Cold Heart

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘Morning. Another lovely sunny day,’ he said brightly, watching Tiger set off in search of a blue rubber boxing glove Decker had bought him, which he adored chewing and flinging about. ‘He seems fit and well.’

  ‘Yeah, so he should. He had a good two miles’ walk this morning, ate half my supper last night and demolished his own.’ She threw her hands up. ‘Shit! What is happening to me? He’s a goddamned dog! He’s taking up too much of my life!’ The boxing glove was hurled across the room, and Lorraine laughed.

  ‘You know, Mrs Page, you have a wonderful laugh,’ Decker said.

  ‘Yeah, just not a lot to laugh about. You want to come in with the coffee and I’ll give you an update, before I go to see Cindy. She’s in hospital.’

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’

  ‘Get the coffee and I’ll tell you.’

  The curtains had been pulled back from the windows that formed one whole wall of Cindy Nathan’s hospital room, giving her a beautiful view of the early-morning haze clearing from the Hollywood Hills. In daylight, the room looked even more like a luxury hotel to Lorraine, and the breakfast on the tray table could certainly have come straight from room service.

  Cindy was sitting up, a bed-jacket draped round her shoulders, eating orange and date muffins and fruit compote.

  Lorraine drew a chair close to the bed. ‘Right, tell me about Kendall Nathan.’

  ‘She’s a vicious bitch for a start-off. She claims she owns half of Harry’s art collection, so I don’t get it along with the house.’

  ‘Has Feinstein told you the value of the estate?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘Well, there’s not nearly as much money in the company as anyone thought – Harry hadn’t made a film that did any business since Mutant Au-Pairs, so the art’s likely to be the big thing.’ Lorraine waited, noting that the girl seemed much recovered and even quite cheerful. ‘Means I don’t have as much of a motive, do I?’ she said cheerfully. ‘Assuming I knew he was pretty broke, which I didn’t, of course.’ Cindy was a prosecuting attorney’s wet dream.

  Lorraine waited as she carried on with her breakfast, pouring some juice and drinking it thirstily before she lay back on the pillows.

  ‘Harry was a con merchant, and anythin’ he could steal he did. He used everybody – that’s how he got his kicks, right?’

  Lorraine remembered the videos – he had got his kicks in a lot of other ways as well.

  ‘The gallery was real expensive – I mean, it’s on Beverly Drive, right? Clients got a lot of money, and they paid through the nose. But I think he and Kendall were up to something crooked.’

  Lorraine sat back. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, all those paintings at the house, they had to be insured. Lot of dough for the premiums, which is why we got such high security – all the stuff in there is the real thing, unlike what those other poor schmucks have got. Harry got the lot – that’s including pre-Columbian stuff, and there’s a Giaca—’ She hesitated. ‘A Giacaroni and stuff like that. You with me? ‘

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay. Now, Kendall was paying Harry the money for the insurance premiums, which she says is because they had agreed that half the art was hers – like, in her dreams.’ Cindy licked up the wheatgerm still adhering to the rim of the juice glass with a practised flick of her tongue. ‘Still with me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lorraine sighed – it wasn’t too taxing to keep up with Cindy’s thought process.

  ‘She asked me to find the insurance certificates. I didn’t know then it was for some scheme that she and her lawyer have cooked up to show she owns the stuff, so I got ’em out. But the only ones I could find were out of date, which means he hadn’t been paying the cover. So ask yourself why.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d tell me.’

  ‘Well, look at the security at the house. The place is jam-full of lasers – you move one of them things off the wall and it’s the full orchestra, you know what I mean?’ Lorraine nodded.

  ‘Well, I checked the dates when he stopped paying the insurance – it was when he got all the security in and started taping all the phone calls. I only checked because I knocked this vase off its stand. This is some Chinese rose vase supposed to be worth three quarters of a million dollars.’

  Lorraine smiled encouragingly.

  ‘It fell off the plinth, an’ I got real worried. I thought the fucking alarms would start screaming, but nothing happened. It just broke.’

  ‘Yes, I saw it.’ Lorraine was wondering where all this was leading.

  ‘Broke into lots of pieces,’ Cindy said.

