First Star I See Tonight

15

On Monday morning, she got a call from the owner of a neighborhood minimart who’d seen her flyer. He wanted her to investigate what he believed was a fraudulent injury claim from one of his former employees, a guy named Wylie Hill. She headed south to check him out.

Pilsen was a predominantly Mexican-American Chicago neighborhood, rich with art and immigrant tradition. Two men leaned against a mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe and watched a couple of hipsters walk by. An old woman in bedroom slippers came up the steps from her basement apartment to sweep the sidewalk.

Wylie eventually appeared and sat smoking on the stoop of the row house where he’d rented a room. She was happy to have a new client, but stakeouts were her least favorite part of the job. First, because they were boring, and second, because they gave her too much time to think, especially today.

She and Coop had spent most of yesterday in bed, and not once had she been plagued by the emptiness that had always come over her when she was with a man-the panicky disconnect that made her look for excuses to get away. With Coop, there’d been nearly as much talking as there’d been sex. She’d described a couple of Duke’s more interesting investigations. He’d talked about ranch life and urban gardening. They’d exchanged surprisingly similar opinions about politics and religion. He’d even pried out some stories about her schizophrenic upbringing-stories she now regretted sharing. Too much talking. Too many places inside her she didn’t want him to see. From now on, she was leaving his place as soon as he put his clothes back on.

Wylie Hill had either genuinely hurt his back unloading boxes or was the laziest man alive, because he didn’t do much except sit on his stoop. By late the next afternoon, when she couldn’t stand the boredom any longer, she made a quick trip to her office and did some work on her Web site. As she was getting ready to lock back up and return to her stakeout, Coop appeared, bringing an influx of testosterone along with him. He gazed around, taking in the framed posters of pulp detective magazine covers. “You really do have an office.”

“A little humbler than yours, but it’ll work until my luxury suite in the Hancock opens up.” She surreptitiously turned the notepad she’d been writing on facedown. “What are you doing here?”

“Curious to see how the other half lives.” He reached across her desk and flipped over the notepad she’d tried to conceal. “Your shrink?”

She’d intended to keep what she’d learned to herself until she had more information, but she couldn’t do that now. “I finally tracked down your ex-bartender. He’s working in a Bridgeport dive bar.”

“You weren’t planning to tell me about it?”

“After I talked to him. That’s what you pay me to do, remember?”

“Right.” He skirted the borders of the rug to poke at the soil of her windowsill orchid, a gift from Amber. “When are you going to see him?”

“Tonight. He goes on duty at nine. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“No need. I’m going with you. And you’re overwatering that orchid.”

“Thanks for the info, and you’ll only complicate things. Now, go away. I have some surveillance work to do for a new client.” And simply breathing your oxygen is fogging my brain.

“Great. I’ll come along. It’ll be interesting to get a glimpse into the seedier side of your life.”

“Surveillance is way too boring for you.”

“I can handle it.”

At first he did. But after a few hours, he grew restless and stared rummaging around in her backseat. “Got anything to eat in here?”

“Fresh out.”

“What’s this?” He held up her pink Tinkle Belle.

“Ice cream scoop.”

“Weird-looking ice cream scoop.” He began to pull it from its plastic bag.

“Leave it alone.” She hadn’t needed to use it recently, but still…

Enlightenment struck. He gazed through the plastic bag at the Tinkle Belle, then at her. “I always wondered how women-”

“Now you know. Put it back.”

She’d parked catty-corner from the beat-up Pilsen row house where Hill lived. As Tejano music blared from a vintage clothing shop next door, Coop flipped open her glove box and rooted around. When he got tired of that, he poked at a loose panel on her dashboard. She willed him to be still so she could try to forget he was there. As if that were possible.

“How do you know your guy’s inside?” he asked.

She pointed toward the top floor. “He’s passed by that corner window a couple of times.”

“Maybe he’s in for the night.”

“Could be.”

“What if he really did throw out his back on the job?”

“Then he deserves his money.”

A lowrider shot past. Coop draped his arm across the seat, his fingers brushing her shoulder. “You don’t always have to be the toughest Viking in the longboat, you know.”

