The Little Tombstone Cozies Box Set

  The Good, the Bad, and the Pugly

  Lonesome Glove

  The Good, the Bad, and the Pugly

  A Little Tombstone Cozy Mystery (Book One)

  By Celia Kinsey

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  : A Little Tombstone Cozy Mystery©2019 Celia Kinsey. Also sold briefly under the title Upon My Death: A Little Tombstone Cozy Mystery©2020 Celia Kinsey. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover images ©Freepik.com

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  Also by Celia

  The Little Tombstone Cozy Mysteries

  The Good, the Bad, and the Pugly

  Lonesome Glove

  Felicia’s Food Truck One Hour Mysteries

  Fit to Be French Fried

  Hamburger Heist

  Pizza Pie Puzzler

  Hot Dog Horrors

  Also by Celia

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter One

  “Do you have any questions, Mrs. Iverson?” my Great Aunt Geraldine’s lawyer asked as I finished reading the first half of my aunt’s will and placed it back on his immaculate desk, too overwhelmed to go on.

  The surface of the desk was so shiny that I could see that my eyeliner had smudged and that I had a bit of spinach stuck between two of my front teeth.

  Aunt Geraldine’s lawyer had instructed me to call him Jason, although, as he persisted in addressing me as Mrs. Iverson, rather than Emma, I’d decided it was safer to stick with Mr. Wendell.

  “Aunt Geraldine is leaving me Little Tombstone?”

  “According to the terms of her will, Mrs. Montgomery has left you nearly everything she possessed, yes,” Mr. Wendell said. “The few exceptions are addressed in the later pages.”

  He smiled an impersonal smile, displaying a row of very white, very straight teeth. I doubted Mr. Wendell ever went around for hours, oblivious to the fact that part of his lunch was on display every time he opened his mouth. At least everyone I’d seen since noon would know I was the sort of responsible citizen who ate her vegetables and did her part to keep rising health care costs at bay by practicing preventative medicine.

  I smiled back at Mr. Wendell with my lips pressed firmly together. Smiling with my mouth shut makes me look slightly deranged, but as Mr. Wendell had obviously had extensive dealings with my Great Aunt Geraldine, he shouldn’t be surprised to discover that being slightly deranged runs in the family.

  “I’m getting the café building?” I asked.

  “Yes. The Bird Cage Café is included on the deed.”

  “And the little shop with that funny old man—Hank? He runs that weird museum thingy?”

  “The Curio Shop and Museum of the Unexplained, yes. Hank Edwards leases that portion of the premises, although I understand his rent amounts to a purely symbolic sum.”

  “Hank will become my tenant?”

  “In the latter half of the will, Mr. Edward’s use of the premises is discussed. It seems your aunt had granted Mr. Edwards tenancy for life at what seemed to me a rather reduced rent.”

  “How reduced?”

  “The will stipulates the rent to remain, in perpetuity, at ten dollars a month.”

  If I hadn’t been so shocked by the will in its entirety, I would have asked a lot more questions about the relationship between Hank Edwards and my Great Aunt Geraldine—not that Mr. Wendell would have been in a position to answer them—but I didn’t. At the moment, I had more pressing concerns.

  “Aunt Geraldine left me the trailer court too?”

  “Yes, also with several long-term tenants, although I won’t deceive you that the rents amount to much. You are free to raise those rents, unlike Mr. Edwards’, at your discretion.”

  “And the motel?”

  “There are the two tourist cottages as well as the eight-room motel, all of which are vacant and virtually derelict.”

  “If Aunt Geraldine was this loaded,” I pointed down at the documents on Mr. Wendell’s desk, “why is Little Tombstone in such bad shape?”

  “I’m afraid Mrs. Montgomery did not confide in me her reasons for allowing things to run into such disrepair.”

  “But what about Abigail?” I asked. “Shouldn’t she be the one getting all this?”

  “Mrs. Montgomery’s daughter?”

  My cousin Abigail had been on the outs with her mother off and on for years, but I had a hard time believing that their relationship had deteriorated to the extent that my Aunt Geraldine would cut her daughter out of the will entirely.

  “Mrs. Montgomery did leave her daughter a small bequest,” Mr. Wendell said. “You’ll find it on page eighteen.”

  I consulted page eighteen.

  “’A blue 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with an extra set of hubcaps (needs new carburetor and windshield, hood ornament missing).’ What about Abigail’s daughters?”

  “Keep reading,” said Mr. Wendell. “Mrs. Montgomery left something for each of her granddaughters.”

  I scanned the page once more.

  “A large box of miscellaneous Tupperware (some have lids) for Freida and a set of World Book Encyclopedias (missing volume B and U-V) for Georgia?” I said. “Isn’t this all a bit insulting?”

  “It’s not my place to interpret the intent of the deceased,” said Mr. Wendell, and for a few seconds his stuffed-frog demeanor slipped a little, “but I have reason to believe that Mrs. Montgomery may have been less than pleased with her daughter and granddaughters at the time of her death. Mrs. Montgomery altered the will, shortly before she died, to leave her real estate and the bulk of her personal property to you. Your name was added as sole beneficiary to all her banking and investment accounts at the same time Mrs. Montgomery altered her will. Those accounts are not reflected in the will itself, and their existence may be kept confidential if you wish.”

