Tamales at High Noon: Little Tombstone Cozy Mysteries, #5

By Celia Kinsey

Following a long-awaited wedding at Little Tombstone, both the bride and a guest fall ill after eating leftover tamales from the reception at the Bird Cage Cafe.

 

While Emma is still embroiled in trying to figure out why anyone in their right mind would try to poison the bride, more mayhem strikes the village of Amatista, and it's a race against time to catch a would-be killer before he (or she) succeeds in his (or her) evil schemes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Cat Cozies
• Release date: Jun 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201665302

Book preview

Chapter One

E mma! my partner said over the voice of Patsy Cline singing Crazy when I trod on his toe. You have to pay attention, or we’ll both end up down there on the gravel.

The parking strip below the rickety boardwalk in front of the Bird Cage Café did not make an inviting landing pad for imbalanced dancers.

Neither I nor Jason Wendell, who was attempting to lead me through something resembling a waltz last seen on the ballroom floor in 1942, were what you might call graceful and coordinated. It might not even have been the waltz we were attempting. It may have been that we were supposed to be dancing a two-step. Whatever it was, I was having fun. When the village of Amatista’s most eligible bachelor asks you to dance, you don’t turn him down.

There were plenty who’d have indulged Mr. Wendell’s impulse to dance if I’d told him no. Chamomile, one of the waitresses at the Bird Cage, would have gladly forsaken monitoring the buffet table for a turn around the boards with Jason.

Dancing is a traditional activity for wedding receptions, and although the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Hank Edwards’ wedding had been anything but traditional, as the reception inside the Bird Cage Café wore on, a few couples had drifted out to the boardwalk in front of the café to dance.

The boardwalk was not ideal for dancing. For one thing, despite the best efforts of Little Tombstone’s handyman, Oliver, there were still spots where the warped edges of the boards created a tripping hazard. There were even a few half-rotten boards that still needed to be replaced.

Fortunately, most of the older wedding guests, prone to brittle bones and less-than-ideal balance, had not joined Jason and me out on the boardwalk to dance to the oldies.

Phyliss Ford, the bride, had chosen the playlist for the reception. She had come of age in the late 1960s, and her musical tastes reflected the fact.

The groom had declined to give his input. Hank Edwards, the proprietor of Little Tombstone’s Curio Shop and the Museum of the Unexplained, was not musically inclined.

Hank’s enthusiasms began and ended with conspiracy theories and a firm belief in mythological creatures: Hank owned the world’s only complete family of taxidermized Chupacabras, which comprised the star exhibit in the Museum of the Unexplained.

Chupacabras weren’t the only dubious beings Hank believed in. When I’d first moved to Little Tombstone, Hank had warmed up to me only after I’d managed to do away with the alien visitors who had persisted in landing in the vacant expanse of sage brush and saguaro behind Little Tombstone’s trailer court.

There had never been any actual aliens, of course, but the truth was more complicated. Hank wouldn’t have believed me even if I’d told him the real source of those mysterious lights hovering over the ground behind Little Tombstone, so I’d let him go on believing I’d kept our alien invaders at bay.

You cold? Jason asked me as Patsy Cline’s Crazy faded away and was replaced by The Supremes positing that You Can’t Hurry Love.

I was cold. It was May, but the evening was turning out to be much cooler than I’d anticipated when I’d belatedly scanned my meager wardrobe that morning for something wedding appropriate. Also, my anxiety about getting the groom down the aisle before the bride’s arrival may have clouded my judgment as I was getting ready. I should have worn a cardigan over my dress. Under normal circumstances, I’d have excused myself to go upstairs to my apartment over the Bird Cage and put on a sweater.

At the moment, however, I wasn’t about to leave Jason Wendell to get snaffled up by pretty, little Chamomile just because my forearms were sprouting goosebumps the size of green peas, and I had to clench my jaw at intervals to keep my teeth from chattering.

You want my jacket? Jason asked.

I started to say no, but he had already paused and was taking it off.

Did you get tamales to take home? I asked Jason to cover up the fluttery feeling I was getting as he draped the jacket over my shoulders. There are tons left.

Can’t Juanita serve them tomorrow?

Juanita Gonzales, the owner of the Bird Cage Café and my late grandmother’s best friend, had protested when I’d suggested she might consider recycling some of the considerable leftovers from the reception. It wasn’t that the guests hadn’t eaten their fill, nor was it that there had been a poor turnout to wish Phyliss and Hank well on their long-in-coming marriage. It wasn’t that at all.