She should never have told him about Duke’s child-rearing habits. She had to retrench. “I’m not a romantic, if that’s what you mean. I don’t dream of a hubby and house full of mini-me’s. I had more than enough of domesticity taking care of my father when I was growing up.” Along with never whining, crying, or admitting uncertainty.

“It’s understandable that your father was overprotective, considering what happened to your mother, but it was dead wrong of him to leave everything to your stepmother.”

Piper shrugged, as if it were no big deal. “What was your mother like?”

“She was adventurous. Funny. Not very domestic. Pretty much the opposite of my old man. A little like you. Except sweet.”

She smiled. The front door of the row house opened, and a nervous-looking guy with a bony face and untidy shoulder-length hair emerged. Piper straightened. “That’s him.”

Hill sat on the lighted stoop and lit a cigarette. Coop watched him smoke for a while, then looked at the time on his phone. “This is like watching paint dry, and it’s barely seven o’clock.”

“You didn’t have to come with me.”

“I was hoping for a high-speed chase.”

So was she.

Wylie stood and stretched. Piper picked up her Nikon, adjusted the focus, and took a couple of shots.

“Not exactly proof of anything,” he said.

“Employers like to know you’re on the job.”

Wylie was finishing his third cigarette when he pulled out his cell and held it to his ear, as if he’d just gotten a call. He said a few words, pitched the cigarette butt into the gutter, and took off down the street, moving a little fast for a guy with an injured back. He climbed behind the wheel of an old gray Corolla. Piper stuck the camera out the window and took another shot as he pulled away.

“Now can we have a high-speed chase?” Coop asked.

“Maybe next time.”

Piper was a good driver, alert and agile behind the wheel. He’d noticed that on their drive to Canada. She kept well back from the Corolla as it headed north a few blocks, turned onto Racine, and again onto Eighteenth. Eventually Wylie eased the car down a street partially closed for road construction. Coop could see a liquor store and taco place, but not much else. Pipe pulled into a loading zone, set aside her Nikon, and grabbed her cell instead. “Stay here,” she said as she opened the car door. “I mean it, Coop. You’re too conspicuous.”

He hated that she was right, but it was a mild evening, and there were enough people on the street to make it certain he’d be recognized. Still, it was a tough neighborhood, and he hated the idea of her going off alone.

He glanced at his watch as she disappeared around the construction barricades. He’d been with her for a couple of hours, and he still hadn’t told her what had happened earlier today. He needed to get it over with instead of putting it off, but he could already predict her reaction.

He drummed his fingers on his knees and gazed toward the corner where she’d disappeared. He knew how competent she was. She could take care of herself. She probably had that Glock stuck in her jacket pocket. But he felt like a pussy sitting here while she was out there by herself.

More minutes ticked by until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He checked the backseat again for a ball cap or anything he could use to mask his identity, but found only a pair of purple sunglasses. Screw it. He got out of the car.

Just then, she came around the corner. He slipped back inside, but not before she’d seen him. “Leg cramp,” he said as she climbed back in.

She rolled her eyes at him and started the car. “It looks like Wylie’s back problem is all better.” She passed over her cell.

He flipped to her photos and saw a pawnshop next to the taco place. Hill was coming out of it carrying a television with maybe a thirty-inch screen. Even in the dim evening light, she’d captured it all. The way he balanced the weight of the set in his arms. How he propped it on the rear fender while he opened the trunk. And, most damning, how he managed to maneuvered it into the trunk without any extraordinary effort.

“The pawnbroker came out to hold the door for him,” she said. “I heard them talking. Wylie had put out the word that he wanted a new TV, and the broker called to tell him the ticket on that one had expired.”

“Case solved.”

“Yeah.” She didn’t look all that happy about it. “I was hoping it would last another couple of days.”

“The price you pay for being good at what you do.” He set down her cell. “It would have been a lot more interesting if you’d had to shoot him.”

“Life can be cruel that way.”

When they reached Hill’s apartment, she took more photos of him unloading the set. It was nearly time for Keith to start work, but Coop made her stop at a Taco Bell where he had a couple of 7-Layer Burritos and she ate half of a steak gordita. Even with the windows down, the car smelled of chili powder, cumin, and lust.

