The Little Tombstone Cozies Box Set

by Celia Kinsey

  Fifteen minutes later, Nancy was sitting on the couch in Aunt Geraldine’s apartment. Earp refrained from growling, but I noticed that he kept a sharp eye on her from his vantage point behind the TV stand.

  “Now you have to tell the truth,” I said after I’d explained that Marco had confessed. “You have no choice.”

  “Can’t Marco just claim self-defense?” Nancy asked.

  “That will be hard to do, seeing as the gun in Freida’s hand didn’t match the bullet to her head, and Marco won’t be capable of coming up with a reasonable explanation for that. Marco must believe that Freida was shot during the struggle over the revolver, and he is somehow responsible.”

  “What I don’t understand,” said Nancy, “is why Freida wanted to kill that poor kid in the first place.”

  “I don’t know for certain why Freida wanted to kill Marco,” I told Nancy, “but I believe that Freida put Marco up to busting our water main, setting the kitchen on fire and causing Hank Edwards to nearly die from being stung by bees.”

  “Why would he—”

  “Freida was trying to drive me out of Little Tombstone,” I said. “I think she paid Marco to do those things, but I suspect that after Hank ended up in the hospital, Marco got scared. I doubt, at the start, the kid intended to participate in anything more serious than minor acts of vandalism. He must have eventually realized there was no limit to how far Freida would go.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why Freida would want to kill Marco,” Nancy pointed out.

  “I imagine Freida didn’t take kindly to Marco balking at whatever she’d planned as a follow-up to the bees’ nest incident. It may have been that Marco was threatening to expose the whole scheme.”

  I didn’t say it out loud, but I couldn’t help wondering if Freida hadn’t initially planned to manipulate Marco into killing me, and when he refused, she decided to kill Marco instead.

  I was convinced that the day Freida died, she had intended to frame me for Marco’s murder, killing two birds—or in this case, two uncooperative persons—with one bullet.

  “If you’re not sure what to do,” I suggested to Nancy, “why don’t you go have a chat with Mr. Wendell and review your legal options, but please do it in a hurry. I know Marco may have caused a lot of trouble, but I don’t think the poor boy deserves—”

  “You’re right,” Nancy said. “I’ve done some things in my lifetime that I deeply regret, but it’s too late to go back and change them now. This mistake is not too late to fix.”

  “My cousin Georgia will back up your story,” I told Nancy. “She saw it all.”

  After Nancy left—she didn’t tell me where she was going—I sat there absently patting Earp on the head and wondering what to do next.

  I’d been doing a lot of lecturing others on the importance of “doing the right thing,” but I wasn’t at all sure that I’d been doing the right thing myself.

  Now that I knew where Aunt Geraldine’s money had come from, I didn’t feel right about keeping it, but I was also uncertain who else had a right to it.

  I was all but certain that my Aunt Geraldine had removed the gold from land that belonged to Nancy (although Aunt Geraldine hadn’t known it), but I wasn’t convinced the money from the sale of the gold ought to be returned to Nancy. Although my Uncle Ricky had been legally within his rights to dispose of the land as he chose, the way he’d gone about it had hardly been ethical. I was convinced that my grandmother had only sanctioned the transfer because she believed—wrongly, in my opinion—that it was best to shield my Aunt Geraldine from the painful truth about her husband.

  Legally speaking, the original gold cache belonged to Nancy, but I couldn’t bring myself to hand the money over to her. Which raised another question. The original $150,000 worth of gold coins had now grown to a fortune of over a million. Even if I wanted to return the original value of the gold, was Nancy entitled to interest?

  There was also the problem of what to do about Abigail and Georgia’s share of the inheritance. Would my Aunt Geraldine, were she still alive and privy to what I now knew, really still want to cut Georgia—who’d stepped in to protect her grandmother at a crucial moment—completely out of her will?

  It was all too much for me. It was time to call on the collective wisdom of the Little Tombstone family.

