The Little Tombstone Cozies Box Set

by Celia Kinsey

  “You don’t know how happy I am,” said Juanita.

  “Because I’m sorry?”

  “No, because you’re here.”

  It would be another two weeks before August was back behind bars. Just as I had predicted, the police tracked him down at the home of one of his wives, Amy, in Denver. I wondered how August would explain to Melissa of Des Moines and Christine of Omaha why he was going to go off the radar for thirty years to life.

  Hugo, once he figured out that Jasper had nothing to do with either Jorge’s death or the disappearance of the chop shop coalition’s ill-gotten gains, was no longer a threat to Jasper or Janey.

  Jasper went back to the ranch and resumed his duties as Nancy’s pigman, and Janey returned to her home in the village.

  There was only one fly remaining in my ointment and the resolution to that thorn in my side came in the form of a phone call from Mr. Wendell.

  I was halfway through a plate of Georgia’s delicious apple pancakes one February morning when my phone rang.

  “I have good news,” Mr. Wendell’s voice said on the other end. “Frank signed everything. You won’t have to go to court.”

  I immediately started to cry into my pancakes, which alarmed Maxwell, who was sitting across from me. He’d finished eating and was surreptitiously feeding bits and pieces of broken pancake to Earp and Hercules who were loitering under the table.

  “What’s wrong, Emma?” Maxwell asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “I’m happy.”

  “Why are you crying if you’re happy?”

  “It’s something grownups do sometimes.”

  “Adults are weird,” said Maxwell, and went back to feeding bits of pancake to the pug and the piglet.

  I hadn’t been lying to Maxwell. I was crying tears of happiness. They were also tears of relief. It was as if some invisible cord tying me to my old life with Frank in California had been irrevocably severed, and I was finally free to throw myself wholeheartedly into my new life at Little Tombstone.

  Little Tombstone might be raveling apart at the seams and its inhabitants collectively several eggs short of an omelet, but never had any place felt so much like home.

  THE END

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  More 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

  Chapter One of Fit to be French Fried

  When Mrs. Dunn said she’d like to kill her pesky parrot, I had no inkling that it was Mrs. Dunn herself who’d be darkening death’s door by sundown.

  Mrs. Dunn was not my all-time favorite customer. Technically, she wasn’t a customer at all in the sense that she never bought anything. Either Mrs. Dunn had lost her driver’s license, or she liked to walk for her health, but almost every day she’d stop in on her way to or from the Whispering Palms Senior Living Complex. It didn’t matter if she was walking to the supermarket, or to Senior Bingo at the Baptist Church, or to the Dollar Store; Mary Dunn never failed to take advantage of the ice water dispenser we keep next to the food truck.

  Even Marge, who carries her belongings around in a black plastic bag and sleeps on the porch of the old house that serves as Bray Bay’s tiny public library, occasionally springs for a small French fry on principle.

  “Because I always drink your water,” she’ll say.

  Mrs. Dunn was burdened by no such sense of obligation.

  “Surely, you don’t really mean it when you say you want to kill Polly?” I said.

  Mrs. Dunn sipped ice water from the cup she held in her right hand and tightened her grip on her shopping trolley with her left, an arm firmly clamped across the bright blue handbag she wore slung across her body. Mrs. Dunn was the sort who believes thieves are always lurking just out of the corner of one’s eye, intent on stealing one’s low-fat yogurt, bran cereal, and multi-vitamins.

  “I do mean it. I really hate that bird,” Mrs. Dunn insisted. “The only reason that stupid parrot is still alive is that they’ve been after me for years to get rid of her. That dratted bird is driving me crazy, but I can’t get rid of the blasted thing on principle.”

  “Perhaps your parrot is driving ‘them’ crazy, too?” I suggested. I didn’t know who “they” were, and I wasn’t about to ask. If I asked, Mrs. Dunn would remain for another ten minutes, airing her grievances and scaring away the paying customers.

  “Well, Felicia,” said Mrs. Dunn, “can’t stand around all day chatting.”

  Rather than placing her used paper cup into the recycling bin, she set it down on a table I’d just wiped clean. I glanced over at the serving window of the food truck. My cook, Arnie, was scowling at the back of Mrs. Dunn’s head. Arnie is a stickler for recycling.

  Mrs. Dunn took an even firmer hold on her trolley, adjusted her bright blue handbag so it hung low across her belly—the better to keep an eye on it—and shuffled off down the street back toward Whispering Palms.