Juanita, who has never been one to skimp, had let her enthusiasm over Hank finally tying the knot cloud her judgment. One of our own was getting married; it was unthinkable that anyone should go hungry at the celebratory dinner.

Juanita probably could serve all those leftover tamales tomorrow, I told Jason, but she won’t. She says everything has already been paid for, so all the left-overs have to go to the guests.

Who paid for the buffet? Jason asked. Phyliss?

Nobody in their right mind would have supposed it was the groom. Hank never failed to balk at paying his purely symbolic rent of $10 a month (stipulated in my Great Aunt Geraldine’s will to remain in force for as long as Hank was a tenant at Little Tombstone). If my cousin Georgia and I would have decided to ignore Aunt Geraldine’s wishes and raised the rent to a reasonable amount, I doubt Hank could have paid it.

There are not many motorists who drive through on Highway 41 on a quest for cut-rate southwestern style tchotchkes or a gander at the only complete family of stuffed Chupacabras in the Western Hemisphere (or any hemisphere for that matter.) We do get the occasional Lookie Lou, but they generally make a flying trip through the Museum before heading over to the Bird Cage for a plate of enchiladas and a cerveza—only one, mind you. Juanita maintains she’s running a restaurant and not a bar, so diners are restricted to a single beer.

I’m a bit hazy on who paid for the catering, I said, but I’m thinking it was Phyliss.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Juanita paid for all the food, said Jason.

Juanita is notorious for doing things like that. Earlier in the year, she’d catered (for free) a lavish birthday dinner for a woman who was going around telling anyone who’d listen that Juanita was a thief and a liar, which Juanita most certainly was not.

Juanita didn’t pay for the food, I told him.

How do you know?

I asked her.

Maybe, Juanita lied.

I shook my head. She was telling the truth.

Juanita rarely lies. When she does, it’s painfully obvious, and there’s always a good reason for her concealment of the truth. Besides, I couldn’t think of any reason why Juanita would be unwilling to admit that she’d bank-rolled Hank and Phyliss’s wedding dinner. She and Hank had done business next to each other for the past thirty-plus years. It would have been a natural gesture to make.

Maybe, some of Phyliss’s or Hank’s family pitched in? Jason suggested.

Hank and Phyliss don’t have much family to speak of, I pointed out. Phyliss’s  sister, Lola, was here, but I think she gets by on social security.

Lola? The accordion player?

The wedding ceremony had been the oddest I’d ever witnessed, and not just because the entrance of the bride had been preceded by a polkaesque rendition of She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain When She Comes. To be fair to Lola, it wasn’t quite as odd a choice as it sounded. The bride had arrived in the back of a pickup, seated on a haybale. Phyliss had come around the mountain if one was prepared to greatly exaggerate the elevation of the road leading down from Nancy Flynn’s Ranch.

What about Hank? Jason asked. Didn’t he have any family at the wedding?

Chapter Two

When Jason asked if Hank had any family at the wedding, I told him that it had just been Hank’s cousin Al who’d shown up to represent the Edwards family. Hank and his cousin were on the outs. I supposed the only reason Albert had shown up at all was because he knew Hank’s ex-wife would try to break up the wedding. Al had been the reason Hank’s ex had found out her long-estranged husband had been marrying again in the first place.

Maybe, Hank’s cousin financed the reception, Jason suggested.

I don’t imagine Albert ever did such a generous thing in his life. Besides, even if he wasn’t the crankiest old codger to walk the face of the earth—

He’s crankier than Hank?

I like Hank, I protested.

I like Hank, too, but you can’t deny he looks like he just swallowed a lemon most of the time.

True, but Hank has a good heart.

Possibly. Jason did not seem entirely convinced. Besides being a cranky old codger, why wouldn’t Albert chip in for the reception?

I don’t think Al has any money. You’ve seen how he lives.

Jason said he hadn’t.

Yes, you have. He lives in that house just down the street from Janey’s.

That place with all the peacocks?

That’s the one.

It wasn’t just the flock of peacocks that made Al’s house stand out. It was the piles of abandoned appliances, old lawnmowers, and platoons of rusting metal barrels that made the place conspicuous for its slovenly appearance in what was hardly a community known for its cleanliness and conformity to social norms regarding neatness.

I imagined the village of Amatista was regularly the subject of critical comment from midwestern white-picket-fence-type tourists making the drive north to Santa Fe, and that was without them getting a gander at Al Edward’s property, which was several blocks back from Highway 41.

According to Hank, the inside of Albert’s place was even worse than the outside, and it takes a lot to impress Hank when it comes to dirt and disorder.

