The Little Tombstone Cozies Box Set

by Celia Kinsey

  “What do we do with this bone?” I asked.

  “There’s a banana box half full of bones in room two of the old motel. I decided to put them there for safekeeping. That way, if anybody ever does dig up those graves and tries to put the pieces back together, at least they’ll have something to work with. At the rate Earp is dragging in bones, though, we’ll soon collect enough to assemble a whole skeleton.”

  After Mr. Wendell went back to his office, I went back to the café to talk to Juanita. It was close to six by this time, and the place was filling up.

  “I’ll come back later,” I told her, “after the supper rush is over. Is Chamomile all the help you’ve got around here?”

  “No,” Juanita glanced around and lowered her voice. “I’ve got Marco in the dish room. I hired him to bus tables because he’s Pastor Freddy’s son.”

  Juanita is a big churchgoer. There are two tiny religious congregations in Amatista. The Catholics have an ancient adobe chapel that gets a visit from a succession of random priests who conduct mass about every third Sunday. The other congregation is a group of nondenominational Protestants who meet in the back of Freddy Fernandez’s barbershop. Freddy’s barbershop sits right next to the Bird Cage Café, so it’s certainly convenient. Freddy isn’t really a pastor, but that’s what Juanita calls him anyway.

  “Pastor Freddy claims his son is practically a genius,” Juanita told me. “Pastor says that’s why Marco has trouble holding down a job. Not enough intellectual challenge. Freddy says Marco plans to make a fortune inventing his own cryptocurrency, as soon as he scrapes together enough real-world money to get started. I asked Marco about it when he first started working for me, and the boy tried to explain how cryptocurrency works, but it went straight over my head.”

  “I don’t really understand how cryptocurrency works, either,” I admitted.

  “I think it’s all a bunch of bosh,” said Juanita. “As a favor to Freddy, I agreed to give Marco a chance, but he’s the slowest, laziest dishwasher I’ve ever had. Still, he’s lasted longer here than he usually does. I heard that Nancy Flynn’s brother-in-law got him a job working on a concrete crew, and he lasted only three days before they fired him.”

  She broke off speaking when Chamomile came in from the dining room with a new batch of order slips.

  “You have a key to your aunt’s apartment?” Juanita asked. “It’s a real mess, I’m afraid.”

  I held up the ring of keys that Mr. Wendell had handed off to me. Before her death, my aunt had helpfully labeled them. Unfortunately, about half of them were simply labeled “?”

  I climbed the back stairs to my aunt’s second-story apartment, Earp in tow. Halfway up the stairs, the pug overtook me. He seemed excited to be returning to his old environment, but when I unlocked the door and switched on the light, he ran from room to room, searching for his former human companion. When he didn’t find her, he returned to my side and howled until I found a bag of dog treats under the sink and gave him a whole handful. After that, he trotted over to his bed in the corner of the living room, made three rotations, and settled down to a light doze.

  I wondered if Earp’s search for Aunt Geraldine would be a regular returning-home routine for a while. Did dogs grieve? They must. I believed dogs felt something like love, so they must also feel the pain of separation. I decided to put off going back down to the rental car to retrieve my suitcases, for fear of waking up Earp. I’d get them later when I went back down to catch up with Juanita.

  It was strange to be in Aunt Geraldine’s house and know she was gone and never coming back. It was the little things that got to me: the half-finished Sudoku on the dining table, the slippers next to her bed, and the month-old TV guide sitting under the remote with Law and Order circled (notation: MUST WATCH!!!), and the Bachelor crossed out so vigorously that it was almost unreadable (notation: BRAIN ROT!!!).

  I opened the refrigerator door and hastily closed it again. I made a mental note to buy gloves and a box of heavy-duty trash bags.

  I kept an eye out the living room window on the parking spaces in front of the café, and by eight the cars had thinned out considerably. I snuck out, leaving Earp snoring in his bed. I hoped he wouldn’t wake up, find that he was alone in the apartment, and start to howl again.

