Greatest Hits Mysteries Holiday Bundle - Book 8
It’s Christmas Eve, and huddled around the fireplace with pet Dodo in her lap, Missi Bombay tells the story about the time she and her cousins, Gin, Liv, Paris, and Cy carried out a holiday assignment on the family’s private island—Agatha Christie style.
There are no Christmas stockings for the wicked. All five of the nasty targets are on Santa’s naughty list, and this year the only present they’re getting is murder. One-by-one they start dying off under mysterious and often hilarious circumstances as everyone wonders—Who Will Be Next?
**This is an approximately 18,000 word/37 page short story.**
Chapter One
“Tell us that story, Aunt Missi!” Theo Bombay wailed at me. His father, Coney Island Bombay, lunged for his son, but even with his amazing reflexes, the six-year old danced out of the way and took up a whining position on the other side of my chair. Too bad we weren’t assassins anymore. The kid had some talent at evasion.
I tried to ignore the request. It was Christmas at Santa Muerta, and this year I’d invited all of my cousins and their families to join us. The island belonged to the whole Bombay family, but my husband, Lex, and my sons, Monty and Jack, and myself were the only ones who lived here year round.
Theo was the youngest and the first Bombay in four millennia to have a name that wasn’t the pronoun for a location. For four thousand years the Bombays were the first name in assassination worldwide. That creates some quirky traditions, and one of ours was to saddle every child with a place name. Which was great if you were Virginia Bombay, but not so great when you’re named Liverpool. Which is why Liverpool became Liv, Mississippi became Missi, and Coney Island very fortunately became Cy. Why Virginia, with her name being a real one, changed to Gin is anybody’s guess. But if you ask Uncle York, he’d say she’s a drinker.
“Knock it off, Theo.” Coney chuckled. “You’ve made her tell it twice already this weekend.”
“Don’t care, Dad.” Theo crossed his arms over his chest and scowled, looking very much like his father. “I wanna hear it again.”
Gin Bombay downed a cup of eggnog and chided, “Oh, do it, Missi. I love that story.”
“Because you’re in it!” Her brother Dakota (who went by Dak) scowled. “I’m not in that story.” His wife, Leonie, shook her head. She was tired of hearing about it.
“I don’t know…” I said. “It was a long time ago. I might not remember everything.”
Paris Bombay (who never felt the need to shorten his name) laughed. “You remember every single word. Go ahead. Tell it.” He shot a look at Dak. “After all, I am in it.”
“Maybe we should wait for everyone else,” I said.
Veronica, Theo’s mom, spoke up as she grabbed another ninjabread cookie, “The teenagers are all at the pool—they’ll never come back. Besides, I haven’t heard it yet.”
I looked around the room and sighed. “Fine.” I sat down, and Liv Bombay handed me a large glass of wine. Which, at that moment, made her my favorite cousin.
“Several years ago, back when the Bombays still killed bad people,” I began, “five little Bombays were each given one assignment and an ultimatum to get the jobs done by the day after Christmas…
"Myself, Paris, Cy, Liv, and Gin had each received from the Council that special manila envelope with the Bombay Family crest in red wax sealing it shut. We each found out about the others when we got together at a sports bar in Gin, Liv, and Paris’ hometown to basically complain about spending the holidays taking out Vics.”
Dak interrupted with a pout. “I still don’t get why I wasn’t involved. It would make more sense for Gin, Liv, Paris, and I to get these assignments. We all lived in the same place!”
The rest of the Bombays ignored him. We’d all heard this complaint every time I told the story.
“As I was saying,” I said, shooting Dak a look. “We were eating burgers and drinking beer and complaining that we didn’t want to do it, when Cy came up with a great idea. What if we did all the hits at once? At the same place? It was a stroke of genius.”
Theo puffed up proudly. He loved this part because he agreed—his dad was a genius. Cy suppressed a smile.