  ‘I noticed. Go on.’

  Cindy held up her hand. ‘One: no alarms. Two: I find a sticker inside it, a modern sticker like a price thing – the vase had this long, thin neck so that normally you would never see inside. There was a name scrawled on it – Classic Reproductions. I dunno who they are, but what’s their name doing inside some piece of porcelain that’s supposed to be a billion years old?’

  ‘It’s a fake.’

  ‘Right. Which brings me to Kendall Nathan.’

  Lorraine waited while Cindy licked her lips.

  ‘She thinks she owns half the so-called art stuff, and she thinks it’s all legit, but if it’s not it means Harry sold the real art on, took the money and didn’t tell her. Now if she found that out, it’s one hell of a motive to kill somebody, wouldn’t you say? It’s called being fucked over twice. He ditched her for me, then ripped off all her money. She was paying him to cover the insurance and he took that as well. You see what I mean, Lorraine?’

  ‘Do the police know this?’

  ‘Hell, no. I only just worked it out myself when the vase fell off its perch. I started to put it all together and then—’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘I lost my baby.’

  Lorraine’s mind worked furiously. Having seen the videos, and learned that Cindy and Raymond Vallance had been having an affair under Nathan’s nose, the possibility that either Cindy or her lover had shot him seemed, as Decker had said, the obvious conclusion. She wondered if Cindy was dragging out all these ideas about art in an effort to throw her off the scent. She said, ‘Cindy, I won’t press you if you’re feeling low, but when you called me, you said somebody was at the house. I saw the rooms were wrecked.’

  Cindy nodded. ‘I thought I saw someone, like a young black guy, going down the stairs to the gym. Then I went upstairs and saw the place had been trashed. It really freaked me out.’

  Another convenient mystery burglar, Lorraine thought sceptically, but it wasn’t out of the question that the same person who had destroyed the tapes in her office could have broken into the Nathan house. ‘You didn’t mention that when you called me.’

  Cindy plucked a tissue from the box at her bedside. ‘Didn’t I? I guess I wasn’t that together – I mean, it was just before . . .’ She gestured weakly at her belly. She blew her nose, then turned her gaze back to Lorraine. ‘I know things look bad, but I swear I think somebody’s framing me, because I’m sure now I didn’t kill Harry, I know I didn’t.’ Cindy lay back again, and put her hand over her eyes.

  ‘Cindy, there’s a couple of things I need to ask you about,’ Lorraine said quietly.

  ‘Sure,’ Cindy said, blinking back tears.

  ‘I found some videotapes, hidden in a wall in Harry’s office.’ There was a pause: Cindy wouldn’t look at her. ‘I’m sure you know the ones I’m talking about. I think your lawyers should see them, plus—’

  ‘No way,’ Cindy said, crumpling the tissue in her hand. ‘I won’t allow anyone to see them, especially not those fuckin’ lawyers. I hate ’em.’

  ‘But you were subjected to extreme violence and a lot of sexual abuse.’

  ‘Yeah, I sure as hell was.’ Lorraine watched the girl pluck at the tissue. ‘Me and God knows how many more.’

  ‘Like Kendall Nathan and Raymond Vallance, for example,’ Lorraine said casually. ‘Jose and Juana seem to think that you and Mr Vallance were . . . close. Is that
true?’

  Cindy said nothing for ten, twenty seconds, then, ‘Yeah, we had a thing. Lasted all of five minutes and then he pissed on me too. It’s like I have a sign round my neck, which only guys like him and Harry can see, that says, “Fuck Me and Dump Me” - oh, and “Beat Up on Me While You’re There.”’ She began to cry in earnest.

  Lorraine was surprised that Cindy had admitted the affair so readily - it made things look even blacker against her. Vallance had a key to the house, and he could easily have been responsible for the damage, particularly since there was no sign of forced entry, but Cindy seemed determined to cast suspicion elsewhere, first by the sudden mention of an unknown black youth - and now she was back to Nathan’s ex-wife.

  ‘What’s gonna happen to me, Lorraine?’ she wept. ‘I know it looks like I had more reason than anyone to kill him, but I swear I didn’t do it. It’s Kendall Nathan who’s pulling all the strings here, I just know it. She has no alibi for the time Harry was shot, and if the art thing’s true, she’s got a motive as well.’

