"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 suspicious parked cars, ever mindful of the Crossroads of the World, the New Normal, and life on orange alert. By the time they reached the other side of the street, Rook had finished his first dog.
"Man, I don't know if I can eat two. What the hell, yes, I can." He started in on the other, filling his cheeks like a squirrel, making her laugh as they walked north, weaving between the tourists. Except for the gun on her hip, thought Nikki, they could be a suburban couple themselves.
Between swallows, Rook asked, "Why are we checking Soleil's other alibi? Let's suppose maybe she hired the Texan to stab Cassidy Towne. What's her whereabouts going to tell us?"
"It gives us a chance to talk to people in her life. We follow the leads we have, not the ones we wish we had. Besides, look what the last alibi check gave us."
"We learned Soleil lied to us?"
"Exactly. So let's talk to some more people who might tell us the truth."
Waiting for the cross signal on 45th, Rook followed her gaze to the newsstand where a dozen Nikki Heats hung from clothespins along the roof of the kiosk.
"How many weeks till November?" she said. And then the light changed and they crossed the street to enter the lobby of the Marriott Marquis.
They found Soleil's old keyboardist Zane Taft exactly where his agent had told Nikki he would be, in the Marquis Ballroom on the ninth floor. Nikki had also gotten the musician's cell phone number, but she didn't call ahead. Soleil could have already texted him, as she did Allie, but if she hadn't yet, no reason to give him a heads-up and a chance to call his former lead singer to line up their alibi stories.
He was alone in the ballroom, on a riser overlooking the empty dance floor, doing a sound check on his keyboard. The first thing Nikki noticed about him was his smile, big and open and crammed with perfect teeth. He fished out Diet Cokes from the ice bucket the hotel had left for him, a man glad for the company.
"Got a gig here tonight, a Sweet Sixty."
"Birthday party?" asked Rook.
Zane shrugged. "Life, huh? Four years ago today I'm at the Hollywood Bowl in Shades, playing our second encore, looking out at Sir Paul in the front row and making eye contact with Jessica Alba. And now?" He popped the tab on his aluminum can and Coke fizzed over. "I should have had a business manager. Anyway, tonight I'm getting duked an extra three hundred because birthday boy likes Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and I know all the songs from Jersey Boys." He slurped the overflow from around the rim of the can. "Fact is, Soleil was the band. She gets the fat contract, I get to play 'Do You Like Pina Coladas?' for boomers who are recession-proof enough to afford parties for themselves."
Nikki said, "You don't sound bitter."
"What's that going to get you? And, hey, Soleil's still a pal. She checks on me from time to time, or when she hears about a studio gig, she'll make a call for me. It's cool." He smiled and all those teeth reminded Heat of the keyboard on his Yamaha.
"Have you been in touch with her recently?" Nikki phrased it openly, seeing how he played it.
"Yeah, she called about half an hour ago, telling me to expect a visit from the famous detective, what's-her-name. That's her saying that, not me."
"No problem," she said. "Did Soleil tell you why we're here?"
He nodded and took another hit off his soda. "Here's the truth. Yes, she was with me the other night. You know, when the lady got killed. But not for long. She met up with me at the Brooklyn Diner on Fifty-seventh about midnight. I was only on the first bite of my Fifteen Bite Hot Dog when she got a call and freaked and said she had to go. That's Soleil, though."
"I can never finish those," said Rook. "And I'm a dog eater."
Nikki ignored Rook. "So she was only with you for how long?"
"Ten minutes, if."
"Did she say who the call was from?"
"No, but I heard her say his first name when she answered. Derek. I remember it because I started thinking… and the Dominos. You know as in," and then he started riffing the iconic piano solo from "Layla," the coda sounding as authentic as if the band were in the room. Later that night, he'd be playing "Big Girls Don't Cry" for a landscape contractor from Massapequa, Long Island.
As soon as the doors closed to the ballroom, Rook said to Heat, "Know how you've been kidding me, always saying my insider knowledge ain't crap?"
"Who says I was kidding?"
"Well, stop. Because I know who Derek is."
Nikki U-turned herself in the hallway and stepped in front of him. "Seriously? You know who Derek is?"
"I do."
"Who?"
"I don't know." When she moaned and strode to the elevator, he caught up with her. "Hang on, I mean I've never met him. But hear me out-I was with Cassidy Towne when she got a call from a Derek, and I heard his last name when her assistant said he was on the line."
Multiple synapses started firing in Heat's brain at once. "Rook… If there's a connection between Soleil and this Derek and Cassidy Towne… I don't want to say what it means yet, but I have an idea."
"Me, too," he said. "You first."
"Well, for one, what if he is the Texan?"
"Sure," said Rook. "Timing of the call to Soleil, her reaction… Derek could be our killer. Maybe he and Soleil were both involved in that big story Cassidy wouldn't tell me about. And they wanted it and her killed."
"Fine, fine, fine. What's the last name?"
"I forget." She shoved him and he stumbled back into a potted plant. "Hang on, hang on now." He took out his black Moleskine notebook and flipped to some early pages. "Here. It's Snow. Derek Snow." The address trace didn't take long. A half hour later, Heat was parking the Crown Victoria in front of Derek Snow's fifth-floor walk-up on 8th Street a few blocks east of Astor Place.
She and Rook made the climb of five flights with a squad of heavily armed uniformed cops borrowed from the Ninth Precinct. There was another contingent on the fire escape, both high and low. Their reward for the hike was to knock and get no answer. "It is just past one," said Rook. "He could be at work."