  I was just pondering how soon I could reasonably assemble all concerned parties in the dining room of the Bird Cage when Georgia arrived, complete with a howling Maxwell and six suitcases.

  “There’s three more in the back of the Suburban,” Georgia informed me over Maxwell’s protests. “I asked your handyman to bring them up.”

  When Oliver arrived with the suitcases, I asked him to summon Ledbetter and Hank to meet me in the dining room of the Bird Cage at 9 PM right after closing.

  It was time for a moment of truth, and the truth-telling had to start with me.

  Georgia was mystified by my call for a community meeting, but she agreed to come down if she could get Maxwell to sleep.

  I tried calling Nancy but got no answer. I wondered if she was still consulting with Mr. Wendell. I texted her the time and place of the meeting. If she didn’t show up, I’d make a decision without her.

  I called Mr. Wendell’s office next. He answered right away.

  “I’m trying to reach Nancy Flynn,” I told him.

  “Miss Flynn isn’t here,” Mr. Wendell said so stiffly that I was certain Nancy had already come and gone. Perhaps she was currently down at the sheriff’s office, confessing to her role in Freida’s death.

  “I’m going to need legal counsel,” I told Mr. Wendell. “I have a confession to make.”

  “Please tell me you’re not planning to confess to killing Miss Montgomery, too?”

  “Certainly not,” I said.

  “I fail to comprehend your—”

  “Be in the dining room of the Bird Cage Café tonight at nine.”

  “Emma—”

  That was a first. Up until now, I’d been Mrs. Iverson.

  “Yes, Jason.”

  “As your legal counselor, may I advise you not to make any hasty revelations you may later regret.”

  It was sound advice, but I did not take it. Instead, I belatedly asked Juanita permission to use her dining room that evening and asked her to be present.

  Then I tackled my most dreaded task. I phoned my cousin Abigail.

  Her phone was switched off.

  Around 8:30, I went down to the dining room, but I was far too nervous to eat the plate of tacos Juanita insisted on setting in front of me. My ex used to joke that I could maintain my appetite in the midst of an apocalypse, but apparently, my nervous system felt what I was about to face was worse than the demise of mankind as we know it.

  Shortly before nine, as the last of the diners departed, the invited participants in my little meeting began to trickle in.

  By nine, everyone was present save Abigail.

  “Is this about the aliens?” Hank asked when I stood up and cleared my throat for silence, although no one was talking to each other anyway.

  “I have a lot of ground to cover, so I’ve made some notes,” I said.

  It was a lame way to start, but I wasn’t there to compete for any public speaking awards, so I muddled on.

  “I’m going to tell the truth, as I understand it, from the beginning, and if anyone wishes to correct my understanding or offer additional information, please interrupt me before I move on.”

  I hoped Hank wouldn’t use this little meeting as an opportunity to educate us on how the Deep State, the Medical Industrial Complex, and Big Oil had been colluding to conceal that the American People had, since the fall of the Nixon Administration, been governed by a succession of figurehead leaders controlled remotely by beings from a galaxy far, far away.

  I glanced over at Hank. He was having too much difficulty getting his cigar lit to concern himself with the machinations of the Deep State.

  “I’m sure you all know I rec
ently inherited Little Tombstone from my Great Aunt Geraldine,” I began.

  I had everyone’s complete attention, except for Hank’s.

  “I was surprised, as I’m sure were all of you, that Geraldine chose to leave everything she had to me, instead of leaving it to her daughter and granddaughters.”

  Dead silence. I knew I was currently stating the obvious, but what I was about to say would be news to (almost) everyone in the room.

  “I was always supposed to receive half of Little Tombstone—the half originally belonging to my grandparents—upon Aunt Geraldine’s death. What most of you don’t know,” I continued, “was that not only did my Great Aunt Geraldine leave me the remaining half of Little Tombstone which was originally to have gone to her daughter and granddaughters, she also left behind a small fortune.”

  This time, I got a bigger reaction. Nobody said anything, but everyone—except for Ledbetter—was glancing around the room as if to say, “Did you know?”

