Her crying stopped. “Thank you, mister. Santa brought me my dolly. Isn't she pretty?”
“Very pretty. Just like you.”
In that moment, Kincaid Hunter's heart broke.
He ran hard in his boots, holding onto his Stetson, all the way down the corridors then down the escalator and to the rental car area. He pointed the car back to Moonstone.
* * * *
He took the North Pole's staircase steps two at a time, calling, “Gloria?”
But he was too late. Somehow he'd missed her. Peter LeBarron was in the kitchen pouring himself coffee. “She left for the airport just after you did.”
Kincaid never caught up with her.
On New Year's Day he won another belt buckle at the Reno rodeo. He was obligated to appear at several parties. But this time, dressed in expensive leather from head to toe, he looked around at the gaudy decor, at the food that would barely feed a sparrow, and he discovered he felt out of sorts. Bored. He realized his life had taken on a sameness day after day. Here, there was no cocoa to stir for a bunch of rowdy kids with a huge dog, no coffee in a Styrofoam cup to share with a crusty friend, nothing to fix with his bare hands, and no misadventures with a crazy woman who smelled like gingerbread. He found himself wanting to hide from the women sidling up to him in their clouds of perfumes named for actresses. And none of them had a nice butt.
When he went back to his room, he put on his old denims and the sweater he'd worn back in Wisconsin. He smiled when a hand in a pocket found Philippe's list of sayings that no woman could refuse. He hadn't yet used all of them.
Determined to finish his unfinished business, he got on a plane for Cozumel in the Caribbean.
~—~—~—~ ~
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* * *
Chapter 10
He was waiting for her when the cruise boat's tender brought several passengers ashore for a sightseeing and shopping. Knowing by now how much he could talk himself into trouble, he got down on his knees on the dock. “Gloria?”
“What are you doing here?”
Okay, that was disappointing. He'd wanted her to rush to him and bowl him over in a hug with her soft pillows. “I missed you,” he said, getting off his knees. One cracked, which was disconcerting, but maybe prophetic. His body couldn't take bull riding forever. His body needed a soft place to fall. Like Gloria.
He held out the gift box he'd brought.
When she opened it up, she frowned. The giant belt buckle glinted under the warm January sun. “You came all this way to tell me you won again?”
“No, Glo. Flip it over. Read it.”
He held his breath.
“'To Glo, the woman with whom I want to share my sleigh forever'. What does that mean?”
“The original saying on my list was ‘the only woman I want to share my tombstone with.’ I rewrote it to fit us.”
“Thank goodness.”
He took her in his arms. “Gloria, you showed me how to fly.” He rested his lips first on one soft eyebrow, then the other. Heaven. They were soft as snow. “Glo, I love you. Can you possibly love me back? I know it'll be hard work, but you're the strongest, smartest woman I know. I'll be a handful, but I think you're up to it. You're perfect for me.”
Gloria looked around at the crowd gathering, then down at the belt buckle.
His heartbeat hiccupped. His breathing stopped.
When she looked up, a smile hatched on her face. “What took you so long? I fell in love with you from the moment you agreed to put on knitted booties for me.”
“I loved you the moment I saw you in your bow. Did you bring that apron along?”
Her satiny lips kissed him. But this time, he took charge of the lip-lock. He picked her up, twirling her around until they were dizzy and she gave forth with that full-throttle laugh of hers.
He got better applause for that kiss than he'd ever received for an eight-second ride.
* * * *
They made love in his Cozumel hotel room until the light outside grew pink. Then a pleasant silence settled in as they lay in bed.
After a while, Gloria popped up on her elbows. “What was her name anyway?”
“Who?”
“Honesty-Honda-whoever.”
Grimacing, he sat up on his elbows. “Harvey.”
“Harvey?!”
“You haven't seen the news? The showgirl and singer committed to transgendering while I was away in Moonstone. She went from Hazel to Harvey over the holidays.”
“You mean the rodeo champ almost dated ... Harvey? You almost had your picture with Harvey in the scandal sheets? But instead you got stuck with me in a quaint little town doing quaint things?”
“Yup. You saved my life.”
