I knew there was something weird going on with my hubs, Stanley, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I’d been working my way through every room, drawer, and cabinet in our dream home, searching for whatever I was searching for.
I thought I was going to find a lipstick stained collar. Or a knitting club in the basement. Or maybe even an art forger living in our guest house (because honestly, who has that many Picassos? No one).
But when I opened the china cabinet and saw all those bags of white powder. . .that’s a gut punch right there, my friend.
No one predicts a moment like that, let alone has an extensive plan for how they’re going to handle it. I didn’t.
After my crime-laden childhood, a mom who kept us on the run all the time, and a complete lack of stability in my life, my entire goal when I ditched my mom was stability, a home, and security. And, even though it’s all girly and dependent, I really wanted to be swept off my feet by a knight in shining armor who would shower me with adoration, love, and total support for the law-abiding good citizen I wanted to be.
I’d found that with Stanley. I’d made it. So when I saw those bags. . .decision time. Which would you choose?
1. Be like, hey, my beloved hubs collects baby powder in plastic bags. What a prepared future dad he is! Yay for me!
2. Figure there’s hidden cash in an offshore account, find it, steal it, and then disappear into a great life in the Cayman islands with hot cabana boys, high-quality chocolate, and expensive champagne.
3. Confront apparent drug kingpin, admit you found the stash, and then tell him you love him, believe in him, and want to work through it so you guys can live happily ever after. Because of course he loves you too much to chain you to a cement block and toss you in the ocean to keep you from ratting him out.
4. Bags of powder? What bags of powder? I haven’t been in the dining room in years. I love my life and onward it continues!
5. Google the number for an FBI Hotline, leave an anonymous tip, and then sneak away in the middle of the night, crying as you walk away from your home and family for the second time in your life, but trying to be optimistic that at least you found out before you got sent to prison, so you can start your life over without having a best friend named Big Betty who pimps you out for cigarettes and romance novels.
My mom would have voted for #2 and sprinted for the Caymans in her new private jet, but you know what the problem with that is? It leaves him to do his thing. All of them except for #5 leave him to do his thing (because, let’s be honest, #3 leaves you alive for about thirty seconds).
Leaving a drug kingpin to do his thing.
Sometimes, we’re the heroes we dream of being. Sometimes we’re not. I honestly didn’t want to be a hero. But I just couldn’t sit there and let him do that. I’d seen the impact of my mom’s cons on people.
And this was so much bigger.
So, I grabbed my phone, left a voicemail on the FBI hotline, and then walked out of my life.
Forty-five minutes later, while I was ordering coffee for the last time at my fave café before I left town, Agent Straus of the FBI slapped his ID badge and a ten dollar bill on the counter, shot me a no-sense-of-humor smile, and said the coffee was on him and we needed to chat.
Two hours after that, I walked back into my life with a wire strapped to the inside of my bra, a new appreciation for how annoying the FBI could be, and a raw, unbridled terror of being chopped up by my hubby.
Because life can be fun like that.
Would I do it again? Yeah, I would. Despite everything it cost me, I’d do it again, a million times over.
Why?
Because I can’t walk away when bad people do bad things.
But boy, oh, boy, the trouble that that can lead to. . . especially when I try to start my life over in a small, adorable lake town in Maine with my two besties, a plethora of dead bodies, my purloined rescue cat, and a posse of murderous, Jet-skiing moose. . .
Check out Double Twist for the highly entertaining shenanigans that occur as I attempt to reboot my life in Bass Derby, Maine, and bodies start popping up way too often.
Until then. . .keep those china cabinet doors locked!!
Mia
Double Twist, A Mia Murphy Mystery #1
Genre: Cozy
Release: May 2022
Purchase Link
In this new mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Rowe, the irreverent, underappreciated, and alarmingly talented Mia Murphy risks it all to do the right thing. . .even if it means doing the wrong thing.
A high-octane, feel-good romp starring women you’ll wish were your best friends, an inconveniently attractive cop, a posse of gray-haired quilters with a fondness for margaritas, and an eccentric town with more secrets than Mia’s con artist mom.
All Mia Murphy wants is an ordinary, law-abiding life.
Accidentally marrying a drug kingpin? Easily fixed with an anonymous tip to the FBI…which resulted in a not-so-voluntary, surprisingly stressful stint as an undercover spy against him.
But with her ex finally in prison and assassins in her rearview mirror, Mia is off to Diamond Lake in Bass Derby, Maine with King Tut, her rescue (aka purloined) cat, to start over.
Upon arrival, Mia quickly finds a couple of soulmates in a blue-haired “I’ll show you what old is” café owner and a baton-twirling mail carrier. Life is headed in the right direction. . .until the trio stumbles across a dead body during a slightly illegal but well-intentioned home invasion.
When one of her new besties is arrested for the murder, Mia is the only one with the skills to ferret out the real killer…but she can’t afford to resurrect her morally flexible past. Can Mia keep her life on the straight and narrow with so much at stake? Or will a homicidal, jet-skiing moose, a dead Mr. January firefighter, and an overzealous mayor take them all down?
Mia has to step up, or she’ll lose her chance for the life she’s always wanted and the friends she’s never had. Even worse, she might wind up dead. . .
Meet the author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Stephanie Rowe is the author of more than fifty novels. This is her first mystery, but it won’t be her last (because it’s just so freaking FUN to write!). Notably, she is a Vivian® Award nominee, and a RITA® Award winner and a five-time nominee. She loves her puppies, tennis, and being as sassy and irreverent as her heroines. She’s pretty sure dead bodies are better in fiction than real life, but hey, never say never, right?
All comments are welcomed.