“They said we should wait inside and lock the doors until the police get here,” she said. “But wait, I have to ask … um, did you do it?” At Tulia’s blank look, she clarified. “Did you have anything to do with the guy in the dumpster?”

  Her eyes widened. “No! Of course I didn’t. I don’t think I could have even lifted him in there without help. And why would I murder some stranger for no reason?”

  “I had to ask,” Angela said apologetically. “You’re the only one who’s come to the diner in the past two hours, and for all I know you’re a serial killer or something.” She took a deep breath. “I knew him. His name’s Tom Platt. We used to be friends in high school, but he was a jerk, and I stopped seeing him a while ago. I heard he started selling drugs, and he got into a fight with my brother’s friend once; I tried to avoid him after that. But he didn’t deserve this.”

  “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say. As the two of them walked toward the diner’s front entrance and Angela got the keys back out of her purse, Tulia looked at her out of the corner of her eye.

  Had she had something to do with it? Angela seemed nice and all, but that didn’t change the fact that Tulia had just met her. If that guy was a local, Angela might have some unpleasant history with him. Granted, she couldn’t see the other woman hefting the man’s body into the dumpster on her own, but maybe she was covering up for the real culprit.

  Angela pushed the door open and half turned to gesture Tulia in, but before she could complete the movement, Tulia heard a flurry of wings, and Angela screamed and ducked.

  She turned just in time to see Cicero flying at her like an ungainly feathered rocket. She raised her hand, hoping he would land on it, but he overshot her and alighted on the edge of the diner’s roof. It was still beyond Tulia’s reach, but it was much more accessible than the top of the tree.

  “Good job, bud,” she said, proud of him for braving the flight. “Look at you, you master of the skies.”

  “What is that?”

  “His name is Cicero,” she told Angela. “He’s my bird.”

  Angela gave her a look that said she was very done with the day, but Tulia ignored it. She stretched an arm up toward Cicero, eyed the difference in height, then turned to her companion.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a step ladder in the diner, would you?”

  The diner did have a step ladder, and within minutes, Tulia had managed to convince a rather unhappy Cicero to step onto her hand. After looking him over to make sure he was unhurt, she shut him in the restroom with a bowl of water and some chopped up apple from the diner’s fridge, just in time for the police to arrive on the scene.

  What followed was the longest two hours of Tulia’s life. Even though she knew for a fact that she was innocent of all things homicide related, talking to the authority about a murder gave her the worst case of nerves she’d ever had. They weren’t even that interested in her as a suspect. Once they learned that the only helpful thing she could share was that she’d heard some rattling by the dumpster the first time she went into the diner, they switched over to asking her about her RV. Giving them the full list of everything she’d left in the RV had taken the longest, but she’d do whatever it took to help them track down the vehicle—and all her personal belongings—and with it, hopefully, the killer.

  By the time they left, Tulia was exhausted. All she wanted was to go home—her real home, not the RV—and bury her head under some pillows. Instead, she was left facing the cold, hard reality of the fact that she had nothing, not even a cell phone to call her bank with. She’d just have to hope that whoever had stolen her RV didn’t did too deeply into her personal belongings.

  The diner had an old-fashioned pay phone in one corner, and she stared at it, pondering the irony of being a lottery winner without even a quarter to her name. The only number she had memorized was her parents’ landline. She could call them, she knew. Doubtless, Angela could loan her some change from the till, and once she told her parents what had happened, they’d call a ride for her and get her a hotel room for the night before driving up here themselves in the morning. After getting back to Midland, she could go to the bank, cancel her cards, and start the long process of replacing what she had lost while she waited for the RV to turn up somewhere or the insurance to pay out on it.

  Maybe that would be the responsible thing to do. She was still alive, unlike that man the coroner’s office had taken away, and she had Cicero. She hadn’t lost anything truly irreplaceable. She should go home and regroup and maybe find a good therapist to help with the trauma of the last few hours.