Besides, I continued, even if Al did have the money, he’s mad at Hank right now. That’s why he tried to get Hank’s ex-wife to break up the wedding.

"Why’s Al mad at Hank?

Hank wouldn’t help Al stuff pig manure up Herbert St. Claire’s tailpipe.

What?

You heard me.

Herbert St. Claire lives next door to Albert. Herbert had been trying, without success, for several years now to get Al’s house condemned and his flock of peacocks confiscated. I couldn’t entirely blame Herbert St. Claire for appealing to the authorities to do something about Al. It couldn’t be easy to live next door to such a dump, never mind waking up most mornings to the ruckus of twenty-odd peacocks.

According to Janey, several of the peacocks had taken to roosting on Herbert’s front porch, rendering it impassable from dusk ‘til dawn. Herbert and his stepson, Collin, had been forced to start coming and going via the back door.

The music had stopped, and we’d given up dancing. Jason and I sat down on the steps leading down from the boardwalk to the parking strip below. More guests were filtering out to join us.

According to Janey and Oliver, who’d been dancing on the boardwalk with us earlier, the newlyweds were about to make their grand exit.

Where are Mr. and Mrs. Edwards off to? Jason asked.

Las Vegas, Janey said, but not until tomorrow.

Hank and Phyliss would be spending the night in the brand-new living quarters Oliver had cobbled together for them in the attic over the Museum of the Unexplained.

Hank had lived for decades in an overstuffed studio apartment pasted onto the back of the Curio Shop. During the whole of Hank and Phyliss’s lengthy courtship, Phyliss had never once spent the night at Hank’s house. All their time together had been spent at Phyliss’s house in Santa Fe. Now, Phyliss’s house was sold, along with her pawn shop. Phyliss had retired, and she’d agreed to move to Little Tombstone under one condition. She refused to move into Hank’s place.

Thankfully, after all the effort certain members of the Little Tombstone family had gone to in order to get Hank to propose marriage, the Hank/Phyliss merger hadn’t fallen apart over Hank’s squalid living conditions.

Oliver had worked overtime for weeks getting the apartment ready, but he’d ultimately succeeded in converting the leaky attic over the Museum of the Unexplained into a surprisingly cheerful living space.

I’m surprised Hank and Phyliss are going to Las Vegas, said Janey. Casinos and shopping and shows don’t really seem like Hank’s cup of tea.

They aren’t Hank’s cup of tea, said Oliver. He struck a deal with Phyliss.

What kind of deal? I asked.

Phyliss gets Vegas, and Hank gets Area 51, Janey explained.

I suspected that Hank would have agreed to accompany Phyliss down the Vegas strip wearing a powdered wig and silk knee-breeches if it had meant the possibility of getting a glimpse of the fabled site of where they were concealing irrefutable evidence of the invasion of planet earth by alien forces.

Area 51 is a favorite pet topic of Hank’s. I’d discovered soon after taking up permanent residence at Little Tombstone back in November that if you wanted something from Hank, the best way to butter him up was to let him expound on Area 51 for a while.

All evidence, according to Hank, confirmed that every attempt by the alien hordes to take over planet earth had been successfully repelled. Furthermore, Hank believed, captured alien invaders, living and dead, had been impounded in underground bunkers concealed beneath the sands and sagebrush of Area 51.

Hank said it was impossible to predict when one of those aliens might break out of wherever they were being warehoused for research purposes and attempt to hitch a ride with a passing motorist. That’s what made driving through Area 51 so exhilarating.

Not that Hank himself would think of letting a real live alien into his car, he told me. It was well known that it was unsafe to entrap oneself in a confined space with an alien. Some were friendly. Some were not. Hank was adamantly against risking his life and limb just to be able to say he’d interacted with an extraterrestrial. All Hank wished for was a glimpse of one from the safety of a moving automobile.

Can you really see anything once you get to Area 51? Oliver asked. I thought it was just a stretch of lonely highway passing by a locked gate.

I’m surprised that Hank hasn’t already made multiple pilgrimages to Area 51, said Jason.

He has, I said. He goes every few years. He drives by hoping that this time he’ll get lucky and see something.

Plus, this time, he has Phyliss with him, said Janey.

What difference would that make? I asked.

Chapter Three

H ank thinks that Phyliss’s presence will render him less suspicious, Oliver said.

Suspicious to who?

Whoever is guarding the gate? Or possibly the aliens? I didn’t ask.

I doubted Phyliss’s innocuous presence would help much. Despite his spiffy new haircut, Hank Edwards was still the very essence of suspicious.

Chamomile came out with a basket of minibubbles. She instructed us to blow them at the