“Obviously. The piano company is a front for art thieves.”

“Is that your final answer?” The flat expression she showed him made Rook backpedal so fast, Nikki wanted to burst out laughing. But she held her poker face.

“Or…,” he said, “let me finish. You served a warrant at the Guilford and at a personal storage place. I’m sticking with my piano crate scenario, but I say it’s…Kimberly Starr.” Although her face remained neutral, Rook became animated. “I’m right, I know it. I can see it all over you. Tell me I’m wrong, then.”

“I’m not telling you squat.” Raley and Ochoa came into the bull pen. Heat started over to them. “Why spoil the fun?”

“Raley and I showed around Buckley’s picture,” said Ochoa. “We scored two positive hits. That doesn’t suck.”

“Doesn’t suck at all.” Nikki dared to let herself feel the thrill of gathering momentum on the case. “And they’ll testify?”

“Affirm,” said Raley.

Nikki’s desk phone rang and she lunged for it. “Detective Heat.” She kept nodding as if the caller could see her, and said, “Excellent. Great. Excellent. Thanks much.” When she hung up, she turned to her team. “Wiretap’s up. We’re going to the dance.” For once things were moving at Heat speed.

Nikki and Rook sat wedged into a corner of the tiny room, knee-to-knee on metal folding chairs behind the police technician who was recording the calls. The AC vent whistled, so Heat had had the air turned off to let her hear without that distraction, and it was suffocating in there.

A blue LED meter spiked on the console. “Picking up,” said the technician.

Heat put on her headphones. The ring purred on the line. Her breathing became shallow the way it had on the raid in Long Island City, only this time she couldn’t calm herself. Her heart thunked at a disco cadence until Nikki heard the click of the answer and one of the beats skipped.

“Hello?”

“I’m using your direct line because I don’t want the receptionist knowing I’m calling you,” said Kimberly Starr.

“OK…” Noah Paxton sounded wary of her. “I don’t understand why not.”

Nikki hand-signaled the technician to ensure he was recording. He nodded.

Kimberly continued, “You’re about to understand, Noah.”

“Is something wrong? You sound strange.”

Nikki closed her eyes into a tight squint of concentration, wanting only to hear. With headphones on, the fidelity was iPod-quality. She clocked every nuance. The air hiss of the office chair Noah was sitting in. The hard swallow that came from Kimberly.

Now Nikki waited. Now she wanted words.

“I need your help with something. I know you always did things for Matthew, and now I want you to do the same for me.”

“Things?” His tone was still guarded.

“Come on, Noah, cut the shit. We both know Matt pulled a lot of crap that was shady and you handled it. I need some of that from you now.”

“I’m listening,” he said.

“I have the paintings.”

Nikki caught herself making tension fists and loosened her grip.

Paxton’s office chair creaked. “Excuse me?”

“Am I not speaking English? Noah, the art collection. It wasn’t stolen. I took it. I hid it.”

“You?”

“Not me personally. I had some guys do it while I went out of town. Forget all that. The thing is, I have them and I want you to help me sell them.”

“Kimberly, are you nuts?”

“They’re mine. I didn’t get insurance. I deserve something out of all those years with that son of a bitch.”

Now it was Heat’s turn to swallow hard. It was starting to come together. Her heart was punching to get out.

“What makes you think I’d know how to sell them?”

“Noah, I need help. You were Matthew’s fixer, now I want you to be mine. And if you’re not going to help me, I’ll find someone who will.”

“Whoa, whoa, Kimberly, slow down.” Another pneumatic hiss, and Heat pictured Noah Paxton rising up behind his horseshoe-shaped desk. “Don’t call anybody. Are you listening to me?”

“I’m listening,” she said.

“We should talk this out. There’s a solution to all this, you just need to keep your head.” He paused and asked, “Where are these paintings?”

A swell of anticipation gathered up Nikki and carried her until she felt suddenly weightless at its crest. A trickle of sweat curved around the vinyl ear seal of one of her headphones.

“The paintings are here,” said Kimberly.

“And where’s here?”

Say it, thought Nikki, say it.

“At the Guilford. Pretty cool, huh? All the searching they’ve been doing and they never left the building.”

“All right, listen to me. Don’t call anybody, just relax. We need to work this out face-to-face, OK?”

“OK.”

“Good. Stay there. I’ll be right over.” And then he hung up.

Nikki took off her headphones. When Rook removed his, he said, “I called it. I was right. It was Kimberly. Ha-ha, where’s my five?” He held up his palm to her.

“Uh, we don’t do fives.”

Rook stood. “Listen, we’d better get over there before Noah. If this woman killed her husband, who knows what she’ll do next.”

Nikki rose. “Thanks for the pointer, Detective Rook.” He held the door for her and they strode out.

NINETEEN

Heat, Raley, Ochoa, and Rook crossed through the lobby of the Guilford to the elevators. When the doors opened, Nikki put the palm of her hand on Rook’s chest. “Whoa, whoa, where do you think you’re going?”

“With you.”

She shook her head. “No way. You stay down here.”

The automatic doors kept trying to close. Ochoa braced them open with his shoulder to keep them from bouncing.

“Come on, I did what you said. I thought like a detective and I deserve to be there when you take her down. I’ve earned that.” When all three of the detectives broke into laughter, Rook walked it back a hair. “How about I just wait in the hall?”

“You told me you’d wait in the hall when I arrested Buckley.”

“OK, I got impatient once.”

“And on our raid in Long Island City, what did you do after I told you to stay behind?”

Rook kicked the toe of his shoe against the lip of the rug. “Look, this is starting to sound more like an intervention than an arrest.”

“I promise, we won’t make you wait long. After all,” she said with mock solemnity, “you’ve earned that.” She got in the elevator with Roach.

“Just for that I may do my whole article about someone else.”

“Break my heart,” she said as the doors shut on him.

When Detective Heat entered through the front door of the apartment, she found Noah Paxton by himself in the living room. “Where’s Kimberly?”

“She’s not here.”

Raley and Ochoa stepped in behind Nikki. “Check all the rooms,” she said. Ochoa disappeared with Raley down the hallway.

“Kimberly’s not back there,” said Paxton. “I already checked.”

Heat said, “We’re do-it-yourselfers. We’re funny that way.” Her gaze went to the room full of artwork, hanging as it always had been, floor to ceiling. Nikki marveled at the sight. “The paintings. They’re back.”

Noah seemed to share her bewilderment. “I don’t understand it, either. I’m just trying to figure out where the hell they came from.”

“Relax, you don’t have to playact anymore, Noah.” She watched the furrows crease his brow. “They never left the Guilford, right? We tapped her phone call to you not twenty minutes ago.”

“I see.” He thought a few seconds, no doubt sorting through his side of the conversation, wondering if he could be an accessory after the fact. “I told her she was nuts,” he said.

“Now, that’s a good citizen.”

He opened his palms to her. “I apologize, Detective. I knew I should have called you. Guess I still have my protective instinct for the family. I came over here to talk sense into her. Too late now.” Nikki just shrugged. “When did you find out she stole them? During that phone call?”