“Well, no. But men seem to like you anyway. Not that you pay much attention. I still can’t believe you’re thirty-three years old and you’ve never been in love.”
“Freak of nature and waste of time.”
“Love is never a waste of time,” Berni asserted. “I’ve been wanting to ask… Are you a lesbian?”
“I wish.”
“I understand. Women can be so much more interesting than men.”
Piper nodded in agreement. She trusted her girlfriends a lot more than she’d ever trusted a boyfriend in the days when she’d still been interested in having a boyfriend. But this conversation wasn’t helping Berni get past her delusion. “Exactly when did you see the cheesehead guy?”
“Howard! And it was September fourth. Exactly sixteen days ago. It was game day for the Packers. I’d come out of the bookstore, and there he was. Sitting on a bench in the plaza watching the pigeons.”
“And wearing a foam cheesehead…”
Berni’s smugness vanished. “That’s what I can’t understand. Why would a Bears fan like Howard wear a cheesehead? I could have understood if he was wearing a Stars hat. He liked the Stars almost as much as the Bears.”
Considering the fact that Berni believed her husband had come back from the dead, his choice of headgear didn’t seem as though it should be the primary question. “Did he see you?”
“He sure did. I called out his name. ‘Howard!’ He turned, and all the blood drained right from his face.”
Piper clicked her pen. “You were close enough to see that?”
“Maybe it only seemed that way. But one thing I do know… He recognized me, because he got up right away and ran off. I tried to follow him, but with my hip, I couldn’t catch up.” Her face crumpled. “Why would he do that? Why would he run away from me like that?”
Piper dodged that question and posed another instead, one she would ask if this were a legitimate case. “Were you and Howard having any marital troubles while you were on the cruise?”
“We bickered. What couple doesn’t? That man refused to take care of himself, and you should have seen him on the ship, loading up on bacon and bakery. He knew exactly how I felt about that. But we loved each other. That’s why losing him has been so terrible.”
Even though Piper wasn’t a romantic herself, she didn’t doubt the love Berni and Howard had. She also didn’t envy it. Men were a lot of work, and when Piper’s past relationships had burned out, she hadn’t been all that bummed. Then her father had gotten sick, and she’d lost interest in everything but work. She had more than enough complications in her life without adding a man to it.
She asked Berni a few more questions and promised she’d investigate. Berni’s gratitude made her feel like a fraud, and to ease her conscience, she took a detour past Lincoln Square on her way home.
The brick plaza held its customary assortment of kids, couples, young mothers pushing Maclaren strollers, and a few oldsters, none of them wearing a foam cheesehead and none of them bearing the slightest resemblance to Howard Berkovitz. She felt ridiculous even looking, but she wanted to face Berni with a clear conscience. As for Berni’s one hundred dollars… She’d take her out for a great dinner.
The next day, a friend of a friend of Jen’s called. She thought her boyfriend might be cheating. Piper was glad to have a new client, but unfortunately, the boyfriend was stupid, and that same night Piper snapped a photo of him going into a motel with his other girlfriend. Case solved in less than twenty-four hours. Heartbroken client. Minimal money.
As she was locking up her office on Wednesday evening, six days after Graham had busted her, his legal eagles left another message for her to ignore. Who said denial was a bad thing?
She’d parked her car near the modest green-and-black sign for Dove Investigations that hung over her office door. A Dodge Challenger pulled into the space next to her. The door opened and a man got out. A very good-looking man wearing jeans and a T-shirt over a torso of rippling muscles. She didn’t recognize him until he pulled off his sunglasses. Mirrored, naturally. “Hi, Piper.”
It was Hottie. She eyed him warily. “Officer.”
“Eric.”
“Okay.”
He rested his hips against the fender and crossed his arms over his too-sculpted chest. “Want to get some coffee or something?”
“Why?”
“Why not? I like you. You’re interesting.”
At least he didn’t say she was cute. She hated that. “Nice to hear,” she told him, “but I’m not too crazy about you.”
“Hey. I was just doing my job.”
“Sucking up to Cooper Graham?”
He grinned. “Yeah, that was pretty cool. Come on. Twenty minutes.”
She thought about it. Unlike her father, she didn’t have any close contacts in the police department, and if by some miracle she could stay in business, she’d need a few. She nodded abruptly. “Okay. Let’s go. I’ll follow in my car.”
As it turned out, their coffee date lasted nearly an hour. She wasn’t completely surprised by his interest. Good-looking guys had started coming on to her when she’d been a freshman in college. At first, she’d been confused by their attention, but she’d eventually figured out her lack of interest was what attracted them. One of her short-term boyfriends had told her that hanging with her was like hanging with the guys.
“You like sports, and you don’t care if a dude brings you flowers and shit. Plus, you’re a babe.”
She wasn’t a babe, and she hadn’t come close to falling in love with any of them, maybe because every relationship she’d been in had eventually made her feel… almost empty, as if a hole she didn’t understand had opened inside her. Right now, her aversion to relationships was a benefit. One less complication in a life that was complicated enough.
Hottie was a decent guy. His stories about life on the force were interesting, and his attention wandered only once, when a super-hot brunette in a tight sweater walked past their table, but since even Piper had noticed her, she couldn’t fault him. He asked her out to dinner for the following weekend. Amber had given her a ticket to the Lyric for that night, and she told him she already had plans.
Being turned down for a night at the opera seemed to surprise him. “You’re an unusual person,” he said.
“And you’re a nice guy, but it’s really not a good time for me to date.”
“All right. We won’t date. We’ll just hang out sometimes, okay?”
He had good stories, and she really did need a contact in the police department. “Okay. Pals. No dating.” She paused. “And I’m not hooking up with you.”
She could see he didn’t believe her.
By the next night, Piper was doing the ultra-depressing job of trying to figure out what to pack and what to get rid of. Subleasing her apartment was no longer up for debate, and Amber’s professor friend was moving in tomorrow. His rent would cover her mortgage and condo dues, temporarily postponing her need to sell. She kept telling herself she wouldn’t have to live in her cousin Diane’s tiny basement apartment forever-an apartment with no separate entrance, a moldy bathroom, and worst of all, her cousin Diane, who was a nonstop complainer. As for Diane’s two bratty kids… Piper suspected her cousin was keeping the rent ridiculously cheap so she could be guaranteed a built-in babysitter, a prospect even more depressing than living in a basement.
Piper was leaving most of her things behind for Amber’s professor, but she had a couple of boxes of personal items to pack up, including a grubby stuffed pink pig she’d rediscovered in her bottom drawer. Oinky. His seams were frayed, his plush fur bedraggled. He’d been her childhood lovey, a baby shower present to her mother.
When Piper had turned five, Duke had announced that Oinky had to go. “Only babies carry around crap like that. You want everybody to think you’re a baby?” She’d told him she didn’t care what people thought and that Oinky wasn’t going anywhere.