Page 58 of First Star I See Tonight (Chicago Stars 8)

As her husband and child disappeared, Annabelle gave Piper a long, assessing look followed by a bright smile. “So . . . tell me all about yourself . . .”

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Piper left the Champion house feeling as though she’d made a new friend, but since Annabelle Champion lived among the city’s movers and shakers, while Piper lived above a Dumpster, it was a questionable assumption.

She didn’t want to show up at Coop’s before he’d had his second cup of coffee, so she headed for Lincoln Square. Berni had called her late last night to check on Piper’s progress finding Howard, and hearing that Piper had run a computer check through the major search engines hadn’t satisfied her. Berni wanted more.

“I’ve been reading up, Piper. There are these whatchacall databases where you can register missing persons. I want you to do that.”

“Those databases are for people who aren’t legally dead,” she said as gently as she could.

“A technicality.”

Hardly a technicality when Piper had watched Howard’s urn being lowered into the ground at Westlawn Cemetery.

“I never saw the body,” Berni said. “You remember that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Piper outmaneuvered a blue Mazda to snag one of the diagonal parking places on Lincoln Avenue. The morning was cloudy and chilly, hinting at rain, but a few hardy souls sat on the benches. A motorcycle shot past, and she took an unoccupied bench.

She tucked her hands in the pockets of her bomber jacket. On the bricks near her feet, someone had made an elaborate chalk drawing of a pelican. It felt good to sit still for a moment. Between working at Spiral at night, chauffeuring during the day, and planning Faiza’s escape, she’d barely had a chance to breathe.

Eventually, she got chilled and began walking back to her car, indulging in a little window-shopping along the way. Her phone pinged. A text from Eric Vargas.

See U tonight?

As she pondered her response, she saw an elderly man cross Lincoln Avenue toward Leland. Potbelly, pants pulled too high at the waist, bright white sneakers, and a wedge of yellow foam rubber on top of his head.

She began to run. A CTA bus cut in front of her. She dodged it, avoided a UPS truck and a bicyclist, but by the time she’d reached Leland, the man was gone. She searched the area, ducking into alleys and side streets, but the man with the Green Bay Packers cheesehead was nowhere in sight.

Piper reminded herself that she hadn’t gotten a good look at his face. But Howard had the identical potbelly and the same penchant for wearing white sneakers and hitching his pants too high. The height had also seemed right.

The theme from Buffy interrupted her thoughts. It was Jen. “Berni wants me to use my media contacts to get the public to look for Howard. And she’s guilted Amber into helping her put up missing person flyers. Everybody’s going to think she’s crazy.”

Piper gazed out at the brick buildings lining the square. “Maybe not quite as crazy as you think.”

She arranged to meet Jen and Amber at Big Shoulders Coffee on Friday. They’d all have preferred one of the neighborhood bars, but Amber had to sing later that night.

On her way to Lakeview, Piper planned her strategy for dealing with Coop. “Let me up,” she said, when he finally answered his intercom.

“You got food with you?”

“No food, but I make a great omelet.”

“You can cook?”

“Sure, I can cook.” No need to tell him she hated doing it, but Duke had expected her to cook and take care of the house right along with acting like his son instead of his daughter. Nobody knew more about growing up with mixed messages than she did.

“Okay, you can come up. But you can’t ask me any more questions that I can’t answer. Got it?”

“Absolutely. No questions.” He knew she was lying, so she didn’t feel bad about it.

When she stepped off the elevator into his condo, she found him sprawled on his couch holding an ice pack to his shoulder. He hadn’t shaved, and his burnt-toast hair was a delicious rumple. Despite the bruise on his jaw, he was just so . . . everything. All that battered, lived-in masculinity would wake up any woman. Even the dead ones. Rugged men like him were born to win ball games and sire warrior children.

Children? She had to get more sleep. As much as she liked kids, she didn’t want her own and wasn’t in the habit of thinking about them.

He came off the couch. He was shirtless, and he wore gray sweatpants like other men wore Hugo Boss. They slipped low on his hips, revealing a flat, muscled abdomen and a thin line of dark hair pointing straight toward . . .

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