Richard Castle - Naked heat

"Why are you hassling me, anyway?" said the chef. The attempt at peeved bravado had returned.

Nikki stood over him, close enough to make him have to strain his neck to look up at her. "I told you. I want you to give up the body of Cassidy Towne."

"What would I know about Cassidy Towne? I didn't even know the bitch."

"Yes, you did, I heard you fighting," said Rook. "Whoo," he blew air out of his mouth in a huff, "must have gotten a seed."

Vergennes acted as if a distant memory had been jogged free. "Oh, that. We argued, OK? What the hell, you think I killed her because she was pissed I wouldn't comp her a party of twelve at my opening?"

"We have a witness that says you hired them to steal her body."

He scoffed. "I'm done. This is getting crazy. I want my lawyer."

"All right. You can call him after we take you to the precinct," said Heat.

Taking opposite sides of the kitchen, Raley and Ochoa moved in a line, systematically opening and closing custom cabinets, all full of either cookbooks, imported dinnerware, or a Williams-Sonoma's worth of kitchen gadgets.

"For real, my mouth is seriously on fire." Rook stepped to the big Sub-Zero. "Wow, this is some fridge. Gorgeous."

Vergennes called out, "No, don't, that's broken."

But Rook had already pulled the handle. And then he got knocked backward when the body of Cassidy Towne bumped open the refrigerator door as it toppled out and landed on the Spanish tiles at his feet.

The uniformed officer posted at the front door ran in when he heard Rook scream. Richmond Vergennes was a different man when confronted by the harsh reality of the Interrogation Room. The cockiness was gone. Nikki watched his hands, callused and scarred by years on the cook line. They were quaking. From the chair beside him, Vergennes's lawyer gave him the nod to begin. "First of all, I didn't kill her, I swear."

"Mr. Vergennes, think of how many times in your career you've heard a waiter bring a dish back to the kitchen and tell you the customer says it's cold. That's about half as many times as I've sat here and heard the guy in cuffs on your side of the table say, 'I didn't do it, I swear.' "

The lawyer chimed in. "Detective, we are hoping to be cooperative here. I don't think there's any call to make this difficult." The suit was Wynn Zanderhoof, a partner in one of the big Park Avenue firms that specialized in entertainment law. He was their criminal face, and Heat had seen plenty of him over the years.

"Sure, Counselor. Especially after your client made our lives such a breeze. Resisting arrest, brandishing a weapon at a police officer, obstructing an investigation. And all that comes after the murder of Cassidy Towne. Plus the conspiracy to hijack her body. Plus the numerous charges related to that. I think difficulty is the word of the day for Mr. Vergennes."

"Granted," said the attorney. "Which is why we were hoping to strike some sort of arrangement to mitigate the unnecessary tensions surrounding all this."

"You want a deal?" asked the detective. "Your client is facing a murder charge, and we have a confession from a man in the crew he paid to steal the damn body. What are you going to bargain with, a complimentary dessert?"

"I didn't kill her. I was home with my wife that night. She'll vouch."

"We'll check." There was something that crossed his face when she said that. His dark Cajun looks lost their cockiness. Like the alibi wouldn't hold or maybe something else. What was it? She decided to pick at that and see where it led. "When you say you were with your wife, when was that?"

"All night. We watched some TV, went to bed, woke up. Like that."

She made a show of opening her notebook and poising her pen. "Tell me the exact time you and your wife went to bed."

"I dunno. We watched some Nightline, then hit the hay."

"So," said Nikki as she wrote, "you're saying it was twelve o'clock? Midnight?"

"Yeah, or a few minutes after. Those late-night shows are all like five minutes late getting started."

"And what time did you get home?"

"Mm, about eleven-fifteen, I guess."

Something seemed off to Heat, so she pressed. "Chef, I hear all the stories about the restaurant business. Especially for a new restaurant, isn't quarter after eleven kind of early for you to be home?"

She could see she was getting at something. Vergennes was showing nerves, working his mouth like he was looking for a strand of hair with his tongue. "Business was light, so I, ah, knocked off early."

"Oh, I see. What time did you knock off?"

His eyes roamed the ceiling. "Don't remember, exactly."

"No problem," she said. "I'll be checking with your staff, anyway. They'll tell me what time you left."

"Nine o'clock," he blurted.

Nikki wrote it down. "Does it typically take you two and a quarter hours to get to SoHo at that hour from Sixty-third and Lex?" When she looked up from her pad, he was coming unglued. His lawyer leaned over to show him a note he'd scrawled, but Vergennes pushed it away.

"All right, I didn't go straight home." The attorney tried again by putting a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off and said, "I'll tell you exactly where I was. I… was at Cassidy Towne's."

Heat wished Lauren Parry had had that body sooner so she could have a more accurate time of death. It was entirely possible that the TOD was before midnight. She followed her instinct to seize Vergennes's moment of weakness and take the leap. "Are you saying you went to Cassidy Towne's and stabbed her?"

"No. I'm saying I went to Cassidy Towne's and…" He trailed off, lowering both his head and his voice, mumbling something she couldn't make out.

"Excuse me, I don't hear that. You went to Cassidy Towne's and what?"

Vergennes's face was sallow when he looked up, his eyes unable to hide the misery of his shame. "I went there… and… I fucked her."

Nikki watched him bend down to dry wash his face with the palms of his hands. When he rose up from his manacles, some of his color had returned. She tried to look at this heartthrob master chef who had conquered Manhattan and put him together with Cassidy Towne, the unofficial arbiter of public scandal. Something in her didn't see them as a couple, although, after years on the job, Nikki could believe just about anything. "So you and Cassidy Towne were having an affair?"

Nikki tried not to paint the picture before she got his answer. The one she saw was a married man trying to break it off, an argument got too heated, and so on. Once again, she went to training and listened instead of projecting.

"We weren't having an affair." His voice was weak and hollow. Nikki had to strain to hear him even in the quiet room.

"So that was your first… liaison?"

The chef seemed amused by a private thought. He said, "Sadly, no. It was not our first 'liaison.' "

"You're going to have to explain to me why you don't call this an affair."

The dead quiet that followed was broken by his lawyer. "Rich, I have to advise you not to-"

"No, I'm going to get this out now so they'll see I didn't kill her." He settled down and then came out with it. "I was doing Cassidy Towne for one reason. I had to. I bought this new place right before the economy cratered. I had zero budget for advertising, suddenly people weren't dining out, and if they were, they were skittish about new restaurants. I was desperate. So Cassidy… made a deal with me." He paused again and muttered his pitiful, defining words. "Sex for ink."

Heat reflected back on her Sardi's experience with Rook's mother. Apparently, Cassidy didn't restrict herself to actors.

"You have to understand, I love my wife." Nikki just listened. No sense telling him the hundreds of times she's heard that, too, from husbands in that chair. "This wasn't something I came up with. She caught me at a vulnerable time. I said no at first, and she just made it harder to refuse. Said if I loved my wife, I'd… sleep with her so we didn't lose our investment. It was stupid. But I did it. I hated myself for it, and you know what's crazy? She didn't even seem into me. It was like she just wanted to prove she could make me do it."