“What’s going to happen to Willie Shoetaker?” asked Rook as they clinked glasses.
“Real sensitive, Rook.” She sipped her cocktail. “But I forgive you because this Caipirinha is awesome. To answer your question, I Article Nined William Scott for an involuntary psych evaluation. It lets me hold him a few days, plus he’s better off in Bellevue. Not that I expect to get any more from him. I’m afraid he seems to be a gap in the chain, not a link.”
“Hey, you never know.”
“Don’t patronize me. I do know.”
Recognizing the rise of her firewall, Rook busied himself with his drink to fill the strained silence with something other than strain. After a decent interval, he said, “Well, here’s what I know. This may be a dead end, but only on one front.”
“Here we go. Are you back to 1999 again?”
“No. Before that. I want to look into your mom’s life.”
“Forget it, Rook.”
“Carter Damon said your mom was a piano teacher, right?”
“Tutor. Piano tutor.”
“What qualified her for that?”
Nikki scoffed. “Qualified? Pal, do you have any idea how qualified?” But then she was surprised by the answer he gave without taking a beat.
“You mean like an advanced degree from the New England Conservatory of Music while training to become a top concert soloist? That kind of qualified?” As she sat there just gawking at him, he clinked her glass and said, “Hey, you don’t get a pair of Pulitzers by being a slouch in the research department.”
“All right, so you have your special gifts, smarty. Where’s this going?”
“Riddle me this: What is Detective Heat’s First Rule of Investigation?” Before she could reply, he answered it himself. “‘Look for the odd sock.’ The odd sock being the one thing that doesn’t go with, or seems out of place in, all the evidence.”
“And?”
“And what is the odd sock of your mother’s life? Simple. Why have all that passion, talent, and classical training only to give it up to teach rich brats ‘Heart and Soul’?” He waited, same as he’d seen her wait out the homeless man through the glass.
“I… uh…” She lowered her gaze to the counter, having no answer to share.
“Then let’s find out. How? Let’s follow the odd sock.”
“Now?”
“Of course not. Tomorrow. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We’re going to Boston to visit your mom’s music school.”
“Do I have a say in this?”
“Sure. As long as it’s yes.”
They certainly seemed to know Jameson Rook at the front desk of the Lenox Hotel. After a short walk from the Back Bay Amtrak station, the two of them had planned to drop their overnight bags at the bell desk and move on with their day, but a beaming old gent whose nameplate read “Cory” welcomed the famous writer back and offered them a suite upgrade to something called “Heaven on Eleven” and early check-in. Looking out their top-floor room at the view of the Back Bay, Rook said to Nikki, “I used to come to this hotel a lot because it’s next door to the PL.” He made a nod to the Boston Public Library below. “Logged a lot of hours in there working on a romance.”
“Which book was that?”
“Not a book. Sandra, in the microfiche section.”
“You’re dating yourself.”
“I was then, too. Sandra proved immune to my charms.”
His phone buzzed. It was Cynthia Heat’s music professor from the New England Conservatory returning his call with apologies that she wouldn’t be available until the next morning. Rook set a time to meet,
thanked her, and then hung up. “I hereby declare this day to be an RTWOTC.”
“What’s RTW… whatever?”
“Romantic Trip While On The Case. And you call yourself a cop?”
They had set out to stroll Newbury Street to select one of the thousands of sidewalk cafes for lunch, but on Boylston, when they got a whiff of a gourmet food truck selling pulled pork Vietnamese noodles and rice bowls, a quiche on Newbury didn’t stand a chance. They unpacked the white paper bag on a park bench in Copley Square and began their impromptu picnic. “Nice view,” said Rook, pointing to the bronze statue in front of them. “The ass of John Singleton Copley and a twenty-four-hour CVS.” He put his hand on her knee and added, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” When she didn’t reply, he repeated, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“I should never have left New York.”
Rook put his container of noodles down to give her his full attention. “Look, I know it’s not your nature to take what feels like a step back in the middle of a case. Especially this one. Trust me, I know you are all about pure effort. But you have to try to see this as work. Even if it doesn’t feel like it every second, you are still investigating something my gut tells me is important. And remember, that squad of minions you browbeat are hard at it back home. This is good strategy. It’s divide and conquer, in action.”
“Doesn’t feel like it to me.” Heat set aside her rice bowl and made phone rounds of the investigation while he ate. When she had finished, she couldn’t mask her disappointment. “They came up empty at the nursing home.”
“Too bad. I halfway wondered if that lab cleaning residue might have come from there. They must have some medical solvents in a place like that.”
She shook her head. “Roach checked that already.”
“You know, we ought to have a name like that. A compressed nickname like Raley and Ochoa. Roach.” And then he added, “Only ours would be romantic. I mean there was Bennifer, right? And there’s Brangelina. We could be…”
“Done with this relationship?” She laughed. But he kept on.
“Rooki?… Naw.”
“Would you stop?”
“Or how about… Nooki? Hm, I like Nooki.”
“Is this how you lost Miss Microfiche? Talk like this?”
He hung his head. “Yes.”
A rain shower rolled into Boston, so they took things indoors, to the Museum of Fine Arts. They dashed through a downpour from their taxi, past a group of guerilla artists on the sidewalk with political works on display. One was a lovely, if unimaginative, acrylic painting of a greedy pig in a top hat and tails, smoking a cigar. It caught Rook’s eye, though, and as he ran by, he almost tripped over a sculpture of a three-foot-tall gold leaf fist clenched around a wad of cash. “What a way to go,” he said to Nikki once they got in the lobby. “KO’d by the ‘Fist of Capitalism.’”
Just by entering the museum, he sensed Nikki had become temporarily released from her cares. She grew animated, telling him the MFA had been a weekly pilgrimage when she went to college at Northeastern. She hooked his arm and took him to see all of her favorites in the collection, including the Gilbert Stuart oils of Washington and Adams and The Dory by Winslow Homer. Transfixed, Rook said with reverence, “You know, his water is the wettest you’ll ever see in a painting.” The John Singer Sargents triggered warm memories of the print of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose Rook had given her when they first started seeing each other. Heat and Rook kissed under The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, a masterpiece from the period when the artist made a living painting American expatriates in Paris. The four daughters didn’t seem to mind the PDA.