  A gangly young man, about the same age as Chamomile, but not nearly so pretty nor industrious, was listlessly wiping down tables in the almost-empty dining room. He had to be Marco. I greeted him on my way to the kitchen, but he didn’t bother to look up.

  Juanita and Chamomile were alone into the kitchen, cleaning up the detritus of the dinner hour.

  “How’s Earp settling in?” Juanita asked.

  “He looked all over the apartment for Aunt Geraldine. When he couldn’t find her, he howled, but he’s finally settled down. He went to sleep after I stuffed him full of dog treats.”

  “I’m sure he must miss her,” said Juanita.

  “I imagine he must.”

  “Otherwise, how are things going? This must all be a bit of a shock.” Juanita made a sweeping gesture that seemed to take in all of Little Tombstone. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to Little Tombstone’s shocking state of disrepair or the fact that I now owned it all, down to every last loose shingle and bit of peeling paint.

  Either way, the answer was still the same, so I said, “Yes, it is a bit of a shock.”

  “You plan to stay for a while?”

  “I don’t have any place else to go,” I said. “It’s a long story, and I don’t have the strength to tell it right now, but Frank and I are getting a divorce.”

  “Oh, Emma.”

  “It’s OK. It was my choice.”

  It had been my choice, but only after I’d found out what Frank and Shirley had been up to.

  “I thought you had a good job in LA,” Juanita said. “Your grandmother was very proud of your accomplishments. She was always saying, ‘my granddaughter the screenwriter.’”

  Nine years ago, I’d sold a script that had been turned into the sleeper hit of the year, and I’d been labeled the girl wonder of the screenwriting world, but since then, up until about six months ago, I hadn’t sold anything else that had made it past the option stage.

  I’d bring in a little from time to time from doing endless revisions on someone else’s work. Butchering it, most of the time, if I’m going to be honest. Not that it was my fault that other people’s nuanced and thoughtful stories ended up as unrecognizable bilge. I just did what I was told.

  We’d lived off Frank’s income, for the most part, a fact he was forever reminding me of. Then, when I’d finally sold my second screenplay, I’d foolishly handed the entire amount over to Frank to upgrade his office. I might as well have flushed that entire chunk of change right down the toilet.

  “I’m in between jobs right now,” I told Juanita. “That’s what we like to say in LA when we’re totally skint and have no idea where our next meal is coming from. It’s less humiliating, somehow, than admitting you’re trying to decide between a job cleaning bus station bathrooms or one that involves spending eight hours a day harassing people about the late payments on their leased furniture.”

  I’d been suddenly saved from a similar fate by the unfortunate demise of my Great Aunt Geraldine. With prudent management, it might not matter if I never worked again.

  I suspected that Juanita had no idea that my Aunt Geraldine was a millionaire several times over. I couldn’t fathom how my aunt had managed such a feat. I decided it might be best to downplay that aspect of my inheritance until I figured out where all the money had materialized from, and who else knew it existed.

  “Is your situation really that bad?” Juanita asked.

  “No, I exaggerate. Cleaning bus station toilets was never on the table. I’ll be fine. Aunt Geraldine left enough to tide me over for a while,” I said, “and to take care of some of the things around here that have gone to wrack and ruin. Plus, if my screenplay becomes another hit, I’ll have back e
nd coming to me.”

  “Back end?”

  “They give you more if the movie turns a profit. It’s a percentage.”

  “I’m relieved that Geraldine left you something to live on in the meantime,” Juanita said. “I always got the impression that Geraldine was barely making ends meet.”

  My aunt was a crafty old biddy, letting her dearest friend believe she was on the brink of bankruptcy. Clearly, Juanita had no idea about my aunt’s substantial stockpile.

  “Make me a list of everything that needs fixing,” I told Juanita, “and I’ll get to them as soon as I can find a handyman type capable of taking on such a colossal task. I asked Hank for a list of repairs, but he seemed more concerned that I do something about the local influx of aliens.”

  “Ah, he told you about the aliens, did he?”

