Dying Declaration (32 page)

52

CHARLES SEEMED DISTRACTED
late Tuesday afternoon as Nikki shared some of the details of her investigation. They were in one of the law school classrooms,
giving them plenty of room to spread out.

She was still wearing her Eagle Cleaners’ jeans but had changed into a button-down blouse. She had no plans to tell Charles that she now worked two jobs. Besides, she planned on giving her notice to Eagle Cleaners on Friday. She didn’t really want to work for them that long, but she figured if she didn’t stay at least a week, they would get suspicious. She would do plenty of complaining in the meantime, so they would be glad to get rid of her.

She gave Charles the bottom-line facts about Armistead with no details of how she learned them. The Barracuda had been at Armistead’s house the day after the preliminary hearing. Armistead stood to inherit more than a million dollars from his wife’s trust. And shortly after Erica’s death, Armistead paid four hundred thousand dollars to a medical malpractice insurance company that she had never heard of.

The two racked their brains considering the possibilities. Nikki’s theory was that the doctor and the Barracuda were having a torrid affair and Erica Armistead got in the way. Charles couldn’t see it. Armistead was not the Barracuda’s type, he argued. Besides, an affair wouldn’t explain the four-hundred- thousand-dollar payout.

Charles tried everything to pry from Nikki the details of how she knew this stuff. It was critical to the case that he personally be able to weigh the credibility of the sources, he claimed.

“Hogwash,” Nikki replied. “You just want to know because your curiosity is killing you. They’re reliable sources. That’s all I can say.”

After they exhausted the possibilities on Armistead, they started mapping out a game plan for picking a friendly jury. There were more than a hundred people on the prospective jury list, and it would be nearly impossible to investigate each of them. They would take what little information the court provided, put together an index card of information for each juror, and rank them against the list of desirable characteristics they wanted in a model juror. It wasn’t perfect, and it sure wouldn’t come close to what the Barracuda would do with her high-priced jury consultants, but it would have to work. It took money to hire consultants, and money was in short supply.

At a few minutes before five o’clock, Nikki announced she had to pick up the kids from day care. The place closed at five thirty, and she had a fifteen-minute drive. Stinky hated it when she and Tiger were the last ones to be picked up.

As Nikki started picking up the legal pleadings and index cards strewn around her, Charles sat down beside her on the floor. He placed a hand on hers as she was gathering her stuff, and his face turned serious, his eyes sad and downcast. It was a look Nikki had never seen on him before.

“Can you stop packing up for a second?” he asked. “I’ve got something I want to talk about. I don’t really know how to say it, so I’m just going to blurt it out.”

Nikki looked into his eyes. She decided to loosen him up, make it easier to say whatever was on his heart. “You’re not pregnant,
are you?” she asked. “Having my baby?”

An unbidden smile creased his lips, though it died quickly, and the ominous look returned. “Nikki, I’ve got to be serious for a minute. Please hear me out on this.”

He is serious,
she thought.
And it’s not good.

She braced herself as Charles removed his hand from hers. He paused and took a deep breath before continuing.

Charles said a quick prayer for courage and grace. He searched his heart for just the right words. He had already made a bigger deal out of this little speech than he intended. Now he couldn’t remember a single line he had practiced so faithfully over the past few days.

“I want to talk about us, Nikki,” Charles started. She tilted her head a little, like the notion of “us” had never crossed her mind.

“There’s some great chemistry here . . . at least I think so . . . and, um, well, I want to make sure we don’t move too fast’go beyond where we should.” He saw confusion in her eyes and paused, searching again for those elusive words that would describe what he was feeling.

“For the past few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about you . . . about us,” he continued. “You’re my last thought at night and my first thought in the morning. I know that sounds corny, but it also happens to be true.”

He thought he detected a little spark in her eye, the beginning of a smile playing on her lips.
Just wait.
He took another deep breath.

“But honestly, I don’t think there could ever be more between us than this incredible friendship we’re developing, and it’s unfair to you if I don’t say that up front. I mean, I guess I’ve never really gotten over Denita and—” he paused again and lowered his voice—“and though I don’t expect you to understand this, I’ve made a promise to myself that I would never get serious with someone who’s not a follower of Christ.”

He saw Nikki’s eyes go cold, her face expressionless. He instantly wanted to take the words back, but he was in too deep.

“I know you’re not; we’ve talked about that. And I’m not trying to pressure you into saying otherwise. So . . .” His voice dropped off in midsentence. He felt like he had started babbling, just making things worse. He had already said what he needed to say.

The two sat there for a moment, frozen. Charles listened to the labored sound of his own breathing, each second of silence intensifying the pain of his second-guessing. Had he messed up completely? misread Nikki’s intentions? Had she even wanted to be more than just friends? Maybe it was just him; maybe she would laugh in his face.

