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Missing Persons
She’d considered getting rid of the firm’s old slogan, “Truth Brings Peace,” but it was part of her family history, starting with her grandfather, and changing it would feel like wiping out her heritage.
A rap sounded on her office door. She jumped up. But instead of a new client coming in off the street, Berni barged in. She’d pulled herself together enough to tie a hippie headband around her Day-Glo-orange hair and wear a fringed vest over her sweatpants. “Now, Piper, before you say anything . . . I know you don’t believe I saw Howard in Lincoln Square. I hardly believed it myself. But I lived with that man for fifty-eight years, and I should know.” She brushed past Piper and settled in one of the chairs across from the desk. She opened her bag and pulled out an envelope. “Here’s a one-hundred-dollar retainer.” She slapped it on the desk.
“Berni, I can’t take your money.”
“This is business. I need an investigator, and you’re the best there is.”
“I appreciate your faith in me, but . . .” She tried a new tack. “I’m too involved personally. It would keep me from being objective. Another investigator would—”
“Another investigator would think I’m a crazy old woman.” Her fierce glare dared Piper to agree.
Piper settled behind her desk, hoping she could use logic to persuade Berni to give up her delusions. “Let’s look at the facts . . . You were in your stateroom with Howard when he had his heart attack.”
“But I wasn’t with him when he died. I told you. I’d slipped out of the ship’s infirmary to use the toilet, and then I fainted when that quack of a doctor told me he’d passed. Who knows what was in that casket they shipped back.”
If bureaucracy hadn’t gotten in the way of Berni seeing Howard’s body before he was cremated, none of this would be happening. “All right, Berni.” Arguing with her was futile, and Piper reached for her yellow pad. “Let me ask you a few questions.”
Berni gave her a smug smile. “You look very nice today, by the way. You should wear lipstick more often. And it almost looks like you combed your hair. You have beautiful, shiny hair, Piper. I know that eggbeater haircuts are fashionable now, but a nice pageboy would be more feminine.”
“Seriously, Berni, have you ever known me to give a crap about being feminine?”
“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.