“Anyway, Liv came up with the idea that we do it on Santa Muerta. Her favorite book was Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. So she suggested we invite each of our victims to the island for a Christmas party and take them out, one by one.”
“That was an inspired idea.” Gin laughed. “I still can’t believe it worked.”
I waved the comment away. “Of course it worked. We’re Bombays. Anyway, we decided the only way we could get our five Vics to come to Santa Muerta at Christmas time was to tell them they’d received a significant inheritance from a distant cousin. But they all had to come out on Christmas Eve in order to claim it or they’d lose it forever. So we made up letters for each of our targets:
Dear Sir,
I regret to inform you that your sixth cousin twice-removed, Mr. Upton N. Owen, has died. Due to the fact that Mr. Owen had no direct descendants, he has left you a very large legacy. In order to claim the money, you will need to come to his home at Christmas Eve for the distribution of the inheritance. You need be at your local airport at the specified time on the enclosed ticket, on December 23. Per Mr. Owen’s request, if you do not attend, you receive nothing.
Sincerely,
Phillip Lombard
Attorney for the Deceased
I’d just finished reciting the letter when a short, fat bird waddled into the room and hopped up and down next to my chair. Leaning forward, I lifted the animal onto my lap. It walked in circles before dropping on my legs with something that sounded like wooompf. She was a dense, heavy bird with a heart of gold and the brain of an imaginary tulip.
“I still can’t believe you cloned Cairo Bombay’s dodo ,” Paris mused. “I still think you should let the world know. That’s a pretty big deal.”
I shook my . “No, I don’t want her dissected or worse. Right, Eulalie?”
The dodo looked up at me and, without getting up, tried rather unsuccessfully to scratch her face with her foot before falling over onto her side. She scowled at her foot, then believing it to be suitably chastised, closed her eyes and fell asleep in that awkward position. Eulalie could fall asleep so easily, anywhere any time. Clearly that contributed to the bird’s extinction. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. I was pretty sure she believed there were entire herds of free-range dodos all over the world just waiting to worship and adore her. Telling her there weren’t would only depress her.
“Well, she’s better looking than those cassowaries,” Dak mumbled. “At least I was there for that Christmas hit.”
“Stop interrupting, Uncle Dak!” Theo turned to me and begged. “You have to get back to the story!” He really was a cute kid. Theo reminded me of my twin sons, when they were still cute and not in college (where they thought they knew everything and were decidedly not cute).
SQUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK! Eulalie lifted her head, let out a loud protest for no apparent reason, glared at the suspicious foot, then fell back asleep.
“Alright,” I said. “I guess I’m not getting out of this one.”
I shifted Eulalie to distribute her weight more easily and continued the story.
“So, we sent out the letters to our five targets. Annie Webb, Nora Bineppe, Juan Perez, William Bukowski, and Anderson Smith. To our surprise, each and every one of them showed up at their closest airport at the designated time. It wasn’t easy getting the Bombay jet to all those places and make sure everyone was here on time. But it worked out. I have a chart for stuff like that. It’s based on an Excel spreadsheet and a flight simulator and…”
I’d started to wander. Theodore fixed his eyes on me, and I realized I should just stick to the story. Six year olds have no patience whatsoever.
I’d been fixing up the original home of the island’s founder, Cairo Bombay. It was on the other side of the island and pretty isolated. No one ever went there because I think most of the family had forgotten it existed. But I was retired and bored, and my husband, Lex, agreed to help me.
The house had been falling apart, literally. It was built in the 17th Century, and time and the Equator’s humidity had not been kind. Still, the outer walls were stone and it had a good foundation. Over the course of a year, Lex and I had turned it into a gorgeous, ten bedroom house with hardwood floors, two working fireplaces (which I know is weird when you live in this part of the world), and lots of comfy furniture.
For our part, Cy, Paris, Liv, Gin, and I decided to each be additional "relatives" scrounging for the inheritance. We were going to mix and mingle and kill ourselves off too. Each one of us started working on a persona, complete with costumes. When my cousins arrived on the island, I took them through the house, to familiarize them with it. They were appropriately impressed.