  “Is he—?” I tried to think of a diplomatic way to ask if Hank had finally taken a plunge off the deep end. He’d been teetering on the tip of the diving board for years. “Hank’s always been odd, but it used to just be conspiracy theories, strange inventions, and an unwavering confidence in the existence of chupacabras. Hank’s not moved on to full-blown hallucinations, has he?”

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as that,” Juanita said. “Hank’s not claiming to have actually seen aliens or been abducted by them or anything.”

  “Then why is he convinced that Little Tombstone’s being overrun by extraterrestrials?”

  “It’s the lights. He’s been seeing strange lights and attributing them to alien visitors,” Juanita lowered her voice and dropped her gaze. “I’d think Hank imagined the lights, except that I’ve seen them too.”

  Chapter Five

  “Lights?” I asked Juanita. “What kind of lights?”

  “I’ve seen them three times, blindingly bright lights hovering over the ground. Sort of blueish.” Chamomile had gone home, but Marco was still out in the dining room washing the tables at half speed, so Juanita kept her voice low. “Hank claims to see them practically every night, out in the field on the other side of the trailer court.”

  “There’s nothing out there but sagebrush and cactus,” I said. I wasn’t prepared to embrace Hank’s assessment that Little Tombstone was experiencing an alien invasion; in fact, if Juanita hadn’t been so quick to corroborate his story, I’d have dismissed his tale without a second thought.

  “That’s not all,” said Juanita. “According to Hank, there are strange marks on the ground out where he thinks the lights are hovering.”

  “Are you and Hank the only ones who’ve seen the lights?” I asked.

  “As far as I know, Hank and I are the only ones. Morticia, Ledbetter, and Chamomile all say they haven’t noticed anything amiss. You couldn’t see the lights from the trailer court itself, though, not unless you were outside peeking through a hole in the fence.”

  “When did you see these lights?”

  “All three times I’ve seen them have been when I left the café late at night,” Juanita told me. “I only noticed them because I’d parked over on the other side of the old motel to keep the spots out front freed up for customers.”

  “How late at night was it when you saw the lights?” I asked.

  “Around 1:00 in the morning.”

  “Same as Hank?”

  “Hank’s seen lights even later. Two or even three AM.”

  “What about Katie?”

  “Chamomile said she hadn’t mentioned anything. Katie does leave for work very early. Five in the morning most mornings, but I guess by that time, the lights must be gone.”

  Later that night, as I lay in my Great Aunt Geraldine’s bed, staring at the moonlit water stains on the ceiling where the roof had been leaking and listening to Earp snoring from his spot at my feet, I couldn’t stop thinking about the strange lights and unexplained markings on the ground. I knew they couldn’t possibly be the handiwork of aliens, but if little green men weren’t visiting us from a galaxy far, far away, then who was?

  The next morning I got up bright and early and had a hearty and nutritious breakfast consisting of stale All Bran washed down with a bottle of Ensure (vanilla), which were the only remotely edible things in the apartment unless I counted Earp’s dog treats under the sink.

  After I’d polished off a second bottle of Ensure (chocolate), and Earp had eaten an entire bowl of dog treats, I found a tablet of paper and a pencil and got to work organizing myself.

  TO DO, I wrote in big, bold letters at the top of the blank page. I nibbled the tip of the eraser until I discovered that petrified rubber doesn’t taste so good. Then I wrote:

  #1: Buy Groceries. Dog food. Cleaning supplies. Don’t forget gloves. Ditto trash bags.

  #2: Find Handyman.

  #3: Go through Aunt Geraldine’s things?

  I got stuck on number three. I wasn’t sure what to do with Aunt Geraldine’s belongings. She might have left everything to me, but I couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t quite right. Sure, Aunt Geraldine might have been angry at her daughter and granddaughters (although I’d never quite been clear on why they had such a rocky relationship), but, once her wrath had cooled, would she really have wanted them to have nothing besides a broken-down Oldsmobile, mismatched Tupperware, and a partial set of encyclopedias to remember her by?