  Ledbetter starting fidgeting in his chair, like he was scared I was going to out him, too, but I had no intention of spilling his secrets.

  “My aunt grew her wealth by a series of wise investments made with the help of a—” I tried not to look at Ledbetter, “—with the assistance of a talented financial advisor, but the source of Geraldine’s original nest egg is what I’d like to discuss,” I continued.

  I made the mistake of making eye contact with Mr. Wendell. He nodded his head in warning, but I plowed on with my revelation.

  “Some of you may remember rumors of a cache of stolen gold pieces hidden near Amatista,” I continued. “Fewer of you will recall that, for several years, my Uncle Ricky made a hobby of metal detecting. I believe that he searched for the gold right up to his death.”

  Hank had finally succeeded in getting his cigar lit and was filling his corner of the dining room with a haze of blue smoke. Juanita got up and opened a window.

  “Don’t tell me the old buzzard succeeded in finding it?” said Hank in a clear attempt to warn me off any further revelations.

  “No, Uncle Ricky didn’t find the gold,” I said. “It was Aunt Geraldine who found it.”

  I looked over at Nancy. She had turned another two shades ruddier. She could easily have played a vine-ripened tomato in one of those produce commercials where they anthropomorphize fruit.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “What complicates matters considerably,” I said, “is that the gold discovered by my aunt was unearthed on a portion of the Little Tombstone property which had been deeded over—without my aunt’s knowledge—to a third party.”

  “What third party?” Juanita demanded. “And why?”

  “I understand it was in repayment of a debt,” I said. “This puts me in a tenuous position as heir to my aunt’s fortune, both from a legal standpoint and an ethical one.”

  “What if the legal owner of the land has no intention of laying claim to Geraldine’s find?” said Nancy, rising to her feet. “Perhaps, she—the legal owner, I mean—has amends to make with your aunt,” Nancy said and sat down.

  “That would remove one significant obstacle to my inheritance of my great aunt’s estate,” I said, ”but it still begs the question of whether Geraldine would—had she known what I know now—have chosen to leave me everything, rather than leaving the bulk of her estate to her immediate family.”

  “I think I speak for us all when I say I’m a bit confused as to why you are telling us all this,” Juanita said.

  “I called you all here today to take advantage of the collective wisdom of the community,” I said. “Every person here has been significantly affected in some way by the contents of my Great Aunt Geraldine’s will, and I’ve called you here today to help me honor the wishes of Geraldine while taking into consideration that she might have made a different decision, had she known the whole truth.”

  “The whole truth about what?” Juanita persisted. “I’m sorry, Emma, but you are being very unclear.”

  Georgia spoke up from the back of the room.

  “I think I can help explain,” she said. “It has to do with my mother and sister.”

  “Georgia had nothing to do with Freida’s death,” I hastily interjected.

  “But I did have something to do with getting written out of my grandmother’s will,” said Georgia. “I’m sure at least a few of you were aware that Grams thought we were trying to get her declared incompetent so my mother could get power of attorney.”

  A few heads nodded, but there was an equal number of blank looks.

  “I truly believed Grams was losing it, at first, anyway,” Georgia continued. “When I found out it wasn’t true, I found a way to put a stop to it.”

  I carried on where Georgia left off.

  “Aunt Geraldine was so angry that she cut her daughter and both of her granddaughters out of the will,” I said. “But she never knew that Georgia was innocent of wrongdoing, that’s why I’m questioning the fairness of the will.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Juanita said. “I think we can all agree that Geraldine left Little Tombstone to Emma because she believed that Emma would take care of it the best she could.”

  Everyone’s heads were nodding except for Hank’s, but since he didn’t snort, I took that as a sign of agreement.

  “My proposition is this,” Juanita continued, “Half of Geraldine’s estate be reserved for the preservation of Little Tombstone and that Emma consider gifting Georgia a quarter of the remaining money.”

  “Can I do that?” I turned to Mr. Wendell.

