“I’ll get to that when I’m ready. First, I want to know where you were between one and two P.M. since you were not at Dino-Bites. You lied.”
“I didn’t lie. I was there.”
“You dropped your son and nanny off and left. I already have witnesses. Should I ask the nanny, also?”
“No. That’s true, I left.”
“Where were you, Mrs. Starr? And this time I’d advise you to be truthful.”
“All right. I was with a man. I was embarrassed to tell you.”
“Tell me now. What do you mean with a man?”
“God, you’re a bitch. I was sleeping with this guy, OK? Happy?”
“What’s his name?”
“You can’t be serious.”
The face Nikki gave her could still show the full range of expression. It told her she was quite serious. “And don’t say Barry Gable, he says you stood him up.” Heat watched Kimberly’s mouth go slack. “Barry Gable. You know, the man who assaulted you on the street? The one you told Detective Ochoa must have been a purse snatcher and that you didn’t know him?”
“I was having an affair. My husband just died. I was embarrassed to say.”
“So if you’re over your shyness, Kimberly, tell me about this other affair so I can verify your whereabouts. And, as I’m sure you just figured out, I will check.”
Kimberly gave her the name of a doctor, Cory Van Peldt. Yes, it was the truth, she said, and yes, it was the same doctor she had seen this morning. Heat had her spell his name and wrote it on her pad along with his number. Kimberly said she met him when she went in for a facial assessment two weeks ago, and they had this magic thing. Heat was betting the magic was in his pants and was his wallet, but she knew better than to say so. She prayed Rook had the same sense.
As long as things were in a hostile vein, Nikki decided to press on. In a few minutes she would need Kimberly’s cooperation with the photos and wanted her to think twice about lying, or be so rattled she’d do it poorly if she did. “A lot of things can’t be taken at face value with you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You tell me, Laldomina.”
“Excuse me?”
“And Samantha.”
“Hey, don’t you start with that, nuh-uh.”
“Wow, that’s cool. You sounded pure Long Island.” She turned to Rook. “See what stress does? All that preppy posing falls away.”
“First of all, my legal name is Kimberly Starr. There’s no crime in changing a name.”
“Help me out: Why Samantha? I’m picturing you with your natural color and see you more as a Tiffany or Crystal.”
“You cops, you always loved to give us girls a hard time for getting by any way we could. People do what they gotta do, ya know?”
“That’s why we’re having this conversation. To find out who did what.”
“If that means did I kill my husband…God, I can’t believe I just said that…The answer is no.” She waited for some response from Heat, and Nikki didn’t give it. Let her wonder, she thought.
“My husband changed his name, too, did you know that? In the eighties. He took a branding seminar and decided what was holding him back was his name. Bruce DeLay. He said the words construction and DeLay weren’t the best selling tool, so he researched names that would be brand-positive. You know, upbeat and inspiring confidence. He made a list, names like Champion and Best. He picked Star and added the extra r so it wouldn’t sound fake.”
Much as she had the day before, when she’d crossed from his opulent lobby into his ghost-town offices, Heat watched another chunk of Matthew Starr’s public image crack and drop off. “How did he end up with Matthew?”
“Research. He did focus groups to see what name people trusted that went with his looks. So what if I changed mine, too? BFD, ya know?”
Detective Heat decided she had gotten as much as she was going to get out of this line of questions and was happy at least to have a fresh alibi to check. She took out her photo array. As she began to lay down the pictures and tell her to take her time, Kimberly interrupted her on the third shot.
“This man here. I know him. That’s Miric.”
Nikki felt the tingle she got when a domino was tipping, ready to fall. “And how do you know him?”
“He was Matt’s bookie.”
“Is Miric a first or last name?”
“You’re all about names today, aren’t you?”
“Kimberly, he might have killed your husband.”
“I don’t know which name. He was just Miric. Polish dude, I think. Not sure.”
Nikki had her examine the rest of the array, without any other hits. “And you’re positive your husband placed bets with this man.”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be sure of that?”
“When Noah Paxton looked at these pictures, he didn’t recognize him. If he’s paying the bills, wouldn’t he know him?”
“Noah? He refused to deal with the bookmaking. He had to give Matthew the cash but looked the other way.” Kimberly said she didn’t know Miric’s address or phone number. “No, I only saw him when he came to the door or showed up at a restaurant.”
The detective would double-check Starr’s desk and personal diary or his BlackBerry for some coded entry or recent call list. But a name and face and occupation was a good start.
As she squared her stack of photos to put away, she told Kimberly she had thought she didn’t know about her husband’s gambling.
“Come on, a wife knows. Just like I knew about his women. Do you want to know how much Flagyl I took in the last six years?”
No, Nikki did not care to know. But she did ask her for any names she recalled of her husband’s past lovers. Kimberly said most of them seemed casual, a few one-nighters and weekends at casinos, and she didn’t know their names. Only one got serious, and that was with a young marketing executive on his staff, an affair that lasted six months and ended about three years ago, after which the executive left the company. Kimberly gave Nikki the woman’s name and got her address off a love letter she had intercepted. “You can keep that if you want. I only held onto it in case we got divorced and I needed to squeeze his balls.” With that, Nikki left her to grieve.
They found Roach waiting for them in the lobby. Both had their coats off, and Raley’s shirt was soaked through again. “You’ve got to start wearing undershirts, Raley,” said Heat as she walked up.
“And how about switching to an Oxford?” added Ochoa. “Those polyester things you’re wearing go see- through when you sweat.”
“Turning you on, Ochoa?” asked Raley.
His partner jabbed back. “Much like your shirt, you see right through me.”
Roach reported the same hit off the photo array when they showed it to the doorman. “We had to sort of pry it out of him,” said Ochoa. “Doorman was a little embarrassed Miric slipped into the building. These guys always call up to the apartment before letting anybody in. He said he was taking a leak in the alley and must have missed him. But he did catch him coming out.” Quoting from notes, the doorman described Miric as a “scrawny little ferret” who came by to see Mr. Starr from time to time but whose visits had become more frequent over the past two weeks.
“Plus we scored a bonus,” said Raley. “This gentleman was coming out with ferret dude that day.” He peeled off another shot from the array and held it up. “Looks like Miric brought some muscle.”
Of course, Nikki’s instincts had already been crackling about this other guy, the brooder, when she screened the lobby video that morning. He was in a loose shirt, but she could tell he was a bodybuilder or at least spent a lot of his day at the weight rack. Under any other circumstances, she wouldn’t have thought twice and would have assumed he was delivering air conditioners, probably one under each arm, from the looks of him. But the serene
