Heat Wave Page 5

  It was her first Thanksgiving break from college since her parents divorced. Nikki had spent the day shopping with her mother, a Thanksgiving Eve tradition transformed into a holy mission by her mom’s new singleness. This was a daughter determined to make this not so much the best Thanksgiving ever, but as close to normal as could be achieved given the empty chair at the head of the table and the ghosts of happier years.

  The two squeezed around each other as they always had in the New York apartment–sized kitchen that night, making pies for the next day. Over tandem rolling pins and chilled dough, Nikki defended her desire to change majors from English to Theater. Where were the cinnamon sticks? How could they have forgotten the cinnamon sticks? Ground cinnamon never flew in her mother’s holiday pies. She grated her own from a stick, and how could they have overlooked that on their list?

  Nikki felt like a Lotto winner when she found a jar of them on the spice aisle at the Morton Williams on Park Avenue South. For insurance, she took out her cell phone and called the apartment. It rang and rang. When the message machine kicked on, she wondered if her mom couldn’t hear the phone over her mixer. But then she picked up. Over the squeal of recorder feedback she apologized but she had been wiping butter off her hands. Nikki hated the sharp reverb of the answering machine, but her mother never knew how to turn that damn thing off without disconnecting. Last call before closing, did she need anything else from the market? She waited while her mom carried the portable to check on evaporated milk.

  And then Nikki heard glass crash. And her mother’s scream. Her limbs went weak and she called for her mom. Heads turned from the check stands. Another scream. As she heard the phone on the other end drop, Nikki dropped the jar of cinnamon sticks and ran to the door. Damn, the in door. She brute-forced it open and ran out in the street, nearly getting clipped by a delivery guy on a bicycle. Two blocks away. She held the cell phone to her ear as she ran, pleading for her mom to say something, pick up the phone, what’s wrong? She heard a man’s voice, sounds of a scuffle. Her mother’s whimper and her body dropping next to the phone. A tah-tang of metal bouncing on the kitchen floor. One block to go. A clink of bottles in the fridge door. The snap-hiss of a pop top. Footsteps. Silence. And then, her mother’s weak and failing moan. And then just a whisper. “Nikki…”

  FOUR

  Nikki didn’t go home following the movie after all. She stood on the sidewalk in the warm, spongy air of the summer night looking up at her apartment, the one where she had lived as a girl and that she had left to go to college in Boston, and then left again on an errand to buy cinnamon sticks because ground wouldn’t do. The only thing up there in that two-bedroom was solitude without peace. She could be nineteen again walking into a kitchen where her mother’s blood was pooling under the refrigerator, or, if she could bat the image balloons away, she could catch some news on the tube and hear about more crimes—heat-related, the Team Coverage would say. Heat-related crime. There was a time when that had made Nikki Heat smile.

  She weighed texting Don, to see if her combat trainer was up for a beer and some close-quarter bedroom grapples, against the alternative of letting some late night comic in a suit help her escape without the crowded bathroom in the morning. There was another alternative.

  Twenty minutes later, in her empty precinct squad room, the detective swiveled in her chair to contemplate the whiteboard. She already had it burnished in her head, all the elements-to-date pasted and scrawled inside that frame which did not yet reveal a picture: the list of fingerprint matches; the green five-by-seven index card with its bullet points of Kimberly Starr’s alibis and prior lives; photos of Matthew Starr’s body where he hit the sidewalk; photos from the M.E. of the punch bruising on Starr’s torso with the distinctive hexagonal mark left by a ring.

  She rose and walked up to the ring mark photo. More than studying its size and shape, the detective listened to it, knowing that at any time any piece of evidence could gain a voice. This photo, above all other puzzle pieces on the board, was whispering to her. It had been in her ear all day, and its whisper was the song that had drawn her to the squad room in the stillness of night so she could hear it clearly. What it whispered was a question: “Why would a killer who tossed a man over a balcony also beat him with nonlethal blows?” These bruises weren’t random contusions from any scuffle. They were precise and patterned, some even overlapping. Don, her combat boxing instructor, called it “painting” your opponent.

