The Trials of Nikki Hill (19 page)

“Any idea how she might have come into possession of your ring?” Goodman asked.

“
Maddie
had the ring?” Willins asked. “When was it you saw her, honey?”

“Last week,” Dyana said. “We were at the Ivy. We dined separately but we met while waiting for our cars. Hers came first and she talked me into going with her to look at gloves at Neiman’s.

“Oh, my God,” she said, her right hand going to her forehead while her face expressed a mixture of surprise and wonder. “That must have been how it happened. On the drive back from the store, I removed the ring to try on the gloves I’d just... And you found it at her home?”

“I guess she was holdin’ it for you,” Morales said. “Probably waitin’ to surprise you with it, next time you two met up in a restaurant.”

So he’d been paying attention after all.

“Well, it’s wonderful to get it back,” Dyana said. “I just wish Maddie were here today, returning it.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to hang on to it for a while,” Goodman said.

“Why? It’s mine.”

“It’s also evidence.”

“I don’t understand. Evidence of what?”

“You’ll have to take our word for it.”

Reluctantly, she slipped the ring from her finger and held it out to him.

He opened the baggie for her to drop the ring in. Pocketing the item, he asked Willins when he’d last seen Madeleine Gray.

The big man shrugged. “Oh, Lord, I don’t really know. I remember exchanging a few words with her at the Grammys. Five months ago. Six months.”

“No more recently than that?”

Willins shook his head. “I don’t believe so.”

“Not the night she was murdered?”

“That night I was right here.” He looked at his wife. “I worked hard for a lot of years to get my company to the point where I could spend my evenings with my family.”

Goodman stood. “We’ve taken up enough of your time,” he said. “Thank you all for your cooperation.”

Willins walked them to the front door.

Morales, who was bringing up the rear, paused to glance out of a window that faced the ocean. “Partner, look at that set of wheels. Beauty, no?”

Goodman, Nikki, and Willins all moved to the window.

At the rear of the house several vehicles were parked, among them a Rolls Silver Wraith, a dark blue Range Rover. And a beige Jaguar soft-top.

“Ah, the Rolls,” Willins said. “It is a beauty.”

“I was talkin’ ’bout the Jag.”

“The XKE. I bought it when I got my first job in the music industry,” Willins said wistfully. “Took me six years to pay it off and I suppose I’ve spent more than twice the original cost keeping it working.”

“Looks like it’s in great shape,” Goodman said.

“Come on, I’ll show it to you,” Willins said.

“We’re kinda in a rush right now,” Goodman said. “Another time, maybe.”

As their car moved past the gate and headed out of the Palisades, Goodman asked Nikki for a court order to have

the Jaguar impounded. “ASAP,” he said, “before Willins decides to get it painted a different color.”

“I don’t think Dyana Cooper was lying about the ring being hers,” Nikki said.

“She’s an actress,” Morales said. “They can make you believe anything.”

“Actresses are still women.”

Goodman shrugged. “Might be a marriage of convenience. She finds it convenient for him to stay out of jail. Who knows?”

“Nice alibi the guy’s got,” Morales said. “He was home. I don’t guess the wife or people on his payroll would lie just ’cause he wanted ’em to. And who’s this Doyle? I don’t trust fat men who don’t blink.”

“I think he got Jesse Fallon to free up Deschamps,” Nikki said. She told them about Fallon’s appointment calendar.

“I don’t understand,” Goodman said. “If he’s playing on Willins’s team, and he knows Willins is our boy, wouldn’t he want Deschamps to stay our number one suspect?”

“Maybe Willins didn’t want to see an innocent man pay for his crime,” Nikki said.

Morales rolled his eyes. “More likely this guy ain’t the same guy phoned Fallon. All them Paddy names sound alike.”

“Here’s a thought,” Goodman said. “Maybe Doyle wanted Deschamps off the spot so that Willins would be more in need of his services, whatever they are.”

“Tha’s cold,” Morales said. “You know this guy, Eddie?” “He does seem sorta familiar. But I can’t quite place him.”

“He kept starin’ at you, like he’s got some kinda hard-on for you.”

“I’m not flattered,” Goodman said.

At four-twenty that afternoon, the detectives, along with two uniformed policemen and a forensic expert, seized the Jaguar.

They had little opposition.

