To the black man, Steve said, “Raleigh, this is Nikki Gillette.”
“Big Daddy’s daughter?”
She tensed a little. “One and the same.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said. “Your father gave my Camille a break and it changed her life, for the better.” He smiled then, showing off one gold tooth. “You two go talk all ya want. It’s been slow this afternoon.” And with a shooing motion of hands, which were large enough to belong to a pro ball player, he swept them out of the small space.
“Never thought I’d see you in uniform,” Nikki said as they stepped into the grand lobby, her shoes clicking against the marble floor, a few travelers pulling roller bags to an interior elevator with glassed-in cars.
“Stranger things have happened.” He still had a boyish smile; though a few lines fanned from the corners of his eyes, Steve could have passed for a man ten years younger. “You know I had such a crush on you in high school.”
“Really?”
He nodded as they walked past an escalator leading to the second floor and a few potted ficus trees, to a tufted bench by the windows, where the softest notes of piped-in music could be heard and the view of the river was nearly panoramic. “You didn’t know?”
She shook her head. “You were out of school when I got there.”
“Yeah, but I knew you because of Elton McBaine. He was your cousin, right?” When she nodded, he added, “We had the same extracurricular interests back then.”
“Drugs?”
Rather than answer directly, he said, “The same connection.”
“Your dealer?” she asked, remembering that Elton had “dabbled,” according to her parents, which could have meant anything from having an experimental joint to being an out-and-out druggie who used any and every illicit substance known to man. From what Hollis had told her, she thought he was somewhere in between.
“I don’t smoke and tell,” he said with that charming grin, “but those days are behind me now. So what is it you want?”
“You dated Amity O’Henry when she was in high school.”
His smile slid off his face. “Well . . . we went out a couple of times. Maybe three times. But we weren’t going together or anything like that.” He looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“No?”
“It wasn’t for me not trying. Hell, I thought she was incredible. Hot. But,” he lifted his shoulders, “I didn’t like her old man, the one who’d come back from the war. He gave me the evil eye, and I had the feeling that it was ‘hands off,’ if you get my drift. But the deal was, Amity wasn’t all that interested anyway. I’m pretty sure she had her eye on someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” he was shaking his head as if digging up ancient high school history was nearly impossible.
“Brad Holbrook?”
“Nah. She thought he was stuck on himself, and she was right. Dumb-ass baseball jock.”
“What about Holt Beauregard?”
He looked out the window, where dusk was settling. Nikki turned to follow his gaze and saw both their pale reflections, ghostly images that reminded her of how they had looked at Robert E. Lee High School, which seemed, now, a lifetime ago.
“Beauregard. I don’t know. As I said, Amity and I really didn’t spend much time together. Too bad you couldn’t ask Elton; she was always calling him. Bugging him, but he loved it.”
Again the connection. And hadn’t Hollis said once that her brother and his friends had basically used Amity? At the time Nikki had thought it was all just teenage boys with their inflated egos and largely exaggerated sexual tales. “Did they date? Amity and Elton?”
“Not officially, but I got the idea she had the hots for him. I figured because he had a hot car and money, and could get drugs pretty easily, but that was maybe wrong. The way I remember it, Amity really wasn’t into smoking weed or anything. At least she never did it around me, and you know, at that time, I was into being stoned.” He thought for a second. “Does it really matter? She’s dead. Her weird mom spent most of her life in prison, and her siblings are all messed up. So it’s ancient history.”
“Except that someone fired a gun at point-blank range and killed her.”
“You don’t think it was her mom?” he asked, astounded, as if he’d never considered another person could have pulled the trigger. “They sent her to prison.”
“And now it looks like she’s getting out early, that her son might have lied on the stand. She may very well be innocent.”