Frozen Heat (2012) (31 page)

“You got it.”

“But first, I want to understand your background.”

“Name it, Detective.”

“You had some trouble on one of your jobs as a security guard.”

“It was really a misunderstanding.” His manacles clanked as he brought his hands up to gesture. She wasn’t surprised to see that his nails were immaculate, and his slender fingers were clean and lightly freckled like the skin under his eyes.

“These charges say you stole from the offices you guarded and stalked women in the apartments you patrolled.”

“As I said, all a misunderstanding. I did borrow some electronics, you know, computers and a printer, but intended to return them.”

“And the stalking?”

He put a hand over his heart. “I learned the hard way, when you are a lowly apartment security guard, it’s best not to ask residents on a date.”

“You had three restraining orders.”

“That’s what I mean about the hard way.” He fixed her with his grin again, and she put her nose back in the manila folder.

“And for about ten years you’ve worked on cruise lines?”

“That’s right. Well, off and on.”

“What sort of work?”

“Bit of this, bit of that. I worked casino operations staff doing slot maintenance. Also did some time on deck operations. You know, prepping chairs, handing out towels, lifeguarding.”

“You got fired from your cruise in 2007.”

“Only because I refused to accept a reassignment to work as bartender. I have a severe citrus allergy.” Heat looked up to stare at him at length for the first time. He fidgeted under her fixed gaze and explained himself. “That’s right. And you try to mix a drink on a tropical cruise that doesn’t have a lemon, orange, or lime.”

“Never heard of that,” she said.

“That was the reason, no lie. As a kid, I almost died from anaphylactic shock, so I said no way, and they fired my ass.”

Nikki mulled that over and went back to the rap sheet. “I thought you’d been put ashore because you were caught spying on a female guest.”

“That was on another ship. And all I did was check her stateroom for fresh towels. Her word against mine, and who do they believe? The paying guest or the grunt in the white uniform?”

“And how have you made ends meet between cruises?”

“I do some dog walking, a lot of apartment sitting. Oh, and I have a blog now.”

“Blogging? How well does that pay?”

“Not so much yet. But I’ll get there. I’m also on Twitter. I hear I’ve gone bat shit with followers since I got arrested.”

Easing into a new phase, she smiled at him and said, “You’re going to be pretty famous yourself, I guess, Hank.”

“Think so?” He beamed upon hearing his name from her. “Not like you, Detective Heat. And you’re not even on social media.”

“Not my thing.”

“You should do it. You’d trend off the hook. Seriously, you’re a real hero. I’ll bet I’ve read everything there is about you.” Nikki pulled out his confession and, from its contents, bet Hank Spooner had indeed become quite the expert.

“So you say you killed Cynthia Heat?”

“Your mother.”

“How did you kill Cynthia Heat?”

“It’s in there.”

“Tell me.”

“I stabbed her. One time. In the back.”

“Where was she?”

“In her apartment near Gramercy Park.”

“Where in the apartment?”

“In the kitchen. She was making pies.”

“Nicole Bernardin. How did you do that?”

“I stabbed her.”

“How many times?”

“Once. Same way. In the back.”

“And where was Nicole?”

He paused slightly. His first hitch. “Waiting for a train.”

“Where?” The railroad connection had been leaked in one of the articles and this was her attempt to shake him with detail.

“Larchmont.”

“PD up there says no blood on the platform.”

“It’s in there,” he said with a gesture to the confession. “I said she was buying a ticket at the machine near the parking lot. And it’s rained a lot since then.” He gave her a satisfied look as if he had seen through an attempt to trip him up.

Over the next hour, Heat tried to knock him off his declaration either by misstating things he’d written or by rapid-firing questions about details out of order, knowing that most liars adhere to sequence as their means of sounding credible. He nimbly adjusted to everything she threw at him, and Nikki pictured Irons behind the glass, gloating. Spooner had just finished describing the front of her building in Gramercy Park when she said, “We have more to talk about, but I’m going to get something to drink. You thirsty, Hank?”