  But the thing was … she knew if she did that, her trip was over. Oh, the police might recover the RV, or she could buy a new one, but if she went home now, after everything that had happened, she knew she would never do this again. And she wasn’t ready to give up, not yet.

  “Hey, I’m going to head home,” Angela said, making her jump. Tulia turned away from the payphone to face her. “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

  “If you don’t mind, that would actually be really helpful.”

  Angela nodded and stared at Tulia for a moment, waiting for something. Finally, she said, “Okay, where do you need to go?”

  “I…” Tulia opened her mouth, then closed it again, feeling helpless. Where could she go? She didn’t have her wallet.

  Angela seemed to come to that conclusion at the same time she did. “Shoot, you don’t have any money, do you?”

  “I left everything in the RV,” she admitted.

  The other woman bit her lower lip, then sighed. “I hope I don’t regret this, but you can stay at my place tonight if you want to. I’ve got an extra bedroom.”

  “Really? And Cicero … you wouldn’t mind him?”

  “I think there’s an old rabbit cage in the shed. If you help me bring it in, he can stay in there. I don’t know much about birds, but as long as he doesn’t bite and he doesn’t like, eat my couch or something, he’s fine.”

  “Thank you so much,” Tulia said. “I’ll pay you back, I swear.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Or if you insist, just stick around long enough tomorrow to help out here until the afternoon. The kid who was waiting tables for me in the mornings quit yesterday, and I haven’t replaced him yet.”

  “I can do that,” Tulia said, glad to be back on solid ground. “I’m a waitress.”

  “Really?” Angela shot a skeptical glance out the window, toward where the RV had been parked. The very expensive, very new RV.

  “Well … it’s a long story. But I was a waitress, up until about six weeks ago. I know my way around a table.”

  The other woman laughed. It was strained, and she still looked exhausted after everything that had happened, but it was something. “I’ll take your word for it, I guess. Go on and get your bird. I want to go home.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Angela’s house was two miles farther down the road, down a long dirt driveway through a scrubby forest that showed signs of recent logging. The house itself was a single story and had seen better days, but the inside was cozy, with houseplants on every windowsill and a half-finished afghan taking up two-thirds of the coffee table.

  “Sorry for the mess,” Angela said as she cleared her knitting away. “I wasn’t expecting company. Well, my brother’s supposed to come over today or tomorrow, but he doesn’t count.”

  “It’s a lovely house,” Tulia said. “It’s so private here. Are you renting, or do you own it?”

  “This was my grandmother’s house. She passed away last year. Technically, my mom owns it now, but she moved to Grand Rapids years ago and doesn’t have any interest in moving back up here, so I’ve sort of inherited it. The diner was my grandmother’s too. I helped her keep it running when she started having health issues, and now it’s mine.”

  Tulia looked around with more interest, going over to the window to gaze up at the stars. The trees were barely visible through the darkness. It seemed so peaceful out here. She would have quite liked it if she wasn’t worried sick about everything else.

  “I’ll go get that cage for your bird,” Angela said, breaking into Tulia’s thoughts. She gathered herself and went to help.

  Before long, they had the old rabbit cage set up with a branch shoved through the bars as a makeshift perch. They placed some newspaper in the bottom as litter and added bowls for food and water. Cicero sat in the middle of the perch giving her the stink eye, but this was the best option Tulia could come up with for him. He was just lucky he hadn’t been bird-napped along with the RV, though she knew he didn’t understand that.

  Angela opened up the guest room for Tulia, promising that it was clean, if maybe a bit dusty. It was fully dark by now, but even though she felt exhausted, she also felt far too wound up to sleep. With any luck, the police would find her RV abandoned along the side of the road somewhere tomorrow, but luck hadn’t exactly been with her this trip, so she wasn’t holding out much hope.

