She passed the time searching Google for information on Samuel Gracers, but beyond a few mentions about his contributions to local charities, she found precious little. More of the same when she turned her focus to learning what was being said online concerning Jessica Gracers. Nikkie skipped over the numerous news and social media mentions about how Jessica was sitting in a jail cell, and focused her attention on the pre-jail-cell-sitting Jessica Gracers. Again, beyond a few mentions in the “Happenings Around The Area” sections of local newspapers, Nikkie didn’t find much at all.
“Private citizens leading private lives,” she thought.
She dropped her Android cell phone to her lap, checked her watch for the eighth time, and thought about asking Steinberg’s office assistant if the DA would be much longer when the door leading to the DA’s office swung open.
“I don’t usually meet with private investigators,” said the woman, who was standing with one hand gripping the door handle and the other waving Nikkie to come inside. “I’ll give you five minutes but, I’m telling you upfront, this is an active investigation so I won’t accept or answer any questions pertaining to our activities. Understood?”
Nikkie put Julia Steinberg in her mid-forties. Tall, thin, with shoulder length blond hair that had certainly seen its share of a hairdresser’s coloring bottles. Julia held her sharp-featured face in a manufactured smile that didn’t reach her bright blue eyes. As Nikkie drew closer, she noticed Julia’s forehead looked flat as a pancake. No wrinkles at all. Not even a hint of worry in that forehead.
“Botox, and a recently administered healthy dose of it,” she thought as she extended her hand for an introduction.
“I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to meet with me,” Nikkie said as she followed behind the swift walking DA.
“Like I said, five minutes and no questions about the department’s ongoing investigation nor this department’s thoughts on possible charges.” Julia didn’t bother shutting the door behind her. Didn’t bother sitting down, either. She just leaned her backside against the front of her desk, crossed her legs in front of her, and braced herself with her long, lean arms on the top of the desk. “And what can I do for you, Miss…?”
“Nikkie Armani. I’m with Derek Cole and Associates. We’ve been hired to investigate…”
“I know what Mrs. Gracers hired you for, Miss Armani. But that’s not what I asked. What I asked was what I can do for you.” It was a statement, not a repeated question.
“Mr. Cole and I work an awful lot of cases, some as serious as Mrs. Gracers’, some not so critical. When providing our services to a client in a situation as precarious as is Mrs. Gracers’, Mr. Cole and I find it important to view the case from all possible angles. Unlike an attorney, we are not interested in assisting our clients to beat the system. I thought it might be a good way for me to better understand your department’s position on this case while Mr. Cole explores other avenues.”
Steinberg, her face still set in what Nikkie was beginning to believe a permanent smile, slowly began shaking her head. Small, rapid shakes growing longer and slower.
“Let’s dispense of the bullshit, shall we, Miss Armani? That’s a wonderful line you just tossed out, but I’m not taking the bait. The DA’s office has already presented its initial findings and will soon be presenting more details of the case against Jessica Gracers before a grand jury. I’d expect that presentation to be scheduled in no more than a few days.”
“You must have plenty of evidence to go before the grand jury so quickly,” Nikkie said, unfazed by Steinberg’s harsh refutation.
Julia Steinberg glanced at her wrist. And while she wasn’t wearing a watch, she began tapping where a watch would have been. “Time’s about up, Miss Armani. Is there anything I can do for you that has nothing to do with the Gracers case? If not, then I should be getting back to my duties. I am, after all, paid by the hardworking tax payers of this county and fully believe they deserve nothing short of my best efforts.” She stood, extended her right hand to Nikkie. “Will that be all?” she asked in a voice at least a full octave higher than her normal voice.
Nikkie shook her head then shook Steinberg’s hand.
“I don’t want to take up any more of your time, Miss Steinberg. Thank you. You’ve been a gracious host.”
Nikkie wasn’t one to get flustered easily and nothing District Attorney Steinberg did was all that unsettling. But still, as Nikkie walked briskly out of the DA’s office building, out into the oppressively hot Florida heat, she felt herself shaking.
“Get a grip, girl,” she said to herself.
