DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (34 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Three days later, while Daniel was just
returning from New York and was unlocking the door of his home, Nikki got a
visit of her own.
 

It was nine at night.
 
She was already in bed.
 
She hadn’t heard from Daniel in three days,
nor had she attempted to phone him.
 
And
the pain of that separation was excruciating.
 
But what could she do?
 
Bury her
head in the sand?
 
Maybe he figured some
older, sophisticated lady would have done just that.
 
But she wasn’t older, and she wasn’t
sophisticated, and how did he expect her to be what she wasn’t?
 
She was a trained journalist.
 
She was taught to follow facts, not
fiction.
 
And the facts were against
Daniel.
 
It was heartbreaking, but the
facts were against them both.

She tried to watch television, but found
herself flipping through channels as if she hated everything she saw.
 
But when her doorbell rang, and then she
heard loud banging almost right away, she got out of bed, put on her robe, and
hurried downstairs.
  

But she couldn’t get down there fast
enough.
 
Her front door was rammed once,
and then again, and then it broke loose on its hinges and flew open.
 
Policemen, in what looked to Nikki like swat
team riot gear, came charging in.
 
She
immediately stood frozen on her stairs.

“Get down!
 
Get down now!” the officers yelled, and Nikki quickly raised her hands and
crotched down.
 
Her heart was pounding
through her chest.
 

The officers rushed her on the stairs,
slinging her down the stairs and then onto the ground, while other officers
began searching frantically throughout her home.
 

“What is this about?” she kept asking, but
she received no response, just orders to be still and quiet or she would be
sorry.
 
And they handcuffed her.

“Are you Nikki Graham?” the lead officer, a
sergeant, asked as he stood her to her feet.

“Yes.
 
What’s happening?”

“We received information about drug activity
at this residence.
 
We have a search
warrant.”

“Drug activity?
 
Here
?”

“We have a search warrant.
 
It’ll be better if you were to tell us
everything you know.”

“What are you talking about?
 
There’s no drugs in my home!
 
Are you out of your mind?”

“Settle down, lady.”

“Settle down my ass!
 
This is a terrible mistake you’re making!”

“We’re following up on credible information,
so I suggest you cooperate.
 
If you’re
clean, fine.
 
This will all be over
rather quickly.
 
If you’re not . . .” He
wouldn’t even paint that scenario.

“Sarge!” an officer yelled from the patio
around back.
 
The sergeant immediately
left Nikki’s side and hurried outside.
 
Another officer sat Nikki in a chair and insisted that she remain
silent.
 
And she sat.
 
And sat.
 
Until the sergeant returned.
 

“Nikki Graham, you have the right to remain
silent.
 
Anything you say can and will be
used against you in a court of law.”

“What are you saying?” Nikki asked the
sergeant.
 
She was stunned witless.

“I’m saying, Ms. Graham,” he said, “that you
are under arrest.”

Daniel had had a long day.
 
As soon as he could get out of New York, he
did, with the company plane waiting to bring him home.
 
Only home felt about as lonely as New York
had.

He headed upstairs and laid across his
bed.
 
He was too tired to even change
clothes. When the phone began ringing, he had been asleep for nearly two hours.

“Hello?” he said, still groggy.

“Daniel?” the voice on the other end
said.
 
It was Nikki.

Daniel lifted up to look at the clock on the
night stand.
 
Then he laid back down.

“Daniel?”

“I’m here, Nikki.
 
What is it?”

The sound of sniffling could be heard through
the phone.
  
When he realized she was
crying, he exhaled.
 
What now
, he thought.
 
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.
 

“They came to my house.”

“Who came to your house?”

“The police.”

Daniel hesitated, realized he had heard her
correctly, and sat up on his bed. “The police?”

“They broke into my home and said I was under
arrest.”

Daniel frowned.
 
“Nikki, what are you talking about?”

“They arrested me!
 
I’m in jail, Daniel.
 
They said I had heroin hidden on my
patio.
 
They said I had drugs at my
home.”

Daniel leaned forward.
 
It felt surreal to him.
 
He knew the law.
 
He knew the court system.
 
He knew the seriousness of what she was
telling him.
 
“All right now, I want you
to settle yourself down, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to get you out of there.”

“Please, Daniel.
 
They said they received all these phone calls
about me, about how I had all of this drug activity at my home and how people
were in and out like I was some big time drug dealer.”

“Okay.”

“But they’re lying.
 
That’s not even true.
 
Nobody’s in and out of my house, I mean
nobody, and I’ve never done drugs in my life.”

“Listen to me, Nikki.”

“I told them they’re making a mistake.
 
I told them. . .”

“Nikki?”

“Yes?”

“Listen to me.
 
You are not to tell them anything else, you
hear me?”

“But it’s a big mistake.
 
I haven’t done what they’re claiming.
 
