Frozen Heat (2012) (10 page)

“Maybe I can close the case someday. But closure?” She dismissed the entire concept with the wave of a hand.

“I don’t know how you got through it, Nikki.” He rested his hand on her wrist. “You were very strong then.” Rook signaled for the check.

“Maybe strong is what broke us up.”

He smiled a little and said, “And not me cheating?”

“Oh, right.” She grinned. “That, too.”

On their way out, Nikki excused herself to the ladies’ room and Petar thanked Rook for the nice meal. “You’re a very lucky guy, Jameson Rook,” trilling the R, a remnant of the accent. “Take this the right way, OK? I honestly hope you’re luckier than I was. I could never get through that protective wall of hers. Maybe you won’t give up.”

In spite of himself, Rook had to admit maybe he and the old boyfriend had something in common, after all.

The April air had chilled overnight, and as they waited Sunday morning on the empty sidewalk outside of NEC’s Main Conservatory Building to meet her mom’s former professor, Nikki could see vapor trails from Rook’s nose. It reminded her of Lauren Parry’s breath inside that freezer truck, and she turned away to watch a bus roll by on Huntington Avenue. Then they both heard bouncy synthesized music followed by a man’s amplified voice singing the
Flashdance
song “Maniac.” The two of them turned all around, searching for the source.

“He’s up there,” said the gray-haired woman approaching from the bus stop. She pointed to an eighth-floor open window in an apartment building behind the NEC residence hall, where a black man in a red long-sleeved shirt and matching black leather vest and fedora sang into the mic of his karaoke machine. “That’s Luther.” She waved up to the window, and Luther waved back, still swaying and singing, his booming voice echoing off the face of the building. “Every morning, when he sees me, he auditions like this for the Conservatory. I told him once we don’t do pop, but he seems undaunted.” Professor Yuki Shimizu extended her hand and introduced herself.

The three of them ascended the foot-worn marble steps and entered through hallowed wooden doors into the vestibule. “I guess you know NEC is a national landmark,” said the professor. “The oldest private music institution in America. And no, I wasn’t here when it opened. It just feels like it.”

As they signed in at Security, Professor Shimizu said, “Pardon me for staring, but I can’t help it. You look just like your mother.” The old woman’s smile filled her entire face and warmed Nikki. “Take that as a supreme compliment, my dear.”

“So taken, Professor. Thank you.”

“And since it’s my day off, how about calling me Yuki?”

“And I’m Nikki.”

“Most people call me Rook,” he said. “But Jameson’s fine, too.”

“I’ve read your magazine articles.”

“Thank you,” he said.

A twinkle played in the woman’s eyes. “I didn’t say I liked them.” She threw a wink Nikki’s way and led them down a corridor to the right. In spite of the gray hair earned over seventy-six years, she strode with vitality and purpose, not a bit like she even knew what a day off felt like.

As they passed a rehearsal hall, a scattering of students awaiting their turns sat cross-legged on the brown and tan carpet, beside their backpacks and instrument cases, listening to iPods. From inside the hall,
Bolero
pounded against the closed door, all lush and percussive. Rook leaned over and whispered to Nikki, full of suggestiveness, “Mm,
Bolero
.”

Professor Shimizu, strides ahead of them, stopped and turned. “You like Ravel, Mr. Rook?” she asked, clearly having nothing wrong with her hearing. “Almost as sexy as
Flashdance
, eh?”

She took them downstairs to the Firestone Audio Library, where she had arranged a booth for them to meet in, for quiet and privacy. Once they all sat, she regarded Heat again and said, “Nikki, you became a police officer, right? So much for the apple falling from the tree theory.”

“Actually, I had planned on becoming a performer myself,” she said. “I went to college next door at Northeastern and was on track get my degree in Theater Arts when my mother was killed.”

Professor Shimizu surprised her. The old woman rose to her feet and crossed to Nikki’s chair, clasping both her hands in both of hers. “I have no words. And we both know none can fill that void.”

Rook could see Nikki blink away some mist as the woman returned to her seat, so he began for her. “Professor, may I go back for a moment to our metaphorical apple tree?”

