Murder in Michigan (Rambling RV Cozy Mysteries Book 1), page 1
MURDER IN MICHIGAN
RAMBLING RV COZY MYSTERIES, BOOK 1
PATTI BENNING
SUMMER PRESCOTT BOOKS PUBLISHING
Copyright 2022 Summer Prescott Books
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying, or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder.
**This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional.
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Also by Patti Benning
Author’s Note
Contact Summer Prescott Books Publishing
CHAPTER ONE
“Will that be all?”
Tulia looked at the small pile of diet pop and snacks on the counter, then glanced over at the advertisement for the lottery. The statewide drawing was up to eighty-six million dollars, a number that seemed as far away from her as the moon. She shrugged.
“I’ll take a lottery ticket too, I guess. Why not? I’m feeling lucky today.”
She left the gas station a few minutes later, already sipping one of the pops, with her lottery ticket tucked into the pocket of her sweatshirt. It was three in the afternoon, and she felt wonderfully free. The restaurant where she worked as a waitress had just had a huge grease fire in the kitchen an hour before, and the entire waitstaff had been let go for the rest of the day while the owners got it cleaned up. Sure, she was missing out on some tips, but it was Tuesday evening, and the restaurant had been slow anyway. An unexpected afternoon off was worth a few crumpled fives she would never see.
She dropped the bag containing her snacks and the pop she’d picked up for Luis on the passenger seat, then started her car and pulled onto the street. The sun was shining, the spring leaves were waving in the breeze, and she had all afternoon to do whatever she wanted, at least until Luis got home. She was sure he’d want to watch TV—there was a new show about Vikings he was obsessed with—but he would be at work until seven, which left her plenty of time to hang out with her best friend and keep looking for better jobs online.
There was an open parking spot right in front of her apartment when she pulled into the complex, and she hummed cheerfully as she got her things out of the car. It really was her lucky day. Maybe that lottery ticket would come to something after all. She pressed a button on her phone and spoke into it as she walked into the apartment building. “Remind me, check the lottery drawing at eight.”
“Reminder set for—”
Satisfied, she shoved her phone back into her purse and fished out her keys as she walked up the stairs. A wolf whistle greeted her when she unlocked the door, and she turned toward the culprit.
“Cicero! I’m back early, buddy. It’s a nice surprise, huh? It was for me too.”
Cicero ran his beak across the bars of his cage and let out another low whistle. He was her best friend, and in every way that mattered, was family. Just like her, he was thirty years old. Her parents had bought him when she was six months old. His hatch date was the day before her birthday, and they joked that he was her older brother. She’d been his person since she was old enough to walk, and he had come with her as soon as she rented her first apartment after her freshman year of college.
Cicero was an African grey parrot, and Tulia couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been right beside her, whistling and chattering away. With luck, she’d have another twenty or thirty years with him; African greys could live up to sixty years in captivity.
Now, she opened his cage door and let him climb on top as she put her purse and the bag of snacks on the small table in their cramped dining room. She shot a dirty glare at the electric keyboard Luis had insisted on buying, even though he couldn’t play it without the neighbors getting upset and it took up space they could have used for a bigger table, then turned back to her bird when he spoke a single word in a man’s voice.
“Lucy.”
“We don’t know anyone named Lucy, bud. Where on earth did you pick that up? It’s been months, and we still don’t know any Lucys.” She tapped her chest. “Why won’t you say my name? Tulia.” She sounded it out for him, something she’d done since she was a little kid. Cicero could talk up a storm, but in all his years, he hadn’t said her name once. If he ever did, she was pretty sure she would be crying happy tears for a year.
He let out another whistle, then repeated himself. “Lucy. Shut up.”
She frowned at that last phrase. She’d have to talk to Luis again about what he said around Cicero. She didn’t care how annoying his high-pitched whistles could get; Luis had better be nice to her buddy while she wasn’t around.
“I swear, if this apartment is haunted by a ghost named Lucy, I’m gonna—” She broke off midsentence at the sound of a woman’s voice coming from down the hall that led to her bedroom. Her blood ran cold. She had been joking about the ghost, but for a crazy moment, she thought she’d summoned something supernatural. Then, she heard the low murmur of a man’s voice and felt as if her body had turned to a block of ice for another reason.
Luis wouldn’t— She inhaled sharply at the unmistakable sound of a woman’s giggle. No, he wouldn’t cheat. He was supposed to be at work. There had to be some explanation…
Unable to hear anything but her rushing pulse and the quiet sounds of conversation coming from behind the bedroom door, she staggered down the hallway. It seemed longer than usual, the shadows darker. Her mind grasped futilely for other explanations but came up blank.
