Cold Heart

by Lynda La Plante

  Three weeks after Cindy Nathan’s release, Lorraine had traced one missing daughter, and had discovered that Mrs Walgraf’s husband had obviously been preparing for his divorce for many months before his wife had become aware of his intentions.

  Mrs Walgraf did not have the money to pay Lorraine, who would not press her – she felt sorry for the woman.

  ‘Well, let’s hope we get something a bit more financially rewarding next,’ Decker said.

  Lorraine yawned. It was almost time to leave. Tiger was stretched out on his back on the pretty cherry-coloured sofa in Reception, his legs in the air. ‘He’s not supposed to get up on that,’ she said, irritated.

  ‘I know, my dear, but you try and shift him!’

  The phone rang and Decker snatched it up. It was the main reception downstairs. He listened, then covered the receiver. ‘It’s Mrs Nathan. She’s downstairs. She wants to see you.’

  Lorraine smiled. ‘You know, I thought I’d hear from her again. Ask her to come up.’

  Lorraine put on some fresh lipstick and ran a comb quickly through her hair. She was just checking her reflection when Decker tapped and opened her door. Tiger was barking and tried to get into the office between Decker’s legs. ‘Mrs Nathan to see you, Mrs Page. Sit!’ Tiger slunk off to the sofa and lay flat on it with his head on his paws.

  Decker closed the office door and returned to his desk, wishing he could be privy to the conversation. He was beginning to like the job. He’d been worried during the past week as there had been little to do, but now he couldn’t wait to make a quiet call to Adam Elliot to tell him who had arrived.

  Cindy Nathan wore dark glasses, a short powder blue princess-line dress, low, peep-toe shoes in white patent leather, and a silver chain and padlock, fastened tightly, like a dog collar, round her neck: a gift from her loving spouse, Lorraine had no doubt. She didn’t have a purse, just a small white-leather billfold.

  ‘Please sit down. Sorry about my dog. He’s supposed to be trained, but he hasn’t got it quite right yet. Can I offer you tea or coffee?’

  ‘No, nothing, thank you.’ She was perched on the edge of the chair.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine, get sick in the mornings, but they say the first few months are the worst,’ Cindy said. ‘Do you have children?’

  Lorraine nodded. ‘Two daughters. They live with their father.’ She said it quickly, wanting to avoid a long conversation about births and pregnancies.

  ‘Harry’s other kid didn’t live – this would have been his only child. It would be terrible if it was born in prison.’

  Lorraine looked at her fingers. ‘Do you think that’s a possibility?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. I need someone on my side.’

  ‘What about your lawyer?’

  ‘Oh, I have a whole team of lawyers, LA’s best.’

  ‘And what do they say?’

  ‘Oh, they seem pretty sure I did it. They don’t say it, it’s just how they ask me all these questions, over and over.’

  ‘Do you know what the evidence is against you, Mrs Nathan?’

  Cindy looked down at her toenails, painted electric blue. ‘Well, the gun was mine.’

  ‘Are your fingerprints on it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they have the gun?’

  ‘The police found it in the shrubbery by the pool.’

  ‘Did you fire it, Mrs Nathan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’ve said you did not kill your husband.’

  ‘Yes, but you asked if I fired it and I did,’ Cindy said, with a childish sort of exactness. ‘A few times, just practising. Once I fired it at Harry, but I missed and there were blanks in it anyway.’

  Lorraine picked up a pen and twisted it in her fingers. ‘Did you fire your gun on the day your husband was found dead?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did you leave it the last time you used it?’

  ‘In our bedroom, on my side of the bed, in a silver box. Harry had guns all over the house – he was paranoid about security. He had a licence, and he even had a gun in his car.’

  ‘Could I come out to the house, Mrs Nathan?’

  Cindy nodded. ‘Will you say that you’re going to give me a massage? I don’t want them to know. I don’t think they would like it, you know, me hiring you, without telling them.’

  ‘Who are you referring to, Mrs Nathan?’

  ‘Oh, the lawyers and the staff.’