  ‘I’ll go to the gallery just as soon as I can and see if I can talk to her,’ Lorraine said soothingly, reaching out to give Cindy’s hand a squeeze. ‘Did the hospital have anyone photograph your bruises, by the way?’

  Cindy nodded.

  ‘Well, when you next see your lawyers, at least mention it to them, and also that Nathan had been violent to you on many previous occasions. I take it you haven’t told the police any of this?’

  ‘No, nothin’. A cop, a real bastard, asked me a lot of questions, but I told him nothin’.’

  ‘You don’t recall his name, by any chance?’

  ‘Yeah, Sharkey.’

  So he was still on the case. Lorraine walked to the door. ‘I’ll be in touch. You try to get some rest, and call me when you’re discharged. Do you know how long you’ll be here?’

  ‘Depends on the doctor - could be out later today.’

  Just as Lorraine opened the door, Cindy spoke again. ‘I did love him at the beginning. I was only eighteen, he was so nice and he made me all these promises, about being in one of his movies. But they were as fucking sick as he was - he was just making porn.’ She pulled herself up on her elbows to look Lorraine in the eye. ‘You think I killed him now, don’t you?’

  Lorraine met the girl’s gaze before she replied, ‘No, Cindy, I don’t believe I do. Take care now.’

  She went out and closed the door quietly after her. She had made no mention of the bullet she had found, or Jose’s revelation about the parked jeep that could have been Kendall’s. She didn’t want to raise Cindy’s hopes, because unless Lorraine could clear her name, Cindy Nathan would have to stand trial for the murder of her husband.

  As soon as Lorraine got back to the office she asked Decker to check out Jose’s story about the jeep. ‘Find out if anyone else saw it there. Talk to any residents close to where he said it was parked.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah, can you get me any newspaper coverage of fine art auctions or galleries selling top quality paintings?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Maybe come on as a buyer. Don’t act up the investigator.’

  ‘As if I would,’ he said, with a camp flick of the wrist.

  Lorraine grinned at him. ‘Get out of here - go on.’

  ‘On my way,’ and he left with a prancing swagger.

  Lorraine began to thumb through notes of her last interview with Cindy, in which she had underlined the name of Detective Sharkey.

  Jim Sharkey, the officer she had worked with on her first case in Pasadena. She was sure she’d be able to get some inside info on the police inquiry - if she paid for it. She called the police department, asked for Sharkey. It was a while before he came to the phone.

  ‘Sharkey,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Lorraine Page,’ she replied politely.

  ‘Yeah, they said.’

  She could tell he was smoking as she could hear him inhale, then hiss the smoke out from his lungs. ‘Can we meet? ‘

  ‘Not right now, I’m busy.’

  ‘So am I - but I think we should meet. I may have some information for you in regard to the Nathan inquiry,’ she said, still keeping her voice over-polite, almost coaxing. ‘What about lunch? I’d prefer to discuss it away from the station.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m busy.’ His voice sounded tense and irritated. ‘Mrs Page, if you have anything relevant to my present investigation, then you should come in and talk to my lieutenant.’

  ‘I’d prefer to discuss it with you. Surely you don’t want me to spell it out.’

  ‘Spell what out, Mrs Page?’

  ‘Oh, come on. Stop playing games with me. You know I’m working for Cindy Nathan, I know you’re on the case. Now, if you don’t want to meet, then you can go fuck yourself. If, on the other hand, you want to have a cup of coffee with me, I’ll be at the Silver Spoon, corner of Santa Monica and Havenhurst, about two.’ She put the phone down. Detective Jim Sharkey had been given a lot of backhanders by Rooney, and now he was coming on all pompous and squeaky clean. It infuriated her, as she knew just how much money Rooney had palmed the man in return for access to police files for the last murder case she had worked on.

  The phone rang and, still angry, she snatched it up to hear the bleeps of a payphone. ‘Mrs Page?’ It was Sharkey again.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Don’t ring the fuckin’ office – I got the Captain at my fucking elbow listening in on every word you said.’