They fell back on their respective pillows, falling into silence again for a few moments before Gloria snorted next to him. The snort became a howl of laughter. “You spent all that time and energy wishing you were back with ... Harvey.”
Kincaid laughed with her. Yeah, the joke was on Kincaid. And he deserved it. He loved “quaint.” Always had. He couldn't wait for next Christmas. He wanted to spend it in Moonstone with Mrs. Claus.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
PEST CONTROL
{Men of Moonstone Series, Book 3}
by Christine DeSmet (Dame Moonstone)
Chapter 1
“You want me to find skunks? That's the emergency that brings me undercover at midnight to Moonstone?”
Jason Schuster stood in his sister Lily's second-floor apartment kitchen, manacled by her hug. She hadn't even let him take off his shearling coat and Stetson, though heavy wool felt mighty good in Wisconsin's bone-chilling, late-April weather. Sleet had slashed at his windshield the entire hour's drive from the Duluth airport.
Trying to breathe, Jason grunted, “Lily? What's wrong?”
“I haven't seen you for so long.”
Jason hadn't seen Lily since she'd moved to Moonstone almost two years ago from Chicago. He'd visited this part of the country a decade ago, but two people had died in an incident that motivated his hooking up with the DEA. Whatever worried his deputy sheriff sister had to be serious. Her kitchen smelled of a bribe—fresh-baked, oatmeal butterscotch cookies. His mouth watered despite the fear making his heartbeat faster than normal.
Lily still looked like a kid, always wearing her strawberry blonde hair in a ponytail. She helped him take off his tan coat and Stetson. “Jase, there's more than one definition of a skunk.”
In his line of work, he read eyes. Looking into Lily's blue eyes right now was like watching the moody, dreaded night fall over the Eagle Pass mountain area between Mexico and South Texas, where he currently worked. He said, “You got yourself a high-profile case evidently. Drugs? Otherwise...”
“Otherwise you wouldn't have come. You never wanted to come back here. I'm sorry for what happened back then, Jase, for my role in it.” Her sad gaze haunted him. “Let me get you some coffee, Jase. Sit.”
“No more apologizing, okay? We agreed. The past is the past.”
“Okay.”
While she fussed making fresh coffee, he took note of her brown uniform; she was ready to go out on patrol in the freezing, wee hours of Tuesday morning. Moonstone was a burg on Lake Superior's shoreline, with four hundred mostly good folks. Jason had even heard high praise about Moonstone from his Montana ranching buddies, Kincaid Hunter and John “Bozeman” Hall, whom he'd met in Afghanistan while they'd been in the service together. Kade and Boze had both found a wife in Moonstone, oddly enough. In Jason's job, though, the “I love you” tripped off a female drug mule's lips faster than her dealer's bullet in a guy's back.
Jason sat down at Lily's table piled high with case files, but he could see in his sister's eyes an ache to talk about what had happened to him a decade ago at her hands. It didn't surprise him that Lily had ended up in law enforcement, just as he had. She was also married now to an upstanding guy; Professor Marcus
Linden made a living digging up the bones of prehistoric beavers the size of bears.
“Is this about Marcus? Is he involved in...”
Lily flashed him a smile so fake only a fool would trust it. “He's involved, but not in what you think. I don't want to tell him about everything quite yet. He worries like crazy about my safety as it is.”
His sister set a mug of steaming coffee and a plate of cookies on the square table suffering under its paper stacks. If Lily was keeping secrets from her husband, he wanted no part of that trouble. He'd had enough women trouble of his own.
Lily eased into the chair across from him. “You look great, Jase. A lady killer.”
He scoffed, munching on a delectable cookie. Jason hadn't always looked good, not at all, so it was a loaded comment. At thirty-two, he was three years younger than his sister, but he looked older, rougher. But people used to think of them as tow-headed twins when they were youngsters. Each had been born with bluejay-blue eyes and strawberry blond hair. Their parents had gotten them television commercial gigs. As Jason grew older, his hair had darkened to a tawny brown. It now hit his shoulders in thick waves like a scruffy lion's, but it was that way for his latest undercover job. He hadn't shaved in a couple of weeks, either.
