Richard Castle: Heat Wave

Rook couldn't help himself. "Now, that's a marriage of terms that always tickles me, 'high-end' and 'call girl.' Like, is that your job status or a sexual position?" He earned their silent stares and muttered, "Sorry. Go on."

"I can detail the burn rate of the money for you, but suffice it to say these and a few other habits ate away at him financially. Last spring we had to sell the family estate in the Hamptons."

"Stormfall." Nikki reflected on Kimberly Starr's upset that the murder never would have happened if they had been away in the Hamptons. Now she understood its depth and irony.

"Yes, Stormfall. I don't need to tell you about the bath we took on that property in this market. Sold it to some reality show celebrity and lost millions. The cash from the sale barely made a dent in Matthew's debt. Things got so bad he ordered me to stop payments on his life insurance, which he let lapse against my advice."

Heat jotted two new words. "No insurance." "Did Mrs. Starr know about that?" In the periphery of her vision, she saw Rook lean forward in his chair.

"Yes, she did. I did my best to shelter Kimberly from the seedier details of Matthew's spending, but she knew about the life insurance. I was there when Matthew told her."

"And what was her reaction?"

"She said…" He paused. "You have to understand, she was upset."

"What did she say, Noah? Her exact words, if you remember."

"She said, 'I hate you. You're not even any good to me dead.'"

In the car on the ride back to the precinct, Rook went right to the grieving widow. "Come on, Detective Heat, 'No good to me dead'? You talk about gathering information that paints a picture. What about this portrait we're seeing of Samantha the Lap Dancer?"

"But she knew there was no life insurance. Where's the motive?"

He grinned and needled her again. "Gee, I don't know, but my advice is to keep asking questions and see where they lead."

"Bite me."

"Oh, are you talking tough with me now that you have other irons in the fire?"

"I'm talking tough because you are an ass. And I don't get what you mean by other irons."

"I mean Noah Paxton. I didn't know whether to throw a bucket of water on you or fake a cell phone call to leave you two alone."

"This is why you're a magazine writer who only plays cop. Your imagination is greater than your grasp of facts."

He shrugged. "Guess I was wrong." Then he smiled that smile, the one that made her face flush. And there she was again, feeling this torment over Rook for something she should have laughed off. Instead, she popped in her earbud and speed-dialed Raley.

"Rales, it's me." She angled her head toward Rook and sounded brisk and formal, so he wouldn't miss her meaning, even though she did radiate subtext. "I want you to run a background on Matthew Starr's financial guy. Name's Noah Paxton. Just see what kicks out, priors, warrants, the usual."

After she hung up, Rook looked amused. This was going nowhere she liked, but she had to say it. "What." And when he didn't answer, "What?"

"You forgot to have him run a check on Paxton's cologne." And then he opened a magazine and read.

Detective Raley looked up from his computer when Heat and Rook came into the bull pen. "That guy you wanted me to run, Noah Paxton?"

"Yeah? You got something?"

"Not so far. But he called for you just now."

Nikki avoided the playground look she was getting from Rook and surveyed the stack of messages on her desk. Noah Paxton's was on top. She didn't pick it up. Instead, she asked Raley if Ochoa had checked in. He was on Kimberly Starr surveillance. The widow was spending the afternoon at Bergdorf Goodman.

"I hear shopping is a balm for the bereaved," said Rook. "Or maybe the merry widow is returning a few designer rags for ready cash."

When Rook disappeared into the men's room, Heat dialed Noah Paxton. She had nothing to hide from Rook; she just didn't want to deal with his preadolescent taunts. Or see that smile that chapped her ass. She cursed the mayor for whatever payback made her have to deal with him.

When Paxton got on the line, he said, "I located those life insurance documents you said you wanted to see."

"Good, I'll send someone over."

"I also got a visit from those forensic accountants you were talking about. They copied all my data and left. You weren't kidding."

"Your tax dollars at work." She couldn't resist adding, "You do pay your taxes?"

"Yes, but you don't have to take my word for it. Your CPAs with badges and guns look like they'll be able to tell you."

"Count on it."

"Listen, I know I wasn't the most cooperative."

"You did all right. After I threatened you."

"I want to apologize for that. I'm finding I don't do well with grief."

"You wouldn't be the first, Noah," said Nikki. "Trust me."

She sat alone that night at the center row of the movie theater laughing and munching popcorn. Nikki Heat was transfixed, swept up in an innocent story and spellbound by the eye candy of digital animation. Like a house tied to a thousand balloons, she was transported. Just over ninety minutes later she carried the weight again on her walk home in the mugginess of the heat wave, which brought fusty odors up out of subway grates and, even in the dark, radiated the day's swelter off buildings as she passed them.

At times like these, without the work to hide in, without the martial arts to quiet it, the replay always came. It had been ten years, and yet it was also last week and last night and all of them thatched together. Time didn't matter. It never did when she replayed The Night.

It was her first Thanksgiving break from college since her parents divorced. Nikki had spent the day shopping with her mother, a Thanksgiving Eve tradition transformed into a holy mission by her mom's new singleness. This was a daughter determined to make this not so much the best Thanksgiving ever, but as close to normal as could be achieved given the empty chair at the head of the table and the ghosts of happier years.

The two squeezed around each other as they always had in the New York apartment-sized kitchen that night, making pies for the next day. Over tandem rolling pins and chilled dough, Nikki defended her desire to change majors from English to Theater. Where were the cinnamon sticks? How could they have forgotten the cinnamon sticks? Ground cinnamon never flew in her mother's holiday pies. She grated her own from a stick, and how could they have overlooked that on their list?

Nikki felt like a Lotto winner when she found a jar of them on the spice aisle at the Morton Williams on Park Avenue South. For insurance, she took out her cell phone and called the apartment. It rang and rang. When the message machine kicked on, she wondered if her mom couldn't hear the phone over her mixer. But then she picked up. Over the squeal of recorder feedback she apologized but she had been wiping butter off her hands. Nikki hated the sharp reverb of the answering machine, but her mother never knew how to turn that damn thing off without disconnecting. Last call before closing, did she need anything else from the market? She waited while her mom carried the portable to check on evaporated milk.

And then Nikki heard glass crash. And her mother's scream. Her limbs went weak and she called for her mom. Heads turned from the check stands. Another scream. As she heard the phone on the other end drop, Nikki dropped the jar of cinnamon sticks and ran to the door. Damn, the in door. She brute-forced it open and ran out in the street, nearly getting clipped by a delivery guy on a bicycle. Two blocks away. She held the cell phone to her ear as she ran, pleading for her mom to say something, pick up the phone, what's wrong? She heard a man's voice, sounds of a scuffle. Her mother's whimper and her body dropping next to the phone. A tah-tang of metal bouncing on the kitchen floor. One block to go. A clink of bottles in the fridge door. The snap-hiss of a pop top. Footsteps. Silence. And then, her mother's weak and failing moan. And then just a whisper. "Nikki…"