Crashing Heat

by Richard Castle

  Tammy’s eyes snaked to Rook, but she quickly looked away. “Do I have to go through it again?”

  “It could really help,” Heat said, softening her voice. “We want to find out what happened. We want the truth.”

  Once again, Tammy turned her attention to Rook. “Ask him.”

  Rook scooted up to the edge of the couch. “Ask me? Ask me what?”

  “She worshipped you—”

  Heat leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped between them. “Why? Why did she worship him?”

  Tammy threw up her hands. “Something to do with some story she was doing? Or wanted to do? Or was in the middle of. Honestly, I don’t know. It was ‘top secret.’” She heaved a sigh. “That’s what she always said. ‘I can’t tell you, Tammy. It’s for your own good.’”

  Heat looked to Rook before she answered. “She never talked to Mr. Rook about anything she was working on,” Heat said after he drew his brows together and shook his head.

  “Never?” Tammy asked Rook, clearly surprised.

  “Never,” he confirmed. “She talked to me once after my class, and she wanted to meet with me about something, but it never happened.”

  Tammy looked baffled. “But she was in your house...”

  “We believe someone might have brought her there to make Rook look guilty.”

  “You mean someone’s trying to frame him? God, I thought that only happened in movies.”

  If only that were true—but life imitated art. “Unfortunately not.”

  Tammy directed her gaze at Rook. “So you didn’t talk to her?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  “And you didn’t have anything to do with...with what happened to her?”

  Again, he said, “No.”

  Heat’s gut told her that Chloe’s death had nothing to do with her personal life, and everything to do with whatever story she had been obsessed with. But her gut wasn’t proof, and in order to get a solve, proof was what she needed. She had to explore all avenues until there was only one clear path to follow. “Did Chloe have any enemies, Tammy? People she’d wronged or who held a grudge?”

  Tammy’s expression turned indignant. “No way. Everyone likes—liked—her. If you needed help moving furniture, she’d be there. If she couldn’t lift it, she’d get some guys to help out and buy the pizza. If you were short ten dollars, she’d foot the bill. She was a good person. A genuinely good person.”

  Heat had no doubt that Chloe Masterson was exactly who her roommate said she was. But everyone had skeletons in their closets. She just had to keep shaking the tree to see what would fall out. “All right if we take a look in Chloe’s room?” she asked Tammy.

  Tammy tossed another crumpled tissue on the floor before hauling herself out of her chair. “They’ve already scoured everything,” she said.

  “I know, but I’d like to have my own look around. Form my own opinions. If it’s okay.”

  Tammy led them back to the hall, stopping at the first door. She pushed it open and then stepped aside. “Help yourself,” she said and then left them alone, retreating to her own room.

  “Her emotions seem real,” Heat said quietly.

  “Definitely grief-stricken,” Rook said, his voice booming compared to hers.

  Heat held a finger to her lips to shush him. Who knew how thin these apartment walls were. His eyebrows shot up and he nodded, putting a finger to his own lips, then clasping it to his thumb and turning it like a key in a lock.

  “It also looks like she’s been to hell and back since those pictures were taken.” Heat stood in the center of the room, hands on hips.

  “Not surprising,” Rook said, much more quietly this time. He came up beside her. “I know I’d be a shell of a man if I lost you.”

  She slipped her hand under one side of his brown leather jacket, patting his taut stomach. “We can’t have that, now, can we?”

  He draped his arm across her shoulders, pulling her close. “No, no death and no wasting away. That would never do. Carpe diem, even in the face of adversity.”

  “We have a truckload of adversity at the moment,” she commented.

  He looked at her with an intensity he didn’t normally have. “We should seize the day, Nik.”

  “We should,” Nikki agreed, reading his intention. She needed him. The precariousness of this situation had her spooked. She needed to feel him. Taste him. Touch him. But first they had to finish the task at hand. She gently pushed him away. “After we do everything else we need to.”