Then, her hand was on the doorknob, and she couldn’t move. She could make out Luis’s voice now, could have made out the words he was saying, but for the rushing in her ears. A woman responded, laughing, and for a moment, Tulia thought she might vomit all over the hall carpet.
Instead, she turned the doorknob and pushed the door open.
Part of her had been expecting them to fall silent, to turn and stare at her as the realization that she had uncovered their secret dawned on them, but this wasn’t a movie. There was no dramatic moment. Instead, the woman who was sitting on the corner of her bed screamed and leapt up. Luis swore and fell off the other side of the bed, then clambered to his feet and started saying her name over and over again.
“Tulia, this isn’t what it looks like. I swear, Tulia. Tulia…”
She ignored him, staring at the woman. She was younger, in her early twenties, with red hair and wide blue eyes that darted back and forth between her and Luis. Her mouth opened and closed silently, but she was pretty enough that it didn’t make her look like a fish. Tulia hated her for it.
“Get out of my apartment.”
Somehow, her voice was calm. The woman gaped, and instead of scurrying away in terror, she grabbed a pillow and started hitting Luis with it.
“You’re a liar! A pig! You said you lived alone. You said you were single!”
Luis ducked and covered his head, and Tulia just stood there, watching. She didn’t feel … anything. The ice in her veins had faded away to numbness.
Finally, the woman tossed the pillow at Luis with a last shout, turned, and hurried down the hall past her, her pretty blue eyes blinking tears away. She paused just past Tulia and turned to meet her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know; I swear.”
“Just go.” Tulia didn’t care. She just didn’t want to see the woman ever again.
Sniffling, the woman grabbed her purse from the couch—how had Tulia missed that?—and left the apartment, slamming the door behind her. Tulia stared at Luis.
“Really, Tulia, it was an accident.”
“Leave.” She pointed to the door. “Go. Now.”
“I didn’t mean to—she looks so much like you.”
“She’s a redhead. She has blue eyes.”
“She’s a natural blonde! You have to believe me, Tulia, I didn’t mean to—"
She stomped into the room and stopped in front of him, her hands on her hips. “Really, Luis? It was an accident? How does that work? Did you mistake her for me because we look oh so much alike?”
“Ye— “He must have spotted the look on her face because he didn’t finish the word. “No, of course not. I made a mistake, and I’ll admit that. It’s just, you work so much, and she started flirting with me, and I just wasn’t thinking. This is the first time it happened; I swear.”
She huffed. “Really? What’s her name, Luis?”
“Lucy—” He shut his mouth with a clack of his teeth, but it was too late. Figuring Lucy had the right idea, she picked up the pillow and smacked him with it.
“It’s been months. Cicero’s been saying her name for months. Ge t out of my apartment! I never want to see you again!”
He scrambled to grab his things, and as soon as he was in the hallway, she slammed the apartment door shut in his face. Then, she turned and heaved the keyboard over, glad that it was on wheels. Opening the door, she ignored him as she shoved the device out, letting it tip over in the hallway. He had to scramble backward to keep his toes from getting crushed.
“And take your stupid keyboard with you. We’re done. Done!”
She slammed the door again and turned the deadbolt this time before staggering over to the couch and collapsing in a heap of tears. Above her head, Cicero said, “Lucy!”
“Please, Cicero, not now.” It was the last thing she said before she let the sobs overtake her.
It was getting dark outside by the time she stopped crying and made her way to the bathroom to wash her face. She stared at herself in the mirror, taking in her blotchy cheeks and red, puffy eyes. She wasn’t a pretty crier but didn’t think she was bad looking when she wasn’t crying, which was most of the time. She had hazel eyes and hair that was dark blonde in the winter, but turned a lighter, pale shade at the slightest hint of sun. Her nose was perky in a cute sort of way, or so she’d always thought, and she kept herself in decent shape, though all the free food she got at the restaurant had given her a bit of a muffin top over the past year. But still, she wasn’t ugly, or at least, she didn’t think she was. Was she missing something? Was something wrong with her? Was she a terrible girlfriend? Luis was the one who had cheated, and she’d never take him back, not in a million years, but still, she couldn’t help but feel like maybe, if she had been better, prettier, funnier … this wouldn’t have happened.
She stared at herself until Cicero whistled, then went to give him dinner. She wasn’t hungry. After turning off the lights, she settled down on the couch and pulled the throw blanket up to her chin. She wouldn’t be able to sleep in her bed again until she washed everything. Staring at the dark ceiling, she wondered how to fix her life. Luis’s cheating was just the tip of the iceberg. She wasn’t happy and hadn’t been for a long time. She wanted more, but what more was there? She was a thirty-year-old waitress with a bachelor’s degree in English, a cheating ex-boyfriend, and no real prospects to speak of.