She turned aside to Nikki. “Writers.”

“You feel her mom was quite promising as a performer?”

“Let’s talk about the whole student, Jameson. The goal of this institution is not simply to grind out performers like sausage. This is a school, but it is also a community. We stress collaboration and growth. That means artistically, that means technically, and, most importantly, as a person. They are all connected if one is to achieve mastery.” The old teacher turned to address Nikki. “Simply put, your mother embodied those values like few I have seen in my almost sixty years here, both as a student and as faculty.” She paused for effect and said, “And do I look like I’d blow smoke up your skirt?” Heat and Rook laughed, but the professor remained serious. “Your mother also confounded me, Nikki. She studied, she practiced, she inquired, she experimented, and then she studied and practiced some more—all so she could realize her passion, her dream of becoming a concert pianist of the first order. I knew she would get there. The faculty had a pool going about when she would get her first recording contract from Deutsche Grammophon.”

“What happened?” asked Rook.

“Wrong question. You mean, ‘What the hell happened?’” She looked at Nikki and said, “You don’t know either, do you?”

“That’s why we came to see you.”

“I’ve seen this sort of thing before, of course. But usually, it’s alcohol or drugs, or a man or woman derailing them, or burnout, stage fright, or mental illness. But your mother, she simply went to Europe on holiday after graduation and …” The professor lifted both hands off her lap and let them drop. “No reason. Just a waste.”

Rook broke the brief silence. “Was she really that talented?”

The old professor smiled. “You tell me.” She swiveled her chair to the console behind her and switched on the TV monitor. “Lights, please,” she said. Rook got up to kill the overheads and rolled his chair beside Nikki’s in front of the screen. The image that appeared there, 16mm film dubbed to VHS years before, fluttered and resolved. They heard applause and young Professor Yuki Shimizu, with jet-black hair and a polyester pantsuit, stepped to a podium. The subtitle lettering read, “Keller Recital Hall, February 22, 1971.” Beside them, Yuki whispered, “Anyone can pound out Beethoven and hide in the spectacle. I chose this because of its simplicity, so you could see all her colors.”

“Good evening,” said the professor on-screen. “Tonight, a rare treat. French composer Gabriel Faure’s
Pavane
, Opus Fifty, performed by two of our outstanding students, Leonard Frick, playing cello, and, at the piano, Cynthia Trope.” Upon hearing her mother’s maiden name, Nikki leaned closer as the camera panned to an impossibly skinny student with muttonchops and an explosion of kinky hair behind a cello. Then the TV screen included Cynthia in a sleeveless black formal with dark brown hair brushing her shoulders. Heat cleared her throat at the sight. Rook felt like he was seeing double.

The piece began on the Steinway grand, slowly, softly, plaintively; Cynthia’s elegant arms and slender fingers rode the keyboard like gentle waves and then became joined by the cello in harmony and counterpoint. “One bit of color, and I’ll shut up,” Yuki said to them. “This is a choral work, but in this arrangement, the piano carries that part. It’s amazing what she does with it.”

For six minutes they sat, mesmerized, watching and listening to Nikki’s mother—only twenty—weave under, inside, and through her partner’s plaintive cello line in graceful motion, playing fluid and sure, her swaying body connected to the music and the piano, a picture of natural poise on the bench. Then the velvety opening turned sharply dramatic, signaling distress, tragedy, and discord. Cynthia’s unruffled flow broke and she threw thundering, athletic stabs at the ivory. Her neck and arm muscles were sculpted into sharp definition with each of the concussions she delivered, etching the recital hall with crisp shocks of upheaval before returning seamlessly to the melodic, stately dance, with the whole effect of her contribution elevating the performance above melodrama to fully realize the composer’s intent, which was its sophisticated cousin, melancholy. At the end, her fingers gently shaped the notes into softness, not just heard but felt. Ending solo, her tender creation conjured a vision of puffy snowflakes gently lighting on frozen branches.

