Armed and Devastating

For John Kincaid’s sake, she’d bury her misguided attraction and slug her way through her social awkwardness and make a success of herself at the Fourth Precinct.

For John.

Brooke gripped the edge of the sink and held on as a wave of sadness washed over her. Oh, how she missed John and the familiarity of working in his warm, strong presence day in and day out. The grief wasn’t with her all the time now, but when she thought about the good friend she had lost—the mentor who had taken her under his wing and shown her what a father was like—the loss caused by his senseless murder made her heartsick all over again.

Yet, almost as quickly as the sadness had hit her, Brooke’s frustration with the stalled investigation spurred her out of her funk. She finished pinning up her hair and tucking in her blouse. As the closest thing to an inside man familiar with the comings and goings of John’s office, she’d promised the Kincaid family to do whatever she could to help find his killer. Homicide’s investigation might have stalled; her research with Atticus might have stalled. But no way was she giving up. Standing in front of the mirror and bemoaning her deficiencies instead of expecting success did John Kincaid’s memory a disservice.

Her former boss had seen right through her shy exterior and demanded important things from her. He’d pushed her to use every brain cell, to take chances, to be confident in all she could do. He’d recommended that assertiveness class to her in the first place, said he wanted her to see the same talented woman he saw every day, and to believe in herself. He’d set his expectations for Brooke high, and she’d risen to his challenge.

Now she’d have to do the same for herself. Becoming that self-confident, successful woman John Kincaid believed in would be the best testimonial to the man she could offer.

Any crush she might have on one of his sons—any guilt she might feel at not being able to help him—was irrelevant. She owed this to John.

So, Brooke adjusted the pretty new glasses on her unremarkable face, smoothed her palms down the front of her light-gray gabardine skirt, and silently declared herself ready for the new day ahead. She grabbed her jacket from its garment bag and headed out of the bathroom.

BROOKE HADN’T TAKEN three steps before her good intentions hit their first roadblock.

“Louise! Get down from there.” Brooke spotted the artificially strawberry-blond hair nearly two stories above her. She dropped her jacket and ran across the planks of the temporary floor to grab the base of a ladder that soared up to the peak of the nineteenth-century limestone church she and her aunts now called home. “Aunt Lou? We talked about this.”

“I’m doing a little patch work on the ceiling.”

“On a thirty-foot ladder?”

“How else am I supposed to reach it?” Smart ass. Louise Hansford—a ringer for the younger brother who’d been Brooke’s father if the old pictures in her scrapbooks were accurate—pulled a caulking gun from the hammer loop of her denim overalls and squeezed something into a vent where workers were installing a central cooling and heating system. “After all that rain this spring and the leaks we had, I’m not taking any chances on more water damage. We’ve put too much time and money into the bedrooms and bath downstairs to let problems in the unfinished areas ruin the work we’ve already done.”

“We’re paying Mr. McCarthy and his crew good money to do that type of work for us. Now come down.” Brooke shifted to the other side of the ladder, hissing through clenched teeth as Louise climbed up to a higher rung to inspect another vent. When nothing fell and no one crashed, Brooke allowed herself a normal breath. “It hasn’t rained for two weeks. And unless you count the humidity, there’s no moisture in the forecast, either.”

“My old bones say different.”

“Don’t…” Old bones, my foot. Brooke got a bug’s-eye view of her aunt stepping from the ladder onto the steel scaffolding that gave construction workers access to the aged oak panels lining the arched ceiling. “There’s not a thing wrong with your old bones.” Louise’s occasional bouts with vertigo, however, were another story. “You’re sixty-five years old.”

“And I’m in better shape than women half my age. Limber, too.” She reached through the steel framing and pushed aside the plastic tarp that captured the bulk of the dust and debris from the workmen’s sanding and drilling projects.

Oh, no. “Come down and have breakfast,” Brooke begged.

But Louise wasn’t listening. “Where do you think you get those long limbs of yours from? I’m fine.”