She walked several blocks before realizing she was moving fast enough to have worked up a decent sweat. Turning herself around, she was about to head back to the DA’s office, where she had parked her car, when she saw a brass plaque adorning the front of a small office, situated in the middle of a line of similarly sized, one story offices.
“Law Offices of Maryanne Jenkins, Esq.
Est. 1992”
The blinds in the office’s two front windows were drawn, probably to prevent the glaring sun from causing even more of a challenging workout for the office’s air conditioning system. Nikkie pressed her face against the sun-heated windowpane, cupping her hand around her eyes to block out the sun, but couldn’t tell if the office lights were on or off. She thought she saw movement but, considering her view was through the quarter inch where one slat of the blinds hadn’t fallen all the way into place, she couldn’t be sure she saw anything.
The door to “The Law Offices of Maryanne Jenkins, Esq.” was a solid pane of glass, framed in some type of brushed metal, and, like the front office windows, had its view of the interior of the office blocked by drawn blinds. Nikkie pulled the door, finding it locked. The small play in the gap between the dead bolt and the strike plate caused a bit of a rattle when pulled. Nikkie gave the door a few more pulls, hoping that if someone, supposedly Maryanne Jenkins, Esq., was inside; the obvious sound of someone persistently attempting to open a locked door would grab their attention.
Nothing.
She rapped her knuckles on the glass pane, hard, producing a sound louder and more determined than a rattling door.
Nothing.
Unless…Nikkie thought she heard something from inside the office. A shuffle of paper? A roll of a desk chair? Something made some type of noise. Of that she was certain, but what the noise was and what had made the noise was unclear.
She knocked again, this time letting her knuckles bounce off the door so many times she needed to stop at one point to make sure she hadn’t split one open.
And that’s when she heard it. A voice from inside the office.
“I’m closed. Weren’t the locked door and closed blinds clues enough for you?”
Both the street noises and the closed door muffled the voice, but Nikkie was sure she recognized the voice.
“Miss Jenkins?” she called. “It’s Nikkie Armani. We met…”
“I know where we met, for Christ’s sake. What do you want?”
The voice was weaker, had more of the wobble Derek had mistaken for a Caribbean accent.
“Are you okay? Everything all right in there?” Nikkie called, her mouth set at an angle to the door to avoid a more direct and sound-altering reflection.
“Why wouldn’t things be all right? I’m busy. If you need to speak to me, call me. I gave you my business card. Use it.”
“Ten minutes is all I’m looking for, Miss Jenkins. Ten minutes and I’ll be out of your hair.”
There was a long pause. Terminally long for Nikkie but not long enough for Maryanne. Nikkie wasn’t going to just walk away. Leave her alone. No. This one, the woman with the perfect body, dazzling green eyes and legs and arms that weren’t slowly slipping away from her command, knew something was wrong. Maryanne didn’t know how Nikkie knew. Maybe it was woman’s intuition or maybe she had a family member who was visited by Iron Lou.
As she sat behind her
desk, rubbing her thighs in an attempt to vacate the “pins and needles” feeling which had taken up residence in both legs, Maryanne felt desperately afraid she’d never be able to stand again. What she read about ALS, suggested it advanced slowly. Inch by inch. Muscle cell by muscle cell, and not in a sudden barrage of painless immobility. But after returning from her visit with Jessica, Derek and Nikkie, Maryanne sat herself down in the chair behind the desk and hadn’t been able to stand up again since.
“I shouldn’t have walked to and back from the jail. Damn, woman. It’s too damn hot and I’m too damn far along to be strolling down the streets like nothings wrong with me,” Maryanne thought.
“Miss Jenkins?” Nikkie was calling from outside the door again. “Ten minutes, I promise.”
“I’ll give you ten if you just leave me to my business and call me,” Maryanne shot back. Her voice was slurred, even she noticed it.
“I met with the DA,” Nikkie said, her voice loud but laced with less emotion. “Tried to, anyway. She’s a tough woman. I figured she’d at least be pleasant with me. Wasn’t expecting her and me to become best friends, but I thought she’d at least have a conversation with me.”