During the applause, her mother and the cellist stood for humble bows. Rook turned to Nikki, expecting to see tears glistening on her cheeks in the reflection of the video. But no, that would be melodrama. Her response was in tune with her mother’s in the piece—melancholy. And longing.

“Want to see one more?” asked the professor.

“Please,” said Nikki.

The video continued to roll as the duo quickly set up to became a trio and a classmate joined them on stage with her violin. Heat and Rook both reacted at the same time. Rook said, “Stop the tape.”

Nikki shouted, “No, don’t stop it, freeze it. Can you freeze it?”

Professor Shimizu punched the pause button and the image of the violinist froze as she brought her instrument and bow up, revealing a small scar on her outer wrist.

“It’s her,” said Rook, voicing what Heat already knew. “That violinist is our Jane Doe from the suitcase.”

As the Acela Express sped toward New York’s Penn Station, Rook stared out his window at a snowy egret fishing the bank of a salt marsh on the Connecticut shoreline. “God, I wish you’d say something,” said Heat.

“What do you mean, ‘say something’?” His eyes rose to the archipelago dotting the horizon, where several hulking mansions jutted up, each stately home rooted fast to one of the tiny rock islands scattered offshore. Over a century ago, millionaires from New York and Philadelphia looking for isolation and privacy built what they whimsically called their summer cottages on those mounds of granite, appropriating Long Island Sound as a castle moat. Their perfect seclusion made Rook reflect on Petar’s comment the night before about Nikki’s defensive wall. He turned to face her across the table from him. “I think I’ve been a total chatterbox since Providence. Do you really want to hear more about my theory on why Ravel’s
Bolero
is such a surefire, panties on the floor, bedroom seducer?”

“Rook.”

“Hands down, the most hauntingly erotic piece of music ever. Except maybe ‘Don’t Mess with My Toot Toot.’”

“You’re driving me crazy, so just say it. If you hadn’t pushed me to go to Boston, we never would have popped this lead.” Nikki’s cell phone vibrated and she took a call from Detective Ochoa. “That’s great,” she said and made a few notes. She hung up and said, “Case in point. In the time since we ID’d Nicole Bernardin as our Jane Doe this morning, Roach has located her apartment. It’s on Payson Avenue near Inwood Park. They’re rolling there now.”

“No such thing as Sunday off for Roach.”

“Or Malcolm and Reynolds. They volunteered to pick us up at Penn so we can Code Two up there.” She checked her watch for the tenth time in as many minutes. “We’ll still get there sooner than if we had waited for a flight.”

Rook smiled. “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something I like about Malcolm and Reynolds.”

Heat went back to looking over the photocopies Professor Shimizu had made for her of the student file and 1971 yearbook photos of Nicole Aimee Bernardin. As Nikki studied the French violin student’s young face in one picture, snapped in a candid moment laughing with Nikki’s mother and Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood, she felt Rook’s stare.

“Know what I can’t wrap my brain around?” he said. “That your mom never mentioned her to you. Let’s look past the obvious stunner that the lady in your mom’s suitcase was a classmate of your mom’s. They weren’t just classmates. The professor said your mom and Nicole were inseparable back then. Friends, roommates—hell, they even formed their own chamber ensemble. Why do you think she never told you about her?”

She turned the page to another yearbook shot of her mother and Nicole. This time they were at the 1970 French Cultural Festival at the Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade. The picture captured them eyeing each other peripherally as they played. The caption read, “Trope and Bernardin, Keeping Time,” but to Nikki the look carried more. If it were present day, the caption would simply say, “BFFs.”

Rook asked, “Do you think they had some big falling out?”

“How would I know if I didn’t even know about her?”

“Hey, here’s a theory.”

“I was waiting. Are you sure you don’t want to put on your foil cap?”

“Nicole Bernardin killed your mother.”

She just stared at him. “And?”

“Hang on, I’m formulating thoughts…. And that is how Nicole had your mom’s suitcase.”

“And then, ten years later, someone else killed her, same MO, and just happened to stuff her in it?”

“Oh,” he said, wiggling in his seat. “What if … What if Nicole’s husband was your mom’s killer? That’s how she ended up in his suitcase.”