Cruise Millions: A Humorous Cruise Ship Cozy Mystery (Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries Book 6)

by A. R. Winters

  “What on earth was all that about?”

  “No idea,” said Sam.

  Cece remained silent. We both looked at her.

  “Cece?”

  “Umm…” She turned away, looking over the rail toward New Orleans, and started to whistle.

  “Cece!”

  Finally, she turned around. “Okay, it was me.”

  “What was you?”

  “Umm, do you remember when we had breakfast?”

  “What, you mean yesterday?”

  Cece nodded.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I remember breakfast yesterday. We may be a few years older than you, Cece, but we aren’t that old.”

  “You know you let me look at your phone? And the pictures and the video?”

  “Yes…”

  “Well, I may have, maybe, sent that video of her in the spa to myself. And then I may have accidentally… Tweeted it out.”

  “Accidentally?”

  “Accidentally… on purpose,” Cece clarified. “She annoyed me so much I wanted to get back at her. I’m sorry, Adrienne. I shouldn’t have done it. Anyway, I tweeted it out, and it did go viral. Thousands of people have seen it now—and they’re following her to see what else she might do.”

  I should have been mad, but after all that had happened, I couldn’t find it in me to get angry at her. And Helen seemed to have been positively pleased by the end result.

  “No harm, no foul, I guess.” I leveled a stern look at her. “But don’t do it again. I could get in serious trouble, you know.”

  She bobbed her head up and down. “You know me. I never make the same mistake twice.”

  I stared at her, trying to figure out if that was true or not. I couldn’t remember her repeating any mistakes, but I was also pretty sure she’d just made that fact up on the spot.

  “If you say so.”

  “Oh, look.” I pointed down at the narrow strip of water between the ship and the dock. There, floating, was the air mattress we’d seen Milton trying to carry off the ship.

  “And look!” said Sam, pointing to a dejected man, staring down at the water from much closer than we were.

  “I don’t think he should be in the inflatable business,” I said.

  “Or any other,” said Cece.

  “Adrienne, ladies.”

  The three turned to smile at Ethan. He looked even more tired than last time I’d seen him, but he had a fresh uniform on at least.

  “Did you find him?” I asked before anything else.

  Ethan shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. The fake housekeeper disappeared off the ship in Key West after bringing down Parker. I checked all the video feeds—he didn’t come back aboard.”

  “Right.” I wasn’t surprised. “Did you get anything out of Parker? About the kidnapping stories?”

  I’d asked Ethan to try and find out where Parker had come across the story of resilience about the girl from Nebraska who was kidnapped in Arizona.

  “Nope. First, he said he didn’t know what I was talking about, and then he said it was all proprietary information of Claim Your Million Incorporated, and that I’d have to take one of his courses to find out.”

  We all laughed at that.

  “Doesn’t he realize he’s going to prison?” asked Sam.

  “I think he’s delusional. He thinks he just made a little mistake and he’ll be able to talk his way out of it.” Ethan shook his head at the memory of questioning the entrepreneur trainer.

  “Hey,” he said to me, taking me by the arm. “See you later?”

  I nodded happily up at him. This time, we were actually going to spend some time together during our shore leave. He’d promised.

  “Looking forward to it,” I said.

  He leaned over and gave me a brief kiss on the lips. Then, he was gone, marching back into the ship.

  “Ooooh,” said Cece and Sam together.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Are you getting married?” asked Cece, wiggling her eyebrows at me.

  “Married!? We’re not even a real couple yet!”

  “You sure do look like a couple,” said Sam.

  Unable to wipe the glee off my face, I grinned like an idiot “Yeah, we do, don’t we?”

  I turned away from my friends and looked out over the railing again, toward the city of New Orleans, wondering what Ethan and I would get up to during our shore leave.

  “Hey,” said Cece. “What was that about a kidnapping?”

  I turned to face her. “It’s a long story…”

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  Sneak Peak: A Berry Deadly Welcome

  Chapter One

  "Come on, come on." I gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. My car was out of gas. Rather, my ex-husband's car was out of gas. I had "borrowed" it to make the trip from Chicago, Illinois down to Camden Falls, Kentucky. I'd had to make the trip somehow, and I'd been too broke to buy a bus ticket.

  I rocked back and forth in my seat a couple of times, trying to will my momentum into the car. I knew that wouldn't help it inch forward off the road and into the curbside parking spot, but I did it all the same. I couldn't stop myself.

  "Just a little more!" The engine gagged, coughed, spluttered and then bucked before rattling and dying. That was okay, though. When it bucked, the car lurched forward that little bit more that I'd needed to get it off the road. I wasn't going to have to abandon it with its butt end sticking halfway out into the road.

  I eyed the road around me. It was huge. It wasn't eight lanes huge or anything like that. There were only two lanes, one coming and one going, but the main street of little Camden Falls could have accommodated four tractor trailers driving side by side. Even with so much room, the traffic was slow and lazy, cars meandering instead of rushing. There were two and three car-lengths between each car that passed. I was used to seeing cars in Chicago drive headlight to bumper, but that wasn't happening here.

  On top of that, there were almost no people. I eyeballed around thirty or forty people walking around. They walked in small groups or alone, but always spread out with plenty of distance in-between.

  I turned my attention toward a pickup truck that was driving past. The truck's driver nodded his head at me and then lifted his palm in a small side-to-side wave. Panic flooded me, and my heart skittered and jumped as badly as the engine had a moment earlier. My ex probably already had a warrant out for my arrest, and it would be just like him to hire someone to keep an eye out for me.

