Rhymer asked, “Address?”
“Mail drop. No offices evident. Phone is an eight-eight-eight. I’ve put in for a check on that number and any other phone accounts she had. Landline, if she even had one, got taken. And, as you recall, she had no cell phone on her.”
Rook said, “No cell phone? That’s like one step away from cave paintings and medicinal leeches.”
Heat posted the business card. “She had a Web site, but it’s one page stating all of the above plus an added line, ‘References and testimonials on request.’”
Raley said, “Sounds like a front or a home business.”
“Rales, you work that thread. Put on your media crown and surf for any hits on executive placements, business testimonials, you know what I’m after.” He nodded as he jotted his note. “Detective Feller, you do a search for her state and federal tax ID. That will also tell us if she used an accountant.”
“And if so, I follow the proverbial money,” Feller said.
“Like the bloodhound you are. That includes all bank accounts, safe deposit boxes, credit cards, credit check-the works. Detective Malcolm, do you own a suit?”
“Birthday,” his partner, Reynolds, heckled him.
“Whatevs,” said Heat. “Nicole Bernardin was a French national. Take a jaunt across Central Park and visit their consulate when they open. See if she’s known to them. Also put in a call to the French consulate in Boston.” She indicated the Esplanade photo. “This was for a cultural program they sponsored. Maybe she kept in contact. Find out.”
Rook had his hand up. “A thought?”
“Let’s hear it,” said Nikki.
“Her laptop is missing, right?”
“And her external drive and memory keys.”
“Right,” he continued, “but in my own travel experience with a notebook computer, I always do compulsive backing up, either by e-mail attachments I send to myself or, the new fail-safe, syncing everything to a remote internet storage cloud service like Dropbox.”
Heat said, “That’s actually a good idea.”
“Second one today,” said Rook.
Ochoa said, “I tell ya, the man’s got the power. The power of Roach Blood.”
“Detective Rhymer,” she said. “Soon as we adjourn, bust down some geek doors at the Computer and Information Technology Unit to see if they have any Big Bangers who can work a trace on whether she used a Web cloud for data backup.”
The soft-spoken detective formerly from the South lived up to his nickname of Opie by politely asking, “And it’s cool if I kick some butt, even if it’s a Sunday?”
“Even better,” said Detective Heat. “That way, they’ll know how important this is.”
After dinner they arrived at Heat’s apartment building to find the elevator still had the out of order seal on its doors. On the second landing of the stairs, Rook paused momentarily to swap grips on his Boston overnight bag. “Now I know why these are called carry-ons and not carry-ups.”
“Want me to take yours?”
“Ah-ah,” he said, shooing her hand away. “I’ll just consider this my rehab for the day.”
“Let me see if I can write the story, Pulitzer boy. Rehab today, naughty nurse massage tomorrow?”
“Now, there’s a story with a happy ending,” he said as he resumed his ascent.
Rook found an ‘07 Hautes-Cotes de Nuits in the back of the fridge that he accused her of hiding from him, and then he settled beside Nikki on the couch to look through the photo albums with her. “This is all I have left,” she said, indicating the banker’s box of family keepsakes on the floor beside her. “I don’t even know what’s missing. Whoever searched this apartment the night of the murder got the rest and must have left before he got to these.”
“Nikki, if this is hard for you…”
“Of course it’s hard for me. How could it not be?” Then she rested her palm on his thigh. “That’s why I’m glad to have you here with me to do this.”
They kissed, each tasting Burgundy on the other’s tongue. Then he surveyed the room and gave her a thoughtful look. “I’ve always wanted to ask, and I never quite knew how.”
“You mean, ask how I could live here after her murder?” When he reacted, she said, “Come on, Rook, the way you just scoped out this place was the most ridiculous tell I’ve seen. Well, since the last time I beat you at poker.” He didn’t respond, but just watched her.
She swiveled her knees to the coffee table and traced her fingers around the edges of a photo album. “It’s hard to say why. People encouraged me to move, back then. But leaving here felt like I would be leaving her. Maybe I will want to move out sometime. But it’s always seemed right to be here. This was always home; this is our connection.” She sat up straight and clapped her hands twice to bring a mood change. “Ready to look at some boring pictures?”
They began slowly at first, turning pages that led off with her parents’ individual grammar and high school portraits along with serious and goofy poses with family, mostly elderly. Her dad’s college photos from George Washington University included a few action shots of him playing basketball for the Colonials and cradling his business school diploma at commencement on the DC Capitol Mall. There were numerous pictures of her mother at the New England Conservatory, mostly at a Steinway or standing in front of one. There was even a picture of Professor Shimizu handing her a bouquet and a trophy, but no chamber duo shots, except for one with Leonard Frick. No glimpses of BFF Nicole Bernardin. When Nikki closed the back cover on the first album, Rook said, “It’s like a mash-up Syfy Channel meets Lifetime movie where a rip in the space-time continuum removes all traces of the best friend.”
She stared at him and said flatly, “That’s right. That’s exactly what it’s like.”
But that did coax a smile out of her, and he said, “Know what we should do? No-brainer. Ask your father.”
“No.”
“But of all people, wouldn’t your dad-”
“Not going to happen, OK? So drop it.”
Her sharpness left him nothing to say but “Moving on?”
The second album of the pair chronicled the courtship of Jeff and Cynthia Heat, a young trophy couple about Europe, including Paris, but still without Nicole. When Rook asked if she might be in the wedding party, Nikki told him there hadn’t been one. Products of the seventies, her mom and dad had succumbed to a bout of post-hippie rebellion and eloped. The ensuing series of photographs were taken of baby Nikki in New York, including a hilarious snapshot of her when she was barely walking, holding on to the wrought iron bars of Gramercy Park, peering through them angrily at the lens. “I’ve seen that expression from most of the prisoners you put in the holding cell.” She laughed at that but then closed the album. “That’s it? Come on, it’s just getting to the good stuff.”
“We’re done. The rest is mostly me at my gawky worst and we’re not doing this for your entertainment or my humiliation. I got enough of that in seventh grade. I know for a fact there’s no sign of Nicole in these.”
“I have another crazy thought.”
“You, Rook? Imagine that,” she said, refilling their glasses.
“Actually, it’s not so out there. Has it occurred to you since we found out her name this morning that you might actually be Nicole’s namesake?” He watched the impact of that play across her brow. “Ah, not so crazy now, is it?”
She tossed it around and said, “Except my legal name isn’t Nicole.”
“So? Nikki, Nicole. Not so far off. Makes sense, especially if they were such close friends… Although, from this,” he said, indicating the photo albums, “Nicole’s looking more like she turned into an imaginary friend.”
Nikki went to her desk in the second bedroom to make her cell phone and e-mail rounds on the case progress, and when she returned, she found Rook cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Being incorrigible, what else? It’s my job.” He pressed the play button on the old VHS player and the TV screen resolved into a video recording of Nikki, seated beside her mother at the piano. The date stamp read: “16 July 1985.”