  Lorraine leaned back in her chair. ‘Did you love your husband, Mrs Nathan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As his widow, are you his main beneficiary?’

  ‘I get the house and the stock he had in the company, and his second wife, Kendall, gets his share in the gallery on Beverly Drive, though the will says that if there should be issue of our marriage, then the kid would be the main beneficiary and I get a lot less. The most valuable stuff is the art in the house – Harry was a collector. Feinstein says it’s mine as part of the contents of the house, but Kendall’s got some attorney to write claiming she and Harry agreed to split it so her half wasn’t his to leave. There’s something about Sonja too, but Feinstein says it won’t add up to more than a few mementoes. It’s all very complicated . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow, all right?’

  Cindy nodded, then opened her wallet. ‘You gave me your card, so I got the cheque all ready. All you got to do is fill in the amount. I don’t know how much you charge, but I want you to look after me, exclusive, so that will be extra, and I’ll pay extra because I don’t want you to tell anybody that you’re working for me. If it gets out, I’ll deny it, and I’ll get one of my fancy lawyers to sue you. Do you have client confidentiality?’

  ‘Of course.’

  *

  Decker ushered Cindy Nathan out of the office and into the elevator, while Lorraine remained at her desk, staring at the looped, childish writing. She had suggested Cindy engage her on a weekly basis, and said it would be three hundred dollars a day plus expenses.

  Cindy had counted on her fingers, then leaned over to use Lorraine’s felt-tipped pen. ‘I’m going to pay you five thousand dollars a week, and I want you for a month to start with. Then, if everything works out all right for me, I won’t need you any more.’

  When Decker returned, Lorraine held up the cheque between her fingers. He took it and looked stunned.

  ‘Shit! Twenty grand! What in God’s name do you have to do for that?’

  Lorraine perched on the side of the desk. ‘Long time ago, one of the boys arrested this old guy for passing dud cheques. When he was questioned he shrugged his shoulders and . . . he was crazy. He’d found the cheque book in a supermarket.’

  ‘I don’t follow. What’s that got to do with Cindy Nathan?’

  ‘I think she’s crazy – the elevator’s certainly not quite going to the top floor. I wouldn’t be surprised if that cheque bounced. On the other hand, she’s a wealthy widow.’

  Decker chuckled. ‘Well, hell, let’s bank it first thing in the morning, and if she’s out to lunch we’re laughing.’

  Lorraine clicked her fingers to Tiger. ‘Yeah, you go ahead and do that. Oh, that phone call Cindy denies making.’ Decker nodded. He still felt awful about the recording.

  ‘Cindy has quite a high-pitched voice. If she got hysterical, like she’d just shot her husband, it’s likely her voice would go up a notch. Whoever made that call, if my memory serves me well, had quite a deep, almost throaty smoker’s voice.’ She gave him that cock-eyed, smug smile. He said nothing.

  Lorraine still hovered at the doorway. ‘Did Mrs Nathan come with a chauffeur?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Decker said. As the door closed behind her he shut his eyes, tried to remember the voice. Had it been deep, throaty as she had just said? He could not remember.

  According to the doorman in the main lobby, Cindy Nathan had walked into the building. He had seen no driver, and she had
not left keys for the valet-parking facility. She had asked him which floor Page Investigations was on, and then used the intercom phone to the office. ‘I’m sorry if I did anything wrong,’ the doorman said apologetically.

  ‘You didn’t,’ Lorraine replied, as she left, with Tiger straining at the leash. But she knew intuitively that something was wrong. Nothing quite added up. She felt good, though, and she was twenty thousand dollars better off. Page Investigations was up and rolling.

  CHAPTER 2

  LORRAINE ARRIVED at the Nathans’ mansion with her CD playing Maria Callas singing Madame Butterfly at full volume. The door was opened by a middle-aged Mexican maid who ushered her into the cool hallway and motioned her through an archway framed by a broad-leafed twining vine growing around two carved pine pillars. Looking up the floating stairs, Lorraine saw several modern art works. Whether they were valuable or not, she couldn’t tell.

