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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.
Despite considerable pressure, she’d held her ground until she was seven. That’s when the neighborhood bully had knocked her down and made her cry. Duke had been furious, not at the bully, but at her for crying. “We don’t have sissies in this family. You get back out there and kick that kid’s ass and don’t let me goddam see you cry again.”
