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?'
'Well, you know, who doesn't say stuff when they're mad? It doesn't mean they did it.' Allie could see that she had gotten their interest and looked down, rolling her thumb on the trackball on her BlackBerry just to have something else to do. When her eyes came up and found Nikki scrutinizing her, she set the PDA on the coffee table and waited, knowing what was coming.
'Tell me what you heard her say.'
'It was just talk.' Allie shrugged it off. Heat simply watched her, waiting.
Rook leaned forward onto his thighs and smiled. 'She always wins the staring contests, trust me, I know. You might as well, you know…'
Allie made her decision to come clean. 'One night last week she took me to dinner. The cool artists do that. They know my salary. Anyway, Soleil wanted Italian so she took me to Babbo.' She misread the look that passed between the other two and explained, 'You know, Mario Batali's place in Washington Square?'
'Yeah, it's great,' said Rook.
'We were eating upstairs, and Soleil has to use the loo, so she excuses herself and goes downstairs. A minute later, I hear all this shouting and a crash. I recognized Soleil's voice so I ran down the steps and there's Cassidy Towne on the floor with her chair tipped over. Just when I got there, Soleil grabs a knife off her table and says…' Allie dry-swallowed again. 'She says, you like stabbing people in the back? How would you like me to stab you in yours, you frickin' pig.' Nikki walked out of the parking garage off Times Square and found Rook buying two hot dogs from a sidewalk vendor across from the GMA studios. 'This is why you hopped out of a moving car?' she asked.
'I call that more rolling than moving,' he said. 'I saw the stand and sprung into my signature hero deployment. Keeps my reflexes sharp. Dog?' He held one out to her.
'No, thanks, job's dangerous enough.' As they crossed Broadway Detective Heat made her habitual check for
