The tension eased from the clench of his jaw, due as much to Brooke’s ingenuous embarrassment as to the easy opportunity she presented. Atticus summoned the practiced smile that had carried him throughout the day. “If you’ll excuse me. I see a friend I need to catch up with. Again, thanks for coming.”
It felt good to leave with the last word for a change. Lengthening his stride, Atticus angled down the hill and quickly caught up with Brooke. He adjusted his umbrella over her head and fell into step beside her. “Need a lift to the house? Mom said you were helping with the pot luck.”
All he could see was the part in her curly, blond-brown hair as she kept her eyes glued to the path in front of her. “Um, no thanks. I have my car.”
He followed the point of her finger to the blue VW Beetle about a quarter mile down the road. “Then let me walk you there so you don’t get soaked to the skin.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Dad would have my hide if I let a lady walk that far in the rain without benefit of a hat or umbrella.” To show Brooke that he wasn’t taking no for an answer, Atticus tugged on her wrist, pulling her hand from her pocket and linking her arm through his.
Hayley had grabbed as if she still had the right. Brooke paused, looked at her mud-dappled hand where it hovered over his sleeve, and finally, with a sniffle that probably had as much to do with the mention of John Kincaid as with the chilly dampness, she lightly curled her fingers into the material and nodded. “Okay.”
Atticus was a cop as much as he was a hurting man. He’d just said his amens and put his slain father in the ground. Though he knew protocol wouldn’t allow him to work the murder investigation, something needed to be done. Besides, work was a hell of a lot easier to focus on than any grief or resentment he might feel. “What was Dad working on before he left the office last week?”
Turning the conversation to work, Brooke seemed to relax. Her hand rested more naturally on his arm and she began to talk. “Paperwork mostly. He was clearing his desk, moving from task force captain to deputy commissioner. You know—writing final reports, passing open cases on to other precincts, briefing the watch commanders. He was working on his memoirs, too. Journaling—making a record of his career highlights, I guess. He wouldn’t let me transcribe any of that—said it was personal, not police business.”
“Do you have some free time in the next few days that we could go over that stuff?”
“Sure, I’ve got the time. But homicide collected most of his files. You might have better luck talking to Detective Grove. He’s heading up the investigation. I’m not sure what I’d actually be able to access for you.”
Grove. Brooke had already provided more information on the case than he’d had a minute ago. Atticus didn’t know Kevin Grove well, other than that he’d come over from the cold case division a couple of years back and had a reputation as an experienced investigator.
Still, Atticus wasn’t ready to leave justice up to a relative stranger. “Anything might help. Are you willing to try?”
“For your dad, sure. I can’t understand why anyone would want to hurt him.”
Atticus killed the conversation with his bleak pronouncement. “He was a cop for thirty years, Brooke. The man was bound to make some enemies.”
Her grip stiffened on his sleeve and they reached the asphalt before she spoke again. “I miss your dad. The office seems so empty without his laugh or his grousing at the computer when it doesn’t do what he wants it to. John always said he just wanted to turn on the computer and have it work. He didn’t want to learn all the tricks and shortcuts, said that’s what I was for.”
Atticus ducked his head, catching a glimpse of a wistful smile before her eyes met his and widened behind her rain-spotted glasses and she glanced away. He straightened, nodded to a passing driver, and guided her across the road. “Dad always said you were his right hand at work. If he couldn’t find a file, you knew where it was. If a case had him all worked up, you let him blow off steam.”
“Your dad never yelled at me.” Brooke’s chin darted up as she defended her former boss.
Smiling at her loyalty, Atticus stopped. “What I meant was, you were always a calming influence for him.”
“I am pretty quiet.” Her chin quivered as she tried to hold his gaze, but then it dropped to the middle of his chest.
Well, hell. That wasn’t much of a condolence to say to a woman who was more like a kid sister than a coworker. He tucked a finger beneath her chin and nudged it back up, vowing to do better. “After raising four boys who ran roughshod around the house, I think Mom and Dad were both glad you came into their lives.” He swiped his thumb over the thick round lenses of her glasses, wiping away the moisture beading there. He wanted her to see the sincerity in his expression. “You were like a daughter to him.”
Her eyes were big and slightly almond-shaped. A deeper green than he remembered. They blinked rapidly to erase the sheen of tears gathering there.
Brooke squiggled her chin away from the contact and tugged ever so slightly on his arm to get them walking again. “I’d have done anything for John. He was always good to me.”
“He was a good man.”
“He was.”
They walked the rest of the way without saying a word. Atticus didn’t know if he was feeling that same calming influence his dad had always talked about, or if it was just the distance he was putting between himself and Hayley that made the fist squeezing his heart relax its grip. There was a straightforward simplicity to Brooke that was soothing on a day like this.
“Here we are,” she announced unnecessarily as they reached the dark-blue compact. She released his arm to dig through her bag for her keys. “You can go now if you want to catch up with your family. Thanks.”
“I’ll wait until you’re inside.” Atticus turned in the direction she’d nodded and spotted Sawyer, having a private word with Holden and their mother. With a yes-sir nod to Sawyer, Holden led Susan Kincaid to the black limo she’d ridden in to the service and tucked her inside. Brooke was still rummaging when Atticus turned back to her. He shifted to shield her from the rain with his body and umbrella as the search went into extra innings. “Are you one of those women who carries her life around inside her purse?”
Her chin snapped up and Atticus wondered if it was her natural shyness or just him forcing his company on her that made her so skittish this afternoon. “I like to be prepared.”
“For what? The siege of Kansas City?”
Her cheeks flushed and she quickly glanced back down to her purse. She propped one knee up like a stork and rested her bag on her thigh to get to the very bottom. “With my inheritance from my parents, my aunts and I bought a small stone church that we had gutted last fall. Now we’re remodeling the inside, shoring up the structure and modernizing the place, putting in central air—we’ve hired a contractor, of course. But it’s only partially finished inside—a bedroom for them, one for me, a bath and part of the kitchen.”
When her balance started to waver, Atticus wrapped his hand around her upper arm to steady her. “Easy.”
Her foot plopped to the ground and he released her as she kept on talking—using more words than he’d ever heard her string together at any one time. “We barely have closets and we’re living out of suitcases because there’s still so much dust from the ceiling and drywall work in the main room and the sun porch and deck they’re adding on, that I never know when things will be