  He straightened up and squared his ruggedly handsome face. “Then let’s get to work. What first, Captain?”

  “See if you can find anything about the story Chloe was writing that the police might have missed. Notes jotted on a scrap of paper. A source’s name. Anything that might help us figure out what she was writing about.”

  They spent the next ten minutes scouring every inch of Chloe’s bedroom. Just as Heat had suspected, Chloe was neat and organized. Unlike Tammy’s room, in which the bed was rumpled and unmade, books were precariously stacked, and clothes were strewn everywhere, Chloe’s was the epitome of order, pattern, and arrangement. The clothes in the closet were grouped by color. Her books were lined up, spines facing out, and organized by type: textbooks, nonfiction, and a smattering of fiction. Shoes lined up like soldiers at the front. Even in her dresser drawers, her underclothing, T-shirts, yoga pants, and such were folded and neatly stacked.

  Heat opened the nightstand drawer, riffling through its contents. Underneath a sleeping mask, a scattering of lip balms and pens, and a small package of tissue was a notepad. She took it out and flipped through it. Page after page was filled with various sketches and doodling. Eyes, noses, and lips. Feathers. Squares and circles and triangles. Chloe had drawn some of the shapes one-dimensional. Some were three-dimensional, with shading and depth. A square held an eye, or a triangle held lips. Chloe had mixed and matched the different designs as if she were seeing what fit best, and where.

  “Look at this,” she said, holding it out for Rook to see.

  “Not bad,” he said as he flipped through the pages, just as she had.

  She turned in a slow circle. “I don’t see any other drawings or sketches. No art supplies, either.”

  “People doodle, Heat.

  “True,” she conceded. Something about the sketches bothered her, but she put the pad back.

  They spent another fifteen minutes poking around every nook and cranny of Chloe’s room before Heat gave it up. Chloe hadn’t left any clues about what she was working on. She’d been fastidious about it, in fact. This told Nikki the most important thing she needed to know: that Chloe had recognized what she was researching could put her in danger.

  Heat didn’t bother with niceties when she answered her phone. It rang, and invariably she answered with a short “Heat.”

  “Nik.”

  Ian’s voice was the last thing she’d expected on the other end of the line. Several scenarios ran through her mind: he could be calling to tell her to leave Cambria, that her presence was not wanted; he could want to reminisce about the old days, although she couldn’t imagine why he’d want to rehash their breakup; or he could pony up something that would help her. “Ian.”

  A silence hung between them for a long beat before Nikki spoke again. “What can I do for you?”

  He cleared his throat. “Look, I, uh...”

  She read the tone of his voice as he trailed off and knew he was trying to apologize for being such an ass. She could’ve made it easy for him, but instead she let him sweat by remaining silent.

  “I, uh...”

  “What is it, Ian?” she finally asked, letting him off the hook.

  “I gave it some thought after you left the precinct and, well, we would be okay with you helping out on the Chloe Masterson case.”

  This was a surprising turn of events. “Is that right? Who is we?”

  “The mayor, actually.” He’d sounded tentative at f
irst, as if he was having trouble saying what he’d called to say. Apologies had always been hard for him. But now, with just the slightest pushback from her, his tone was slightly indignant.

  “Give him—”

  “Her,” he corrected.

  “Give her my thanks.”

  “Nikki, all bullshit aside, the mayor wants us to work together on this. I’m the chief and I want a solve. We talked and she thinks your experience as a homicide detective can help us get there faster.”

  “What about the fact that Rook is my husband?”

  He paused before answering, as if weighing his words. “I cannot take him off the persons-of-interest list. The girl was in his place and he found the body. There is a connection. If he doesn’t know anything, then why was she killed there? That is a big unanswered question. I know you want to believe him, but it’s too damning to just ignore.”

  As much as she wanted to, she knew she couldn’t argue with him. If she were in his shoes, her thought process would be the same.

  “I know you want to be involved, so I’ll cut right to the chase. Turns out Chloe Masterson’s father went to college at Cam U,” he said, referring to the university by its shortened moniker.

