Cold Heart

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘By the way, I promised Jose and Juana I would mention this matter of the savings Nathan took off them and their back salary. It looks like they should contact Sonja,’ she said, but the phone on the desk blinked again, and this time Feinstein, still on his feet, marched to the door and yanked it open.

  ‘Pamela, what the fuck are you doing out there?’ he shouted.

  Lorraine heard whispers passing between Feinstein and his secretary before the attorney walked out, leaving the door ajar. He returned almost immediately. ‘She’s dead.’

  Lorraine stood up.

  ‘Kendall Nathan’s dead.’

  Burton looked up from reading the file on Lorraine Page to see Jim Sharkey outside the office door.

  ‘Is it the autopsy on Cindy Nathan?’ Burton asked.

  Sharkey came in with some photographs and put them down on the lieutenant’s desk. ‘These are morgue shots. Hard to tell who it is, but it’s Kendall Nathan. Last night. Initial view is she was trying to torch the gallery and it backfired. Her hair caught light and . . .’

  ‘Dear God,’ Burton said, looking at the charred form. If Kendall had killed Cindy as, he had to admit, Lorraine had largely convinced him was likely, and possibly Nathan too, she had certainly got her just deserts.

  ‘Yeah, pretty horrific way to die. Place went up like a bonfire – lot of white spirit, plus all the canvases, the wooden frames . . . No one could do anything.’ Sharkey went on to tell Burton that there was an eyewitness, the owner of a shop that shared a back alley with the gallery workshop, who had seen Kendall enter the building and had raised the alarm when he saw the smoke.

  Burton’s phone rang, and he picked it up; the receptionist told him that a Mrs Page was on the line. He asked the girl to take a message as he was in a meeting. He replaced the phone. ‘What about Cindy Nathan?’ he asked again.

  Sharkey shrugged. It was still only nine thirty and nothing had come in as yet. Burton rocked back in his chair, and told Sharkey to see what he could do to hurry things up, while his eyes moved back involuntarily to the grotesque photographs of Kendall Nathan’s corpse. Well, he figured, there was no more potent motive force to set off a chain of destruction than the cocktail of greed, hatred and lust that had seemed to surround Harry Nathan. Either Cindy or Kendall had killed Nathan, Kendall had killed Cindy, and now Kendall, too, was dead. The nest of vipers had consumed itself, and he was glad to close the Nathan case for good. The evidence could go back to the family now, he thought, recalling the hours of sickening videotapes he had made sure that no one but himself saw, and made a mental note to call Feinstein to find out who was now the legal owner of Harry Nathan’s estate.

  Decker jumped as Lorraine banged into the office. ‘Do I have a lot to tell you, darling,’ she said, tossing a rustling deli bag full of wrapped packages onto his desk. ‘Did you eat?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for you. God, I’m hungry. What did Feinstein want?’ He went into the kitchen for plates.

  When he came back, she said, ‘Cindy was right about the art scam. Feinstein bought over two million dollars’ worth of paintings from Harry Nathan and Kendall and they’ve turned out to be fakes. He wants us to try to trace either the original paintings or the proceeds of sale.’ Lorraine opened a tub of artichoke salad and scooped some into her mouth before continuing. ‘Cindy also wrote stuff about killing herself to Feinstein and a whole bunch of other people – which fits in with what I thought about the note. I had Kendall pretty much down for having killed her, but – you won’t believe this – Kendall Nathan died too last night.’

  ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead,’ Decker said ironically, arranging bread, bresaola and salad on a serving platter. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘The gallery caught fire and she went up in smoke. That’s all Feinstein’s assistant knew.’ Lorraine tore off another hunk of bread, assembled herself a rapid sandwich and began to eat.

  ‘I’m sure Lieutenant Burton will be able to let you have a few more details,’ Decker said, with mock innocence, and Lorraine flushed scarlet. ‘Remember to ask him when he’s scrambling eggs for you – I mean, next time he calls.’

  ‘Did he call?’ Lorraine asked, giving up the pretence that her association with Burton was purely professional.

