Blackberry Summer

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 ditched the good doctor.”

He gently tugged her coat away to help her into it. Her mouth tightened, at him or at the doctor, he didn’t know. “Holly was tired, so they made an early night of it,” she answered.

She had always been enamored with Jeff Bradford. He hated the guy for that, alone, especially because from the moment Jeff had noticed her, too, Claire had seemed completely smitten.

Even early on, she had talked about living in one of the town’s historic old brick houses, settling down and raising a family here in Hope’s Crossing.

Things hadn’t quite worked out as she planned and Riley knew a moment’s sadness for unrealized dreams. If anyone deserved the life she wanted, Claire Tatum Bradford would have topped his personal list. She’d been through hell as a kid and ought to be first in line for a happy ending.

Was she completely devastated that Bradford had moved on? Riley didn’t want to think so. He had been fourteen when his own mother disintegrated for a while after his old man walked out. He could still remember the nights he would wake up to her sobbing in the living room as they all tried to make sense of James McKnight’s sudden abandonment of his wife and six children.

Another problem he should have anticipated about moving home. Things he hadn’t thought about in years—and didn’t want to waste another moment of his life dwelling on—had a way of pushing themselves to the front of his brain. He quickly turned his attention to Claire’s son.

“Great show.” He shook Owen’s hand with solemn gravity. “Your speech was my favorite of the whole pageant.”

The boy flashed a grin at him. “Thanks. I’m super glad it’s over.”

“Me, too.” A kid with flaming red hair and freckles who had played a highly unlikely FDR in the pageant grinned at him and Riley couldn’t resist smiling back.

“This is Jordie. We’re driving him home,” Owen announced. “His mom and dad couldn’t come see the play ’cause they’re both pukin’ sick.”

His sister rolled her eyes. “Do you have to be so disgusting all the time?”

He shoved his finger in his mouth and made a retching sound until his mother gave him a stern look.

“Carrie and Don have the flu, poor things. I offered to drive Jordan to and from the pageant for them.”

That was just like her, always taking care of everybody else. Apparently that hadn’t changed. “Well, be careful driving out there. Looks like the snow’s finally started. I forgot how lovely spring can be in the Rockies.”

“I have four-wheel drive,” she said.

“Four-wheel drive won’t do diddly-squat if you hit a patch of black ice,” he said, but before she could answer, his cell phone buzzed with the urgent ringtone from Dispatch.

“Hang on, Claire. Sorry, I’ve got to take this.”

She shrugged and finished shepherding the boys into their jackets and gloves while he stepped away to answer.

“Yeah, Chief.” Tammy, the night dispatcher spoke rapidly, her words a jumble. “I just got a call from Harry Lange out on Silver Strike Road reporting a possible burglary in progress at one of the vacation homes near his place. He says the owners were just in town from California last weekend and told him they wouldn’t be back until June but he’s seeing lights inside that shouldn’t be there. He thinks it’s kids. And get this, Harry also reported they might be driving a dark-colored extended-cab pickup truck, just like our suspect vehicle from the robberies.”

“Did he get a plate?”

“No. He said he couldn’t see it from his angle in the dark and didn’t want to move in too close. What should I do? Jess is in the middle of a domestic disturbance over at the Claimjumper Condos and Marty is taking care of a fender bender out on Highland Road. Do you want me to divert one of them or call the sheriff’s department for backup?”

“I can be there faster than anybody else. Have the sheriff send a couple deputies for backup just in case.”

“Right, Chief.”

He was already heading out the door, his adrenaline pumping at a possible break in the case, when he remembered Claire and the kids.

“Sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve got an emergency.”

He wasn’t sure whose eyes were wider, hers or the kids.

“Are you going to catch whoever stole my mom’s computer?” Owen asked.

“I intend to,” he vowed.

He gave one last apologetic smile to Claire, then raced out the door. Less than a minute later, he pulled out of the elementary school parking lot as fast as he dared and turned toward the canyon road that hugged the mountainside east of Silver Strike Reservoir.

As he had told Claire, the snow that had been threatening all day had begun to fall, plump fluffy flakes that might look like something off a postcard but played hell with road conditions. Welcome to April in the Rockies.

At least there was little traffic in either direction up the canyon. He was still about two miles from Harry Lange’s place when his dispatcher’s voice crackled through his radio. “Chief, be advised, suspects are believed to have left the premises of the vacation cabin and are now on Silver Strike Road, heading back toward town.”

Which meant they would be coming right at him. He might have missed catching them in the act, but he could still possibly nail them with stolen items from the vacation cabin and then link them to the Main Street break-ins.

“Ten-four, Tammy.”