  “But why would my Great Aunt Geraldine leave me practically everything?”

  “I believe that your grandmother had specified that her half of Little Tombstone should pass on to you upon your aunt’s death. I understand that it was joint property between your great aunt and your grandmother. The earlier version of the will had named you and your cousin Abigail as joint inheritors of Little Tombstone, but your great aunt must have had misgivings about the arrangement.”

  I checked the date on the will. It had been signed just three weeks before Great A
unt Geraldine had passed away.

  “But I didn’t even come to see Aunt Geraldine when she was sick,” I said. “I haven’t visited Little Tombstone for almost three years. I always called my aunt at Christmas and on her birthday, but that’s about it. I don’t deserve this.”

  The truth was, I hadn’t known my great aunt even had cancer until I’d received a call from Aunt Geraldine’s best friend, Juanita, telling me that my aunt was already gone. There’d been no service. Just a quiet cremation.

  I’d inherited Great Aunt Geraldine’s ashes too, apparently. The bright blue ceramic urn containing all that was left of my aunt sat on Mr. Wendell’s shiny desk next to the manila envelope which held my copy of the will.

  “Your aunt did not confide in me her reasons for leaving you the bulk of her property. The only comment she made when she came in to draft the changes was that she was doing it for Earp.”

  “Earp? Aunt Geraldine’s dog, you mean?”

  I was shocked that Earp was still alive. I’d not been back to visit Little Tombstone since my grandmother’s funeral three years before, and even then, Earp, my Great Aunt Geraldine’s ancient and irritable pug, had looked about a hundred years old—in dog years, of course.

  Earp had taken an obsessive shine to me. I suspected that it was not my personal charm that fueled his possessiveness, but because I surreptitiously fed him little powdered sugar-covered lemon cookies out of the package I always keep in my handbag. Whatever the reason, for my entire visit to Little Tombstone, Earp had refused to let me out of his sight.

  “You’ve not made it to the section addressing the matter of Earp,” said Mr. Wendell. His lip twitched a bit at one corner as if suppressing a genuine smile of amusement, but he hastily replaced it with a professional display of his straight, white teeth. “If you’ll skip to page nine, you’ll find the matter of Earp addressed in great detail.”

  I read page nine, then page ten, followed by pages eleven through thirteen. By the time I was finished reading the lengthy passages addressing the care, feeding, and sweatering of the pug, I understood why Mr. Stiff-as-a-Double-Starched-Shirt was having trouble keeping a straight face.

  There was a condition attached to my inheritance of Little Tombstone Café, Curios, Museum, and Trailer Court: I was obliged to Love, Honor, and Cherish my Aunt Geraldine’s beloved pug ‘til death-do-us-part. Those were her exact words.

  If I didn’t, Little Tombstone, along with what appeared to be a substantial stash of cash and even more substantial investments, would go to the Animal Rescue in Albuquerque, and all I’d be left with was an old set of golf clubs formerly used by my late Uncle Ricky to hit rocks at rattlesnakes.

  Chapter Two

  After I had finished reading the will and asked at least a million questions, all of which Mr. Wendell patiently answered, he insisted on accompanying me to Little Tombstone.

  “Just in case,” he said.

  “Just in case of what?” I asked, but Mr. Wendell ignored my question and instructed me to follow his spotless, white, and nearly-new Land Rover in my compact rental car.

  I wondered what someone who drove a spotless, white, and nearly-new Land Rover and wore what looked suspiciously like handmade Italian leather loafers was doing practicing law in a dusty New Mexican wide-spot in the road. Even Mr. Wendell’s small concrete office building looked out of place. It was the newest structure of the twenty-odd buildings that made up the village of Amatista by a good thirty years.

  Mr. Wendell looked more like the Santa Fe type. I’d have thought he’d be well suited to intellectual property law or corporate mediation, rather than officiating the wills of eccentrics who bequeath rundown roadside tourist attractions to their down-and-out grandnieces.

  I wondered if Mr. Wendell handled divorces. I’d already filed for one in LA County, but after seeing what Aunt Geraldine was apparently leaving me, I was in no mood to let my fiscally reckless ex get his hands on that, too.

  I’d selected my LA lawyer by the dubious strategy of performing an internet search for divorce attorneys and then picking one at random. It was all I’d had strength for at the time. It might do to get a second opinion, just in case my first arbitrary pick of legal counsel was giving me bad advice.

  When we reached Little Tombstone, a mere half-mile north of Mr. Wendell’s office, it looked much as I had left it three years before. Little Tombstone had looked shabby then, and it looked shabby now.

  According to the deed, which I’d received along with Aunt Geraldine’s will, Little Tombstone sat on one hundred and fifty acres, but the buildings were clustered on three blocks’ worth of street frontage along Highway 14. The buildings were on the far north edge of the tiny village of Amatista, but the bulk of the land attached to Little Tombstone extended into rolling hills dotted with sagebrush and cactus interrupted by the occasional arroyo.

