“A piano?” And then he repeated, “A piano? No.”
“Well she bought one.” Heat looked at the CSI photo in her hand of the Starr living room. “It’s a beaut. A Steinway Karl Lagerfeld edition.”
“Kimberly, Kimberly, Kimberly.”
“These list for eighty thousand. How could she afford that?”
“Welcome to my world, Detective. Not the craziest thing she’s done. Want to hear about the speedboat she bought last fall in the Hamptons?”
“But where did she get the money?”
“Not from me.”
Nikki checked her watch. She might be able to get to the insurance folks before lunch. “Thanks, Noah, that’s all I need.”
“Until next time, you mean.”
“Sure you don’t want to set up a desk over here?” she said. They were both laughing when they hung up.
Heat punctuated her “Yesss!” with a fist-?pump when Raley finished his call to the archives manager at GothAmerican. They not only routinely maintained photographic documentation of insured art collections, they held them for seven years following the cancellation of a policy. “How soon can we get them?”
“Faster than you can microwave my leftovers,” said Raley.
She pressed her detective. “Exactly how soon?”
“The archive manager is e-?mailing them to me as an attachment now.”
“Forward it to Forensics as soon as it comes.”
“Already had GothAmerican do a cc to them,” he said.
“Raley, you are the czar of all media.” Heat clapped him on the shoulder. She grabbed her bag and hurried out to Forensics, brushing past Rook on his way in without seeming to notice him.
The world still hadn’t caught up to Heat speed. When Nikki was closing in, it had little chance.
Detective Heat returned to the bull pen from Forensics an hour and a half later wearing the game face Rook had seen when she was staging for the body shop raid.
“What did you learn?” he asked.
“Oh, just that Matthew Starr’s art collection was all forgeries.”
He sprang to his feet. “The whole collection?”
“Fakes.” She slung her bag on the back of her chair. “The ones in the insurance pictures are real. The ones in Barbara Deerfield’s camera? Not so much.”
“That’s big.”
“It sure provides a motive for someone to murder an art appraiser.”
He gestured, punctuating with his forefinger. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Oh, you were, were you?”
“I am a trained journalist. I’m capable of reading clues, too, you know.”
He was getting cocky and she decided to have some fun with him. “Great. Then tell me who had the motive.”
“You mean who murdered Barbara Deerfield? Pochenko.”
“On his own initiative? Doubt that.”
He pondered and said, “What do you think?”
“I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s too early to go shooting my mouth off.” She went to the board and put a check mark beside her notation to screen the insurance photos. He followed her like a puppy and she smiled to herself.
“But you’re on to something, aren’t you?” he said. She just shrugged. “Do you have a suspect in mind?” Nikki flashed a grin and walked back to her desk. He trailed her and said, “You do. Who is it?”
“Rook, aren’t you doing this whole ride-?along so you can get into the mind of a homicide detective?”
“Yeah?”
“Just telling you wouldn’t be helping you. Know what would help you? For you to think like a homicide detective and see what you come up with on your own.” Nikki picked up her desk phone and pushed a speed-?dial button.
Rook said, “That sounds like a lot of work.”
She held up a staying palm while she listened to a ring at the other end of the line. He brought his knuckle up and pushed it to his lips, agonized. She loved driving Rook crazy like this. It was fun, and besides, if she was wrong, she didn’t want him to know.