Cold Heart

by Lynda La Plante

  Lorraine turned back to Jose. ‘Is this the master bedroom?’

  ‘No, this is a guest suite.’

  She asked to see Cindy’s bedroom, and Jose indicated that it was the next room along the corridor. According to him, it was Mrs Nathan’s own suite. When Lorraine asked if Cindy had slept alone or with her husband he shrugged. ‘I think it depended on how Mr Nathan felt.’

  There were no photographs or knick-knacks in the ice-blue bedroom, but Cindy’s wardrobe made Lorraine gasp. She had never seen so many designer labels, not even in the smartest department store, row upon row of evening gowns, daywear, a whole closet of beach and casual wear, and racks of shoes. The walk-in wardrobe was more like a room, the size of her own bedroom, and from the sales tickets still attached it was obvious that many of the items had never been worn.

  ‘Mrs Nathan likes to shop,’ Jose said, with humour.

  ‘Obviously,’ Lorraine murmured, and looked around. ‘She’s surprisingly neat and tidy.’

  Jose raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell that to my wife and she’d split.’ He gestured to her to follow him from the dressing room. ‘My wife spends hours every day just tidying up after her.’

  Lorraine looked back at the pale blue room. It felt cold, empty and unused. It was hard to imagine Cindy sleeping in there, let alone dressing and . . . ‘What about her bathroom?’

  Jose paused, already at the door. ‘Through the mirrored wall beyond the bed.’ He moved soundlessly across the thick blue carpet, passed his hand across a certain area of the mirror and the door slid back electronically to reveal yet more ice-blue, this time stained floor-to-ceiling marble. Again, the room was obsessively neat. The only thing that seemed out of place was a single toothbrush left beside one of the washbasins. Jose opened one of the cupboards underneath, took out a spray of glass polish and a cloth, cleaned carefully around the washbasin, replaced the cleaning fluid and cloth and put the toothbrush neatly into a pale blue glass holder.

  He caught Lorraine watching him. ‘Mr Nathan hated anything out of place. He checked every room every day.’

  ‘You mean she couldn’t even leave a toothbrush out?’

  ‘Water stains the marble. He even used to check under the taps. He was quite obsessive about cleanliness.’

  Jose ushered Lorraine back across Cindy’s bedroom. ‘He showered sometimes six, seven times a day, and changed his clothes as often. But he worked out a lot, and he would need clean clothes to work out in, clean clothes to change into, and then he would start the whole process again.’

  Lorraine followed him across the landing. ‘Must have been tough to work for him.’

  ‘Not really, you got into his routine. This is his room – the master bedroom.’

  Lorraine waited as the pine doors opened, then said softly, ‘Well, I think you’ll have quite a job in here, Jose. I’m sure Mr Nathan never left his room in this state.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Jose whispered.

  The lurid orange linen had been torn from the twelve-foot-square bed and strewn over the floor. The rugs had been drawn up in places and pulled into the centre of the room, throwing a tall metal chair onto its side. A glass coffee table had been broken, as had a lighting fitting. A canvas had been dragged from the wall and the drapes on the lower windows had been torn down. A marble plinth lay on its side, and what had been a Chinese famille rose peach vase lay shattered in tiny fragments.

  ‘Well, Cindy was right. Somebody has been here, and this must have taken quite a while,’ Lorraine said, watching Jose carefully. He seemed genuinely shocked by the destruction in the huge room.

  There was a dressing room similar to that of the guest suite, Lorraine noticed. Its electronic door was ajar. ‘Can I go in here?’ she asked, and the man nodded without speaking. At first sight, Harry Nathan’s dressing room was untouched, the clothes neatly stored.

  ‘I think I should check the entire house, Mrs Page,’ Jose said, ‘if you would care to come downstairs with me.’ Lorraine wondered if there was some reason why he wanted her out of the room. ‘Could I just see his bathroom?’ she asked.

  Jose pointed towards it as he surveyed the bedroom. ‘I just don’t see when this was done. My wife and I left the house for such a short while.’

  Lorraine glanced into the bathroom, another room with the charm of a meat safe, then did a double-take. ‘Oh, my God . . .’

