But that worry seemed far away now as he sat comfortably with his family. The audience applauded energetically when Owen Bradford finished a moving speech about brother fighting brother and Riley slanted his gaze from the stage to the spot across the gymnasium where he’d seen Claire sitting next to her idiot of an ex-husband and the flashy eye candy who’d been in Claire’s store earlier. Her daughter sat next to the new wife, not next to Claire, he noted. Awkward.
How could Claire sit there with them and still wear that look of calm indifference in her eyes? Was it a mask or did she really not care that Jeff had moved on, traded her in for a newer, younger model?
None of his business. She could have a half-dozen ex-husbands all arrayed around her like those shiny beads at her store and it shouldn’t be any of Riley’s concern.
He found it more than a little unsettling that Claire Tatum Bradford still fascinated him like she did when he was just a stupid kid mooning over his older sister’s smart, pretty best friend. What would Claire think if she knew he used to fantasize about her?
He shifted his attention back to the stage, where his nephew as narrator was introducing Betsy Ross. What any of this had to do with celebrating spring, he had no idea. He imagined it grew tough after thirty years to come up with something original for the third-grade pageant.
The crowd ate it up, jumping to its collective feet as soon as the last words had been spoken and clapping with broad enthusiasm for the young performers, who beamed as the curtain opened for them to bow once more.
“Thanks for making time to come, Riley.” Angie smiled at him as the applause finally died away and people began to gather their coats and belongings. “I know it means the world to Jace that you showed up.”
“I’ve missed a few of these over the years. It’s good to be back.”
She touched his arm in that Angie way of hers, her eyes sympathetic. His sister had been the little mother to the rest of them. He loved all his sisters and was probably closest to Alex, the next oldest sibling to him, but he would always have a tender place in his heart for Angie. During the dark days after his dad walked out, she had been the one he turned to for comfort when his mom had been too distraught herself to offer any.
“You’re staying for refreshments, aren’t you? Ang made her famous snickerdoodles,” her husband, Jim, said.
Angie and Jim were two of the most sane people he’d ever had the fortune to know. After twenty years of marriage, they still held hands and plainly adored each other.
“And you didn’t bring along a few dozen just for your favorite officer of the law?” he teased his sister.
She made a face. “Didn’t think about it. Sorry. I’m still not used to having you home for me to spoil again with cookies. I always make a triple batch, though, so I can probably find you a few crumbs lying around. I’ll bring them by tomorrow.”
“I was kidding, Ang. You don’t have to feed me.”
“I can if I want. And I want. I’m just glad you’re home to give me a chance.”
He was still reserving judgment on whether he shared her sentiment. Coming back to Colorado had been a tough decision, one he hadn’t yet convinced himself had been right. But being an undercover cop had become intolerable. He had been on the verge of handing in his badge and hanging up his service revolver for good—if not for Chief Coleman’s phone call, Riley might be working construction somewhere in Alaska, because that’s about all he felt qualified to do besides police work.
Alaska was still an option. He wasn’t ruling anything out yet. When he took the job, he’d insisted on a three-month probation to see how he could adapt to the quieter pace in Hope’s Crossing. At the end of that time, if he didn’t feel the life of a small-town cop was any more comfortable to his psyche than the urban warfare of inner-city Oakland, he might be spending next winter on the tundra.
“Hey, McKnight! Town must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel to drag your sorry ass back.”
He turned at the familiar voice and grinned as he recognized an old friend. Monte Richardson had once been the star quarterback of the Hope’s Crossing High football team. Now he was balding with a bit of a paunch, a thick brushy dark mustache and the well-fed look of a contented husband and father, at least judging by the sleeping baby in his arms.
“Hey, Monte.” Somehow they managed to shake hands around the sleeping baby. “I figured next time I ran into you, it would be when I hauled you in for a drunk and disorderly.”
Monte laughed. “Not me, man. I’ve reformed. Only drinking I do anymore is maybe a beer or two while I’m watching Monday Night Football in my man cave. You’re welcome anytime.”
He shook his head. “How the mighty have fallen. Whatever happened to party till you drop?”
“Life, man. Kids, family. It’s a hell of a ride. You ought to climb on.”
That world wasn’t for him. He had figured that out a long time ago. Family was chaos and uncertainty, craziness and pain. In his experience, life handed out enough of that without volunteering for more.
He would have stayed to talk longer but the two of them were interrupted by Mayor Beaumont, who greeted Monte with a polite if dismissive smile and then proceeded to corner Riley for the next ten minutes about the progress of the investigation into what for him condensed to only the most pressing issue, the desecration of his daughter’s wedding gown.
“You’ve got to find the buggers and fast,” the mayor finally said, his tone implacable. “Gennie and my wife are out for blood. We all better hope they’re not the first ones who find whoever did this or you just might have a murder investigation on your hands.”
He took the words to heart. Finally the mayor was distracted by one of the city council members approaching and Riley took blatant advantage of the chance to escape with a wave for the men.
His progress through the crowd was slow and laborious. He supposed that was another one of those curse-and-blessing things about returning to his hometown. Everybody wanted to talk to him, to relive old times, to catch up on the years and distance between them. Add to that the unaccustomed excitement of the day with four—count ’em four—robberies in town, and everyone gathered at the elementary school for the pageant seemed to want to put in his or her two cents.
Wearing the title of chief on his badge in a small town wasn’t much different than being an undercover cop whose entire goal had been blending in. The only difference was instead of hanging with drug dealers and pimps, here he was required to be polite, to make conversation, to play the public relations game, something that didn’t sit completely comfortably inside his skin.
He did have one uneasy moment when he encountered J. D. Nyman, one of his officers who had also applied for the position of police chief. The man had made no secret that he thought Riley wasn’t qualified for the job, which made for some awkward staff meetings.
“Officer Nyman,” he said. “Any word from the crime lab on those fingerprints?”
“No,” the other man said with blunt rudeness and turned his back to talk to someone else.
Riley almost called him on it, but then decided this wasn’t the venue, so he headed out of the gymnasium to the hallway, where he almost literally bumped into Claire Bradford at the coatrack, pulling a charcoal wool coat from a hanger.
She looked tired, he thought. The big blue eyes he used to dream about were smudged with shadows and tiny lines of exhaustion radiated from her mouth. She smiled. “Hello, Chief McKnight.”
Her warmth was refreshing, especially after Nyman’s rudeness. “Looks like you finally