'Back to the apartment,' from Raley.
A few minutes after the meeting broke up, Rook sidled up to Heat, holding his cell phone. 'I just got a call from another one of my sources.'
'Who is it?'
'A source.' He slipped his iPhone into his pocket and crossed his arms.
'You're not going to tell me who, are you?'
'You up for a ride?'
'Is it worth one?'
'Do you have any better leads? Or maybe you'd like to hang around here so you can sit with Captain Montrose and watch the five o'clock news.' Nikki considered that a moment. She dropped a stack of files onto her desk and snatched up her keys. Rook told her to pull up to the curb on 44th Street in front of Sardi's. 'Beats hanging out at a round-the-clock car wash, don't it?'
'Rook, I swear, if this is your sneaky way of getting me out for a drink, it won't work,' she said.
'And yet, here you are.' When she popped the transmission into Drive, Rook said, 'Wait. I'm kidding. That's not what I'm doing.' When she put it back in Park, he added, 'But if you change you mind, you know I'm always game.'
Inside at the host podium, Nikki spotted Rook's mother, waving from her table across the room. She answered with a wave and then put her back to the woman so she couldn't see the anger on her face as she spun to Rook. 'Your mother? This is your source? Your mother?'
'Hey, she called and said she had information on the murder. Would you turn that down?'
'Yes.'
'You don't mean that.' He studied her. 'OK, you do. Which is why I didn't want to tell you. But what could I say to her? Tell her you didn't want to hear whatever information she had? And what if it's useful?'
'You could have done this by yourself.'
'She wanted to talk to the police. That would be you. Come on, we're here, it's the end of the day, what have you got to lose?'
Nikki put on a smile and turned to walk to the table. On her way, still grinning, she quietly said to him, 'You are so going to pay for this.' And then she let her smile grow as they approached Margaret Rook.
She was seated in a corner banquette, regally situated between the caricatures of Jose Ferrer and Danny Thomas. It occurred to Nikki Heat that the setting for Margaret Rook was probably always regal. And if it wasn't, she made it so. Even at the poker game in Rook's loft when Nikki met her last summer, his mother's presence had been decidedly more Monte Carlo than Atlantic City.
After hugs and hellos, they sat. 'Is this your usual table?' Nikki asked. 'Nice and quiet.'
'Well, it's before the pre-theater rush. Trust me, kiddo, it will get loud enough when the buses unload from New Jersey and White Plains. But yes, I like this table.'
'It's her favorite view,' said Rook. He twisted in his chair, and Heat followed his gaze to his mother's own caricature on the facing wall. The Grand Damn of Broadway, as he called her, smiled back from the 1970s.
Mrs. Rook draped her cool fingers on Nikki's wrist and said, 'I have a feeling your caricature might have been up there, too, if you had stuck with theater after college.' It jarred Nikki that Rook's mother knew this, since she'd never mentioned it to her, but then it came to her. The article. That damned article. 'I would like another Jameson,' said the actress.
'I'm afraid you're stuck with me,' said Rook, probably not for the first time in his life. Nikki asked the waiter for a Diet Coke and Rook ordered an espresso.
'Right, you're on duty, Detective Heat.'
'Yes, Jameso- Jamie said you could tell me something about Cassidy Towne.'
'Yes, do you want to hear it now, or wait for cocktails?'
'Now,' said Heat and Rook in unison.
'Very well, then, but if I get interrupted, don't blame me. Jamie, you do remember Elizabeth Essex?'
'No.'
'Look at him. It always irritates Jamie when I tell him stories about people he doesn't know.'
'Actually, it only bugs me when you tell them two or three times and I still don't know who they are. This will just be the first time, so go, Mother, go.'
Nikki prodded her more gently by giving her what she wanted, an official ear. 'You have relevant information to the Cassidy Towne case? Did you know her?'
'Only in passing, which was how I liked it. We all trade in favors, but she reduced the high art to low commerce. When she was new at the paper, Cassidy would invite me to drinks and ask me to trade her house seats for planting items about me in her column. Oh, I made sure I paid for the drinks. It was different with male actors. She would promise a lot of men ink in exchange for sex. From what I heard, she wasn't always good for her end of the bargain, either.'
'So is your information about her… recent?' Nikki asked with hope attached.
'Yes. Now, Elizabeth Essex-write that name down, you'll need it-Elizabeth is a marvelous patroness of the arts. She and I are on the committee to bring an outdoor program of Shakespeare soliloquies to the fountain at Lincoln Center next summer. This afternoon we met with Esmeralda Montes from the Central Park Conservancy for lunch at Bar Boulud before it gets too cool for the patio seating.'
'Where's that coffee?' said Rook. 'I could use the caffeine.'
'Relax, hon, I'm getting there, it's important to set the stage, you know? So we're on our third glass of a very nice Domaine Mardon Quincy, talking all about the murder and the stolen body, as everyone must be, and Elizabeth, who does not hold her liquor well, reveals, in a moment of wine-soaked melancholy, a rather shocking piece of news I feel duty-bound to share.'
Nikki asked, 'And what would that be?'
'That she tried to kill Cassidy Towne.' As the waiter delivered the drinks, Margaret relished the looks on their faces and lifted her fresh rocks glass in a toast. 'And, curtain.' Elizabeth Essex couldn't stop staring at Nikki Heat's badge. 'You'd like to talk to me? About what?'
'I'd rather not discuss it out here in the hallway, Mrs. Essex, and I think neither would you.'
The woman said, 'All right, then,' and opened the door wide, and when the detective and Rook were standing on the imported Venetian terrazzo in her foyer, Nikki began.
'I have some questions to ask you about Cassidy Towne.'
Suspects and interviewees in murder cases have a panorama of reactions to the police. They become defensive, or belligerent, or emotional, or stone-faced, or hysterical. Elizabeth Essex fainted. Nikki was eyeballing her for a tell and the woman became a marionette with severed strings.
She came to as Heat was in the middle of her call for an ambulance, and the woman pleaded with her to hang up, that she would be fine. She hadn't hit her head, and her color was coming back, so Nikki obliged. She and Rook steadied her on the way to the living room, and they settled into an L-shaped sofa set angled to take advantage of the penthouse view of the East River and Queens.
Elizabeth Essex, late fifties, wore the Upper East Side uniform, a sweater set and pearls, complete with the tortoiseshell headband. She was attractive without trying, exuded wealth without trappings. She insisted she was all right and pressed Detective Heat to continue. Her husband would be home soon and they had evening plans.
'Well, then,' said Detective Heat, 'one of us should start talking.'
'I've been waiting for this,' said the woman with quiet resignation. Nikki was back to observing responses more familiar to her experience. Elizabeth Essex was vibing a mix of guilt and relief.
'You are aware, I assume, that Cassidy Towne was found murdered this morning?' said Heat.
She nodded. 'It's been on the news all day. And they say now her body was stolen. How does that happen?'
'I have information that you attempted to kill Cassidy Towne.'
Elizabeth Essex was full of surprises. She didn't hesitate; she simply said, 'Yes, yes I did.'
Heat looked over to Rook, who knew enough to stay out of Nikki's way on this one. He was busy tracking a jet that was banking around Citi Field on short approach to La Guardia. 'When was this, Mrs. Essex?'
'June. I don't know the exact date, but it was about a week before the big heat wave. Do you remember