The gatekeeper was respectful of the badge. The armed guard in the blue sweats was a bit more truculent, but even he understood the power of a court order. Willins and Doyle were not there at the time, but Dyana Cooper was.

In response to Goodman’s request, conveyed via the blue sweatsuit, she provided them with the keys to the car. She remained inside her home, but as they were carefully preparing the Jag for the trip downtown, Goodman chanced to look at the house and saw her standing at a window, watching. She seemed only mildly curious, if curious at all. Maybe the show of disinterest was another example of her acting skill. Or maybe she had something else on her mind.

T
HIRTY-THREE

T
ell me why I’m not going to regret this forever, Ray,” Joe Walden said.

Wise cleared his throat. “I . . .” he began, faltered, and nodded toward Nikki, who was sitting beside him in the conference room “. . . that is,
we
both feel Detectives Goodman and Morales had cause to seize the car.”

Nikki chanced a quick look at her watch. Seven-fifty. She’d left a message for Virgil with the receptionist, saying that she’d been called into a last-minute meeting and for him to wait in her office. But their date had been for six-thirty and she doubted—

“What do you think, Nikki?” Walden was staring at her.

Her mind flip-flopped, but she replied smoothly, “Like Ray said, we’re both in sync on this one.”

The big man slumped in his chair. “Christ, I guess we’ve bottomed out anyway. One more newsworthy fuckup won’t matter.”

She could understand the D.A.’s depression. The rush to arraign Jamal Deschamps was a mistake that had assumed monumental proportions. Just that morning, the announcement of Deschamps’ ten-million-dollar lawsuit against the city and county had pushed all other events, including a nuclear bomb test in southern Asia, far into the TV news background.

Nikki and Wise had expected their midday report on the John Willins connection to lift the D.A.’s spirits. It had had just the opposite effect. After a moment of apparently stunned silence, he’d exclaimed, “My God. John Willins? We’re on fifty committees together. The man’s a true civic leader. He’s done as much to keep South Central from disappearing into rubble as any other humanitarian in this city. Dear God, don’t tell me we’re going to be trying John Will-ins for the murder of a white woman?”

Wise and Nikki had exchanged glances and remained silent.

“All right,” Walden had said, after taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “We’re going to stay in control of this one. I’ll tell Corben at Major Crimes the same thing I’m telling you: Anyone leaking Willins’s name to the press won’t just wind up out on their ass. I’ll see to it personally they never work in this state again. Understand?”

They’d nodded their complete understanding.

Later, when Goodman informed her that the Willinses’ Jaguar had been seized, Nikki, in the new spirit of cooperation, had brought the news directly to Wise. Together they’d carried it to the district attorney, prompting the late-hour meeting.

“We have no hard evidence against John,” he said.

“Except the ring.”

Walden shook his head and looked rueful. “Perfect,” he said. “This damned lawsuit of Deschamps’s. I was hoping to diffuse it a little by disclosing the information that one of the main reasons the media’s new hero was arrested was that he’d stolen a ring from the dead woman’s finger. Now I have to continue to keep the ring from the press.”

“Until Willins is arrested,” Wise said.

Walden considered that. Finally, he nodded. “Right. Then Mr. Deschamps’s five minutes of fame will have ended.” He scowled. “But, unfortunately, the discomfort he has caused us will seem like happy days compared to what we’ll be going through trying Willins for murder.”

“The bright side,” Nikki said, “is that we won’t be trying him unless we have a pretty good case against him.”

He gave her a thin smile. “Pretty good?” he said. “My dear Nikki, before I agree to bring John Willins to trial, I will have to have a case so airtight, we could float it clear acros the Pacific without taking on a drop.”

She hoped Virgil would be waiting at her office, but the room was empty.

Disappointed, she sat down at her desk, then saw the folded piece of paper stuck between the rows of her computer keyboard.

“Got tired of staring at your messy office,” the note read. “Going to Baby Doe’s for a drink. Or two. Four’s my limit, so come soon. V.”

She began filling her briefcase. Then stopped. She wasn’t going to be doing any homework that night and she knew it.

The phone rang. She grabbed it merrily and said, “I’ll be right there.”

The voice on the other end said, “I have a collect call for Nikki Hill from Folsom Prison. Prisoner J43205.”

