“No, sign this!” She took a step closer and tugged aside the cup of her halter.
Rook smiled. “I think I’m going to need more ink.”
The woman exploded with laughter and clutched Nikki Heat’s arm. “See? This is why he’s my favorite writer.”
But Heat was focused on the front steps of the Guilford, where Detective Ochoa clapped a sympathetic hand on the shoulder of the doorman. He left the shade of the canopy, did a limbo under the tape, and crossed to her. “Doorman says our vic lived in this building. Sixth floor.”
Nikki heard Rook clear his throat behind her but didn’t turn. He was either gloating or signing a groupie’s breast. She wasn’t in the mood to see either one.
An hour later in the solemn hush of the victim’s apartment, Detective Heat, the embodiment of sympathetic patience, sat in an antique tapestry chair across from his wife and their seven-year-old son. A blue reporter’s-cut spiral notebook rested closed on her lap. Her naturally erect dancer’s posture and the drape of her hand on the carved wooden armrest gave her a look of regal ease. When she caught Rook staring at her from across the room, he turned away and studied the Jackson Pollock on the wall in front of him. She reflected on how much the paint splatters echoed the busboy’s apron downstairs, and though she tried to stop it, her cop’s brain began streaming its capture video of the mangled busing station, the slack faces of traumatized waitstaff, and the coroner’s van departing with the body of real estate mogul Matthew Starr.
Heat wondered if Starr was a jumper. The economy, or, more accurately, the lack of it, had triggered scores of collateral tragedies. On any given day, the country seemed one turn of a hotel maid’s key away from discovering the next suicide or murder-suicide of a CEO or tycoon. Was ego an antidote? As New York real estate developers went, Matthew Starr didn’t write the book on ego, but he sure did the term paper. A perennial also-ran in the race to slap his name on the outside of everything with a roof, you had to credit Starr with at least staying in the chase.
And by the looks of his digs, he had been weathering the storm lavishly on two luxury floors of a landmark building just off Central Park West. Every furnishing was either antique or designer; the living room was a grand salon two stories high, and its walls were covered up to the cathedral ceiling by collectible art. Safe bet nobody left take-out menus or locksmith brochures at this front door.
A trace of muffled laughter turned Nikki Heat’s attention to the balcony where Detectives Raley and Ochoa, a duo affectionately condensed to “Roach,” were working. Kimberly Starr rocked her son in a long hug and didn’t seem to hear it. Heat excused herself and crossed the room, gliding in and out of ponds of light beaming down from the upper windows, casting an aura on her. She sidestepped the forensics tech dusting the French doors and went out onto the balcony, flipping her notebook to a blank page.
“Pretend we’re going over notes.” Raley and Ochoa exchanged confused looks then drew closer to her. “I could hear you two laughing in there.”
“Oh, jeez…,” said Ochoa. He winced and the sweat bead clinging to the tip of his nose fell onto her page.
“Listen to me. I know to you this is just another crime scene, right? But for that family in there, it’s the only one they’ve ever experienced. Are you hearing me? Good.” She half turned to the door and turned back. “Oh. And when we get out of here? I want to hear that joke. I could use it.”
When Heat came back in, the nanny was ushering Kimberly’s son out of the room. “Take Matty outside for a while, Agda. But not out front. Do you hear me? Not out front.” She pulled another tissue and dabbed her nose.
Agda stopped in the archway. “It is so hot in the park today for him.” The Scandinavian nanny was a looker and could have been Kimberly’s coed sister. A comparison that made Heat ponder the age disparity between Kimberly Starr, who she ballparked at twenty-eight, and her dead husband, a man in his mid-sixties. Can you say Trophy Wife, boys and girls?
Matty’s solution was the movies. The new Pixar film was out, and even though he’d seen it on its first day, he wanted to go again. Nikki made a note to take her niece to it on the weekend. That little girl loved animated movies. Almost as much as Nikki. Nothing like a niece to provide the perfect excuse to spend two hours enjoying pure innocence. Matty Starr left with an unsure wave, sensing something amiss but so far spared the news that would descend upon the little boy soon enough.
“Once again, Mrs. Starr, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Detective.” Her voice came from a far place. She sat primly, smoothing the pleats of her sundress and then waited, immobile except for the tissue she absently twisted on her lap.
“I know this isn’t the best time, but there are some questions I’m going to need to ask.”
“I understand.” Again, the waif voice, measured, remote, and what else? Heat wondered. Yes, proper.
Heat uncapped her pen. “Were you or your son here when it happened?”
“No, thank God. We were out.” The detective made a short note and folded her hands. Kimberly waited, rolling a chunk of black onyx from her David Yurman necklace, then filled the silence. “We went to Dino-Bites over on Amsterdam. We had frozen tar pit soup. It’s just melted chocolate ice cream with Gummysaurs. Matty loves the tar pit soup.”
Rook sat down on the toile Chippendale wing chair opposite Heat. “Do you know if anyone else was home?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She seemed to see him for the first time. “Have we met? You look familiar.”
Heat jumped in to close that flank, and fast. “Mr. Rook is a journalist. A magazine writer working with us in an unofficial capacity. Very unofficial.”
“A reporter…You’re not going to do a story about my husband, are you?”
“No. Not specifically. I’m just doing background research on this squad.”
“Good. Because my husband wouldn’t like that. He thought all reporters were assholes.”
Nikki Heat said she understood completely, but she was looking at Rook when she said it. And then she continued, “Did you notice any changes in your husband’s mood or behavior recently?”
“Matt did not kill himself, don’t even go there.” Her demure, preppy composure vaporized in a flare of anger.
“Mrs. Starr, we just want to cover all—”
“Don’t! My husband loved me and our son. He loved life. He was building a mixed-use low-rise with green technology, for God’s sake.” Beads of perspiration sprouted under her side-swept bangs. “Why are you asking stupid questions when you could be looking for his killer?”
Detective Heat let her vent. She had been through enough of these to know that the composed ones had the most rage to siphon off. Or was she just recalling herself back when she was the one in The Loss Chair, nineteen years old with her world suddenly imploding around her? Had she really siphoned off all her rage, or merely clamped a lid on it?
“It’s summer, damn it, we should be in the Hamptons. This wouldn’t have happened if we were at Stormfall.” Now, that’s money. You don’t just buy an estate in East Hampton, you name it. Stormfall was beachfront, secluded, and Seinfeld-adjacent with a partial Spielberg view. “I hate this city,” Kimberly shouted. “Hate it, hate it. What is this, like, murder number three hundred so far this year? As if they even matter to you people after a while.” She panted, apparently finished. Heat closed her notebook and circled around the coffee table to sit beside her on the sofa.
“Please hear me. I know how difficult this is.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m afraid I do.” She waited for the meaning of that to sink in on Kimberly, then continued. “Murders are not numbers to me. A person died. A loved one. Someone you thought you were eating dinner with tonight is gone. A little boy has lost his father. Someone is responsible. And you have my promise I will see your case through.”