Then everyone went back to the main condos, got dressed, and packed a bag. It had to look like we’d just showed up here, like the targets. We met up on the tarmac. That’s when I realized that my cousins had apparently taken their costumes from some dinner theater in a remote location that had been possibly cut off from the rest of the world for a couple of decades.
“Um,” Gin asked Paris. “What are you supposed to be?”
Paris looked wounded. As the more sensitive Bombay, he took things a little more personally than the others.
“I’m Giuseppe Dijorno. An Italian poet,” he said with what could only be considered an insult to the Italian accent and a grand flourish of his arm.
“Dijorno?” I asked. “Like the pizza?”
Paris shrugged. “I couldn’t think of anything else.” He said this in the bizarre Italian accent. From head to toe, he was dressed all in black with a beret perched atop his head.
“I’m a poor man, so I really need the inheritance money. See?” Paris explained as he turned, showing off patched elbows and threadbare clothes.
“So,” Cy said, scratching his beard, “you’re a beatnik hobo?”
Paris frowned and shook his head. “I’m a poet! I’ve had critical success but as of yet, my art has remained undiscovered by the masses.” He sighed heavily. “I may have to die before I become famous.”
“Yes. Clearly the world suffers without your genius.” Liv rolled her eyes. “You might’ve gone a little overboard, my brother.”
Gin pointed at her cousin. “And you are?” She eyed Liv’s voluminous skirts and peasant top. She had a gold circlet around her forehead, and...did I smell Patchoulli?
“A Gypsy, of course.” Liv sniffed. “Madame Angelina. I tell fortunes.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Gin said. “You two look like you’re going to a costume murder mystery night at a bed and breakfast in Idaho.”
I laughed out loud. Gin didn’t look much better. She was dressed in tight leather pants, a fuschia tank top layered over an electric blue one and neon green stillettos. There had to be one hundred rubber bracelets on her arms and she had a huge, guitar tattoo on her right shoulder.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Groupie for Mötley Crüe?”
Gin looked a little pissed off. “No. I’m Tiffany Lauper—a rock star,” she said with an accent that sounded like Robert De Niro eating an octopus, and launched into some weird pose that involved her attempting to make the horns of the beast but looked more like obscene shadow puppetry.
“Tiffany Lauper?” Cy asked. “You just combined the names of two singers from the ‘80s?”
“Your clothes…you look like what would happen if my closet in 1987 barfed,” Liv chimed in.
“What?” Gin asked, looking down at herself. “I look totally legit!”
Paris shook his head. “No. You look like you fell out of a Ratt video.”
“What are you going to say when the others don’t recognize you or your name?” I asked.
Gin shrugged. “I’ll just say I was big in the ‘80s and am kind of washed up now.” Did I mention that her hair was teased into a frizzy, blonde cloud? She wasn’t going to get a comb through that mess anytime soon. Gin gyrated her hips in a way that would make sailors avert their eyes, and shrieked, “Rock and roll!”
“Please stop that,” Cy said. He was probably the most convincing. Cy moonlighted as a carney between assignments from the Bombay Council. He had a long, frizzy beard, shaved head, with stained jeans and a workshirt with a label that said: Frank. And because he really was a carney, he would be able to pull off the character without a problem.
“What about you, Missi?” Liv pointed at me, and my other cousins nodded.
“I’m just your average, middle-aged American housewife,” I said. “Nancy Johnson, at your service.”
“Those are your real clothes!” Paris whined. “You were supposed to have a character!”
“Yeah!” Gin said. “You and Cy are just playing yourselves!”
I held my hands up. “Look, I spent all this time adding the gadgets we need to the house. I didn’t have time to do anything more.” As the inventor for the Bombay Family, I was the only one who could create and install the apparatuses we’d need to get this done. I was a little insulted that they thought I should do more.
