The Little Tombstone Cozies Box Set

by Celia Kinsey

  Chamomile skittered off, and Mr. Wendell turned his attention to me.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Talk away,” I told Mr. Wendell.

  “I mean professionally. Regarding your divorce. I have several slots free in the afternoon tomorrow.”

  “Can’t you say what you have to say right now?” I asked. I took out my phone, opened my timer app, and poised my finger over the start button. “You can bill me by the minute later.”

  Mr. Wendell took my phone and flipped it over face down. I felt a little zing when our fingers touched.

  I felt it. He didn’t.

  “I’d like to enjoy my enchiladas in peace without the specter of your soon-to-be-ex-husband looking over my shoulder, thank you.”

  Mr. Wendell holds a very low opinion of Frank. That makes two of us.

  “He’s been calling again. And texting,” I told Mr. Wendell.

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Well done.”

  It was a patronizing way of putting his approval, but nevertheless, it pleased me. I turned my attention back to my tamales and tried valiantly to keep all my food on my plate. The first meal I’d shared with Mr. Wendell, my very first day back at Little Tombstone, I’d managed to spatter green sauce all over his pristine white shirt front.

  As I cast about wildly in my brain for something interesting or witty to say, I noticed that Chamomile was still embroiled in deep discussion with her mother. Katie was giving us the stink eye. Or to be more accurate, she was throwing dark looks in Mr. Wendell’s direction. I might as well have been an empty chair for all the attention Katie was paying me. I wondered what was troubling Katie and what it had to do with Mr. Wendell.

  I was saved from what would probably be a failed attempt at being sparkling and vivacious by the arrival of Hank. Hank Edwards usually sits at a back table in the corner, and, if he thinks he can get away with it, which he usually can, he lights up a big cigar and taps the ashes into one of the little plastic “no smoking” signs he turns over to form an improvised ashtray.

  This evening, however, his usual seat had been taken over by a trio of tourists, and every other table in the place had at least one person sitting at it.

  Hank doesn’t like strangers.

  Hank doesn’t like much of anybody, strange or otherwise, but ever since he’d developed the mistaken conviction that I’d put the kibosh on an alien invasion—don’t ask, it’s a long story—he’s been a lot more friendly. Not so friendly that he’d actually ask to sit with me, however.

  Hank didn’t offer any greeting or overt acknowledgment of my presence; instead he loitered just outside my range of vision clearing his throat at intervals until Mr. Wendell asked him if he’d like to sit down. Hank took his seat with the air of a man who was doing lesser mortals a great personal favor.

  “How’s Phyllis?” I asked. It was an innocent question; Hank has a longtime lady friend who owns a pawn shop in Santa Fe. Hank knows I know all about Phyllis, but apparently, I wasn’t supposed to discuss Phyllis in front of any third parties.

  Hank looked warily at Mr. Wendell and grunted.

  “I saw you coming out of Morticia’s Winnebago the other day,” I said, mostly just to change the subject. I wasn’t optimistic that Hank would be any more forthcoming on that front. “I didn’t know you were a believer in tarot.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Hank. He lit up liked I’d asked him to expound on his theories regarding Area 51. “I thought it was all a bunch of bunk, but lately, I’ve seen the light.”

  “Oh?” I looked over at Mr. Wendell, who was transparently amused. Jason Wendell has not ever been a believer in tarot and has most certainly not seen the light. I’m an agnostic, tarot-wise, but when it comes to Morticia in particular, I know her success has more to do with her ability to stretch out a reading (she charges by the minute) than it does any metaphysical phenomenon. By successful, of course, I mean Morticia makes enough to pay her lot rent on time, buy groceries, and keep herself supplied with patchouli.

  Morticia offers the first ten minutes of her readings free, but she always makes sure to have some breakthrough revelation just prior to the ten-minute mark. She then expands the reading to take up however much time she believes the client has on them in bills and loose change.