In addition to the heavenly smell of coffee and cookies, Jason sniffed out another scent—that of freshly-ironed clothes. His sister had always ironed when she was stressed. An ironing board sat behind her now in the corner of the kitchen, like a ship at harbor.
Jason sipped the coffee. His sister had given him an extra dose of cream, just the way he liked it. He rolled up the sleeves of his blue chambray shirt. “You can't be talking about real skunks. You must have a pest control officer in the DNR to call on for that."'
“Actually, that's your cover. You're now a pest control officer.”
“Nice joke. Come on, Lily, you've been ironing. What's worrying you?”
She picked up one of the file folders. “I think there's going to be a murder in Moonstone.”
“You ‘think'?” Her verbiage made him thump the table with a finger. “I've been brought here for a future murder that may not happen?”
“It's going to. I know who's going to do it, too, but I need help infiltrating the group.” She handed the folder across to him.
Jason scratched at his chin whiskers. “Group? You got a cult or militia here?”
“Nothing like that. There's been a rash of break-ins, all kinds of goods taken plus money. The break-in at the bank gave me the excuse to call the Feds and ask for you, Jase.”
“Because a lot of bank robberies are done by people involved with drugs. How much dough did they get in the bank break-in?”
“The bank's gumball machine.”
He gulped the hot coffee to keep from guffawing. “So it's kids? Gee, you can handle this without me. Unless those gumballs are made of something besides sugar.”
His sister wasn't laughing. “I called you because if I don't solve these break-ins, I'm going to be fired.”
“Nah.”
“The county budget's strapped. And if there's a murder on my watch that I could've prevented...” Lily shuddered. Her movement shook loose a couple of tears. His gut tightened. Lily never cried. She said, “I've been given notice that if I don't solve this in two weeks, I'm done.”
Jason's emotions shifted to serious concern. “Why only two weeks?”
“Less than two weeks, actually. There's a big May Day celebration here in Moonstone, its first. A week from this coming Friday, on May 1st. Tourists won't show up if they think we're a bunch of burglars, pickpockets, or kooks. And if there's a murder? Moonstone's celebration is toast. I'm toast.”
“Your husband knows about your job being in jeopardy?”
“No. May Day is when Marcus comes home from a cave dig he's on with his students down in LaCrosse. I want everything to be perfect when he comes home.” Her eyes puddled with more tears.
Jason still suspected something wasn't quite right with his sister's marriage. “But how is my being a pest control officer going to bring down your guy?”
Lily got up to refresh his coffee. “The truth is, I think the robber is a woman, or a group of women. A sewing and knitting group formed about two months ago, and within days of that the robberies started.”
“A group of old ladies?” Jason stuffed a cookie in his mouth to keep from chuckling.
Lily slid into her chair again, shaking her head. “They're not all old. One is in her late eighties but don't call her old or there's hell to pay. The women call themselves the Moonstone Mavens; they solved the murder of a priest who came here to marry Margie Mueller and Tony Farina. Margie runs the grocery store and Tony's the chef on the local cruise boat during the summer. But now it appears the Mavens have expanded with a possible bad element joining them.”
“So you think this knitting group is a gang? Committing crimes as part of an initiation or proof of loyalty? That's the true meaning of a close-knit group.” He waited for Lily to laugh at his pun about knitting.
She didn't. She pointed at the file folder next to his coffee cup. “The list of suspects. This area is filled with people of poor economic means, Jase. Out of cash. Out of jobs. Mad at an unfair world.”
Jason opened the file. One suspect was Ellen Peplinski, the mother of Lily's friend Kirsten, the chef at The Jingle Bell Inn. Ellen used to be a grifter, a con woman. She was an automatic suspect. Her daughter Kirsten's restaurant was apparently doing well, so he didn't suspect Kirsten at the moment.
Next on the list was Ruth Mueller, the lady in her eighties, and shirttail relation to Margie. She had caused plenty of mischief when Lily first came to town. Ruth was a pie queen who had been vying for the attention of the richest man in town, curmudgeon Henri LeBarron. During a pie contest, the lady pie judge dropped dead of poisoning. The supposed murder turned out to be an accident involving rat poison getting into pie flour by mistake. Lily had met Marcus during all that hubbub.
