A Midlife Mountain Murder (Alaska Campground Cozy Mysteries Book 1)(Paranormal Women's Fiction)

A MIDLIFE MOUNTAIN MURDER ALASKA CAMPGROUND COZY MYSTERIES #1 JULIE ECKER Copyright © 2023 by Julie Ecker All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. You can subscribe to my newsletter and get a free book when you sign up, plus other goodies! CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 About Julie Also by Julie Ecker CHAPTER 1 The pale golden light of the morning sun woke me, shining on my face through the mesh windows in my camper van’s pop-up top. It brought along a brisk mountain breeze, tickling my nose with scents of woodsmoke and conifers. I yawned and stirred in my nest of blankets, pillows, and an unzipped sleeping bag. I sat up carefully, because sleeping in the camper’s loft meant that I didn’t have a lot of head room. It still felt to me like waking up somewhere fantastic and magical. What it reminded me of most was the treehouse in the backyard of the house where we lived when I was a little kid. We moved away from that house before I hit second grade, but even now, forty years later, I still remembered how much I had loved that treehouse, how I turned it into everything from pirate ships to hollow fairy trees in my head. Still a little sleepy, but delighted to be here, I looked out at the Alaskan campground I was calling home for the summer. Spruce Cone Campground lay serene and beautiful in the soft white-gold light of the newly risen sun. I could just glimpse the top of a tent in the space across from mine, but the tall spruce trees provided privacy and cast long shadows between the camping sites. I inhaled deeply of the fresh morning air. “Good morning, world,” I said out loud. “Good morning, trees. Good morning, campers.” It seemed a little silly, but why not? I was on my own, newly divorced and living the van life. It was time for me to make some new traditions to suit the upending of my old lifestyle, so I was trying everything on to see what fit. Barefoot in my flannel PJs, I climbed down carefully from the loft to the body of the van. It wasn’t big. My home for the summer was a VW EuroVan I had bought used. It was just about the size of an old 80s van (it reminded me of the one from the A-Team), and probably almost that old, but it was beautifully well kept, with an interior that was perfectly clean and nice. The van had a condensed version of all the modern conveniences: a mini kitchenette, a dinette table and seats in the back, even gingham curtains at the windows that I carefully tied back for the day with their fabric bindings. The loft was probably meant for kids. There was a master bed, of sorts, that folded out of the dinette couches below. But I found it stuffy and unpleasant to sleep down below. I loved being up in the top, where I could look out at the campground and inhale the wind that blew cleanly through the mesh sides. There were zip-up waterproof covers for the open mesh that I could close on wet or chilly days. The minifridge, stove, and heater ran off a propane tank. All in all, I lived in my own self-contained van world, exactly big enough for one person, with everything I needed to live a simple life on or off the grid. I pulled a robe over my PJs, collected my toothbrush, makeup bag, hair dryer, and towel, and pushed my feet into my flip-flops for the short walk to the campground’s showers. I was able to eke along the van’s tiny water tank for weeks between refills by using the campground’s sanitary facilities for the most part, saving my van’s water for casual use like occasional handwashing. The van’s rear door opened sideways (also like the A-Team van). I slid it back and stepped down to the gravel of my camping space. As I inhaled another lungful of clear morning mountain air, I began to realize something. The campground was absolutely quiet. I heard no engines, no radios or generators from the RV zone, no tent campers chatting as they strolled to the showers. In the camping space next to mine, just visible through the trunks of the spruce trees, my neighbor Miranda’s tent was zipped closed, without even a hint of Miranda walking her dog in her usual swirl of colorful skirts. And I realized I’d done it again. “Oh, come on,” I said out loud. In midsummer Alaska, the sun barely sets. It goes down for a few hours during what is technically night, but doesn’t actually get dark. Then it rises again at three or four in the morning. I had been living in Spruce Cone Campground since the start of camping season in mid-May, a few weeks ago, so I should have been used to this by now. But try telling that to my morning brain, trained on the circadian rhythms of sane Midwestern latitudes where it actually gets dark at night. I stepped back up into the camper to check the time on my waterproof hiking watch, which I had left beside the sink. Yup. It was just past 4 a.m. Latter-day hippie Miranda had introduced me recently to the concept of affirmations, positive statements to brighten my outlook on the world. I decided this would be an excellent opportunity to try them out. “I am an early riser,” I announced to the sleeping campground—though quietly, not wanting to wake anyone up. “Nothing can dim my inner