Something Borrowed, Something Chewed: Little Tombstone Cozy Mysteries, #4

By Celia Kinsey

Hank Edwards, the proprietor of Little Tombstone's Museum of the Unexplained, is finally tying the knot with his longtime ladylove, Phyllis. But when Emma tries to get Hank down the aisle on time, she discovers that someone--Hank won't say who--has attacked both Hank and his precious collection of taxidermied Chupacabras.

 

Who has it out for Hank? And why? It's up to Emma to get to the bottom of this troubling turn of events before the long-suffering bride's big day is ruined by a mysterious stranger threatening to throw a wrench in the already-chaotic nuptials.

 

Join Emma, Earp-the-pug, Hercules-the-potbellied pig, and precocious six-year-old Maxwell as they cooperate with the whole Little Tombstone family in making sure that Hank and Phyllis get the wedding day of their dreams.

 

This novelette is a prequel to the next novel in the series, Tamales at High Noon, but features a complete stand-alone short mystery.

 

About the Little Tombstone Cozy Mysteries:

These quirky, light-hearted cozies are set in rural New Mexico and feature a collection of endearing residents from the village of Amatista and its main attraction, a dilapidated roadside tourist stop called Little Tombstone.

Little Tombstone is a truncated version of its namesake, Tombstone, Arizona, and is home to a variety of sweet but eccentric characters.

Cast of Recurring Characters:

Emma Iverson: Our sleuth and heir to Little Tombstone.
Earp: Emma's ancient and irritable pug, inherited from her Great Aunt Geraldine.
Hercules: Earp's porcine companion.
Juanita Gonzales: Proprietress of the Bird Cage Cafe.
Georgia: Emma's cousin and coheir.
Maxwell: Georgia's precocious six-year-old son
Marcus Ledbetter: Veteran and undercover stock-picking genius.
Hank Edwards: Curator of the Museum of the Unexplained and conspiracy theory enthusiast.
Phyliss: Hank's longtime ladylove.
Morticia: Resident psychic.
Katie: Mail carrier and mother to Chamomile.
Chamomile: Waitress at the Bird Cage.
Jason Wendell: Amatista's only lawyer and most eligible bachelor.
Oliver: Resident handyman and Australian transplant.
Nancy Flynn: Neighboring rancher and mayor of Amatista.
Freddy Fernandez: Amatista's devout barber and lay preacher.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Cat Cozies
• Release date: Aug 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393669289

Book preview

Chapter One

When my Great Uncle Ricky first envisioned how Little Tombstone—a truncated imitation of the original old west town in Arizona—would age, I’m sure he’d imagined something quite different from the weather-beaten row of buildings fronting Highway 41 as it bisected the village of Amatista, halfway between the interstate to the south and the city of Santa Fe to the north.

In my late Uncle Ricky’s mind, I’m sure the gravel strip in front of the elevated boardwalk that tied the whole crumbling monstrosity together would be forever packed with massive American-made sedans overflowing with families of midwestern tourists searching out cut-rate kachina dolls and Zuni pottery of questionable provenance.

A tourist—on the rare occasions that we got one these days—could still purchase all manner of tacky southwest-themed tchotchkes at the Curio shop—but they rarely did.

The star attraction of Little Tombstone was no longer the Curio Shop, the Museum of the Unexplained, nor the under-renovation motel out back.

The reason people still came to Little Tombstone was the Bird Cage Café, where Juanita Gonzales served up daily lunches and dinners to a packed dining room. The food at the Bird Cage rivaled the finest Mexican cuisine north—or south—of the border.

Today, even though the gravel parking strip out front was crowded with cars, the café was closed.

A large cardboard sign hung from the front door of the Bird Cage. CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY, it said. COME BACK TOMORROW.

It didn’t much matter that the Bird Cage was closed. Most of the regulars of the café would be guests at the private party, anyway.

It was no ordinary party; it was a once in fifty-years’ event that had come as a shock to the village of Amatista in general and the inhabitants of Little Tombstone in particular.

Sixty-something Hank Edwards—proprietor of the Museum of the Unexplained, proud owner of the worlds’ only complete family of taxidermized Chupacabras, and confirmed bachelor—was tying the knot.

Hank Edwards was getting married, and it was my job to make sure he got to the church on time, in a manner of speaking.

Phyllis, Hank’s intended, had initially lobbied for a wedding in the tiny, picturesque adobe chapel on the edge of Amatista, presided over by Father Orejo.

Hank, unlike Phyllis, was not a baptized Catholic. Hank was not a baptized anything, and when Phyllis raised the possibility of conversion, if only for the sake of a proper Catholic wedding, Hank wouldn’t hear of it.

And it wasn’t just Catholicism Hank objected to.

Hank is perpetually prepared to entertain the possibility not only of the existence of aliens in some galaxy far, far away but aliens who may at any moment show up on one’s doorstep and crave humanities’ assistance in saving their race from mass extinction. Hank enthusiastically embraces vast and untenable conspiracies involving collusions between all manner of disparate government and civilian entities collectively cooperating to deprive the American People of life, liberty, and happiness—not that Hank’s life, liberty, or happiness seems to have been affected in any way by these mass indoctrinations of the American Citizenry, just yet. According to Hank, this detracts nothing from his theories; disaster on an apocalyptic scale is always lurking just over history’s horizon.

Regardless of Hank’s multitude of other views requiring an abundance of blind faith, acknowledgment of the existence of a Supreme Being, according to Hank, required a suspension of disbelief too great for his whiskey-addled mind and bacon-clogged arteries to bear.

For years, Phyllis had ignored Hank’s bizarre views on the world and its workings and faithfully gone by herself to mass every Sunday, and sometimes Saturday evenings, too.

Phyllis and Hank had maintained an amiable toleration for one another’s disparate viewpoints throughout their lengthy courtship