Free The Murder of a Queen Bee by Meera Lester Page A

Large-size letters, big ego—that was Clay.
    The memory of her heart breaking flooded her thoughts. The back of her eyes burned with tears, as if Clay’s good-bye were happening all over again in the present moment. A little voice inside her head whispered, You don’t have to read it now . She tossed the mail onto the seat and drove forward, wheels crunching on the gravel. After rolling to a stop, Abby got out and let Sugar race to gulp from her water bowl just inside the gate. She followed Sugar through the gate to the patio table facing the back of the property and the acre behind. Tossing the mail onto the patio table, she sank into a chair. Sugar barked and pawed at the door.
    â€œNo, sweetie. We’re not going inside just yet. Get down now. Down. Let me rest here for a few minutes.”
    Sugar was relentless with the barking and pawing, so Abby walked to the aluminum garbage can at the corner of the patio, removed the lid and a rawhide bone, and tossed the bone across the yard. With Sugar chasing after it, Abby tried once more to relax, sinking into the chair.
    The breeze stirred the hollow copper rods of a wind chime that had been harmonically tuned to play an ecclesiastical-sounding melody. Clasping her hands behind her head, she leaned back, closed her eyes, and drank in the sounds of the farmette’s healing presences. Contented chickens clucked as they scratched in the dirt. A blue jay screeched as it flitted from the firethorn bush to the olive tree. Squirrels chattered their kuk-kuk-kuk as they scampered along the roof. Sugar whined, apparently wanting Abby to get up and play. After such a harrowing day, here, at last, was bliss.
    Abby’s thoughts drifted, but soon something she had seen moments ago began to trouble her. Then a realization took hold. The vertical blinds at the sliding glass door were closed. She had left them pushed back when she and Sugar had departed for the feed store. But she remembered locking the door. Suddenly, alarm bells sounded. Eyes flew open. Panic ensued. To close those blinds, someone had to have gone inside. Maybe was still in there.
    Adrenaline pumping, she sucked in a deep breath and let it go. Abby rose slowly and crept to the fence, where she’d left a steel flat-headed tamper used to flatten the earth when patching the lawn. With the tamper raised in an assault position, she reached for the patio door handle, quietly pushed the door along the track, and stepped through the long blinds.
    In the middle of the kitchen stood a hot pink six-drawer tool cabinet on locked wheels. A drill in a matching shade of pink and its charger rested on top of the open toolbox atop the cabinet. Frowning, Abby placed the flat-headed tamper on the floor next to the double ovens, took a step forward, and studied the toolbox. “What in the world? Who would . . . ?”
    â€œLike it?” asked a familiar husky voice emerging from the bedroom hallway.
    Abby looked up at her intruder, feeling her body shake against her will. “Darn it all, Clay! You’re as crazy as ever. There’s a law against breaking and entering. I could have killed you!” She knew deep down she would have let him in, had she been there, but it angered her that he was in her house without her permission.
    She stared at him. Dressed in a white polo and jeans, he looked tan and fit, and taller somehow than his five feet, eleven inches, but he still exuded that rugged vitality and those good looks, which she’d always found irresistible. The smile had evaporated off his face, but as he strode into the kitchen, those dark eyes still beamed with excitement at seeing her.
    Sugar came bounding in through the open door. In an unusually vocal defense of Abby, she sounded a high-pitched alarm. Now Abby understood why the dog had made such a ruckus before. Sugar had known someone had come onto the property and had entered the house.
    â€œI see you got a new protector,” Clay said,