She’d been up front. She’d told him she used men for sex, but she was hardly the picture of a man-eater with those blueberry eyes that looked straight at him. His own scruples about sleeping with an employee had conveniently vanished. Piper was no ordinary employee. Half the time he felt as if he worked for her.

She wiped a dab of sauce from her chin. “This was Duke’s idea of fine dining. Taco Bell and a Big Gulp. You would have liked him.”

That was debatable. Overprotecting a daughter with such an adventurous nature while he also bullied her had been an epic fail on Duke Dove’s part. Coop returned his empty food wrapper to the bag. “Not his taste in football teams.”

She gave him her wicked look. “The Bears are a man’s team-the monsters of the Midway as opposed to you pansy-assed glamour boys from the ’burbs.”

“Despite our winning stats.”

“Duke’s opinions weren’t always supported by facts.”

“Just like yours. I swear, if I see you in that Bears jersey one more time, I’m going to rip it off you.”

The words hung in the air between them. He couldn’t stand it a moment longer, and he reached across the seat. She leaned against him, but only for a second before she pulled away. “Don’t make me cuff you.”

She was such a punk. Such a stubborn, sexy, driven, funny little punk.

She tried to talk him into going home, but he wasn’t having it, and she eventually gave up. “The bar is on the fringes of Bridgeport,” she told him as they headed south on Halstead. “Right by Bubbly Creek.”

“Bubbly Creek?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve lived in Chicago this long and never heard of it.”

“I’ve been a little busy.”

“It’s the South Fork of the Chicago River, but nobody calls it that. A hundred years ago, all the meatpacking companies around the Union Stock Yards dumped their waste in it. I did a term paper for a college biology class.” She paused and glanced over at him. “Term papers are the things all of us who actually went to class had to do.”

He gave her his cowboy drawl. “Wouldn’t know about that. I was too busy cruisin’ around town in the shiny red Corvette the alums bought me.”

She shot him her withering look, which was so damned cute he would have kissed her nose if she’d been another kind of woman. “So, Bubbly Creek?” he said.

“The slaughterhouses threw their carcasses in the water-guts, blood, hair-every putrid thing you could think of, then tossed in all the processing chemicals, too. After a while the creek started to bubble from the decomposition. That’s how it got its name. Sometimes the sludge got so thick that people could walk on it. The government’s poured millions into cleanup, but it can still bubble on a hot day.”

“Mother Nature takes a long time to get over being pissed off.”

“Women are like that.” She pulled into a crumbling parking lot next to a squat, aluminum-framed building with an Old Style sign hanging above the front door. “Keith’s come down in the world,” she said.

He needed to get this over with. “Before we go in, you should know… I was doing some paperwork at the club today, and when I came out, somebody had slashed my tires.”

“What?!”

He’d known she’d go ballistic, and she didn’t prove him wrong.

“Why didn’t you tell me this right away?”

Because he hated to admit she was right about these incidents not being arbitrary. Worse than that, he hated knowing somebody was getting the best of him. “It could have been random,” he said.

“Don’t even start with me about that.”

She began peppering him with questions, as he’d known she would. When had it happened? Who might have witnessed it? Had he seen anyone hanging around the alley?

He told her everything he knew, which was exactly nothing. Tony and the cleaning staff had been inside the club. None of them had seen anything. He hadn’t reported it to the police.

She set her jaw in that way she had. “Let’s see what your pal Keith has to say about this.”

A notice next to the front door read: protected with loaded guns. He suspected the sign wasn’t meant to be ironic.

The place smelled of stale beer and cigarette smoke left over from the eighties. A long bar, square tables, a yellowed linoleum floor, and random wall art served as decor, while the Bee Gees singing “How Deep Is Your Love” on the jukebox provided questionable ambience.

None of the array of beaten-down locals looked up as they walked in. Keith was behind the bar, his back to the door. Piper took a seat at the end of the bar. Keith turned and saw them both. The rag he’d been using stalled in his hand.

