Frozen Heat (2012) (29 page)

“On the Food Network, Alton Brown specifically says not to cook pasta in less than a gallon.” He took the lid from her and replaced it. “Why don’t I grate my Parmigiano-Reggiano while you relax and find a killer. Deal?”

While he cooked, the squeak of her marker on the whiteboard they had nicknamed Murder Board South mixed with the chop of his chef’s knife on the Boos Block. “Pop quiz, Rook. What have we learned from our DHS carjacking?”

“You mean, besides that automobile travel with you is repeatedly fraught with peril? We’ve learned that we are on to something. Otherwise, you don’t get that kind of attention.”

“Including eavesdropping on our conversations and tailing us in Paris. You did recognize Callan’s partner, didn’t you?”

He looked stumped but tried to cover. “Uh, sure. He … I have no idea.”

“Wake up, Rook. He was the guy in the blue suit outside the cafe the other morning acting like he was killing time rolling his own cigarette. Did you see how he looked away tonight when I made him?”

“Ah … sure I did,” he lied.

“Homeland Security is nervous about something. And for all their snooping, our interrogation tells me whatever that is, they still haven’t cracked it.”

“No kidding. Every question he asked told us what they don’t know. And did you see his face when you mentioned Seacrest? And what’s with the swabs?” He looked through the steam rising from the pot to see her circling “DHS Swabs?” on the whiteboard. “So what’s got them operating at DEFCON One?”

“I don’t know, but I say, let’s keep doing what we’ve been doing because it’s working.”

He fanned the spaghetti in the roiling water and gave her a self-satisfied grin. “You mean like going to Boston and Paris?”

“Yes,” said Nikki. “Those were great ideas I had, weren’t they?”

“Brilliance,” said Rook, “brilliance.”

Jeff Heat’s socks matched, which pleased his daughter, who wasn’t ready to witness his decline just yet. Maybe the advance overnight notice had given him a chance to better prepare for the visit this time. But while he sat beside her on the couch in Scarsdale that afternoon, going through the box of old photos, she noticed that even with the pressed khakis straight from the dry cleaners, a springy pastel sweater, and a fresh shave, her dad looked many years older than his age.

Every time he paused on a photograph, Nikki would ask, “Anything?” and he would shake no but hesitate again before dropping it in the discard pile. It didn’t take long for Nikki to understand what was happening. Jeff Heat was not recognizing any of her mother’s contemporaries; he was stopping to dwell on the shots of the woman he had fallen in love with. The divorce had made Nikki overlook the possibility that he would enjoy those shots. But why not? They were not only part of his life, they might have been from the best part. She made a mental note to get some of the pictures scanned and make an album for him.

“Here’s one I recognize. Eugene Summers. He’s the butler now on that asinine TV show,” he said, holding up a group shot of her mom, Tyler Wynn, and a young man who now, decades later, had his own hit reality series playing himself as a manservant to the young slacker of the week. “Think I even took this picture.”

“I love that show. You know Eugene Summers?” asked Rook.

“Not really. Just met him once over in London. Liked the guy at first, then he kept correcting everything I did. He even took the handkerchief out of my suit pocket and refolded it. Can you believe that?”

“Cool,” said Rook, earning a withering glance from Nikki.

“Why were you in London, Dad?”

“Your mother, why else? Cindy had a tutoring job there the summer of ‘76. What a time to be stuck there. Worst heat wave in decades. And a drought. And how crazy to be in England during the Bicentennial of kicking their royal asses.” He tossed the picture of Eugene Summers into the discards.

Nikki, who had seen the photo but hadn’t made the connection to Summers, set it aside as a reminder to contact the reality star. “Do you remember who she was tutoring?”

Her father laughed. “Sure as hell do. The kid of some big millionaire brewer over there. Good beer, too. Durdles’ Finest. That’s how I remember.” He licked his lips, which made her sad. “Largest exporter to Ireland. No wonder the SOB was rich. If you can’t sell beer in Ireland during a heat wave, hang it up.”

His attention waned as they reached the bottom of the toile-covered box, which he did without making any other identifications, except the numerous shots of Nicole Bernardin. “Sorry I couldn’t be any more help,” he said.