  One of the first things Nikki Heat had implemented when she took command of her homicide unit was a system to facilitate information sharing. She logged on the server and opened the read-only file OCHOA. Scrolling through pages, she came to his witness interview with the doorman at the Guilford. Love that Ochoa, she thought. His keyboard skills are crap, but he took great notes and asked the right questions.

  Q: Had vic lef bdg anytm drng curse of morng?

  A: N.

  Nikki closed Ochoa’s file and looked at the clock. She could text her boss, but he might not see it. Like if he was sleeping. Drumming her fingers on the phone was only making it later, so she punched his number. On the fourth ring Heat cleared her throat, preparing to leave a voice mail, but Montrose picked up. His hello was not sleepy and she could hear the TV blasting the weather forecast. “Hope it’s not too late to call, Captain.”

  “If it is too late, it’s too late to hope. What’s up?”

  “I came in to screen that surveillance cam video from the Guilford and it’s not here yet. Do you know where it is?”

  Her boss covered the phone and said something muffled to his wife. When he came back to Nikki, the TV sound was off. He said, “I got a call tonight during dinner from the attorney representing their residents board. This is a building with wealthy tenants sensitive about privacy issues.”

  “Do they have issues with their fellow tenants hurtling past their windows?”

  “You trying to convince me? For them to give it up it will take a court order. I’m looking at the clock and thinking we’ll wait to find a judge to issue one in the morning.” He heard her sigh because she made sure he did. Heat couldn’t stand effectively losing another day waiting for a court order. “Nikki, get some sleep,” he said with his usual gentle touch. “We’ll get it for you sometime tomorrow.”

  Of course the skipper was right. Waking a judge to cut a warrant was capital you spent on high-priority matters against a ticking clock. To most judges this was just another homicide, and she knew better than to push Captain Montrose to squander a chip like that. So she switched her desk lamp off.

  Then she switched it back on. Rook was pals with a judge. Horace Simpson was a poker pal at the weekly game she always ducked when Rook invited her. Simpson was not as sexy a name drop as Jagger, but last she heard, none of the Stones was issuing warrants.

  But hang on, she thought. Eager was one thing, owing a favor to Jameson Rook was another. And besides, she had overheard him boasting to Roach he had a dinner date with that groupie in the halter who crashed Nikki’s crime scene. At this hour, Heat might be interrupting the application of his autograph to a new and more exciting body part.

  So she picked up the phone and dialed Rook’s cell.

  “Heat,” he said with no surprise. It was more a shout-out, like on Cheers when they’d holler, “Norm!” She listened for background noise, but why? Did she expect Kenny G and a champagne cork?

  “Is this a bad time?”

  “The caller ID says you’re at the precinct.” Evasion. Writer Monkey wasn’t answering her question. Maybe if she threatened the Zoo Lockup.

  “A cop’s work is never done, and all that. Are you writing?”

  “I’m in a town car. Just had an awesome meal at Balthazar.” Then silence. She had called to screw with him, how did her head end up being the one messed with?

  “You can give me your Zagat rating some other time, this is a business call,” she told him, even as she wondered if his halter groupie knew not to wear cutoff jeans to a b
istro, SoHo hip or otherwise. “I called to tell you don’t come in for the morning meeting. It’s off.”

  “Off? That’s a first.”

  “The plan was for us to prep for a sit-down with Kimberly Starr tomorrow morning. That meeting’s in question now.”

  Rook sounded beautifully alarmed. “How come? We need to get with her.” She loved the urgency in his voice more than she felt guilty for playing him.

  “The whole reason to see her is to screen surveillance pictures from the Guilford yesterday, but I can’t get access to the surveillance tape without a warrant, and good luck reaching a judge tonight.” Heat envisioned underwater video of a big mouth bass opening wide for the miracle lure on one of those sport fishing infomercials she saw too many of on her sleepless nights.

  “I know a judge.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Horace Simpson.”