  Little Tombstone proper—a haphazard and truncated imitation of the original historic town in Arizona—had originally been my grandfather’s idea, back in the 1970s, but his idea had outlived him by forty years. After my grandfather’s unexpected death left my grandmother a very young and overwhelmed single mother raising a daughter on her own, she had invited her sister Geraldine and her husband Ricky to move to Amatista and help run the roadside attraction—then in its heyday.

  Judging by the condition of the place, Little Tombstone’s heyday was over, never to return.

  Mr. Wendell bypassed the eight-unit motel with its broken-out windows and collapsing roof and pulled up in front of the Bird Cage Café, the only building within the three blocks’ worth of weather-beaten structures which had any cars parked in front of it. I pulled into the gravel strip which fronted the dilapidated boardwalk that tied the whole crumbling monstrosity together.

  Mr. Wendell climbed out of his Land Rover and navigated the broken steps leading up to the elevated boardwalk with a look on his face that plainly said, “This place is a personal injury lawsuit waiting to happen.”

  I made a mental note to use a bit of the cash my Great Aunt Geraldine had left sitting in the bank to get someone out to fix those steps before some poor soul broke his neck.

  I’d always assumed that Aunt Geraldine had let things get in such a sorry state because she lacked the funds to do anything about it, but, based on the assets enumerated in the list, I’d just received from my aunt’s lawyer, I’d assumed wrong. Aunt Geraldine had been practically rolling in dough.

  Mr. Wendell held open the swinging saloon-style doors which led into a small open-air vestibule.

  “You may find that Mrs. Gonzales is still somewhat distraught over your great aunt’s passing,” he said as we paused in front of the glass door which led into the café’s dining room.

  I noticed one of the panes of glass in the door was broken out and had been covered over with an old license plate screwed haphazardly to the frame.

  As Mr. Wendell pushed open the door, a bell jingled overhead. The dining room was empty except for a wizened old man I immediately recognized as Hank, the proprietor of the Curio Shop and curator of the Museum of the Unexplained next door.

  Hank was sitting at a table for two in the back corner sipping a cup of coffee and smoking a cigar. He’d overturned one of the little plastic No Smoking signs that sat on each table and was using it as an improvised ashtray.

  “Morning, Mr. Edwards,” said Mr. Wendell.

  Hank just grunted and took another draw on his cigar.

  “You remember Mrs. Iverson.”

  Hank grunted again, allowing his gaze to hover somewhere east of my left ear. Hank looked none too happy to see me, although, if my memory served me correctly, none too happy was Hank Edwards’ perpetual state of mind.

  I could hear Juanita in the back, banging pots and singing at the top of her lungs. She didn’t sound terribly devastated, but then she was the type who could laugh through her tears, so I concluded that Mr. Wendell’s read on the situation was probably accurate.

  Juanita had almost forty years
of friendship with my Aunt Geraldine to look back on. Nobody gets over a loss like that overnight.

  Mr. Wendell and I left Hank to his coffee and his probably-not-legal-on-the-premises-of-a-food-service-establishment-open-to-the-public-in-the-state-of-New-Mexico cigar and went through to the kitchen.

  As soon as Juanita clapped eyes on me, she proceeded to maul me in a motherly fashion which I’ve always found incredibly endearing. Both my grandmother and my great aunt had been raised up under the “a handshake is as good as a hug” school of thought, and they’d instilled the same philosophy in my late mother. During my childhood, hugs had been in short supply. Still, every time I’d been to visit Little Tombstone, Juanita had more than made up for my flesh and blood’s standoffishness by practically squeezing the stuffing out of me every chance she got.

  “Emma!” she said, “You’ve—”

  I half expected Juanita to tell me I’d grown. It was true. I had grown. Outward. Which is the only way that thirty-three-year-olds generally do grow. I had gained fifteen pounds in the last three months. Stress-eating will do that to a person.

  I guess Juanita realized that it would be insensitive to point out my weight gain, so she finished with, “—changed your hair.”

  I hadn’t, not since she’d last seen me, but I wasn’t about to argue with her in front of Mr. Wendell.

  “You’ve seen Hank?” she asked.

  “Yes, he—umm—greeted us as we came through,” I said.

  I wondered when Mr. Wendell was going to leave. It appeared he planned to conduct me on a complete tour of Little Tombstone, a place I’d been coming to all my life. I hoped he wasn’t billing me by the hour for his services.

  “You can go,” I told him. “Thanks for bringing me out here, but I’ll be fine on my own now.”

  For the first time since I’d met him, Mr. Wendell appeared flustered.

  “Have you had lunch?” Juanita asked. It was nearly four in the afternoon. I’d had lunch hours ago. Skipping meals is not something I do if I can help it. Truthfully, the soggy chicken sandwich and anemic spinach salad I’d eaten at the Albuquerque airport before picking up my rental car had worn off sometime halfway through the reading of my Great Aunt Geraldine’s will.