  “You just learned that?” Nikki bit her tongue as soon as the words were spoken. Criticizing Ian’s investigative skills wouldn’t endear her to him. He was willing to let her in, and she did not want him change his mind. Just because the mayor wanted it didn’t mean he couldn’t fight it. She backtracked. “I just mean that I usually check next of kin first thing.”

  “We did that, Detective. We may be upstate, but we’re not imbeciles. We’re just not New York City. Our limited manpower only goes so far.”

  Heat chastised herself for being so careless with her words. “Of course you’re not. You don’t have to be. I—”

  “Don’t placate me,” he said, cutting her off. “I get it. You’re used to being the one in charge.”

  The comment gave her pause. He was 100 percent right. She didn’t take instructions or orders from someone else; other than the brass at One Police Plaza, she called the shots.

  Rook came into the hotel room, a white cardboard cup of coffee in each hand. She mouthed Thank you as he handed one to her.

  “Who’s that?” he whispered, pointing to the cell phone at her ear.

  She covered the base of the phone. “Ian Cooley,” she whispered.

  Rooks eyebrows shot up. “New information?” he whispered back.

  Nikki shrugged just as Ian started talking again. “Let’s get to it. Turns out Masterson is Chloe’s mother’s maiden name. Mom and Dad were never married. The mother didn’t give Chloe her father’s surname.”

  This was interesting. “Masterson is on her birth certificate?”

  “Yep.”

  Tammy had said that Chloe didn’t see her dad. Nikki had assumed divorced, but now that narrative was changing. A lesson that she shouldn’t jump to conclusions. “Who’s the father? Have you talked to him?”

  “Not yet. But Chloe’s cell phone log shows that she had been talking to him. For five months now.”

  Nikki swiveled around, looking for a pen and piece of paper. Rook saw her searching and quickly grabbed both from the bedside table. She nodded her thanks and jotted down what Ian had just told her. “And before that?”

  “Nothing. It’s like he suddenly blew into her life from out of nowhere.”

  Five months ago. Multiple questions came to Nikki. It explained why Chloe had her mother’s name, but why hadn’t her father been part of her childhood? Was that his choice, or had it been orchestrated by her mother? And what brought him back? Lots of questions. Far fewer answers.

  Rook waited impatiently, gesturing at her. She turned her back to him as she listened to Ian. “There were no calls from Chloe’s phone to her father on the day her body was discovered,” Ian continued. “The day before there were four calls from her phone to his. Three lasted for less than ten seconds. The fourth call connected and lasted several minutes.”

  “Sounds like we need to talk to Chloe’s father ASAP.”

  Behind her, Rook drew in an interested breath. This was the best development they’d had to date. Heat and Rook had already learned that Chloe could keep a secret. She’d proved it with whatever research she was doing. It was not a surprise, then, that she’d kept her father a secret, as well.

  “I’m going to interview him,” Ian said. “I thought you might want to tag along.”

  She had to swallow her eagerness. “Of course. Where and when?”

  “Right now. I’ve been to his house. Not there. I’m heading to his lodge. I’ll pick you up.”

  “Where and when what?” Rook said, his whisper louder.

  She looked at Rook. “No, I’ll drive myself.”

  “Sure, suit yourself.”

  Heat scribbled down the address he rattled off. “I’m on my way.”

  The streets of Cambria were calm compared to those in Manhattan. There were no blasting sirens, no blaring horns, no continual street noise like in the city that never slept. Heat was getting her bearings and figuring out the lay of the land, but she missed the cacophony that was New York. “It’s too quiet,” she said.

  “It does have its own appeal, though,” Rook said from the passenger seat.

  She could enjoy a slower pace for a while. A long weekend in the Hamptons, definitely. A week on Nantucket, without a doubt. But permanent residence in a suburban town would have her yearning for the energy of the city and all its boroughs, for the eclectic people, for the variety of food to be found no matter where you happened to find yourself. “I suppose, but it’s nostalgic for you,” she said.

