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It might have been more suspicious for Nichols to refuse to give Kimble $200 and tell him to piss off.

Plus, it took a lot of detective work to connect Nichols with the death. First, Kimble was after the one-armed man, then the trail led to the dead doctor (Lentz?), and then he had to go to the lab and get a lot more help to figure out Nichols was involved. It's reasonable to conclude Nichols would not have thought Kimble would be able to dig so deeply.

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The correct answer - albeit one that would have made the movie suck - is to give him money and then call an anonymous tip in regarding what was (the way the movie presented it) the most wanted man in Chicago.

You make a good point in your second paragraph, but the movie made Kimble out to be a very resourceful saint with a lot of people who would cover for him; Nichols would have known this already via character witnesses at his trial.

Reading too much into a movie I really enjoyed, of course, but this was the one glaring plot hole to me (aside from surviving the jump off the dam basically uninjured).