  Instead of locking herself in the guest room to stare at the ceiling and let her worries gnaw away at her, she sat with Angela out on the screened porch and chatted with the other woman while enjoying the summer night. Angela had been in this area all her life and had never traveled out of state, so she was interested in hearing about Tulia’s travel plans—even if Tulia wasn’t sure she was still going to go through with them.

  “You’re so lucky that you get to see the country,” Angela said, sighing. “Even if I could afford a trip like that, I don’t think I would be brave enough to go on my own. Do you mind if I follow you on your social media profile? I’d love to see pictures from the rest of your trip.”

  “You’re welcome to add me, but I don’t post on it much,” Tulia admitted. “Maybe I should start posting about my trip, though. I’m sure some of my friends would like to hear about it.”

  “Ooh, you should start a blog.” Angela looked eager as she warmed to her idea. “Travel blogs are pretty popular, aren’t they? I bet a lot of people would be interested in reading it.”

  Tulia considered the suggestion. She did like to write; in fact, she’d considered starting a blog in the past, but at the time had figured her life was too boring for anyone to be interested in reading about it. Now, though, she might actually have some interesting stories to tell.

  “If I get the RV back and keep going on my trip, I might do that,” she said. “If the police don’t find it soon, though, I think I’ll probably just go home. I don’t know if I have it in me to start the trip over from scratch.”

  “You should get back out there either way,” Angela said. “If you can afford it, of course. Seriously, if you bought that RV with a waitressing job, tell me what restaurant you worked at. I’ll sell the diner and move south in a heartbeat if there’s a restaurant paying their staff enough to afford something like that.”

  Tulia shifted uncomfortably. She shouldn’t have mentioned that she was—or had been—a waitress. It would have been better to let Angela assume she had some other random, high-paying job. It really didn’t make sense for a waitress to be able to afford the sort of RV she was driving, but she didn’t want to tell Angela about the lottery. Not yet. Maybe not ever. She’d done a lot of research after she won, enough to know that people got weird around lottery winners.

  “I’ll see how I feel. Things always seem worse at night, anyway,” she said, ignoring Angela’s comment about the money. “I’ll talk to the police tomorrow and see if—”

  She broke off when Angela’s phone rang, leaning back in her seat as the other woman shot her an apologetic glance and answered.

  “Benny, what’s up? I thought you were coming out here tonight. I already gave the guest room away, so if you’re still coming out, you’ll have to make do with the couch.” She paused while whoever was on the other line spoke, then responded. “Ishpeming? I thought you were with a friend in Marquette.” She sighed. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be there in about half an hour. Devon wants to come out too? Ugh, all right. I’ve got to get ready to go. Bye.”

  She ended the call and turned to Tulia, her expression apologetic. “That was my annoying little brother, who apparently needs a ride out here tonight. He’s twenty and kind of bounces between my house and some of his friends’ houses. I told him he could stay this week. I guess he and a friend of his are looking into getting jobs up here, so they’re both going to crash here for a few nights.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m completely in your way, aren’t I? I could sleep on the couch tonight, or you could just drop me off at a motel.”

  “Don’t worry about it; he was supposed to be here earlier this afternoon, so as far as I’m concerned, he lost his chance, and you’ve got dibs. The guest room is all yours. They can take the living room or camp outside; we’ve got tents, and it’s nice out. They’ll survive. I’ve got to run to Ishpeming to get them, and it will take me about an hour to get there and back again. Just like … don’t burn the place down or rob me or whatever while I’m gone, ‘kay?”

  “If it would make you more comfortable, I can ride along with you.” Tulia didn’t think she would trust a stranger alone in her apartment so soon after meeting them, but Angela shook her head.

  “You seem nice, and I don’t really think you’ll do anything. I just know my grandmother’s probably rolling in her grave right about now. I’d better head out. Make yourself at home, and I promise we’ll be quiet when we get back in case you’re asleep.”

