Naked Heat by Richard Castle

Author:Richard Castle [Castle, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-01-14T19:19:19+00:00

On the walk back to the car, Rook laughed and said, “Or we can talk to you in a . . . ‘more official setting.’ That goes on my list of Heatisms, along with Zoo Lockup and blast matrix.”

“I was showing some refinement. After all, it was the Dragonfly.”

Rook said, “So the question for me remains, why was Derek calling Soleil Gray the night of Cassidy’s murder?”

“Right there with you,” said Heat. “And the freak-out reaction from her.”

“I don’t suppose that’s because the concierge couldn’t get her the table she wanted at Per Se.”

“Not being a fan of coincidences, I’d say a call with that timing, two bodies with stab wounds, duct-taped to chairs . . . Derek Snow has to be related to Cassidy Towne, but how? And if Soleil wasn’t complicit in her murder, is she feeling in some kind of danger herself?”

“Here’s a nutty idea. Ask her.”

“Yeah, and she’ll be straight with me, too.” And then she said, “But you know I will.”

As Nikki headed north on First Avenue toward the OCME, Rook said, “With or without the lobby gunplay, I’m still going with the premise that Derek was a Cassidy tipster.”

“Well, we’re pulling his phone records, let’s see if you’re right.” She blew air out between her teeth. “Sordid, isn’t it? Thinking people are spying on you for cash. What you ate, what you drank, who you’re sleeping with, all so Cassidy Towne can put it out to people in the Ledger.”

“Most of it was true, though. She told me she got something wrong early on, right after she started her column, about Woody Allen having an affair with Meryl Streep. Her source said he was obsessed with her ever since Manhattan. Not true, totally blew it. The other papers pounced on it and called her the Towne Liar. From then on, she said if it wasn’t true and verifiable—from two sources—she’d rather let someone else scoop her.”

“Noble. For a scumbag.”

“Yes, and none of us ever read those columns, do we? Come on, Nikki, the problem is if you take them seriously. They’re like the sports section for peeping Toms, which is just about everybody.”

“Not I,” she said.

“Look, I agree with you that it’s scummy. And not just because I am intimidated by your impeccable command of grammar. But, at the same time, she was only covering what people were doing. Nobody made Spitzer mount a call girl in over-the-calf socks. Or Russell Crowe toss a telephone at a hotel night manager. Or Soleil Gray blow a hole in a concierge’s pants with a handgun.”

“Right. But who says we have to know all that?”

“Then don’t read it. But it doesn’t make the secrets go away. You know, my mom’s been putting together a night of Chekhov readings at the Westport Playhouse. She was rehearsing one last weekend, ‘The Lady with the Little Dog.’ There’s a passage about this guy Gurov that I’m going to excerpt in my article about Cassidy. It goes something like ‘He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all .

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