Jason put the list down, concerned with the Mavens’ connection to two recent deaths in Moonstone. “Ellen's an old hand at stealing, but Ruth had nothing to do with the rat poison, so why is she on your list?”
“She doesn't want to go to a nursing home. She's probably stealing to save up for a live-in helper. Or lover, knowing Ruth. Henri married again, so Ruth is on the prowl.”
The list included Tootsie Winters, sixties, silver-haired wife of the former mayor. A newspaper photo showed a plump lady with a sweatshirt decorated with a rooster on it. “Is this the lady who gave you that odd lavender chicken?” He dug out an Associated Press color photo from his wallet that he'd carried ever since he spotted it in a Santiago, Chile, daily newspaper. It showed his sister in uniform with a lavender chicken with flyaway, fuzzy feathers, even on its feet.
“You've carried that photo of me around with you all this time? How sweet of you.” She choked up and looked away.
In the silent moment, Jason realized how much his sister loved him, and how much he wanted to help her. “Where do you keep your chickens?”
“I couldn't keep them here so I gave them to another of our suspects, Hyacinth Clarehout. The minute she moved here two months ago she took over as leader of the Mavens, too fast for my taste.”
There was no photo. The notes said Hyacinth had moved here from Madison in early March and settled on twenty acres south of Moonstone, two miles out. Jason said, reading, “She's my age, has a degree in agriculture, taught college a little bit. She seems solid. Why is she a suspect?”
“She's odd.”
“Odd in what way?”
“She doesn't have a job, but somehow always has cash and is always buying things around town and building things like a windmill on her place. She rides a bike to town, even in winter. I've never seen her in a car.”
“So she's a health nut saving the environment. Maybe she inherited the dough. You suspect she has a growing operation?”
“Marijuana? I don't know and have had no cau
se to get a warrant to search her property. But the windmill sits right next to her farmhouse.”
“Growers have found interesting ways to create power for their grow lights.”
“Exactly.”
“But, Sis, I don't have cause to go marching in there, either.”
“You forget. I made you a pest control officer for a reason. You'll see her place tomorrow. She's the lady with the skunk problem. When she brought Kirsten eggs for The Jingle Bell Inn restaurant the other day, I overheard Hyacinth complain that a family of skunks had taken up residence under her back porch.”
“And you volunteered me to help her. I don't know anything about skunks.”
“You're a fast learner, Jase. And if you get sprayed—” Lily handed him several sheets of paper. “I did some Internet searches. Oil-cutting dish soap mixed with hydrogen peroxide and baking soda will do. Washing your clothes with bleach works, though you'll likely need to do the old standby—bury or burn them.”
Jason got up and went to her refrigerator. This called for more cream. “I suppose you already gave me an alias, too?”
“You're Jason Bellows now, not Schuster. ‘Bellows, your pest control fellow'.”
Jason narrowed his eyes at his crafty sister. “Do I have a shop set up already?”
“Of course. There's been an empty storefront two doors down from me.” His sister's deputy sheriff's office was downstairs from the apartment, in a space that had once been a dry goods store. It faced the town's square, as did his new shop, evidently. Lily said, “You probably passed by the sign I put in the window but didn't see it in the dark.”
Lily got up from the table to grab a large sign sitting in the corner behind the ironing board. “'Bellows, Your Pest Control Fellow'. This is the magnetic version for your vehicle door.”
“Did you have to call me a ‘fellow'? That sounds a bit—”
“Friendly and harmless. The ladies won't suspect you of being a DEA agent working with me and the FBI.”
“But you made me sound like a milk-toast, a guy who wears a bow tie and a pocket protector.” After an unsettling moment in which they just stared at each other but neither backed down, Jason said, “Damn, but you're good at this. I'm proud of you, Sis. I suspect you've arranged for my lodging, too. Where is Jason Bellows living while he works on preventing a murder?”
Men Of Moonstone Series Page 13