“Why the hell did you try and meet with her?” Maryanne’s voice was sharper. Stronger. The wobble was gone, perhaps evicted by her anger.
“I had a feeling I could help if I built some type of professional relationship with her.”
“Well all you did is piss her off! That’s what your visit did.” Maryanne paused a beat. “She called me, you know. Not two minutes after your tight little ass was walking its way out from her office, DA Steinberg called me. Told me I’d better keep my investigators in line. Said she hasn’t the time for social calls.”
“It wasn’t a social call.”
“You just said you were trying to build a relationship,” Maryanne said. “That sounds social to me.”
The Florida heat was growing more stifling as Nikkie stood inside the enclosed alcove. No breeze was finding its way to the doorway, not that there was much of a breeze, anyway.
“Miss Jenkins, please. It’s hot and all I want to do is sit and talk about the case with you for a few minutes.” She paused. “I understand you’re not happy about Derek and me being part of this case, but we are. We are all on this case together. Same team, same objectives.”
Maryanne sat in silence. She didn’t know Nikkie but could sense from the tone in her voice she wasn’t the type to just give up, walk away and leave her alone. She looked down at her legs, noticed the darkness between her legs was still much too visible. The smell of urine had, thankfully, passed but in the Florida humidity, her pants wouldn’t dry for a long time.
She wasn’t sure what angered her more: Not feeling she could stand and walk to her bathroom only twenty steps from her desk, or the fact she didn’t even know she had pissed her pants till she felt the warmth between her legs. Both things pissed her off, she guessed. Both damn things.
“My car is parked around back,” she called out. “In the lot. Green Buick. I keep an extra set of keys in the glove box. In the wheel well of the rear, driver’s side, there’s a door key hidden. Use it to unlock the car door, grab the set of keys from the glove box. You can come through the back door if you want. Saves you from walking all the way around to the front.”
Nikkie screwed her face with concern. “Maryanne, are you okay in there? Can I get you something? Call someone?”
“You asked for ten minutes with me,” Maryanne shot back. “If you want those minutes, this is the only way you’re going to get them. Take it or leave it. And don’t go calling no one on my account. Ten minutes. Take it or leave it.”
Nikkie was already walking around the row of offices towards the back parking lot.
Chapter 6
“Are you okay?”
It was the first thing Nikkie asked once she entered the Law Offices of Maryanne Jenkins, Esq. and was almost the last.
“I have zero, I repeat, zero interest in discussing personal things with you. I told you I’d allow ten minutes, which I assumed you wanted to spend discussing our mutual client. Unless I was wrong, I suggest you alter your course of questioning.”
“You’re a real bitch, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me?” Maryanne’s face was a bit too slack to display her shock and anger and the weakness of her voice also failed to deliver her intended response.
“You look like shit and smell like piss. Not a great combination, if you ask me. I just asked you if you’re okay, if you need anything, and you snapped at me like I asked if you if you're as stupid as you smell. I didn’t ask you to tell me your deepest, darkest secrets.”
Maryanne stared at Nikkie. Their locked gaze was like a game of chicken: She, who flinches first, loses.
“I am one of the finest lawyers in the area,” Maryanne said, breaking the shared gaze and, perhaps, losing the game. “I’ve taken on and won some cases most of the other so-called lawyers in the area wouldn’t touch with a twenty-foot pole. But I take them on. I don’t back down from any challenge. So if you’re thinking I’m not capable or not up to providing superior defense services for Mrs. Gracers, you better change your thoughts, and right quick.”
“Then we have something in common. We don't run from challenges. But we also have some serious differences, which, if we are going to work together on this case, we need to resolve. Now,” Nikkie said as she sat in a chair opposite Maryanne, “I can tell something is not right with you. Noticed it the minute I met you in the jail. You don’t have to tell me what it is or even that there is something, but…”
“I have ALS. Lou Gehrig’s disease.” Telling someone, even though that someone was practically a complete stranger, sent a wave of relief over Maryanne. “A tick less than a year and a half into it. Based on what I’ve read, I’m halfway through the disease’s run rate. That means I’ve been traveling with Lou Gehrig for fourteen months and will probably travel another fourteen or so before I stop all travel completely.”
