RISKY BUSINESS meets SIX FEET UNDER

Mary Murphy McConigle has a little problem.

She borrows eighty bucks from the Junior Class car wash proceeds, then heads to the Lucky Feather Casino to win back the money she owes and, within an hour, loses it all.

Make that Murphy has a big problem.

Accidental solution: sell the trinkets, balloons, stuffed animals and other gewgaws intended for the Junior Class Carnival to the grieving people at a makeshift memorial for little Eva Melendez, seven-year old community icon who has just died of cancer. A touching solution to poverty and grief, especially since Murphy comes from a long line of respectable funeral directors. Murphy knows mourning and Murphy certainly knows how to dig herself a grave.

So, make that Murphy has a major problem.

But Murphy isn’t the only one with problems. Her best friend, Erica “Bings” Binger has lost her job, Bings’ beloved grandmother has just been diagnosed with cancer and Murphy’s parents, Ken and Barbie, are struggling financially with the McConigle Mortuary. And one way or another, all these problems are stacking up on Murphy’s shoulders.

Really, all she wanted to do was pay back the class money she lost gambling, not cause a national dialogue on how we mourn. From borrowing that first twenty dollar bill to blackmailing Riley Cobean, her father’s shifty new funeral director–it’s an all-or-nothing gamble to save the family business. Murphy takes a fast track, self-taught course of Business Models 101 and learns that in life, as in business, there can be profit in loss and and loss in profit.

Email Randall to see if Mary Murphy McConigle actually pulls it off without going to jail.