  I decided that I’d just throw out the obvious trash and box up anything that might have sentimental value. It wasn’t like there weren’t enough nooks and crannies around Little Tombstone to stash a few boxes of keepsakes.

  I drove to the closest grocery store on the southern edge of Santa Fe. After I’d stocked up on food and cleaning supplies, I scavenged enough cardboard boxes to fill up the back of my rental car.

  When I got back to Aunt Geraldine’s, I added another item to the list.

  #4: Buy car.

  I’d inherited a running vehicle from Aunt Geraldine, but I was too scared to drive it. It was a 1957 Chevy pickup, and it had been all Aunt Geraldine had driven for as long as I could remember. Over the years, it had developed an increasingly long list of quirks. Even were I to succeed in getting it started, I was afraid of getting stranded along the side of the road without the intimate knowledge of its eccentricities necessary to get it running again.

  After I’d cleaned out the refrigerator and filled it with groceries, I set to work on the rest of the house.

  I was just removing about fifty years’ worth of tax files—which I intended to examine later for insight into the source of Aunt Geraldine’s wealth—from the filing cabinet in the back of the spare bedroom closet when there was a rattling at the door of the apartment. After whoever was out there didn’t succeed in getting inside, they knocked vigorously, rattling the door against the deadbolt I’d engaged the night before.

  There was no peephole in the door, so I demanded to know who it was before I opened it.

  “It’s Georgia! Open up!”

  I opened the door and found my twin cousins, Freida and Georgia—second cousins, to be entirely accurate—standing impatiently on the landing outside.

  Growing up, Georgia and Freida and I had spent a lot of time together at Little Tombstone, and since I’d been born just a month after the twins, we’d been expected to play nicely together—or else. I’d never been terribly fond of either of my cousins, but even when we were kids, Freida had been the twin to look out for.

  Georgia would pick a fight with you if you so much as looked at her sideways, but she always fought fair. She never ambushed you from behind, and she never got anyone else to fight her battles for her.

  Freida, on the other hand, was the type who’d skip the fight altogether and go straight to the higher-ups. I remember getting on Freida’s bad side for some reason—I can’t recall why—and she threw herself down in the dirt while she screamed like a banshee. When she was done messing up her pristine flowered dress, she’d even ripped the pocket off the skirt for dramatic effect. Then she’d run to my Grandma, sobbing her big blue eyes out and claiming that I’d knocked h
er down and torn her dress.

  I’d gotten in terrible trouble for that, among innumerable other things that hadn’t been my fault. The summer we’d all turned thirteen, though, Freida had done something I’d never been able to forgive her for.

  My grandmother owned a spectacularly ugly vase that resembled a leering pufferfish with a hormone imbalance. It had once belonged to my great-great-grandmother, and despite its garishness, my grandmother loved the hideous thing.

  One day, during one of my lengthy summer visits, I’d come into my grandmother’s living room to find Freida holding the vase in her hands.

  Freida had smiled sweetly at me, not breaking eye contact as she dropped the vase onto the floorboards. It had smashed to bits, of course, and as I stood there in horror, Freida had gone tiptoeing off, still smiling that sticky sweet smile of hers.

  Freida must have alerted my grandmother to the broken vase, because a few minutes later, Grandma came in and found me stooped over the debris, trying to fit the poor pufferfish’s smile back onto his bloated face.

  I got the paddling of a lifetime. I tried to tell my grandmother that it wasn’t me who’d broken the vase, but she didn’t buy my story that Freida had done it on purpose, just to get me into trouble.

  That was the thing about Freida: she’d do things so malicious that anyone who hadn’t yet been the target of my cousin’s wrath found it impossible to believe in her victims’ protestations of innocence.

  Freida invariably did her dark deeds with a saccharine smile on her face. I’d wondered more than once if my cousin Freida might not be seriously disturbed.

  Freida, who waited impatiently outside the apartment door beside her sister Georgia, was smiling that saccharine smile now. I fought the impulse to slam the door in their faces. Freida was no less terrifying to me now than she’d been when we both were ten, although I was determined not to show it.