  Slightly overwhelmed at how quickly she seemed to have been wrapped up in Angela’s life, she waited around awkwardly while Angela put her shoes on and grabbed her purse, then waved goodbye as she pulled down the driveway and vanished into the night.

  Being alone in a stranger’s house was an uncomfortable experience. She got ready for bed as quickly as possible, taking a fast shower and making sure to tidy up behind her, then joined Cicero in the guest room. It had been a long day for both of them. She sat up with him for a few minutes, talking softly and promising things would seem better in the morning, then she shut off the bedside lamp and lay down. The silence seemed louder than the traffic outside her apartment ever was, and she wasn’t sure how long it took her to fall asleep.

  She woke in the morning to the smell of bacon and pancakes, relieved that she hadn’t been murdered during the night. She got up, made an effort to comb her hair out with her fingers, and straightened her rumpled clothes. Promising Cicero to bring him back some food, she wandered out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.

  She was greeted with the sight of two unfamiliar men eating a feast of breakfast food at the kitchen table. One of them had to be Angela’s brother; he had the same brown hair and Roman nose as she did. The other had short black hair and a tattoo along one arm. Both of them stared at her when she came into the room.

  “You’re up! Sorry, did we wake you?” Angela’s cheerful voice drew Tulia’s eyes to the stove, where even more pancakes and bacon were in the process of being made. Her stomach rumbled at the sight.

  “I think it was the smell of bacon that woke me up,” she admitted. “And that’s not something I’d ever complain about.”

  Angela laughed. “Go ahead and grab a plate. There’s some orange juice in the fridge. You can join the others at the table if you want. Benny, introductions!”

  Angela’s brother straightened up, suddenly remembering his manners. “Sorry. I’m Benny, Angela’s brother, and this is my friend Devon. You’re the woman whose RV got stolen, right?”

  Tulia nodded as she accepted a plate loaded with bacon and pancakes and maple syrup from Angela. “Yep. Angela’s been very nice to let me stay here. I’ll figure out a way to get out of your hair today.”

  “Not so fast,” Angela said as she brought the orange juice over to the table. “You promised to help me at the diner, remember?”

  Tulia could hardly go back on her word now after Angela had gone out of her way to be so kind to her, so she was quick to nod. “Of course. I’ll stick around as long as you need me to.”

  “Good. Because the police might have left crime scene tape all over half the parking lot, but they didn’t say anything about closing the diner, and my bills don’t pay themselves. Hey, does your bird eat pancakes?” She tilted a plate to show Tulia a single, perfect pancake the size of a silver dollar—plain, without butter or syrup—and Tulia smiled. It wasn’t necessarily as healthy as his parrot food, but it was something he could eat safely, and he was always thrilled to get human food.

  “He’ll love it.”

  She brought Cicero his breakfast, then returned to the chaos of the kitchen to finish her own food. She still didn’t know what the future was going to bring, but things did look brighter in the morning light. She’d keep her word, help Angela, and then she would talk to the police and see if they had any inkling as to where her RV had gotten to. She wanted to see this trip through to the end.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The four of them carpooled to Beth’s Diner together since Angela only had one car. Benny and Devon dropped them off, then left to head to Marquette, where they were supposedly going to look for jobs. Tulia had learned that the two of them had been best friends since elementary school, that Devon was an out-of-work welder, and that Benny had never pursued higher education. Though Angela was only five years older than her brother, she acted more like a mother to him than a sister.

  She was curious as to why Angela’s mother and father were out of the picture, but kept her mouth shut. Common sense told her that some things simply shouldn’t be asked, especially not to someone she’d known less than twenty-four hours.

  The crime scene tape was still up in the parking lot, marking off the dumpster and a good area around it, but Angela simply parked by the other side of the building and headed for the door, waving goodbye to her brother as Tulia hurried to catch up to her. She’d left Cicero at Angela’s house while she worked since a restaurant really wasn’t the place for a parrot, and she’d fashioned a few homemade toys for him to keep him entertained while she was gone.

 

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