The end of a perfect day. “Yeah. Go ahead,” she said.

“Hi, Nikki.” Mace Durant’s deep, depressing voice filled her ear. “Tried to get you yesterday, but they said you were out.”

“I was.”

“Funny thing, hearing about somebody being ‘out.’ It’s a idea you sorta lose track of when you’re spending your whole life ‘in.’ ”

“You working on some kind of stand-up comedy routine, Mace?”

“Not exactly, Nikki. Nothing funny about bein’ in the joint.”

“What do you want?”

“Hear they gonna arrest somebody for the Maddie Gray murder.”

She frowned. “Who might that be?” she asked.

“Name don’t mean nothing to me. Guy who makes records.”

Some secret!
“Who told you that?”

“I hear this stuff aroun’. All we got to do in here is talk, listen, ’n’ try to survive.”

“You’re pretty good at all of that, Mace.”

“Been at it awhile, thanks to you.”

“Me? I didn’t tell you to shoot anybody.”

“The reason I called: The ole dude runs the liberry went a little soft in the head and they lookin’ for somebody else to take over. A word from you wouldn’t hurt.”

“Can you read, Mace?”

“Don’t dis me, Nikki. I been to school. I can take care of the liberry jus’ fine. You gonna he’p me?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Sure would be nice sittin’ in the liberry all day. Not worrying about some white boy stickin’ me with no shiv soon’s I turn my back.”

“Hey, you hear anything about the stabbing of Jamal Des-champs?”

“Gang thing.”

“That’s your answer for everything.”

“Gangs are into everything.”

“Deschamps in a gang?”

“I don’ know about that, Nikki. More likely he pissed

some gangsta off. The job got handed aroun’. Want me to see what I can find out?”

“No,” she said. “You stay out of it.”

He chuckled. A moist, unhealthy sound ending in a coughing fit. “Worried about ole Mace, huh?”

“Just don’t want you getting messed up on my account,” she said.

“Now who’s bein’ the comedian?” Mace asked.

When Nikki finally arrived at Baby Doe’s the place was packed with singles revving up for the weekend. Virgil was at the crowded bar talking to an attractive, well-dressed woman who was pressing her thigh against his. Her sister deputy D.A., Dimitra Shaw.

Nikki was still several feet away when Virgil turned to her, grinning. “Hey, Red.”

She wondered if he had some sixth sense. “Eyes in the back of his head,” Grandma Tyrell would have called it. Then she realized he’d seen her reflection in the bar mirror.

He rose from his stool, taking her hand and pressing it to his lips, at the same time drawing her closer.

“Dimitra keeping you company?” she asked sweetly.

“She walked in here,” he said, “I thought it was you for a minute.”

The resemblance had been noted before. Initially, Nikki hadn’t given it much thought. They were both light-skinned, and lots of black women used her brand of makeup and went to Loreen Battles’s beauty parlor. But as time went on, Dimitra had started to shop from Victoria Allard, sometimes purchasing the exact blouse or skirt Nikki wore. Their lunches together, which at first had been occasional, turned into almost daily affairs, during which the younger woman would ask Nikki’s advice about everything—from cases she was trying to men she was seeing.

The situation finally came to a head when Dimitra dropped by Nikki’s apartment one evening to tell her the great news: she’d just moved in down the block. Though considerably irritated, Nikki had invited her in, poured her a glass of wine, and calmly explained the facts of her life. “I’m a private person,” she’d said. “I have my agenda pretty well figured out. I just don’t have the inclination or the temperament or the time to put up with a homegirl who’s always in my business. You’d better start tending to your own life instead of worrying about mine.”

She’d expected Dimitra to react with either tears or anger. Instead, the young woman had reached out a hand, grasped her arm, and said, “Thank you. That’s exactly the kind of advice I needed to hear.”

They exchanged hellos after that. On occasion, they had longer work-related conversations. The intensity of Dimitra’s identification with Nikki seemed to have abated, but it didn’t disappear.

“Poor Virgil looked like you’d left him high and dry,” Dimitra was saying.

“Lucky thing you were around to wet him up a little.”

“Wet and wild, that’s the way to be,” Dimitra said.

“Maybe we should go have dinner,” Virgil said, a shade anxiously.

Nikki looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Dimitra joining us?”

He seemed at a loss for words.