  I’d never had Morticia read my cards, but I had discovered that in day-to-day life, she’s surprisingly taciturn for a woman who makes her living off the gift of gab.

  “What made you see the light when it comes to tarot?” I asked Hank.

  “Morticia knows things,” said Hank. “Things nobody else knows.”

  “Like what?”

  “It’s not only that,” Hank continued, ignoring my question and looking even more wild-eyed than usual, which is saying a lot. “She‘s helped me establish a line of communication with my late mother.”

  “Oh?” I looked over at Mr. Wendell, but he was distracted. Chamomile had gone back into the kitchen, but Katie continued to stand against the wall and glare at him. He was finally noticing what I’d noticed ten minutes earlier: Katie Perkins hated Jason Wendell’s guts.

  “How did Morticia put you in touch with your mother?” I asked Hank.

  “She didn’t. She only helped me see that she’s been speaking to me all along.”

  “Oh?” I really hoped Hank wasn’t hearing voices in his head. When a man as already unhinged as Hank starts hearing voices, who knows what they’ll start telling him. “How are you communicating with your late mother?”

  “She’s speaking to me through the crossword puzzle.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I went upstairs to brush my teeth—I had no desire to stand up in front of the entire Little Tombstone Preservation Board only to find out later I’d had bits of cilantro stuck in my teeth. When I returned downstairs, the dining room had cleared out considerably, although several residents of Little Tombstone were lingering over drinks or desserts as they killed time waiting for the meeting to begin.

  Katie was sitting alone at a table drawing patterns in a drift of salt that had spilled on the table. She started when I asked if I could join her.

  “You seem worried about something,” I said. I wanted to ask what she had against Mr. Wendell, but coming right out and asking seemed far too direct.

  “Everything’s fine,” said Katie in a voice that suggested she did not expect, nor even desire, that I believe her.

  “It’s tough being a mother.”

  Not that I know anything about motherhood personally. Frank didn’t want any kids, and I was ambivalent. Considering how things turned out, it’s probably a good thing we didn’t have any young ones to drag through the mire of what was shaping up to be a messy divorce.

  Katie heaved a sigh and drew another circle in the salt.

  “Is this about Jason Wendell?” I asked.

  Katie looked me in the eye for the first time.

  “I know you two are friends, and I have nothing against the man personally, but I wish my daughter would set her sights on someone more suitable.”

  “You mean you wish Chamomile would date someone her own age?”

  “I do.”

  “I’m not sure Jason Wendell has any intention of—”

  “I certainly hope not,” said Katie. “He’s at least ten years older than she is.”

  I hoped Mr. Wendell wouldn’t return Chamomile’s affections, either, but I wasn’t too eager to examine why I felt that way, so I changed the subject.

  “I’ve been hearing rumors that Roberta Haskell is having her mail stolen.”

  “That’s what she tells me,” said Katie, “but I’m beginning to think she’s making the whole thing up.”

  This was new. And intriguing.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I have a small route,” said Katie. “Lots of driving, but not many boxes.”

  I wasn’t sure exactly where s
he was going with this, but I nodded to encourage her to keep talking.

  “Well, when there’s not that much mail, you kind of get to know what different people get. You notice things.”

  It had never occurred to me to think just how much a mail carrier might potentially know about the postal customers they served.

  “So you think those checks aren’t being put in her mailbox to begin with?”

  “I don’t,” said Katie. “If those checks are being stolen, it’s happening before they make it into my mailbag.”

  “She’s almost 80. Maybe her mind is going. Sometimes dementia makes people paranoid.”

  “Possibly, but Roberta Haskell still seems pretty sharp.”

  I looked around the room and saw that everyone but Georgia was present. Janey, who was spending another night in our apartment, was going to stay in with Maxwell, but sometimes getting Maxwell to sleep requires Georgia to oversee a prolonged ritual involving multiple drinks of water, adjustments of lighting, and bedtime stories—which Maxell reads to himself from the Scientific American or Popular Mechanics.