  I twisted to see if anything was coming from behind and then jumped out of the car. It was a pearl white Mercedes S-Class, and I'd probably never get the chance to drive anything like it again—especially if my ex had me put in jail. If that happened, I wouldn't even need to worry about how I'd look when I renewed my driver's license. I wouldn't need to worry about where my next meal was coming from or where I was going to sleep tonight.

  "Maybe I should get arrested." I couldn't keep the hopefulness out of my voice as I glanced around, but I didn't see any police. "Live to fight another day," I said with a scowl before forcing my features to re
lax. I didn't want to get wrinkles.

  Popping the trunk of the car, I used all of my not-impressive strength to lift a navy canvas suitcase out of the trunk. Then, I hesitated, looking wistfully between the car keys I held in my hands and the car. With a sigh and a shoulder shrug, I did what I had to do. I clicked the lock button on the key fob, and then tossed the keys into the trunk and slammed the trunk's lid down. I'd gotten this far, but tempting fate wasn't my style.

  I pulled up the suitcase's telescoping handle and started walking, dragging the suitcase behind me on its tiny wheels. The name tag attached to the handle flopped and jiggled as I walked, listing my name in block letters: KYLIE BERRY. It was my maiden name, not the name I'd left behind with that dirty, rotten piece of pond scum I used to call a husband. No, Kylie Berry was a good name, and it, the suitcase and its contents were all that I owned. But that would be enough. It had to be. I'd figure out the rest as I went, and where I was going now was my cousin's cute little café. When she'd invited me to come down to "help her out," I'd jumped at it. If it meant one less night of having to sleep at the women's shelter, then I was game.

  I paid attention to the people around me as I walked. All around me were a myriad of tennis shoes or flat sandals, various types of denim, a few Walmart-style short skirts, and a lot of t-shirts. I was wearing a black polka-dotted sleeveless, torso-fitted dress with a flared skirt, gold high-heel pumps, and I knew from experience that my shoulder-blade length fire red hair would be shining in the afternoon sun.

  I didn't fit in, but I didn't see anyone picking up any rocks to throw at me, so I figured that must be okay. A man exited a store with a green awning twenty or so feet ahead of me wearing what had to have been a thousand-dollar suit, and no one paid him any attention either.

  "Things are going to be okay," I mumbled to myself. Yet my feet were not convinced. Camden Falls' Main Street seemed to go on forever, and my pretty gold pumps soon pinched my feet in ways that made me work hard to hide a limp.

  A group of barely twenty-somethings sauntered through a door a little ways ahead of me laughing, and one of them was holding a to-go cup of what looked like iced tea.

  My heart sped up but my feet slowed. This was it. My new beginning. My second chance. I'd be the best waitress, assistant, whatever I could be to Sarah. And hopefully, Sarah would make room for me on her couch until I crawled my way back up to standing on my own two feet.

  This would work. I would make it work.

  Chapter Two

  I won't lie, when I reached for the glass-front door with the scrawling script "Sarah's Eatery" on it, my hand was shaking, but I kept my eyes bright and an excited smile on my gloss-painted lips as I pulled the door open. A little bell jangled, announcing my entrance.

  That's when I stepped into cousin Sarah's "tiny" little café, and my smile slipped as my mouth fell open. It was huge! I had imagined some ten foot by ten foot space with as many little round tables and chairs as could be crammed into it per the laws of physics, but instead what I found was spatial extravagance. There was room to walk between the tables. People could have conversations without the absolute certainty that the words they spoke were being overheard by the person sitting two inches behind them. A ladder on top of another ladder would be needed to reach the ceiling. And it had big, sunny windows on two sides, all along the wall that faced Main Street and all along the wall that faced the corner side street, making it look even bigger.

  "Wow." I felt like I was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I'd been swept up from the churning bustle of Chicago and dropped right in the middle of a magical place where people could stretch their legs, lean back in their chairs and prop their arms behind their heads without worrying about blocking the path of another.

  "Kylie!" Sarah exclaimed.

  I turned my head to the left, toward Sarah's voice and a grill-style bar. Over the bar was a large banner that read, "We'll miss you!" with Sarah's name taped on at the end on a large piece of colorful construction paper. Sarah had her hands thrown up in the air as if to celebrate, and all of the patrons at the bar were swiveled around on their stools to stare at me.

  Sarah didn't exactly come running from around the bar to greet me. It's more like she bounced. She was wearing denim overalls that were rolled at the ankle, a sleeveless tee with a scoop neck, and cute little white canvas shoes without socks. Her eyes crinkled heavily at the corners from her enormous smile, but it looked good on her.

  "Hey!" She threw her arms around me in a warm, snuggly hug. Her hair smelled like apples with a hint of grilled cheese. "I knew you'd make it in time."

  "Hi," I said, with a panic-smile plastered on my face. "You going somewhere?"

  Sarah sighed and got dreamy-eyed. "I just couldn't wait a minute more to go join Jon in Seattle. All my stuff is packed and ready to go."

  Breathe. Keep breathing, I told myself while another little voice inside my head screeched, Homeless! You're going to be sleeping on the streets!

  I should have kept the car keys. I could have at least slept in it. A crowbar. I could break into the trunk in the middle of the night. And the trunk was roomy! No one would have to see me sleeping in the car. I could use the clothes in my suitcase to make a cozy little bed for myself.

  "That's great." My voice barely wavered, but I felt a cold sweat breaking out on my upper lip.

  "Come on," she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me along behind her. "I want you to meet the regulars. This going away party was their idea."

  I eyed them, wondering if one of them would take over the café. Then I wondered if they would give me a job.

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