  The blood was in pools, not even dried, and there was a heap of blood-sodden towels in the centre of the otherwise spotless bathroom. Jose stepped past her, bent down to the towels, then recoiled. He leaped to the washbasin and retched. That reaction clearly wasn’t faked, Lorraine noted. He had not been with Cindy when she had lost her child.

  ‘Let’s take a look round the rest of the house,’ she said, already heading out, not turning back when she heard Jose vomiting. The wreckage in the bedroom made her wonder if Cindy herself had caused the damage – perhaps that was what had made her miscarry, unless she had walked in on someone else and been attacked. Lorraine was still deep in thought as she crossed the landing towards the stairs. Suddenly she paused. Had she seen all the rooms on this floor:

  ‘What’s that room?’ She indicated a closed door.

  ‘No one is allowed in there. Mr Nathan never let anyone in even to clean it.’

  ‘Mr Nathan is dead now, so let me see in there, Jose, would you? ‘

  ‘It’s always locked.’

  But Lorraine had turned the handle as he spoke and the door opened.

  This was Nathan’s office: here, at least, the walls were still intact, though covered with two-foot-square wood tiles stained red and black in an ugly checkerboard effect. There was the usual office equipment, a photocopier, fax machine, computers and telephones, and a bank of four television sets, like monitors, was recessed into the wall. Two shelves that had previously contained videotapes were now empty, the tapes removed from their cases and thrown on the floor. Lorraine saw that they were labelled with the names of Nathan’s films and of TV shows he had appeared in – someone had clearly gone through them to check that the contents of the boxes matched the labels outside.

  There was something in this house for which someone had been searching desperately, that much was obvious to Lorraine. The fact that the phone tapes had been destroyed suggested that it might have been a recording, but it hadn’t been on any of the tapes she had listened to or, presumably, the ones that had been destroyed, or the burglar wouldn’t have bothered looking any further. Nor could it have been on any of the videotapes in front of her, or they, too, would have been destroyed or removed. There was, however, a cache of tapes from the security cameras, which Cindy had mentioned but which had never been found, and these must be the object of the search.

  ‘What did Mr Nathan do with the tapes he recorded on the security cameras?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘He took care of all that himself,’ Jose said. ‘I thought he kept them in here, or just used them over and over.’

  ‘When was all the security put in the house?’

  ‘A couple of years ago. The same firm did some of the decorating.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Lorraine asked casually. ‘Any work on the walls or floors?’

  ‘Wall panels. Like in here,’ he said.

  What a surprise, she thought, scanning the checkerboard walls. ‘Jose,’ she said, with her sweetest smile, ‘could you get me something with a flat blade – like a big knife or a chisel?’ She had a good idea that she would not need any implement to open the hidden compartment she was sure was in the wall, but she wanted him out of the room. He nodded and disappeared.

  As soon as he was gone, she began to scan the rows of large wooden tiles on the walls, then spotted a row of metal bandstand chairs in dolly-mixture colours folded flat against one of the walls. She examined the floor in front of them, which, thanks to Harry Nathan’s secrecy, did not benefit from daily vacuuming. She could make out the marks where a chair’s sharp metal legs had indented the thick pile – deeper than one would have
expected if someone had been merely sitting on it, but not if they had stood on it, particularly a tall and heavy man . . .

  She pulled out a chair, set it up with its feet on the same marks, then climbed up on it. She pressed carefully along the vertical edges of the two large wooden tiles within easy reach, and swore under her breath when they remained still. Then she tried the horizontal axis. One of the tiles gave, just a quarter of an inch. It seemed to be spring-loaded on the other side to prevent it opening too easily and to keep it flush with the rest of the wall. She had to press hard but finally a wooden door opened. Behind it were pile after pile of tapes. Lorraine pulled one out. There was no title, only a date and the name ‘Cindy’.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jose spoke suddenly behind her, and she almost fell off the chair. The man was standing in the doorway with what looked like a carving knife, Juana beside him.

  Lorraine looked coolly at them. She had no idea what their intentions towards her were, but she had to try to face them out. ‘I was looking for evidence relevant to my client’s case, and it seems like I found it. My assistant and I are working closely with the police, and I will naturally be informing them as soon as possible. I imagine they will want to talk to you about how the house came to be torn apart today, and how this evidence came to be concealed.’ She willed her voice to remain calm.

