The unit drew close as he read bits from the file. “Our preppy Step-?ford Mom was born and raised in Astoria above a mani-?pedi salon on Steinway. About as far from the Connecticut girls’ schools and riding academies as you can get. Let’s see, high school dropout…and she’s got a rap sheet.” He handed it to Heat.
“No felonies,” she said. “Juvie busts for shoplifting, and later for pot. One DUI…Oh, and, here we go, busted twice at nineteen for lewd acts with customers. Young Laldomina was a lap dancer at numerous clubs near the airport, performing under the name Samantha.”
“I always said Sex and the City fostered poor role modeling,” said Rook.
Ochoa took the sheet back from Heat and said, “I talked to a pal in Vice. Kimberly, Samantha, whatever, hooked up with some guy, a regular at the club, and she married him. She was twenty. He was sixty-?eight and loaded. Her sugar daddy was from Greenwich old money and wanted to take her to the yacht club, so he—”
“Let me guess,” said Rook, “he got her a Henry Higgins,” drawing blank stares from Roach.
“I speak musical theater,” Heat said. Right up there with animated films, Broadway was Nikki’s great escape from her work on the other streets of New York—when she could swing a ticket. “He means her new husband got his exotic dancer a charm tutor for a presentability makeover. A class on class.”
Rook added, “And a Kimberly Starr is born.”
“The husband died when she was twenty-?one. I know what you’re thinking, so I double-?checked. Natural causes. Heart attack. The man left her one million dollars.”
“And a taste for more. Nice work, Detective.” Ochoa popped a victory donut hole, and Heat continued. “You and Raley keep a tail on her. Loose one. I’m not ready to show my hand until I see what else shakes free on other fronts.”
Heat had learned years ago that most detective work is grunt work done pounding the phones, combing files, and searching the department’s database. The calls she had made the afternoon before, to Starr’s attorney and detectives working complaints against persons, had paid off that morning with a file of people who’d made threats on the real estate developer’s life. She grabbed her shoulder bag and signed out, figuring it was about time to show her celeb magazine writer what fieldwork was all about, but she couldn’t find him.
She had almost left Rook behind when she came upon him standing in the precinct lobby, very occupied. A drop-?dead-?stunning woman was smoothing the collar of his shirt. The stunner barked out a laugh, shrieked, “Oh, Jamie!” then pulled her designer sunglasses off her head to shake her raven shoulder-?length hair. Heat watched her lean in close to whisper, pressing her D-?cups right against him. He didn’t step back, either. What was Rook doing, making a perfume ad with every damn woman in the city? Then she stopped herself. Why do I care? she thought. It bothered her that it even bothered her. So she blew it off and walked out, mad at herself for her one look back at them.
“So what’s the point of this exercise?” Rook asked on the drive uptown.
“It’s something we professionals in the world of detection call detecting.” Heat picked the file out of her driver’s door pocket and passed it to him. “Somebody wanted Matthew Starr dead. A few you’ll see in there made actual threats. Others just found him inconvenient.”
“So this is about eliminating them?”
“This is about asking questions and seeing where the answers lead. Sometimes you flush out a suspect, sometimes you’re getting information you didn’t have that takes you somewhere else. Was that another member of the Jameson Rook fan club back there?”
Rook chuckled. “Bree? Oh, hell, no.”
They rode another block in silence. “Because she seemed like a big fan.”
“Bree Flax is a big fan, all right. Of Bree Flax. She’s a freelancer for the local glossy mags, always on the prowl for the true crime piece she can up-?sell into an instant book. You know, ripped from the headlines. That operetta back there was all about getting me to cough up some inside stuff on Matthew Starr.”
“She seemed…focused.”
Rook smiled. “By the way, that’s F-?l-?a-?x, just in case you want to run a check.”