I told them that.”

“You don’t tell them anything.”

“But they need to know I’m innocent, Daniel.”

“They don’t need to know shit!
 
Do you hear me?
 
You don’t tell them another
got
damn thing, Nikki!”
 
He paused, to settle back down.
 
“I’m sorry, honey, but you have got to listen
to me.
 
You have no statements to
make.
 
You sign no documents.
 
You agree to no interrogations, I don’t care
how innocent you are.
 
Am I making myself
clear?”

There was a slight pause.
 
“Yes.”

“I’m on my way.
 
I’ll be there as soon as I can get
there.”
 
Then he exhaled.
 
“This will work out, honey, I promise
you.
 
You just. . .”
 
Tears began to well up in Daniel’s eyes as
just the thought of Nikki in jail, in
jail
, caused him to want to fall
to his knees.
 
But he quickly composed
himself.
 
For her.
 
“You hang in there, Nikki.
 
You just keep your mouth shut and wait on
me.
 
All right?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

There was a pause.
 
“Daniel?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Hurry.”

His heart dropped through his shoe.
 
How much more did they have to take?
 
“I will, honey,” he said.
 
“I will.”

Daniel was sitting on a bench at the station,
his back leaned against the wall, when Nikki was finally released.
 
He sat quietly in the same expensive suit he
had been sleeping in, his body anxious, and exhausted, and almost too horrified
to move.
 
But he knew he had to be strong
for Nikki.
 
She had never been arrested
before in her life.
 
Not for
anything.
 
Now she had a major felony
hanging over her head.
 

He stood up.
 
Nikki wore a pair of jeans, a jersey, and a pair of tennis shoes, an
outfit he knew she threw on when the cops allowed her only a minute or two to
dress.
 
Her hair was frazzled, and her
eyes were wide and still in disbelief.
 
They’d better know whose woman they’re dealing with, Daniel thought
angrily of the cops as he watched Nikki come toward him, as he inspected every
inch of her body for bruises, cuts, visible marks of any kind of brutality.

When she arrived at his side she just stood
there, her face refusing to look up at Daniel, her entire body seemingly cast
down by the burden of her own weight.
 
Then she just fell against him, her head leaning into him so hard that
he almost stumbled back.
 
He held
her.
 
He wanted to pick her up and carry
her away from there.
 
But he didn’t.
 
He walked her out instead.

He sat her down and buckled her into the
passenger seat of his Jaguar.
 
When he
walked around to the driver’s side and stepped in, she immediately reached for
his hand.
 
He took her hand and squeezed
it, and then drove away from there.
  
She
wasn’t crying about the ordeal she was enduring.
 
She wasn’t complaining about the injustice of
it all.
 
She was just clinging; clinging
to Daniel as if he were her security blanket, as if she was floating in a new
ocean now and she wasn’t even trying to pretend to know its’ depths.
 
She needed him.
 
He knew it.
 
And she knew it more.

He took her home, although he didn’t think it
was a good idea.
 
But she wanted to go
home.
 
As soon as his car turned onto
Cypress Road and he pulled up into the driveway of Nikki’s townhouse, she got
out of his car before him and hurried around the side of her home. Daniel
noticed where the cops had rehung her door, albeit in a slap-dashed way, but at
least the home was secured.

Daniel quickly got out of his car too and
followed her, looking around, unsure what exactly was going on in this world of
theirs.
 

Nikki saw where the cops had been digging,
the light of her patio illuminated the entire area.
 
She had a few plants she was trying to grow,
right against the back side of her wall, and the flowerbed had been upturned,
the few plants thrown out, and that was where they supposedly found the
goods.
 
Over thirty grams of heroin.
 
Thirty grams?
 
Heroin?
 
Nikki shook her
head.
 
Then she looked at Daniel, who
looked so worried to her that she felt a need to reassure him.

“I don’t do drugs, Daniel.”

But Daniel needed no reassuring there.
 
“I know you don’t.”

“And for them to think that I would take
thirty grams of heroin and bury it in my back yard, and not even in my backyard
but right on my patio, is ridiculous.
 
I’m being set up.
 
How can they not see this?”

Daniel paused.
 
Nothing was simple anymore, he thought.
 
“Let’s go inside,” he said.

Nikki stared at him, and then she looked at
her plants lying helplessly above the earth.
 
She could have planted them again, to give them a fighting chance, but
she had no fight left in her.
 
She went
inside her home.

Daniel ran her bath water while making phone
calls.
 
And even after she had bathe,
dried off, and put on her negligee, he was still making phone calls.
 
He was lying on top of her bed, still fully
clothed, his eyes closed by exhaustion as he talked on the phone.
 
Nikki sat on the edge of the bed when he
finally hung up.

“Well?” she asked.
 
“Are they going to drop the charges?”