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.
THIRTEEN
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.”
Next came recorded footage of Captain Irons standing with his gut to the crime scene tape, in his glory, with his name plastered on the screen and a sea of microphones pointing at him. “Our suspect’s name is Hank Norman Spooner, age forty-two, a self-employed apartment sitter. Mr. Spooner was apprehended without incident by myself and Detective Sharon Hinesburg from my precinct, the Twentieth, as well as officers assisting from Midtown North.”
Rook said, “This gets better every minute.” Heat didn’t respond; she just stood transfixed as Irons answered