  I expected with the excitement of the arrival of the piglet, this process would take twice as long as usual. Georgia, if she showed up at all, might be a while, so I decided to start the meeting without her.

  Despite my best intentions and a valiant attempt to follow Ledbetter’s advice for keeping a firm hand on the proceedings, things went haywire right from the start.

  The previous evening when I’d taken the bloody work glove up to the Santa Fe sheriff’s office, I’d made a side trip to the paint store and picked up paint chips. I’d arranged these on a piece of poster board and propped it against the soda dispenser so everyone could see it.

  “What’s that?” Hank interrupted while I was in the midst of explaining the range of estimates that had come in on replacing the roof. He pointed at my array of paint chips.

  It was a good thing it didn’t rain much at this time of year, but come monsoon season in July and August—according to Juanita—the rooms on the upper story of the buildings at Little Tombstone would become obstacle courses of buckets and pans to catch the drips from the heavy afternoon rains.

  Hank didn’t seem interested in the state of the roof. It had been leaking for years, and I guess he’d gotten used to it. Besides, the space occupied by the Curio Shop and the Museum of the Unexplained had an attic above, so he did not have to worry about his precious family of Chupacabra or his other artifacts of questionable provenance getting water damaged.

  “If you’ll refer to your agenda—" I said as I eyed Ledbetter for moral support. He gave me a thumbs-up under the table. “—you’ll see that selecting a paint color is item four. Right now, we’re discussing the roof.”

  “I don’t care about the roof,“ said Hank. “Can we talk about the paint right now? I have to leave early.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hank didn’t specify why he needed to leave the meeting early. I suspected it had something to do with his lady friend Phyllis whose existence I was not supposed to acknowledge, at least not in public.

  “I’m sorry, Emma,” Juanita said, “but I need to leave early, too. Ricky and I are going to try and catch the second half of Timo’s basketball game.”

  I might have succeeded in holding the line with Hank, but Juanita was a different story. She’s like a second grandmother to me, and it seemed churlish not to accommodate her wish to leave early to attend her youngest grandson’s high school basketball game.

  “Well—” I said as I tried to ignore Ledbetter’s attempts to telegraph his disapproval of my wavering. “We’ll shelve discussion of the roof and talk about the paint.”

  “I have to leave shortly, too,” said Katie. “I have to be up early in the morning.”

  I wondered why she was telling me this, but then she explained that she didn’t care about paint color or the roof, but could we move item 6 (upgrades to the power supply for the trailer court) to the top of the agenda.

  “All right, let’s talk about the trailer court, and then we’ll choose a paint color.”

  The matter of the upgrades to the trailer court was dispensed of with minimal discussion, and Katie went on her way. I then returned to the matter of the paint.

  At the previous meeting, two distinct schools of thought had emerged. One group was strongly in favor of brownish-yellow, the other had settled on brownish-gray. Aside from Hank, who insisted that a grayish-green—the original color when Little Tombstone had first been constructed—was the only acceptable option, everyone else had agreed that the paint color should be either a warm or cool brown.

  Based on the outcome of the previous meeting, I’d selected paint chips that were variations of warm to cool browns in various shades. I’d even thrown in a couple of greenish-gray chips to appease Hank.

  I held up the poster board with the carefully arranged and numbered paint chips and explained that we were going to take a simple show of hands and narrow down the samples by removing those that didn’t get any votes until we’d reduced the selection down to a single chip.

  I felt very clever about my paint chip poster board. What could possibly go wrong?

  Morticia was the first to throw a wrench in the proceedings. “I was thinking about paint colors after our last meeting, and I’m wondering if something more eye-catching might not be a better choice.”

  I’d been surprised during the first discussion of paint colors by Morticia’s ready support for brownish-yellow. Despite her predilection to dress in black from head to toe, Morticia’s Winnebago—which serves the dual purpose of home and workplace—is painted every color of the rainbow and features a large, rather off-putting eye with the words: Tarot. Your Future Foretold. Free 10 Minute Readings.