Brooke puffed out an irritated sigh—and not just because she was fighting a losing battle with her aunt. Brooke’s arms and legs were long and gangly and considerably lacking Louise’s spider-like grace. Maybe by the time she turned sixty-five, she might finally manage to outgrow that uncoordinated adolescent phase that was still just as embarrassing now as it had been nine years ago when she’d turned twenty and had no longer qualified as a teenager.

Or maybe she was destined to live out her days dealing with all of the Hansford family’s recessive genes. Timidity. Klutziness. Eyes that were too big and boobs that were too small.

Tamping down the inevitable frustration, Brooke moved over to check the anchors on the scaffolding that framed the skeletal stairs and second-floor landing still under construction, fearing there was little more she could do to protect her daredevil of an aunt. “This is why we hired a contractor. If you wait half an hour, Mr. McCarthy and his men will be here to do that job for you.”

“I like to keep an eye on their work,” Louise insisted. “Some men see three women living together—two of them retired—as an easy mark to take advantage of. That won’t happen on my watch. No, sir.”

“No one is taking advantage of us.” Brooke had studied the numbers meticulously and done her research into the costs of blending modernization with restoration—and who could best do the work for them. Louise was the only thing worrying her right now. Brooke cringed as her aunt tested her weight on one of the two-by-fours that framed the upstairs landing before stepping on it. “Lou?”

But the red-blond hair and overalls had already disappeared through the tarp. Only the creaking of the wooden bracings above her head told her what path Louise was taking to the opposite side of the church. Brooke followed the sounds of her aunt, wondering if she’d be able to catch her should she tumble through one of the open spaces above her.

“I know as much about building and restoring things as any man.” Louise was a disembodied voice from the rafters overhead. “I’ve got a degree in architectural history, don’t I? Truman McCarthy doesn’t have one of those.”

So that’s what had spurred this show of independence. It wasn’t really concern that the work wasn’t being done properly, but a regret that once upon a time, Louise Hansford would have been doing the work herself.

Brooke’s heart went out to the woman who’d curtailed her globetrotting adventures the day she’d received a telegram telling her of the car crash in Sarajevo that had orphaned Brooke, and had come home to help her older sister, Peggy, take care of their parentless niece. Once a woman ahead of her time, Louise’s life had become considerably more mundane, serving first as surrogate parent and in more recent years as best friend. In time, as her aunts aged, their roles would reverse, and Brooke would gladly step up to take care of the two women who were the only family she’d ever known. That was one of the reasons she was creating this spacious home, so that her aunts could live independently on the main floor, while Brooke eventually moved upstairs to a private apartment.

But the future would have to wait until she could get Louise down to a safer altitude. Hurrying back to the base of the ladder, Brooke hiked her skirt up above her knees. “I know you’re an expert.” She toed off her pumps and climbed the first rung. “But McCarthy and Sons is a reputable company. They don’t do shoddy work.”

“Now don’t you go climbin’ up there after her,” Peggy Hansford chided as she stepped out into the main room and closed the bedroom door behind her. The elder Hansford aunt picked up Brooke’s jacket from the floor and brushed it off. She motioned Brooke down as she strode past the ladder into the nearly finished kitchen area. “No sense both of you breakin’ your fool necks.”

“I can hear you up here, Peggy,” Louise hollered.

“Didn’t say anything was wrong with your ears. Just your common sense.” Peggy draped the jacket over the back of one of the stools they were using for temporary kitchen furniture and turned to pull three mugs out of the dishwasher. “Now you come on down from there. You’re worrying Brooke, and we don’t want anything to upset her this morning.”

Brooke returned to the floor and smoothed her skirt back into place, slipping into her shoes while she waited for Louise to join them. Listening to the woman-sized cat scrambling overhead, she nibbled anxiously on her bottom lip.

But Louise didn’t have any speeds except go and go faster, and she quickly popped through the tarp and headed for the ladder. “That’s right. You start your new job downtown today.” Brooke had barely shrugged into her jacket when Louise pulled up a stool beside her at the black granite counter. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

“Louise Hansford.” Peggy pointed a reprimanding finger from the opposite side of the island counter.