  ‘We have nothing to do with this,’ Juana said immediately, angry and defensive, and Jose shot her a warning glance. ‘We were going to go to the police ourselves – tell her, Jose.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ he ordered. ‘There is nothing to tell.’

  The woman’s eyes flashed. ‘How much longer are you going to hide that man’s dirt, Jose?’

  ‘Be quiet, woman!’ he repeated, but his wife stood her ground.

  ‘He is dead. We have nothing. Tell her the truth.’

  The man sighed. ‘Perhaps it is better. Perhaps we should go downstairs.’

  Lorraine relaxed. ‘I’d certainly be more comfortable. But I’d like to take the tapes. They become Mrs Nathan’s property, I believe, under the terms of Mr Nathan’s will, and as I just said, she has asked me to gather any evidence relevant to her case.’

  Jose looked at Juana again. ‘Let her take them. I want them gone.’ There was a note of resignation in her voice.

  Lorraine scooped into her arms as many of the tapes as she could hold and climbed down from the chair. ‘I’ll lock these in the trunk of my car before we talk.’

  Juana nodded, a look of relief crossing her face. ‘I will make some tea.’

  Lorraine made two journeys out to the Mercedes, doing her best to appear unconcerned, but prepared for any attempt the two servants might make to stop her. Neither approached her, though, and she could hear them talking in Spanish in the kitchen, Juana’s voice much more prominent than Jose’s. She locked the trunk before returning to the house.

  Lorraine walked back into the hall and through to where she could hear Jose and Juana’s voices. The kitchen, which had the air of an operating theatre, was in monochrome black and white, and the table was set with crockery of almost transparent white porcelain in a variety of deliberately irregular shapes. ‘Mr Nathan certainly seemed to like the minimalist look,’ Lorraine said.

  ‘Mr Nathan was a criminal,’ Juana said, tight-lipped. ‘He was a thief Jose said nothing: his wife had clearly convinced him that their interests no longer lay in loyalty to their former employer.

  She poured Lorraine a cup of slightly perfumed tea, and pushed a plate of home-made crinkle cookies towards her.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Lorraine said, as she bit into a cookie, but before the woman could answer, the telephone rang.

  Jose picked it up. ‘No, Mrs Nathan, I have no authority . . .’ he said mechanically.

  Lorraine looked up at the mention of her client’s name. ‘Can I speak to her?’ she asked, but the man shook his head.

  ‘It is not Cindy,’ Juana said. ‘It is Kendall. She has been calling every day since Mr Nathan died. Cindy won’t let her in the house.’

  Jose continued to say yes and no to a clearly pushy caller, and told her that Cindy had suffered a miscarriage and been taken to Cedars-Sinai.

  When he hung up, Lorraine asked, ‘What did she want?’

  ‘What she always wants. She says there’s some property here of hers. Mr Feinstein has given instructions that she is not to be allowed to remove anything – I think it’s some of the paintings.’

  Or maybe some tapes, Lorraine thought, wondering when Harry Nathan’s interest in home movies had started.

  ‘What were you about to say, Juana, about Mr Nathan’s having stolen something?’ she asked.

  Juana looked at Jose, indicating that he should speak. He pulled at his tie. ‘Mr Nathan owed us a lot of money, Mrs Page. Our life savings, plus back salary. We were only here because we wanted to get paid. Six, seven years ago, he said he would invest it for us.’

  Juana folded her arms. ‘For the first few years we didn’t question it. He said he had invested it for us and even paid us dividends, so it seemed our money had doubled, then trebled and then . . .’ She went on to describe how when Nathan had married Kendall, they had wanted to leave. ‘She was an evil woman, but when we went to him and asked for our money, told him we couldn’t stay, he . . . he told us that he’d had some bad news about his stocks and shares. He said he hadn’t been able to tell us because he was so upset about it – that he had lost everything as well.’

  ‘But that obviously wasn’t true,’ Lorraine said, jerking her head towards the rest of the house.

  ‘He said the house was remortgaged and he made us all these promises about selling his art collection. We stayed on here because we had no place else to go and no money to go anywhere with. At least by being here we could see if he did make any money and then we’d get paid. He promised us we would. He owed everybody he ever met,’ Jose said flatly. ‘Now we just hope that we’ll get something if his estate is sold.’

