Murder in Michigan (Rambling RV Cozy Mysteries Book 1), page 7
“Shoot.” Tulia hesitated, then grabbed a sheet of paper towel from the roll she kept on the counter and used it to pinch the shirt between her fingers again without actually touching it. Then, she followed Angela out of the RV. She needed answers.
The other woman had found Devon where he was still unloading the car. He looked befuddled as he patted her shoulder while she cried. Then, he looked up, saw Tulia, and blanched.
“Shoot, Angela, what did you do?” he snapped, grabbing Angela roughly be the shoulder. She tried to pull away, but his grip tightened.
“Hey!” Tulia called out, hurrying forward. Her shout must have alerted him because Benny shoved the door to the house open and stepped out. He spotted Devon manhandling his sister, and his eyes narrowed.
“Dude, what are you doing?” He started toward where they were standing by the car. Devon let go of Angela and spun around to face his friend.
“You’re an idiot, Benny.”
“What?” Benny stopped in his tracks, looking confused. “What did I do? I just put the towels in the washer.”
“Not that.” Devon glanced back toward Tulia, who was edging toward Angela. She hadn’t expected this. She’d wanted to talk to the other woman alone, figure out what was going on.
Benny followed his friend’s gaze and his eyes fixed on the shirt in Tulia’s hands. His eyes rose to meet hers, and then, without another word, he turned around and went back inside.
“Benny!” Angela cried out.
Tulia, finally losing patience with having no idea what was going on stepped forward and grabbed the other woman’s wrist. “Angela! What’s happening? Talk to me.”
Angela pulled away. “I can’t… I don’t understand either. Devon? Whose shirt is that? Please tell me it’s yours.”
“Benny’s an idiot,” Devon said in response, sighing. He turned to Tulia. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved in this.”
Tulia stared down at the shirt in her hands. A man’s shirt. She remembered Angela say the night of the murder, “He was supposed to be here earlier this afternoon,” about her brother, who she had to go pick up from Ishpeming. The same town her RV had been found just outside of, the same town where Devon lived. She remembered her saying “I knew him. Oh, my goodness, it’s Tom. 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.”
It was either Benny or Devon, and she thought she knew which it was. She looked up from the shirt to Devon’s face, an accusation on the tip of her tongue. Then, Benny came back out of the house, a hunting rifle in his hands, and aimed it at her head.
“No!” Angela jumped in front of her, her arms spread in a shield. “Benny, put that down.”
“I can’t go to prison, Angela.” He moved the rifle slightly, so the barrel wasn’t pointing at his sister, but didn’t lower it. “We can’t trust her not to go to the police.”
“Tell me the shirt isn’t yours, Benny,” Angela said desperately. “It’s not you. You didn’t kill him. You didn’t steal the RV.”
Tulia forced herself out of her shock. She’d frozen at the sight of the gun, but now she spoke up. “I think he killed Tom, Angela. You said he was supposed to be at the diner earlier. I think he was. He must have had someone drop him off. But then he ran into Tom before he came in, and after he killed him, he stole my RV as a getaway vehicle and had Devon pick him up by Ishpeming. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He must have hidden his shirt so he wasn’t covered in blood when he went into town.”
“Benny…” Devon said, his voice full of warning as his friend aimed the rifle. “You’re my best friend, man, but I’m not going to cover for you. I said I’d keep quiet over the weekend, give you a chance to talk to your sister and put things in order, but I was never going to keep my mouth shut past Monday. You’ve got to come clean.”
Benny hesitated, then lowered the gun. Angela’s voice was broken as she spoke. “They’re making things up, right, Benny? You’re my little brother. You aren’t a murderer.”
“It … it wasn’t murder,” Benny said. He leaned the gun against the porch railing and approached his sister slowly. “It was a fight. Look, I was going to tell you. I swear. I just wanted one last weekend where things were normal.”
Angela went to meet him and grabbed his hands with hers. “Just tell me what happened.”
