“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.”