As the Acela Express sped toward New York’s Penn Station, Rook stared out his window at a snowy egret fishing the bank of a salt marsh on the Connecticut shoreline. “God, I wish you’d say something,” said Heat.
“What do you mean, ‘say something’?” His eyes rose to the archipelago dotting the horizon, where several hulking mansions jutted up, each stately home rooted fast to one of the tiny rock islands scattered offshore. Over a century ago, millionaires from New York and Philadelphia looking for isolation and privacy built what they whimsically called their summer cottages on those mounds of granite, appropriating Long Island Sound as a castle moat. Their perfect seclusion made Rook reflect on Petar’s comment the night before about Nikki’s defensive wall. He turned to face her across the table from him. “I think I’ve been a total chatterbox since Providence. Do you really want to hear more about my theory on why Ravel’s Bolero is such a surefire, panties on the floor, bedroom seducer?”
“Rook.”
“Hands down, the most hauntingly erotic piece of music ever. Except maybe ‘Don’t Mess with My Toot Toot.’”
“You’re driving me crazy, so just say it. If you hadn’t pushed me to go to Boston, we never would have popped this lead.” Nikki’s cell phone vibrated and she took a call from Detective Ochoa. “That’s great,” she said and made a few notes. She hung up and said, “Case in point. In the time since we ID’d Nicole Bernardin as our Jane Doe this morning, Roach has located her apartment. It’s on Payson Avenue near Inwood Park. They’re rolling there now.”
“No such thing as Sunday off for Roach.”
“Or Malcolm and Reynolds. They volunteered to pick us up at Penn so we can Code Two up there.” She checked her watch for the tenth time in as many minutes. “We’ll still get there sooner than if we had waited for a flight.”
Rook smiled. “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something I like about Malcolm and Reynolds.”
Heat went back to looking over the photocopies Professor Shimizu had made for her of the student file and 1971 yearbook photos of Nicole Aimee Bernardin. As Nikki studied the French violin student’s young face in one picture, snapped in a candid moment laughing with Nikki’s mother and Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood, she felt Rook’s stare.
“Know what I can’t wrap my brain around?” he said. “That your mom never mentioned her to you. Let’s look past the obvious stunner that the lady in your mom’s suitcase was a classmate of your mom’s. They weren’t just classmates. The professor said your mom and Nicole were inseparable back then. Friends, roommates—hell, they even formed their own chamber ensemble. Why do you think she never told you about her?”
She turned the page to another yearbook shot of her mother and Nicole. This time they were at the 1970 French Cultural Festival at the Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade. The picture captured them eyeing each other peripherally as they played. The caption read, “Trope and Bernardin, Keeping Time,” but to Nikki the look carried more. If it were present day, the caption would simply say, “BFFs.”
Rook asked, “Do you think they had some big falling out?”
“How would I know if I didn’t even know about her?”
“Hey, here’s a theory.”
“I was waiting. Are you sure you don’t want to put on your foil cap?”
“Nicole Bernardin killed your mother.”
She just stared at him. “And?”
“Hang on, I’m formulating thoughts…. And that is how Nicole had your mom’s suitcase.”
“And then, ten years later, someone else killed her, same MO, and just happened to stuff her in it?”
“Oh,” he said, wiggling in his seat. “What if … What if Nicole’s husband was your mom’s killer? That’s how she ended up in his suitcase.”
“You know, at least that has possibilities.”
“Really?”