He took a deep breath. “I got a friend of mine to drop me off at the diner. I was going to surprise you, which is why I didn’t text you when I got there. But then I spotted Tom around the side of the building. Some guy was walking away from him, stuffing a baggie into his pocket, and my blood boiled. I couldn’t believe Tom had the gall to be dealing drugs outside of your diner. I went to confront him, but he was the one who swung the first punch. It happened so quickly. I dodged and swung back, and he fell and hit his head on the corner of the dumpster. It cut his scalp and he started seizing. There was blood everywhere. I … I panicked. I was worried someone would drive past and see, so I managed to get him into the dumpster, but by then, I had his blood all over me, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“Why didn’t you come into the diner and tell me what happened?”
He gave a dry laugh. “Do you think I wanted to waltz on in there, covered in blood, and say, ‘Hey, Angela. Surprise, I’m here! By the way, I think I just killed someone. Will you help me hide the body?’” He shook his head. “I hid out behind the dumpster when I saw Tulia pull up in her RV. When I saw her go in a second time and realized she had left the RV running, I realized that was my chance to get away. I wasn’t expecting a bird to freak out and fly at me when I went in, and I felt bad when I realized I’d let someone’s pet escape, but I didn’t have time to stop or to change my mind. I took off down the road to Ishpeming and told Devon I needed his help. I wasn’t expecting you to find the body.”
“I got the story out of him when I picked him up, shirtless, outside of a stolen RV,” Devon said. “For some reason, he thought I wouldn’t question any of that. I tried to tell you, Angela.”
“I know,” she whispered. She looked at Benny, squeezed his hands, and then stepped back. “Go inside. I just… I need a minute. Then, we’re going to call the police and get this straightened out.”
Benny just nodded, sighing heavily as he turned and trudged back towards the door, bypassing the rifle. Devon hesitated, then followed him.
Angela turned to Tulia. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Tulia blinked. “For what?”
“For all of this. I can’t believe he pointed a gun at you. I … I had my suspicions, especially when Devon tried to tell me something was going on, but I just couldn’t believe he would actually kill someone.”
“It’s not your fault.” Tulia went to hug her, realized she was still holding the bloody shirt, and let her arms fall to her side. Angela gave her a weak smile.
“No, but I should have listened to my gut.” She sighed. “It looks like you’ll have to stay longer after all. I’m sure the police will want to talk to you too.”
“I’ll stay as long as you need me to,” Tulia promised. It was the least she could do.
EPILOGUE
Tulia set the RV’s cruise control and then reached over to crank the radio louder. In his cage in the passenger seat beside her, Cicero started bobbing his head. She grinned and joined him, nodding along to the music.
The highway stretched out in front of her. Behind her, Marquette, Ishpeming, and everyone she had met during the first, chaotic week of her trip were slowly falling farther and farther away.
Ever since she bought that lottery ticket, the highs and lows in her life seemed to have changed from hills and valleys to mountains and canyons. This first leg of her trip had been no different. She’d had a great time, except for the times when she’d had a horrible time, and there really hadn’t been much in between.
She wasn’t sure what sentencing Benny would get for what had happened. He’d gone willingly with the police, and Angela was already looking into a lawyer for him. Even with the best lawyer in the world, though, Tulia was sure it would be a long time before he saw the outside of a jail cell again.
Somehow, Angela didn’t blame her for any of it, even though she had been the one to uncover the final, unignorable piece of evidence when she found the shirt he had hidden in the RV. Against the odds, Tulia had the feeling she had made a lifelong friend. In fact, as of right now, Angela was the only reader her new blog had … and was the only one, other than her parents, who knew about the winning lottery ticket that had changed her life. She’d known that letting the other woman read her blog would give her secret away, but after all they had been through, it had felt right, and she didn’t regret it yet.
And now, she was finally moving on. She was still in Michigan but would be reaching Wisconsin in a matter of hours, where she was planning to camp—at an actual campground this time—and hit some nature trails before seeing what else the neighboring state had to offer.
As she drove, she occasionally glanced in the side mirror at the traffic behind her. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw a black SUV a few cars behind her. It might not be Samuel and Marc’s vehicle. For all she knew, it would turn off the highway in a few miles, and she would never see it again. But somehow, she got the feeling that she hadn’t seen the last of those men yet. They might not have killed Tom, but they were certainly up to something. She would just have to hope that she could handle whatever happened. And for the first time in a long time, she was beginning to feel confident that she could handle anything life threw at her.
ALSO BY PATTI BENNING
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Patti Benning, Murder in Michigan (Rambling RV Cozy Mysteries Book 1)