“I’m very sorry, Maryanne,” Nikkie offered.
“I didn’t tell you to get your sympathy or your pity. I told you because there may be certain things on certain days I won’t be able to accomplish.” Maryanne paused to consider Nikkie’s reaction. “I know what you’re thinking, that I should be in some goddamn nursing care facility instead of handling cases for clients. But, let me tell you something, Miss Tight Ass, my mind is as sharp as ever. Maybe even sharper since I am relying on it to be so even more now. I can not only handle the Gracers case, but will see it through to the end.”
“You’re wrong. I wasn’t thinking about that at all. What I was thinking is whether or not you told Jessica about your illness.”
“I have not and demand that you keep your mouth closed on the subject.”
“You have an obligation to reveal any and all physical or mental disabilities to your client which may negatively effect your ability to provide capable legal counsel.”
“You gonna sit across my desk and tell me how I should run my law practice? I suppose that if I choose not to reveal my little disease, that you’re gonna feel compelled to reveal it for me?”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Nikkie said. “The way I see it, without an alibi, your client is going to prison. Sooner or later, your disease will be impossible to hide. Meaning people will know. Jessica may be in prison by then and will have a very strong case when she appears with her new lawyer in front of the appellate court. She’ll have a rock solid case that she didn’t have proper representation since her layer, you, was suffering from ALS and never revealed her condition. She’ll get a new trial and Derek and I will be hired again. We’ll be back down here, hopefully when it’s not so damn hot, working with a different lawyer who won’t be hiding anything from Jessica or us. I’ll make sure we stop in and visit you in whatever nursing care facility you end up in. That is, of course, if you’re still alive.”
“And you call me a bitch? Honey, you take bitchiness to a
whole new level.”
The two sat in tense silence; both knowing their conversation was at a crossroads. To Maryanne, who was quickly regretting her decision to tell Nikkie about her illness, the conversation was now threatening her ability to continue practicing law. Should Nikkie raise her concerns, Maryanne could be removed from the case. She’d need to be “checked off” by a doctor — more like a team of doctors — before she’d be allowed by the Bar Association of Florida to serve as lead counsel for the Gracers case, or any other case which might happen to come her way before Iron Lou made her decision to retire for her.
For Nikkie, the thought of telling Jessica, or anyone else, about Maryanne’s condition was already resolved: She would say nothing. It was none of her business and if someone as wealthy and as influential as Jessica Gracers is had chosen Maryanne Jenkins over countless others, Maryanne must be one hell of a lawyer. What was occupying Nikkie’s mind was why Jessica chose Maryanne in the first place.
Jessica was a millionaire, probably several times over, and had the means to afford any law firm in the country. In the world, possibly. Sure, Jessica’s access to the shared financial accounts was constricted, but it wouldn’t be much longer. There wasn’t a judge in the country that could justify locking her away from her deceased husband’s accounts, creating a hardship for her ability to secure legal counsel. Yet despite the options her wealth afforded her, Jessica had chosen a law firm consisting of exactly one person. The office she was sitting in had only one desk, meaning Maryanne either did her own paralegal work or employed a home-based paralegal on a contract basis.
A single employee law firm, with an office close enough to the jail to make for an easy commute to find new clients? It didn’t make sense.
Nikkie wasn’t questioning Maryanne Jenkins’ skills, but only why she was chosen. As her thoughts followed their present pattern, she wondered how Jessica was able to secure funds to pay for the $5,000 retainer fee for her and Derek’s fee. In her experience, restricted accounts meant full restrictions. And lastly, every lawyer Nikkie knew received a retainer fee up front; before beginning to work a case. Yet, here she was, sitting across the desk from a lawyer, with pee soaked pants, for an added measure of confusion, who was “all in” and actively working Jessica Gracers’ case.
Deathly Reminders: a Derek Cole Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 6) Page 4