  Through the archway was a shallow flight of pink polished granite steps leading down to the main living area of the house. Floor to ceiling windows gave it a lovely, light, delicate feel, and the room had been divided into a sitting space on one side and an area for formal dining on the other. There were large plain white armchairs and sofas, and one piece of ‘art’ furniture, a strange green and black chair with a round, stuffed base and padded back, which looked to Lorraine like a cartoon-style tea-cup or a fairground waltzer.

  Cindy Nathan sat in the tea-cup, curled up like a child with a glass of orange juice cupped in her hands, rolling a clear plastic beach ball back and forth over the same six inches of floor with a tiny, tanned foot, drying the varnish on her toenails. ‘Oh, hi, have you come to give me a massage?’ she said brightly, getting up. Today she had her hair in Dutch-girl braids, high on her head, and had made up her eyes in a defiantly garish blue, her lips with raspberry frosting. She wore a yellow top with peasant-style embroidery and blue and yellow windowpane check pants.

  Cindy’s acting – as she pretended Lorraine was a masseuse – was as bad as it had been in her TV roles. She gestured for Lorraine to follow her into an adjoining room. It was a gym, very professional with weights, sit-up bars, medicine balls and leg stretchers. Close to a boxing punch-bag, in the centre of the space, was a row of different-sized gloves in bright red leather. ‘I always used to call this Harry’s toy cupboard. He was always in here when he was home, working out.’

  ‘He must have been fit.’

  ‘Yes, he was. Well, so he should have been. He spent enough time looking after his body.’ She giggled, and covered her mouth. ‘I reckon the reason he was so obsessive was . . .’ she held up her little finger and waggled it ‘. . . he was kind of small. Some parts of the body you can never build up.’

  Lorraine perched on one of the black leather-covered benches, irritated by the girl’s innuendo. ‘Did you kill him, Cindy?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I did not. I did not.’

  Lorraine smiled encouragingly at her. ‘Good. Now, can we talk in here or not?’

  ‘Yes, it’s safe.’

  ‘Safe?’

  ‘Ah . . . yes. Harry used to record stuff,’ Cindy said, colouring slightly, and Lorraine had the impression that the girl had said something she hadn’t meant to. ‘But down here was his private place. Nobody came down here but him,’ she chattered on. ‘I used to have to go out to my classes – he wouldn’t let me work out down here.’

  ‘What kind of thing did Harry record?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘Oh . . . just conversations. He taped phone calls, and there were cameras in all the rooms in the house. For security, you know, the art.’

  ‘You knew about that, though.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I knew.’

  Again Lorraine felt that Cindy wasn’t telling the full truth, and she wondered whether the presence of a pornographer, an ex-actress and a large number of cameras under the same roof had had the inevitable consequence. ‘He didn’t make any other sort of recordings?’

  ‘No,’ Cindy said, a shade too quickly. ‘He was just paranoid, even about personal things. I mean, he hated anyone to know he’d had a face-lift, and he dyed his hair – plus he took his drugs down here.’ It was a titbit thrown out to shift the conversation away from a subject Cindy clearly didn’t want to discuss.

  Lorraine asked, ‘What drugs did he use?’

  ‘Oh, stuff for body-building mostly. Sometimes he’d have a few lines of cocaine, but mostly it was steroids, or speed – he was a real speed freak. But he was careful. He’d never over-indulge – he always knew exactly what he was taking.’

  ‘Did you take drugs?’

  ‘Me?’ Cindy gave a goofy grin, suddenly the little girl again, as if it were all a game. ‘Oh, yeah, I’d do anything that was going, mostly cocaine. But I haven’t touched anything since I knew about the baby. I’ve got to take care of myself. You have to when you’re pregnant.’

  Cindy gazed at her reflection in the mirrors, and Lorraine considered how to question her. She would like access to the tape recordings Cindy had mentioned. ‘Can I just take you through the events up to your arrest?’ she said.

  ‘Sure. Do you want a drink?’

