“Uh-oh, here we go.” An older, handsome woman with auburn hair and sparkling blue eyes laughed as she came over to join her husband. “You can take the man out of the uniform, but not the uniform out of the man,” she told Jackson. “No shoptalk, remember, Andrew? That’s your rule.” Turning toward Jackson and her niece, the woman smiled at them as she twined her arms through one of Andrew’s. “I’m Rose. Mrs. Former Chief of Police.”
“No shoptalk,” Andrew protested. “I was just going to tell them not to allow the Auroras to throw their weight around. They’ll try to intimidate you if you let them,” Andrew warned, speaking from experience. “You two follow the case to wherever it takes you.”
“Speaking of taking people places,” Rose said to Brianna, “why don’t you take the detective into the backyard? He looks as if he’d welcome a drink right about now.” With that, the vivacious woman drew her husband back to the kitchen to attend to his first love—cooking.
“A drink,” Jackson repeated. “Smart lady.”
Brianna smiled. “She’s seen enough first timers here to be able to read the signs.” Turning, she directed Jackson toward the rear of the house and the patio just beyond. “Let’s get you something to drink and then maybe you’ll be more inclined to mingle.”
Jackson raised a skeptical eyebrow. “How big a drink are we talking about?”
Brianna laughed. “I’ll leave that entirely up to you.”
Jackson feigned surprise. “You’re taking the training wheels off already?”
For a second, he caught himself being drawn in by the gleam in Brianna’s eyes. It almost seemed as if they were smiling at him as she said, “This is going to go well.”
Jackson sincerely had his doubts, but he did like the way confidence echoed in her every move.
“Follow me,” she said.
He did as he was told.
The house had seemed crowded to him from the moment they’d arrived. Jackson had assumed, when his partner had said that she was looking to acclimate him, that she meant there wouldn’t be so many people milling around in the beginning.
Obviously he’d been wrong. It felt as if he’d been thrown in the deep end of the pool right from the start. There was no place to retreat to, no alcove to hide in. Just people everywhere he turned.
Andrew Cavanaugh lived in one of the older developments in Aurora. Consequently, his backyard was three to four times the size of the ones in newer developments. Certainly a lot bigger than the yard surrounding the homes planned for the Old Aurora Hotel site.
But even with such a huge piece of property, the area was dwarfed by the presence of all the people attending the chief’s get-together. Everywhere he looked, Jackson thought, there were people talking, eating and, above all, laughing.
* * *
Despite his efforts to the contrary, Jackson found himself being drawn into one conversation after another, some overlapping. Some with people he knew by name or by sight. Other conversations were with people who were complete strangers to him at the outset. But not so once the conversations were over.
All in all, Jackson was almost in awe that there were this many people getting along with one another. There were no raised voices, no heated arguments breaking out. No displays of anger at all. In short, none of the things that he had grown up witnessing in his own family.
He half expected someone to come out in the middle of the festivities and yell, “Cut! That’s a wrap.” But this wasn’t some movie set. Hard as it was for Jackson to believe, all this was genuine.
The Cavanaughs and their friends seemed to have a lock on knowing how to get along.
“A bit overwhelming, isn’t it?” a deep voice behind Jackson said with an amused laugh. When he turned around, Jackson found the sympathetic smile of a man he vaguely recognized from the precinct.
“First time I came to one of these gatherings—not willingly, mind you,” Davis Gilroy added with feeling and a lopsided grin, “all I wanted to do was run. Fast. Come to think of it, I probably had the same look in my eyes that you do right now. But it gets easier.”
Shifting a drink into his left hand, the detective extended his right to Jackson. “Davis Gilroy,” he said. Nodding in the general direction of the patio, he continued, “I’m Moira’s husband.”
Shaking Davis’s hand, Jackson introduced himself as well.
“I know,” Davis said, dropping his hand to his side. “You’re the detective working on the Old Aurora Hotel murders case.”
“One of them,” Jackson corrected.
Davis smiled. He was familiar with cautious responses. A couple of years back, this could have been him.
“Right. I know the others on it,” Davis responded. “Well, nice meeting you. I’d better find Moira before it gets any more crowded. She’s around here somewhere. Oh, by the way, just a word to the wise from a former outsider. These people are the best thing that ever happened to me. And believe me, I really resisted being taken into the fold.” He clapped a hand on Jackson’s shoulder. “I would have been a lot happier a great deal sooner if I hadn’t.”
And then Jackson saw the other man nodding and smiling at someone just to his right. Before he could turn to see who it was, Davis told the person, “He doesn’t look nearly as overwhelmed as I felt the first time Moira brought me to one of these.”
When he heard the laugh in response, Jackson knew who Davis was talking to.
“He’s got a good poker face,” Brianna said. As Davis left, she turned toward Jackson. “Prepare to have your taste buds feel like they’ve died and gone to heaven.”
He’d been getting more than a whiff of a tantalizing aroma for the last few minutes, reminding him that, in his
