Now Charlie didn’t look so comfortable. “Let’s just say he happened to call one day. I had gotten myself in a little bit of trouble. Nothing real serious, but I was still on parole and it could’ve cost me some serious time inside. He offered to help me out and I accepted that offer.”
“Kind of like I did,” said LuAnn, an edge to her voice. “His offers can be kind of hard to refuse.”
He glanced at her, his eyes suddenly wary. “Yeah,” he said curtly.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and blurted out, “I’ve never cheated on anything in my whole life, Charlie.”
Charlie dragged on his cigarette and then put it out. “I guess it all depends on how you look at it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, if you think about it, people who are otherwise good, honest, and hardworking cheat every day of their lives. Some in big ways, most in small ones. People fudge on their taxes, or just don’t pay ’em, like me. Or they don’t give money back when somebody figures up a bill wrong. Little white lies, folks tell almost automatically on a daily basis, sometimes just to get through the day with their sanity. Then there’s the big cheat: Men and women have affairs all the time. That one I know a lot about. I think my ex-wife majored in adultery.”
“I got a little taste of that, too,” LuAnn said quietly.
Charlie stared at her. “One dumb SOB is all I can say. Anyway, it all adds up over a lifetime.”
“But not to no fifty million dollars’ worth.”
“Maybe not in dollar terms, no. But I might take one big cheat in a lifetime over a thousand little ones that eat away at you eventually, make you not like yourself too much.”
LuAnn hugged herself and shivered.
He studied her for a moment and then looked once more at the room service menu. “I’m gonna order dinner. Fish okay with you?”
LuAnn nodded absently and stared down at her shoes while Charlie conveyed their dinner order over the phone.
That done, he flipped another cigarette out of the pack and lit up. “Hell, I don’t know one single person who would turn down the offer you got. As far as I’m concerned you’d be stupid to.” He paused and fiddled with his lighter. “And from the little I’ve seen of you, maybe you can redeem yourself, at least in your eyes. Not that you’d need much redeeming.”
She stared up at him. “How can I do that?”
“Use some of the money to help other people,” he said simply. “Maybe treat it like a public trust, or something like that. I’m not saying don’t enjoy the money. I think you deserve that.” He added, “I saw some background info on you. You haven’t exactly had the easiest life.”
LuAnn shrugged. “I got by.”
Charlie sat down beside her. “That’s exactly right, LuAnn, you’re a survivor. You’ll survive this, too.” He looked at her intently. “You mind me asking a personal question now that I’ve spilled my guts to you?”
“Depends on the question.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded. “Well, like I said, I looked at some of your background stuff. I was just wondering how you ever hooked up with a guy like Duane Harvey. He has ‘loser’ stamped all over him.”
LuAnn thought of Duane’s slender body lying facedown on the dirty carpet, the small groan he had made before plummeting over, as though he were calling to her, pleading for help. But she hadn’t answered that call. “Duane’s not so bad. He had a bunch of bad breaks.” She stood up and paced. “I was going through a real bad time. My momma had just died. I met Duane while I was thinking of what to do with my life. You either grow up in that county and die there or you get out just as fast as you can. Ain’t nobody ever moved into Rikersville County, least not that I ever heard of.” She took a deep breath and continued. “Duane had just moved into this trailer he had found. He had a job then. He treated me nice, we talked some about getting married. He was just different.”