Turning onto her side, she closed her eyes. Life would get better. It had to. And if it didn’t, well, maybe she and Cicero could just run away and live out of her car for a while. She’d always wanted to travel.
She woke up to a chirping sound coming from her cell phone. For a moment, she stared at the pattern on the couch, confused as to why she was sleeping out here and why her head felt like someone had blown a balloon up in it, but then she remembered what had happened the evening before. Groaning, she rolled over to silence her phone. Had she set an alarm? She didn’t remember setting an alarm.
She turned the screen on and read the notification she’d set the evening before, reminding her to check the lottery drawing. Her phone must have set it for eight a.m. rather than eight p.m. Buying the lottery ticket seemed stupid now, but she sat up and navigated to the lottery website anyway. Taking the crinkled ticket out of her sweatshirt pocket—she hadn’t had the energy to change into her pajamas the night before—she compared the numbers to the ones from the draw the night before. Then, she compared them again. Then, she pinched herself and compared them a third time.
Her hands shaking, she laid the ticket very carefully on the coffee table and found the lottery office’s number on their website. The call seemed to take forever to ring through. Finally, someone answered, and Tulia spoke, her voice hoarse from crying the night before.
“Hello, my name is Tulia Blake, and I think I won the jackpot drawing from last night.”
CHAPTER TWO
Two months later, Tulia was still in a state of shock, though it had faded slightly to be replaced by giddiness and a vague, spiteful glee. Sometimes she still lay awake at night, crying over what Luis had done, but most of the time, she kept those feelings at bay by imagining how livid he would be when he found out she’d won the lottery, and he’d missed out on his chance to share in the windfall by less than a day.
She hadn’t told anyone yet, other than her parents. It felt strange keeping such a big secret from her friends, but one of the employees at the lottery office had taken pity on her when she admitted she had no idea what to do with so much money and had given her some advice.
Don’t tell anyone, and get a financial advisor as soon as you walk out the door.
She’d played fast and loose with the advice since she’d told her parents and then had asked for her dad’s help with finding the financial advisor, but she couldn’t imagine keeping the truth about her winnings from them. She trusted them completely. One of the first things she’d done, before she even had the money in her bank account, was to offer to pay off their mortgage. They’d turned her down, but she was going to keep working on them. If anyone deserved a share of her lottery winnings, it was them.
Sometimes, when she woke up in the middle of the night, sure it was all just a dream, she opened her various bank accounts and investment reports—all of which her financial advisor had set up; his aid, along with the spending advice he’d given her, had proven invaluable—and just stared. Taxes had taken a good chunk out of the original eighty-six million, of course, but that left a bit over sixty million for her. It was a number that hadn’t felt real when she heard it. It still didn’t, even after she’d quit her job and gone on a moderate spending spree. The numbers in her accounts just didn’t go down.
She was glad she’d gotten advice since she was in way over her head. Her first, mad impulse had been to buy a plane—never mind that she didn’t know how to fly one. She’d also wanted to buy a mansion and give generous gifts to all her friends and family, which was probably the first instinct a lot of lottery winners had. Her financial advisor—and her parents—had encouraged her to sit down and really think about what she wanted to do.
She had, and she’d landed on doing the one thing she’d always wanted to do. Travel. See the world, or at least the country. She still didn’t know what she wanted to do after that, but she had time to decide. A lot of the urgency she’d felt in her life seemed to have vanished along with all her stress about paying the bills.
And now she was looking at her brand spanking new RV, her hands on her hips as her father looked it over critically. It was grey and blue and was so new it felt like driving a spaceship. The interior was nicer than her apartment on such a scale that it almost didn’t seem fair comparing them. Her little beige sedan, which was hooked up behind it, looked sad by comparison. So much was changing in her life, though, that she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to sell it.
“I suppose it’ll do,” her father said at last, patting the side of the RV. Tulia exchanged an amused look with her mother. The RV cost more than their house—probably more than half the houses on their street combined. It was the most expensive thing anyone in her entire family had ever bought, and the one major treat she was giving herself until she was ready to buy a house—a reasonable house, and not a mansion, because she really didn’t need thirty rooms and a helipad.
“You’ll be safe, won’t you, sweetie?” her mom asked once her father had given the RV his mark of approval. “Carry your pepper spray and remember to listen to your gut. If you feel like something is wrong, listen to that feeling.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom.” She embraced her mother, then turned to her father, who was looking at her with a complicated expression.
“I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.”
“I didn’t do anything but buy a lottery ticket,” she pointed out.
He clasped her shoulder. “I’m proud of you for going out there and chasing your dreams. Have a good time. And remember, if you need anything, your mother and I are just a phone call away.”