  ‘Nope, not yet. You want me to call him?’

  Lorraine nodded, then changed her mind. ‘No, I’ll call him later. Anyway, two things. Feinstein figures that he bought the real thing from Nathan’s gallery, as he got it properly authenticated there, but what was packed and delivered were fakes. Cindy told me she thought Kendall and Harry were pulling something like that, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t believe her.’ Lorraine shook her head. ‘Poor kid. Nobody took her seriously her whole life.’

  ‘It’s not your fault she died,’ Decker said gently. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it.’

  ‘Yeah, I know – part of the job,’ Lorraine said with a wintry smile. ‘But she told me she’d found out that some of the art at the house was fake too. Some Chinese porcelain she thought was antique was apparently knocked out by some company called Classic Reproductions. Check them out for a start.’ She finished her sandwich as Decker made notes of what she had said.

  ‘I also think we need to trace a guy who worked for Kendall Nathan, a sort of gofer who brought the paintings round and hung them for Feinstein,’ she continued. ‘He’s a young kid – Feinstein couldn’t recall his name, but I remember seeing someone when I was at the gallery so chase him up too.’

  ‘Will do,’ Decker said, making another note.

  ‘These are pretty spectacular pieces that have gone missing, so we contact galleries in the US and in Europe and all the big art auction houses. They’re all signed works by well-known modern painters, and all had price tags from three hundred thousand dollars to over two million. Poor old Feinstein really got stung.’

  ‘I’ll make some enquiries in London,’ Decker said, writing furiously. ‘I think they have a register of hot art works you can have searched.’ He was going to enjoy doing the legwork on this case, he reckoned, schmoozing through galleries, and looking up art-world friends.

  Lorraine dug into her briefcase and brought out some loose pages. ‘These are the names of the people Kendall employed. Feinstein paid the wages so the list should be legit – just three people. He said they were hired to remodel frames, do repairs and so on, but they might also have been painting the fakes, so check them out. There’s also a list of regular buyers – get each of them to give you the name of their art adviser. It may mean a lot of people have been stung.’

  Decker nodded, excited.

  ‘Clever bastards,’ Lorraine mused, leaning forward. ‘You can see by the list – all movie people. They rarely sold to a dealer or old money, because they’d recognize a fake so fast. Most of the people they sold to were just rich trash and wouldn’t know if they’d bought a Lichtenstein or a fried egg. They hung up what they’d bought, put up the gold plaque to say what it was, while the original stayed with Nathan’s gallery. He and Kendall were pulling the scam together.’

  ‘And a very lucrative one,’ Decker remarked.

  Lorraine nodded. She frowned, and leaned back in her chair. ‘You know . . . everything Cindy Nathan said is starting to make sense. I mean about the high-tech security at Nathan’s – I’d say he kept the originals on his own walls.’ Lorraine leafed through the pile of pages of information from Feinstein. ‘There’s also sculpture, ceramics, and some statues that were worth over a million dollars.’

  Decker waited, pen poised, as Lorraine thumbed through the pages. ‘According to Cindy, Nathan hadn’t paid the insurance for the contents at the house for quite a while. Why do you think that was?’

  ‘It’s certainly a weird thing to do,’ Decker said meditatively. ‘Particularly since he wasn’t lax about security.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. He was paranoid about it, monitored every phone call, every visitor,’ Lorraine said. ‘Supposing what he was wo
rried about wasn’t the paintings being ripped off out of the house, but certain people getting into it – like the people who thought they had the same painting hanging in the guest bath at home? I bet he was careful never to sell to anyone too close to his own social circle.’

  ‘That’s certainly one explanation,’ Decker said. ‘But what about Kendall getting in and trashing the stuff?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to figure that one out since the housekeepers told me about it. The only thing I can think is that she discovered then that those paintings weren’t the ones she and Nathan had bought.’

  ‘What do you mean – he’d sold them again?’ Decker interjected.

  Wouldn’t surprise me. I reckon Nathan got two sets of fakes painted. Then he switched the originals again to cut Kendall out.’

