic since Zoe’s disappearance in early December, six months ago.

The familiar sensations start. My heart pounds. My palms burn like I just smashed them to a hot iron. My head swims, as if I just took three tequila shots back-to-back.

Stay centered. You have a date to get to, or George will give you her ‘disappointed look.’

I stuff the phone back away. Time to wrap this up. I have forty minutes until I’m due for my blind date at Old Irving Brewing across town, and we haven’t even moved the body to the SUV. With traffic what it is at six p.m. in Chicago … yeah, not going to have time to change. Hope he loves flannel.

‘Whatever. If flannel is a make it or break it, it’s not gonna work out,’ I mutter under my breath.

‘Excuse me?’ says Jeff.

‘Sorry … nothing.’ I guess not under my breath enough.

Jeff’s desk overlooks a brightly lit lobby with two rows of bucket chairs bolted to the floor. No windows, but a few fake plants bring an attempt at cheer. I never tried to imagine what morticians would look like before I started this job five days ago, but if I had, I would have seen Jeff. Tall. Pale. Serious as hell.

I finish up the paperwork with a loopy signature at the bottom. Margot Estelle McKee.

‘Here you go,’ I say, pushing the clipboard across the desk. I hope I did everything right. Jeff slowly unclips the papers from the clipboard. Straightens them.

‘I see you work for Anderson & Pulaski Funeral Home and Crematory,’ he says. ‘How’s Bill?’

‘Oh! The owner? Yeah … good. I think?’

He makes a deep hmm in his throat, then spends a very long time looking at the first page.

‘Sorry, ah …’ I lean forward and give him what I hope is a winning smile. ‘I’m in a bit of a hurry. Is there any way we could, you know … expedite this one?’

Only Jeff’s eyes move. They flicker up, glare at me, then flicker down.

‘O … K,’ I whisper, stepping back from the desk. Message received.

This is where Zoe would shine. She had this vibrant energy that made it impossible for anyone to ignore her. Zoe could have convinced the Pope to try Ouija. I mean, she convinced me to move to the shittiest apartment in the city of Chicago with her, practically the minute we both turned eighteen. We were only in that particular place for a year, but even with the silverfish problem, the clouds of fruit flies that lived in the sink drains, and the nasty refrigerator with old meat juices crusted in the drawers, she still managed to cast her magic over the place. It was one of the best years of my life.