  Now Nikki was up, pacing the length of the bull pen, trying to keep the grin out of her voice as she said, “Listen to me, Rook. Stay out of this.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “Rook, I am telling you no,” she said in her best command voice.

  “I know he’s still up. Probably watching his soft-core porn channel.” And then Nikki heard the woman giggle in the background just as Rook hung up. Heat had gotten just what she wanted, but it somehow didn’t feel like the win-win she’d envisioned. And why did she care? she asked herself yet again.

  At ten o’clock the next morning, in the stickiness of what the tabloids were calling “The Summer of Simmer,” Nikki Heat, Roach, and Rook met under the Guilford canopy holding two sets of twelve still frames from the lobby surveillance camera. Heat left Raley and Ochoa to show one array to the doorman while she and Rook entered the building for their appointment with Kimberly Starr.

  As soon as the elevator doors closed, he started in. “You don’t have to thank me.”

  “Why should I thank you? I specifically told you not to call that judge. As usual, you do what you please, meaning the opposite of what I say.”

  He paused to absorb the truth of that and said, “You’re welcome.” Then he broke out that shit-eater of his, “It’s the subtext thing. Oo, the air is thick with it this morning, Detective Heat.” And was he even looking at her? No, he was tilted back enjoying the up-count of LED numbers, yet she still felt all X-rayed and naked and at a loss for words. The soft bell chimed a rescue signal on six. Damn him.

  When it was Noah Paxton who opened the front door of Kimberly Starr’s apartment, Nikki made a mental note to find out if the widow and the accountant were sleeping together. On an open murder case everything went on the table, and what belonged more on the “What If” list than a trophy wife with an appetite for cash and the man who handled the money hatching a pillow-talk conspiracy? But she let it go by saying, “This is a surprise.”

  “Kimberly’s running late from her beauty appointment,” said Paxton. “I was dropping off some documents for her to sign and she called to see if I’d keep you entertained until she got here.”

  “Nice to see she’s focused on finding her husband’s killer,” said Rook.

  “Welcome to my world. Trust me, Kimberly doesn’t do focus.” Detective Heat tried to read his tone. Was it true exasperation or cover?

  “While we’re waiting, I want you to look at some pictures.” Heat found the same tapestry chair as she had on her last visit and took out a manila envelope. Paxton sat opposite her on the sofa, and she dealt two rows of four-by-six prints on the red lacquer coffee table in front of him. “Look carefully at each of these people. Tell me if any of them looks familiar.”

  Paxton studied each of the dozen photos. Nikki did what she always did during a photo array, studied the studier. He was methodical, moving right to left, top row, then bottom, no inordinate pauses, all very even. Without any sense of desire, she wondered if he was like that in bed and once again thought about her untaken road to the suburbs and more pleasant routines. When Paxton was done, he said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize any of these people.” And then he said what everybody said when they came up empty. “Is one of these the killer?” And he looked again, as they all did, wondering which one did it, as if they could tell by looking.

  “Can I ask an obvious question?” said Rook as Heat slid her photos back in the envelope. As usual, he didn’t wait for permission to shoot his mouth off. “If Matthew Starr was so broke, why didn’t he just sell off some of his stuff? I’m looking around at all this antique furniture, the art collection…That chandelier alone could fund an emerging nation for about a year.” Heat looked at the Italian porcelain chandelier, the French sconces, the floor-to-cathedral-ceiling display of framed paintings, the gilded Louis XV mirror, the ornate furniture, and thought, Then again, sometimes Writer Monkey came out with a gem.

  “Look, I don’t feel comfortable talking about this.” Then he glanced over Nikki’s shoulder as if Kimberly Starr might come walking in.

  “It’s a simple question,” said the detective. She knew she’d regret giving the props to Rook but added, “And a good one. And you’re the money man, right?”

  “I wish it were that simple.”

  “Try me. Because I hear you telling me how broke the man was, company imploding, personal money leaking like an Alaskan oil tanker, and then I look at all this. What’s this worth, anyway?”

  “That I can answer,” he said. “I.T.E., forty-eight to sixty million.”

  “I.T.E.?”

