Queen (17 page)

She tried unsuccessfully to crawl out of her angel without ruining the shape. "Good Lord," she muttered as a large glob of snow slid down her boot.

"Need a hand?" he asked.

Queen heard the laughter in his voice and knew it was long past the time for graceful exits from her situation.

"I'd appreciate it," she said, and extended her arm.

She was propelled up and out with speedy finesse and no further damage to her art. Embarrassed by her predicament, she began brushing vigorously at the snow on her clothes and hair.

"I came to see Colonel Bonner, but I think I'd like to change my destination. If you have an opening on the next flight to heaven, I'm your man."

Queen's mouth dropped. His audacious statement and the reference to her angels were too much to ignore. She laughed long and loud, and that sound was what drew Cody out onto the deck.

When he saw Queen with the man below, he couldn't think and couldn't move. All he could do was stare in astonishment. Queen had done something with a total stranger that it had taken her weeks to do with him: she was laughing… and at a level that could almost be called bubbling. He vacillated between shock and jealousy, and jealousy won out.

Then the man with Queen turned and looked up, and the smile on his face broke even wider.

Cody sighed. He should have known.

"Macon, you asshole, get out of my yard and quit bothering my lady."

Queen looked up into Cody's eyes and felt the world spin beneath her feet. A flush suffused her face. Cody had just laid claim to something neither of them had even admitted to themselves, let alone to someone else. She stood there, unable to move, while the tall officer stomped up the steps into Cody's rough embrace of welcome.

It took Queen some time to assemble herself and her thoughts. By the time she'd made it to the back door, dumped her wet clothes and shoes, and scurried up the back stairs, the men had gone from greetings to guffaws and she knew it was too late to undo what Cody had done. Not that she wanted to, it was just that she felt obligated to tell someone besides Cody that she was not his lady.

She slipped into clean, dry sweats, relishing their warmth, and after a glance in the mirror over her dresser made a beeline for the living room. She stopped just outside the door, smoothing her hair and adjusting her sweatshirt before making her entrance. Then Cody saw her and ruined it before she had time to proceed.

"Queen, I'm glad you're here. There's someone I want you to meet."

"I was just coming to see if there was anything you wanted, Mr. Bonner."

Cody grinned. "Can the 'Mr.' stuff, honey. This is an old friend. You don't have to be formal with him."

Queen glared. She'd been trying to be formal with Cody, not the friend. She was still irked by the way he'd laid public claim to her in front of the man, and he was ruining it again by treating her like a member of the family and calling her "honey."

Then she stopped herself, wondering what in the world was making her so angry. Wasn't this what she'd wanted all along? To be considered a member of the family? Then what in the world was she so worked up about? She threw back her shoulders and tilted her chin in a defiant gesture, determined to regain her footing within this mess.

Cody's eyes narrowed, and the smile died on his face. She looked as if she were about to go to war. He already knew that what he'd said had shocked the hell out of her. He'd seen that much before he'd taken Dennis Macon inside with him. He wondered if he was about to get his comeuppance… and if he would survive it.

Queen walked into the room, her hand extended. "We've already met… sort of," she said, and gave both men a dazzling smile.

Cody forgot what he'd been going to say.

"As I was about to say before we were so rudely interrupted," Dennis Macon said, wiggling his eyebrows at Queen to make his point, "I'm Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Macon, late of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and as of two days ago stationed at Lowry Air Force Base, Denver, Colorado."

"That's where Cody goes," Queen said, and then caught herself, uncertain whether or not Cody had admitted to his friend that he'd made visits to the base psychiatrist.

"Yeah," Dennis said, and punched Cody lightly on the shoulder, "so he was telling me."

Then she remembered she hadn't identified herself, and it was obvious that Cody was not going to do it properly. His lady indeed!

"I'm Queen Houston… Cody's housekeeper," she said, and extended her hand.

The look on her face and the glint in her eye dared either man to make jest of the fact or deny it. Cody knew better, and it didn't take Dennis Macon long to get the message, either.

"Pleased to meet you, angel," he said. "Very pleased indeed." And I wish to hell I'd seen you first, he thought.

Cody frowned. Angel!

"Queenie! Queenie! Donny's nose is bleeding!"

Will's frantic shout brought everyone running into the kitchen. It didn't take long for her to establish that the bloody nose wasn't life-threatening, but that it had come from the direct hit of an icy snowball.

"No more snowballs," Queen ordered, propelling Donny backward onto a kitchen chair. "At least not until the snow is fresher. It's getting too icy. Someone will get a black eye next time… right, Cody?"

The nervous plea in her voice was all Cody needed to hear. No matter how casually he or the boys would view a black eye, Queen seemed horrified by the thought. He backed her up and saw her sigh with relief as she pressed an ice bag against Donny's nose. She combed her fingers through the boy's hair in a gentle motion, pushing it away from his eyes and out of the oozing blood.