“Well, she’s not even thirty years old yet, and she dresses more conservatively than either one of us.”

“She’s dressed professionally, Lou.” Peggy’s soft green eyes expressed a clear opinion over the rims of her glasses. “Besides, I don’t think a woman wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and overalls has the right to criticize anyone’s wardrobe.”

“At least my clothes have personality.” Louise plucked at the starched white collar of Brooke’s short-sleeved blouse. “Maybe just a scarf to soften things up? Or some funky jewelry to add a little pizzazz?”

“I’m wearing the gold chain you gave me for my twenty-first birthday.” Brooke pulled the necklace from her cleavage and held up the nickel-sized charm that had been left to her by her father. “You said Dad asked the nurses to pin this to my diaper in the hospital before he died. I thought it’d be good luck to wear a family heirloom today.”

“It is good luck. And very pretty, dear.” Peggy pushed the French vanilla creamer across the counter to flavor their coffee. “I wish you could have known Leo. I can’t tell you how many times he wrote me about you—even before you were born. Your daddy thought you were the most beautiful baby in the world. As beautiful as your mother, God rest her soul.”

Aunt Peggy was being too kind. According to the one family photo that had survived the automobile crash which had killed her mother outright and put her father in the hospital for the last few days of his life, Irina Zorinsky Hansford had been a Slavic beauty with curling mahogany tresses and bold, dark eyes. Brooke, only six months old at the time, had survived the fiery accident, miraculously unscathed. She would have ended up in a state-run orphanage if these two strong women hadn’t come into her life.

She’d heard the story dozens of times growing up. Her father had been feverish with burns and grief, too weak to even make arrangements for his wife’s hasty funeral, much less attend. But he’d been clear about one thing. Don’t let Brooke go with her mother, Leo Hansford had pleaded from his hospital bed. Don’t let my baby girl die.

Brooke and her aunts had never even seen Irina’s grave. It had been hard enough proving guardianship and getting out of the country where her father had worked at the American embassy. As soon as they were able, Peggy and Louise had whisked her back to the United States. They’d promised their brother they’d take her home to Kansas City where they’d grown up. Leo Hansford had wanted Brooke to live. Love. Be loved.

She was loved.

But she was a pale shadow of the woman her mother had been.

“Well, of course, we know what a beautiful girl she is.” Louise hugged Brooke around the shoulders, breaking the pensive mood. “But how is anyone else going to notice when she dresses like a nun?” Louise snapped her fingers, already turning for the bedroom she shared with Peggy as an idea hit her. “I’ll be right back. I have a brooch in my suitcase that will add a shot of color and liven things up a bit.”

Peggy tied an apron around her plump middle, shaking her head. “You know, sometimes I think we’re raising her more than she and I ever had to raise you. Thank God you have your father’s steady nature and good sense. And tact!” she shouted after her sister.

Brooke tucked the medallion with the Cyrillic letter etched in gold back inside her blouse. As much as steady nature and good sense felt like faint praise, she had to grin at Peggy’s on-the-money assessment of their family dynamic.

“You know, we’ll have to nail her shoes to the floor when we start painting the bedrooms. The fumes will go straight to her head and make her dizzy. Dizzier,” Brooke amended, eliciting a smile and reassuring Peggy that Louise’s remarks had no lasting effect on her ego. Brooke sipped her coffee and reached for one of the English muffins Peggy was toasting for breakfast. “I told her that I was going to hire someone specifically to do odd jobs like that around here. At lunch today I’m interviewing a man Mr. McCarthy recommended.” She thumbed over her shoulder toward the ceiling. “When we agreed to cut a few costs by completing the finish and landscaping work ourselves, I didn’t mean having either one of you hanging from the scaffolding or doing some other dangerous thing.”

“I’m already ahead of you, dear.” Peggy winked and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve let the weeds grow in my garden and we’ll have to turn up the soil before anyone can lay new sod, so I’ve got plenty lined up for her to do outside while you’re painting.”