  The girl’s butterfly mind digressed into trivia – either she didn’t realize the seriousness of her situation, or she was trying to hold on to some kind of normality. She wandered off to a small kitchen area, tucked away at one side of the gym by the showers.

  ‘Just water for me,’ Lorraine said, following her.

  Cindy opened the fridge and selected a can of Diet Coke for herself. She opened a cupboard and took out a glass. Having forgotten, it seemed, Lorraine’s water, she opened the can and poured out the contents.

  ‘Where exactly were you on that morning?’ Lorraine asked, sitting down on a work bench and taking out her notepad.

  ‘I was lying on the balcony, over there.’ Cindy waved her hand. ‘I fell asleep.’

  ‘Would that be at the front of the house?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘Sort of. There’s balconies all over the house, but I kind of move around with the sun, you know, so I was on that one.’ She pointed to indicate which side of the house she meant.

  ‘And the swimming pool is where exactly?’

  ‘Behind you,’ Cindy said.

  ‘Is there access from here to the pool?’

  ‘Of course. Behind the mirrors, they slide back.’

  ‘Right. So what time were you sunbathing?’

  ‘Oh, the usual time.’ She took a slug of her Coke, draining the glass.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know your usual routine, so if you would just take me through it.’ Lorraine tried not to sound irritated.

  ‘Okay. I get up usually about nine, sometimes earlier, sometimes a lot later, shower, then work on my tan for a couple of hours – just my body, I don’t do my face.’

  ‘Do the servants all know your routine?’

  ‘Of course, I’ve been doing it since I got married – get up, shower, sunbathe, swim, get dressed for lunch.’

  Cindy started doing half-hearted t’ai chi exercises in front of the mirror.

  ‘So on the day you discovered your husband’s body, you were sunbathing as usual and you fell asleep. A loud noise woke you – about what time would that have been?’

  Cindy wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe eleven. I was asleep the first time, then I heard it again. At first I thought it was a car backfiring. It was just one loud bang. Then I saw all these birds flying up, from the garden by the shrubbery. You can’t see the pool from the balcony, just the edge of the garden, so I called Harry, wondering if he was messing about.’

  ‘Messing about?’

  ‘Yeah. Sometimes he’d take pot-shots at the birds. It used to make me mad as hell, because once he killed one.’

  Lorraine doodled on her pad as Cindy went into a long monologue on how she loved all of nature’s creatures. Finally she interrupted, ‘You know, Cindy, if you’re found guilty of murdering your husband, you’ll be locked up in a prison and you’ll be hard pushed to hear a
single tweet. Now I know it may be tedious, but I have to ask all these questions so I know exactly what I should—’

  ‘I never killed him,’ the girl said, red-faced with anger.

  ‘I know you didn’t, but you’re to stand trial for it, unless—’

  ‘I never killed him. I found him, that’s all.’

  ‘So, will you close your eyes and tell me exactly what you did, from the time the noise woke you to the moment you discovered your husband’s body?’

  Cindy covered her eyes with her hands. ‘You mean, like creatively visualize?’ Clearly this was something she was familiar with.

  ‘Just tell me what happened.’

  ‘After the bang, I called out his name,’ Cindy began. ‘When I got no reply, I picked up my towel, and my sun creams and my straw hat. I went into the bedroom and decided I’d have a swim. I didn’t have anything on – I sunbathe naked – so I put my swimsuit on and got a big outdoor towel. Then I heard another bang – I was pretty sure it was a gun this time, so I put on my mules and went downstairs . . .’ She withdrew her hands from her face, and her big blue eyes stared ahead. ‘I went to the pool and put my towel on the chair by the table. I saw Harry’s towel, his sandals, and his cigarette packet. I looked around because one cigarette was smoked down – there was a long line of ash on it.’

  Cindy blinked, and Lorraine noticed that she was looking at herself in the mirrors again as she spoke.

  ‘I was about to dive in so I went to the deep end. First thing I noticed was the water was kind of pink, and then I saw him. I called out his name – he was lying face down, arms outstretched – but I knew something bad had happened, and I started to scream. I screamed and screamed.’