  “There are considerable tax implications,” he replied, “but it would be possible. I’d suggest setting up a non-profit foundation for the preservation of Little Tombstone and appointing a board of directors to oversee it.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said, “and I can’t think of a group more qualified to be the board than those assembled here.”

  I meant it, too, although I had misgivings about Hank.

  After that, events moved quickly. Georgia and I worked with Mr. Wendell to set up a trust to ensure the future of Little Tombstone, and then we set to work returning Little Tombstone to a state of reasonable repair.

  I floated the idea of hiring Oliver as a full-time salaried employee if I could get a work permit for him, but he informed me that there was no need to apply for a permit. His mother was a US citizen living in Australia, and, in fact, Oliver himself had been born in San Francisco.

  Georgia and her son settled into their new home. Georgia’s son, Maxwell, who’d never had a pet other than a goldfish, was fascinated by Earp. Earp was less than enthusiastic about being followed from room to room and forcibly having his belly scratched, but the pug put up with Maxwell’s attentions because the kid was a messy eater. Georgia didn’t belong to the no-snacks-between-meals school of parenting, so if Earp stayed in Maxwell’s orbit, there was a very real chance of being caught in a hailstorm of crumbs.

  Georgia gradually came to terms with her twin’s death. It was a complicated cycle of grief, anger, regret, and a pervasive sense of horror over the circumstances surrounding Freida’s death.

  It turned out that the day Marco went to the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office, he’d confessed both to the murder of Freida and to the acts of vandalism and sabotage that had briefly plagued Little Tombstone.

  However, when Nancy confessed to her part in Freida’s killing, Marco was no longer considered a suspect in Freida’s death. He served a stint in Juvenile Detention for vandalism and arson. It was a hard lesson, but I was confident Marco would never again get involved with anyone offering him money to commit acts of vandalism.

  Nearly six months to the day after Freida was shot, Nancy went to trial on charges of wrongful death. After a mere three hours of deliberation, she was found not guilty by a jury of her peers.

  Nancy never did formally confess to her role in the disappearance of the Halversons, nor did my cousin Abigail, but, acting on an anonymous tip, the Santa Fe Police Department were able t
o match the DNA of Stacy Halverson’s living niece to one set of remains dug up from underneath the trailer court of Little Tombstone. No living relatives were ever located for Greg Halverson, but nevertheless, the case was closed, and the mingled remains of the Halversons were given a final resting place in the old cemetery overlooking the village of Amatista.

  Without naming names, I asked Mr. Wendell if anyone could still face charges in a case of hit-and-run from thirty years ago, but he told me that the statute of limitations had passed.

  I decided to keep the details surrounding the Halversons’ disappearance to myself. I also never told Hank the truth about the lights he’d seen behind Little Tombstone. I let him believe that Oliver and I had managed, single-handedly, to purge Amatista of an ongoing alien invasion.

  I figured if I had any hope of turning Little Tombstone back into the thriving roadside attraction it once was, it couldn’t hurt for the place’s oldest resident to have complete confidence in my abilities to complete any task, no matter how daunting.

  I kept my secrets but finally pried out Hank’s. The reason Hank paid no rent was due to his role in assisting Aunt Geraldine in converting her antique gold pieces into cold hard cash. It seemed that Hank’s lady friend Phyllis owned a pawnshop, and her gold buyer at the time was not the sort to ask questions.

  On the day of Nancy’s exoneration, Georgia and I went to visit Freida’s grave. Maxwell insisted on coming along and bringing Earp with him.

  I didn’t think it was appropriate to bring a dog to a cemetery, but my protests were overruled. I was worried that Earp would try to mark his territory by lifting his leg on Freida’s headstone, or that he’d decide to do his business on the stone slab that covered the grave, but he did neither of those things.

  The pug seemed happy enough when I lifted him from his spot in the back seat beside Maxwell and set him on the ground. Earp sniffed excitedly at unfamiliar smells all the way to the section of the cemetery that contained my cousin’s grave, but when we approached the stone marking Freida’s final resting place, Earp bristled and backed away, growling.