Pipe proved her familiarity with dive bars. “Two PBRs.”

Coop hadn’t had a Pabst since he was fourteen, but this wasn’t the kind of place where you ordered the latest IPA.

Keith brought over their beers. He needed a haircut, and he hunched his left shoulder, the same way he always did when he wanted to look tough. The same thing he’d done when Coop had fired him.

“Come here to laugh at the corpse?” Keith set the beers in front of them with a hard thud that sent a splash of suds over the rims.

“You did it to yourself, pal.” Coop still hadn’t gotten past the sting of betrayal.

“I’m buying this place as soon as I get the cash together,” Keith said belligerently. “Make it into something.”

“Good luck.”

Keith took a couple of swipes at the bar with his rag. “There was a time you’d have helped me.”

“Yeah, well, that train pulled out of the station a while back.”

Keith had never had much of a poker face, and the corners of his mouth dipped. He looked over at Piper. “What are you doing with her?”

“I’m his new girlfriend,” she retorted. “He upgraded.”

Considering the accomplished women in his past, that wasn’t exactly true. But in another way, it was.

Keith dismissed her and returned his attention to Coop. “You know what I miss?”

“What’s that?”

“Sitting around shootin’ the shit. That’s what I miss.”

Coop shrugged.

“For what it’s worth,” Keith said, “it was Taylor who came up with the idea. Stupid bitch. She moved out on me right after I got this job.”

Coop took a sip of beer. “All you had to do was tell her no.”

Keith gave a bitter laugh. “You’re the one with character, remember? I’m the one who always screwed the pooch.”

Piper set down her mug. “So, Keith, while you’re all full of regret… Last week, somebody jumped your ex-pal here. Know anything about that?”

Keith looked genuinely shocked. Ignoring Piper, he stared at Coop. “She serious?”

Coop nodded.

Keith’s left shoulder went up. “You think it was me?”

Coop considered it. “Not really.”

“But I have a more suspicious nature,” Piper said. “I heard you took a swing at Coop when he fired your ass, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”

Keith’s face flushed with anger. “I’ve done a lot of shitty crap in my life, but I’d never do that.”

Piper bore in-drilling him on where he’d been that night. At the bar working, as it turned out. Where he’d been this afternoon-asleep with no alibi. But Coop stopped paying attention. Whatever else Keith had done, he hadn’t been behind any of this.

While Pipe continued her interrogation, Coop took a pull on his beer and contemplated hidden enemies. He hated this. He wanted his enemies where he could see them, right across the line of scrimmage.

Soccer wasn’t Coop’s game, but Deidre Joss had invited him to Toyota Park to see the Chicago Fire play D.C. United, and he wouldn’t turn her down. He liked everything about Deidre, from her personality to her reputation, everything except how long it was taking her to commit to his operation.

He glanced across the stadium’s executive viewing suite at Piper. She managed to look both cute and sexy in a loopy orange sweater and a pair of jeans that actually fit. Her predictable dark tousle of a hairstyle wouldn’t work on another woman but somehow fit her perfectly. Pipe was the least needy female he’d ever been involved with, and their relationship was working out even better than he’d hoped.

He’d invited her to come with him right after they’d returned from last night’s confrontation with Keith. She’d launched into a predictable refusal-they weren’t dating, and this sounded like a date-then immediately reversed herself and accepted. He knew why. She wanted to keep him in her sights. Totally maddening and completely unnecessary. He’d nearly withdrawn the invitation, but then he hadn’t. He respected perseverance, no matter how misguided.

When he’d picked her up, she’d dropped a bombshell on him. A flood of online complaints about Spiral had popped up, complaints about everything from rude serving staff to dirty glasses to bad music-none of which was true. The reviews looked as though they’d been planted, and she’d already started the process of trying to get them taken down, but she’d warned him it would take time.

He was furious, and not even her reminder that she had years of experience handling problems like this had mollified him. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t. He had a new life, and failure wasn’t an option.

Deidre stepped away from the group she’d been talking to and caught his eye. He hoped like hell she hadn’t caught wind of the bad reviews. Forcing a smile, he went over to join her.