  Juanita piped up and said she’d had similar thoughts—wouldn’t something a bit more cheerful be nicer?—and Hank chimed in that if preservation was truly our aim, then we had no choice but to go with the original greenish-gray.

  Things spiraled completely out of control after that. Oliver, who’d prepared a detailed report of the outstanding repairs required to bring the place up to standard, didn’t even get to present it. A vote was never taken approving the acceptance of a bid to replace the roof.

  At 8:30, Juanita’s husband Ricky showed up to take her to see the second half of Timo’s basketball game.

  “What about a nice lavender?” she suggested as she put on her jacket. “With teal accents, perhaps.”

  This suggestion was not met with enthusiasm by anyone except Morticia. Hank, who’d already been standing by the door with his coat on, also took his leave, but not before insisting we not take a vote on paint colors without everyone present.

  I looked over at Ledbetter, who had his head in his hands. I’m not sure if he was trying not to laugh or cry.

  In the end, when the meeting broke up at a quarter ‘til ten, all we’d accomplished was approving funds to upgrade the utilities to the trailer court and a suggestion that anyone who had a strong feeling about paint colors bring them in to add to my paint chip poster board.

  “I don’t think paint chips are really big enough to make a good decision on color,” said Georgia, who’d arrived about the time Hank and Juanita had been leaving. “Don’t you think it might be better to paint sample swatches on the backside of a building or something? You know, so we could see how they look in the daylight?”

  It was a sensible suggestion, but I was not in a frame of mind to entertain it.

  “Let’s table the matter of paint color until next month,” I said. “Meeting adjourned.”

  I spent another night on the couch. I meticulously checked the locks, but this time I didn’t bother keeping Uncle Ricky’s golf club within easy reach. It was unlikely that Hugo was going to try and break our door down to get to Janey.

  What with my disastrous attempt at chairing the Little Tombstone Preservation Board meeting, Hank’s wild-eyed claim that his late mother was communicating with him through t
he crossword puzzle, and trying not to think about the possibility Jason Wendell might finally notice Chamomile had a colossal crush on him and decide to do something about it, I’d almost forgotten why I was sleeping on the couch and why Janey Hamm was our house guest in the first place.

  I mentally reviewed what I knew about Jorge’s murder—not what one would think was an effective way to ward off insomnia—but I needed something fairly riveting to keep my mind off my unsettling conversation with Chamomile’s mother.

  I was still a married woman, although I was doing my personal best to remedy that condition as soon as possible. Because Frank was still living in California and that was where we’d been married, Mr. Wendell had a professional connection there who was taking care of my paperwork, but it was Mr. Wendell who was advising me.

  Because Frank had dug in his heels and refused to come to an agreement, things were dragging out far longer than I’d anticipated. I was ready to get the whole wretched process over with.

  Mr. Wendell had nothing to with my eagerness to get my divorce out of the way. Aside from him taking over the role of my de facto divorce attorney after I’d fired my lawyer in California for not bothering to return my calls, Jason Wendell didn’t figure into my decision-making process.

  I’m a realist. I could be single for the next sixty years and still not catch the eye of a man like Jason Wendell.

  I tried so hard not to think about Chamomile and Mr. Wendell that by the time it was getting light, I’d tossed and turned so much that the afghan I’d put over myself was wound around me so tightly I had a hard time getting loose.

  At six, when Georgia came out to start breakfast, her rattling around with the pots and pans interrupted a dream of another baptism. This time, instead of a piglet named Hercules, the infant was Chamomile and Mr. Wendell’s firstborn. Earlier in the night, I’d dreamed about Chamomile and Mr. Wendell’s white wedding. The bride had been radiantly beautiful, the groom devastatingly handsome, and the congregation of witnesses comprised entirely of pugs and potbellied pigs.