Last Will Murders: Jim Richards Murder Mysteries, #41

By Bob Moats

Jim and Penny are still relaxing on their vacation trip across the U.S. heading back to Michigan to visit where they started together. Penny gets a call from Lacey back in Las Vegas saying a P.I. came looking for her and needs to meet. The P.I. is from Michigan and came back to reveal that Penny has relatives in the area and one is giving Penny all her properties amounting to millions of dollars. Jim and Penny finally meet the long-lost aunt and then they go to see another aunt at a house now owned by Penny. It's a family reunion, meeting relatives Penny didn't know she had. The next day there is a murder of Penny's cousin, an habitual gambler who is counting on being in his mother's will to settle his debt with the two goons who are after him to pay up. Now Jim and Penny must protect the aunts and catch the killers of her cousin. All in a day's work for Jim and Penny fighting crime in this 41st book of the series. This book is a novella, longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Moats
• Release date: Mar 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393929635

Bob Moats

Detroit area resident, Bob Moats, has been writing short stories and plays for as long as he can remember. He has lost most of his original stories, typed or handwritten, in the numerous moves he has made from his hometown of Fraser, Michigan to Northern Michigan, to Las Vegas and back to Fraser, where he now lives. Moats became one of the causalities of unemployment a year ago, and had time on his hands to finally pursue a life long dream of writing a full blown crime novel. Thus was born the first book, "Classmate Murders".What followed was a series of seven books starting with "The Classmate Murders" which introduces the main character, Jim Richards, who has to admit he has become a senior citizen, reluctantly. Richards, one day, receives an email from a childhood sweetheart asking for his help, but by the time he reaches her, she has been murdered. His life turns around and he is pulled into numerous murders of women from his high school who he hasn't seen in forty years. Along with a friend of his, Buck, a big, mustached biker, they go off to track down the killer before he can get to one former classmate, Penny Wickens, a TV talk show host who Jim has just fallen for while protecting her. The killer is also murdering the women right out from under police protection, driving homicide detective Will Trapper crazy, and he slowly depends on Jim to help. There's humor, suspense, wild chases across suburban Detroit with cops, classic cars and motorcycle clubs; murder, mayhem, a good amount of romance and a twist ending.Jim and his crime fighters, continue in the other books, traveling to Las Vegas twice, back to Detroit and out to New York to solve murders involving dominatrix; mistresses; Bridezillas; magic and strip clubs.Book titles: Classmate Murders; Vegas Showgirl Murders; Dominatrix Murders; Mistress Murders; Bridezilla Murders; Magic Murders; Strip Club Murders and Made-for-TV Murders.

Book preview

Extra special thanks to:

To Amy Morningstar for doing the main edits. To the Beta readers, Cindy Valstad, Bobbie Burns, Carolyn Linington, Pamela Malone-O’Brian, and Al Norris for reading the final copy and hopefully catching all those annoying little errors that slip through.

Thank you to all the people who purchased this story. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it for my faithful readers.

Chapter 1

Reta reclined in the easy chair staring at the clock on the wall. Five-thirty in the morning. She hated waking at such an ungodly hour but couldn’t control her body and mind to just sleep through the night. At eighty-two years old she had read that the older you are the less you need to sleep. Probably because you were that much closer to death, you didn’t want to waste time in slumber. Although her life was far better in dreams than in real life.

She stood and wandered aimlessly around the spacious apartment she continued to live in since her partner died two years prior. She had no friends other than the two neighbors in the building on her floor. She never associated with them, they were much younger than she was by a couple of decades. She had one relative living nearby, a nephew, from one of her two sisters, neither of which she had seen in years. Her nephew would only visit her once a year at Christmas just to get his envelope of cash. She learned that her younger sister had a daughter that lived somewhere in Michigan. The woman was supposed to be a host of a TV talk show but she had never met her. Reta had been separated from her family for far too many years to remember why. Reta didn’t own a television so she never saw this long-lost niece or the show she was on. Reta tried to remember her name, but her mind was slipping so it took a moment or two to recall it. What was her name? she strained to pull it out of her cobwebs of a brain. She ran through different names until one name struck a note, Penny.

PENNY WICKENS-RICHARDS suddenly felt a chill run through her body as she sat in the passenger seat of the RV that she and her husband shared. She felt a strange twinge in her nervous system and tried to shake it off. She and her husband, Jim, were now driving through Ohio on their way back to their old homestead in Michigan. They were traveling from their home in Las Vegas on vacation and planned to end up back in Michigan where they both grew up, met and married. Jim had a son from a first marriage and a brother, but Penny had no relatives since her parents passed away years ago. Penny knew very little about her family tree, since she stopped inquiring about relatives while her parents were still alive, and since her mother told her never to ask about her family. As far as she knew she was the last of her family.

What’s on your mind. You look deep in thought? I asked as I glanced at her then turned back to watch the road ahead.

I just had a strange feeling, sort of a premonition, she replied.

Premonition? Are you becoming psychic now? Is there a foreboding in our future? I tried not to laugh but stayed serious for my wife. I knew she was intelligent enough not to fall for silly things.

I don’t know, I just had a strange feeling hit me all of a sudden. Like someone was thinking about me or talking about me. I’m sure what with my former days as host of my talk show, people talked a lot about me. But this was more personal, and I felt a connection to what ever made my body tingle.

I thought I was the only person who made you tingle, I joked.

You give me a different tingle, one that I can control. No, this tingle felt like it came from another source. I had one other tingle like this years ago when my parents died in an auto accident. I just knew something bad happened to them.

I’m sorry that it brought back bad memories, I consoled her. Maybe this will make you feel better, we are three miles from the border of Ohio and Michigan. Then another hour and back to our old stomping grounds.

Too bad all our friends are back in Vegas and not here to help us stomp, Penny said.

Well, there’s Barry Becker, now a detective in Fraser PD. If he hasn’t quit. My family is no fun for stomping around, so we are on our own. I wish I had more relatives to count on, I said.

We relaxed for the last of the drive back and pulled into the driveway of Penny’s house that she let my son and his family use while we were in Vegas. My son came out and helped us bring our luggage into the guest room of her house. I could see she was wistfully walking around remembering when she lived here.

Brings back old memories? I asked her.

"Yes,