“Your dad?” asked Rook. She shrugged as if she didn’t know who and just stood in place, watching.
On the twenty-five-year-old video, young Nikki Heat, decked out in a yellow jumper, swung her feet to and fro under the bench and smiled. She talk-shouted to the camera, “I am going to play Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.” Rook expected to start hearing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Instead, the girl looked to whoever held the camera and confidently announced, “I would like to play his Sonata Number Fifteen.” Cynthia gave her a nod to begin, and Nikki poised her hands over the keyboard, counted silently to herself, and began the piece, which was immediately familiar to Rook. He moved closer to the TV, impressed to say the least. The piece was challenging but doable for small hands, and she struck all the notes without a miscue, although her cadence felt rote, but hell, the kid was only five. As the little girl continued to play, her mother leaned close to her and said, “Beautiful, Nikki. But don’t rush. Like Mozart said, ‘The space between the notes is music, too.’”
Heat indulged Rook his voyeurism but hit the stop button as soon as the song ended. Rook applauded, and meant it. He turned to the piano across the room: The same one, situated exactly as it had been in the video. “Do you still know the song?”
“Forget it.”
“Come on, command performance.”
“No, show’s over.”
“Please?”
Nikki sat on the couch and positioned herself turned away from the piano. Her pose gave off the vibe he got from the Sargent painting she had avoided in Boston. “You need to understand. I haven’t even opened the lid since her murder.” Her features tightened and her complexion took on a slight pallor. “I can’t bring myself to play it. I just can’t.”
A pair of sirens screamed by, wailing beneath her window in the middle of the night, and Nikki stirred. Somebody heading to emergency or jail, as that old Eagles song about New York had gotten so right. The alarm on the nightstand read 3:26 A.M. She flopped an arm to Rook’s side of the bed and found nothing but cool sheets.
“Please tell me you’re not surfing porn,” she said, tying a bow on the front of her robe. He sat in his undershorts at her dining table in the darkened room, his face cast in creepy lunar light from his laptop screen.
“In my own way, I am. Writer’s porn.” He looked up at her. The spiky bed head didn’t make him look any less crazy. “What is it that is so darn satisfying about a Google search? It is kinda like forbidden sex. You wonder, should I/shouldn’t I? But you can’t get it out of your head, so you say the hell with it, and, next thing you know, you’re sweaty and panting with excitement as you get exactly what you need.”
“Look, if you’d rather be alone …”
He spun his MacBook toward her so she could see the search results. “Leonard Frick. Remember the cello guy in your mom’s video?”
“Otherwise known as the cellist.”
“Who also played the clarinet in her chamber trio with Nicole. Multitalented.” Rook hitched a thumb to the screen. “Leonard Frick, graduate of the New England Conservatory, is currently employed as principal clarinetist for the Queens Symphony Orchestra.”
“Otherwise known as the principal clarinet.”
“This is why I gave up the bassoon. Too many rules.” He stood. “This guy had to know both your mom and Nicole as well as anyone. We need to go see him.”
“Now?”
“Of course not. I need to get dressed first.”
She pressed herself against him and caressed his ass with each hand, then jerked him to her by his cheeks. “Now?”