"You need a haircut, mister," she said, using the excuse to touch him when what she wanted to do was sit down and cry at the sight of all that blood and his swiftly swelling nose and lip.

This was much worse than the little scrapes they'd had when playing ball. Even though she kept telling herself that boys would be boys, it didn't help, especially when she saw tears in the corners of his eyes.

Cody handed her a fresh compress and then sent the other two boys upstairs to change into dry clothes while they dealt with his eldest's latest bump of life. He watched Queen's tender ministrations toward Donny and tried not to envy the attention his son was receiving.

She was not only his lady and the best damned housekeeper he'd ever had, she was also quite a mother. He wondered how his boys would react to her care on a permanent basis and thought he already knew the answer. When Donny had gotten hurt, hers had been the name that they'd called.

Dennis observed with interest their not-so-casual glances and their careful-not-to-touch-each-other moves. He sighed and gave up whatever wayward thoughts he'd been having about the pretty redhead before they became too painful to ignore. It was as obvious as hell that she was already taken. What was also obvious was that she had yet to admit it—to herself or anyone else.

The snowfall during the night had been heavy, but sometime between the midnight and early morning hours it had stopped. The trail of footprints leading from the rural, unpaved, snow-packed road was impossible to ignore, as was the fact that for the first time in thirty-one years, Patrick Mooney, the man who carried the mail to the outlying areas of Snow Gap, had failed to show up for work and wasn't answering his phone.

It hadn't taken long for his concerned co-workers to make a report that sent Sheriff Miller toward the Mooney home, which lay nestled just above the foothills of the mountains around Snow Gap.

Abel Miller didn't expect a problem other than the fact that he could very possibly get himself stuck in a snowdrift. He'd been roused and sent on the call before the road crews would have had time to get on the job.

He gunned his four-by-four up a gentle incline and then found himself having to pull over to let Snow Gap's school bus pass on its morning route. He grinned and waved as he recognized several familiar faces, including those of the Bonner boys, who were sitting at the back of the bus. He now had a passable set of ruts in which he could drive, thanks to the bus's wide dual wheels.

Abel pulled into Mooney's driveway and then turned and waved as another vehicle passed and honked. He recognized Cody Bonner and tipped his hat as he climbed out of his police vehicle.

"You're out early!" he yelled as Cody drove by. "Did you miss the bus?" He laughed loudly at his own joke when Cody grinned and waved before driving on.

It was Abel's opinion that Bonner was a good man with a lot on his plate. These days it was hard enough to raise a family, even with a complete set of parents. Doing it alone would be doubly difficult. Then he remembered the pretty sister who wasn't really a sister and figured there was a lot more between them than the welfare of three boys.

He turned back to the business at hand and started toward the house. The first inkling of trouble hit when he saw the door slightly ajar and a double set of footprints-one set going in, the other leading out of the house.

He walked onto the porch and then stood for a moment and looked around at the flat area around Mooney's house. Though the footprints had come from the road, they went away from the house into the forest in the distance.

"What in hell?" he asked aloud as he walked toward the open door. "Surely old Pat didn't have some kind of spell and just wander off?" He pushed the door open a little farther and leaned inside. "Hey, Pat. It's me, Abel. You in there?"

No one answered, and a sick feeling began twisting at the pit of his stomach. He walked inside and then stopped short and quickly pulled his service revolver as adrenaline kicked in. He started a silent sweep of the scene and had a sudden suspicion that he might wish he'd skipped breakfast before he made this call.

Abel Miller had seen a lot of things in his fifteen years on the force, but the last time he'd seen anything this bad had been in a village in a Laotian jungle just after a bombing.

Furniture was overturned. Pictures were knocked off the walls. Phones had been yanked from their jacks, and half-opened packages of foodstuffs littered the floor. The plaque that Patrick had received for twenty-five years of on-the-job excellence with the postal service was broken and lying in the fireplace.

Abel cursed beneath his breath and accidentally kicked an unopened can of tuna lying beside the wall as he started toward the back of the house. But he didn't have to go far to find out why Patrick had been late for work. What was left of Patrick Mooney lay in a pool of blood half-in and half-out of the doorway to his bedroom. His head rested at a crazy angle to the rest of his body, and it was obvious that whoever had done this had been sick as hell and in a blinding rage.

"Damn it, old buddy, it was a bad way to go," Abel said as he knelt and gently touched the bare flesh above the victim's wrist. It was cold and rigid, and Abel knew it was going to be hard to get a good fix on time of death, because the cold air had probably interfered with the body's natural rate of morbidity.

He stood abruptly and walked out of the house much faster than he'd come in, heading for the radio in his unit. It didn't take long to say what had to be said. Now all he could do was wait for the coroner and the boys from the crime lab.