Liv picked at her skirt, and I was almost strangled by a wave of patchouli. “I feel kind of stupid now.”
“I die first anyway, guys,” I protested. What I really wanted to say was you guys should look more like me.
The hum of an airplane overhead interrupted us. We watched as it came to a stop on the landing strip. The side door of the airplane opened, and the stairs dropped down. We had our first target.
“It’s show time. From here on out, we only use our character names,” I whispered as we walked to our first guest.
Anderson Smith gave us a look that said he found us distasteful. The way Gin as Tiffany Lauper, Paris as Giuseppe, and Liv as Madame Angelina were dressed, I kind of agreed with him.
Smith wore a tailored suit of expensive fabric that could only have been made in Saville Row and pressed by domestics whose families had been ‘in service’ for many generations. A tall, thin man with gray hair and a pinched face, he walked toward us with purpose in his stride. He was the one we were most worried about. This guy was already very wealthy. Using money as a lure might not work. But here he was.
The Englishman held out a pale, veiny hand to me first. I shook it only to find he held it like a limp dishrag. “Anderson Smith.” We introduced ourselves according to our character. I was mildly alarmed when I discovered that Guiseppe had decided to continue to use an outrageous, Italian accent.
Mr. Smith finished shaking, then wiped his hands on a red silk handkerchief that he produced from his pocket. It was insulting, but he didn’t seem to care what we thought.
“So,” he said in a crisp, clipped accent. “There are others here for the inheritance? I’d thought I was the only one.”
Tiffany Lauper pouted through red glossy lips. “Me too!” Okay, whereas Giuseppe’s accent was bad, Tiffany’s was worse. Her attempt at a Brooklyn accent was so over the top it was orbiting Mars as we spoke. I was starting to wonder if we’d make it through the next two days without actually killing her.
“Disappointment flares in the shadows of my soul!” Giuseppe made a dramatic gesture with his right hand. Oh. My. God.
Madame Angelina spoke up in a weird, Romanian accent. “Madame Angelina did not see this coming. And I always know what is going to happen next!” To my horror, she then twirled, sending the tons of fabric from her skirts flying.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter much to me,” I said in my own voice with my own accent. “I’m happy for any money I can get.”
Frank (a.k.a. Cy) folded his shoulders across his chest and said nothing. I wondered if this was how he was going to play it. And then I realized he might be the smartest one of all of us.
The plane took off. It wasn’t going far. We’d had each person flown down here to a local airport so they could all arrive at the same time. It wasn’t easy. But we'd managed it. I figured that it would be a ten minute flight to Quito, where the next guest waited.
Anderson sighed in resignation to his having to slum it for the next twenty-four hours.
“Does anyone know this distant cousin of ours?” he asked.
“How can a man ever truly know anyone but himself?” Guiseppe asked. His accent was getting so heavy it was weighing down my nerves. And if he kept talking in poetry, my character was going to beat his character senseless.
“Never heard of him.” I shrugged again. I was kind of worried that this shrugging thing was going to be my motif from here on out. Oh well. I was the first victim. I wouldn’t have to do this very long.
Tiffany Lauper tapped a finger against her cheek. I saw a flash of black nail polish on super long fingernails. “Ya know, I wondered about that too. But then, the Laupers are a huge family. Could be anybody.”
Madame Angelina posed dramatically, hands on her hips. “I tried to see into his past with my scrying ball. But the past was a veil I could not see through at this time.” Scrying ball? Someone just watched Lord of the Rings. Again.
Frank kept his arms folded and simply shook his head.
Anderson looked at each and every one of us. He’d only been here a few minutes and I’d bet he figured all this stuff out. Frank would have to snap his skinny neck right here. Oh well. We could dump him in the ocean and none would be the wiser.
“I find it difficult to believe I could be related to any of you.” He put an emphasis on ‘you’ that made us feel like we’d barely evolved past a planarian with STD’s. We all seemed to hold our breaths.
