“There’ve been some crazies, though,” Heath said.

“Any recent ones?” Piper inquired. Besides me.

“You’d have to ask him,” Heath said.

“Coop’s my new pro bono project,” Annabelle declared with a grin.

“Which he doesn’t know,” Heath said, in case Piper missed the point. “What about the trouble he was having at the club with the bartender he fired?”

“I’m looking into that.”

A mini version of Heath wandered into the kitchen and regarded her curiously. “Who’re you?”

“This is Piper,” Heath said. “She’s a detective. And, Piper, this is Trev. He’s five.”

“Five and a half,” the boy said. “You got a badge?”

She could tell a lot about the kid by the glint in his eyes, which were the same shade of money-green as his father’s. “No badge,” she said, “but a couple of useful superpowers.”

He regarded her with a combination of anticipation and skepticism. “Flying?”

“Sure.”

“X-ray vision?”

“I couldn’t do my job without it.”

Trevor threw down the gauntlet. “Telekinesis?”

A big word for a little kid. Piper eyed his father, who shrugged. “Trev gets his brains from his mother.”

“Telekinesis is tricky,” Piper said. “I’m still working on that one.”

“That’s what I figured,” he said wisely. “What about invisibility?”

“Did you notice me here when you were eating breakfast?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

Heath laughed. “Come on, pal. Get your backpack. It’s time to leave for school.”

As Piper began to rise from the table, Annabelle stopped her. “Keep me company while I finish my coffee.”

“And here we go,” Heath murmured.

Annabelle shot him a glare. “Do you have something to say?”

“Not a word.” He gave her a quick kiss, planted another on the top of his daughter’s head, and grabbed his son.

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

***

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.”