Nikki shrugged. “For now.”
She hesitated and said, “That is when she left me. Eleven-thirty.” Heat didn’t need to look at her notes to know that the times Soleil had given her were bogus. Allie flipped her hair around her ear again. “You won’t tell Soleil?”
“That she asked you to lie in a murder investigation?” Allie’s lower lip started to tremble and Nikki put a hand on her knee. “Relax, you did the right thing.” Allie flashed a quick smile that the detective returned before she continued. “Soleil and Cassidy Towne had some bad blood between them, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, that bitch—sorry, but she kept printing all sorts of ugly crap about her. Like if she had one beer. Made Soleil nuts.”
“So we understand,” said Nikki. “Did you ever hear Soleil say anything threatening about Cassidy Towne?”
“Well, you know, who doesn’t say stuff when they’re mad? It doesn’t mean they did it.” Allie could see that she had gotten their interest and looked down, rolling her thumb on the trackball on her BlackBerry just to have something else to do. When her eyes came up and found Nikki scrutinizing her, she set the PDA on the coffee table and waited, knowing what was coming.
“Tell me what you heard her say.”
“It was just talk.” Allie shrugged it off. Heat simply watched her, waiting.
Rook leaned forward onto his thighs and smiled. “She always wins the staring contests, trust me, I know. You might as well, you know . . .”
Allie made her decision to come clean. “One night last week she took me to dinner. The cool artists do that. They know my salary. Anyway, Soleil wanted Italian so she took me to Babbo.” She misread the look that passed between the other two and explained, “You know, Mario Batali’s place in Washington Square?”
“Yeah, it’s great,” said Rook.
“We were eating upstairs, and Soleil has to use the loo, so she excuses herself and goes downstairs. A minute later, I hear all this shouting and a crash. I recognized Soleil’s voice so I ran down the steps and there’s Cassidy Towne on the floor with her chair tipped over. Just when I got there, Soleil grabs a knife off her table and says . . .” Allie dry-swallowed again. “She says, you like stabbing people in the back? How would you like me to stab you in yours, you frickin’ pig.”
Nikki walked out of the parking garage off Times Square and found Rook buying two hot dogs from a sidewalk vendor across from the GMA studios. “This is why you hopped out of a moving car?” she asked.
“I call that more rolling than moving,” he said. “I saw the stand and sprung into my signature hero deployment. Keeps my reflexes sharp. Dog?” He held one out to her.
“No, thanks, job’s dangerous enough.” As they crossed Broadway Detective Heat made her habitual check for suspicious parked cars, ever mindful of the Crossroads of the World, the New Normal, and life on orange alert. By the time they reached the other side of the street, Rook had finished his first dog.
“Man, I don’t know if I can eat two. What the hell, yes, I can.” He started in on the other, filling his cheeks like a squirrel, making her laugh as they walked north, weaving between the tourists. Except for the gun on her hip, thought Nikki, they could be a suburban couple themselves.
Between swallows, Rook asked, “Why are we checking Soleil’s other alibi? Let’s suppose maybe she hired the Texan to stab Cassidy Towne. What’s her whereabouts going to tell us?”
“It gives us a chance to talk to people in her life. We follow the leads we have, not the ones we wish we had. Besides, look what the last alibi check gave us.”
“We learned Soleil lied to us?”
“Exactly. So let’s talk to some more people who might tell us the truth.”