“Well, sure,” he said with that smile nearing adoration.

As she passed through Observation One, Irons rose from a chair. “What’s going on? Aren’t you satisfied yet?” She just smiled and stepped out the hallway door, so he turned to Raley and Ochoa. “She always like this?”

“Always,” said Roach.

Hank Spooner perked up again when Heat returned a few minutes later with two cans of soda. She popped the tops, took a sip of hers, and set the other in front of him. He just stared at it. “Something wrong?” she asked.

“Do you have anything else?”

“Sorry Hank, this isn’t McDonald’s. What wrong with it?”

“Nothing, unless you’re trying to kill me.” He slid the orange Pellegrino as far away as he could reach. “I told you. I have a bad citrus allergy. One sip of that, and I’m in the hospital or dead.”

“Oh, sorry. Wasn’t thinking. I love them. Keep my own stash in the fridge here.” She picked up his can and her own and walked toward the door.

“You’re good,” he said. When she turned and gave him a puzzled look, he continued, “The orange soda. You were just testing to see if I was lying about my citrus allergy.” He gave her a wink. “Nice one.”

“Busted,” she said.

When she entered the Observation Room again, Irons said, “Well, are you satisfied he’s our killer?”

“No.”

“How can you not be? His story’s solid as a rock.”

“So what? Like I said, it’s a story anybody could have put together from public knowledge.”

“But like
I
said, the man confessed.”

“Sure, because he’s got some sort of fame psychosis or stalker agenda he’s working out and I’m the lucky object of his desire. Leave that to the shrinks. He’s lying, and I can prove it.”

“How? He answered all your questions.”

“True, but there’s one hold back on this case that didn’t get leaked. And it’s my own. Whoever killed my mother took a can of soda from our fridge right afterward and gulped it down.” She held up the orange San Pellegrinos. “It was one of these. Sixteen percent real citrus juice.” As it registered on Irons and he turned to gawk at Spooner through the glass, she said, “You can book Allergy Hank on whatever you want, but my mom’s murder? Forget it.”

Captain Irons stood gaping through the ob window at his prize suspect when she left.

Detectives Raley and Ochoa were at their desks when Heat came back into the Squad Room, and she corralled them to the back hallway, out of earshot of the rest of the bull pen, and closed the door. “Sorry to go all Deep Throat, but I need this handled with discretion.”

“Want me to get Sharon Hinesburg so she can join us?” said Ochoa.

“Do,” she said. “And let me put Tam Svejda from the
Ledger
on my speaker phone.” After they had a good laugh, Heat opened up the accordion file of bank documents her father had given her. The two detectives’ faces sobered as Nikki briefed them on the account her mother held in secret from her dad. “I can’t go into the significance of it, but I need someone I can absolutely trust to quietly—but thoroughly—trace its activity. Especially in November 1999.”

“Done,” said Raley, taking the documents from her.

“And if he blabs,” said his partner, “I’ll cap his ass.”

“He would,” agreed Raley.

The three emerged from the back hall, and Nikki found Rook camped at his squatter’s desk off to the side of the bull pen. He pointed to the shield and Sig on her hip. “Nice to see you wearing your tin again and packing, Sheriff.”

“Feels right,” she said. “Not quite Paris, though.”

“Look at it this way. Not as much dog crap to step in.”

“Elegant. You’re a wordsmith
and
a poet.”

Heat called together a quick Murder Board roundup. Detective Rhymer reported that his checks with the cruise line showed Hank Spooner had not been away at sea during either killing he confessed to. Even though Nikki had eliminated Spooner from her mother’s murder, she decided to go beyond thorough and assigned Detective Hinesburg to make sure he got held in custody until his whereabouts could be verified for the night of Nicole Bernardin’s stabbing. Then she sent Sharon on a field trip to Westchester County to survey the Larchmont train station herself and to show pictures of both Nicole and Spooner around. The alibi check went to Malcolm and Reynolds.