Nikki repacked the photos, taking her time to be careful with them, but also, in truth, to procrastinate. There was a difficult subject she would be broaching soon. But first, she had a question. “People I’ve talked to asked me if Mom had something she tried to hide.”

“Her other life,” he said with a scoff. “If she was spying for the CIA like you say, great. But it still shut me out. And, by the way, just ‘cause she was spying doesn’t mean she wasn’t also having an affair with that …,” he gestured to the box that Nikki had just put the lid on, “smooth operator, Wynn. Maybe he was the attraction.” She didn’t have anything to say to that and considered the best course would be to nod and leave it for him to work out his anger his own way. The CIA news hadn’t been the cleansing tonic she had hoped for. Part of what he said, she had to admit, made sense. Spying and an affair weren’t mutually exclusive. In her own relief—and, perhaps, wishful thinking—Nikki hadn’t thought to question it as he had. Perhaps because they had different agendas. She was seeking to absolve Cindy Heat; he wanted reinforcement of the injustice he’d suffered.

Rook had been trying to stay out of the way, but he spoke up to help steer things back on topic. “Nikki, wasn’t it more like Something physical they were talking about hiding?”

“That’s right. Dad? Did you ever see Mom trying to hide an object or did you find something around that didn’t make sense?”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. It could be a key, a videocassette, a blueprint, an envelope. The fact is, I don’t know. But did you ever stumble on something that made you say, what the heck is this?”

She heard him sucking his teeth, and his eyes got the same downcast look she’d seen when he admitted he had hired that private investigator to follow his wife. Her father excused himself then returned from his bedroom after five long minutes of drawers and cabinet doors opening and slamming. “This is the thing I found that made me hire Joe Flynn.”

Rook said, “Joe Flynn. He was your PI?”

Jeff Heat nodded and handed Nikki the small velvet bag. As she took it from him, she experienced the kick in her chest she always got when a dead case felt like it might be getting some legs. Rook felt goosed, too. He slid forward on his armchair and tilted his head up as she opened the drawstring. “It’s a charm bracelet,” she said as she shook it out into her palm. Rook got up and stood beside her father to get a better view. It was simple, not very expensive. A gold plated link chain with only two charms on it: the numerals one and nine. “Who’s it from?” she asked.

“I never knew.”

“Didn’t Mom tell you?”

“I, ah, never told her I had it. I was too ashamed. And she never asked about it. So when the private detective said things were all clear on the affair front, I decided not to tempt fate, you know?”

“Sure, I get that.” Heat turned the numbers over to inspect them but saw nothing unusual. “Do you mind if I keep this?”

“Take it.” And then he whisked a hand at her like a broom. “Take it away.” Nikki studied her father and didn’t see age anymore, but the toll of secrets. Then she wondered what her mom’s face would look like if she were alive.

“Oh, listen, one more thing before we go.” Nikki stepped into the awkward subject with a light touch, trying to ignore how much her duplicity made her feel like her mother’s daughter. But the difficult question had to be asked, especially after the Russian had made such a point of it the other night in the Bois des Vincennes. “You held on to all of your bank records, right?”

“Yeah …” Even though his financial background made him a records pack rat, Jeff Heat’s reply carried a timbre of uncertainty that was about as straightforward as her question. Reminding herself that the information she sought was to clear her mother of the double agent rumors, Heat pressed on with the anvil she had to drop.

“Any chance I could see them?”

“May I ask why?” She saw more than wariness in him. It was more like something she had seen so often in suspects during interrogation: fear of discovery. But he wasn’t a suspect, he was her father. Nikki didn’t want to break him down, she only wanted information. So she went right for disclosure.

“I want to know if Mom had any accounts that were separate from yours. Secret, sort of like this.” Heat held up the velvet pouch with the charm inside. “An account you didn’t know about until you stumbled on it.”

The silence that followed got broken by the ringing phone on her father’s side table. Nikki could see that the block letters on the orange field of the caller ID read, “NYLedger.” Her dad saw it, too, and waited out the four rings without answering. By the time the phone had dumped silently to voice mail, he’d come to a decision and said, “It is like that damned bracelet. I asked her about it. I said, why the separate account, and she said for mad money, independence. It’s the thing that first got my gut twisting that there really might be another man.” The way he looked at her broke Nikki’s heart. “Do you really need this?”