“But he is my sixth cousin, twice removed.” He made a face. “I guess every family tree has it’s…” Anderson looked Frank up and down. “Black sheep.”
Frank chose not to respond. He was used to judgment as a carney. If only people knew he had a Ph.D. in philosophy from an Ivy League college. But he didn’t really care what anyone thought. Anderson’s slight meant nothing.
The plane approached again. We all stood there as it coasted to a stop. Once again the door opened, and the stairs were lowered. A pretty young woman stepped out and stood staring at us. She hesitated for a moment, but then decided to approach us. That had to be brave. At this point, if it were me, I’d get back on the plane.
“Hey!” she said breathlessly as she caught up. The young woman was even prettier up close. Short, glossy red hair in a bob, bright green eyes rimmed by impossibly thick eyelashes. She was wearing a white button down blouse and navy capri pants.
“I’m Annie.” She extended her hand to Anderson. Apparently, he looked a little less weird to her.
Anderson’s eyebrows went up, but he took her hand and shook it. Each one of us introduced ourselves. Frank even took her hand and said, “Frank.” But then, he always behaved like a gentleman.
“So!” Annie said brightly, “there’s more than just me. Good! I was worried about coming to some strange island all alone.” She came over and stood next to me. Apparently, she’d decided I was safe too. I smiled at her.
We chatted aimlessly on the tarmac as the plane landed a third time. Each of us insisted we didn’t know Mr. Owen and we didn’t know each other. Annie and Anderson seemed to relax a little.
A short, dark haired man got off the plane and walked toward us. Juan Perez was thirty and super hot. He smiled, his teeth perfectly straight and blindingly white. He wore a black tshirt and pair of jeans. Again, here was another person dressed normally. I shot a look at Madame Angelina, who pretended to be very interested in one of her ten rings on her right hand. That’s right. Ten. On a hand with only five fingers.
“Hello.” Juan’s rich baritone caressed the air. “My name is Juan Perez. Are we all here for the same thing?”
We indicated that we were and once again made our introductions. There were two people left to arrive. This had seemed like a good idea, but the tropical heat on the hot tarmac was brutal. Guiseppe was starting to sweat. Why on earth did he wear all that black? I didn’t want to ask, because then we’d be subjected to more of his poetic musings.
The plane landed two more times, offering up Nora Bineppe, a fashionably dressed woman about my age, and Willian Bukowski, a large, well-built man of forty. William and Nora regarded the rest of us for a moment. Nora decided within seconds that we weren’t worth her time and attached herself to Anderson.
William, however, would be a problem. Shrewd, brown eyes watched us warily. He didn’t say much for an introduction. Did I mention he was huge? At least six-foot-four, he towered over the rest of us. If I wasn’t an assassin, he might’ve intimidated me.
“Nora Bineppe.” The woman extended a perfectly manicured hand toward me. “Senior Editor. Fashion Magazine.” She seemed to talk only in segments.
“Which fashion magazine?” Tiffany Lauper asked before blowing a big gum bubble and popping it noisily. Where did she get gum? I wanted gum.
Nora shook her head. When she stopped, every hair fell obediently into place. “No. Not a fashion magazine. Fashion Magazine. You understand now?” she condescended.
“Oh goody.” Tiffany Lauper acted like she hadn’t heard the snub. “You know, I’ve always wondered. Is the eyeliner supposed to be on the inner lid or outer?”
The woman looked as though she’d been vomited on. “I don’t do things like that.”
“Outer.” Annie piped up. “You’ll look like a zombie if you line the inner lid.”
The car appeared just in time. Raoul smiled as he pulled up in a ten-passenger van. He did a good job of acting like he didn’t know us. Raoul was the island manager. He ordered the food, supervised the staff, made sure everything was ready whenever the family came out.
“Please,” he said. “Please get in the car. I will take you to the house.”