The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(75)
Charles stopped walking and loosened his arm from hers. “Why would you think,” he said, taking hold of her shoulders, “you need to tell me that?” With the gentlest touch of his fingertips he tilted her face upward so their eyes met. For a long moment it seemed as though he was going to kiss her. “I knew exactly what you were, the moment you walked into my office. Miss Lannigan was lucky to have you for a friend. Anybody would be lucky . . .” His voice trailed off, then he smiled, hooked his arm back through hers and continued along Charter Street.
It was late October, the time of year when a cool wind blows and darkness comes early, but Destiny felt the heat of summer rising to her cheeks and she could swear a sunbeam was focused on Charles McCallum’s face. Anybody would be lucky . . . the words kept running through her brain, words spelled out in bright lights like a Times Square sign, a message circling around and around, a message with the tail end missing. “You said,” she started to ask, and then backed off.
“I said,” Charles repeated, “you’re doing fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
The next day Hoggman attacked Destiny on issues of where she’d gotten the money for her car, red fox coat, big screen television, and any other thing a person could possibly imagine. “I understand that you’ve a brand new velvet sofa,” he said. “Now, just where did the money for that come from?”
Destiny began to wonder if maybe there was a peeping Tom outside her window, someone taking inventory of everything she owned. “Miss Abigail said it’s better to pay for a thing straight out rather than on the installment plan,” she answered. “So, with that in mind, I figured –” She was on her way to telling the whole story of the conversation when Charles leaned over and whispered in her ear again. She listened to what he had to say, then responded curtly, “The money came from the bank account which was given to me by Abigail Lannigan prior to her death.” From that point on, she gave the same answer to almost any question Hoggman asked.
“What about the fur coat?” he repeated, and she started rattling off her statement saying that the money was given to her by Abigail Lannigan prior to death. It was like a rubber stamp, smacked down after each question.
When Hoggman finally got tired of listening to Destiny repeat the words that Charles had whispered into her ear, he switched over to asking if Abigail Lannigan had ever given her a Power-of-Attorney document.
“Why would she do that?” Destiny asked. “I wasn’t her attorney,”
Elliott snickered at the answer, but when he caught sight of the mad look on Charles face, he stopped immediately.
“I know,” Hoggman sneered, “that you are not an attorney, that much is obvious! But did you have legal authorization to make financial decisions and distribute funds from Abigail Lannigan’s account?”
“Miss Abigail changed her accounts to both our names ‘cause she wanted me to be able to sign checks – how much more authorization did I need?”
Charles gave her a wink of confidence, and smiled.
“Yes,” Hoggman shot back, “but, did she do so of her own free will or did you, taking advantage of the fact that she was elderly and in poor health, coerce her?”
“It was her idea! She asked me to help out because she was getting forgetful.”
“Was it also her idea for you to help yourself to whatever you wanted?”
Charles set his hand on Destiny’s arm – his intent being to hold her back from responding to such a statement – but the silkiness of his fingertips sliding around her wrist prompted Destiny to stare at him, dreamy-eyed, like there was not another soul in the room. For a moment he lost track of himself, forgot what he’d intended, forgot, in fact, where they were or what they were there for. Not until she smiled, was he able to shake free, then he snapped, “That’s an improper line of questioning!”
Hoggman, of course, claimed it was no such thing. He huffed and puffed like a boiler on the verge of exploding, but shied away from belching and eventually pulled back on the manner of questions he was asking.
His deposition of Destiny went on for another five days, the same questions over and over again – restructured, rephrased, reworked and twisted around to make them sound different, but always circling back to the issue of where the remaining money was. I had to admire the way she handled herself – not once did she tell Hoggman to take a royal crap in his hat, which is something I might have said. Instead, she sat there answering questions she’d already answered five times over, generally smiling like a person who couldn’t think of a better place to be, of course more often than not, that was because Charles was squeezing his knee close to hers, or hooking his foot around her ankle.
As the days went by, Elliott convinced himself that her smile was a result of having stashed a million dollars in some offshore bank account, and he started to regret that she wasn’t being tried in criminal court.
When he finished with Destiny, Hoggman hauled Doctor Birnbaum in for interrogation. At first he tried to phrase the questions in such a way that a positive answer could be construed as negative, but Doctor Birnbaum restated almost every question and thereby eliminated any doubt as to the meaning of his answer. “Well then,” Hoggman blustered, twisting the doctor’s words, “you’re saying that Fairchild was capitalizing on Miss Lannigan’s helplessness!”