He waited interminably long for the laughter, for the explosion.

Then he watched as Nikki resumed her packing, deliberately picking up the scattered papers and cards that represented that day’s work. She placed them carefully in her briefcase—Charles had never seen her treat anything so neatly and carefully—then she stood to leave.

“First,” she said, “your Dear John speech is incredibly arrogant. What makes you think I was dying for some type of deep and lasting relationship with you anyway? Sure, we had some fun Friday night. But that doesn’t mean I’m making wedding plans.”

Nikki talked calmly, deliberately. This was no explosion, and the calculated chill in her voice made it worse.

“Second, you’ve got a funny way of showing that you don’t want to get serious, with your writing-on-the-sidewalk routine and all. If I didn’t know any better, I might have actually assumed you had the hots for me. And while I’m on this subject, why would I want to convert to a religion that tries to tell me who I can and cannot date?”

She did not give Charles a chance to answer, and he knew she wasn’t really interested in an answer. She just needed to vent. He stayed seated but glanced up as she turned to go. He saw sadness in her eyes, not the familiar flash of anger.

“And third . . . ,” she continued, her back to him now. “Um, I don’t even remember what else I was going to say, but it doesn’t really matter.” She walked to the door and put one hand on the knob.

“You want to be friends, you’ve got a friend—a professional colleague—at least until the end of the case. If that’s the way you want to play it, that’s fine with me. I’ll report back in Thursday night, Mr. Arnold.”

“Nikki . . .”

Charles stood and headed toward the door, but Nikki left without answering him.

He knew it would do no good to chase her. He had nothing else to offer.

The Sebring speedometer was now at eighty-two and climbing. Nikki was swerving through traffic on I-64, changing lanes with no turn signals, passing other cars like they were standing still. She was trying to outrun her emotions and put distance between her and the man who had just blown her off.

The radio blared some hard rock, no chance of running across a sappy love song on this station. She had secretly harbored some hope of a relationship with Charles. She didn’t realize how much he mattered until he had dashed those hopes a few minutes ago. Sure, the two of them were very different, and they had been together only a few times, but he was the first man she had felt this way about in a while. Something about him was different from the others she had dated and dumped. She trusted him. Even opened up her past to him—something that she never did with men. The thing is, she could see herself with him long term. Until tonight, anyway.

She knew Charles really did care about her, but he was a fanatic about these religious matters. Over the last several days she had harbored her own doubts about their relationship. In fact, she had thought about giving
him
the Dear John speech. They were just so radically different, she was going to tell him. But the last thing she expected was to get the snub from him.

How dare he? Does he have any idea what he’s giving up?

They would have to learn to peacefully coexist and work together on the case. There was too much at stake to let personal feelings interfere with business. They had only eight days to get ready for trial. First thing tomorrow morning she would really hunker down on the investigation.

But tonight she was heading for the Virginia Beach bar scene, if for no other reason than to prove that she had not lost her touch. It had been a while since she had been out on the town. But after all, she
was
still the beautiful, fun-loving, and enchanting Nikki Moreno. She speed-dialed Bella, the secretary where Nikki worked, and talked her into picking up the kids from day care. Bella had met them at the office a couple of times when Nikki had them with her.

“They can stay all night if they need to,” Bella said. “They’re cute little rascals.”

“I owe you,” Nikki said as the Sebring accelerated. It had been a long day. Nikki Moreno was ready to party.

It took her less than three hours to prove that the Moreno charm had lost none of its magnetic force. Charles Arnold may have some religious hang-ups that blinded him to her beauty, but other men, millions of them, would walk across broken glass for a chance to wear Nikki on their arm. And one of those men, a dark-haired surfer named Dustin, was living that dream right now, leaving the Forty-eighth Street Suds-n-Surf bar side by side with Nikki, trying to talk her into making a night of it. She had snagged him in classic Moreno style: Find a loser to dance with you, wiggle around the dance floor for a few hours casting eyes at other men—the “Moreno Shake and Awe,” she called it—and walk away with the cutest dude in the joint.

Tonight that dude happened to be Dustin. Nikki was tired of the intellectual intensity of Charles. She needed a looker without much between the ears.

“I’ve got a condo on Rudee Inlet,” Dustin was saying. He had already told Nikki how rich his parents were. “And when the sun comes up over the ocean—” he lit up with a smile so bright it belonged on a Crest Whitestrips billboard—“it’s like totally awesome!”

Now that they were outside the bar, with no music blaring in her ears, now that Nikki could actually hear the guy talk, her first thought turned to how she could gracefully dump him. But she was finding it a challenge to think much at all. The toxic blend of margaritas and Bloody Marys was catching up with her. As she walked next to Dustin, a parade of disjointed images marched through her head, most of them having to do with Charles. The thought of him made her conscious of how disappointed he would be if he could see her now.