Heat nodded grimly. “It may help me find her killer,” she said, hoping that would end up being the only significance of the secret account.

He gave it a moment of thought then wordlessly disappeared again to the back hall, this time to the second bedroom. Rook gave Nikki an affirming smile that did little to make her feel any better. When her dad returned moments later, he carried a brown cardboard accordion file with an elastic strap around it. He didn’t come to Nikki with it, though. He stood by the front door and waited. The two of them joined him there and he gave her the file.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Tell me something, Nikki,” he said in a low, hollow voice. “What makes you any different than that other cop who came here to disrespect me?” He swept an arm toward the phone with its blinking message light. “Or those reporters?”

Her eyes began to sting. She spoke the truth, and meant it. “The difference is that I’m trying to help.”

It offered him no comfort. Her father said, “I think it might be a good idea for you to give me some space for a while.” Then her dad retreated to the back hall so they could let themselves out.

Their usual ride would have been in Heat’s motor pool Crown Victoria, but since she was stuck on leave, they had taken a car Rook had rented. That’s how he ended up as the lucky duck to endure the stop-and-go braking of the Sunday caravan back to Manhattan by weekend day trippers. He had prepared himself for a silent, moody ride but Heat had immersed herself in full work mode. Rook considered the emotional slap Nikki had just gotten from her father and, reflecting on her emotional wall, was glad for her sake that she had the capacity to seal herself on the good side of it, if only temporarily.

From the passenger side, Heat made a quick pass of the bank file, eyeballing the sparse amount of paperwork and monthly statements in it. “These are incomplete,” she said. “My mom only carried a balance of a few hundred dollars, with just enough activity to keep the account active, but the statements abruptly come to an end without any sign of the account being closed.”

“When’s the last statement you see?”

“October 1999. The month before she was killed.” She got out her phone and did some scrolling until she came to Carter Damon. As she listened to his phone ring, she wondered if the former lead detective on her mom’s case would be too pissed to talk to her after their last encounter. “Detective Damon,” she began her voice mail, using his former rank as an olive branch, “Nikki Heat. Hope I’m not disturbing you on the weekend, but I wanted to ask you a question about the old case and challenge your memory about a bank account.” She left her cell number and hung up.

For guilty pleasure and to cement their return to the good old USA, they turned in the car then went to a local favorite of Rook’s called Mudville9 for an early dinner of barbecue wings and Prohibition Ale. They chose a table near the TV showing the local news, so they could catch up on the progress of the earthquake cleanup, which, the scrolling text under the official in the hard hat said, was 95 percent complete, with a price tag in the millions. Rook dipped a fry in his extra Buffalo Wow sauce and started to ask Nikki how he’d look in a hard hat. “Not for safety, mind you, but as a fashion choice.” But she had become so suddenly riveted to the screen that he turned back around to see what had caught her attention.

A blazing headline graphic filled the top of the wide screen:
BREAKING NEWS: POLICE ARREST KILLER IN FROZEN MURDER CASE
.

Rook asked the bartender to turn up the volume on their TV so they could hear the breaking story, which didn’t go down so well with the
Sunday Night Baseball
fans, but he and Nikki didn’t care. They stood under the big screen, their wings forgotten and growing cold on the table behind them, as they gaped up at the New York cable news channel.

The reporter stood outside a length of caution tape in a city street and spoke to the camera. Underneath him the graphic read: “Live, from Hell’s Kitchen.” Pressing the earpiece to his ear, he nodded, picking up his cue from the anchor. “Thanks, Miranda. Yes, a major break in a case that has been the talk of New York this week, ever since the frozen corpse of an Inwood woman, the victim of a fatal stabbing, was found inside a suitcase on a food delivery truck.” He turned and gestured behind him, and the camera slowly zoomed to show the front entrance of a tan brick apartment building, where an NYPD uniform stood guard. “You can see it’s quiet here now on West Fifty-fourth Street, but that’s the doorway of the building where, minutes ago, officers and detectives of the NYPD stormed the apartment of an alleged killer.”