  ‘He was doing a double whammy?’

  ‘Right. And Kendall found out when she went to the house the night Cindy Nathan killed herself.’

  ‘But why the hell would she set light to the gallery?’ Decker asked. ‘That was her own stock – she must have known that was genuine, at least.’

  ‘She’s going to have lost a fucking fortune on the scam – I’d say she torched it for the insurance. Which is why Feinstein wants me to look for secret banks accounts. If Nathan sold half of those paintings he’s got to have millions stashed somewhere.’

  ‘I’ll start calling round and see if any of them have turned up.’ Decker dangled the last piece of bresaola above his mouth and finished it with an elegant snap.

  ‘Let me tell you the second thing first,’ Lorraine said. ‘Feinstein told me the exact terms of Harry Nathan’s will.’ And she explained how Sonja Nathan now stood to inherit not only Cindy’s share of Harry Nathan’s estate, but also Kendall’s.

  ‘Just so long as she lives another . . .’ Decker glanced at the calendar ‘. . . four days. East Hampton next stop, right?’

  ‘Yes, get me another flight. I doubt if Sonja has anything to do with it as she’s been out of the picture a long time . . .’ She smiled at the pun. ‘But I’d like to talk to her, and besides, Mr Feinstein is paying us top dollar, so we can afford it. All fraud cases take a long time to check out too, so we don’t take on anything else – well, not for a while.’

  Decker rubbed two fingers together. ‘Do I get a rise?’

  Lorraine shooed him with her hand. ‘Oh, get out of here. But if you come up with something, yes, we’ll split if fifty-fifty because I’ll need you to do a lot of legwork.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He bowed out, eager to make a start.

  Lorraine glanced at her phone, then checked the time. It was after two, and Jake had not returned her call. Suddenly, she felt the depression descend. It was odd, she thought, she’d got a new and interesting investigation, but a date for the movies was more important.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon sifting through Feinstein’s papers. When it got to four o’clock and Jake still hadn’t called, she rang and cancelled her hair appointment. Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t pick up the phone to Jake himself, and hard as she tried to concentrate on work, she kept thinking about him until she had convinced herself he would never call again.

  It was almost six when Decker returned. ‘So far none of the well-known galleries have seen any of the paintings listed, and none have been sold recently at auction. Next I’ll try England, the art-loss register, and then the rest of Europe – and you’ve missed your hairdresser.’

  Lorraine attempted nonchalance. ‘This is more important. Now get out, leave me alone.’

  ‘He didn’t call, huh?’ he said, hovering at the door.

  ‘No, Deck, he didn’t call. So I’ll take Tiger out, and if you need me, I’ll be at home. Okay?’

  ‘Okay – but if you need me, I’m around.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She turned away from him. ‘I really liked him, Deck, but I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut. I just had to tell him about my past – well, some of it . . .’

  Decker leaned on her desk. ‘Listen, if he’s put off you because of that he’s not worth the effort, period. It’s what you are now that counts, and I’m telling you, you’re lovely.’ He watched her fetch Tiger’s lead and leave the office, while he stayed on to make his overseas calls to a list of major galleries that might have sold art works worth over a quarter of a million dollars. The paintings listed didn’t seem to appear on anyone’s records, and the case intrigued him more and more.

  Burton was still in his office, wading through investigation reports and trial files. The autopsy report on Cindy Nathan wasn’t passed to him until after five. The cause of death was suffocation by hanging, but she had also tested positive for alcohol and drugs. It was impossible to tell whether she had hanged herself voluntarily or whether someone else had done it.

  By the time Burton called Lorraine’s office, the answerphone was picking up calls. Her mobile was switched off and when he tried to call her at home he got another recording. He decided not to leave a message but to go round to the apartment on the off-chance she was there, and he continued to work, clearing his desk. Just as he was finishing, the file on Lorraine caught his eye again. He drew it towards him and leafed through it, rereading everything he had read that morning, then pushed it away. There was something that connected with the Nathan case, something that he had read or been told, that hung like a warning, but he just couldn’t put the pieces together. All he knew was that it had a direct connection to Lorraine.