  Rook answered that. “In today’s economy.”

  “Even at a fire sale, forty-eight mill solves a lot of problems.”

  “I’ve opened the books to you, I’ve explained the financial picture, I’ve looked at your pictures, isn’t that enough?”

  “No, and you know why?” With her forearms on her knees, she leaned forward to him and bored in. “Because there is something you’re not wanting to say, and I will hear it here or at the precinct.”

  She gave him space to have whatever his internal dialogue was, and after a few seconds he said, “It just feels wrong to dump on him in his own home after he just died.” She waited again and he let go. “Matthew had a monster ego. You have to have one to accomplish what he did, but his was off the chart. His narcissism made this collection bulletproof.”

  “But he was in financial quicksand,” she said.

  “Which is exactly the reason he ignored my advice—advice hell, my hounding—to piece it off. I wanted him to sell before bankruptcy creditors went after it, but this room was his palace. Proof to him and the world he was still king.” Now that it was out, Paxton became more animated and paced along the walls. “You saw the offices yesterday. No way Matthew would meet a client there. So he brought them here so he could negotiate from his throne surrounded by his little Versailles. The Starr Collection. He loved big shots standing over one of these Queen Anne chairs and asking if it was OK to sit. Or looking at a painting and knowing what he paid for it. And if they didn’t ask, he made sure to tell them. Sometimes I hid my face, it was so embarrassing.”

  “So, what happens to all this now?”

  “Now, of course, I can start liquidation. There are debts to pay, not to mention Kimberly’s tastes to support. I think she’ll be more prone to lose a few knickknacks to maintain her lifestyle.”

  “And after you pay the debts, will there be enough to make up for her husband not having life insurance?”

  “Oh, I don’t think Kimberly will need to throw any telethons,” said Paxton.

  Nikki processed that as she wandered the room. Last time she visited, it was a crime scene. Now she was simply taking in its opulence. The crystal, the tapestries, the Kentian bookcase with fruit and flower carvings…She saw a painting she liked, a Raoul Dufy yachting scene, and leaned in for a closer look. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts was a ten-minute walk from her dorm when Nikki attended Northeastern. Although the hours she spent there as an art lover did not qualify her as an art expert, she recognized some of th
e works Matthew Starr had collected. They were expensive, but to her eye, the room was a two-story grab bag. Impressionists hung beside Old Masters; 1930s German poster art rubbed elbows with an Italian religious triptych from the 1400s. She lingered before a John Singer Sargent study for one of her favorite paintings, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. Though it was a preliminary sketch in oil, one of the many Sargent made before each finished painting, she found herself transfixed by the familiar little girls, so wonderfully innocent in their white play dresses, lighting Chinese lanterns in a garden in the delicate glow of twilight. And then she wondered what it was doing beside the brash Gino Severini, a pricey, no doubt, but gaudy canvas of oil and crushed sequins. “Every other collection I’ve seen has a…I don’t know, theme to it, or a common feel or, what am I trying to say…?”

  “Taste?” said Paxton. Now that he’d crossed his line, it was a free-fire zone. Even so, he lowered his voice to a hush and looked around as if he would be ducking lightning bolts for speaking ill of the dead. But speak ill he did. “If you’re looking to see rhyme or reason to this collection, you won’t, due to one unavoidable fact. Matthew was a vulgarian. He didn’t know art. He knew price.”

  Rook came up beside Heat and said, “I think if we keep looking we’ll find a Dogs Playing Poker,” which made her laugh. Even Paxton indulged himself a chuckle. They all stopped when the front door opened and Kimberly Starr breezed in.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Heat and Rook stared at her, barely masking disbelief and judgment. Her face was swollen from Botox or some other series of cosmetic injections. Redness and bruising highlighted the unnatural swelling of her lips and smile lines. Her brow and forehead were marked with deep pink speed bumps that filled wrinkle lines and seemed to be growing before their eyes. The woman looked as if she had fallen face-first into a hornet’s nest. “The traffic lights were out on Lexington. Damn heat wave.”