  We get a lot of business from the residents of Whispering Palms despite the retirement complex having its own dining room. Whispering Palms’ promotional leaflet proclaims they provide a gourmet menu approved by a state-licensed nutritionist, but most of the residents prefer my fare: good old-fashioned hot dogs, juicy hamburgers, and crispy French fries, golden brown, with a light dusting of salt.

  I was just wiping up the water ring left behind by Mrs. Dunn’s abandoned cup when we got another customer, a paying one this time.

  Prue, who also lives at Whispering Palms, is sweet as pie, albeit a little loopy. Even Frank, Arnie’s grumpy, geriatric Dachshund, likes her, although that may be mostly down to the dog biscuits Prue carries in her handbag.

  At the sound of Prue’s voice, Frank emerged from the shaded underside of the food truck and waddled over to lean expectantly against the old lady’s ankles.

  “Dear me,” Prue said as she scratched behind Frank’s ears with the tip of her cane and examined the menu written on the chalkboard propped against one of the tires. “Felicia, you must have added more options.”

  It’s the same menu we’ve had for the past three years, but every time Prue sees it, she’s convinced we’ve completely overhauled our selection.

  “I think I feel like a hot dog,” Prue said. “Or maybe a hamburger. Or grilled cheese. I see you do salads. Salads are healthier. Maybe I’ll have a salad.”

  Prue reached into her handbag and took out a dog biscuit for Frank before stepping back and scrutinizing the menu board for another full minute.

  “No, I don’t feel like a salad,” she said firmly. “Give me a large chili fry, Arnie, with plenty of cheese sauce.”

  “No can do,” Arnie said. “I can give you anything on the menu except French fries. The vat is on the blink.”

  I’d like to say that this equipment failure is an isolated incident, but our fry vat goes out every other week. Arnie usually gets it working again in an hour or two. I keep insisting we should just buy a new one, but the truth is, I can barely pay Arnie and my rent, and Arnie knows it.

  “I’m sorry, Prue,” I said, ”whatever you’d like, it’s on the house.”

  I knew I’d get a lecture from Arnie. He insists the reason we struggle to make a profit is that I give away too much free food.

  “You don’t have to do that,“ Prue insisted, but she took a free hamburger.

  “You’d better take off,” I told Arnie, “or you won’t make it to your nie
ce’s recital on time.”

  “Is it 3:30 already?” Arnie looked at his wrist, but he wasn’t wearing a watch.

  “Must be,” I said. “The school bus just went by.”

  In another ten minutes we’d get a smattering of after-school customers, but I could handle them alone, especially since the fryer was down for the count.

  “Recital?” Prue asked.

  “Sammy, my niece,” Arnie said, trying not to look proud. “She’s having her piano recital today, just down the street at the middle school.”

  “That’s nice,” said Prue said as she bit into her hamburger. “Is this a new recipe? I’ve never had it before.”

  It’s not a new recipe, and Prue’s eaten our hamburgers at least a hundred times.

  Arnie raised his eyebrows at me over the top of Prue’s head and mouthed, “See you later,” before he took off on foot toward the middle school.

  I sat down at the table with Prue and started to speak, but my attention was diverted by an ambulance headed in the direction of Whispering Palms, lights on, siren silent.

  “Oh, dear, oh dear,” said Prue. “I wonder who it is this time.”

  The residents of Whispering Palms are always getting hauled off to the hospital. Most of them come back, but some of them end up in nursing homes, or worse yet, the cemetery.

  “Is someone at Whispering Palms trying to make Mary Dunn get rid of her parrot?” I asked, half because I wanted to know, and half because I wanted to distract Prue from wondering which of her friends was headed to the hospital.

  “You mean Polly? I guess Polly is a bit of a nuisance,” Prue said, “but I live on the other side of the complex so that bird doesn’t bother me much.”

  “Whose feathers has Polly ruffled, then? Mrs. Dunn implied that someone was mounting a campaign to deprive her of her parrot.”

  “I bet it’s that Irma McFee,” said Prue. “I’ve never warmed to Mary Dunn, but that Irma is downright vicious.”

  Prue doesn’t usually express strong opinions about people.

  “What do you mean, ‘vicious’?” I asked

  I never got my answer, because two police cars, sirens blaring, rushed past. I expected the sirens to fade into the distance, but instead, they cut off abruptly.

  “I think those patrol cars stopped just down the street,” I told Prue. “I’m going to jog around the block and take a look.”

  “What if somebody comes?” Prue protested.

  “If anybody comes, tell them I’ll be right back,” I told Prue. “And if any packs of middle schoolers show up, don’t let them put their dirty little mitts in the pickle jar.”

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