  ‘Does Cindy know about this?’

  Juana shook her head. ‘That silly child knows nothing, and he’d made her so crazy anyway. We think he was going to leave her, find a woman with money, probably.’

  ‘Do you think she killed him?’

  There was another exchange of looks, and then Juana sighed. ‘Yes, we do. She threatened it more than once.’

  ‘You were here in the house, though, weren’t you, the morning Mr Nathan was shot?’

  ‘Yes, but I was working in the laundry, and Jose was out back near the garages. We didn’t hear anything at all, not until Mrs Nathan started screaming.’

  Jose went on to describe how he and Juana had tried to get Nathan’s body out of the pool, but it was so heavy they couldn’t lift it.

  ‘What was Cindy doing then?’

  Jose thought for a moment. ‘She was sitting by the pool, and I shouted at her to help us. She just kept saying over and over that she didn’t do it – no, what she said was she didn’t think that she had done it. That’s a strange thing to say, isn’t it?’

  ‘But you think that she did?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Juana.

  ‘She had reasons,’ Jose agreed. ‘I think she knew he was going to kick her out. They did nothing but argue, and she was drinking heavily, and—’

  ‘Tell her,’ Juana said. ‘Tell her everything.’

  Jose looked shifty, and wouldn’t meet Lorraine’s eyes. Then he said, ‘She was having an affair with Raymond Vallance, Mr Nathan’s closest friend.’

  Juana looked at Jose as if she expected him to say more: when he remained silent she spoke up herself. ‘And he has offered us money – to keep our mouths shut and give him the tapes.’ Juana met Lorraine’s eyes squarely. ‘I would have taken his money with pleasure, but we did not know where the tapes were.’

  ‘Did you tell him that yesterday at the funeral?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘I have told him many times.’ She noted that Juana did not confirm what her conversation wit
h Vallance had been about.

  ‘Did you know what was on the tapes?’

  ‘I can guess. Mr Nathan used to take drugs and party in the basement on the weekends. He would tell us to take time off. When we went in to clean, you could smell the . . . sex in the air.’

  ‘Do you think Raymond Vallance could have been here this afternoon?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘He has a key,’ Jose put in. ‘She gave it to him.’

  ‘I see. Well, thank you both very much. If you think of anything else that might be important, I’d appreciate it if you’d call me – here’s my card.’ She placed it on the kitchen table. ‘I’ll go see Cindy tonight.’

  ‘What about the jeep?’ Juana said hesitantly to her husband.

  He shrugged.

  ‘What was that?’ Lorraine asked.

  Jose chewed his lip. ‘Well, it’s probably nothing, but I saw it very early, parked down the road. It was odd – most residents around here never park on the street, there’s no need.’

  Juana added, ‘But it wasn’t there when you looked later. Tell Mrs Page, tell her whose car you thought it was.’

  ‘It was the same colour, maybe even the same type, as the jeep Mrs Kendall Nathan drives,’ Jose said.

  Lorraine could hardly contain herself. She asked when Jose had seen it and when he thought it had been driven away. He was unsure of the exact time, only that it had been there early that morning and had gone after the murder.

  ‘You won’t tell her what we’ve said, will you?’ Jose said nervously.

  ‘No, of course not. Whatever we have discussed remains private,’ Lorraine lied, setting off down the steps. ‘Goodnight.’

  The couple stood in the doorway for a moment until the security lights came on, then closed the front door. Lorraine waited until she thought they must be back in the kitchen, then hurried across the lawn, stepped into the shrubbery and, under cover of the thick bushes, began to examine the ground. She got down on her hands and knees and inched her way on all fours, scratched by the bushes, feeling in front of her. She searched for ten minutes until the security lights went out and she could no longer see anything. She decided to come back the following day and continue. She was still kneeling, as she turned to make her way out of the shrubbery, when she felt something digging into her knee. When she looked down, the object glinted faintly. She picked it up: a large, snub-nosed bullet. She’d found it. At least Cindy Nathan had been telling the truth about one thing: that two gunshots had been fired the morning of the murder.