Heat very much wanted to bring the squad up to speed on the information she and Rook had learned about her mother’s and Nicole’s CIA activities, but her tight little ship had sprung too many leaks. She had already confided in Ochoa, so her work-around would be to also brief Raley, Feller, Malcolm, Reynolds, and Rhymer individually—not the transparency Nikki liked to operate in, but that’s what happens when the boss is sleeping with a team member with a Bat Phone to the Metro desk at a tabloid.

After the meeting broke, Nikki listened to a call-back message from Eugene Summers, the young man in the 1976 London picture with her mother and Tyler Wynn. When she asked Rook if he wanted to come along with her to meet him for lunch, he got so excited that he shook his moneymaker right there in the bull pen.

“God, will you look at me back then?” said Eugene Summers as he examined the old snapshot of himself. “Good lord, and the width of that tie. Margaret Hamilton could land her broom on it and still have room for three flying monkeys.” He handed the photo back to Nikki. “I loved your mother, you know. Those were great years, and Cindy was absolutely special.”

Nikki thanked him for saying so, while he took a sip of iced tea, avoiding eye contact with the other lunchers at Cafeteria who recognized him from the cable TV show that had made the real-life butler a breakout sensation in his sixty-first year. After decades as a professional manservant in Europe, Eugene had gotten a call from a studio head he had served during a summer in London, who had an idea for a TV show like
Arthur
, pairing the fastidious and urbane Mr. Summers with various unruly young celebrity stoners. Thus was born
Gentlemen Prefer Bongs
, whose success transformed Eugene into America’s ex officio arbiter of taste and propriety in everything from grooming to etiquette to wine pairing.

In his message, when he had called her back from his Chelsea loft, Summers seemed thrilled to have heard from Cindy Trope’s little girl and agreed to meet for lunch. Rook couldn’t have been happier, too. Not only was he addicted to the series, but on the way to the restaurant, he had said to Nikki, “What do you think the odds are this is going to be one of those cases where the butler did it? Because I could sell that story to any magazine in the country just for the headline.”

Of course, when they met at his table, Nikki heard the obligatory praise about how much she resembled her mom. Rook, who regularly hobnobbed with Hollywood A-listers and blockbuster music icons, just grinned like a dope as he shook hands with the reality star. Heat prayed he wouldn’t embarrass her by asking her to take a photo of the two of them.

They began on a somber note with Eugene’s condolences to Nikki for the loss of her mother, and his disbelief at the deaths of Nicole and, now, Tyler Wynn. “I got a call about Tyler when I woke up Sunday morning. I’m still reeling.” He made a brave face and sat tall. “However, I am reminded of the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said, ‘Good Americans when they die, go to Paris.’”

Nikki found it interesting that he was still in the loop. “May I ask who told you about Wynn’s death?”

“Not by name. Let’s say a mutual acquaintance.”

“Were you and Tyler Wynn close?” she asked.

“Once. But we hadn’t seen each other, oh, in ages. But he’s a man you hold in your heart.”

Heat said, “I guess this leads us to where I want to start. Were you part of this Nanny Network of Tyler’s that my mother was in?”

“Not that I don’t want to cooperate, Detective, I do,” said Summers, “but you put me in an awkward position.”

“You took an oath not to divulge secrets?” asked Heat.

“Oath or not, I’m preternaturally discreet. It’s not just professional, I have personal standards.” Then he saw her disappointment. “But despair not. For Cindy’s daughter, I can bend the rules. I’ll speak in generalities. Or use non-denial denials. For example, to the question you just asked, my answer is that I’m sworn not to say. And that tells you exactly what you want to know, doesn’t it?”

“Good enough,” said Nikki.

Summers noticed Rook absently playing leapfrog, as he often did, with his knife and spoon, and fixed a chastening look on him. Rook ceased and said, “Wow, just like the show. Did you see, Nikki? I just got the Summers Stare.” Then he pleaded to the TV butler, “Give me the catchphrase. Come on, just once? Please?”