Piper gazed out onto the soccer field from the sweeping windows of Deidre Joss’s viewing suite, but the action on the field was secondary to the puzzle pieces that refused to fit together in her brain. She didn’t get it. The mugging, the drone, and the tire slashing were active acts. But the online sabotage and the false tip to the INS seemed more cerebral. How did it all come together?

Behind her, she heard Deidre laugh at something Coop was saying. The two of them looked as though they belonged together. Deidre, tall and poised as a ballerina, and Coop, all rangy self-confidence. A pair of good-looking high-achievers completely at home with the luxuries their hard work had brought them. Deidre was obviously taken with Coop, but she wasn’t pushy about it.

“Enjoying the game?” Noah Parks said as he came up beside her.

All afternoon she’d watched him take care of Deidre. He didn’t crowd her, but if Deidre needed a fresh drink, he was there. If she seemed to tire of a conversation, he stepped in to deflect it. Piper could use a Noah Parks in her life.

“It’s not like watching the Bears, but yes, I am,” she said. On the field, the Fire successfully tipped away a shot at the goal. “These are really nice digs.”

“Deidre has a skybox at Soldier Field, too, and one at the Midwest Sports Complex.”

Where the Stars played. “A girl can’t have too many skyboxes.”

He laughed. “She uses them for business entertainment.” He gazed through the glass down at the field. “Interesting that you’ve become part of Coop’s inner circle, considering the way you two started out.”

He was probably fishing for information, but he wasn’t getting anything from her. “He’s bored, and I’m a novelty.”

The Fire scored their first goal, and she excused herself to get a hot dog from the buffet.

Everybody in the suite wanted to talk to Coop, and it wasn’t until the second half that he approached her. “I just learned that Deidre Joss is the person who hired you to follow me.”

Piper straightened. “Why do you think that?”

“Because she told me.”

“Really?” She’d spoken too loudly, and some of the people in the skybox turned to stare, but Piper was outraged. After swearing Piper to secrecy and nearly destroying her career in the process, Deidre Joss had just blurted it out to Mr. Golden Eyes?

It was a good thing her cell vibrated right then. She pulled it out of her jeans pocket and glanced at the screen. Why was Tony calling her?

“Coop turned off his phone again,” Tony said when she answered. “Is he with you?”

“Yes. You want to talk to him?”

“No. Tell him we’ve got a big problem, and he needs to get over here right away.”

The kitchen was infested with cockroaches. Coop had never seen so many. Hundreds of them scattered from the light he’d just turned on. They scampered across the floor, the counters, along the stovetop. A pale-faced Tony was huddled in the hallway, right outside the door. “An exterminator’s on his way. We’re going to have to close down for at least a week.”

Wonder Woman took one look at the insect bedlam and headed for the hallway, too. “I am so out of here.” She spun back. “If any of those get up in my apartment, you’re a dead man.”

Coop barged into her apartment a few hours later. She was sitting on her couch, curled over her laptop. The exterminator was already at work downstairs, but Tony had been right. They’d be closed at least a week. Exactly seven days too long.

“You’d better have shaken out your clothes before you came in here,” she said.

He stalked across the room. “You’re one hell of a bodyguard.”

“I’m not your bodyguard, remember? And I’ve been doing what I had to do.”

“Hiding from a few bugs?”

She shuddered. “I’m not proud of myself.”

There it was again. That refusal to defend herself over anything she perceived as a personal weakness.

“I’ve been doing some research,” she said as he started to pace. “You can buy cockroaches by the hundreds on the Internet. Did you know their severed heads can survive if they’re refrigerated? Only for a few hours, but still.”

“I didn’t know that. And I wish I didn’t know it now.”

“I’ll start tracking down dealers tomorrow, but finding out who placed the order is a long shot. They even sell them on Amazon.”

But his mind wasn’t on Amazon, and neither was hers. “With Keith out of the picture,” she said, “we both know who the next most logical suspect is.”

He didn’t ask who she meant. He knew.

She closed the lid on her laptop, stared at it for a moment, then rubbed her eyes. “He’s in Miami.”