  Lorraine sat on her sofa. She’d made herself an elaborate salad of goat’s cheese and marinated vegetables, but seemed to have no appetite. She’d walked Tiger, fed him, done everything to occupy herself, even played her answerphone messages twice in case she had somehow rewound the first time and missed his call. But there was no call, and no amount of staring at the machine would make a message appear. He hadn’t called, he wasn’t going to call, and she had been dumb to think he ever would call. She thought back to what he had said as he had left that morning: she wasn’t kidding herself, he had asked her if she wanted to see a movie – he must just have decided to skip it. She could easily call him tomorrow, it hadn’t been a firm date, just a casual suggestion, but by the time it got to nine o’clock, she felt worse than depressed, telling herself that no decent guy would want to start anything with her – she wasn’t worth it. She should never have thought he would want to see her again, so she took the phone off the hook, to stop herself staring at it.

  It was almost nine thirty when Tiger began to bark frantically. Lorraine, wrapped in a bathrobe, yelled at him to shut up, sure he had only heard the neighbours below, but then the entryphone buzzed. ‘I tried to call you at the office, and here . . .’ Jake’s voice said.

  ‘Oh, yeah, sorry. I’ve been really busy.’

  ‘Is it okay if I come in?’

  She pressed the button to release the street door. ‘Sure.’

  He seemed embarrassed when she opened the door to the apartment, and paid more attention to Tiger than to her, while she wished she’d kept the appointment with the hairdresser and hadn’t taken off her make-up.

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yeah, I got a hamburger at the station, but I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee.’

  Lorraine busied herself with the percolator, while Jake continued to mess around with Tiger. Then, suddenly, he was close and his arms slipped around her. ‘I missed you,’ he said quietly, and she turned towards him, putting out a hand to touch his face, feeling that he needed a shave.

  ‘You did?’ she said softly.

  ‘Yeah, all day.’

  She heard a voice inside her head telling her to say it, admit that she had missed him too, but she broke away to fetch the cups and take the cream from the fridge. ‘I’d given up on you,’ she said flippantly, setting out a tray.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He ruffled his hair.

  ‘Well, you say something about a movie, and then when you didn’t return my call . . .’ She reached for the cookies, and realized as she turned to
him that she was holding the jar tightly. ‘I did call you. Some secretary said you were in a meeting.’

  ‘I was. I’m sorry – it was crazy all day. But when I called you back, there was just the answerphone.’

  ‘Hell, you don’t have to explain anything, I’m not interrogating you. It was just . . .’ She couldn’t keep up the pretence. Her voice sounded strangled. ‘I didn’t think you wanted to see me again, not after, you know . . .’

  He took the jar away from her, and held her close. She clung to him, feeling his heart beating. ‘You are wrenching feelings from me that I never thought I would have again, and I’m scared, so scared . . .’

  He kissed the top of her head and the nape of her neck, then opened the palm of her hand and kissed that too, holding it to his lips. He wanted to say there and then that he loved her, but somehow the words just wouldn’t come. Instead he heard himself asking her if it would be all right if he had a shower.

  ‘Only if you stay the night,’ she said, wanting to say something more loving, but she was as tongue-tied as he was.

  It was not until he was beside her, lying on her bed with just a towel wrapped around his waist and a cup of coffee in his hand that they began to relax with each other. Neither said that they felt totally at ease with one another, that they loved the way their bodies fitted together when Lorraine slipped into Jake’s arms and curled up beside him. They didn’t need words, and she was unprepared for what he said when he spoke.

  ‘Will you marry me?’

  She didn’t think twice, but agreed without hesitation. Then they were stunned by the enormity of what they had just agreed, and there was a pause before they laughed. Lorraine covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Oh, my God, I should at least have hesitated a moment.’ She rolled away from him, in disbelief at what had just happened.

  ‘No,’ he said, drawing her closer, as if she belonged with him.

  ‘But it might take a bit of getting used to,’ she whispered.