As she drew near, Nikki Heat stepped to intercept her. "Miss Gray?"
Soleil slowed her stride, but only to size up Nikki, as if for a fight. She gave Rook a fleeting appraisal, but concentrated on the detective. "Who the hell are you? This is a closed rehearsal."
Heat showed her badge and introduced herself. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about Cassidy Towne."
"Now?" When Nikki just stared, Soleil dropped an F-bomb. "Whatever your questions are about her, the answer's going to be the same. 'Bitch.' " She went to the small craft services table in the corner and got a bottle of Fiji out of a cooler. She didn't offer one to either of them.
"Your dancing's awesome," said Rook.
"It's crap. Are you a cop? 'Cause you don't look like a cop."
Nikki jumped in to take that one. "He's working with us on this case." No need to freak her out that the press was there.
"You look familiar." Soleil Gray canted her head to one side, appraising Nikki. "You're on that magazine, aren't you?"
Heat ignored that path and said, "I assume you're aware that Cassidy Towne was killed?"
"Yes. A tragic loss for all of us." She cracked the seal on the blue cap and chugged some water. "Why are you talking to me about that dead bee-otch, other than to cheer me up?"
Rook joined in. "Cassidy Towne wrote a lot about you in her column."
"The scumbag printed a ton of lies and gossip about me, if that's what you call writing. She had these anonymous sources and unnamed spies claiming I did everything from snorting lines off a Hammond B3 to groping Clive Davis at the Grammys."
"She also wrote that you fired a.38 at your producer during one of the sessions with your old band," said Rook.
"Not true." Soleil grabbed a towel from a wicker basket near the window. "It was a.44." She wiped the sweat from her face and added, "Good times."
Nikki opened her notebook and a pen, always a means to help folks get serious about conversations. "Did you have any personal contact with Cassidy Towne?"
"What is this? You don't think I had anything to do with her murder, do you? Seriously?"
Nikki stayed on her own track, getting her facts in morsels, accumulating small answers, and, in them, looking for inconsistencies. "Did you have any conversations with her?"
"Not really."
There was a deflection, for sure. "So you never talked to her?"
"Yeah. We went to tea every afternoon and swapped recipes."
Nikki's newfound sensitivity about gossip helped her empathize with the singer's attitude about Cassidy Towne, but her cop sense was telling her this sarcasm was a bluff. Time to move the fences in. "Are you saying you never talked to her?"
Soleil held the cool flat side of the bottle against her neck. "No, I'm not saying never."
"Did you ever see her?"
"Well, sure, I guess so. It's a small town if you're famous, you know?"
Did Nikki ever know. "When was the last time you saw Cassidy Towne, Miss Gray?"
Soleil puffed her cheeks and made a show of looking thoughtful. Nikki felt her acting was on a par with the dog walker from Juilliard-in other words, unconvincing. "I can't remember. Probably a long time ago. Obviously not important to me." She looked over at the dancers coming back from their five. "Look, I have a music video to shoot, and it ain't happening."
"Sure, I understand. Just one more question," said Nikki, with her pen poised. "Can you tell me your whereabouts from one to four A.M. the night Cassidy Towne was killed?" With the Texan as the probable killer, Soleil's alibi-in fact everyone else's alibi on this case-became less significant. Still, Nikki clung to the procedures that always worked for her. The time line was hungry. Feed the time line.
Soleil Gray took a moment to count nights and said, "Yes, I can. I was with Allie, an A amp; R assistant from my record label."
And you were with her all that time? All night?"
"Um, let me see…" Soleil's manner lit up Heat's radar. The searching she was doing carried a whiff of stall. "Yuh, pretty much all night, till about two-thirty."
"May I have the name and a contact number for the assistant, Allie?"
After she gave Heat the information, Soleil quickly added, "Oh, wait. Just remembered. After I was with Allie, I hooked up with Zane, my old keyboard guy from Shades of Gray."
"And what time was that?"
"… Three, I guess. We had a late bite and I went home to bed about four, four-thirty. Are we done?"
"I have one more question," said Rook. "How do you build upper arms like that? You going to be opening for Madonna?"
"Hey, way things are going? Madge is gonna be opening for me." The soft elevator chime echoed across the desert-rose marble lobby of Rad Dog Records until the sound was lost in the high, vaulted ceiling. A blonde woman in her early twenties was the only one to step off. She looked up from her BlackBerry, spotted Heat and Rook at the security desk, and walked over to them.
"Hi, I'm Allie," she said while she was still twenty feet away.
After they shook hands and made introductions, Nikki asked her if it was a good time to talk. She said it was, but she could only be away from her desk for five minutes. "Did you see The Devil Wears Prada?" asked Allie. "Mine wears Ed Hardy, and he's a guy, but the rest is pretty dead-on." She escorted them across the reception area to a sofa grouping. It was made of hard molded plastic and didn't do much to absorb the sound that bounced around the room. Nikki was struck by how comfortable the sofa was.
Rook settled in opposite them on a large white molded plastic chair. "Looks like we're waiting for the next shuttle to the space station." Then he looked down at the coffee table and saw Nikki's cover on top of a stack of magazines. He picked up a day-old Variety, pretended to scan the headline, and tossed it over the First Press.
"Is this about the murder, the gossip columnist?" Allie swept her hair behind her ear and then twirled the ends with her fingers.
Nikki had figured word would reach her from Soleil before they got there, and it had. That might account for the assistant's nervous tics. Time to find out. "It is. How did you know?"
Her eyes grew wide and she blurted, "OK, Soleil called me and said you might come." Allie licked her lips, and her tongue looked like it was wearing a pink sock. "I've never dealt with the police like this. At concerts, I have, but they're mostly retired."
"Soleil Gray said you were with her the night Cassidy Towne was killed." Heat got out her reporter's spiral notebook to signal this would be on the record. And waited.
"I… was."
Hesitation. Just enough to make Nikki press. "From when to when?" She uncapped her stick pen. "As exact as you can be."
"Um, we got together at eight. Went over to the Music Hall at ten."
"In Brooklyn?" said Rook.
"Yeah, in Williamsburg. Jason Mraz had a secret show. He's not on our label, but we got passes."
Nikki asked, "How long were you there?"
"Jason went on at ten, we left at about eleven-thirty. Is that good?"
"Allie, I need to know what time she left you."
"Is this between us?"
Nikki shrugged. "For now."
She hesitated and said, "That is when she left me. Eleven-thirty." Heat didn't need to look at her notes to know that the times Soleil had given her were bogus. Allie flipped her hair around her ear again. "You won't tell Soleil?"
"That she asked you to lie in a murder investigation?" Allie's lower lip started to tremble and Nikki put a hand on her knee. "Relax, you did the right thing." Allie flashed a quick smile that the detective returned before she continued. "Soleil and Cassidy Towne had some bad blood between them, didn't they?"
"Yeah, that bitch-sorry, but she kept printing all sorts of ugly crap about her. Like if she had one beer. Made Soleil nuts."
"So we understand," said Nikki. "Did you ever hear Soleil say anything threatening about Cassidy Towne?"