  ‘All I said was I wanted a meet.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna give you my mobile number. You want me in future you call that, not the station, and I’ll see you at two at the Silver Spoon.’ He dictated the number and hung up. Lorraine checked the time. Still only eleven – she would have time to see Kendall Nathan first.

  CHAPTER 5

  LORRAINE WALKED up Beverly Drive, looking for Kendall Nathan’s gallery. Although the location was a notch below the premier sites on Rodeo Drive, the smell of wealth and luxurious living was everywhere in the air. Lorraine passed store after store selling designer clothing, shoes and leather goods.

  The neighbourhood was also full of art-related retailing – jewellery and antique stores, and Gallery One was next door to a shop selling antique Oriental kelims. The gallery itself had a plain white store-front, with its name in hammered metal letters, and large, plain plate-glass windows behind which were displayed a sculpture and a couple of star attractions from the latest exhibit.

  Lorraine walked a hundred yards down the block and turned up the back alley between Beverly Drive and Canon to have a quiet look at the back of the premises before Kendall Nathan was aware of her presence. The parking area belonging to the gallery had been walled off behind high wooden gates. There was, however, a gap of about half an inch between gate and post, and, squinting through it, Lorraine could make out the paintwork of a parked vehicle: it was cream and black, the same colours as the jeep Jose had seen parked near the house on the day Nathan died. As she stepped back, she noticed a young black guy walking towards her up the alley. He was looking right at her, almost as though he thought he knew her, but he dropped his eyes as soon as she met them and passed her without a word.

  Lorraine walked back to the front of the gallery and in at the door, triggering an entry buzzer. She stood in the centre of the large, light, virtually square room. The ceiling had rows of spotlights positioned to show off the paintings, hung strategically around the walls. The canvases were mostly unframed, and one wall displayed the works of only one artist, landscapes in bright acrylics. On another wall were oblong canvases, all of block colours, deep crimson, dark blue, black and walnut, all with an identical white and silver flash of lightning in the right-hand corner.

  The only furniture was a desk made of what seemed to be aluminium, with riveted legs, and an uncomfortable-looking chair to match. There was a leather visitors’ book – open – a Mont Blanc pen and a leather-bound blotter, all neatly laid
out next to a telephone.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Lorraine turned, and for a moment her eyes were unable to distinguish anyone: the cross-beams of the spotlights made it difficult to see after coming in from daylight. She couldn’t work out where the voice had come from.

  ‘Or would you prefer to be left alone?’

  Lorraine smiled, her hand shading her eyes. ‘No, not at all. I wanted to speak to Mrs Kendall Nathan.’

  ‘You already are.’

  Kendall Nathan was wearing a simple black almost ankle-length cotton dress with a scoop neckline and long sleeves. Her right wrist was covered in gold bangles, and she wore a gilt chain-link belt, and a large amethyst ring on her third finger. She held out long, thin fingers, which were bony to the touch, but her grip was strong.

  ‘Lorraine Page.’ They shook hands.

  ‘Did someone recommend that you . . . ?’

  ‘No, I’m not here with regard to your paintings.’ She laughed lightly, feeling slightly embarrassed, partly because as Kendall was standing in the shadow she couldn’t see her face clearly. Kendall Nathan walked back into the main gallery and Lorraine went after her.

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t find much to interest you here in that case,’ Kendall said mockingly, moving lightly round the desk like a dancer. Now Lorraine could see Harry Nathan’s second wife well. She was different from how Lorraine had remembered her at the funeral. There was something simpering in her manner, and the narrowness of her body was accentuated by one of the longest faces Lorraine had ever seen.

  Kendall had a wild mop of frizzy, curly hair down to her shoulders, hennaed a reddish colour, which made her olive skin tones slightly yellow. Her eyes were dark, almost black, sly and hooded, and although large, were set too close together on either side of a long, pointed, Aztec-looking nose. Her small mouth was tight and thin-lipped and, even in repose, bore the hint of a snarl.

  She smiled. ‘What can I do for you, Mrs Page? I’m rather busy.’ Kendall obviously did not recognize Lorraine from the funeral: she had been far too concerned with her own performance to take note of who had attended. She eased into her uncomfortable chair and crossed her legs.