The beer arrived quickly, along with chilled glasses and cardboard coasters. Chapa watched Warren take a long, cold sip from the bottle.
“Or maybe, if he really was worried about something or someone, he was concerned you might implicate anyone you spoke to.”
“And here I am now talking to you,” Warren said, smiled, and drank the rest of his beer in a single tilt. “Jim and me were supposed to go hunting this weekend.”
“I didn’t know he was a sportsman.”
Warren shook his head and signaled the bartender for another beer. Chapa shook him off, and slid his untouched bottle over to Warren.
“He wasn’t. Jim just went along because I wanted him to. Probably just to keep me from accidentally shooting myself.”
That sounded a lot like the Jim Chakowski Chapa had known. He wasn’t the sort of reporter anyone would ever want to hurt. He handled community news, did his share of feel-good pieces, and had been at the job for nearly three decades. But maybe he’d gotten himself into something.
Chapa doubted it. The cops had this one right. An old house in an even older neighborhood. Bad wiring. Worse luck. But no crime. In a few days the cops would likely reveal that Jim Chakowski had recently installed a new appliance or a new printer, or had started plugging his electric razor into a different outlet. A dozen or more possibilities that made a hell of a lot more sense than someone blowing up a house to get rid of a reporter.
Still, there was a look in Warren Chakowski’s eyes, an uneasy combination of desperation and determination that marked him as someone to be taken seriously.
Chapter 14
Chapa followed Erin back to her house, some three miles from his own, so Nikki could see where she would be spending parts of her days. After they all politely took off their shoes and got a short tour of the neatly kept ranch, the kids disappeared into the family room where the game system was.
“Okay, are you going to tell me what that strange man at the restaurant wanted?” Erin asked the moment the children were out of earshot.
As he followed her into the kitchen, Chapa explained who the guy was and dismissed Warren Chakowski’s theory about his brother’s death, but then added, “I’m meeting him tomorrow.”
“Why? What are you trying to get yourself into now?”
“I’m not getting myself into anything,” Chapa said, retrieving a cold bottle of beer from the refrigerator. “I feel I owe something to Jim Chakowski. He helped me out a number of times over the years.” Chapa downed a long swig. “Maybe I can help his brother get some closure.”
Erin was putting pots and silverware away, wiping down countertops a second time, and doing a number of small things that told Chapa she was more than a little uneasy. The kitchen, like much of the house, was a nice mix of functional and decorative. Erin liked bright colors, and Chapa found her tastes charming, and in sync with her personality.
He also got a kick out of seeing Mike’s drawings framed and hung on walls as though they were works of fine art. And there were so many photos of Erin and Mike, treated with the same reverence. Chapa was in a few of those, and it made him feel good to be included in that way, but he was also a bit uneasy about it.
Erin had told Chapa that he was, “A man of grays and blues,” and that she hoped some of her would rub off on him. Deep down, he hoped it would, too, but feared it might turn out the other way around.
“I thought you were supposed to just be following Jim Chakowski’s beat, keeping it all as simple as possible.”
“I will, Erin. But I can still ask a few questions, fill in a blank or two. Basically, I’ll confirm the official report, and lay this to rest without any of it getting in the way of my work.”
Erin turned away from the sink and walked toward Chapa. She had a face that he was sure he’d seen in an adolescent dream, and the legs of a runway model. Chapa liked those legs. Even now, hidden inside a pair of faded jeans, he knew how good they looked, how nice they felt every time she wrapped them around his bare waist. And that made him smile.
She draped her long arms around his neck, pulled Chapa close to her, which made him smile more.
“I just don’t want you turning this into one of those things.”
“One of what things?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
He did. From the early days of his career Chapa had shown an ability to find the worst kind of trouble, and a willingness to rush head on into it. As a result, he was on a first-name basis with some very bad people.
Chapa was about to reassure Erin that there was nothing to worry about this time. How at its core this was a fairly benign assignment and that he would not end up getting shot at, stabbed, or even punched. Not that she’d believe him anyhow.
But the instant he opened his mouth she pressed hers against it. Their tongues tangled for a hot moment, then she slowly eased her head back.
Erin gave Chapa’s lips one more quick flick with her tongue and said, “Mr. beer breath.”
“Just pretend this is a bar pickup sort of thing,” Chapa said and gave her an exaggerated wink.
Erin laughed. “I don’t think you’re the sort who ever went for the bar pickup scene.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean me,” Chapa said and slowly smiled.
She smacked his chest, hard, but playful, then laughed and again wrapped her arms around his neck.
Two rooms away, the sounds of their kids playing began to gradually fade, and then everything else went with it. For a perfect moment Chapa’s universe consisted only of Erin’s lips, her touch, and the warmth of her body pressed against his.
Chapter 15
Chapa had hoped to spend some time with Nikki when they got home. But she fell asleep in the car, and was still groggy when he walked her up to her room. It was the first time in nearly a year that Chapa had put his daughter to bed.
He’d preserved the room exactly as it was when Nikki moved out with her mother, but now realized she had already outgrown many of the decorations and most of her toys.
He pulled back the covers and guided Nikki into her white frame bed. Then Chapa gave her a few minutes to get back to sleep while he walked across the hall to his own room, which was quite a bit messier. He flipped on the lights, kicked off his shoes, and then softly walked back across the hall, the floor creaking under his heavy feet.
Nikki had dozed off by the time he walked back into her room. Glancing up, he looked at the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets that covered the ceiling, and remembered when Nikki was much younger and believed it really was the night sky.
“Those stars come out to glow just for you,” he’d told his daughter when she was barely three years old.
They weren’t radiating much tonight, the light in her room had not been on long enough. Tomorrow he’d leave it turned on the entire day, and they’d be a whole lot brighter when Nikki spent her second night in her room.
Sitting at the edge of Nikki’s bed, Chapa watched her sleep until she finally rolled over and faced the wall. For some reason, he thought she’d look more like her mother by now, but that wasn’t the case. Though he understood that everyone sees themselves or their close family in the faces of their children, Chapa couldn’t stop thinking about how much Nikki resembled his father. He remembered a photo of his dad standing by the side of a table during a birthday party. There was a smile on the man’s face, a playfulness in his eyes that Chapa had seen in Nikki these past several days.
That made him feel even worse for not