  “I can’t deny that,” he said. The smile she loved crossed his lips, this time with a hint of sentimentality. “There’s nothing quite like one’s college days, is there? It’s the place you discover who you are. Your authentic self, so to speak. New knowledge. The excitement of young love.” He looked at her from the corners of his eyes. “Of course, not all of us have the best luck with early romance.”

  He was referring to Petar Matic, the boyfriend she’d had in college who’d later turned out to be involved in the conspiracy to kill her mother. And then there was Ian. She’d been giving it a lot of thought. She had to come clean. It might as well be now. “Rook, I want—”

  “Me?” he said with a grin. “I know. I’m hard to resist now that I’m a professor.”

  She gave him a sideways glance, letting her eyes roam over him. “I do like the tweed jacket with the patches on the sleeves look. Very professorial.”

  “I’ll give you private office hours.”

  “Promise?”

  “I’ll grade your papers anytime,” he said, cringing the minute the words left his mouth. “Scratch that.”

  “Yeah, that didn’t quite work.”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “Can’t win them all.”

  They drove in silence for a few minutes before she came back to what she wanted to talk about. “There’s something I need to tell you, Rook.”

  He glanced at her, a mixture of wariness and concern suddenly coloring his face. “Nothing that follows that sentence is ever good, you know.”

  He had a point. It was a phrase that set people up for bad news. “Depends on your perspective, I guess.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “No, not worried.”

  “Then what?”

  “Mmm, you might be mad,” she said, leaving out that he might also feel betrayed that she hadn’t told him about Ian early on in their relationship. A marriage was a pretty big deal.

  He was quiet for a few seconds before he said, “I don’t think you could say anything that could make me too mad.”

  She hoped.

  He swiveled slightly in his seat to face her. “Lay it on me, Nik.”

  And so she did. “I kind of, um, know Ian Cooley.”

  Rook drew back, surprised. “I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t th
at.”

  “We were in the academy together.”

  The worry dissolved from his face. “That was a lot of buildup for—” He broke off as realization hit. “Oh. You know him.”

  She swallowed, her guilt at having kept something so important from him expanding like a balloon about to pop. She tightened her hands on the steering wheel. “There’s more.”

  This time he swiveled his head to look at her. The mood in the car had changed, but Rook was still Rook. He had a light in his eyes that showed he wasn’t taking this too seriously. They both had pasts, after all.

  He nodded sagely. “Bear with me as I do a little deductive work here. I mentioned the young love one can find in college, adding that it’s not always good. Case in point, Petar Matic, but of course he’s best left in the graveyards of our minds. That topic, however, seems to have sparked a memory for you. A memory that involves our intrepid Cambria police officer. Which leads me to conclude that whatever went on with Mr. Ian Cooley was, in fact, short-lived. Memorable for some reason, but in the end, inconsequential.”

  Nikki’s eyes pinched together. “Maybe not that inconsequential.”

  Rook had that smirk of a smile and she could see his eyes dancing with amusement, even from the side. What she said next might well wipe that mirth clear off his face. “Do tell, mi amor,” he said.

  A deep breath might not help bolster her nerve, but she drew one in anyway. “He was my...husband,” she said.

  Rook’s eye twitched. He poked a finger in his ear, wriggling it around. “Sorry, I don’t think I heard you. What was that?”

  She spoke louder this time. “We were married.”

  This time his eye twitched in a series of spasms. “I’m sorry, did you say you were m-m-married to this sheriff?”

  “He’s the chief of police,” she corrected.

  “Of podunk Cambria.”

  “Now it’s podunk? You just got done telling me how much you love this place. New knowledge. New loves. Finding your authentic self.”

  “Well, yeah, but that was before. My authentic self eventually wanted to get the hell out of Cambria and move to Manhattan. This is a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.” He rubbed his hands on his trousers. “Married?”